land spirits

tending to the beyond

beneath

and between

ancient earth shrine

hungering,

holy people make their 

offering –

sun & moon & star 


“water,” she whispered,

behind altar cloth

and cowrie shell

“comes from star glaciers,


and 

i’ve wondered

if, maybe, somehow,

the Spirit of water 

is really the one


who hears

and answers

all our prayers…


keep listening,” she said

“keep listening."

I called a dear old friend of mine to seek counsel and to inspire ideas around how to tend our land spiritually. It’s been heaving in my consciousness, like waves of an old knowing, this calling to steward our land not just physically, but also spiritually, or non-physically. 

A brilliant sort of expert in Tibetan Buddhist wisdoms, my friend shared some cross-cultural practices and also some very specific Tibetan practices for feeding and attracting the good spirits (land & sky) and dispersing the not-so-good ones. More on that in another post. 

As fate would have it, the very next day, I got to sit with a woman initiated in the Dagara tribe of Burkino Faso, West Africa, as an Elder and also as a wisdom keeper. We built a beautiful earth altar and she talked about how the people of the Dagara tribe feel about us Americans not having relations with our deceased ancestors. She said they think we are very sick because of that, “the walking dead” they sometimes call us. And that because we do not acknowledge the indigenous ancestors of this land, continuing to avoid the ancient stewardship, footprints, gardens and atrocities of those who came before us in this place, we are sickly. 

She showed us how to acknowledge those Peoples and encouraged each and every one of us to acknowledge the living presence of our ancestors who are holding us up, like the earth and these mountains are holding us up today.

So today, I encourage you, in this changing season of autumn, to remember your grandparents, your great grandparents, all the way back, and to celebrate them for all they have done so that YOU, a living emanation of that bloodline, can be HERE today, as the earth spins and the heavens change and a new world is being born.

And lay some corn for the indigeous antiquity who knew (know) and deeply love(d) this land, who call(ed) this place Home.