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

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 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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Rewilding the Human Heart

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Photo by Rex Boggs

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.

Forward Wild Graces to a friend. There they’ll find Nesting Circles of Belonging ~ Family, Nature and Cosmos.

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Rewilding the Human Heart wins Nautilus Award

Rewilding the Human Heart is a celebration of new and ancient ways to honor our earth-ancestors and deepen these primal relationships. As we dive into the cardinal elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether, as well as nature’s realms ~ Minerals, Plants, Animals, Humans and Unseen Beings ~ we also rekindle their wild and essential nature within our own being. In this way we become better relatives to our fellow earthlings.  

 Chapter by chapter we become immersed in the components of our luminous biosphere. We deepen our felt experience of the elements and invite the realms of nature into closer relationship. Because we are composed of these very elements and realms, we will discover how their qualities, moods, gifts and challenges exist within our luminous inner sphere. We will deepen into relationship with these earth-ancestors on many levels, within our body, heart, soul, mind, and spirit. Their wildness will rekindle our own wild and tender wisdom.  (From the Introduction)

Web

 In forest light,

mind’s kaleidoscope slows.

Movement germinates anew,

arising now from her feet

that step through leaf litter.

Solomon’s Seal waves

from a green ocean’s

distant reef.

At her feet agrimony bows;

hand to heart, she bends.

Silken veils

invisibly spun across her path

reach out and cling to her,

as spiders come and greet.

Wrapped in webs she walks,

Spider Grandmother by her side.

Together they comb and spin Unity,

weaving life’s complexity

from the singularity of One.

A sole ray of light

pierces summer’s canopy,

refracts off a silk thread

riding across her eyelashes.

It is an arrow of light

flying into the future

showing her the way.

Prose is from Rewilding the Human Heart

Poetry is from A Litany of Wild Graces

When I’m not in the woods, find me here:

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Beauty Is Medicine

Spring is arriving and receding day by day.  The family of deer, our woodland neighbors, have found ways to stay warm and find food through the long weeks of icebound forestland.  They laze in the sunlit meadow.  Sometimes frolicking in the warmth, sometimes grazing the new greens.  Wild bees buzz lazily, the squirrel comes quickly as I lay almonds in a row on the deck railing.  Summer birds have begun to return and spring’s azure butterflies have reappeared at the creek. 

Beauty is ephemeral and cyclic: permeating the days, present to each moment. Beauty is medicine to heal the ugliness in the headlines. Small acts of beauty defy the soul-deadening paradigm, the algorithms that chain us to despair.

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 poems A Litany of Wild Graces

Forward Wild Graces to a friend: There they’ll find 

Nesting Circles of Belonging ~ Family, Nature and Cosmos.

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 Photo by  Idean Azad

We Learned to Sing from Our Feathered Ancestors

“The nightingale dips the truth into honey

and makes this into song”

Thirteenth Century Sheikh Tapduk Emre

Sing

Wood thrush flutes

amid dogwood flowers.

Sings reality to me,

veils it in aeolian cadences.

She and I

inhabit this green cloister,

our lives spent singing

among supple poplars.

Appalachian winds move

among their branches,

intoning grace and praise.

Chanting her spiral remembrance,

she is a Sufi clothed in simple brown.

I become dust at her delicate

crimson feet.

We take flight together;

sacred breath

inhabits my bones,

hollowed by the knife

of human limitations.

She, with bones made of air,

I with bones carved by grace,

our melody resonates in

the heart of the world.

From my book A Litany of Wild Graces

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There you’ll find Nesting Circles of Belonging

 ~ Family, Nature and Cosmos ~

 Photo by Matheus Protzen

Singing is Our First Language

Over the millennia humans have learned tangible ways of fostering relationship with each other and the more-than-human world.  Our lives were spent observing the myriad ways plants, insects, birds, and other animals communicate. The gifts of song, movement, breath and blessing are lessons humans have learned from our other-than-human kin. I call these ways of communication technologies of relationship. We employ these technologies ~ these embodied languages ~ within our deepening kinship with nature.

Song is earth’s first language, articulated by wind in treetops; by water rushing over stones and dropping into clear pools; by birdsong at dawn, autumn crickets, geese flying in formation; by coyote whom we call the song dog and vixen’s song of love. Like our ancient ancestors around the fire at the cave’s edge, we too can discover the magic of song as we embed ourselves more deeply into our own immediate pocket of the emerald earth. As we walk our favorite trail or sit in the twilit back yard, allow song to arise from your listening heart.  Offer this simple song as a gift to these other-than-human relatives who surround you.

Sing now! Seeds are wakening below and springtime birds are beginning to return.  The pre-spring-time blessings of Imbolc are rustling underground and winging our way.  Our songs of gratitude can help pull the warmth and growth of springtime closer.

Soon, in this blog, we will call on the miracles of Movement and Breath to deepen our relationship with our fellow Earthlings!

