Late Autumn

Daylight’s eve,

autumn forest beeches

slowly give way to splendor

day by day surrender.

Cinnamon

copper

beaten gold

drench down each leaf,

stem to tip.

Chlorophyll’s emerald

summer display recedes.

Roots sprawl wide and shallow.

Dense thickets of

root-sprouted seedlings

lean close, clinging.

Dogwood’s

arching, branched fingers

~ subtly articulate as our own ~

lift and bow to pray.

Her spine is raised toward

blue winter’s heaven;

her limbs bend low

with generous touch

bringing grace to

acorn, stone, lichen.

Autumn evening light

~ radiant ~

pours honey thick

upon late fall begonias,

as mercury drops

now one degree, now another.

Solomon’s seal,

in balanced wisdom,

has decreed

a trove of gold-leaf

before frost’s frigid furnace

blasts pitiless,

carried on a clear white moon.

From my book of earth-poems

A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Photo Nick Fewings

We Have Come to the Cross-Quarters

Samhain (pronounced sow-in) is one of the four “cross-quarter” festivals of the ancient Gaelic calendar, which originated among the Celts of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. The timing of the “cross-quarters” festivals were 6 weeks before and after the Solstices and Equinoxes. In this way, the year was divided into eight seasons., or moods of the year. Samhain marks the end of the harvest season, the start of winter, and the "darker half" of the year.

It was celebrated from sunset on October 31 to sunset on November 1, as the Celts counted days from sundown to sundown. It was a crucial time for finishing the harvest, moving herds down from summer pastures and slaughtering and preserving livestock for winter provisions. Many historians view Samhain as the ancient Celtic New Year.

The Celts believed that the barrier between the physical world and the Otherworld (the realm of gods, spirits, and ancestors) grew very thin during Samhain. Souls of the departed were thought to revisit their former families, while fairy-folk and other “Earth-Spirit Beings” roamed freely.  Families left food and drink outside their doors to welcome friendly ancestral souls. 

One thing strikes me most about this festival: Samhain was the time that the Earth’s light was leaving, so ancient Celtic people would assure its return by building a huge communal fire on a hilltop.  Then extinguishing all personal fires in their homes, they all processed to the single, new and pure fire. They re-lit their personal fires from this One sacred fire, knowing that from this shared fire and light came protection, prosperity and unity. At this time when the veils were thin, the people symbolically let go of their individuality and rekindled their innate knowledge that we all come from the same One, we are protected and nourished by this Unity. It was not just during the Medieval era that this was true. Right now, at this time, our beloved Earth and all her children are experiencing chaotic elements from many directions. We can feel the Light receding in more ways than one.

So, today, as the veils are thinning, let’s align with each other and this ancient wisdom that recognizes and celebrates the unity of Humanity and the Ancient Ones... in all their various realms: the Ancestors of the Spiritual realm, the Earthly realm, and the Familial realm. Let’s offer solidarity and gratitude, each in our own way. 

Take a walk among the burnt umber and golden dogwoods, the red and copper maples.

Light a candle and make an offering to the Unseen Beings.

Sing a sweet and melancholy song to the waning light.

Give gratitude and honor to the Spirit of Unity.

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Photo: Dave Hoefler

The Veil Between the Worlds is Thinning

 The veil between the worlds is thinning.

The beings of fire & warmth in Nature are receding.

Now we must carry them within as the light and warmth of Love.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Roel op t Ende, creator of the podcast Voices of Waldorf Elders  Although our topic was “What do Young Children Really Need?” the conversation was wide ranging.  We talked about the fundamental needs of young children within the larger context of the fundamental needs of humans throughout a lifetime. As is true for the wellbeing of young children, every one of us is designed by Nature with an innate need for Love; to offer love, to be held in love’s embrace, and to carry an atmosphere of love as we walk through life.  We humans are designed to live within and carry the light ~ the warmth ~ of Love; we thrive when we follow these “original instructions,” and we falter when this is amiss.

