Beannacht ("Blessing") for the New Year

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the Earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.


~ John O'Donohue ~

Greenpeace holds a historic performance

with pianist Ludovico Einaudi on the Arctic Ocean (English)

https://youtu.be/dHpHxA-9CVM

What will draw world leaders’ attention to the dire effects of climate change? If not the plight of the polar bear, perhaps a beautiful, mournful piano composition played on a floating platform off the coast of Norway? This video showing Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi playing his “Elegy for the Arctic” has been making the rounds, with thousands like actor and environmentalist Adrian Grenier sharing it on on Twitter to say, “Let's change the world, starting at the top.”

The video was shot in collaboration with Greenpeace, who shipped the piano up to the Arctic from Germany. They’re currently running a campaign to get government officials to create the first Marine Protected Area to safeguard 10 percent of the Arctic Ocean at this week's OSPAR (Oslo-Paris) commission in Tenerife, Spain. When ice is falling off a glacier in the background as Einaudi plays, one sees how this performance could inspire action. And if not among leaders themselves, it’s extremely affecting for their constituents, bringing them to a place they don’t often see but whose wildlife and climate play an important role in global ecology.

As Tech Insider notes, climate scientists often point to the melting ice of the Arctic as an important warning sign for the rest of the planet. Polar regions across the north of the planet have been melting, and a viral video featuring a gorgeous composition is an excellent way to move people. “I'm crying, the most touching piano performance I've ever seen so far. Yes, please save the earth. Save us,” says Twitter user Elma Alfiah.

Einaudi himself is 60 and was born in Turin, Italy; he’s historically been open to inspiration and collaboration, releasing an album in 2001 inspired by traveling to Africa and working with a German electronic group in 2009. That openness of creative spirit is evident in this composition. “I’ve been about to see the purity and fragileness of this area with my own eyes and perform a song that I composed on the best stage in the world,” he said in a statement before the performance.  Whether OSPAR is listening remains to be seen.

https://www.good.is/articles/iceberg-pianist-climate-change-greenpeace

Reflections on Patriarchal Mind, Despair and Hope

Yes, I know it is Christmas, but I celebrated the Solstice a few days ago in grand style, and today, I made the mistake of going to Facebook and reading some of the news feeds.  Frankly, ever since the election and the scary people rapidly being put into power to determine the fate of America and the environment......I've felt shell shot.  I don't know how to get my hope back,  I feel the tides rushing very fast now.  With every chest thumping, fist pounding gesture, and every impulsive, bullying tweet the new president makes, I am reminded of the famous words of Louis IIIIX, just before the French Revolution:  "Apres moi, la deluge."  

With the power to incite devastating war, with the urgency of environmental destruction  ignored and denied, with every indication of repression, bigotry, and misogyny arising even before Trump takes office..........what hope is there?  Is this something that will bring forth reaction and ultimate change?  Or does it mean the real irretrievable splintering of this country?   What do people like me do now, besides trying to be as  kind, and generous as possible?

Trump and his cronies are already talking about "increasing our nuclear armaments" and enhancing the military.  The Military in the U.S. already receives some 60% of the tax dollar.  And this country has an arsenal of nuclear arms that could easily destroy every single living thing on the planet some 50 times over. This is the farthest imaginable extreme of the patriarchal mind.

I've marched against Vietnam, and against the invasion of Iraq, each time seeing the streets of San Francisco swollen with 300,000 people. Yet the wars went on.   Why do we still have no control over the militarism of our country?  Why is the new administration pulling out the phallic spectres of bombs so gleefully?  Why does no one seem to notice the elephant in the room?

When I was in Bali I used to go to the Temple of Hanuman to feed the grey monkeys that lived in the forest there.  It was a common sight to see the little females struggling to forage with an infant on their breasts, and an older child hanging on for dear life to their backs.  One day I turned up with a bunch of bananas, and a very big alpha male monkey sauntered over, walking very much as a human bully would, bared his considerable teeth at me, and grabbed the whole bunch out of my hands.  I wasn't going to argue.  He sauntered away, sat down with the entire bunch, and all the rest of the monkeys gathered around, hoping he might drop something. 

I remember thinking, damn, I sure hope, as a very large tribe of naked monkeys, we can evolve beyond this.  

Hollywood churns out distopian movies now that are all about a ruined world, with roaming bands of warriors fighting for alpha male status - endless mythos of a "hero" fighting it out, and ending up, like that grey monkey, for a while, with all the bananas and the best females.  Until, of course, the next alpha male turns up with bigger firepower.  This is the adolescent male fantasy that absorbs virtually all "action" films, and tragically, all it can imagine for the future is endless war and competition, although, if we're lucky, there is a certain pause in the action when the hero finally gets the girl. 

