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✺ HAPPY BELATED BELTANE ✺⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣ Yeste

✺ HAPPY BELATED BELTANE ✺⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
Yesterday I was out and about learning about mama nature’s various local offerings. For as long as human memory serves, on these islands, the 1st of May has been a collective celebration of the first day of summer. In thanks for the fertility and abundance of the soil, plant, wildlife and human beings. ⁣⁣
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When I was a kid, part of this ritual was centred around the maypole. Where an array of colourful ribbons became interconnected through movement. ⁣⁣
The dance around the maypole created a weaving of these ribbons, symbolically representing all the beings who dwell above and below, to create a visual representation of the interconnected web of life that upholds our reality. ⁣⁣
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Yesterday, as I foraged in the gardens of Kent, I learned a different kind of weaving, in the names and uses of a colourful array of life-supporting plant folk who dwell around us, hidden in plain sight on the riverbanks, verges, fields and churchyards throughout this country (and all countries). ⁣⁣
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These beings seem to thrive best when their ribbons of offerings are respectfully woven into the diet of heterotrophs (beings who can’t photosynthesize), offering abundance at its finest and freest. In exchange of the endless gifts they keep on giving, they ask little in return. Dimly that you treat them as kin, and take the time to listen and learn.⁣⁣
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A few weeks ago I wrote a half-digested thought out (in the slides and on my blog), on the balance between staying with the trouble while finding room to grow, leaving one foot in the world lost of meaning, and another deeply dug down into the magic we’re taught to miss. ⁣⁣
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Like all journeys into something other than before, there’s an element of embracing the imperfection of our evolvement. Accepting the dirty work of unravelling, of regathering, reworking, and reweaving. As we scramble in the dark to rediscover or invent the dance(s) we lost, the weaving we’ve forgotten the pattern of, the language of love we languish. ⁣⁣
⁣So we might learn to reweave our species back into the web of living beings.

A long time ago, when many were leaning away for d

Do we empower others to empower ourselves? Or are

Do we empower others to empower ourselves? Or are we empowered naturally through acts which contribute to other’s agency? ⁣
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In this world rooted in hierarchy, I keep finding this split. ⁣
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Some claim to fight for change but are really seeking power and/or popularity. Self-ordained leaders empowering themselves under the guise of empowering others. A me for we.⁣
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Then there are those who are empowered through empowering others. Chosen to lead by those they serve, lifted by the collective they contribute to. Grounded in humility, wise from experience, harnessed by their humanity. A we for me.⁣
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As advocates of ideas, are we practising what we preach, or just preaching? ⁣
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One creates celebrity. The other creates collectivity ... I think. ⁣
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Or perhaps we need both, a spectrum of everything. But if so, how do we cull the ego who dwells here blocking growth and perpetuating pain?⁣
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We all glean the information we preach through a cascade of other’s expressions. Nothing is ever completely our own, our very existence the result of a microbial tide. Our words a cascade of language. Our opinions a ray within a prism of experience which has lived and died in the hearts and minds of time. ⁣
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Like an anchovy, as my friend Lucy says; new, made old, made new again. ⁣
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As we rise with this Libra full moon, we get to decide what we take and what we leave. How we evolve, and what it means to truly live in relation to other beings. ⁣
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What would you choose if we could choose again? (and we can)

When the crown of a tree drops its leaves, it does

For months while I recovered from the virus, the r

For months while I recovered from the virus, the radius of my life consisted of a micro migration between the bed and a chair.

At night, as I slipped between states of sleeping and awake, a collection of stars known here as ‘Orion’, spread themselves across the sky.

As I sat, watching the days and nights pass, I began searching the stars’ stories. Within the thousands that exist, a theme of commonality rose to the fore; sharing that regardless of our ancestors' place on the globe, when they looked up at this set of stars, they saw the shape of a warrior and a story of how this warrior got there.
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To name just a few cosmologies, in Hungarian mythology, the stars are seen as the hunter Nimrod. In China, people know the constellation as their great hunter and warrior, Shen. The Hittites (a Bronze Age people of Anatolia, present-day Turkey) saw their mythical hunter, Aqhat. The Sumerians (southern Iraq) saw the story of Gilgamesh who battled the bull of heaven. The Egyptians associated it with Osiris, a powerful god. The Australian Aboriginals of the Great Victoria Desert know the stars as the hunter, Nyeeruna (*). The Seri people of northwestern Mexico, call the three stars which create the ‘belt’, Hapj (a name which means ‘hunter’).⁣⁣⁣
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As I slowly became well again, I found hope in the knowledge that despite differences in culture, language, environment and cosmology - in these stars (and through shared grounding in sacred ecology) our ancestors saw each other as well.
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⁣⁣⁣* I was reading Tyson Yunkaporta’s ‘Sand Talk’ at this time which greatly influenced the star search and guided any lessons learned.⁣
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#liminality #sacredecology

Yesterday I collected my sister’s children (afte

Yesterday I collected my sister’s children (after she got knocked by a ceiling lamp) and took them out into the falling snow. ⁣⁣
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While her youngest, Rex watched each flake fall with wonder, the elder two argued about who was better at spelling.⁣⁣
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I wondered at what age kids learn humanity’s most destructive idea: “I am better than you, you are less than me” * or whether it has been wired into us over the last 1,000 ish years as words like **hierarchy came to use in this language. ⁣⁣
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A friend sent me the text on slide 2 (via BBC) which seemed to sum up one of two approaches this hierarchy has taken. And it had me reflecting on my past 10 years working within this space, and all the times I was like this woman mentioned. ⁣⁣
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I also thought about all the uncomfy work over more recent years that helped me begin to move away from that binary, ego-led approach to change. And how I still catch myself on my ugly high horse now and again.⁣⁣
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Yet, despite the separatism we sometimes fall into, I see so much growth in society, especially those who show up on these communities. Only a few years ago, the conversation around environmentalism and social justice were ‘fringe’, as spiritual ecology and anarchy is now. ⁣⁣
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Our growth collectively is incomplete and imperfect, but as @ decolonize__ shared today, “you deserve to celebrate not only who you’ve become, but who you could’ve become and fought not to”. ⁣⁣
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Despite our growing pains, we are slowly rooting down together through listening, un/learning, mistake making and partaking in deeply uncomfortable conversations with each other and with ourselves.⁣⁣
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As the new moon resets our sails tonight, perhaps we can use past growth as inspiration for our next phase of individual and collective work.⁣⁣
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♥️ Happy Lunar New Year tmrw to all those celebrating. May this new beginning offer good health, bundles of happiness, and loving luck.
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♥️ ID: Holly stands in the soft silence of the falling snow dressed in a coat made of upcycled fabrics and a big ugly hat that keeps her warm.⁣⁣
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♥️ *quote from Tyson Yunkaporta’s book, ‘Sand Talk’⁣⁣
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♥️ ** notes on the word ‘hierarchy’ in comments

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