Looking into our current society we find people of all ages struggling to find belonging, beauty, meaning, inspiration, and ~ essentially ~ Hope.  Not hope as pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.  Rather hope with her sleeves rolled up and her eyes open to the needs of all other beings, human and our other than human brothers and sisters needs as well. This kind of hope is the twin sister of Love; they work together side-by-side and fill the world with beauty.

Please listen-in with Roel and me as we turn our thoughts inward;

and our hearts ray outward at this time of

the thinning of the veils and the turn of the seasons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rOIuA5Xu40

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Photo by Tengyart

Earth Song

Sound is a formative force: we are shaped by what we hear. Our ancient primate ancestors lived bathed in sounds, the language of a vibrant fecund new earth busy with love’s work of evolution.  Humans first learned to speak by listening to the musical language that surrounded them, the living intelligence it conveyed.  The whistling of wind through red rock canyons, the call and response of crashing waves and sand susurration, the intricately accurate newscasting systems of bird language.  We also heard stones speak silently as they broadcast their electromagnetic fields into soil and water.  Their minerals still speak in our bloodstream as health and vibrancy: our well-being falters without mineral language.  Plant dialogue tells of nutrition, medicine, pleasure.

We grew up in this river of language, and out of this our human speech arose to naturally imitate and reflect the life-force that sounded all about us.  Our original languages were expressive of broad sense perception, wide expanses of movement, of nuanced felt-experiences in this sensuous earth; they were languages of verbs.  The native Potawatomi language even today contains seventy percent verbs. As we live further removed from the wild, living earth we recede further into mental conceptions of the world.  More and more removed from our wild and sensuous selves, we find our language today composed of seventy percent nouns.  Verbs tell us about the activities of beings; nouns name things. Having devalued the being-ness of earth ancestors, we now live in a small perceptual prison this narrowing of language both reflects and perpetuates.

Other voices speak of other kinds of intelligences.  Enter into these invocations and listen.  Let’s allow these other ways of knowing to rise up through the bottom of our feet and send mycelial networks’ delicate strands of mind through our pores.  Allow earth-knowing to percolate up through our strata; it is fresh groundwater bringing life to barren thought. Perhaps our moistened words will grow wings and spiral upward on warm currents or grow foliated and plentiful, reaching into arid regions of mind to seed the clouds of thought and call sweet rain.

From my book of Earth Poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

 And From David Abram

“The written word carries a pivotal magic – the same magic that once sparkled for us in the eye of an owl or the glide of an otter.  Let us release the budded, earthly intelligence of our words, freeing them to respond to the speech of the things and beings themselves, to the green uttering forth of leaves from the spring branches.  Let us find phrases that place us in contact with the trembling neck-muscles of a deer holding its antlers high as it swims toward the mainland.  Let us plant words like seeds, under rocks and fallen logs, letting language take root, once again, in the earthen silence of shadow and bone and leaf.”

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Photo: Stephen Crane

The Still Point

Gaia’s Inhalation

 Light-eating spirits, flora are ancestral forces.

Photosynthesizing, they make divinity

visible to our blunt human sight:

Beech trees open their copper arms,

touch hair, greet and bless.

Silvery glade ferns bow, exude antediluvian perfume.

Curling grapevine tendrils swing in the wind of our passing.

The central flame ~ the green light ~

rooted and ever-rising, is the mitochondrial matrix.

Its combustive heat, fed by pacifist chloroplasts,

turns stardust into flesh:

Damsel-fly snaps open peacock green wings

she is an elegant kabuki dancer

suspended in flight bove the creek.

Bear cub strolls the path a child walked last eve.

Coyote’s signature is written in

morning’s creek-side mud. 

 The still point, ~ empty core of life’s axis ~

is the central beam of wild cathedrals.

It holds up the night sky, to become evening’s intimate roof,

the only dome vast enough

to carry human dreams.

Let us recognize plants as our living ancestors, photosynthesis as divine activity, the still point as Gaia’s inhalation.

 Read the blog here, to see the evening sky video, and listen to cricket-song.

