Branches and Magic

Posted on May 5, 2013
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I have been quite busy at home and coming up with new ideas to manifest.  Here is a recent piece I wrote, speculating and meandering upon thoughts regarding the origins of magic wands -

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So I think first of Welsh myth, particularly the story of Einigin and Menw. In the story, a giant (also the first of all beings) witnesses the divine, in sound and sight and knowing, and taking three rowan staves, carves upon them the knowledge he has obtained. Rowan has associations with protection and magic because it is a tree that will grow quite easily when cuttings are thrust into the ground. It is a common magic stave, wand, or dowsing rod for the Celts. Being a people who place great value upon the knowledge of the trees, it would make sense to assume that in this culture, at least, a wand would be meant to bring the quality of the tree, the gifts of the tree, to the carrier of the branch. 

A stick is a likely first tool of human ancestors. The more one works with a tool, the more it also brings on the qualities of the one working with it. The branch becomes smoother, the hand becomes harder. Human and branch bend to work together, and in focusing upon this interaction, one might realize other ways to work with the branch energetically. Perhaps the seeds grow better if you sing and breath while you dig the hole, putting your energy through the branch into the earth. Surely results are better when you focus intention upon them. 

You hold your branch as a tool, but why think spiritual work and physical work are separate? It is a spiritual act to take the animals for food, to take the fruits of the earth, to search for water, to find a good place to live or camp, to build a home, to prepare a meal, to build a tool. 

Perhaps the wand has been there since the branch was seized for a tool. Perhaps the magic was there before the branch left the tree, in both human and tree. What it took was someone to feel it.

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July – Fires Burn, Thunders Speak

Posted on July 9, 2012
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Time has been taken.

My computer broke down, again, which always makes me think it is a sign from Spirit that I am spending too much time with this electronic pseudo-world and not enough time in the world outside the window.  Other things have been taking my attention as well.  Family news of illnesses demand positive changes, like spending more time with loved ones and being sure to let the love shine through, and more time restraints, as being an ear to hear or a present comfort is one of the most important jobs one can have in a community.  Then, there is the Fire.

My husband is a former wildland firefighter and environmental educator who teaches fire ecology, among other things.  Thus, I have a decent understanding of the physical realities of this element of change.  I also think of other associations, as being a neo-pagan for over a decade lent me some ideas about fire as an element, about change and transformation.  The phoenix comes to mind, as well as the only piece of Fantasia 2000 that I liked at all, Firebird.

A fire came to our region.  It held captive the attention of all local residents for at least a week, as tens of thousands of humans were forced from their homes, and hundreds of homes burnt to the ground.  Until the homes burnt and two lives were lost, it was more of a fascination and excitement, a wonder of a thing, this disaster that is not a natural disaster but a human disaster, a normal event in the life of a forest, one our forests depend upon for true health and vitality.  Trepidation was present, but it was really a question of how the fire was spreading and what it would mean – technical things like “is this a crown fire or a ground fire?” and “will this mean higher flash flooding risk?” and “will this be a catastrophic fire for the forest?” and “how much will we humans need to do to bring the forest back to full health after this fire?”  There was fear for property and life, but this was pushed aside for less threatening ponderings, more observation, and prayer.

Something I heard often that I disagreed with, probably because I challenge most ideas presented to me when I am under stress, was sadness for the forest because of the fire.  I many times had to stop myself from arguing with them… The forest needs this fire.  The trees depend upon it.  Our forests are unhealthy and overpopulated and need this cleansing.  This is normal and beautiful and a fantastic reminder that we are but a piece of the natural environment, which includes death and renewal in its normal cycles.  This is normal and should be happening frequently.  We should not be killing this fire.  We should be allowing it to heal our forests while doing what we can to prevent it from coming onto our homes, before and during the event itself.

The fire, however, did come to the homes.  We saw, firsthand, the forest’s best method of cleansing for renewal.  Then too, we saw the beauty of human communities.  Of thousands of people coming together to help those in need.  Shelters for humans and animals with too much food, homes being opened to evacuees and the newly homeless, resources and compassion abounding.  It has been beautiful.

Finally, the Thunders came with their gifts of life.  The people asked for rain.  I yearned for something to tame the fires, for the gentle clouds that bring moisture without lightning.  When they came, my fire ecologist husband commented that the firefighters had this fire handed to them, and so it seemed to be.  The clouds came without flooding rains, without fire-starting lightning, and moistened the air.  When this was done well enough and the fire was greatly contained, the rains began.  The Thunders speak even now, sometimes softly and sometimes forcefully, reminding us of their gift and answered prayers.  Now many days of heavy rains have come, soaking the Land and the growing things, bringing new life and healing to this place.  For this, I am grateful.

