earth based wisdom – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is brought to you by a collaboration by FAR and Nasty Women Writers written and hosted by Maria and Theresa Dintino. This post originally appeared on their website on Sep 12, 2023

In her book To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger shares her origin story, the humble beginnings of the famous scientist, the activist and crusader for the planet she became. We learn on what forge that will, strength, brain and consciousness were smelted. And it is one of beauty, strength and love, one that takes the breath away.

I loved this book. I loved going deeper and deeper into Beresford-Kroeger’s life story, into the rich depths of her Celtic heritage and medicine lineage. To learn the secrets and the wisdom. Beresford-Kroeger offers sacred transmission in this book, revealing another part of herself. It is a vulnerable telling and an irreplaceable gift.

Empty Nest by Sara Wright

She fluttered
out of a woven
mossy green
basket
above the door
at dawn
the
nest
had fallen
onto granite
stone.
Oh
my drowning senses
couldn’t
contain such grief
every cell
drilled
deeper
I gasped
this
cavernous
hole
had no
bottom
I continued
to fall
Nature had
Spoken
my silent
plea went
unanswered
Ki’s* message
was clear
I replaced
the nest
added a
cedar shingle
enticing
the phoebes
to return
listened
to a vibrating
body
whose mourning
bell
rang clear
Nature
had Spoken
my beloved
birds
and those
I loved
were gone.

Deep Time and Dreaming by Sara Wright

I am standing on top of a mountain looking over a landscape of unspeakable wild natural beauty that stretches as far as I can see. This is the ‘long view’ the dream -maker tells me. The trees are stretching out their lush green needles to the sky as if in prayer, and they are whole. The forests, clear waters, the animals, birds, insects. All of Nature has been returned to a State of Grace.

An Old red skinned Indian Man appears. He is a Grandfather. He is on the mountain with me but also stands below (both and). He speaks to me.

“Sit, listen, this is the Song of Life”.

A finely crafted flowing red clay seat appears below (it flows like a wave) although it is situated a few inches above the earth. Almost hovering. I also see a drum made from deerskin and red clay sitting on the ground. There is a four directional equilateral black cross on the skin of the drum. The cross is thick and around the cross an intricate design is etched/inked into its skin also highlighted in black.

Kinship, the Powers of Place, and Leavetaking by Sara Wright

What do I mean by the word kinship? I believe that kinship is the idea, and the belief that all aspects of nature from photons to galaxies are connected to one another. Practically, I think of kinship as my feeling/sense of being intimately linked to place/landscape. In my mind Kinship and Place are not only related, each is shaped by the other.

The powers of place are invisible threads that work by exerting a kind of physical and psychic pressure, pulling me into relationship. Place acts like an attractor site. My body behaves like a lightening rod or perhaps a tuning fork picking up information from the landscape. Once I have heard the “call” the door opens through my relationship with elements, trees, animals, stars or stones to name a few possibilities.

As this presence manifests through its individuals place begins to teach me what I need to know about an area and how I might best live in harmony with a particular landscape, if not its people. This learning occurs in bursts or very slowly just below the threshold of everyday consciousness. Either way, information seeps in through my body as I listen and pay close attention to what my senses are telling me. I allow animals, trees, plants to speak to me in their native language, and I note synchronistic occurrences. Information also comes to me through dreams. Eventually a discernable pattern emerges. My body acts as the bridge between self and the rest of Nature; the vehicle that keeps me connected to the whole.

Of Birds and Dogs –Invisible Birds and the Weaver by Sara Wright

I am not feeding my year-round avian friends in the hopes that ‘my’ phoebes can nest in peace above my door and raise their brood without red squirrel interference. Last night I startled a nesting mother by turning on an outdoor light, so egg laying has begun. Every day I apologize to my beloved chickadees who must find food elsewhere (for now).

It’s hard to ignore the truth. So many birds that used to be common around here are gone. Mourning doves and white throated sparrows are two species that I miss too much. Occasionally, I hear a solitary w/t sparrow’s call. In March one mourning dove visited for a day; the flocks are gone

In this space in between bird loss and my choice not to feed those that I recognize by sight and sound, I have gradually learned how to listen to the invisible warblers that have probably been here all along.

Mountain Song on May Day by Sara Wright

I moved to the mountains to move mountains, to find peace in the hidden crevices of an endangered planet.
We pull out her hair, clumps at a time, self-harming her* in a myriad of new ways.
Wildfires burn up our forests, floods destroy precious lowlands. Loggers strip the possibility of new life from the soil. Our childhood stories become our adult lives: The Giving Tree who gave it all. . . .
The land doesn’t break; just dips and hides in private caves.
I moved to the mountains so that the predators of my past wouldn’t find me.
Their spirits crawl out from unvisited graves.

[Excerpted from the poem, Mountain Life by Rebecca Rogerson.

They slip past the disappearing forests of canopied evergreens that once shaded and protected Ki’s children. [Ki is short for Kin – more on what this word means in Part 3.]

