Recently I read an essay on FAR about how Ruth Ginsberg’s Jewish roots influenced her life in a positive way. When her mother died, she was excluded from mourning because she was a woman.
This important exclusion a fundamental form of woman betrayal left an impression and sent a powerful message that inspired and influenced Ginsberg’s life and career – she did not count – she had no voice – she had no authority to speak. (Paraphrased from FAR). We all know how influential this woman became and how she modeled staying with the process to the end of her life.
Ginsberg is one powerful example of a woman who used her betrayal experience to make powerful changes in her life – a true heroine (why do we call women ‘heroes’ today?) This story reflects my belief that it is critically important to acknowledge our religious roots because these myths do affect us regardless of whether we adhere to them or not.
For Christians, Palm Sunday marks the beginning of holy week – a week that ended in betrayal and the tragic death of someone who was a mystic, healer, a man who created loving space for women and was supported by them during his life and after his death. The saddest part of this story for me is that this was a man who cared about women and the earth. Not a patriarchal man. I see the resurrection as a natural occurrence because the soul stays present for a time after death for those who are closest to that person.
Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.
About ten years ago I began to keep a (public) though never advertised blog to help me keep track of my life. Because I am so severely directionally dyslexic this blog helped me to organize my material. Drafts of published and unpublished papers, poetry, opinions, changing seasons, virtually anything that I was experiencing and writing about ended up on that blog. Without conscious awareness/intention I began to include the more esoteric aspects of my experiences, and this is how stories of Lily b, lizards, various extraordinary encounters with birds, bears etc. ended up on this online journal sort of by ‘accident’. I didn’t even realize what was happening. I wasn’t talking about these experiences, but I was starting to write about them publicly, not just privately. People read what I wrote, I realized vaguely. Frankly this didn’t matter much because that wasn’t why I kept an online journal. Its primary purpose was twofold. It helped me organize my writings but more importantly it distanced me from particulars so that patterns emerged. Enter NPR. Anna had apparently been reading my blog for a couple of years and asked me if I would do an interview on Lily b my telepathic bird. I was astonished, but agreed, although with some trepidation because I had so rarely discussed this subject. The old fear of crazy surfaced.
I begin this story with a vignette and an invitation to meet my current family. This morning my four -pound Chihuahua made her usual rounds and ended up in the bathroom where my 3O plus year old African Collared Dove, a free flying house bird has a roost and his very own plant window. Lily b had flown onto the floor and was visiting with Coalie.
The first time I witnessed this exchange between bird and dog I instinctively swept Lily off the floor and deposited him on his perch, feeling relieved no damage had been done, though oddly Lily b was not the least bit agitated. A few days later I discovered him on the kitchen floor as Coalie was backing him into a corner. Or was she? Lily b was initiating these exchanges, so I was baffled.
Every morning Coalie stops by to see if Lily b is perched on his basket. They exchange salutations meeting eye to eye before Coalie moves on unless Lily flies down. It is impossible not to conclude that these two are engaging in some kind of play on days they meet on the floor. If Coalie can’t resist pulling at one of Lily’s feathers, he promptly spreads out a wing using it as a shield to block her. Back off he says and she does! Lily b never flies away.
In late November I first snowshoed our woodland trails to include the little balsam that I lit to honor all evergreens throughout the winter months. Every day when my little dog and I circled the tree I told her I loved her and called her ‘Lightbringer’. This daily encounter never lost its magic. The Goddess Lived during the darkest winter nights!!
The rest speak to the subtle changes that occurred from late winter into spring. My writing naturally follows both seasonal and intraseasonal shifts that might not be noticed unless a person is paying close attention.
(1)Lightbringer
Will she still be there shining after the storm? Moon Bear is on the rise. I peer through white flakes at dawn light pierces her powdery fringed shawl Love lights the darkest Night.
Steadfast Balsam cloaked or not Ever-green, Tree of Life. Heartlines flow crystalline waters pour down deep sleep oh, Daughter of the Night Daughter of The Light, Light -Bringer Life -Bringer The Miracle Is that You Live.
Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.
I also came to understand the role Intergenerational Silence played in the dance between my mother and father. My mother controlled through silence, a perfect correlate to her husband’s explosive rages. Silence and Rage make grotesque bedmates, and both destroy relationships.
My mother’s story remained veiled. Except on one occasion, my mother never apologized to me for her actions so that bridge remains broken.