Pilamaya

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Preparing for Change – Ban the Barcode

Posted on June 13, 2012
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The moment you decide to change your life, you already have.

Ban the Barcode has reminded me of this.

When I first decided to create the Ban the Barcode event, I knew it would be a great way to connect people with local food and enhance the sense of control over diet and health.  I admit I felt a sense of liberation more than restriction, as I already had many resources for local food, I make much of my food from scratch as it is, and this gave me motivation to act on many previously-engendered desires for food changes.  We have our own chickens for eggs and we have been planning on harvesting one soon, so Ban the Barcode week looked like a good time to do it.  We get our milk from a herd of cows we purchased shares in, providing milk and butter for us.  We haven’t used a microwave in so long that we took it out of the kitchen altogether a month ago and haven’t missed it since.  We cook from scratch primarily because it is cheaper (we live well below the poverty line) and because it allows us more control over what we eat.  We have allergies and sensitivities to dairy, soy, and beef in our family, so making our own food makes sense.  Our journey to a full organic and healthy diet has taken years, and we’re not at 100%.  I don’t expect people with similar goals to do it in a month or a year, let alone a week, but I support yo u all the way and don’t judge for different food choices.

Recognizing the different places people are coming from is the reason I left the event so open-ended.  Folks who have the resources, time, and motivation can go full boar, replacing all foodstuffs with local goods for the week (or longer).  Those with a different set of resources can buy fresh food, visit a farmers market, and stock up beforehand on those packaged products they aren’t ready to relinquish or don’t feel they need to.  At least I hope they will think more about their food and what is grown in their region.  Even I don’t plan on giving up all of my spices for the week, but I did look into getting them from a local spice shop instead of from the big box stores.

I am still more inspired and liberated by Ban the Barcode than I am stressed and restricted, though the realities of foods I will miss are looming.  Not being able to drink that lovely cow’s milk we get weekly, nor the butter I make from the cream, I rely on coconut milk and coconut oil.  There aren’t exactly coconut plantations around here, and these aren’t products I can get sans barcode either.

The biggest benefit of this event, for me thus far, is that I am reminded of how our decisions change us.  Even just the pursuit of answers and alternatives creates a bigger picture than we ever knew existed.  We imagine some future life where our goals are met, but really, we are liberated from our monotonies and our lives have changed for the better the very moment we set a goal or decide we want change.  I am grateful for this reminder.  I hope you are also enjoying the changes in your life as you pursue these or other changes in your life.

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Living Food

Posted on June 11, 2012
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A basic need of living things is food, something to build our bodies and maintain them.  Our food does more than keep us alive.  It determines much about our happiness, our perceptions, our overall and specific health, our mental capacities, our emotional wellbeing, our short and long-term wellness, and how we relate to the world around us.  An individual or culture whose food ways involve experiencing the animals and plants of their diet in a living state, bringing them from life to palate, have drastically different perspectives on food than the people who only experience food from packages and drive-thru windows.  We also know that the former live with greater health, in regards to their food.  The detriments of processed foods and manufactured food-like items are numerous and easily discovered through a little searching.  I have included a few links at the bottom of this post for those who would like to see some of the ideologies forming my perspectives on this topic.

Harmony & Awareness

Instead of delving into the various reasons to choose or avoid certain foods or follow certain diets, I want to offer the suggestion of living in harmony and awareness with the things you put into your body.  Are there things in your diet you feel you shouldn’t eat but you do becasue you are habituated to eat it or because you really enjoy eating it?  Do some research, experimentation, and observation. Find out if you really should replace the food entirely, limit consumption more than you are, or stop worrying and enjoy your body’s natural ability to forage for nutrients you need through cravings.

A fun way to do the observation and experimentation is to make the food yourself, if you are used to getting it pre-made, and see if you enjoy it more and react better in body and spirit.  Look to your family too in your “experiment” to see how they react.  Eat or drink as much as usual for a few weeks, then go back to the pre-made version (if you aren’t already convinced to keep making your own) to see how if attacts you.  You may find that the homemade version is deeply nourishing, while the packaged version actually makes you sluggish and only partially satisfied.  You may find that you really only want one part of a packaged meal and can better feed yourself with mindful meals containing that ingredient.

