The Heralds of Spring

Bare winter branches

bow to frigid winds.

Chimes chant prayers.

Summer’s hydrangea stalks

rattle sun-drenched thoughts

that skitter past frozen ferns.

 Cardinals are scarlet sentinels

on dogwood’s silver branches

etched into winter’s brocade.

Yet, at the foot of wintry poplars

 snow drops feel the call

of coming solar warmth.

 Let’s celebrate new and ancient rituals to honor the rhythmic cycles of earth and our fellow earthlings.  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 deepen these primal relationships.

Join me and LifeWays for a deep dive into Kinship with Nature is a Family Affair.  In this video is your personal invitation; I’d love to take this journey with you!  

Photo by Kate Knott

Winter Wishes and an Invitation

We are blessed with actual winter weather here in Virgini: below freezing nights, frosty mornings, and snow will arrive soon!  The winter birds are at the feeders all day and the squirrels come to me when I call them, saying I’ve put their breakfast of nuts on the porch rail.  The frogs are breathing through their skin, sleeping in the creek-side mud, and the coyote’s song wafts down from the high orchards.

We have passed the “bleak midwinter” though.  Imbolc, in early February, is the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox; it marks our emergence from winter. It is a time of fire and light: candles and hearth fires symbolize the returning sun and inner light, with celebrations involving candle-dipping and bonfires. Underground, even in the snow, seeds begin to subtly stir. Our fist patch of snowdrops nod their heads beneath the poplar by the porch. 

With this sense of earth’s slow awakening and new life gestating, LifeWays and I invite you to join the course Kinship with Nature is a Family Affair!  Together we will celebrate this time of nature’s re-awakening, beginning February fourth and traveling through early spring till March 11th. This is the perfect moment for a journey that will take us more deeply into kinship with the natural world and all her feathered, furred, foliated and finned beings.

Kinship with Nature is a Family Affair will travel through the elements and realms of nature in an embodied way, incorporating song, movement, blessing, story and much more. Research shows intimate connections with nature improve our health, mood and sense of purpose.  Science affirms that the child’s love of nature, and its many health benefits, depends upon their adult’s depth of connection with the natural world. Are you not quite sure how to deepen and express your own love of nature?  Would you love to know how to “pass the torch” of nature connection to the children in your care?  Join us in this joyful learning process!

Please forward this invitation to friends and family!

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

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

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

Deepen Your Kinship with Nature ~ Rewild Your Heart!

You are invited to join me and the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries!

October 16th- November 20th
A 6-week elemental journey into rewilding our hearts

From the ONE website:

Led by Sharifa Oppenheimer, beloved Waldorf educator and author of Heaven on Earth and A Litany of Wild Graces, Kinship with Nature draws from her newest book, Rewilding the Human Heart: A Journey of Reunion. Though not required for the course, the book is a powerful companion for those wanting to go deeper.

This course is for you if you are:

Seeking peace, purpose, and presence through Nature connection

Longing for a spiritually grounded, heart-centered learning experience

Moved by Sharifa’s writing or Waldorf-inspired teachings

Curious about the wisdom of the elements as a guide

to personal and planetary healing

Exploring ways to rewild your inner landscape in response to a changing world

Together, we’ll explore the five elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether—as living teachers and pathways to inner and outer harmony.

Click here for more information, answers to questions, and to register

I look forward to making the Elemental Journey with you!

https://www.natureevolutionaries.com/kinship-with-nature-course

Magic and Medicine

 Beginning Soon!

Join me and LifeWays for a deep dive into the magic & medicine of Rhythm!

This journey through the world of rhythm begins at the beginning of every human life ~ the rhythm of the breath ~ which we can use as a rudder through all the waters we traverse. We then explore the rhythms of gesture; we learn to read the silent language our gestures speak as well as simple ways to train this speech.  We also look at the rhythms of our days and our weeks; in this demanding hectic society, we learn how to create rhythms that are healing and sustaining. We end by engaging with the rhythms of the great round of the seasons ~ we celebrate and honor the rhythms of the living earth.  She is the mother of all life and the foundation of all rhythm.

