The Questions of Maat

In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that the Goddess Maat waits in the Underworld, before a door all souls who have died must enter to pass into new life. She holds in her hand a scale and a feather. Maat weighs hearts, and none may pass until they have answered her questions, and their hearts are as light as the feather of truth.  How heavy is each heart? 

I find "the questions of Maat" such a significant metaphor, a metaphor about forgiveness and releasing the past to new evolution.  Because to dream a new life, to be born again, one must truly know the life that has been lived, one must forgive and be forgiven, enter into the stream of transformation.

When I turned 60 it was a tremendous passage for me.  Certainly, I felt the "lightening" that came with transit into my 6th decade. I had the urge to get rid of things that weighed me down, weren't relevant, and demanded my attention in some unnecessary way. Old love letters that just made me sad, pretty dresses that no longer fit and probably never will, dusty boxes of mementoes, weary assumptions, heavy handed beliefs, habits of mind that once were useful adaptations to something or other, but now were  boringly repetitious. I went through a period of self-examination, and noticed that very many of my assumptions were erroneous, often blocked my vision, and was probably unfair to somebody somewhere, including myself.  Unused possessions require care, require storage, require energy, require memory.  It was time to light-en up and enter the stream.

Natalie Goldberg, in her book "Writing down the Bones", tells of meeting Meridel le Sueur in her eighties.  A true nomad, Meridel told her that she lived nowhere. She visited people and places, writing wherever she was. The elderly writer asked Natalie if she knew a place to purchase a used typewriter. When she is ready to leave, she said, she will give it away so she doesn't have to take it to her next destination.  Now that I understand. Why should one wish to lug a typewriter around, or a bulky suitcase, or for that matter, an old grudge, a worn out storyline, or an exhausted persona?  Such unexamined baggage surely slows the creative journey of life down, making it difficult to create into the future.  

A reporter once asked the artist Pablo Picasso, at 90 or so, what he thought, after such a long and distinguished career, his greatest work was. He replied "The next one."  This is the lightening of the heart and mind the Goddess Maat weighs. Maat's name meant "truth" in ancient Egyptian. Her questions do not "damn" those who wait before the door....but without answering them, without finding the truth of one's life, no passage to other realms of being is possible.   We are stuck at the station, waiting for the train. 

Maat's questions are questions each soul must answer sooner or later. "Who have I not fore-given?" "What have I done that I cannot fore-give myself for?" "What part of my life story have I not been able to see, or to fore-give?" 

I am always stunned when I examine out of context the language we unconsciously take for granted in daily speech, and humbled further when I consider that each language has its singular depths of meaning unique to its cultural evolution.  In English usage, to "fore-give" is to do just that - to "give the energy forward". To the future, to the unknown, to new possibilities of relationship and creativity, to new responsibilities, endeavors, and perhaps high adventure. To the continual growth of wisdom and compassion. When we don't fore-give we are left with psychic baggage, stories told so many times they have lost any semblance to the truth.

I am not saying that fore-giveness is a simple thing.  Sometimes it involves working through layers of experience, telling our story over and over until it can be truthfully seen, and sometimes we need help from wise or impartial listeners. But ultimately I believe fore-giveness comes from being able to gain a wider perspective, the integral Soul's perspective.  From that perspective, which often requires faith as well, there is a greater landscape that weaves together the ways we were challenged and deepened by our experiences, our betrayals, our failures, our losses, our ignorance, and our blessings.

I remember years ago there was a man I was attracted to. The Eros of my experience fueled enormous creativity in me. His considerable talent inspired me as well.   And because I had a lot of unripe, naive ideas, and did not know how to confront him, he also had a lot of fun manipulating and humiliating me, probably just because he could. He never pretended that he was a kind or conscionable person, and I still cringe when I think about it. 

