Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
Walk lightly
pay keen attention…
practice gratitude
but not at the expense
of truth
take sparingly
share
an Underground Web
writes the Story
but my roots
belong to earth
at the crossroad –
I choose
‘both and’
Listen to
feathered voices
keep breathing deep
into the forest floor
feel that luminous Light
hidden beneath my feet
Balance fear and pain
with turkey flight.
Part 1 was posted yesterday
On Samhain we are given the opportunity to come together in community to grieve our losses. We grieve for all those we have known personally who have passed over. But this year we also grieve for all those who lost their lives and homes in Hurricanes Helene and Milton and in the many other disasters around the world. We grieve as well for the other losses that occurred—of homes, of jobs, of community, of pets (many of whom also died or were separated from their owners). The losses are so enormous and overwhelming that we need the support that community provides to cope with them. We need to bind together in the strength of community to express our sorrow. Being aware of the death from so many natural disasters helps us to listen to the earth to see what She is telling us, to hear Her crying because She is weakened and out of balance, breaking apart under the strain.
Feeling the earth’s grief from the hurts inflicted upon Her enables us to take stock of our policies, to change our course while we still can. As we float downstream on our raft, we can ignore what we see around us until we see the rapids ahead and say to ourselves, before we plunge over them, “Why didn’t we change course earlier?”
Continue reading “Samhain and the Waters of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, part 2 by Susan Foster”Moderator’s note: While Samhain is past for this year, we are still in the section of the Celtic calendar which makes this blogpost, and its part 2 which will be posted tomorrow, relevant.
Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival, in fact the most sacred celebration in the Celtic year. Samhain is the New Year of the Celtic calendar. It is one of the eight holidays of the Celtic year—the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days—all of which mark the turnings of the seasons. Samhain is a time when the harvest had been completed; all the grains and late-maturing vegetables have been gathered in; the fields have been cleared, the old cast off, the fields lying fallow over the cold and dark of winter in order to make room for the eventual springing forth of new life. The New Year, begins in darkness at Samhain, is a reminder that all life emerges from the darkness, that death precedes rebirth. It is a time when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living thinned, so that the presence of those who have gone before us is more clearly felt or even seen. It is a time to remember the ancestors as well as those newly departed—to grieve our losses, to let go so that we can move forward.
Samhain is the precursor of our Halloween. It was brought to this country by Irish immigrants during the potato famines in the 19th century. They brought their Celtic customs with them, but by that time Samhain was known as Hallows Eve, since the Irish were good Catholics. It struck a responsive chord with the American people, who called it Halloween. They adopted many of its customs, including lighting candles in gourds or pumpkins and dressing in costume. Today Halloween is celebrated as a spooky and fun time, observed with trick-or-treating and mischief-making, but originally it was a solemn holiday—a time to commune with the beloved dead, to honor the ancestors with food and drink, and to acknowledge death as part of a never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
Continue reading “Samhain and the Waters of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, part 1 by Susan Foster”On November 6th, the day after the election in the middle of writing through my own anger/grief I suddenly stopped and got up – heeding that inner voice that often interrupted my train of thought. Picking up the lights I opened the door to adorn my young cedar for the very first time ever.
I planted this twelve-inch-tall seedling in 2020 to replace my original Cedar Guardian Tree that had been decimated by deer during a year-long absence. To my astonishment in four years, this seedling had become a seven-foot-high Guardian Tree. Of course, in the interim I have carefully tended this cedar, watering her, talking with her, touching her, loving her, calling her ‘my guardian’ but this species is very slow growing so even as I began to festoon the tree with lights, I experienced a sense of awe. I was of course talking with this tree as I adorned her… I told her that I would be lighting her as a Tree for Life.
When the air around the tree suddenly exploded with the scent of cedar, I experienced a powerful sense of relatedness with this cedar, and with all nature that is impossible to describe. That she was communicating with me using her own words moved me deeply. Although I have had these experiences before each one remains a revelation, especially when I have one during times of deep distress. When I plugged in the lights, I saw the unintentional spiral that I had created when I wound the strings so carefully around and across her delicate fronds. Just perfect I thought as a breeze rustled through her branches making the lights twinkle for a moment.