From my book of Earth Poems,

A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Gratitude for Our Plant Relatives

As the Plant world moves toward autumn sleep and winter regeneration

a global ceremony to honor our Plant relatives begins today.  Join me and the

Organization of Nature Evolutionaries here

 ONE is asking us to send notes of love and appreciation to the world of green growing beings:

 Plant

 Rivanna river bank,

damp earth a fecund womb,

gestates plant embryos

who dream of water

~ grace fallen from stars ~

who ache toward sun’s warmth

~ his sovereign ascendency ~

Plant ancestors live

through our cycles

moon to moon

blossoming, fruiting,

seeding, resting

We are kin

to seductive honeysuckle

unfurling first leaves,

opening blossom’s fertile whorl

into crimson dawn light.

Kin to masting beech trees:

sisters, cousins

who together as one

launch their precious young,

making forests fill with music.

Nuts cascading from upper stories,

squirrels gathering,

gossiping amid leaf litter

Kin to blackberries who open

their taut, sweet fruit

into lustrous solar face.

As they turn toward sleep,

we turn toward gratitude. 

Beech trees do not fruit yearly or biennially.  By a mysterious communication,

beeches in an entire bio-region will set, mature and launch their fruit at the same time: mast-fruiting.

From my book of earth poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Now We Pause at the Balance Point

Ancient spiritual traditions of the world encourage the practitioner to pause at the balance point of the breath ~ the still point between breaths. Current science affirms that the nervous system takes a minute rest at the end of each breath, resetting our whole system toward calm abiding.  We do not need to look far to discover who has taught us this lesson.  We and all of creation, from our most primordial ancestors to the scientist in the lab, practice “biomimicry” with each breath: all breathing-beings imitate our Earth Mother.  Now, after her long exhalation of summer’s beauty, bounty and beneficence, she is beginning to prepare for winter’s sleep.  As with our breath, we can elongate this still point.  Let’s pause now, to experience the balance point.

Equinox

Celestial geometry

maps star voyages

that navigate cosmic seas.

One beam of earth’s star

rays out low across land,

glances off stones

standing at sunset.

Now a telluric ritual begins

            October Lady’s Tresses

            ~floral spears~

            point to summer’s

final hours.

Lobelia wears a violet crown:

medicine for breath

and dreams.

Frost grapes and porcelain berries

shine plump, heavy,

tempt autumn’s fox.

Witness earth’s weight shift

as she moves toward quiet,

toward her fragrant rite

            laying down

            layering up

mounded, umber

            oak and poplar leaves

            bee balm flower stalks

            beds of bracken.

This is her ceremony of soil;

magic at its most potent.

Winter’s death is a chrysalis

returning to its

embryonic state.

Fluid with possibility

~ pluripotent ~

earth turns toward sleep.

From my book of earth poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Photo Johannes Plenio

Jewel Weed Wears Her Diamond Studded Gown

 Let us Walk Redemption

Now we set this foot

upon holy soil,

now this one

upon star moss,

now sand beside

the sacred stream,

now the tenderness of

sweet Jewel Weed.

Let us walk our prayers,

walk at the center of

time and space,

as feet press prayers

into fragrant autumn loam.

 The first wild plant I fell in love with when I moved to Virginia was Jewel Weed! Her medicinal properties are full of kindness and generosity: her gel-like sap breaks down poison ivy’s itchy oils; her fresh juice cools and calms mosquito bites; her fungal properties help athlete’s foot and ringworm.

Plant people say that if you make a relationship with a wild plant, or if you need its medicine, it will come to live close by. Here you see this year’s Jewel Weed, just outside my kitchen door.  The hummingbirds, making their autumn journey south, are congregated here with me.  We are all buzzing and humming in gratitude. My feet press prayers into fragrant autumn loam.

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Breathe with Our Living Earth

Prana

***

Mother to earth’s water cycle

breath is an airborne ocean

moving through

tissue, muscle, blood.

The human is made new

at each in-breath;

our scent, note, hue

are given away

at each out-breath.