This is from the LifeWays webpage:

Rhythm is Life with Sharifa Oppenheimer

Beginning September 24 through December 3

Group Mentoring Sessions Oct. 20th & Nov. 24th, 6- 7:30 pm Central

Rhythm is at the heart of a loving home and a nourishing, relationship-based program. It is the pulse of our activities and a carrier of warmth within our time together. Parents and care providers, both, must live the rhythm that guides the children through the day, week, and year. To do this with mastery is to understand and cultivate the healing forces that are opened by leading life aligned with the macrocosm of nature as much as the microcosm of individual needs. 

Join Sharifa in this incredible opportunity for months of support as you take a deep dive into what it means to live these rhythms.  This is a self-paced six module course with two live group mentoring sessions! 

Enroll here:

https://www.lifewaysnorthamerica.org/product-page/rhythm-is-life-with-sharifa-oppenheimer

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

Subscribe for free to my SubStack!

Rewilding the Human Heart

https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com

Come To My Book Party Tomorrow, Sunday April 27th!

Hi Friends,  We are looking forward to being with you to celebrate Sharifa’s new book!

Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion

  Live on Zoom

 Sunday April 27th, 2:00-3:30 ET

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81009883469?pwd=LqZf3eDa6ZrfvutbJdZTJbdpCHcBPp.1

 What to expect: My dear friend and “tech-guru” Ralph Earle and I will welcome you.  It will be a fun interactive afternoon including song, movement, readings from the book and an artistic activity!

 What to bring: Mostly, your earth-loving heart!  If you want to join in making an Earth Altar, bring a beloved cloth to define sacred space and lovingly collected items to place there. To make a Gratitude Bundle, bring a large leaf or a beautiful piece of paper, yarn or other natural materials to tie the bundle, as well as offerings to the Earth Spirits.

See you soon!  Sharifa and other Earthlings.

 Buy Rewilding here, or on Amazon

Save the Date for a Book Party

Let’s gather for a spring afternoon of Rewilding our Hearts!

Please join me either in-person at the Charlottesville Waldorf School or live on Zoom!  Both venues will offer an engaging afternoon with singing, movement, some readings from the book, an art exploration and time for conversation. Whichever event you choose, please register, for more details.  I'd love to see you there!  A few words about the structure of the book:

 Rewilding the Human Heart

“Rewilding the Human Heart is a celebration of new 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.

Each chapter incorporates an array of tools ~ technologies of relationship ~ that foster an embodied exploration. These “technologies” allow our awareness to sink down from the inquiring mind and settle more deeply into the regions of our sensitive heart, our eternal soul, and the soft animal of our body, thereby engaging the wholeness of being human. 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 communicating technologies of relationship. We employ these technologies ~ these embodied languages ~ within our deepening kinship with nature.”

 YOU ARE INVITED!

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

Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion

has just been published and is 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 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.”  I hope to see you there!

Save the Date!

Join me for a Rewilding Book Party

Live on Zoom

Sunday April 27th, 2:00-3:30

Or Join In-Person

Saturday May 10

At Charlottesville Waldorf School’s Beautiful Pavilion

2:00-3:30

Click here to register

We will send you the Details and Zoom link soon

Remember Mother’s Day and Graduation gifts will be needed soon, and I like to recommend Bookshop.org because they support small and local bookstores. You can find it on Amazon, too.

 Photo Rob Mulally on Unsplash

SubStack, Rewilding the Human Heart  https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com

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

Love Beauty

Choose Beauty, Tend it, Protect it

 The most radical act we can make is to step with our vulnerable bodies into our suffering and beautiful world.  Look around; see the contempt of beauty and witness the destruction that necessarily follows.  Our only way forward is to let sorrow transform us and bring us to love.  Let love school us, reshape our seeing, hone our listening, finely tool our feelings.