Continue reading “Trees Scent and Sing for Life by Sara Wright”
I spent hours
writing
you snaked by
underground roots
entering my story
with your
forked stick
‘witches’ are a
lie that christians
made up
to legitimize
harm done
to our kind
Artists, Writers,
Healers,
Visionaries,
Trees,
(men too)
Women whose
Difference
others defined.
Nature defiled.
Twice a year, once in May for a few days and during the first week of October I can’t leave home because I’ll miss the next moment of spring flowering or scarlet flames.
Last week I was captivated by how the golden morning light affects each deciduous leaf. For about five days I ran inside and out all morning to feast upon the astonishing leaf color changes as the sun rose higher. ‘Fire on the Mountain’, crimson, gold, seductive sultry salmon brilliance. In and out for hours. I drove my dogs crazy. Noting the bees on the blushing hydrangea, glad for dragonflies cruising around the house. Greeting little green frog framed against his log. Breathing in the Light. Infused by all too brief moments of swamp maple’s fierce fiery splendor.
Continue reading “A Leaf Peeper’s Reflection by Sara Wright”Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.
Yesterday on the day before the equinox I returned to my favorite hemlock forest after another morning of unproductive research on the mycelial web. The scarcity of information on this critical source of all life on land is troubling. As my frustration mounted I heard a little voice say, ‘Go visit with the hemlocks’. I did.
After I crossed the bridge into the forest something amazing happened. An invisible cloud of incredibly fragrant mushroom scent slipped over me like a shroud. I just stood there for a moment inhaling sweet earth, astonished and bewildered.
Continue reading “A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 2 by Sara Wright”Walk lightly
pay keen attention…
practice gratitude
but not at the expense
of truth
take sparingly
share
an Underground Web
writes the Story
my roots
belong to Earth
‘Listen to
feathered voices,
seek mushroom clouds
keep breathing deep
into the forest floor
feel that luminous Light
rooted beneath my feet’
(my fall equinox prayer)
During these days of mindless violence and fearful political upheaval, I feel driven to enter the woods on a daily basis. Lately, I haven’t even left my property. As I cross the bridge over the brook, I brush by the first lacy hemlocks and lovingly touch a branch of witch hazel whose lemony fingered flowers reach for mine. I am on the trail of mushrooms, but not as a forager.
I am drawn to these fungal fruiting bodies because I am trying to learn more about the complex relationships between certain fungi that emerge as mushrooms and their relationship to the trees around them. Some fungi that are in a symbiotic (or mycorrhizal) relationship with one tree or many, do fruit above ground but there are only about 20,000 mushrooms in all. The rest (which is most of the fungal world) fruit underground.
Continue reading “A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 1 by Sara Wright”
I was captivated by a bunch of wispy, weedy zinnia flowers on my dining-room table, with its bright blossoms sprinkled on the curling stems. The zinnias pulled me from my current obsession with sea goddesses into a different zone, into the Kingdom of Plants (Kingdom Plantae). The Plant Kingdom is an important part of Goddess manifest, having come into being long before the appearance of our human family. It’s no wonder that flowers and other members of the Plant Kingdom play an important part in the mythology of our ancestors worldwide.
I have been involved with plants since I was a toddler. My first word was ‘fower’ for bright yellow buttercups, a nickname I was given by my grandfather that stuck.
I guess it’s no surprise that I started out with gardening as a three-year-old under my grandmother’s tutelage. Her large vegetable plot fed us for most of the year. I seeded my first yellow summer squash into rich moist earth and watched with wonder as the seed emerged with two emerald ears.
In college when students were decorating their rooms with drapes and bedspreads, I bought a pepper plant to brighten my cement surroundings and soon had a windowsill full of plants.
As a young adult I grew many house plants and often talked to them, noting that we seemed to have an uncanny personal relationship, a childhood reality that I had been educated out of. I also gardened with herbs outside my back door, because I loved to cook and needed tasty condiments. Soon I moved on to planting a full – fledged vegetable plot. I canned what I could like my grandmother still longing for the bountiful flower gardens of my dreams. I come from a lineage of female flower gardeners and farmers that stretched back three generations (that I know of) but as a young single mother who worked and one who was frozen from loss, I didn’t make the time.
Continue reading “Seeds of Life by Sara Wright”