But this is the  foundational mythos that millions of boys (and girls) now addictively act out with video games, video games that will prepare them someday to push buttons that launch drone bombs to far away places, never seeing in their minds or hearts the face of the children, women, old people upon whom they will fall.  They don't see the ruined faces of the children of Aleppo, a tragedy unfolding even as I write, they don't remember for one moment the faces of the dead of Kosovo, and bodies piled high in Vietnam, or in the pits of German concentration camps or the killing fields of Cambodia.    None of this has been hidden, it's all been documented in living color for the past 50 years.  And yet nothing changes.   

This is the imbalance in the human psyche taking its continual toll.  Has it always been like this?  No.  Marija Gimbutas and others have demonstrated that past cultures have existed for long periods of time, their economies and values, reflected in their art and their buriel remains, not based upon conquest and war.  The his-story of humanity is not all the domain of the violent  patriarchal war gods.    This is what happens when the Goddess is removed from the sacred vocabulary.

Pray indeed for our country now,  if the alpha male chest thumping of Trump has any substance to it.  Pray for the ravaged earth our descendants must live on.  And for the millions of innocents who will experience our bombs along with the violent tyranny of their own tyrants.  And the thousands of  youth who will not become doctors, or parents, or artists, or gardeners, or environmental activists, but who will die as soldiers. 

When I feel stressed, thanks to Netflix, I now escape into Star Trek.  Yes, there's a lot of fighting there, but there is also, especially in the earlier versions, a lot of hope that I no longer see in our media. I was fortunate, I see now, to live in such a hopeful time.  Inherent in Star trek was the firm concept of a noble crew and captain, and a society that sought to explore "where no one has gone before" with the Prime Directive, leaving behind a home world without poverty or injustice. The recent "Star Trek" movies, featuring new actors portraying younger versions of Kirk and Spock, feature brilliant special effects - but nowhere is there the effort to teach some kind of morality, ethics, or human relational  interest that was a concern in Gene Roddenberry's earlier series. It's like a video game - endless bang bang and blow 'em up.  I imagine most young people find the "moralizing" of old Star Trek shows boring indeed.  But if stories can't help us to learn how to be human beings, what does?  

We all know now we're not going to the stars.  2001 has come and gone, and unlike the vision Kubrick had, we didn't go to the moon in that year.  Instead we went to war, again, and then again.  And we have learned very little about how to live together on, and preserve, our beloved Mother Earth.  Mostly I cry for the loss of so much that is beautiful, and I cry for the future, for our children and their children, who are not going to the stars or the moon, but rather will struggle to survive in the debris of our  civilization, a civilization with so many wonders, so much possibility.  Here's another  email I recently received, from a woman named Ariadne:

"I'm not hopeful about the future. It's clear that this civilization will not survive the effects of climate change and the many other consequences of our pollution, overpopulation, greed and lack of empathy. Nor should patriarchal civilization survive, but it's unlikely to die without a catastrophic collapse. The survivors will be trying to scratch out an existence in a biologically depauperate world.  To me, Goddess is Nature -- the Universe and the Earth. She does not need us; we need Her. But I think the evolutionary experiment on Earth of combining large brains with testosterone has been a fairly quick flop -- managing to exist for only a quarter million years before evolving to extinction.  It's a big universe, and no doubt there are other experiments in "intelligence" under way elsewhere. Life will go on here on Earth for hundreds of millions of years after we are gone."

"GAIA" (1986)

Should I mince my words, for fear of offending, not share the anger and despair of people like Ariadne?  I already have friends who are telling me to "chill", to calm down and stop being upset and political, who are talking about some variation or other of "everything happens for a reason."  I think the people of Aleppo, or the people suffering in Mongolia right now as the permafrost melts and they can't farm anymore........would find no comfort in such mysticism.  Yes, it is important to not lose one's center.  But I do not think I will calm down.  

I pray for real guidance, in spite of it all.  We all know what good and beauty  human beings are capable of - we celebrate Martin Luthor King for what he accomplished, and Susan B. Anthony, and FDR, and so many others  who helped to make a  better and more just America, the America that was capable of inspiring the world.  People who represented that evolution beyond patriarchy, an evolution toward cooperation.   No matter what, we must hold on to these principles, these possibilities.  I do not believe in mindless "positivity".  But  I do believe in finding ways to go forward with love,  with compassion, and with generosity -  if not always hope.

"Dove of Sophia" by Hrana Janto.