Love is the answer.  It is the only power strong enough to break these chains of exploitation and extraction with which we violate our beautiful home, planet earth.  Love is the first footstep along a new path; we can find this new way by love’s light alone.  Love will inform and shape our actions. It will be the fulcrum of every decision we make.   Love will restore beauty and through this we can uncover our own buried humanity.  We can regain our small place in the great circle of life.

 How Shall We Let Love School Us?

 Join me and the Inayatiyya Ziraat group for a Journey of Love, beginning this Valentine’s Day!

Follow this link for program information and registration:

https://events.humanitix.com/rewilding-the-human-heart-deepening-our-kinship-with-nature

 We will meet the second and fourth Fridays Feb 14th through May 9th.  We will go trekking through my soon-to-be-published book Rewilding the Human Heart~ A Journey of Reunion. Through song, movement, story, breathwork, visualization and deep internal inquiry, our innate connection to the natural world will flourish.

 Come and explore the sacred manuscript of Nature with us.  This program is open to everyone, so please tell your friends and invite them along.  There is a registration fee and we are aware this may pose a difficulty for some, especially those in other countries and have set up additional discount options. We don't want anyone to miss out for financial reasons.  For a further discount or a full scholarship, please email:  Nehmat (ziraat@inayatiyya.org) or Hayden at the Astana:  astana@inayatiyya.org 

I look forward to seeing you there!

Graphic: Numinosity Mandala by Cristina McAlister

Winter Seeds

Winter’s Dark Womb

Ice diamonds fall in the night, the owl’s call echoes across moonlit hillsides, seeds incubate in sheltering soil beneath the frozen snow.  Human seeds of creativity incubate during these dark nights and quiet days, as well.  It is good to ponder the seeds of our own creativity at this time. These days of darkness in both the terrestrial landscape and especially the socio-political terrain demand that we tend carefully the seeds that, as they grow to ripeness, will carry us through the coming unknown.  What seeds will each of us tend and cultivate in the soil of the heart?  My hope is to grow a crop of generosity, patience, love, courage and hope; what is yours?

I’m pleased to share with you this news: the seeds of a new endeavor of mine are rustling in their earthen beds.  My new book Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion is in the publication process now, and will be complete this spring!  It is my hope that this journey of reunion with the Elements and Realms of Nature will bring love, courage and hope to many people searching for a way forward in these troubled times.  Here is a short synopsis:

“In Rewilding the Human Heart ~ A Journey of Reunion, Sharifa Oppenheimer invites the reader to travel with her into a new and ancient relationship with the living earth.  This journey is a return to humanity’s ancient roots in earth wisdom. Sharifa strips away of the veneer of “nature appreciation” and celebrates a homecoming to humanity’s primordial embodied symbiosis with Gaia.  She guides readers not only through outer terrains, but also into interior landscapes of the soul, making the alchemical properties of the elements and realms of nature readily accessible.  Through ritual, story, breath and internal inquiry this exploration can be a journey of transformation for the reader.”

I will let you know when Rewilding is ready to launch and I certainly hope that you will join me in celebration!  And here is a winter poem for you, from my book of poems A Litany of Wild Graces.

 In winter dawn’s pure

shadowless light

            ~ mountain’s north face

shapes emerge, recede.

Her slow pace stops

she bends

holds in her palm

the smooth

flat hip bone

            ~ last winter’s venison

weathered to a richly

embroidered surface.

She sees synaptic deltas

of her mind

reflected in bone’s

fractalline calcium terrain.

Fingertips trace

its ivory in

ever repeating

diminishing

patterns.

She gazes soft, open.

Its infinite living form

refracts outward

visible in forest’s

fine tapestry

            ~ stone, mycelium, bark

Her branching

veins, arteries

are reiterated

in bare winter’s

intricate, eloquent limbs

in reindeer moss

etched by crystals of frost

and velvet lichen

grown chocolate brown

on walnut trunk’s

north side.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. Please share any inspirations, streams of thought, and comments! Let’s keep the conversation going. 

Subscribe for free to my SubStack, as well!

 Rewilding the Human Heart 

https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com   

      Please invite your friends to subscribe and join you in the conversation.