If you are drawn to foodways that follow the seasons and to local, fresher foods, check out my Ban the Barcode event.  If you missed the June week, don’t worry!  I will be repeating this particular event with each of the four seasons, and you can always choose your own dates and criteria for change.

Know Your Food

Familiarize yourself with your food.  This is obviously easier if you are making your own food, as the ingredients in packaged foods are often anomylous.  Even if you do eat food made by others or by industry, be mindful of the things you are putting in your body.  Read labels, ask questions, dive into the unknown areas of your pantry.  Do not only scrutinize, but look for joyous aspects of food.  How does this ingredient nourish you?  Is it pleasing to the senses?  Does it bring you long-held energy or help you rest?  What are the gifts of your foods?

Hold and prepare your food in gratitude.  What courses of nature and work and energy had to come together to bring these things to your mouth?  Who and what brought this to you?  In silence or aloud or on paper and art, express the immensity of how food is created and prepared.  Create a ritual of gratitude and acknowledgement for your food, such as a prayer before the meal, a moment of silence in gratitude, grounding your energy and focusing to fully experience your ingestion of nourishment, create some other way, or use all of the above.

Use your food thinking as a reminder of your relationship to all things.  The food is made up of the Earth and Air and Water and Spirit, just as you are.  The level of health and wellness these plants and animals have is passed on to you.  What gifts do their lives bring?  Are these all the things you wish your food to offer?  How can you engage these relationships to help them and become healthier yourself?

Things I Look At About Food

I do not fully endorse any one diet, health, or food resource or method.  I pick and choose what I take from each source I find.  These are just places to look to start thinking about things.  They are not necessarily exclusive resources and you will probably find things you disagree with.

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Water Thoughts – Connection

Posted on June 7, 2012
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Today’s post is really an expression of my thoughts and feelings following the viewing of Kalani’s TEDxSF talk.  I met M. Kalani Souza at the Rights of Mother Earth Conference in Kansas this Spring.  Meeting him, feeling his words and the power of truth in his presence was one of the best things about that conference.  I feel very awed by the time I was able to spend listening to him, as his session for speaking to the conference was bumped repeatedly as time ran short.  We were just in the right place, at the right time, with the right intentions.  I was honored and felt the strong reverberations of his song and words for days following the conference.  My readers can feel the reverberations too, as Kalani’s messages are what kickstarted my retaking of action in spirit, creating EarthWalk Living, acknowledging that I am driven to help others connect with the Earth, the Water, the Sky, with all Life.  Suffice it to say that I encourage you all to watch his video, linked above.  On to my reflections.

The ocean.
Water.
Spirit.
Life.
“The atmosphere is the ocean!”
The water cycle is an amazing Mystery.
My two-year-old yesterday was sitting at the table with Legos and told me he was “playing the water cycle.” Children are such gifts to have in your life.

I have always had a difficult time relating with the ocean, probably because I haven’t spent much time there.  Throw me in a mountain river or stream and I’m a happy otter, but the ocean is a relation I haven’t developed.  In Celtic or Druid spirituality, they often refer to the Land, Sky, and Sea.  Many things in Celtic Spirituality are in triads.  I always had a hard time imagining a Sea around me while in the middle of a mountain desert.  Go figure.  I often heard of Spirit and Water being connected, so much as being the same, or of Water being the physical manifestation of Spirit, but it wasn’t until I heard Kalani say it that it clicked and the spiritual message of Water, connection, relationship, adaptability, changing oneself, and many other things became clear for me.  I knew it all before, in my head, that place where I so often over-analyze and sort and explore, but now there is a balanced understanding, a whole picture.  Water was always a beautiful metaphor I understood well, but a metaphor for action and decisions and emotions, not of relationship with all things.  That’s what Earth and Spirit are for, says I.

Of course, we are related through sharing all of the elements (there goes my thinking and analyzing again).

Water is a carrier of life, a composition of all life, necessary for all things to live.  On this planet, Water protects her from the sun’s less friendly projections and space debris, Water cools and heats, holds stores, delivers growth and destruction.  All life needs Water.

Water teaches us of persistence, of slow growth and crashing change, of gentle healing and cleansing.  Water teaches us of illness and imbalance too, for we can easily see the disease and sorrow that comes with misuse of Water.