But until I was able to fore-give him and myself, I was unable to see the gifts in that experience, indeed, unable to get beyond it. Now I realize that had I not met him, I would not have created what I did at that time in my life.   And I probably would not have moved through the well defended "victim" template I was deeply entrenched in and attached to.  I could not assume a "victim" position with this man.  I had to grow and take care of myself, and from that perspective, ultimately he empowered me. That is the paradox of Maat's Truth.

Raukkadessa is a Finnish term a musician friend, Kathy Huhtaluata, used in her Saami inspired music.  She told me it means "beyond love". I find this concept profound - because even love, as we experience it, can be a veil, impenetrable in the present moment, and beyond that momentary experience is something vast, beyond the pairs of opposites, beyond time itself. Beyond love is the soul's love, the greater evolutionary pattern.

A Buddhist once told me that we should cherish all sentient beings, because, from the perspective of reincarnation, any sentient being you meet has at one time or another been your mother, brother, lover, enemy, has been your food, or has devoured you.   
One thing is certain. When we don't fore-give, we are unable to move fore-ward, because we are stuck in the past of phantom hurts and ghostly losses, attempting to keep them alive with our own life energy. 

And from my perspective, one of the wonderful things about having had the privilege of achieving the maturity of 60 some years is that one has the means and experience to finally know just that.   May all hearts be light as Maat's feather.

Quan Yin Mask

Sometimes I find that a mask wants to be made, and it seems that I receive "invisible support" in my quest to make it.  For quite a while now I wished to make a mask for Quan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion in China.  But I lacked a cast of a Chinese woman's face, and also did not have any Chinese aquaintances that I could ask to sit for me.  Then in November (I rent rooms in my home with AIRBNB) no less than three beautiful  Chinese women rented rooms from me!  And with the kind assistance of Irene who modelled for the mask, I at last was able to make the mask for Quan Yin.  Now, it is my hope, dancers will come to perform it.

From Journey to the Goddess (https://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/goddess-kwan-yin/:

In Chinese tradition, “Kwan Yin (‘She Who Hears the Prayers of the World’) was originally the mother Goddess of China, who proved so popular She was adopted into the Buddhist pantheon as a bodhisattva (much like the Goddess Bridgit was made a saint). A bodhisattva is a person who has attained enlightenment but chooses to forgo Nirvana and remain in the world to help others attain enlightenment.  As the still-popular mother Goddess of China, Kwan Yin is known as a great healer who can cure all ills. She is also a Goddess of fertility, and is often shown holding a child. In this aspect She is known as Sung-tzu niang-niang, “The Lady Who Brings Children”. She is shown holding a crystal vase, pouring out the waters of creation. Simply calling Her name in time of crisis is believed to grant deliverance.

Guanyin is also revered by Chinese Taoists (sometimes called Daoists) as an Immortal. However, in Taoist mythology, Guanyin has other origination stories which are not directly related to Avalokiteśvara.  She is known as the Goddess Tara in Tibet and the Himalayas and Mazu in Her incarnation as the Goddess of the Southern Seas, but She is best known by Her Chinese name, Kwan Yin (also spelled Kuan Yin), the Goddess of Compassion.  

NAMES OF THE GODDESS

Kuan Yin (Kwan Yin. Guan Yin, Guan Shih Yin, Quan Yin, Guanyin, Kuanin)
Avalokitesvara
Mazu, A-ma, Matsu
Goddess of the Southern Sea
Kwannon (Japan)
the Asian Santa Maria
One Who Hears the Cries of the World
Sung-Tzu-Niang-Niang
(Lady Who Brings Children)
The Maternal Goddess
The Observer of All Sounds
Bodhisattava of Compassion
The Thousand-hand Kuanyin   ***


***I had to include the following video.  If you’ve not seen this before, be prepared to be amazed.  The performance is called “Thousand-handed Goddess of Mercy” performed by China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe.  They are all deaf and mute.  The amazing leading dancer is Tai Lihua , who is a dance teacher at a deaf-mute school in Hubei, China.