Photo: Kevin Butz, Unsplash

Join Me With My New Substack!

Hello Wild Graces Friends,

This last month has brought an unexpected journey into my life: my Face Book and Instagram accounts were hacked and I have spent many hours and dollars righting the wrong. Living in those technological trenches, with daily explosions landing close-by, gave me hours to contemplate not only repair of the current situation, but how to move forward.

I follow a number of writers on Substack and always appreciate its straight-forward simplicity.  No bells and whistles, no ads, no promotions, no tangled web of Meta communications.  Simply the thoughts of writers whose work I admire that arrive not too often in my inbox! You can see where this line of thought is leading: I have paused my Instagram and Face Book accounts and created a Substack called

Rewilding the Human Heart

 A journey of reunion with the living earth.

Explore outer terrain and inner landscapes with me.

Please follow this link, subscribe and forward it

to your friends, family and colleagues who would be interested in my work!

https://sharifaoppenheimer.substack.com/p/rewilding-the-human-heart

 I hope you will join me there!  All subscriptions will be free.  Although Substack has built into its system an encouragement to upgrade with each post, you can ignore it!   It feels to me, given my recent experiences, that Substack is a more grounded container than the circus ~ with its inherent privacy dangers ~ that is social media.

 The following is a taste of what you will find there

“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 communicating technologies of relationship. We will employ these technologies ~ these embodied languages ~ here within Rewilding the Human Heart.

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.

Movement, like song, is a primal language spoken by countless beings.  Certainly, we humans 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.”

I will continue to send you this blog from the Wild Graces website ~ to share with you images, poems and inspirations.  My intention in Rewilding the Human Heart is to explore more hands-on, embodied ways to deepen our relationships with the Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether as well as the Realms of Nature ~ Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human and Unseen Beings. We will put into practice many artistic, ritualistic and celebratory ways to give honor and thanks.  Please join me and invite your friends to enjoy the festivities!

With Delight, Sharifa

As always, please forward this blog to your circle of friends. The link to subscribe is at the bottom of this page:

https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org

Photo by Aron Katz on Unsplash

Deepening Kinship with Nature

 What is the difference between nature appreciation and deep relationship with our more-than-human relations?  Here are clues: Court the poplar… Woo the waters… Propose to crickets… Wed earth’s timeless round.  To spend the month of July rewilding your own human heart click this link and join me in ancient ceremonies of Nature Worship. Classes begin soon!

https://lifewaysnorthamerica.org/workshops_training/kinship-with-nature-is-a-family-affair/

Pursuit

 April

   Court the poplar

   at water’s confluence:

  Speak the original language

            song, prayer, offerings

            wrapped in leaves

    Listen to arboreal speech.

     Slip inside the bark

     veins become phloem.

  Woman inside the wood

enchanted

is a wind harp

 July 

   Woo the waters:

Fingers trail amid

            crayfish

minnows

            flat green stones.

  Caress sand and silt;

they are twin sisters

  Star shine glitters in

               pre-eternal sand.

               Carbon’s combustive cycle

               deposits silk-spun silt.

 Electromagnetic signatures

are written in an elegant hand

  sand: tourmaline, jasper

  silt:   nitrogen, hydrogen

 October

  Propose to crickets:

  Their song pulses

            on a heartbeat

            echoes in cochlear spirals

            steadies the breath.

  Crickets are winter’s Persephone.

Too soon gone,

they grace the underworld.

 January

   Wed earth’s timeless round

  January’s silence cries

till frozen crystals fall

from opaque skies

and cardinals shine

as drops of blood

on a bridal hillside.

Poem from my book A Litany of Wild Graces

https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org/sharifas-books

Free Image from Unsplash

Oneness With All Beings

Kinship with Nature is Our Birthright

I walk in the early summer forest; it glistens as afternoon sunbeams penetrate the new, broad viridian leaves. I greet the plant-beings in this way:

Your branches are reiterated in our veins,

You give us food, medicine, clothing, shelter.