Excerpted from my book Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion.

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https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org

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Photo by  Doncoombez 

A Gaian Litany

It is November, a time of year that we are reminded to give thanks.  The Haudenosaunee, though, practice giving thanks on many occasions, throughout the year.  Their “Words Spoken Before All Others,” also called the Iroquois Thanksgiving, is a Gaian Litany.  It offers thanks to Mother Earth and Father Sky, to land formations and bodies of water. To food and medicinal plants, and trees who offer shade. To the animals who burrow, swim, fly, those who are furred and scaled, finned and feathered. We as well can give thanks on many occasions ~ in fact it is our human responsibility to give thanks ~ in this way we help to hold the balance.

Let us step into earth’s sanctuary and begin to know the nature of each being, the qualities of each plant medicine.  Learn the names and ways of these other than human persons ~ this litany of wild saints.  Bring joy and gratitude.  Call the names of these beings; know they are listening, they understand.  The language of the heart needs no translation.   May this Gaian litany be

Invocation; to call forth

other-than-human presences.

Invitation; to join in the great

conversation of beings.

Participation in a living

geography

botany

zoology

cosmology

a vocabulary of Oneness.

This is litany in its most untamed and fecund form.  Call the names of

land formations

water mothers

plant beings

animal cousins

fire spirits.

A ripple of gratitude echoes toward the past, refracts into the future. The long round of time glistens with a thread of human remembrance.

Litany is creative word

Word is animate being

Being is the breath that sings

among us.

Let us sing their names as we walk.

This is from my book A Litany of Wild Graces

Other Ways to connect with me:

Rewilding Substack: https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com

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Photo Quỳnh on Unsplash

Journey Through Outer Terrains and Inner Waterways

Take an inner and outer journey fluid with possibility. Move through liquid states of the soul. 

Discover elemental ancestors who have come to you as gifts from the stars.

Explore your own flowing imagination,

Your rooted being

Your vast and free breath

Your flaming inspiration

What is the most crucial rewilding task? What is an essential need today?

Rewilding the Human Heart

Join me and the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries for a six week exploration of humanity’s unbroken Kinship with Nature. Come Rewild your Heart and discover a belonging you never imagined possible. Together let’s rejoin the “great conversation among all beings.”  I hope to travel these seascapes and soul-scapes with you!

From the ONE website:

Our upcoming course Kinship With Nature, with beloved teacher and author Sharifa Oppenheimer, starts October 16! Kinship with Nature is a 6-week elemental journey into rewilding the human heart; inviting us into the felt sense that we are not separate, but part of Earth’s great family of beings. Learn More Here

Image: Organization of Nature Evolutionaries

Celebrate Water as a Gift from the Stars

Water Is Life

 There are many ways Earth exists in the “Goldilocks zone,” for everything we need is in the habitable sweet spot. In the vastness of the cosmos, our position is unique.  We are not too close and not too far from our star; we are “Just Right.” This is particularly true of water; if we were a bit closer, our planet would be scorching like Venus, and water would evaporate immediately.  A bit further away from the sun, like Neptune, and water would be deeply frozen ice.  This position makes our water just right for life to evolve. We are the only planet in our solar system to have accessible water.

This accessibility of water on earth occurs as stable bodies of liquid water on the surface: streams, tributaries, rivers, lakes, wetlands, deltas and oceans.  We have deep deposits of water underground, in aquifers that are continually replenished by rainfall. We also have deposits of ancient waters ~ fossil water ~  formed in the original shaping of the earth. Water graces us in solid forms as well, in our glaciers and ice caps; also in atmospheric ice and water vapor, as well as in the magic of snowfall.

 Earth and our bodies are both composed of approximately seventy percent water.  Ninety-seven percent of this water is saline and contained in oceans, while only 3% exists as fresh water. This is a clarion call to protect our hydrologic cycle, which provides us with the rare and precious gift of fresh water!

 Our water, like the minerals that formed earth, came as gifts from the stars: it came from comets and asteroids.  As these celestial bodies collided with earth, much of their water was transferred to earth, where it was able to remain ~ neither burned away in the atmosphere, nor frozen as ice. Some have posed the Theia hypothesis: there is a possibility that a twin planet collided with a newly-forming earth.  This collision may have given earth a larger core as well as doubling earth’s water. It may also have created our Moon.  When I think of this, I am reminded of the eternal love relationship between the moon and the oceans; the waters always following their original love.

 Here is a love poem to further celebrate the miracle of Water, who is the mother of life:

Water beings arrive as

pure benediction.

Ice diamonds fall through

interstellar space, drift

into earth’s warm breath

to become mist

hovering above

river’s slow elbow.

Translucent curtains of rain

billow in valley breezes. 

Drops sipped from

cupped hands

will flow differently, now,

eddying among veins

osmosing cell walls

hydrating neural highways.