"A Webbed Vision" ~ Reflections on Interdependency and Individualism

"What might we see, how might we act, 

if we saw with a webbed vision?  

The world seen through a web of relationships…

as delicate as spider’s silk, 

yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”  

Catherine Keller, "From a Broken Web"3

The quote above, from Theologian Catherine Keller, derives from the ancient and original root meaning of the name "Penelope", the "faithful wife of Ulysses".   It is likely that Penelope was originally a Fate or Oracular Goddess before she became demoted in patriarchal Greek mythology, and as such her name meant "with a web on Her face", one who "sees the connections".  I have never forgotten the significance of that.

It's been 5 years since the shooting of beloved Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.  Because I lived close to her former office, I saw a candlelit altar develop for her, with so hundreds of  wishes for her recovery and for peace.   Having been witness to this  tragedy in my home town  of Tucson,  which took the lives of 6 people including a child, and remember so many other atrocities committed by men with guns since,  I' ve been  unable to think in terms that are too abstract.  When confronted with the horror of violence, and the heavy pall of grief, the need to experience  inter-dependence, with-in our bodies and with-in the refuge of our imaginations -  is very real and immanent.   We want to know we are not alone, we want to believe we can support each other.

I was struck by  the  way "Together We Thrive" became a  theme echoed throughout Tucson at that time, and a motto that headed healing activities, from President Obama's call for unity, to spontaneous Shrines created throughout Tucson.  Does any of that moment remain?  Congress is trying to end Obama Care, which will end health insurance for millions of people, and one of the most arrogant of exploitative capitalist  billionaires, Donald Trump, is running for President.   As I watch the ongoing corporate greed that is eroding not only our former democracy, but the very life of our planet, and the unreasoned ideology of capitalist "individualism" that in many ways makes that possible in this country.............I don't know.  If I am not my brother's and sister's keeper, and they mine - who is?  Monsanto?  Walmart?  

Altar for Gabrielle Gifford at her office, January 2011, after she was shot 

We urgently need pragmatic ways to create community in today's world.  Could a strong community  have prevented what happened?  Unbalanced individuals will always abound, and lethal weapons are readily available - the American gun culture, and easy access to lethal weapons, ensures the violent deaths continue year after year.  Yet even so, the failure of community speaks to this tragedy.  If we weren't in so many ways a culture of "rugged individualism" where "good fences make good neighbors", and our technology increasingly allows us to insulate ourselves from the so-called "outside world" ... would this young man have received the attention he needed before he erupted in catastrophic violence in 2011?

"The Rugged Individualist" writes sociologist Philip Slater,1 "cheers when needy people are deprived of food, battered women are deprived of protection from brutal husbands, children are deprived of education, because this is "getting government off our backs. "   

This kind of thinking fails in every way to communicate that we live within a vast web of human and environmental inter-dependency, a web that is also very intimate. This is my ultimate Iconic Image, the Great Web of Gaia, the "Webbed Vision" that sees and recognizes the sacred links, the archetype of Spider Woman.  I know my art seems obscure to many, but that is what it derives from, in one image after another.  I can't seem to stop making them, because the Web underlies every aspect of our life.   A successful adult is so because of parents, teachers, community resources, and distant ancestors  that enabled him or her to mature.  And without a sense of belonging and contributing to that continuum as it reaches into future generations,  human beings end up feeling alienated and ultimately without a sense of purpose. They feel disposable, and perceive others as equally disposible.

Which is what an unsustainable, insatiable corporate consumer system, as a placebo for the pain of spiritual and communal isolation, feeds on.  And by the way, local free enterprise is not the same as the kind of souless capitalism we now have.  Within a healthy free enterprise system the wealth circulates within the community - if the baker does well, the   pharmacy does well, if the dressmaker does well, so does the restaurant, and so on.  In what we now have the wealth is removed from the heart of the community to the mega stores, like Walmart, on the outskirts, and all the jobs imported to slave labor overseas, to the loss of all except the very, very wealthy exploiting the situation.  

