Nancy Lankston
I am dawn’s flame
Arching through treetops
I am a whisper of wind
Playing in the weeds
I am dark loamy ground
Supporting roots and shoots
I am cool mountain waters
Tumbling toward the sea
I am holy Mother
Creating and holding you.
~Nancy L
“Shamans live in a world where the Creator is not separate from the Creation, Heaven is not separate from Earth, and Spirit and matter infuse each other. There is no division between the body and the spirit, nor between the visible world of form and the invisible world of energy.”
~Alberto Villoldo
🌙
Image: Healer
by Susan Seddon Boulet
☽
Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee Earth with its constant heartbeat of death, but Goddess forces us back to embrace them, to take our human life in our arms and clasp it for the divine life it is— the nice, sanitary, harmonious moments as well as the painful, dark, splintered ones.
If such a consciousness truly is set loose in the world, nothing will be the same.
It will free us to be in a sacred body, on a sacred planet, in sacred communion with all of it. It will infect the universe with holiness. We will discover the Divine deep within the earth and the cells of our bodies,and we will love her there with all our hearts and all our souls and all our minds.
~Sue Monk Kidd
☾
Image: Catacomb Bones
by Nancy L
Full moon in earthy Virgo, keeper of Earth’s cycles, rhythms and mysteries. Virgo is lover of green trees furry creatures, running streams, buzzing bees, soil and stone.
Now is the perfect time to embrace your inner Earth priestess or priest. Earthy rituals are particularly powerful when the moon is full in Virgo.
Offer love and honor to Mama Earth; create a mandala out of objects from Nature, sing a song of gratitude to Earth and Sky, offer up a joyful poem to your favorite tree, sit with the land and give it your loving attention, light a candle and express your appreciation for the air, food, water and shelter our Earth provides, sit in the light of the full moon tonight and express your wonder about the mystery of it all…
There are a thousand different ways to love and honor our sacred Earth. Choose one and do it now. Do it for the land where you live.
🌍
“The Earth does not belong to us:
we belong to the Earth.”
~Marlee Matlin
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
~Billy Collins, Aimless Love
❤️
Image by Nancy Lankston
Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes –
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.
~ Jan Richardson
♾
Image: Tree Sculpture by Debra Bernier
The Wild will call you back.
Through half-remembered dreams
and sunsets painted
in burnt sienna
and vermillion flames
she will call you back home.
The coyotes will wake you
from your sleep
with their clarion call
to keep your eyes
wide open.
How long have you been sleeping?
How much have you forgotten?
The Wild will call you back.
She will hang you upside down
and shake the nonsense
from the pockets
of your mind.
She will strip your soul naked
leaving you raw and exposed
under the searing glare
of the gods.
Offer up the holiness
of your confusion
and questions.
Dress yourself
in fireflies
and attune your senses
to awe
while you learn the slow seduction
of courting your muse.
Brush the stardust from your wings
and wipe the ocean from your eyes.
Flex your claws
dig your roots deep down
into the fertile earth
and show your fangs.
Gather pollen on your legs
and speak
in venom
and honey.
Peel back your colonized tongue
and let it hiss
and purr
and growl
and scream.
Do you remember
how to stalk
as predator
and how to surrender
as prey?
The Wild will call you back.
The owls know your real name
and will call you
from the darkness of night
to dance under the moon.
Crack your heart open
with your ancestors’ bones
and dance in the ecstasy
of your love
and your grief
with flailing limbs
bloody knees
and mud-stained feet.
Braid mugwort into your hair
and dream yourself
awake.
The Wild will call you back.
She will teach you how to die
again and again
and how to die well.
There is no difference
between your funeral pyre
and your birth canal.
Do not bother
to try and stop
the bleeding.
Love with the gentleness
and ferocity
of your whole
soft
tender being.
Feed the spirits
with your beauty
and sweetness
and ask them to show you
the way home.
⠀
~Gina Puorro
www.ginapuorro.com