WHEN: Once in a blue moon of course. (Which is NOW.)

On New Year's Eve of 2010 I sat under a full blue moon circled up with a handful of the founding heroine's of The Red Tent on Rose Avenue.  We were at El Capitan Beach in Santa Barbara County, California celebrating our inaugural wild woman retreat.  After using our senses, our bodies, and our voices to enjoy the last day of the year we sat around the campfire to use our imaginations to envision what was next.  We took turns looking beyond just the coming year and dared one another to dream big by asking, "What would you do only once in a blue moon?"

I was at a more dramatic point of transition in my own personal life than I knew at the time.  It turns out that was to be the last retreat for The Red Tent on Rose Avenue.  With a nine month old child in tow and a deep desire for another even the radiant full moon couldn't illuminate just how much would change for me.  I scryed into the fire in silence that night and walked into the new year holding a once in a blue moon vision for change.  I wanted to transition my red tent work from recovery to prevention, from therapy to education, from just women to girls, and most importantly from aligning with a patriarchal tradition to pursuing partnership with institutions driven by scientific research and a well established code of ethics.  It was going to be a giant course correction taking me places physically and psychologically that I could never have imagined.

Eight years later the vision is sparked. 

Circled under another full blue moon* with my seven year old daughter we're kicking off that campfire-scryed vision.  We've got a blog raisingtheredtent and the beginning panels of a patchwork red tent.  We're following Marge Piercy's prompting from her poem "The Low Road" and trusting that from us two our community will grow:

Two people can keep each other sane, can give support, conviction, love... Three people are a delegation, a committee, a wedge. With four you can play bridge and start an organization. With six you can rent a whole house, eat pie for dinner with no seconds, and hold a fund raising party. A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall. A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter; ten thousand, power and your own paper; a hundred thousand, your own media; ten million, your own country. It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again after they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.

 *a super blue full blood moon eclipse at that!