In tribal societies, survival depended utterly on cooperation, as well as the collective ability to  adapt continually to new environmental challenges, be it drought, invaders, or the exhaustion of resources.  The mythic foundation of any tribe (or civilization) is the template upon which they stand;  a culture with a rigid mythos that cannot adapt and change is doomed to collapse. Without a theology of co-dependency, which we have lost in the advent of mega global capitalism and its "individualism" which benefits only a very, very few individuals, that collapse is apparent.  Because the system, ultimately, cannot adapt, cannot become sustainable, cannot become viable.

"We live in a world today in which the problems we face are all planetary..........." Philip Slater  commented in his last book The Chrysalis Effect,  "the polarization and chaos we see in the world are the effect of a global cultural metamorphosis".   But that metamorphosis, I believe, is based up the profound realization of our inter-dependency in every single way, the "Great Web", a Webbed Vision.  We need this vision, updated and evolving for the challenges of our time.  

I call on artists and other "cultural creatives" to help to make a new mythology for the global tribe. 

Renunciate theologies (and mythologies) that teach us to renounce the world, the body, and the demands of relationships of every kind, either in service of some abstract "better place" (be it heaven, paradise, enlightenment or nirvana) or in reaction to teachings that degrade earthly life as "impure" or "unreality"..............will not help us, or those who must come after us.  If we're going to speak of "oneness", we need myths that include tremendous, creative diversity within that "oneness", that can include many gods and goddesses, many voices and languages, and many ways to the truth instead of simply eliminating the competition.  Further, our world myth can no longer be simply a human world myth - it must include many evolutions, many other beings within the intimacy of ecosystems.  If we're to survive into sustainability.

"The culture that is holistic is holistic because its reasoning structure is holistic." wrote artist Rafael Montanez Ortiz.  "The problem we have with holism is that our reasoning is fragmentary, dissectionist, it removes us from relating things, it structures things in separate compartments in order  to "have control".2  Ortiz maintains that if the logic of one's society is relational, you are in a construct that places you in  relation to all things, and thus, develop an  empathic response to all things.   In earlier societies, he believes,  the entire world mythos was about a living world, alive, entangled, conscious, animistic and full of Anima Mundi, the World Soul.  It's no coincidence that this "primitive"  worldview is very close to what science, from Gaia Theory to Quantum Entanglement, is discovering.

Myths, as the "narrative foundation" for  societies, become more meaningful through embodiment, through an actual enactment - through ritual that is engaging and potent.   Culturally in the West we have, by and large, lost our rituals, or they have become weakened through commercialism - witness the sad transformation of Solstice rituals into the meaningless commercialism of Christmas, or the diminishment of the important days of honoring the ancestors into "scary Halloween". 

Our minds aren't just in our skulls, but in  the entire body, which includes the aura and the etheric networks that exist between us and the rest of life.    Whether we're talking about a forest, or another person, abstractions can remove us from the  experience of communion, the immanent ability to sense what is going on.  Abstractions become what is going on.  I have experienced, and helped to create, rituals that were profoundly transformative.  My experiences of the Spiral Dance with Reclaiming, or with the Earth Spirit Community's Twilight Covening, or the Lighting of the Labyrinth at Sirius Rising......will always energize me when I remember them.  Within those magical circles, I entered mythic time and mythic space and mythic mind, and experienced, as Joseph Campbell put it, the "Thou" realm of existence.  That  does not end when you leave the circle.

In 2004, I directed "Restoring the Balance", a non-denominational event devoted to cross-cultural stories of the Great Mother.  Our cast wished to dramatize the need for healing the great Earth Mother.  We chose as our centerpiece the Inuit legend of Sedna, and the rituals of atonement and reciprocity the Inuit perform with their shaman when they believe they have fallen from balance with the life giving Ocean Mother.   Artist Katherine Josten (founder of the Global Art Project) danced the role of  Sedna.  In bringing up the event, she  observed that:

"The work of our group is not to re-enact the ancient goddess myths, but to take those myths to their next level of evolutionary unfolding.  Artists are the myth makers."

