Oh, NO! Not THAT!
We've been through this, Skunkie, dear, you may have the North side of the yard and leave well enough alone the South side where you wanted to build a nest under the outside stairs a few months back. No nests on the foundation please!! My streaming eyes won't tolerate it! My tender nose rebels even now, as your essence wafts through the window newly opened to this warm spring night.
May you find a sweet new home, Skunkie. May the Earth Goddess Bless you and keep you...
FAR away from us! (The Rabbi, in Fiddler on the Roof, when asked if there is a blessing for the Czar, responds, "A blessing for the Czar? Yes! God Bless and keep the Czar... far away from us.")
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Reading a sweet book right now called Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Such a compendium of ways to honor the earth and live in harmony with our mother.
Dr. Kimmerer is a botanist but comes from the heart of the Anishinaabe Peoples in the North East, and her perspective is much broader, deeper and wiser than pure science can comprehend. I'm moved to tears at the end of nearly every chapter. Tears of joy, tears of WTF have we done?, tears of recognition that she captures my sentiments so succinctly. We all belong to the mother of us all. We all have lost our manners and knowledge of reciprocity.
Never take more than half of what is offered. Always say thank you and act as if you're grateful, for cryin' out loud!
There's an entire chapter dedicated to The Honorable Harvest. Kimmerer says the guidelines are not written down, but she offers up how they might appear if they were written down... right there on page 183! I won't plagiarize here, but invite you to go look up the tenets of how to receive the gifts Earth has to give us and how to support Her to keep on giving, instead of us raping, pillaging, thieving, and poisoning Her.
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I found out Friday that my Cousin Eric died. His sister, my cousin Deb called me to say she saw an OBIT in the newspaper from the tiny town where he had lived that was dated August 21, 2017. He's been dead a year and a half and we're only just now hearing of it. On FaceBook, she found it.
The dream I had of him, about four days before Deb called me with the news, had him flying on the ceiling much like some of the papier mâché angels he began making and hanging from my Auntie's ceiling shortly after he had a bad Acid Trip. Nearly life-size, these pastel colored ladies were not unlike the carved wood Indonesian angels I've seen that are much smaller. Both Eric's angels and the Indonesian stylized ones have beatific smiles. I don't remember if Eric was smiling in the dream. I hope he was and is now, wherever he may be. He had such a different drummer. His mama and all the rest of the family cut ties with him. He went off to live in the woods.
May his offspring think lovingly of him and may he be at peace.
Now, my dear cousin Deb is the sole survivor of her family of origin. That's an unwieldy status.
I wrote to remind her the reason our mamas took us to the beach all those years, ALL those years, was so when their footprints were washed away, and life served up hard lessons, we'd know to go sit on the sandy thigh of THE Mother and let her salt wind kiss our tears, caress our cheeks, and tousle our hair when our tears were spent or dropped into Her infinite depths, as if to say, now go play.
Turns out, Mama Earth has many thighs to choose from. Picnic benches in pine forests will do just fine... or a log or a patch of moss... or chair near a windowsill with one scraggly geranium in a pot. She'll listen to us pour out our hearts and not judge the sobbing or snot, but give us a sign that she heard and absorbed the hurt and tell us, when we're ready, to go play again.
Everything in its own time.
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