It has been a busy summer, one which I have meant to write about here, but it never quite happened. I had hoped to share some of the things I have been preserving, about making flower essences and tea blends, about getting my permaculture design certificate and embarking on an advanced herbalist training this year, but as you can see, there has been little space in my life for reflecting in writing.
While this has been a summer of action, not reflection, the inward spiral of autumn has caught up with me. I have been catching bits and pieces about the occupy Wall Street action, and have followed the Tar Sands action; heard news of violence and oppression here and abroad; felt heartbroken at the massive road that will likely be built through sacred Amazon forest; and been rocked by the news that my parents’ neighbors have signed on to hydraulic fracking because they’ll get some money instead of having their gas rights taken without compensation. I have been sitting with all of this, and more, thinking about shifts in consciousness, and how we occupy a very rocky space of transition between paradigms. I have been contemplating the stories of native elders from all over the world about the change we are now spiraling through, and I have wondered how to weather all of this massive transition without giving in to doubt, fear, panic, and grasping.
I have been feeling through the notion of sacred space, and how I sense the woods of my childhood in my bones and in every action I take in the world. I have been trying to figure out how I can contribute to a positive change in this seemingly senseless time, when so many people are starting to see just how unjust our system is, yet our system is finding more and more sophisticated ways of crushing resistance. I am reaching to the elders, to the earth herself, to my human and plant communities for all of the wisdom I can find. I am learning to cultivate hope, how to truly be present for what is to come. I know that the coming time will not be easy, and I am trying to remember how to be without all of the trappings of false security that this culture has deluded us with. I am reskilling, relearning how to live in sacred relationship to all our relations.
My mother’s visit to Maine this past week sparked in me the desire to be in ever-closer, and more just, relationship to our Mother, the earth, as I remember just how embedded I have always been in this living, breathing sacred world.
I don’t know what the future will hold. I don’t know how unstable instability will prove to be. What I do know is that community is one major answer to the fear-based relating we are currently engaged in. I do know that all of our voices need to be heard and valued, including the animals, plants, insects, and all living beings. I do know that we are all connected and we are all sacred. I know that now is the time to stand up and occupy our own sacred spaces. We must do this for our own survival.
Where are your sacred spaces? What is your sacred occupation?