We become a river bed:

our minerals, bones, stones

sculpt the shape of water.

***

Let us breathe with the earth

 invite earth inside our body:

the coyote by night

at stream’s confluence

gnawing bones,

catching crayfish

children come by day

splashing, giggling

stream ripples glisten

in sunlight

owl calls to her mate

in the pine scented breeze,

we listen motionless.

***

Our mind, prayer, heart

flow out on the breath.

 Earth and human are

twined as lovers;

each one’s embrace

subtly shapes and

molds the other,

our rhythms rising

and falling in tandem.

From my book of earth poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Photo by Christian Lunde

To Re-Sanctify Earth

 The Glory of the Ordinary

Fifty years ago I had a dream in which I was given a new spiritual name and new spiritual practice.  They were both called by the same name, in a language I did not know.  I asked a native speaker to translate and awoke with the words The Glory of the Ordinary ringing…singing… in the cells of my body. In her visionary book The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams re-sanctifies Earth, rewriting a sacred text, Psalm ninety-one, beginning in this way:

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Holy Ordinary will rest in the shadow of the Glorians.  We will say of the Glorians they are our sanctuaries and our fortresses, they are our wonders in whom we trust.”

A visitation from the Glory of the Ordinary arrived outside my door recently; it is a wonder in whom I trust.  This is my sacred Psalm:

Animalia

I.

She hears a small thud

against the window.

Sparrow huddles,

breath coming fast,

blinks as the woman

bends to hold her.

No flutter of wings

quieter still

inside the basket.

The woman pulls

soft flannel close,

steps back inside.

II.

Forest animals

she bows to by day

return to her

under moonlight.

They inhabit her dreams:

She holds a wedding

bouquet of living snakes.

Bees deposit honey

into her lap.

Birdsong becomes

elixir in a crystal vial.

A stag with diamond antlers

stands in shallow creek water.

Her house of dreams

is a living bestiary

herds, packs, flocks, schools

species, times, seasons, eons

are waves on the sea

rising, merging, rearranging

patterns of furred, finned

feathered bodies

surfacing and receding

III.

When humans stood to walk

face forward, gaze level

the underside

~ belly, womb, heart ~

were exposed

vulnerable for the first time.

Rolling over

wolves submit

with a lowered head

tail tucked

underbelly soft and visible.

The woman rounds

her body, bends low

forehead on the ground

to bow bare

before the Sacred.

IV.

One sparrow

the weight of feathers

and a heartbeat

launches into flight

from a basket rim.

From my book of earth poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Photo by Michael Heng

To Reimagine Language

Listen for meaning and mood

as wind rustles dry grass

and mice rattle seed-heads.

Understand the beat of wings;

dawn geese rise

from mist-laden pond.

Mind

listening to coyote song

and owl speech

will sprout

softly velvet new antlers

or become

a chambered nautilus.

Now land will sculpt mind

as water carves

sandstone canyons.

Know the way out

is the way in:

retrace recent steps

return to

where-we-went-wrong

make reparations

so our words

our stories

can return to

the great conversation

among elements

and beings.

Together as one

we will sing the world alive.

Again.

From my book of earth poems, A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology

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Photo by Rex Boggs

To Reimagine Liturgy

Gaia’s own liturgy offers the possibility that we be released from the binding structures of the Western mind.  A new liturgy and its rituals can blur the edges of our sense of self and open the door to unitary states: unite the boundlessness of Spirit with the eternally cycling here and now.

Gaian liturgy is sacramental:  outward and visible realities express the subtle movements of Spirit.  The unfurling of an emerald fiddlehead fern announces the sacred miracle of Spirit’s seed.  It unfolds not only in the green world, but also in the sacrament of our own bodies. The tangible and finite make Spirit visible. 

A sensate liturgy offers us a communal lens through which to witness truth.  With spoken rhythms and gestures, scriptures and texts, prayer’s call and response, the human community is woven together for a sacred moment outside of time into one body, one heart, one mind.  We become one living expression of praise, in communion with all beings.  The resonant states created by a participatory liturgy lift us out of isolation, unbind us from the narrow confines of solitary thought.  We become embedded in something greater than ourselves, a pervasive joyous intelligence.

