The Tree of Life, again

The wind picks up and I am called to attention.
Mystery is speaking directly to me,
And I have prepared myself to hear.
Out here in the canyon lands I have been fasting,
Making myself available to the dawn, to the stars in their slow spin around Polaris,
Completing the work already tasked me through dreams and journeys,
Ready for more,
Ready to take the next step,
Ready to be in full service.

There is a Beautiful Story being written
Of challenge and triumph.
Of Mystery and Magic,
Of survival in the face of domination.
This story has always been.
It is archetypal to life on Earth.

We can acquiesce to colonization
And in the beginning we were forced to on pain of death, torture, and persecution,
As the wave marched across the Earth.
But we remember.
We Love.
We, like droplets of mercury, gather again in a wake behind that wave of crushing force.

Earth is Sentient.
Mycelium is sentient.
The Forest is a culture of sentient beings.
Our kin yearns to hear the drum again.
To feel the story weaving power of the council fire,
To be brushed as we collect dry kindling from living trees,
To feel our artistry partner with Hers in the sacred beauty we tend,
To be amplified, loved and seen through our gratitude and prayers.

Mystery is writing a Beautiful Story of us.
Beyond what the eyes can see and the tools of science can measure,
The world is teeming with energies, forces and guides.
The Soul Journey,
An adventure of listening, learning, guidance, bravery, humility, challenge and triumph on our way to becoming wise.
Earth Culture,
An intricate web of humans listening and participating in Mystery’s Great Story,
Feet on the soul journey learning,
Wisening ones weaving again the central pattern of the village,
Agents in our great becoming,
Making visible again of the Tree of Life.
Navigating survival and thrival as a People, as we always have.

This is my place,
Once and always,
Soul guide,
Weaver,
And here, now, I am in service to those that hear the Great Loom’s shuttle pass across the threads,
Whose soul is a bright thread,
Knowing they are agents of cultural change,
Midwives of Earth Culture,
Protectors of our home, the Web of Life, for those yet to come.

Gaia’s Call

Dear Child,
Remember when you walked barefoot on the path under the moonlight
Soft feet feeling your way.
Remember feathers and the quiet whisper of owl,
Seeing through the forest at night.

Remember when you lived under the baking sun in the dry lands,
And the strong scented plants taught you which ones to bathe with,
which ones to burn to bring soul and spirit close,
which ones to purge with,
and which ones to eat.

Remember when you lived as a forest dweller,
Collecting bark for kindle
And pine needles for tea to mend the lungs from smokey nights in your dwellings.
Remember learning to hunt and fish as a child and the scents of meat drying in the smoke huts.
Remember the joy of collecting berries with your sisters and mothers, laughing and pointing with red lips and fingers.
Remember scooping water to drink from the clear and bubbling stream,
Listening to crow and jay share news of the forest.

Remember rocking in the gentle lull upon the ocean,
Your cradle tethered to the rocks while mother dived for abalone and urchins.
The abundance of my shores and the beautiful creatures offering food, tools and homes for you and each other,
And breathing the sweet and fecund salty air
While seagulls wheeled, joyous in their food and flight.

I remember you sweet child.
Growing you over millions of years,
Perfecting you.
Feeling your soft belly upon mine
As the sweet fragrance of sun on pine needles fills the air.
Your hair growing like moss and silk
Your eyes witnessing the beauty of my creations
Soaring your heart in love and awe,
Inspiring love songs like the dawn birds.
Your softening recognition in seeing the frogs, salamanders and mud
of the birthing waters of my vernal pools.

From wherever upon me you have come, dear child,
I have known you.
I have tended you.
I have grown you.
And now, I am asking you to come home,
to remember.

You have learned the ways of society,
And this is important for you will need these knowings for how to move within it.
But now, dear child,
I need you to come home to me.

As one awakened and rallied by the very real possibility of unfathomable loss,
Of my very mortality.
I have sent a pulse of activation
Out from my heart, my core, my life force.
And I am calling you, dear child,
To enter my fold,
To put your heart’s ear to my Earth
To listen
To attune
To remember
To live, not just for yourselves
But for Me, Gaia.

And I will teach you
I will prepare you,
Grow you,
Show you,
How to serve my precious, precious Web of Life.

Apprenticing to Gaia

The in-between place of all possibility, wildness and wonder…this place is where we wild women go to listen.
Where the brooks run wild and joyous, and the rains flow through the forests of Gaia’s earth.
Where the mosses green wet softness remembers our soft animal bodies as belonging, here.