The Winter Solstice

Serpent Mound illuminated through the efforts of the Friends of Serpent Mound

This has been a strange year, a year in which chaos and shadow and tragedy has been rising, as well as extraordinary bravery and new clarity.  A year of tremendous contrasts, and I think many of us are frightened now, and unsure of what to do.  Lately I have been feeling the need to make circles, to bring forth the "light" wherever it can be found, including inside me, that is inclusive, that reminds me of how sacred the world is, and how we, as human beings among so many incredible beings on our Mother Earth are all a part of each other.  And the Solstice is a Circle as well.

When language was young, when even the gods and goddesses had not yet entirely taken human form but still ran with the deer in the forest, or flew with the wings of crows, or were glimpsed the depths of a numinous pool, when World was still a conversation, and poems were spoken by both bards and by trees,  and our unimaginable ancestors danced and kept watch  through the long, cold, dark night....... even then, long before the writing of words, but perhaps not before the telling of tales,  this was a (w)holy day. 

The Sun was returning to the dark and sleeping world, bringing life-giving light and warmth.

Before ever there were Christmas lights, or candles, or even torches burning olive oil, fires were lit to welcome the Shining One returning from the depths of the underworld.  Stones aligned with the  Sun's journey made a pathway, and food and drink and gifts were given to the young god, just born,  to give him  strength for the new year and his long bright journey across the skylands. 

Perhaps  they  danced through the long cold night, and when they lit bonfires, they did so reverently and with love, knowing that they were  helping him on his way, keeping vigil for him.  Before ever he was called the Christ, or Osiris, or Lugh, he had other names, names lost to history that still whisper and sound sometimes sing again among the stones and circles of another time.   

 Planet Earth turns her face toward the glory of her star again,  She circles round, just as we do,  and we turn with her, every  creature held  within her fragile, azure skin.   May the Light bless you, and Shine in your life.

Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012) Photo courtesy JJ Idarius & Ann Waters

  

  Happy 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

Winter Solstice, Willits Community (2012) Photo courtesy JJ Idarius & Ann Waters

"To go in the dark with a light
is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark.
 Go without sight, and find
 that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
 and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."

Wendell Berry

Winter Solstice inside Newgrange

SWEET DARKNESS
 

When your eyes are tired
the world is  tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

David Whyte

Photo by NASA

Wassailing Celebrations

I wrote about a synchronicity involving bees recently, and it brought back that notion of living in a  “conversant” world.  Instead of seeing "nature" as "other", or a "resource", we could see ourselves, as earlier cultures did, as having a mythic, even friendly and reciprocal, relationship with the extended community of life we inhabit.  When we talk to the trees, the  animals, even stones………..we might just might begin to notice that we get a response sometimes!  

For example, there is the old English custom  of “telling the bees” when someone has died in a farm family, and documented cases of a swarm of bees turning up at the funeral.  Or “wassailing”, singing to trees in celebration of Christmas.  Who is  to say that the apple trees don’t enjoy being part of the festiivities? How would our world be a different place if we saw apple trees as being our generous friends, or inviting bees to the funeral of those they have lived among?  

Although Wassail is popularly a spiced cider drink, often with brandy added and served hot, originally it included the  Yuletide custom of  singing to the trees, in particular, the orchards  of apple trees from which the celebratory drink came.  The spiced cider was offered in honor to the trees,  and around the time of the Solstice, wassailers would prepare  traditional wassail – soaking pieces of bread, cake or toast in it – and travel from apple orchard to apple orchard singing and offering to the trees, in order to ensure a good harvest for the coming year.  Wassail-soaked pieces of bread or toast were then left at the trees’ roots or hung in the trees’ branches to appease the tree spirits and feed them well until the next harvest.

Like the Romans'  offerings and small farm shrines dedicated  to the "Numina", the spirits of place that assisted them with their crops and orchards (the indigenous Roman Goddess Pomona, whose name meant "apple",  originated as a Numen of the orchards), this custom, which is still practiced with a lot of good cheer  in some rural areas of  England, reflects that ancient pagan sense of "reciprocity" with an intelligent, spiritually  inhabited natural world.

Here's what goes on in Whimple, England to this very day:  (http://www.whimple.org/wassail.htm)

 Our ritual follows the traditional well-tried and tested ceremony of our predecessors with the Mayor in his robes of office and the Princess carrying lightly toasted bread in her delicately trimmed flasket, whilst the Queen, wearing her crown of Ivy, Lichen and Mistletoe, recites the traditional verse. The original Whimple Incantation has been retained:

Here's to thee, old apple tree,That blooms well, bears well.Hats full,caps full,Three bushel bags full,An' all under one tree.Hurrah! Hurrah!

Her Majesty is then gently but manfully assisted up the treein order to place the cyder-soaked toast in the branches whilst the assembled throng, accompanied by a group of talented musicians, sing the Wassail Song and dance around the tree. The Mulled Cider or 'Wassail Cup' is produced and everyone takes a sample with their 'Clayen Cup'.

