This is an image I have made over and over and over since, I guess, 2007. The "rooted hand", woven into a great Fabric of nature, reaching up to flower and leaf and create. This "rooted hand" is my personal Icon to remind me of belonging, and to invite the spirit of nature to express through me, my art, through what I create and imagine.
It's almost New Year 2025. And I've been struggling with grief about the prospects for this year. No, it's not the future we imagined, my friends and I as young idealists at Berkeley in say, 1975. We grew out of the idealism and optimism of the Kennedy years, and for all our activism, that was the Matrix we believed we could continually change, make better. Most of those friends are gone now, and here I am, still here, and it is 2025.
It's not the America we imagined, this cynical and corrupt Oligarchy that cares nothing for democracy, or for that matter the future of life on this planet. All they care about is an unquenchable lust for power.
Even so, this is the image that is arising in my mind, and I want to post it here again, as an Affirmation, indeed, as an Invocation of Gaia, of Nature, of the Soul of the Earth. The profound Ecosystem we are a part of, indivisibly, interdependent, woven. That we are all, past, present, future, human, animal, fungi, tree-root, sky, sun, snow and leaf....... that we are each a part of it all. That's what I want to hold to as this New Year begins.
I guess I'll begin with a poem I wrote in October, 2001, shortly after the fall of the twin towers in New York, while I was on the beach in Mendocino. I made an affirmation then, as my own girlhood memories flowed past me on that long ago beach, an affirmation that still rings true for me now. Oh.......... and I want to share some of the beautiful poetry of Nancy Wood too. That's my Affirmation for the New Year 2025. What I don't want to forget, what I want to hold to.
ON THE BEACH
One month after the world ended
The little island world we,
the privileged few, could pretend
was safe, forever, and righteous -
The fallen towers, fiery messengers
of unfathomable destruction yet to come.
Tourists walk barefoot on the familiar beach.
They came here, I imagine,
as I have, not to forget, but to remember.
To remember driftwood and high tide
a red dog and a yellow-haired child
as they enter the water -
their cries of goodly shock and honest forever's
always new, always cold, always blue.
A white heron,
balanced in perfect equanimity on one leg.
Wave forms overlay my feet......
transparent hieroglyphs of infinity.
Her way of speaking.
Gaia. Her manifest, unspoken words.
A brown man lies beside the mossy cliff,
spread-eagled between sky and sea and land.
Sand sunk, leaf-molten,
blackberry thorn,
into the green:
toes, fingers, flesh
reaching into the green
redeeming Earth.
He is rooting himself.
He is taking himself back.
I lie down in grateful imitation,
a stranger in companionable human proximity
sharing this rite of remembering.
I see her now, I see a girl
walking on this very beach.
Yesterday, and 40 years ago.
Sourcing, she is
sourcing the one who lives here
a river Goddess with no name.
She has made a mermaid offering
of sticks and sand and seaweed.
Companions arrive, offer shells,
and return to Berkeley.
To Vietnam, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall,
the war, the wall,
the war, the walls.
The war,
and the summer of love.
("the revolution will not be televised")
A generation to end war, raise hell,
raise consciousness,
raise Atlantis,
and raise the new and Golden Age
("the revolution will not be televised")
How did we get here from there?
I call you back, girl,
I call you back.
I am at the other end of this life now
yet your footprints
touch mine beneath the sand,
I follow them.
On the beach
your sand prayers
ring here still,
The Earth
is my witness.
Lauren Raine, Oct. 11, 2001
Nancy Wood, who passed away in 2013, found a deep sense of spiritual belonging in nature among the natives peoples of New Mexico, and much of her poetry was a celebration of that belonging. Her poetry is about listening, listening to the voices that become One voice of the Earth. I've always found renewed Balance when I return to her poems.
Hold on to what is good
even if it is
a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe
even if it is
a tree which stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do
even if it is
a long way from here.
Hold on to life even when
it is easier letting go.
Hold on to my hand even when
I have gone away from you.
From Hollering Sun (1972)
Blue lake of life from which flows everything good
We rejoice with the spirits beneath your waters.
The lake and the earth and the sky
Are all around us.
The voices of many gods
Are all within us.
We are now as one with rock and tree
As one with eagle and crow
As one with deer and coyote
As one with all things
That have been placed here by the Great Spirit.
The sun that shines upon us
The wind that wipes our faces clean of fear
The stars that guide us on this journey
To our blue lake of life
We rejoice with you.
In beauty it is begun.
In beauty it is begun.
In peace it is finished.
In peace it shall never end.
My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one
give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.
From War Cry on a Prayer Feather, 1979
Earth teach me stillness
As the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
As old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
As blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
As the mother who secures her young.
Earth teach me courage
As the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
As the ant who crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
As the eagle who soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
As the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.
from Hollering Sun, 1972
5 comments:
Yes, let’s us all take Our Selves back. I love your poem. And the remaining poetry is so inspiring. 🙏🏽
Beautiful, all of it!
Love it! All of it. Don't know if my first comment went through or not.
I love popping by your blog, many years now. Refreshes my heart. Remember what Clarissa Pinkola-Estes wrote a while back, as you enter 2025: we were made for these times. Buckle up!
Buckle up indeed!
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