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A prayer for the liberation of woman, earth, life

Art: Deliberation by Spanish Illustrator Mario S. Nevado via aegis-strife.net

“Make no mistake about it–enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” ~ Adyashanti

Here are your some of our wounds, some of our flows, some of the things twirling in my heart, stretching its edges to feel life on the planet.

The list you are about to read might seem arbitrary: meting icebergs, lost habitat, ancient fungi, forgotten stories, neglected places, misogyny, imperialism, war, violence against women & earth. In the midst of so many issues are opportunities: the discovery of Constructal Law, the preservation of seeds of freedom, our need for alternative women narratives, the call to enlightened action, the poetry of living mindfully.

• Here is a film I’d like to see, Chasing Ice, where a pioneering environmental photographer and global warming activist James Balog show melting glaciers and icebergs receding at fast speed due to climate change.  via Lisa Congdon
• Ancient fungi were discovered In 2.7 million year old mud at bottom of ocean. “Their genetic material indicates the microbes are dormant, but could be revived.”
• The time has come to protect our ‘seeds of freedom,’ and keep them in the hands of farmers. Vindana Shiva suggests that “diversity has to be the approach, there’s no magic bullet.” Indeed.
• Let your heart break open: “Two Years Later: What the ‪Syrian‬ War Looks Like” ‪‬
• 7 Sadly Disturbing Truths About [what our madness is doing to] Women’s Bodies.  I added the words in brackets because even though the article means well, the title is a misogynist remark suggesting there is something inherently wrong with women’s bodies. Paying attention to the nuances of language is essential to evolving our thinking.
• “My space is small. My life is big.” Living With Less. A Lot Less.”via @holly59
• A wonderful essay: “The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters.”
• Speaking of roads, of pathways, of narratives,  “There is a New Law in Physics and It Changes Everything” is an interview with Adrian Bejan, author of the illuminating book Design in Nature–my article here. Adrian is a man with a brilliant mind and heart, whose work on the Constructal law of physics is illuminating academia and by the nature of flow, beginning to reach popular culture. Bravo!
• Breathtaking. Naomi A Klein talks with writer, spoken-word artist, and indigenous leader Leanne Simpson  about “extractivism,” why it’s important to talk about memories of the land, dancing the World into Being, and what’s next for Idle No More.

Because we live in a web of life of interconnectedness where even the flap of a butterfly is felt miles apart, changes in a remote area already affect us in ways yet to be seen. Do we want to see? Here is a poem I love prompting us to see where we dare not, because it is time to heal those festering wounds:

Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying

her wounds came from the same source as her power.” ~ Adrienne Rich

We can’t deny our wounds; we can’t deny our power, not anymore. We are beginning to realize that their source is the same, that underneath the wound there is incredible power— a fountain of creativity, compassion, and wild nature waiting to free flow and overflow pass the imposed and internalized gates of oppression, to reach all of life. A feminine kind of power, one that calls for liberation, to be idle no more, to care for the web of life.

I feel grateful for the women and men around the world working towards giving birth to a new kind of system that dismantles patriarchy, but this truth has yet to fully percolate, awaken, and take root in the collective consciousness; for patriarchy is still operating, infiltrating itself in the depths of woman and from there oppressing her right to express the beauty of her womanhood. You might think woman is free, but she is not free of the forces, patterns and beliefs she has internalized, not yet. And man isn’t either, although I can only speak from my experience as woman giving voice to the feminine.

“The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it’s the next step of peace that we need to create.” ~Vandana Shiva

May we explore this sacred space with grace. May we realize that women’s bodies are sacred and filled with mystery. Every one of us was born from the body of a woman, from the body of the earth. In the name of this untapped feminine power flowing sacred, conscious, alive through women of all colors, shapes, sizes, ages and paths; may she, woman, be honored, respected, cherished. May woman experience herself and the earth sacred. Therein lies woman’s freedom. Our freedom. I imagine woman reveling in her song becoming the voice of Pachamama, her actions joining others healing the web of life with the awareness that opens us up to feel life pulsing in each others’ hearts.

Today marks the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere. It is a day to celebrate ancient, dormant seeds awakening. May the flow of our hearts, voices, and paths reach greater expressions of flow as we dream, sing, and dance a new healing dream into being. I dedicate the ebb and flow of these words to the loving, fierce spirit pulsing alive in each one of us. This is:

“A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.” ~ Tennessee Williams

In the name of all that we remember to hold and let flow sacred,

Riding waves in a magical, real world

There is a kind of magic that is born from the soil of experience, the magic of the mundane if you will, which under the light of awareness, shines sacred. I wonder if some of us are wired to experience life in a magical realist way. Asi parece. Magical realism is not just a literary genre; it is a way of living, of perceiving life, of engaging the world..

In the belly of this wild, sacred dance

We have come to be danced…
…the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance…
~ Jewel Mathieson