Some time ago a pulse was sent out from the heart of Gaia.
There among the quivering, swaying hemlock, a prayer broke open the seed of me. Up rose Gaia’s water to swell this seed in her teachings.

‘Attune to my rhythms’, she implored.
‘See how the perennial herbs draw down their medicine in winter and their roots grow fat and potent.
‘See how the crowns of rhubarb roar their potency up through the earth in the warming life of spring.
‘See how the garden hums with the fecund orgy of flowers opening, and the bees, scintillating in their scents and color, pollinate the web as one thrumming orb of life.
‘See how the fruits swell and the plants cast their seeds in all manner of ways to feed and sow the earth with richness.
‘See how the withering stalks then must die as the sun lowers and the cold wind blows, the wisdom in the seeds gleaned and precious, and the medicines returned to their roots once more.
‘You are made as the daisy is made’, she said, ‘to open your petals to life, and flower.
‘You dear one, spiral round and round the wheel of the year, to grow in wisdom through the ages.
‘There are the flowering ways unique to humans which you are to remember.
‘Walk with me, child, and I will re-member you to the Web of all Life and the wisdom ways of humans.’

I bent my head in devotion, as a student to the plants, to Earth, the prayer swelling, swelling as a song, Her song.
Round and round the wheel, softening the stone in the waters and ice, re-wilding, re-cohering with the ways of Earth, until she saw me fit to die a bigger death…

The Great Battle

It has been the obsession of man to tame the wild
Unaware in his modern mind, that it is the wild Earth that has produced him and made him possible. And in this taming he has consumed her.

Women, forget the men for now.
Stop wringing your hands
And let them suffer for a while in the throes of their adolescence
until enough of them initiate.

What we need more than anything,
Is for you to come home to the Wild,
To re-establish your Temples
To re-write the Initiatory journey of Women for these times.

Call upon the elders, the true adults, the initiated women
To help you remember why you have come.
Now, in these times, when so much is at stake,
Earth is calling you out of your homes
Calling you to your knees
To bend in love and longing, and put your ear to her ground
To listen to the thousand other voices besides man.

When you have re-tethered your heart and your power to Earth,
When you have remembered your true name,
When your teeth and your claws have regrown
And the fierceness of protecting your sacred earth has awakened your fire,
When you learn the arts of sourcing from the elements that sustain you,
When your voice rings in the dauntless clarity of passion rooted in knowing and boundary,
Men will listen.
The initiated will have their true partners again.
The destructive fire will be changed into a wisdom fire.

This is the New Earth
It is not a fantasy. It is not an era we blissfully float into.
It is an excruciating act of removing the veil
To recognize what is at stake
To go on the journey of descent to your inner most depths
To pull out the sword that has bled you of your power and sight
To have guides who know the journey
And to listen deep enough to hear Mystery call you by Name.

Braiding Soul-centric Community

How does one shape words to attempt to describe what they hold so dear?
This is the poet’s art and practice.
It is the tears of the heart that provide ink for the pen.
These are some words to try and convey my passion for the circles I immerse in. These circles cast that take us into the subconscious, into soul, into mystery, into the liminal, into the cauldrons of imagination and evolution.

Who is seeking these deep and luminous reflecting pools?

We can stay in the day world doings and live a perfectly fine life getting our mystical fix with the occasional plant medicine.
Or we can seek to walk a more daily rhythm of allowing the dark to inform the light,
Allowing our dreams and deeper longings to begin making their way into the day,
Opening the channels between subconscious and conscious,
Allowing our soul to share the reins with day woman, day man.

How might our lives enrichen when we plumb the depths of our midnight dreams?
To see the numinous in our lives and recognize how Mystery has indeed been shaping us all along?
To allow our soul to spin our thread of longing and wisdom, and weave that thread into council with the sacred others?
To listen together as if Earth herself was teaching us how she wants us to move and live upon Her, now, in these times. She is.

We are social beings, story beings, soul beings.
And it is through ceremonies, drum and fire under the stars,
Speaking tears of heart into the ears of our human and more than human family,
Coming home to the forest and remembering how to engage with the spirit of all beings,
And dancing together the joy of our release from soul numbing isolation,
that weaves us back into the Earth community, that fills our heart with true joy.

We are MEANT to braid our soul journeys with others!
This is how we find our place in the mythic world- by seeing our unique gifts in the moon mirrors of our beloveds.

I hold so dear the weaving of circles, the honoring of true life, of seeing the beauty of humans when in their natural environment of soul-centric earth based culture.