the Spring Sun
a conversation in reorienting to Place
Balance in Times of Great Change
I take my shoes off. And then my socks and I pull up my leggings. I look up at the Sun - does it have a different kind of light today? - she is directly above the Mountain and with the oddest of timing from the unknowable mysteries of this universe, the spring water suddenly begins to flow from its frozen pipe uphill from me. The water trickles down, suddenly, like unexpected music, so gentle and precious, glistening in this new Sun light, spreading on down the hillside below me, through the snow, in a steady stream of shimmering sound.
A hundred tiny suns reflected in its movement.
Spreading, sinking, pooling. Speckled golden and green.
What is it, really though, about the light of the Sun today?
As the Sun moves southerly and the spring water runs free, I place my all too pale and all too soft, bare feet on the cool, winter earth. Wet mud gushes up between my toes. I feel my nervous system respond. This is the first time this winter that my bare feet have touched the earth. I’m slightly embarrassed. It has been a long and linoleum-filled past few months for these feet. They are delighted to be, yet again, among the living.
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My daughter, this morning, flew into the kitchen to tell me about a dream she had in the night. “There was a light,” she said, “that gave birth to another light, and that one grew and grew until it was a big mama!”
My hands were buried in hot soapy water, with the sad fading overhead light shining down on us in the kitchen - me in my turmeric stained robe, her completely sky-clad - and I beamed the biggest smile from my face and asked her to tell me more.
“Then, they bloomed flowers,” she said, her eyes all dazzling at the bouquet sitting on the table.
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After I walked her to school, I drove up here, to the land, to be in the silence and the beauty of all the good things of Life, taking off my shoes, my shirt, my armor, greeting the Sun and the Mountain, when the spring water started running, suddenly, as if waking up from a deep sleep.
A few weeks ago, I sat at the birthing place of this Spring, beneath the Sun, beneath the Mountain, and I asked what kind of food she liked - what kinds of gifts would she enjoy? Any dietary restrictions? Allergies? What could I bring her, this humble Spring, as a good neighbor?
When the Guardian of that Spring finally turned and saw me, I was given a clear answer, and I went home to bundle up the items. When I returned, there was more snow and the earth was even more frozen, but I dug anyway, to bury the gifts at her feet.
Today I felt that Guardian lift and greet me when I arrived and I am happy to be creating good relations with my neighbors.
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There, from my place on the gloriously alive, muddy and cold earth, with my pale feet becoming brown in the thick clay, I ask the Spring about this particular changing light of the Sun: “Do you notice a difference?”
“Oh yes,” she says. Her voice sounds like she’s speaking through fluted grass, or as if its bouncing off the water the way a flat stone skips across the surface of a river.
She then shows me a vision - she lassos the Sun in a big hoop of a rope that she spins around her heart as well, making this enormous infinity loop between her heart and the Sun, showing me how intimately connected the human heart and the Sun are, how both are going through an evolutionary shift, an upgrade, a frequency realignment.
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In an interview with Geraldine Patrick Encina, scholar and member of the Otomi Council of the High Lerma River Basin, Geraldine speaks to the Otomi-Toltec people and their prophecy: that the actual completion of what they call the Fifth Sun, a time of great suffering, war, imbalance and hardship for humanity and Earth, happened in it’s totality, a full 13 year-cycle after the Mayan prophecy date of 2012, landing the actual date of the setting of the Fifth Sun, in March of 2025.
She speaks about how those 13 years between 2012 and 2025 would be excruciating opportunities for us to reassess our behavior as humanity and course correct. About that time she says:
“…we’ve seen this as a period of tremendous challenges and, at the same time, tremendous opportunities for those people who come to terms with their identity as stewards of the Earth—in terms of expanding their roots and their branches in their own place, and in terms of really changing the priorities of what matters in life, and strengthening their relationships with people around them, and with nature, and all the natural elements of nature.”
She asks the question:
“What can you do as an agent of change that will ensure that there is plentiful running water in your place of origin or where you have chosen to live? What do you need to do so there will be abundant local food and thriving forests that belong to that biocultural region? What can you step into as a collective project to ensure a thriving socio-ecosystem where you live?”
Listen to the full interview from The Institute of Natural Law, here.
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For the Seneca people of the Great Lakes region, their prophecy calls the new world we are moving into, the Fifth World of Illumination, similar to how the Hopi refer to this new world that we are literally walking into, as the Fifth World. Not to confuse you with the Otomi-Toltec time-keeping, as they call this moment the rising of the Sixth Sun.
For the Seneca, the Fourth World of Separation, a time of great darkness, war and conflict, could end by polar shift and its ensuing destruction, if humanity did not come into inner unity with themselves, each other and the planet. Each decision, action, word and thought, generated by each human being, would contribute to either the unity or the disharmony of the planet, tipping the scales towards physical destruction or non-physical regeneration.
For them, this new world, this Fifth World of Illumination, began around the year 2013.
From the great book, Other Council Fires Were Here Before Ours, by Jamie Sams & Twylah Nitsch, an interesting quote about this time of transition:
“The community of the Fifth World will include All Our Relations in the Planetary Family. Five traveling stars made of Sacred Fire will pass near the sky path of our Earth Mother at the end of the Fourth World. These Stars-with-Tails or Comet People will provide new thought food for the Planetary Family as well as for our Earth Mother. The Two-Leggeds will see truth through new eyes. This new way of understanding will stop the confusion that has limited the Two-Leggeds’ growth. One among the five Stars-with-Tails will fertilize the egg of our Earth Mother.”
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I bury my feet a little deeper into the mud and reach my hands into the juniper branches above me. The snow is slowly melting in some places, watering the little green plants as it moves down the hillside, past my dugout and decidedly ineffective little pond, past the willow lodge, our yurt, down into the ravine where it will meet with another spring-fed stream from higher up on the Mountain.
I ask the Spring here if she has a name. I hear her fluted voice again, speaking a name in another tongue. She’s between worlds, and in full regalia. I can’t see her if I look directly at her but if I unfocus my eyes, and look a little off to the side, I can see her.
It’s good to visit our neighbors, the Guardians of the Water, in these times. To learn their names and acknowledge their existence, bring them gifts.
A Kogi elder, visiting Sedona, Arizona once told me how sad those red rocks were — that everyone came to take, take, take - take rocks, and pictures, and buy themselves special foods and drinks — but no one offered those rocks a blanket or a piece of chocolate. He said those rocks were very lonely, famished even, very very sad. That it was hard for him to look at them.
Re-establishing relations with the living world looks like…?
Keeping my finger on the pulse of Earth time, Water time and Wind time, I find (am finding, will continue to find) my center.
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Thank you for reading this edition of Wild Leaf, an undulating landscape of meaning, poetry and what it seems to be a mother in these times. Please click the little ❤️ at the bottom of the page here so more readers can find this publication. Paid subscriptions support these works in a big way, thank you. You can also always: Buy Me A Coffee.
I had a similar experience yesterday with the sun, my feet, and earth. Then all last night I was learning about the sun in relation to the earth. There really is something special in this all :)
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and felt experiences!