And yet we waste it, or seek to control it for power, or we allow others to control it and waste it.  I read of families threatened by imminent domain because a natural gas company wants to pump water for fracking.  I hear of once-beautiful river deltas that are miles of desert and pollution.  I read of sensitive water species with sexual mutations because of hormones in the waterways, communities being sapped of all life by corporations privitizing water, and huge sections of ocean floating with plastic refuse.  Not even to mention the Deepwater and Fukushima disasters.  We all need to wake up to the connection in all of these.  We are all affected by Water.  We are all related through Water.  We can all connect through Water.

I hope this week you will spend some time with Water.  Visit a body of water, moving water, falling water, even the water in the air.  Be mindful of Water and its relationship to you and all things here on this planet and beyond.  Enjoy your connection with the water and think of ways you can live in better harmony with Water.

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June – Growing and Weeding

Posted on June 3, 2012
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June has arrived on Colorado’s Front Range with warm skies, infrequent sprinklings of rain, thriving plants, and summer festivals. Many flowers have come and gone, leaving young fruits and seeds in their places. Seedlings of many plants, forging through desirable space in this land around our home, have risen, telling me that mid-May likely is the time to plant new seeds here. Following my grandmother’s advice of planting around the new moon would have placed that planting around May 20th this year, which sounds just about right. Hearing such advice inspires within me a deep sense of connection to the Earth and my ancestors, from the hills of Erin to the deserts of the big Rio.

I haven’t yet planted as much as I would have liked, but my herb garden has sprouted with dill and cilantro, and as of today, the big garden is tilled and amended, ready for planting. The rush of spring seems to have passed into the steadiness of growth. The urgency of planting is present in consciousness, but not in the energy of June, for the season is not so much about beginnings as it is about tending and feeding those things now shooting forth. Our bumper crop of bindweed shall soon be overcome by squashes, borage, and buckwheat, as they are a sun-thirsty plant and we are not supporters of poisoning the Land we share. The native grasses spread around the rest of the yard are happily reaching for the sun, and the chickens were finally released from their confinement to graze upon the bugs and weeds that gathered while the grass was taking hold.

The air and Earth are full of growth, and so too are the people. My children are suddenly shooting up like the plants, taking in the growing things to feed their own. I feel the tug of decisions to be made and actions to be taken, the overwhelming demand of so much doing, balanced with the joys of change and the season.

I find it important to bring up a balanced perspective, allowing myself to enjoy the season and its gifts in greater measure than my task list would allow. I also find myself drawing more of these gifts into myself. Preparation for Ban the Barcode is helping with that, as is the feeding of my spirit, philosophies, and creativity through EarthWalk Living. I am enjoying the challenges of managing this incarnation of my life, the shifting of regular tasks to make way for expression.

If you have not yet done so, I hope you will join me for Ban the Barcode this month, as it should help push you to greater relationship with your community and your region, the needs of your body, and the spirit of adaptability and creativity.  Even if you cannot commit to the full incorporation of the philosophies behind the event, even a small change can make a big difference in the way you see your food, your community, and your own needs for health and happiness.

As you tend to your life’s gardens this season, think of the things you need to rid yourself of and healthy ways to do it, as well as appreciating the growth within and around you. Balance your doing with your practices of rest and contemplation, and feed those things you need more of with your time, energy, and maybe a little of those life-giving rains.

Walakota

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Living Families

Posted on June 1, 2012
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Some of my biggest challenges, ones I suspect of others in my life place, are about being a mother.  This article is not only for parents or mothers, but for everyone with children in their lives.  Bringing my spirituality and philosophies and passions to balance with raising a family is often difficult, to say the least.  My children (3 boys, age 5 and under), remind me that we are always changing and adapting.  We are different people every day and every moment, though we non-children often let our moments blend together in long strands, which can entangle us until we feel “stuck.”

I certainly don’t have all of parenting figured out, but I hope to interweave into this blog some stories and insights about living with children and encouraging our children to live.  How do we encourage relationships with the Land and community?  How do we get this for ourselves while juggling all the other tasks and needs and wants of our lives?  It is often overwhelming, and I encourage you to sometimes remind yourself that without challenges, we would not be pushed to find better ways.

