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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There they’ll find Nesting Circles of Belonging ~ Family, Nature and Cosmos.

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Rewilding the Human Heart

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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 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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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:

 Wild Graces website:

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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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https://www.sharifaoppenheimer.org

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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There, along with you, they’ll find Nesting Circles of Belonging ~ Family, Nature and Cosmos.

Photo by  Doncoombez 

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

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Rewilding the Human Heart

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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