Elder can reset, restore and revitalize the immune system by which it increases the effectiveness of how the whole body works
We are long gone from where we can rely on something other than ourselves to bring back balance. It's the hardest part of my relationship with Elder. She is not here to fix, she is here to remind me that I am the conductor of my well being which relies entirely on how I balance the environment around me. I can barely hold onto my shadow let alone anything that feels effective. What is real in all this glamour? Even as I say that I know instantly in my heart what is richness and I am reminded each time I breathe in the scent of my cat's paws filled with deep forest loam.
But how to start propping each other up so the ant can look into the eye of liberty? Held up by community rather than buried, or divided or derived? While my instinct screams run or I want to huddle so I can hide in a “how perfect my little piece could be” world, my heart a longing for a like-minded community, so my gaze can be reflected and so I don't need to know what is beyond the garden, I know that that will become its own cancer. That integration is life. system that is not well seated, not placed or honoured. The trojan is in and the horse has become the house and evil looms large and it is of our flesh, its all there is and we've become so disconnected so much as to elect it, vote
There are no “mine” paradigms that are going to matter or really function right now. The wound of one is the wound of the whole, undeniable, as I have felt my strands of being woven into the interplay and so, even overwhelmed I trust. Even disgusted I trust. Hylde Moer, older than my remembering stands there with me. Allows me to call her in while I trust that we are navigating a new age of listening. We are calling the Other back to aid us in navigating through our Severance and Shame. Calling them in as we pull together to demand that we are accountable to all our peers, to address our balance in our environment. The putrescence requires pressure for it to surface, requires lancing for relief and healing. Requires a good long look at ourselves, an embracing of our shadows, eye to eye contact, the hard long account of feeling ourselves whole.
All parts of the Elder can be used, depending on the which kind will depend on what you receive. Flowers, berries, bark, leaves roots and even hosted fungus have found their uses, reminding us of the many supporting the whole, some elements bring purging and catharsis, some bring nourishment and enlightenment, all bringing forth that generosity of spirit to embrace the other.
And so I adhere, let the guidance come through, carry on singing into the mystery, carry on exploring my roots, minding my safety so I can remain curious to be able to see and then maybe recognize patterns. So I can read the environment around and carry on digging deeper into the nature of myself, leaping up on that part of the spiral as I circle round, bringing my ancestors forth while I reach out to the future letting the present flower. Know the land, feel my belonging so I can become the support. Listening, learning, due respect, ridiculous failures, silly stumbles, tangled sex and raucous stories feeling into the nature of things to better know the balance. To know how to interrupt and shift, sometimes with destruction, sometimes with the silent placement of rocks on the shoreline, always to sing the song, give voice to the essence of ourselves and the matrix dance, the mystery, fed by ceremonies and movements that in turn give us story and shape which in turn gives us ceremony. Even on the periphery, I can catch a hint of tone, a glimpse of the shimmer and a whiff of the scent of the Other. “The old magic has a will of its own, it may work to your need but not to your command and again there are memories above the old magic that wake when it moves*" Elder remembers that magic, she holds those memories and can see the stag and rider hunting through the night and hear the call of the horn. It's in her bones and roots and is passed to her offspring and it is not lost to us. And as we explore and share and support each other in our reawakening of this, celebrating the different parts of the story we are given to carry, as we cultivate generosity of spirit we can listen to each other, to the landscape around us, and let it lead us, each of us, into balance.
*Alan Garner The Moon of Gomrath
Also gratitude for the resonating words of Matt Wood, Kiva Rose, Ylva Radeweski And Daniel Foor
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