A NEW BOOK—This time I am the illustrator! Gunilla Norris, four of whose books I edited at Bell Tower, wrote the text for ON THE WING, an exquisite book of days illustrated with my paintings. Andrews McMeel is publishing the book on December 6, 2016, and you can purchase copies from online booksellers, your local bookseller, or me. The book is printed in five colors, has emerald green endpapers and a sky-blue ribbon marker, and can be used to record the lyrical (and any other) moments in your life. There’s a space for each day, but you can write in it in any year. Best of all, the price for this elegant journal is only $14.99—a perfect gift for yourself, in addition to friends and family. See Books Written and Illustrated pages for details.

Two Wonderful Interviews: In October 2015, Alan Steinfeld of New Realities interviewed me about my writing and painting on his NYC tv  show on MNN. You can watch it here, and, in June 2016, Paul Swanson wrote from Albuquerque, asking if he could interview me for his website, Contemplify: Kindling the Examined Life, saying, “Your work, Caught in the Act, has had an ardent impact on my life, and has been a loving shove into further self-cultivation and a deeper connection with my own soul. You came to mind as someone whose life shines a light on a contemplative way forward.” He had already posted interviews on Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, John Muir, and Julian of Norwich, so this was definitely not an invitation to be sneezed at. Paul turned out to be a wonderful interviewer, who drew out of me many things I didn’t know I knew. You can listen to the podcast here.

MANY BLESSINGS: In the July 2014 issue Science of Mind magazine ran a 5-page interview by Pamela Bloom, entitled “Second Acts: Celebrated editor Toinette Lippe mines her spiritual insights to reinvent herself after retirement.” It featured six of my paintings, a photo of me, and a box displaying my own two books plus a list of some of the authors I worked with over the years.

OneTheMagazine.com, a beautiful online quarterly devoted to experiences of awakening, chose me as its featured artist in its Summer 2014 issue, showing 18 of my paintings and a short introduction,
and in the Fall issue it published my essay “Dwelling in the Great Space”.

In Summer 2014 Contemplative Journal released the first of four pilgrimage pieces I adapted for its travel section. As many of you know, for twenty years I chronicled my adventures in far-flung places and friends dubbed these letters “Travels with Toinette.” The first piece is about my trip to China “In the Footsteps of Dogen.” You can read it here (free). The second will be going in search of Rumi. And in November they used my paintings on their home page to accompany four poems by my author Gunilla Norris.

In July 2014, Janet Conner of Unity Online Radio’s “The Soul-Directed Life” interviewed me for a series entitled “The Call to Imperfection,” and you can listen to it free here.

Exploring the heART of it: Textile artist Mirka Knaster’s “We Need Space” post on her lovely blog is all about space, a subject dear to my heart. And she chose my art and writing to accompany her thoughts.

In its Fall/Winter 2014 issue, Via Regia Journal, the twice-yearly print magazine for the exploration, representation, and articulation of contemplative experience, published by the Center for Contemplative Practice, featured 11 of my paintings and an essay I wrote about the use of space in my work.