Your shade brings cool midday relief.

You are our elders and teachers.

We breathe in the symbiosis that is love.

The forest replies, coming to me in this dream. My task is to learn the language the worms use, as they tunnel under the bark. To translate this for human understanding.

Dream Forest

Her feet walk

heart listens.

She wants to know

the way the worm knows

tunneling beneath his bark

through balsam dark

writing in a germinal hand.

Blind in his world of xylem

he makes poems

in her dreams

writes in wooden braille

tells of stardust

caught by trees

netted roots.

Each earthen word

becomes a point of light.

Star poems map

fourteen billion years

from now…

to now,

written always

in this eternal moment.

He measures evolution

in time filled with presence,

time

full

fecund

wild

round as the trunk

of the poplar

she stops beneath.

Round as tracings

she sees written

in bark.

Round as all

she wants to know

beneath her feet

that walk and listen.

From my book A Litany of Wild Graces

https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org/sharifas-books

To learn forest-lessons, we must slow down, one footstep then another.  We stop, breathe, listen to language heard only by the heart. We listen….we bow.

Would you like to deepen your kinship with nature and rewild your heart?  Would you like to bring this nature-connection to your family as well? Join me as I teach a five-week Kinship with Nature course through LifeWays during July!  This course is designed for all adults, yet includes an added focus on family. We’ll explore earth, water, fire, air, minerals, plants, animals and more. We will be engaged with movement, song, stories, breath-work, Jungian explorations, scientific understanding and inner inquiries! I hope to see you there.  For more info and to register: https://lifewaysnorthamerica.org/workshops_training/kinship-with-nature-is-a-family-affair/

Photo by Kora Oppenheimer, my grand daughter!

The Power of the Feminine

Sacred Dreams

The following dream came to me recently.  It offers us living images, scent, melody, intuitions.  It points toward a way of seeing humanity’s fresh hope: a return to the feminine principle of relationship with all beings.

 I am with a group of people somewhere in Asia.  It is the time of ceremony.  The Empress is to have her feet washed; the gilt basin is ready.  I have been chosen to enact this ceremony with her, and am informed of the immense importance of this honor.  She waits regally. 

I am given a large water vessel but at my approach, she playfully pulls her feet up under her robes.  Now we are twinkling and quietly laughing together.  Amidst coaxing and playfulness, she slowly lowers her feet to be washed in the warm clear waters.

A smaller bowl is now given. It is a rich composite: frankincense, precious minerals, black deep-prairie soil.  I am to pour this into the pristine water.  As I wash her feet, I watch the elixir spiral around the basin:

I see

clouds   

wave patterns

fractal’s swirl

orbiting interplanetary dust,

I see

evolution emerging

in generative waters

The foot-washing cleanses, blesses, and nourishes everyone.  We are given wafers now, to immerse in the germinating elixir, to eat and thereby absorb grace.

this is Her body,

this is Her blood

this is a new

Holy Communion

Now, the washing finished, I turn to bring her shoes.  Upon return I see

her feet bare

unbound

even by silken shoes.

She steps down and,

arms outstretched,

runs lightly away from

glistening marble

ornately carved wood

away from the prison

of separation.

Hair unclasped

flowing free behind her

lustrous in forest’s green light

she runs home

as a thrush sings in

the scented woods.

I offer this spring wish to you: fresh hope for humanity’s return to the feminine principle of relationship with all beings.

Come visit my website Wild Graces where you will find many resources to explore these life-giving practices of respect, relationship and responsibility ~ for yourself, your family and the community.  https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org/more-ways-to-connect

This dream is excerpted from my book of poems A Litany of Wild Graces ~ Meditations on Sacred Ecology. 

Photo: Kuan Yin of the Southern Sea. This eight-foot painted wooden statue, carved in China in the years 907- 1000 is a stunning representation of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.  She resides in her own small temple, inside the Nelson Museum of Art in Kansas City. Although this photo is filled with beauty, to sit quietly within her temple and feel the power and grace of the feminine is a great gift, indeed.