Particles of human thought

will flow out to soil organisms

migrate into Ivy Creek

eager to find the sea

be pummeled by surf

pause in tidal pools

before becoming

northern blue ice

an Inuit kayak

paddling close.

The prose is reprinted from my recent book Rewilding the Human Heart, and the poem is from an earlier book of mine, A Litany of Wild Graces

More ways to connect with me

Wild Graces website: https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org

Rewilding Substack: https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharifaoppenheimer

Photo Mike Lewis on Unsplash

Movement is an Original Form of Language

Movement is Earth’s Original Language.  Let’s Move, as We Give Gratitude and Blessings

Join me in the video below, giving honor to our more-than-human neighbors!

“I give thanks to the great mystery, who was once a hidden treasure that longed to be known. Gratitude to the One whose light illumines the universe as well as our own minds. This One Love is the force that carries swirling galaxies and births stars, which has placed my life and the lives of all beings into this shimmering sphere, the Earth.  Much gratitude to the mineral beings that form the stream bed outside my kitchen door, and to the mountain waters that sing of many moods and seasons.  Gratitude to the scented pines and grace-filled tulip poplars, to the foxes that bark at dawn and the owls hunting beneath the stars. To the countless beings who teach us goodness, beauty, reciprocity, generosity, joy, persistence, forbearance, resilience, truth and so much more.  They are a living litany of wild graces.”

The quote above is how the Acknowledgements page for Rewilding the Human Heart begins. A few pages later we find this: “Movement, like song, is a primal language spoken by countless beings.  Certainly, we speak through movement too.  Neuroscience, as well as our own experience, shows that rhythmic, continuous movement soothes the soul.  Outer harmonious movements bring harmony to interior body rhythms; here we find comfort and rest. Dance has spoken volumes since the dawn of creation. Think of the bird-of-paradise’s elegant courting dance or the playful grooming, chasing, bumping and tumbling of coyote mates. David Abram, the celebrated cultural ecologist and geophilosopher, encourages us to dance with the wild, a depth ecology movement and arts practice which he calls Place Dancing.  As we settle more deeply into relationship with our earth-elders, let’s playfully move the way they do.  Stand up and allow the breezes to ruffle your hair, spread your wings and feel the lift of wind, feel that your bones are filled with air.”

Join me by participating with the video, in which we use Movement as a way to offer gratitude to the winds and waters, the forests and animals that make our life possible. This link takes you to You Tube; join me there, or in the video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2McsZLwX-GI

Photo: Hubble Telescope

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A Rewilding Forest Walk

Join me on this morning’s forest walk, and also at my Zoom Book Party celebrating my new book Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion!! This Sunday April 27th 2-3:30 ET. Register Here for the zoom link.

This morning in the forest:

In the green light of

appalachian forests

other-than-human

 nations convene for

       ceremony

pageantry

         gift-giving

prayer

wild grapevine

bows down

to touch sacred earth

troupes of

translucent indian pipe

 are ceremonial

ghost dancers

proud mullein push

new velvet leaves

through leaf litter

wear petal crowns

forest raspberry canes

 are lavender flags

carried in late afternoon light

a republic of

     tubers

     seeds

     mushrooms

arrive from far away tribes

bringing gifts to give away

as bees bring sweetness,

medicine for all.

Here, benevolence between species

~~ our ancient heritage~ ~

is a lived-understanding.

From my book of poems A Litany of Wild Graces

 Subscribe for free to my SubStack, as well!

Rewilding the Human Heart

https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com

You are Invited!

I’m thrilled to let you know that my new book

Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion

 is now published and making its way into the world! 

In Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion, I invite you, the reader, to travel with me into a new and ancient relationship with the living Earth.  This journey is a return to humanity’s ancient roots in Earth wisdom.  We strip away of the veneer of “nature appreciation” and celebrate a homecoming to our primal embodied symbiosis with Gaia.  I guide fellow travelers not only through outer terrains, but also into interior landscapes of the soul. Along the byways of this spirited ramble the alchemical properties of the cardinal elements and the primordial realms of nature become readily accessible.  Through ritual, story, science, breath and internal inquiry, this exploration is a journey of transformation. The emerald Earth is calling us to come to our senses, to rejoin the great conversation among all beings. Rewilding the Human Heart is a living map that returns us home to our fellow Earthlings.

Buy your copy here, Remember Mother’s Day and Graduation gifts will be needed soon.

 You are Invited: Save the Date!!

Join me for a Rewilding Launch Party

Live on Zoom

Sunday April 27

Timing and Details will follow in April

It is also a lovely synchronicity that I am teaching Rewilding as a seven-class online course this spring.  It is in collaboration with the International Inayatiyya Sacred Ecology (Ziraat) Organization. We have seventy-plus participants from around the world! Click here to register; it’s not too late to join!

Visit my website Wild Graces https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org

And Substack: Rewilding the Human Heart  https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com   

 cover design by Colin Rolfe