Return to Sender by Sara Wright

you whistled
my name
four notes
chilled
prickly skin
needling
truth
we are
forever
bound
you
bird
woman
owl
tree
wounding
wounding
wounding
we weep
grief
grief
grief
too deep
half a
million
dead
gunned down
by Explosive Will
I make
no apology
Return
atrocity
to those
whose
behaviors
will one
day
destroy
them
too.
What we do to nature we do to ourselves.

Context for Poem:

Yesterday I wrote an essay about the barred owl killings beginning with a personal story about my relationship with barred owls. I have known about this Federal Fish and Wildlife Organization’s proposal since 2023.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Beth Barlett

Hope is the thing with feathers . . .
Emily Dickinson

I awoke this morning to bird song, and for a moment I was lifted beyond the despair that has caught me in its grip — despair for the country, for the earth, for loved ones whose lives are increasingly tossed into the chaos, for the future The disappearance of persons into labyrinths of prisons in this country, Guantanamo, and the tortuous CECOT prison complex in El Salvador has broken what was left of my spirit. Then this morning I heard a report that the State Department has changed what it considers to be human rights abuses in order to align with recent Executive Orders, deleting critiques of such practices as retaining political prisoners without due process of law, restrictions on free and fair elections, violence against LGBTQ persons, threats against people with disabilities, restrictions on political participation, coercive medical or psychological practices, and extensive gender-based violence. Ostensibly these changes are to lift restrictions on sanctions toward other countries, but I fear they portend clearing the way for such abuses in the US as well.

My heart is heavy in ways I have not previously known, so I am grateful for that brief moment of delight in the early morning. Later in the day, I found myself wondering whether those who suffered and died in concentration camps, whose despair certainly was beyond comparison with my own, found any solace in the sight and sound of birds who flew freely over the walls of the camps in ways they could not. The daughter of survivors of Auschwitz, Toby Saltzman, recalled that her mother, who often suffered bouts of despair over the Holocaust, found her spirits lifted by the songs of birds. When Toby later visited Auschwitz, she was greeted by flocks of birds. Upon her return, she reflected, “I left Auschwitz feeling a surge of triumph that my parents survived, and gratitude to the birds that gave my mother spiritual sustenance and hope.” We are sorely in need of such sustenance in these times.

Three poems by Rebecca Rogerson

Don’t Take Me to Church

He never let me eat communion because I wasn’t a catholic, but it was okay for me to eat his dick. My tiny palms forced to stroke him, the same dextrous hands that coloured in the lines.

I knew his God wasn’t my God. I knew she saw everything there was to see and that he wouldn’t reach salvation; no matter how many Hail Marys he said at mass in Ireland.

The Virgin Mary knew what he stole from me, what they steal from all of us.

I couldn’t fall apart on Sundays at noon when he took me to church—before he took me home after he did what he did—to the little Jewish girl who didn’t know she was Jewish.

I couldn’t remember it because I buried it in Survive, until, it was resurrected by nightmares and demons who professed caring and brought me to altars of despair to vomit up all the darkness, and when there was no more left to cleanse or tear out; light ripped in.

No one talks about the embarrassment that goes along with the telling, sharing and surfacing of sexual violence. How it comes up, how it comes back. How we’re always haunted by the deadbeat dead and grabby grandfathers who try to reach from there into here, pretending they are made of heaven.

I fled a friend’s choir concert because perpetrators keep stealing time, moments, sleep, joy, and friendship, in churches and baths. On my flight, I hunted for nature, soil and anything else that felt most alive in the hilly town of Nelson. Pretending I was like everyone else, I hid the panic that strikes broken hearts.

‘Willowing’ at the Turning by Sara Wright

My relationship with and time spent with Indigenous peoples reinforced my intuitive sense that seasonal turnings like the Spring Equinox need to be honored and experienced when the ‘time’ is right. Time, in the Indigenous sense is fluid. Because of this learning I have come to understand that although it is important to write a little ceremony that includes guardians, elements, prayer, gratitude, framing intentions/release that I also need to allow the powers of nature to determine when the actual passage occurs. Indigenous people dance their ceremonies which helped me understand that any experience that transpires around these turnings may become the body of the ceremony if it feels right though the words were written earlier. This year around the equinox darkness reigned in every sense of the word. Having set my intentions, I waited, wondering when the door would open… yesterday it did, and this is the story of what happened. Only afterwards did I realize that in every sense we had honored and experienced the beginning of spring and the rising of clear waters.

My Vet and dearest friend made one of his unscheduled visits. The moment after I got the text my little dogs began to bark. This is normal behavior for both animals who adore their Uncle Gary and are tuned into him on levels that defy explanation (he lives more than a half an hour away). They bark until he arrives, regardless of whether this is a regular visit, or one that’s a surprise. We keep track of the exact timing of his leave – taking, their behavior and his arrival for fun.