In this same spirit, another member of the cast chose to weave a web with the audience as  Grandmother Spider Woman.   Morgana Canady wove a web with 300 people.  In this performance biodegradable cords from “Spider Woman’s Web” were later distributed among cast members, and scattered throughout the desert, symbolically "extending our web".  As part of the Global Art Project an exchange was made with the AFEG-NEH-MABANG Traditional Dance Company, in Cameroon - a part of the weaving.  


 Among the Navajo, infant girls often have a bit of spider web rubbed into their hands so they will "become good weavers".  

May we all now rub a bit of spider web into our hands for the work ahead of us ..........and, like Penelope, may we all now see "with a web on our faces".

1) Phillip Slater, The Chrysalis Effectt (2007)

2) Rafael Montanez Ortiz Ph.D., interview with Lauren Raine for unpublished manuscript (1989)

3) Katherine Keller Ph.D., "From a Broken Web" (1989)

4) Katherine Josten M.F.A., The Global Art Project

The True Cost - a very Important Movie

I will never again buy new clothing, not unless I know where it was made (and that must be local, or guaranteed fair trade by an ethical producer) and what it was made from as well.  Never.

This is a film recently released that's so well done, and so moving, I believe everyone should see it.  It is about the incredible wake of destruction in today's "fast fashion" - to the virtually enslaved workers who make those endlessly disposible, and ever "cheaper" clothes, the horrific waste and decimation of the environment (they present good figures that the clothing industry is second only to the oil industry in environmental impact), and the decimation of our own Western economies, as everyone becomes poorer as a small corporate elite gleans unheard of profits, and yet is fed the illusion that because we can "afford" cheap clothing, we are not.

If we cannot find ways to understand, in every way possible, that we are all connected to each other, that the clothing we wear, the air we breath, the food we eat is all part of the the common good....if we cannot arrive at a true vision and theology of interdependency, truly we are doomed.

My great appreciation for this important, eloquent, disturbing documentary.

http://truecostmovie.com/

https://youtu.be/OaGp5_Sfbss



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*** Below, just because I remembered, I share some photos of garments I saw at the Renaissance Faire last year, all "upcycled" from old sweaters or socks.  Now that is not only creative reuse, but sheer art.

The Eagle Tree and other Magics

Yesterday I was in a parking lot when I saw a huge bird fly right across my line of vision, not 20 feet away.  It flew into a palm tree, where I was able to study it for about 10 minutes before it disappeared.  I thought it might be a golden eagle, but I suspect it was a  hawk of some kind.  While there are golden eagles here in Pima country, they are very rare, and especially rare in the city, although red tail hawks seem quite at home here, enjoying the selection of pigeons to hunt.  You can always tell when one is nearby, because all the smaller birds become very quiet or fly away.

But the experience of seeing that magnificent creature brought to mind  magic that happened in 2003, right around this time of year, that I never forgot, although I never told anyone.  To this day there is a certain small, stunted tree in downtown Tucson, in the proximity of where the former Muse Community Art Center once stood, that I will visit and salute when I happen to be in the area.
Specifically there is a branch on that tree, not far from the height of one's head, that I often find myself standing before, as if something invisible was there, regarding me with a fierce yellow eye.

I had moved into the now long gone Muse Community Arts Center, living in a little studio on the second floor there.  I had a show in their little gallery in process - a display of the Masks of the Goddess collection.  It was very early, just dawn, and I was walking with a cup of coffee in my hand a few blocks from the Muse.  I looked up at a this little tree for some reason and saw, not 12 feet from me, a gigantic bird sitting on it's limb, looking right at me,  I've seen hawks in central Tucson occasionally, but I've never seen a golden Eagle in Tucson, or for that matter, never in the wild either.
But that was what sat before me in that tree.  Far too big to be a hawk.  I stopped, afraid to move, and for a full minute or so I looked at the eagle, and the eagle looked at me.

