In Oregon the Breitenbush river is a color of steel-teal that exists no other place on the earth and this must be partly because of the non-negotiable trees.  It is easy to be grounded and feel at one in your place in a place like this.  It is easy to revere the miracle of dirt: seasons of evergreen, of winter’s death and dying on into spring’s plenty and rebirth.  Steps in the same dance.  Willamette!!  Land of gushing fat waters and springs, land of special color of trees.  You taught me long ago the way of tree breath. Fog drip drop drinking, drinking in-out rhythm of water-air.  How it feels when the trees give gifts of this.  Subtle pine touch.  The gentle sweetness of pine breath on skin.

 

The new moon was Monday.  I was coming down from the Mountain which makes me laugh to write it but no for real, North of the Bay California on up to the Olympics, for me it’s one long extended two decades now of retreating then coming down off various mountains.  Learning to speak bioregion.  Unlocking the practical wisdom of the earth’s cyclic codes.  So yea retreating and returning at once, had to catch me a plane back to the east coast.

The dark moon phase, that VOID CHAOS SPACE of deepest dark, was this past weekend.

So this past weekend, as the daylight grew shorter and shorter towards the peak of our year’s longest night tonight!!–the moon fell to her darkest phase, hidden from the totality of the sunlight.  Sunday we experienced not the longest night of the year, but the darkest.

I was sitting with poetry in the Hot Springs on retreat with my brother Paul and Sita his dear love.  They are Creative Advisory members of the Free School and they held space for me at their home in mountainside to dip in to that depth of deep sweet, yummy darkness, inky blackslide into mountainside stone, inky slide into infinite space oh those healing waters of surrounding mountain chains.  Deep in, to do my own cleanse before winter~tonight~begins.

The dark, winter, death, the depths, dying.  The dark, yin, passive, rest, renewal.  The dark, anima. Realm of the Feminine.   What some Catholics  or mystics call Sophia. Gateway to the Soul.

Dark moon of the month on the dark moon tide of the year.  And into tonight, the longest night.  The entryway to Winter.  We move now North on the medicine wheel. At sunset tonight we tend this passing, and it is movement that will show itself if you get outside, or take time to soften and relax inside of you, too.  Transitory, transition.  IN Between Space.

I just adore that winter is North on the wheel because that is associated with forward direction.  And Winter’s element is Earth, and mama Earth at this time teaches us about dormancy.  So the true direction, our next right step together? North?  The needed ingredient for rebirth.

Let rest be our forward, healing direction.  

Sacred Rest.  Sacred Rest and internal, deep reordering, metabolic stillness the thick softness of slumber to help us reset.

Winter Solstice is a time connected to the Divine Mother.  It is when we revere our matrilineal lines, and all our ancestresses.  The holy power of birth as Solstice is too the celebration of the Return of the Sun and darkness decreasing!  How only from the dark the light comes.  How this darkness initiation gives way to life, how this wisdom teaches of life’s changes, we celebrate the many small deaths, the space this creates, the room for new growth, ever onward in a long cyclic dance.  How the wisdom of the feminine is the wisdom of this fluidity, is the wisdom of the necessity of every aspect in the continuum. 

Demetra George reminds of the many names of the dark aspect associated with the feminine, and it’s a meaningful meditation for the year.  The world around, stories and cultural, sacred, and religious traditions root us to an archetypal realm full of depth for our exploration.  The dark feminine “is called Kali in India, Hekate and Persephone in Greece, Lilith in the Near East, Fresh-kigal in Sumeria, Morgana in Britian, and Hel in Scandinavia.  Moira, the Fates, the Fureis, Medusa, Medea, Crice, Nemesis, Nyx, the Gorgons, the Sirens, the Black Madonna, Cerrwiden, Nepyths, Black Isis, Oya, Coatlicue, Mother Holle, Baba Yuga, the Black Dakini, the Terrible Mother, the Bad Fairy and the Wicked Witch are some of her other names(p 29).”

Knowing my own dark feminine has meant courage.  Courage at night when I can’t sleep, in morning meditation time during struggles and prayers to keep my heart in the game anyhow, courage keeping my tongue in relationships that are hard.  Courage to challenge the self-thoughts of judgement and shame, the particular scrutiny of perfection addiction, that specific internalization of misogyny that only women can know.

My dark feminine knows what it’s like to live in a culture that says her stories are dark.  Are the dark reflection of society.  Are demon and dark, satanic or occult.  Are not allowed to connect me to my unique narrative and exploration, sexuality and emotions, sensuality and biology. Are used against me to keep me out of my own body, to marginalize being in my own skin.

The Dark Feminine Narrative and Stories, if we reembody them, or encourage each other to tap in and rewrite them as our own, we know what it’s like to live in a culture that calls this sin.

Embracing this kinda darkness requires the grit that only living with this kind of darkness could create!  We were made for these times.  Sing it from the hills.

So I left the Mountain.  Left too the Oregon Coast where I was celebrating the wise women.  These spiritual, soulful elders that have shown me how to walk my walk a day at a time laughing and reveling, courageously cackling, all the way.  These elder wise women.  Time on the Mountain only counts when you embody it day to day.  But to do that the body needs time.  This Time on the Medicine Wheel leads us in to dropping in and relaxing. Celebrate.  Drop in and transition.  Drop in to bed!  Let the reset happen.  Man or woman, how does the feminine as sacred exist in your life?

I send my roots down to the Earth as the circle of the year turns us North and Winter here is barren and life lives underground. I root to my roots, send thanks and honor, prayers and love to the lineage of strong females whose lives and hands and hearts midwifed lives and hands and hearts that midwifed lives and hands and hearts all the way down to mine in a million different ways, that I do the same that I do the same that I do the same,

my dark feminine soaks in this infinite wish, and sends love~

To all beings blessings and love, in the light spiritedness and whole soulfulness, in the body, in the heart, of unconditional love may all beings be blessed and

WELL RESTED!

Happy Winter to All.

 

 

 

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prayers and love to beth and paul h and ana and amy and kristina and jotto all of whom hit me up in the center of this reverie with poetry, prayers and love and prayers and love reader, to you~