In these invocations we return to a liturgy of the incarnate deity.  Let us gather friends and family, and together experience these healing, unitive states.  Let them be written into our bloodstream, carried in the rhythm of our footsteps.  Let us walk this ecstatic unity into the moments of our daily lives.

From my book of poems to the Earth, A Litany of Wild Graces

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The Holy Ordinary

 You must read Terry Tempest Williams new book “The Glorians.”  The Glorians are not distant deities, but the ordinary often overlooked presences ~ animals, plants, landforms, rivers ~ that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the green earth.  What they teach us about the power of attending to beauty as an act of resistance as well as an affirmation of hope, is immense.  Open your eyes to the Glorians around you.  And I will share with you some of mine.

Ceremony, Gift-giving, Prayer

In the green light of

Appalachian forests

other-than-human

nations convene for

ceremony, pageantry

gift-giving

prayer.

Proud mullein push

new velvet leaves

through leaf litter,

wear petal crowns.

 Wild grapevine

bows down

to touch sacred earth.

 Forest raspberry canes

are lavender flags

carried in late afternoon light.

Troupes of

translucent Indian Pipe

are ceremonial

ghost dancers.

A republic of

tubers, seeds, mushrooms

arrive from far away tribes

bringing gifts

to give away.

As bees bring sweet medicine

for all.

From my book of Earth-Poems

A Litany of Wild Graces

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Summer Bouquet, Summer Dreams

Night Breath

In nuanced darkness

the spherical nature of sound

echoes in cochlear spirals.

Cicada’s song resonates

with red fox’s shrill bark

and moonlit breezes.

Through tapestried shadows

the breath repeats Huuuu...

heart beating its rhythm.

This breath, created by

tulip poplars and spice bush,

we share with

red-winged blackbirds

who feed their fledgling

one sunflower seed by one

orcas breaching and

shimmering in sunlight

as they play off Vashon Island

a bob cat whose shriek

punctuates pungent dark.

It is a layered elixir infused with

the exhaled dreams of boundless

furred and feathered ancestors

since the first chloroplast

invited mitochondria to dance

a tango of symbiosis.

Each breath, a stratified

sedimentation of beings

~ a fertile broth ~

 drifts damp and lush

through bedroom windows.

From  A Litany of Wild Graces, my book of love poems to Earth.

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Your Child and Nature Have Been Waiting for Each Other!

Join me and the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries in our latest collaboration:

Children’s Adventure: Kinship with Nature

Five lessons of story, song, and elemental adventure for children and their adults.

Watch a child with a puddle. Or a stick. Or a roly-poly discovered under a stone. They don’t need to be taught wonder. They already carry it.

What they need is time. Presence.

And an adult who will slow down and look with them, make up stories, lie in the grass, and say: this world is alive, and you belong to it. Children’s Adventure: Kinship with Nature gives you the structure, the ideas, and the activities to make that happen — a little goes a long way.

WHAT’S INSIDE THE COURSE

Five lessons, each built around one of the great elements of life: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether. Each lesson includes:

• Sharifa bringing circle time to life — story, song, and movement for your child

• Song lyrics to print and sing along together

• The story source, with a link to order the book

• Practical activities: outdoor play, crafts, foraging, art, and more

• A curated picture book list

• Suggestions for making a Sacred Space and Gratitude Bundles together

The course also includes:

• A guide to outdoor movement and child development

• Natural bug solutions, so fear of critters doesn’t keep you from the green world

• A curated fairy tale list with age-appropriate guidance

• Personal reflections on Nature connection for children with disabilities

Designed with a sliding scale, every child who loves to roll in the grass and listen to crickets can join Children’s Adventure: Kinship with Nature

I hope you will meet us there, in the green arms of the living Earth!

Stay in Touch and invite a friend:

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