Everything I know about my mother’s history (and that isn’t much) I learned from her relatives. I knew she was illegitimate, the daughter of a wealthy and very married senator and my grandmother. She lived a privileged life and was sent to the very best schools/colleges. Once a month she visited with her biological father. By the time my mother was in her twenties she severed this relationship for unknown reasons. I have no idea if she ever met her half – brothers and sisters. She disliked – blamed (?) my grandmother who was banned from the family when she became pregnant. No doubt shame was an issue for all. My mother lived with my grandmother’s sisters, my great aunts and called my grandmother by her first name. She married twice. The first marriage was annulled by the family. No idea why. Secrets and Silence ruled my mother’s family; and she clearly perfected that tendency. Didn’t anyone recognize that secrets leave holes that cannot be bridged once that person is dead?
Author’s Note: One reason I am sharing this story is that I hope that it will ease another round of suffering. However, I would dearly like to believe that others might reflect upon the ways they have been impacted by family violence or silence in their own lives, so we don’t get caught by projecting these patriarchal roots outside of us onto the collective while dismissing them in ourselves. That dark patriarchal seed is present in all of us, and I think that telling our personal stories keeps us attached to the whole with humility – a challenge in this time of monstrous ethical, social, political, ecological breakdown.
I often have dreams that leave me with questions, dreams that provoke deep personal reflection, dreams that stay with me as the following one did. At mid-life I had written tributes for two men that mentored me from a distance who brought ‘good fathering’ into the foreground because each encouraged me to believe in myself, to celebrate my original thinking, to trust my intuition and more.
The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary is an astonishing book written by internationally acclaimed writer Terry Tempest Willams that is predicated on the necessity of bearing compassionate witness to all beings during these troubled times. It is a book about family, friends, earth and dreams, the later of which inspired the title. The volume is composed of a series of essays, only one of which I will discuss here.
Terry, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School, writes about the Divinity Tree, a two-hundred-year-old red oak that was removed from the Commons. Listening to this narrative as a ‘Tree Woman’ was/is excruciatingly painful. My stomach roils in misery, but I am compelled to listen, over and over, because this is my story too.
I came to the mountains because I was in love with trees and bears discovering an evergreen paradise or so I thought until the dreams began. In my night stories all the trees were being slaughtered and there was nothing I could do. Since I was surrounded by fragrant forests that stretched from horizon to horizon, I could make no sense of these terrifying warnings and let them be.
the circle repeats tightens with age crushing an aging heart I cannot breathe through these lifetimes of loss instead I relive old pain 4AM lasts an eternity each mourning
I am a plant woman, that is a woman who has an intimate relationship with plants. As an ecofeminist writer I believe that women and plants have a ‘natural’ connection to one another. We see this mythologically as women turn into trees, hold ceremonies under trees, listen to them for wisdom, take comfort from them in distress.
Why do we look to the stars for direction and ignore the urgent messages about interspecies communication that trees and plants convey to us here on earth?
I think this is a very important question to be asking when our planet is facing ecological collapse.
Moderator’s Note: This post was written in early February, 2026
The Big Bear Moon
(Ojibwe and other Northern Tribes)
We know that each full moon exerts a powerful pull on the earth. At the full moon, the Earth, Moon, and Sun align and the tidal bulges on both sides of the earth manifest as extremes (reminds us that extremes are part of all nature).
This full moon, called the Big Bear Moon also ushers in the First Turning of the year. Last night’s luminous round pearl reminds me that every full moon creates a magnetic and gravitational pull that effects every living being on this planet.
Dealing with these natural extremes on a personal level is necessary if sometimes unpleasant work. I have been a regular journal keeper for 50 plus years and notice that each full moon brings on physical symptoms that have increased in severity with age (inability to sleep/headache spikes/ irritability). When I was younger, I experienced the full moon’s pull as a potent ‘high’ that energized me too much. Another curious consistency is that for me the worst human betrayals including self – betrayal have occurred occur around or during the full moons. I have learned not to make personal decisions during this period and to watch out for weird highs/lows and for inexplicable/explosive anger.
Lately I also have been thinking about the forest whose individual trees synchronize to prepare for the magnetic/and gravitational pull of lunar and solar cycles/includes eclipses, etc. that literally suck up water drying trees out, so trees have learned to shut down to protect themselves from water loss. These extremes are particularly dangerous for young trees who have few if any water reserves, so old trees communicate to the seedlings/adolescents what to expect and what to do. Afterwards, trees separate again into individuals, but they also remain connected through their root systems and through the air so interspecies relationship within the forest does not cease. I wonder if during the winter months the trees are less likely to dry out during celestial events because so many are sleeping? Although most tree energy/power descends below to roots and the mycelial networks where life keeps humming, in colder climates natural antifreeze remains in tree trunks and expands during full moons. Sometimes the antifreeze isn’t enough to stop cracking which will damage the tree.
Plants as well as trees respond to the Moon’s gravitational and magnetic pull through leaf movements, altered stem/root growth, and by absorbing more water to compensate for shrinkage. I have noticed all these effects occurring in my houseplants during the months I spend more time inside with plants and the moon.
