a circle of life
calling to the spirit nation
The thick clay-filled mud sticks to my shoes as I carry hot water out to the dish-washing station beneath the juniper tree behind our yurt.
Between the hanging blankets on the enormously long clothes line, I catch a glimpse of our goats, nibbling on dry rabbit brush, all golden in the afternoon sunlight. The oddly sweet smell of the plant drifts through the air and into my nose as I begin washing the glass jars.
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By the second round of the sweat lodge, I realized how heavy I felt as a result of all I had seen and comprehended on my recent trip to Arizona.
I felt a bit hopeless in the face of the enormity of, truly, the ecocide, we have created as humans across the earth.
The millions and millions of miles of dead zones we have literally created, alongside our highways and interstates. The hundreds of thousands of mountains we have detonated to procure precious metals and oil. The slaughtered wildlife left for the crows alongside hot asphalt. The meaningless destruction of Life. The shrinking of water. The absence of bugs splattered across my windshield. The disappearing birds.
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The past, too, is a dead zone.
Evolution continues to propel us forward, molding us anew each day. I am beginning to understand and appreciate, through the living presence of my somatic experience, that IT IS GOOD. That the obliteration of past one experiences as a new mother, is complete, meaningful and, in fact, an upgrade. A very heart-felt, deepening.
I am realizing the centrality of Life in my weave of purpose.
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As I sat on the edge of Sycamore Canyon, my “old stomping grounds”, the sun and rain clouds so beautifully contrasting those ancient red rocks and brilliant white sycamore trees, I processed the exhaustion, the transformation, the surrender, the wounds, the sanctity, the exhaustion, the unknown. No going back.
The sound of the rushing river far below in the canyon danced up into my ears and sounded like the Ocean.
I remembered something. As, hardly, barely, just a tiny beginner student of a beautifully ancient Indian musical tradition called Druphad, I was once told that we sing one note until we can hear all the notes in that one note.
I wonder if the sound of water is like that too. If we listen long enough to one stream, maybe we can eventually hear the sounds of rain, snow, steam and ocean.
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By the third round of the sweat lodge, we brought in the water and I offered it to the earth and stones. I felt lighter, cleaner, more hopeful.
I was told stories of Eagles cleaning the sky. The power of prayer. Star nations. Intervention. Circles of life-loving humans, gathering, protected, amidst the darknesses of the apocalypse.
Will we decide, as humans, that enough is enough?
How many more species must go extinct? How many more rivers must dry up? How many more wetlands must evaporate into the sprawling deserts of our planet?
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If you could paint the rhythms which sustain and cradle our aliveness, you would see short infinity loops of inhalations and exhalations, long rises and falls of fluctuating brain waves, REM sleep and wakefullness.
You would see small pulsations of heart beat, pulse and fluttering eyelids. The whole spectrum of organic, lopsided, rhythmic shiverings of our aliveness, our biology, could be seen as spiraling, looping dancing movements surrounding our entire being; somewhat predictable, but also changing, subtly changing, ever changing, to adapt to circumstance.
That is the nature of our aliveness: rhythmic. We hunger, we sleep, we breath, we digest. We wake, we think, we worry. We cycle around the cycles of earth, pulsing, organic expressions of the universal life force that exists in all things.
And then… there you are, organically pulsing and feeling and breathing, sitting there beside a major intersection between here and there, watching and feeling the cars fly by in both directions, 60 miles an hour, texting, blasting music, laughing, crying, distracted. And there’s this little plant trying to grow there beside you, busting through the cement, stunned at the conditions of earth in which it finds itself, blowing in the winds created by young folks and old folks driving somewhere important, fast and furious, carelessly encassed in collision-proof machines burning fuel and creating weather.
Twenty minutes go by. You and the plant, both pulsing and alive, are covered in dust and fumes, pushed over by the sheer force of mechanistic speed and oblivious intent.
This is not a goot place to grow little plant, these are not good conditions for Life.
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When I arrive home, I feel tension beyond my conscious awareness, release from my back.
The sounds of the goat bells, the safety of my daughter, the mountain.
I feel the rhythms of clock, traffic light and utility meter leaving my nervous system. I feel the air conditioner, the electric fans, the predictable mechanic ticking of cell phone tower and satellite, leaving my body.
The rhythms of my biology, the blessing of aliveness, aligned with the aliveness of Mother Earth, are restoring to me a sense of home and belonging.
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At the Save the Verde River Headwaters!, Water is Life, Event (please consider donating) in Sedona, a woman spoke to us in poetry:
“What we do to Water, we do to Women. What we do to Water, we do to Earth and Women. What we do to Water, we do to the Children.”
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By the end of the sweat lodge, I am saturated in copal and osha smoke, juniper and cedar fragrance and a sense of intertwined, communal resilience and renewal. Home in community, alive with the prayer, I will continue to make offerings, and dream and believe that the waters will run clean, the herds will return and our sacred aliveness will return to the center of human culture and celebration.
I recognize the tree roots in the rocks... Glad you are home safely and finding your balance again.