Then the eagle spread its huge wings, rose into the morning sky, making that strange cry that raptors make...........and I stood in awe.

A few days later I found a note from Grey Eagle, a native American traditional Story Teller who had, by chance, seen my show.  He wrote that he wanted to meet with me to give me the Story of Sedna, which he had learned from the Inuit people when he lived in Alaska.  And that was the beginning of the best, and certainly most mystical, performance I ever produced, which was called "Restoring the Balance", and centered on the Story of Sedna.

I think this is what someone once called the "re-enchantment of the World".  Magic.......recently I was considering submitting  a possible paper to an academic conference on Magic.  But looking at their guidelines..........I imagine long papers on medieval alchemical symbology and the anthropology of magical rites in pre-colonial Borneo, or some such, and already I'm having a problem keeping my eyes open.  What is behind the  constructs of academia?  What is real magic?

I guess to me "magic" is about the great Web of interdependency and ecology that underlies, well, everything, the "entanglement" and "unified field" of a living universe  Synchronicity....... as Alice Walker put it, "the Universe Responds".

The Universe Responds
by Alice Walker

A few years ago I wrote an essay called "Everything is a Human Being", which explores to some extent the Naive American view that all of creation is of one substance and therefore deserving of the same respect. In it I described the death of a snake that I caused, and wrote of my remorse.

That summer, "my" land in the country crawled with snakes. There was always the large resident snake, whom my mother named "Susie", crawling about in the area that marks the entrance to my studio. But there were also lots of others wherever we looked. A black-and-white king snake appeared underneath the shower stall in the garden. A striped red-and-black one, very pretty, appeared near the pond. It now revealed the little hole in the ground in which it lived by lying half in and half out of it as it basked in the sun. Garden snakes crawled up and down the roads and paths. One day leaving my house with a box of books in his arms, my companion literally tripped over one of these.

We spoke to all of these snakes in friendly voices. They went their way, we went ours. After about a two week bloom of snakes, we seemed to have our usual number: just Susie and a couple of her children.

A few years later, I wrote an essay about a horse called Blue. It was about how humans treat horses and other animals; how hard it is for us to see them as the suffering, fully conscious, enslaved beings they are. After reading this essay in public only once, this is what happened. A white horse came and settled herself on the land. (Her owner, a neighbor, soon came to move her.) The two horses on the ranch across the road began to run up to their fence whenever I passed, leaning over it and making what sounded like joyful noises. They had never done this before (I checked with the human beings I lived with to be sure of this), and after a few more times of greeting me as if I'd done something especially nice for them, they stopped. Now, when I pass they look at me with the same reserve they did before. But there is still a spark of recognition.

What to make of this?

I think I am telling you that the animals of the planet are in desperate peril, and that they are fully aware of this. No less than human beings are doing in all parts of the world, they also are seeking sanctuary. But I am also telling you that we are connected to them at least as intimately as we are connected to trees. Without plant life human beings could not breathe. They are the lungs of our planet. Plants produce oxygen. Without free animal life I believe we will lose increasingly the spiritual equivalent of oxygen. "Magic", intuition, sheer astonishment at the forms the Universe devises in which to express life - to express itself - will no longer be able to breathe in us.

But what I'm also sharing with you is this thought: The Universe responds. What you ask of it, it gives. The military-industrial complex and its leaders and scientists have shown more faith in this reality than have those of us who do not believe in war and who want peace. They have asked the Earth for all its deadlier substances. They have been confident in their faith in hatred and war. The universe, ever responsive, the Earth, ever giving, has opened itself fully to their desires. Ironically, Black Elk (the Lakota shaman) and nuclear scientists can be viewed in much the same way: as men who prayed to the Universe for what they believed they needed and who received from it a sign reflective of their own hearts.