I read recently  that our habit of "toasting" may go back to Wassail revelries.  "Waes hael"  revelers would say,  from the Old English term  meaning "be well".  Eventually  "wassail" referred less to the greeting and more to the drink.  The contents of the Wassail bowl varied, but a popular one was known as 'lambs wool'. It consisted of hot ale, roasted crab apples, sugar, spices, eggs, and cream served with little pieces of toast. It was the toast floating on the top that made it look like lamb's wool.  The toast that was traditionally floated atop the wassail eventually became our "toast" -  when you hold up your glass and announce, “Let’s have a toast,”  or  ”I’ll toast to that,” you’re remembering this very old ritual of floating a bit of toast in spiced ale or mulled wine or wassail in celebration.

Wassailing – visiting neighbors (and much appreciated, friendly trees), singing carols  and sharing warmed drink – is a tradition related to the Winter Solstice with ancient roots indeed.  

 I found a good Wassail recipe, which I've taken the liberty of sharing at the end of this post.  I don't know if I'll be going out to sing to the Saguaros  this Solstice, but who knows what I might end up doing if I drink enough Wassail with brandy.   I'm sure the Saguaros wouldn't mind the attention.

Happy Wassailing!

Photo by Martin Beebee

 Apple Tree Wassailing Chants and Rhymes

Compiled in The Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton

From the South Hams of Devon, recorded 1871: 

Here's to thee, old apple tree,
Whence thou mayst bud
And whence thou mayst blow!
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats full! Caps full!
Bushel--bushel--sacks full,
And my pockets full too! Huzza!

From Cornworthy, Devon, recorded 1805:

Huzza, Huzza, in our good town
The bread shall be white, and the liquor be brown
So here my old fellow I drink to thee
And the very health of each other tree.
Well may ye blow, well may ye bear
Blossom and fruit both apple and pear.
So that every bough and every twig
May bend with a burden both fair and big
May ye bear us and yield us fruit such a stores
That the bags and chambers and house run o'er.

 

http://www.aspicyperspective.com/2013/09/wassail-recipe.html

Yield: 10-12 servings,  Prep Time: 5 minutes, Cook Time: 4 hours

Wassail Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon Apple Cider
• 4 cups orange juice
• 4 hibiscus tea bags
• 10 cinnamon sticks
• 1 tsp. whole cloves
• 1 Tb. juniper berries
• 1 1/2 inch piece of fresh ginger, cut into slices
• 1 apple, sliced into rounds
• 1 orange, sliced into rounds

Directions:

1. Place all the ingredients in a slow cooker and cover.
2. Turn the slow cooker on high heat and cook for 3-4 hours, until the color has darkened and the fruit is soft. Remove the tea bags and serve hot.

Class with the Lilith Institute

Lilith is so important for our time, because she represents the wounded and disenfranchised feminine, and the de-sacralization of sexuality.  She is the archetypal Dark Goddess.   I'm pleased to share here a forthcoming class with my friend D'vorah Grenn.

"Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions" - Dag Hammarskjold This has been one of the guiding principles of The Lilith Institute since its founding twenty years ago. My commitment to working with women to give full expression to our voices is stronger than ever, so it seems the perfect time to offer "Meeting Lilith, the Original Nasty Woman” as my first class of 2017. COURSE DESCRIPTION As we begin to heal the rifts and uncertainties left by the election, this class offers the opportunity to come together to learn about the complex figure of Lilith, the first woman, and how she traversed the wilderness, the unknown. Join us to start the New Year off on a positive note as we reflect on both her story and ours. We will discuss ways of getting in touch with our internal nasty woman, claiming her courage and full voice as we reconnect with our own unique characteristics. In so doing, we will ground ourselves to move forward with greater power and strength through our own moments of anger, fear, loss and overwhelm. DETAILS Four Sundays, January 8 - 29, 10 AM - 11 AM PST in our virtual classroom on Zoom.us. Classes to be recorded, in case you can't join us in "real time". EARLY BIRD price: $99 until December 28; after that $109 (December 29-January 7). Payable via PayPal to dvorahgrenn@me.com or by check made out to D'vorah Grenn and mailed to: The Lilith Institute P.O. Box 6004 Napa, CA  94581 Registration will be confirmed and additional course details sent upon receipt of payment. Please share this course with anyone you think may be interested — and stay tuned for news of our other upcoming classes on Ancestor Reverence, Altar Building as Transformative Spiritual Practice, Jewish Magic & Superstition, Creating Feminist Midrashim as Liberatory and more! Warm regards, D’vorah D’vorah J. Grenn, Ph.D., Kohenet Founder, The Lilith Institute 650-863-1986 dvorahgrenn@me.com

Bee Priestess mask.......