Feel the Wind. Feel the Rage.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Rage like wind blows through the land. It is powerful. It is mesmerizing. You only hope that when it’s over that the damage is minimal. But right now as it rages, you wonder.

The Santa Ana winds are blowing today. Out of the Northeast they race down my street, blowing the trees to bending and rattling the awning above my window.

I usually love the wind, the way it wakes me up and energizes me. That was the wind I grew up with, the cold, wet nor’easter or the wild stormy winds from the west. But here, the wildest winds come from the desert to the east and are warm and dry. They are unsettling. They make me anxious. They often increase the risk of fire in this arid land.

This country has become arid, unable to hold the moisture of compassion, the fluidity of uncertainty. Will the rage that is blowing now enflame us all?

The wild Santa Ana winds can wreak havoc. The damage they do may be a few downed trees or raging fires. But they also clear the air and make it easier to breathe as long as fire doesn’t rise.

Maybe it is time to rage like the wind, to call on Santa Ana, the mother of Mary, the grandmother of Jesus. We could use a powerful mother and grandmother right about now. She has long been the patron saint of my family. We went on pilgrimage to her shrine in Quebec every year to ask for healing for my brother. And he was healed. He never exhibited the worst symptoms of his condition.

Rage ignites us. We feel it because something is terribly wrong. We can no longer let ourselves or others be harmed. We can no longer allow the Earth to be damaged. She has her own rage and it knows no mercy. The raw power of Nature has been unleashed on Earth and within the women. The unheralded cry of the banshee whips through us, through the land, through the construct we live under.

Feel the wind, feel the rage. Let it clear the air. Let it blow through and let it make your eyes water. Let’s turn this storm into one of tears. Let our rage rise, let our passions be roused so it may reveal the compassion that is waiting just behind the pain. The wailing of the banshee need not herald our deaths and the death of the planet. It can be a cry to take down the destructive construct of patriarchy and our interior walls of hate and shame.

The wind continues to rattle and rouse everything on my street. My rage continues to rattle my heart and rouse my soul. But the tears are what will prevent the all-consuming fire and bring healing. And when they flow my world works again. Eyes and heart wide open we can face what we’ve become and know it is not who we are. We are ever becoming even as an eternal flame, steady and strong, burns at our center.

In the wails of the banshee I hear her heart sing, “You are wind. You are fire. You are earth. You are water. You are One. Don’t try to contain anything. Let it flow. You always dance on the edge of creation. When you take your next step, who will you be?”

Longing for Nature

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

I scroll through pictures on Instagram and Facebook and love the green spaces and sparkling waters my friends share. I find myself longing to step into these photographs and feel the breeze, smell the green and hear the water lap at a sandy shore.

Though there are trees and bushes in my yard, I long for wild places where the trees speak to one another of places and times beyond my short life. Where the whole community of trees, plants, critters and rocks know themselves as one entity, place as organism. I grow weary of our human focused world. Too many of us don’t know we are one with everything that the whole Earth and all upon it is one being of many beings working together to move us into an ever greater understanding of who and what we are. And we are Life itself.

Sometimes I sit in my backyard and close my eyes and know even here all is one. The trees speak to one another and if I sit long enough and listen, I find I’ve become a part of the conversation for their presence has embraced me and soothed my angst.

Still I long for wild places until I realize those wild places live within me. I’m not just one with nature, I am Nature. My longing stems from my forgetting. It’s time to re-member myself, gather the fragments of my consciousness and realize and realign with Oneness. Those photographs become the images I’m already standing in. Even now as I sit here and type this a stream is running through my mind and the birds are singing in my heart. I am rooted and I am free to fly in the clouds. I’ve been gathered and I’ve been set free.

It’s Time to Uproot the Pain of the Past to Allow for New Growth

The sky is full of wisdom today. This lunar eclipse during a full moon will turn the milky white face of the moon blood red. And that’s not the only thing going on. To learn more about the astrology of this time, read Jennifer Racioppi’s blog.

With many planets going retrograde along with the eclipse, Nature is reminding us of the importance of looking back in order to move forward. It’s a message that has been with me lately. I recently wrote about being told by a Mourning Dove it was time to move forward. You can read it here.

This eclipse cycle that is ending is a 19 year one. Nineteen years ago I moved to Southern California from Nova Scotia. I completely uprooted my life. The beginnings of that change started showing up in 1998 with a crow flying behind me and brushing my hair with its wing. One relationship was ending and another just about to begin.

