Something from this full moon tide... working some big feels these days. It’s been quite a while since I’ve put pen to paper, but here you are.
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Our class, Becoming Medicine for the Earth is now live! The link to more information can be found in the bio of @deliciousginger , my sister in this work. We are so excited that the time has come to bring forth this offering, and can hardly wait to see who else will circle up with us!!
Wishing you a blessed Imbolc tide! We put out cloths a couple nights ago, as is one tradition celebrating the potency of this time, asking that they be blessed as healing cloths for the year to come (though one is still but freshly spun yarn). Thank you Willow, Hazel, and Hawthorn for holding them these past two days.
I don’t think I will wait so long this coming year. I suppose any day could be a good time to ask this favor. . After letting go of my first website I’ve been foundering a bit, listening for my voice, scrambling out of the brambles and back onto my path of destiny (even though the brambles were part of the path all along). The Amber, Thorn and Bone website is the fruit of my reflection, and an honest attempt to weave all my wild threads of passion into something beautiful, helpful, and greater than the sum of its parts. Thank you for visiting.
The 25th of this month was the 300th day in a row that I’ve made my way out to visit water, most often larger bodies of water, but sometimes weather, too. There has been so much to notice... the relief of rain after a long dry stretch... feeling the winter’s first ice on the sidewalk... seagulls bathing in a flooded park... amazing clouds... listening to the sea in the dark... the seasonal migration of people and birds... so much to be curious about...
A quick drawing for our holiday card this year, inspired by a blog post by Gather Victoria about the Reindeer Mother who carries the sun back to warm the land. You can read more here.
Day 265 visiting water. So many changes these last couple weeks here... praise to the first ice edged puddles and sparkling snow. Praise to the buffleheads as they return to the shelter of the bay. And marveling at the simple, yet deeply stirring gifts that have come from showing up.
I’ve been doing my best to retreat from social media for a time, as I was starting to feel like I was being pulled out of myself. It’s been lovely and strange to let my heart rest, and I miss knowing things friends have shared. But I'm finding that it makes me want to reach out directly, and actually spend time together. 221 days in a row visiting water. Today, water was all around. Such a deep, soaking rain. And still now, hours after standing by the swelling bay, I’m listening, and the rain again is dropping thick against the roof/leaves/grass. We sought vision in community at the Weaving ritual, now a few days past. I saw paradox... water and mud and fire and good roots in unlikely places. It’s not yet clear to me what the water is saying or asking. And I recognize, now, that old anthropocentric, self reliant, hubris that is so easy to slide into around here. But I’ve been trusting water’s invitation, and that it’s important to respect and respond the call. I’m realizing that I’m feeling a new subtle pull after 200plus days of visiting. Especially when the tide is high. And I’m feeling a bit rude, having waited so long to share an actual conversation. But maybe the conversation couldn’t happen with out the consistency of all those visits. And maybe, like Percival and the Fisher King, it’s finally time to ask. We’ll see... Thinking about the process of awakening to the Genius Loci, the mythic landscape... especially if one comes from a lineage whose ancestors don’t carry the stories of that place in their bones in a way that the stories fill you up and when you breathe out your own breath is that story, too, and the place where your feet touch the earth is also the place where the old gods reside, and time stacks up until it is all NOW.
I didn’t grow up being told the mythic stories about this place, but maybe there are other ways of knowing. Several years ago I dreamt that my grandmother, but not a grandmother I knew from my waking life, was singing while sitting on the beach of the misty island in this photograph. The song filled me up and I knew it was important to remember. The dream carried me on, though, and gave me another piece of work, so by the time I awoke, I remembered her singing, but song had slipped away. So today, midsummer eve, I sang to her from across the bay, and the rain poured, and the hem of my dress swirled in the waves, and everything was beautiful, and there is so much work to be done. Wishing you safe passage through the mists, dear friends. When I was 10 we started meeting, and a few months later moved to, a mysterious little white house which had a trap door in the living room, and a wide, gray, sandy beach almost as a front yard. Maybe the first time I walked on that wet, cold sand, we came upon a jellyfish, red like strawberry preserves, that had drifted ashore. I had never met a jellyfish, and this one was amazing to me... impossible... like fireworks. Looking at them didn’t make it any easier to see what they were all about...
I still feel that way about these incredible people who float in the sea. And I so rarely see them here. Today is my 111th day visiting the water. I was dragging my feet... no one wanted to come with me... I was trying to decide about going out to do something that had sounded really good at 6:30 this morning... and a thick fog was rolling in. But here I am. At what’s becoming one of the most important parts of my day. And so very glad. |
Sylvan ThorncraftPracticing mother, weedwife, animist, human, who's very thankful to live on the coastal plain of Southern Maine, in Wabanaki terretory, near a place called Owascoag. Archives
August 2020
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