I see children, especially young chidlren, as closer to the Source, Spirit, God, what-have-you, and trying to come into their bodies in a good way.  This is their natural state as new life.  As such, I am in awe of their natural abiliy to have spirit experiences (I spoke in tongues at age 6, so I don’t think this is some new phenomenon), and their innate understandings of health, wellness, and balance are amazing.  I say this because my chidren are beacons of imbalance when our household, food, or family life is unbalanced, not because we live some perfect life of peace and wellness.  We do try for balance, and it is the striving that creates more happiness, in this case.

My words of encouragement at this time are to listen to your children, even when they cannot yet speak, to watch them and play with them, read with them, live with them.  Find a spiritual practice and community you can include them in and work out a childplay co-op so all the parents can get time to attend to their spirits as well.  Make music and art with them.  Go outside with them.  Listen to the messages they have, in words and actions.  They will teach you about time, relationships, food, exercise, cycles of nature, the importance of rhythms, and things to avoid as well.  Follow their lead when you can permit yourself to be free and it will balance you in so many ways, as well as letting them know they are safe and loved, their endeaveors worth attention.  Living with them, showing them how to live, is posibly the most important thing we do for our children.

What do your children see as important to life as they look at every moment they witness of yours?  How does this differ from what you want them to see?  What imbalances to you see in them and how could you find the resources to improve them?  How can you teach them and show them to have a good relationship with the Land?  These are questions I often ask myself, that I hope to bring to these pages, and that I hope you will also often ask yourself.

A few resources I frequent at this time:

Peaceful Parenting - http://www.drmomma.org/
Waldorf Schooling and Parenting Resource List – http://thewaldorfconnection.com/waldorf-resources/
Nourishing Our Children (about food) –  http://www.nourishingourchildren.org/Home.html
The Parenting Passageway – parenting and homeschooling blog –  http://theparentingpassageway.com/

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Introduction to a Place

Posted on May 24, 2012
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I hope to build within these pages some resources for bringing harmony with the Land to your home.  Whether your home is a place you spend little time or nearly all your time, whether it is a tent or hut or apartment or mansion, it should reflect your quest to live in harmony and relationship with the Land.

Let us start at the beginning, when you first come to a place you will spend time.  Perhaps you have just started to lease a place or are shopping for a home to purchase, perhaps you are about to set up camp, start a trek, or you have lived somewhere for long and wish to make a deeper connection.  These are all examples of how relationshiops with the Land can begin.

You may have various motivations for connecting with the Land.  You may wish to establish a spiritual relationship of respectful co-existence with the spirits of this Place.  You may want to help shift your perception and receptivity to the messages from God/Spirit that are present here.  You may wish to be a balanced entity working and sharing this space with other entities in a non-harmful way.  You may want one or all of these.  You may have different ideas.  I support respect for all people on these paths.  We all share this Earth, and positive relationships with the Land and each other are things to be sought for us all.

Establishing a ritual, formal or informal, spontaneous or specifically laid out, is a good way to start your relationship with the Land.  You may already have an unconscious ritual or arrival.  Do you sit in your car for a few breaths, visually taking in the scene outside, before jumping out to do whatever you came to do?  When you look for a new house or home, how do you take in the place?  If you do not already use such simple rituals to focus or ground your energies, now is a good time to start.  Here is one way to begin your introduction to a Place:

Take a deep breath and straighten or relax your body into a comfortable position.  Close your eyes and breathe again, consciously relaxing any tensions you find as you move your consciousness from your head to encompass the rest of you.  Breathe again, taking in the sounds and smells of the place you are right now.  Think of your intention for your time in this place.  Perhaps say it aloud.  Open your eyes and take in the sights, appreciating every aspect and inhabitant of this space who comes to mind.  Be thankful of your life and your ability to be in tihs place.

This may be all you have time or space for.  Even such a simple exercise will help to connect with a Place, and repeating it will only continue to grow your relationship.  If you do have more time and desire to do so, you can take this time to pray, meditate, give an offering, explore the place in mindfulness, make some art, or journal about the place.  These are all good ways to start and grow your relationship with a place.

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Songs of Connection

Posted on May 15, 2012
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Have you ever been to a place where your soul leaped?  Where you suddenly felt overwhelmed with a love and longing for the place that you wanted to dance or sink your hands into the Earth, as though your dance would reach the heavens and your fingers become roots?  I hope you have.  It is a magnificent experience.

What is better, however, is actually doing it, stopping the car to dance or sink into the Earth or sing or run or weep, regardless of the existence of any potential onlookers, stopping the world to allow the magic to catch you, even if just for a moment.

