SPIRIT DANCING

By artist Barbara Kahn

“One who speaks for the tree roots and stones. Who speaks with the tree roots’ and stones’ voices. One who speaks as the grass and rivers. One who speaks as fields and woods and hills and valleys and the salt marshes and waves and tides. Yet who speaks as what is close to home. With the mouse’s voice or the seagull’s or the fox’s or the badger’s. One who speaks in cadences that go beyond the darkness and beyond stars, encompassing what is unmeasurable. One whose entire being vibrates to the spirits’ words in nature, like a reed at dawn in a pool where trout swim.

Picture a living world of tree roots, grass roots, little streams, big streams, great oceans, waters seeping into the deep rocks, recharging the headwaters of rivers and streams. The world is alive with whispers.

Wildwood mystic Rae Beth wrote of one of her familiars, an old cunning man who lived in Britain over a thousand years ago. He spoke to her of prayers. He said that we must know all the prayers of the world around us; of the birds, beasts or fish. I can understand the idea that a sparrow or a fox might pray; but the prayers of streams or stones?

What does water dream of and pray for? Does the drop of water in a tiny brook remember when it was part of a mighty ocean? Does it remember being a snowflake, a glacier, or a tiny drop of rain? Does it remember being another tiny rivulet? Flowing from rivulet, to stream, to mighty river and finally to the sea. Does it remember being caught up by the warmth of the sun only to become a new drop of rain. Does it remember the long fall from cloud to earth, the sinking into the soil, the slow drift into tree roots, the release from leaves into the air and back to clouds to fall again.

What does a stone remember? Does it remember when its atoms were part of the primal lava flows? Does it remember further back when the atoms were formed in the death throes of a super nova? Do the atoms remember their lives in a cliff face being ground down by relentless breakers? Does it remember the endless pressure as the sandstone was thrust again into daylight or carried down into the heart of the earth to return again as a lava flow?

Imagining the dreams of a bird, badger or fish is difficult enough for a human. Normally we see water, grass or stone as inanimate, unaware. To imagine their prayers; that is a mystery.

LOOKING BACK AT THE XTIANS

I wrote this back in early 2008. And I'm still shaking my head. And the x is very deliberate because, frankly I believe that this how we got from there to the we are looking at now.

Now, I have to admit that I have moved to the edges of the Christian community and of the books I’ve got going right now, one is on paganism and the other is on Celtic shamanism. Actually I think I'm on the edge of the cliff ready to dive off, but this left even me shaking my head.

 Saw something Saturday that I’m still kind of trying to make sense of. In some ways, I think it’s evidence that many groups who call themselves Christians don’t really have a clue what they’re doing or how they got there. 

There’s an Open Bible Standard church on Centennial. It’s one of those charismatic, Pentecostal denominations. It’s Saturday right? Smack dab between Good Friday and Easter, right? You know, Good Friday; the day Jesus found himself rejected by the temple establishment and condemned by the Romans? Yeah, that day.

 Then comes the day after when his followers were scared, grieving or hiding; probably all three. If I had been one of them, I don’t think fun and games would have been anywhere near the top of my list of things to do that day.  

I might have been trying to figure out how to get out of Jerusalem without being arrested for consorting with a condemned traitor, maybe crying my eyes out because a friend and teacher had been executed in one of the more brutal methods the occupying government had at its disposal, or perhaps just numb. 

That said, what do I see outside this building? A shitload of cars and a big, pretty sign advertising their Easter carnival. 

Granted, lapsed Methodist that I am, I never even heard of Lent until I was mid college and exploring everything under the sun except being a Methodist. But, we’ve got a theoretically conservative, Bible believing, fundamentalist congregation having a carnival on the saddest day of the Christian calendar. Am I missing something here?

PAINTING WITH WORDS

I've been rereading a lot of my old journal entries. As in back in 2007. Have I really been doing this that long?

There's an old, old Bonanza episode. I forget if the man was a friend or a friend of a friend who needed someplace to get his bearings. He was an artist who'd lost his sight. He was outside by the lake with one of the Cartwrights. Ben, I think, but it's been years since I've seen this. And it's one of the few episodes that's stuck all these years. 

The artist asks what's around them. The usual, trees, water, grass, sky. Then he starts asking for a more detailed description. Not just green, but what kind of green? Not just blue but what kind of blue. Are there clouds? Are they reflected in the water? He comes to understand that he may not be able to paint with a brush anymore, but he has a life time of memories of places he's been and seen and he can still paint them. With words.

LEAVE THEM A FLOWER AND A CHANCE TO SURVIVE

Saw a depressing headline the other day. At least one think tank is predicting that salt water fisheries will collapse by 2050. Haven't seen anyone else confirm. Haven't heard anyone saying they are blithering idiots either. Mom won't be here. I won't be here. Probably. Sisters? Maybe, maybe not. Nephews and their families? Very, very probably.

I speak on behalf of the next generation
My sons and daughters, their children to come.
What will you leave them for their recreation
An oil slick, a pylon, an industrial slum.         

Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity. 

You plunder and pillage, you tear and you tunnel
Trees lying toppled, roots finger the sky.
Building a land for machines and computers
In the name of progress the farms have to die.        

 Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity

 Fish in the ocean polluted and poisoned
The sand on the beaches stinking and black
And you with your tankers, your banks and investments
Say, Never worry, the birds will come back        

 Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity 

When the last flower has dropped its last petal
When the last concrete is finally laid
The moon will shine cold on a nightmarish landscape
Your gift to your children, this world that you made        

 Leave them a flower, some grass and a hedgerow
        A hill and a valley, a view to the sea
        These things are not yours to destroy as you want to
        A gift given once for eternity  

I remember when this song came out in the seventies. Willie Whyten wrote it. Ed Ames covered it. 

GLOBE OF LIGHT

Flash image. Planet? Star? Figment of my imagination? A globe of spinning light strands. What is going on here.

THE LADY HAS LEFT THE STAGE

This was posted on the net awhile back. I think Lady Liberty doesn't feel very welcome these days.

Have a safe trip. We already miss you.

SHIFTING SANDS

I'm going to try to revive this poor, neglected blog. I'm at a cross roads right now. Will probably be cross posting with the Hope blog.

 I'm rereading Starhawk's Spiral Dance again. For the first time. And rereading some Quaker texts. Again for the first time.

I was working with her "Grounding the Tree of Life." Sitting, breathing, eyes closed. Sudden image of the Great Tree as a great, old oak. Roots going down, down, down deep into the earth. And suddenly I'm hit with feelings of grief and sorrow. (how do you put a psychic experience into words, it's impossible)

Grief for what? Not sure. Loss of habitat? Loss of the birds that make the trees their homes? Loss of the trees so the birds have no where to go? Breaking the circle? Don't know right now.

Was it me crying or was I tapping into, recognizing some deep ecological sorrow? That the trees had a way of communicating through their root systems, through the deep earth and that is being destroyed?