I remember when I used to dismiss the bumper sticker "Pray for Peace". I realize now that I did not understand it, since I also did not understand prayer; which I know now to be the active affirmation in the physical world of our inseparableness from the divine; and everything, especially the physical world, is divine.

(From: "The Universe Responds: Or, How I learned We Can Have Peace on Earth", Living by the Word, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, N.Y., N.Y., 1988.)

A Poem for Light

"God's abstention is only from human dialects;
 the holy voice utters its woe and glory in myriad musics,
 in signs and portents.   Our own words are for us to speak,
 a way to ask and to answer."

.....Denise Levertov

There are some gifts that come to us
just once or twice in a lifetime,
gifts that cannot be named
beyond the simple act of gratitude.

We are given a vision so bountiful
we can only gaze with eyes wide,
like a child in summer's first garden.

We reach our clumsy hands
toward that communion
that single perfection
and walk away speechless, blessed.

And breathe, 
in years to come
  breathe, 
breathe our hearts open 
aching to tell it well

to sing it into every other heart
to dance it down, into the hungry soil
to hold it before us

that light, 
  that grace given
  voiceless light


Lauren Raine

Thoughts on Pax Gaia at the Holidays

Pax Gaia (the Peace of Earth) is the most compelling challenge of our time. Geologian, Thomas Berry introduced this theme after 9/11 in an essay reflecting the urgent need to embrace a cosmology of truly comprehensive Gaian  peace. It is a peace that transcends Pax Romana (the peace of an empire) and Pax Humana (peace among humans). 

"We are called as an evolving humanity to the Great Work that engenders Pax Gaia. To this end we create and foster deep cultural therapies that address the deep cultural pathology of our time that has brought about such ecological damage."

 (T. Berry, Evening Thoughts, 2006) 

 

"Only now can we see with clarity that we live not so much in a cosmos (a place) as in a cosmogenesis (a process) -- scientific in its data, mythic in its form."  

~ The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry  

The Winter Solstice was perhaps the earliest universal holy day, celebrated in different ways   throughout the world from the earliest days of human culture. When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet taken human forms in the human imagination, but ran instead with deer in the forest, flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed nameless from the awed depths of every numinous pool, sensed as Presence in the depths of caves........ even then, the Return of the Light was a holy day, a day of celebration. 

Long ago ancestors lit fires to welcome the "shining god" who was the sun returning from mysterious underworld depths. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They lit fires as sympathetic magic, fires to light and imitate the Sun's passage (which is why we still light candles, and Christmas lights, today, although no one remembers.........)

Welcoming the Sun, they left offerings of food to show their gratitude, and invented songs or danced throughout the longest cold night, encouraging, helping the Sun on its  difficult journey to the promise of new life.

I remember at this Holy/Wholly/Holiday  Day that holy days begin among our most ancient, instinctual roots, taproots that reach down, deeply entwined within the visible and invisible web of  Gaia's life. 

Planet Earth turns her face toward her star again, circling in brilliant orbit, bearing every evolving, responsive, living, infinitely intertwined be-ing within her fragile, exquisite azure skin on her long journey.   

Perhaps we sense, as the sun rises,  that pre-verbal, instinctual knowing, found hidden beneath the pages of any book written with five fingered hands, beneath each inscribed layer of words, signs, hieroglyphs, pictures in jet or ochre or sepia, luminous beneath the oldest pages.  A veneer peels away, revealing a pentimento, an ancient heartbeat, shared again with all beings that keep vigil on the long night of the winter Solstice.  

I pledge allegiance

to the soil of Turtle Island,

and to the beings

who thereon dwell

one ecosystem in diversity

under the sun

With joyful

interpenetration for all.

Gary Snyder