Winters go on forever and without my beloved bright green houseplants I would be bereft. I have been paying very close attention to my passionflowers this week during the waxing moon which is also occurring at the First Turning of the year.
One beauty needs repotting and until four days ago I planned to do this job in a couple of weeks. While immersed in another project I received an urgent message from that plant: repot me now. (root growth) Her voice was so insistent that I immediately dropped what I was doing to respond (all plants communicate with those who love them). As usual I expected an ordeal for both of us, so I was stunned to see how easily the plant separated from her pot. Although her thick white roots were spiraling out of the bottom, the whole plant let go without my help (this has never happened to me before – usually re-potting is traumatic with the plant giving off a scent that I associate with pain because plants make sounds or scents when hurt) Ah, she knew when the timing was just right and I (thankfully) was listening! Another point worth mentioning is that repotting/cutting creates distress for all plants. This repotted passionflower had no reaction at all and is already showing new stem growth.
I have also been watching my two other passionflowers. The two in the south windows have required daily watering One is a cutting I placed in a dove pot early last summer that has vined herself around the whole southern window and is now attaching tendrils to the ceiling and a piece of string that I attached to the plant to give the tendrils purchase if/ as the vine moves across the room. Instead of turning south the top of this vine seems to be traveling northeast– or was (it might be important to add that I also had a dream that my dog Coalie and I were traveling northeast via the coast earlier this month). In the last two days the tendrils have reversed their trajectory and are climbing back over themselves towards the west! It’s winter, and southern sun is normally what these plants love.
The Big Bear moon was full last night and this morning the passionflower is once again traveling northeast! So, this reversal was temporary, but it demonstrates the powers of the moon (and other celestial bodies) to create effects like reversals on earth, humans included. Intriguing to say the least.
The third passionflower is in a window that faces north/ northeast. I planted cuttings for someone whose brutal betrayal last spring on the full moon and good friday*(2) unhinged me. After crucifixion day this passionflower immediately developed a mass of blooms, eight weeks before the onset of her regular blossoming cycle. A crown of thorns greeted me each day.
The trauma was so severe that I lost two months of my life. When each astonishing blossom scented the air I felt the knife twist like a corkscrew deepening the hole in my gut. After two plus months nature intervened and I was free at last.
But it took months before I was able to separate that one passionflower from the Betrayer. My passionflowers lived outdoors for the summer which allowed me some space. I started new plants. Both prospered under my care. When I was able, I asked the original plant for forgiveness, but it was too late. My lack of love and attention resulted in a passionflower that was no longer thriving.
Today I remain the ‘Old Woman’ in the crucifier’s life. What I will never forget is that he scapegoated me without cause; I do not hate him but I do not wish him well. That crown of thorns is on his head, not mine.
Lately, I have been asking the passionflower that produced vines and flowers for a killer of soul what to do. Yesterday I received a nudge. Take three cuttings and let me go.
Begin again.
The words could have come from a fairy tale.
I followed the first directions. Next, I burned both my homemade solstice balsam wreaths to acknowledge the circle that had been broken.
I am hedging around throwing out the old plant – part of me wonders if I need to wait until she speaks again – or maybe I am just not ready. Plants are wonderfully patient with humans who often need many more than one set of instructions.
This morning the three cuttings are waving their tendrils towards the light – (normally they droop for days). The repotted plant looks as if ki has been in her new home for a while. No indication that she has just been repotted!
Plants are Powerful Teachers and I am in perpetual awe of how little I know, how mysterious the ways of nature remain. But in this process of writing about plants, I have also uncovered my most recent intentions. Nature, no doubt has known all along!!
Postscript: February 5 9AM – this morning I was stunned to see a bud emerge from a new plant just repotted…. this too has never happened before (this plant has not lived long enough to adjust her cycle for blooming to the light the plant receives in the house). How important it is to learn how to observe and to listen!
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(1) February 2nd is when the bear first leaves his den to determine how much longer winter will last – if he doesn’t see the sun, he knows that winter will last much longer. When the colonists arrived, they turned the Indigenous bear story into a groundhog story)
(2) (AI) The passionflower is steeped in16th-century Christian mythology, where Spanish missionaries interpreted its unique structure as symbols of the Passion of Christ. The corona filaments represented the Crown of Thorns, while the three stigmas symbolized the nails, and the five anthers were wounds.
My commentary:.
In pre – christian/christian mythology one sees Osiris, Dionysus, and Jesus all wearing crowns of one sort or another. Both sides of the archetype can be lived out depending upon whichever side of the alignment a person is living through. For example, in myth Dionysus wore a crown to celebrate joy; Jesus wore a crown to die. Osiris wore a crown depicting his rule over the Underworld.
For Indigenous peoples of South America the passionflower is called the Vine of Souls.
Feminism and Religion 