Listening to Our Landscapes, by Molly Remer

Today the hawk is back, tail feathers lit gold and black by a bright and welcome sun. It stays only a moment before tilting out of the tree and continuing on its way, but this moment is enough to spark a sense of joy and wonder in my chest, the awake kind of glee that fuels and feeds me, that inspires and holds me. This feels like the Year of the Hawk to me, of clear focus and intentional commitment. I watch it glide away between the trees and take a deep breath of release and freedom. I re-center myself into my body and reconnect to the sacred What Is. I am open to clarity. I am open to trust. I am present with this day’s unfolding. 

As a long time goddess devotee and a practitioner of place-based, earth-centered magic, each week, I offer a live community practice online and each month I offer a live virtual circle. As we begin, I usually invite the participants to extend their awareness out to their own landscape, what the land they live on is teaching them today, what they see, hear, feel, and notice in their own place, not the magical associations or patterns that are borrowed from other times and places, other lands and people, but right here, right now, where we are. Instead of turning to the North and calling on the element of Earth, I encourage people to turn to their own North and bear witness to what is held there, what is present there. What is happening in your own North, not the book’s North, not the North of patched together Celtic history and not even the North of pre-colonial times, not the expert’s North, or someone else’s North, but the North of where you are right now. In a changing climate and a changing world, it becomes even more vital that we listen, that we tune in, that we sync ourselves up with this earth to which we all belong.

In February, we must remember that we are still in the cave, in the belly.* We are still steeping. We are still replenishing. We are still waiting to choose. Soon, we’ll feel the heat of the forge rekindled. We’ll spy crocuses beside the frost. We’ll walk at sunset and find it is no longer 4:30. We must empower ourselves to resist the many pressures: cultural, economic, social, and even internal, that push us to leap forward into production, to grow without ceasing and birth continuously without the necessary time spend incubating in the dark. Let us steady our hands and strengthen our will. We are still in the crucible, deconstructing and refining. It is okay to wait. 

I first learned about the 12 Omen Days from Caitlin Matthews in a blog post back in 2013. I have participated in some way each year since then, usually keeping a note for each Omen Day in my We’Moon datebook. The Omen Days are the 12 days between Christmas and January 6th (or, the 12 days after the Winter Solstice if you prefer). For each day, you are alert to omens, which then correspond to the months of the new year as a type of oracle, augury, or divination for the year to come. For example, what you see/encounter on December 26th contains a message or an omen for January of the new year and what you see on December 27th gives you an omen for February of the upcoming year, etc. For me, I always see something in the land around me as my omen and I also usually receive a word or a theme for each day as well. I use the symbols and themes use for guidance as I move through the year. This year, an overall symbol I encountered was the hawk and an overall theme was “arising,” with the companion affirmation: I am present with what arising. I participate in life’s unfolding.

On the fourth Omen Day, I am still at home in Missouri, on my back deck, watching the world. The skies are heavy and gray and there is rain, small droplets pattering swiftly onto worn boards. I am thinking about how often life and spiritual practice are not about having new insights and fresh things to say, but about remembering what we already know, coming back home again and again, opening up, again and again, settling inward, again and again, returning to center, again and again, calling our spirits back, again and again, listening again and again, and beginning, again and again.  As I pause with my thoughts, listening to the rain, a hawk begins to call above the cedar trees in the east, high, thin, and lovely. May we reserve space for the sacred and for ourselves at the center of our own lives. May we cherish our connections and be present with joy. May we remember, again and again.

On the eighth Omen Day, I am at the beach in Alabama, where we travel each January. The wind is restless and cold. We begin our walk and find our breaths stripped away by wind. Doggedly, we put our shoulder to it and keep going, but then realize turning back is an option. Sometimes there is strength in persevering, sometimes in surrendering. We walk at the bird sanctuary instead. It is quiet and peaceful, the wind barely stirring the tops of the tall longleaf pines. The trunks make a cave of light and shadow, the fallen needles muffle our steps, as we move quietly through a primeval land that seems to know old secrets and silent mysteries. It feels gentle and restorative here, soothing and replenishing. Sometimes we need to hold the course, sometimes we need to change directions, to listen to what the earth and this day is teaching now and respond to it, instead of forcing ourselves to comply with a prior vision. Sometimes we need to allow ourselves to be replenished instead of depleting ourselves. It can be brave to hold on, to refuse to yield. It can be brave to let go, to turn back, to let life guide you from effort into ease.

We spot small yellow mushrooms amongst the pine needles, pause in the sunshine by the lake and say: “it is nice and warm here,” right as we notice the slicked grass trail in and out of the water that tells us an alligator has noticed the nice sunshine too. We run our fingers through sandhill rosemary and sweet gale (bog myrtle) and take long, welcome breaths. We spot a monarch butterfly above the branches and stop to visit the gigantic magnolia tree, one of its massive branches split from the base by last year’s lightning. Despite the damage, all of the branches are still alive and covered with waxy green leaves. I pause to balance a goddess in the center of the trunk, a place I’ve often paused for a photo before, because it feels like a place between the worlds to sit and watch what unfolds. As I find her place between sunlight and shadow, the final line from this morning’s dream suddenly comes back to me: “ordinary reality is unraveling,” and I pause, my fingertips lightly resting on the goddess poised at this point of balance between growth and destruction, light and darkness, effort and ease. 

On the tenth Omen Day, a small hawk is on the roof when we wake. The sky is clear and open. We walk towards the waning moon, pleased to find that other than a fox, ours are the only footprints between surf and tide line. We walk for seven miles, lured onward by the sun and shells. We comment that we haven’t seen the oystercatchers yet this year, the birds we joke are the black and white bird version of ourselves, scurrying along the tide line looking for treasure. 

We watch an osprey flying overhead with a fish clasped in its talons and watch the dolphins wildly thrashing up the water leaping so high, we see their tails. A few minutes later, we see the oystercatchers in the surf after all, long red beaks sorting busily through the sand. We smile and kiss each other, feeling such a sweet certainty of belonging. On the long walk back to the car, I step out of the present and into the realm of the imaginal, awash with plans and possibilities, thinking about things to do and future trip reservations to make. I quickly get sharp and snappy, trudging over the sand feeling misunderstood as my husband patiently points out how it sounds like I am planning to step right back into the pattern of overperforming that I claim to long to liberate myself from. This is how I entrap myself, ensnare my spirit  in a web of too muchness, instead of claiming my life’s own daily choices as the site of my own liberation. He is right and I reluctantly let go, my shiny new ideas of massive overcommitment and future strain dissolving back into the sunshine and shells. This is a living practice. I participate in the unfolding as it occurs, I cannot box it up and plan it out, and chain myself to a past day’s dreaming, a former self’s yes. The heart of my own spirituality is in the arising. I must follow the path as I discover and experience it in the present. I must live my life as it unfolds, must bear witness to the living tapestry of each day, must follow the inspiration where and how she is and not as I tidily imagine it to be. I need not create more than I can hold, produce without ceasing, I need to be here to discover what unfolds, present for what arises. When we return, the hawk is on the satellite dish. I sit in the sun with my eyes closed, listening to the wind in the palm leaves, leaning into the unfolding.

Root yourself on this earth,
right where you stand.
Inhabit the arising.
Feel the wisdom of the land
resonate in your bones.
Listen to the unfolding story,
participate with your whole heart
and your open hands.
Feel sun warm your skin
and wind kiss your face.
Stay alert for enchantment.
Feel your own magic
humming in your veins.
Trust your own belonging.
Stay with it.

*February’s holiday on the pagan wheel of the year is Imbolc, from the Celtic word meaning “in the belly.”