I pulled out my journal to ruminate over these past 19 years. There have been many insights and much growth. The new relationship has brought me closer and closer to the past in order for it to be healed. What I really learned was that I brought the past with me. I didn’t leave it behind in Nova Scotia. It wasn’t time to let it go yet. I needed to carry it nearly 4000 miles so I could wait for it to fully surface with the help of this new relationship. And boy, has it risen. It has made things difficult at times, but I’ve learned a lot.

Nature here in California has been a part of my healing over the past 19 years as well. The Giant Sequoias taught me that in the present the past is ever with us. As much as I want to uproot it fully, I can’t. What I can do is remove the stunted growth to allow new growth, new life to prosper. It’s perfect that today, the stump removal team came and removed the stump out front. The stump had grown branches, but it was never going to be a tall, strong tree again. Now something new can be planted.

The desert has also taught me something. I learned that even when it seems as though there is no life, if you look close, you’ll find an abundance of it. Even in our most distraught days, there is still life within us. It also taught me years of drought doesn’t mean death. It will rain again, and when it does, a field of flowers will bloom as far as the eye can see. Our driest time creatively doesn’t mean the end of our ability to create. We just need patience and perhaps the juice of life for ideas to bloom.

And there have been many more moments when Nature led me to a greater understanding. It has helped me carry the past to this point as has my relationship. But now, it’s time to let the pain of the past go. It can only stunt my growth.

Again, I stand on the precipice of change. The distant shore is still hard to see, but I’m beginning to make out some shapes. I light a candle under the Blood Moon and gently lay it on a tiny boat. I recall all I wish to release and launch the boat, let it drift out to sea. I bless all I have learned as I watch it disappear.

I turn to the shore in the distance. It is 19 years away. I step into the boat built by the last 19 years and set sail in a new direction. I don’t quite know yet what it will look like when I land. It’s a long ways away. But I will let the vision that is beginning to rise guide me each day, each week, each month, each year. I know my experiences along the way will shape the vessel and the vision, and this will bring me to exactly where I need to be.

Nature Doesn’t Tell You What to Do

Photo by ollivves on pixabay

Nature just does its thing. We can learn from the flow of life by paying attention. But Nature is never going to tell you what to do. It simply expresses itself from moment to moment. It’s up to us to glean the lessons that are for us.

That’s what I want to do. Share my story and experience. I was looking at many of the online e-zines I’d like to write for and there are so many how-to articles. I don’t feel as though that is what I’m supposed to write. Not explicitly anyway.

As I look out my window and watch the wind move through the palm tree across the street I feel as though my words are to be used to share my experience. Others can then read and glean what they will. This way it comes more from them than me.

Nature is my guru, my teacher by simply being. I looked to its expression as I was tapping into what I want to write. These insights are what came to me. Because I have all I need within, Nature’s ways and my inner wisdom resonate when I come to the answer.

I’m supposed to write and teach in a more expressive form rather than explanatory. This is a big insight for me. I’ll have to sit with this for a while.

For now I’ll let Nature continue to teach and touch me. There is so much to gather from this amazing and abundant Beingness.

Blessed by the Wind

Photo by Pezibear on pixabay

The wind came in my office window like a blessing. It made me realize how much I like incarnation. The touch of the cool breeze on my skin opened my heart and brought tears. It felt like a baptism into the world as both body and soul. Awakened to Spirit through my body, I know myself to be the meeting place of heaven and Earth.

On some level I knew this, but this morning I truly felt it, Nature and Spirit working together to gather me into the fold. I know it is truly all one, and yet it feels like a dance between them. The dance is within us and all of creation. The dream born of this dance is brought to life through us. We give our bodies and souls to it and find we are one.

I don’t need grand vistas and awesome beauty to feel the blessing Nature, of Life. A single leaf floating to the ground in the light of the setting sun, the flutter of sparrow wings as it alights on a branch, the touch of the wind on my skin all speak to me, all bring life home to me as much as my own heart beat and the love that resides there.

This body is a gift. It’s more than a temple. It’s the hearth of my soul. It’s where I can touch Spirit and know I am holy as an embodied being. Living life at the edge of creation is an experience I cherish now more than ever. I give thanks to Nature for Her touch. I give thanks to Spirit for expressing as me. I am in the world as well as of it. I am born into flesh. And flesh is Spirit in form. I am as close to the Divine now as I could be. Blessed by all the elements, I embrace my existence as sacred and whole as I walk upon holy ground.