I have often had these expereinces outdoors, which seems a natural place for such things, but so too has this feeling of awesome invitation shown intself in other places, anywhere interactions with sacred beings take place.  It has sprung up when a child dances in the living room, when laughter overcomes a group of friends, when certain experiences of music or dance or conversation or ceremony or love or place suddenly find their way into your spirit, calling for a deepening, a connecting, a sharing of oneness.

I see these as divine experiences.  Through relationships with other beings, we can touch the Divine.  Our spirit senses an opportunity for connection, and when we allow our bodies to follow through, by dancing, singing, weeping, touching, embracing, deepening, we allow ourselves to complete the circuit, to reach out to the great beyond and touch the sacred that resides in all things from that spark within ourselves.

Connecting with Spirit and connecting with the Earth are nearly always appropriate, even if other connections seem troubled.  The Earth is very healing, Spirit very much renewing.  I suggest you connect with both often.

I speak of these divine experiences because I had a wonderful one yesterday.  We took the family for a day trip to the mountains and desert nearby, stopping at a canyon park.  When I stepped foot to Earth, I was overwhelmed with a love for this place.  The soil called for my hands, the grasses and sage invited me, the wind spoke sweet words of long memory, the sun gently pushed me with his warmth.  I wanted to embrace trees and roll on the ground until I was covered in the place.  I wondered if that is what my dog feels when she rolls upon the Earth and swims in the snow.  I gently touched a few plants and nearly cried.  This place was wakan, holy.   I didn’t do much more than that, to be honest.  The kids were sleeping and I told myself, “I can’t leave them there.”  I stopped myself from fully reaching out, not because there was a good reason I couldn’t just sit down and touch the Earth, but because that is what our culture is used to doing, what it teaches us to do.  Too often we hold back.  We do not trust that inner knowing.

We are going back today, however, so that I may touch the Earth.

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Earth-Based Spirituality

Posted on May 12, 2012
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The ways of a good relationship with the Land are as diverse as the landscapes we call Home, as unique as each individual.  Even a term such as “Earth-based spirituality” will have widely different definitions for those who identify with it, let alone those who don’t.  Whatever your specific concepts of divinity might be, we all share relationship with this Earth, its systems and energies, the physical existence we inherit with Life in this vast place.  Our physical bodies are made of this Earth and regenerated by it and its relationships with the cosmos.  For some, who believe in a divine Creator, breathing life into each thing that is, it is easier to see relationship with others through this Creator.  Does this relationship not mean then that we are related to all things, not just other humans?  And what of this divine breath, this inspiration?  Is it not present in all things, animate or inanimate?  We have then two major ways of exhibiting our relationship to all things, through Spirit and through our physical existence with this Earth.  Even a devout atheist can see the relationship through and with the Earth, as it is a concept not dependent upon the magic of a soul.  This is one reason why I feel it is appropriate to focus upon Earth-based spirituality at this time.  To me, Earth-based spirituality and Earth-based living are the same, because as the famous quote says, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).

I like to think about our relatedness through the Earth, about molecules of soil and organic matter becoming plants, which become animals and humans who consume those animals.  I like to think of patterns of energy flowing through everything as electrical currents and things I don’t understand, invisibly influencing everything they touch.  Webs of inter-relatedness, of species supporting and balancing other species in their web, and webs supporting and balancing other webs.

Practicing Earth-based spirituality yields two understandings.  One is a vast sense of connection.  One is a deep sense of sorrow.  At this time on our Mother Earth, it has become obvious that our inherent, inherited relationship with Her and all expressions of life and inspiration we can fathom, has too long been ignored.  When your foot hurts, you take steps to care for it and heal it.  When your little brother calls for help, you come to his aid unquestioning.  When your grandmother is struggling, you offer a steadying hand.  So too should you feel for the pains of injury and illness, hear for the calls of distress, and watch for the signs of needed support from all our relations.  Our home and its ecosystems do not yearn for resource managers, they long for caring family, supportive and balancing communities.  Without that support, aid, and healing, ecosystems are perishing, species are perishing, humans are perishing.

Get in touch with the Earth, get in touch with the earthly manifestation your existence embodies, open yourself to the illness and injury being created around you and within you.  Ignoring the problems only serves to separate you from the balancing and healing solutions.  They are there, but you must first be able to hear the call for help, to see the unsteady waver, to feel the ache.  Only then will you be able to dance the steps, sing the songs, and walk the way of healing, harmony, and balance.

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