How many of us take them seriously?
What if these numinous contributions are of utmost importance?
Are we losing some of our ability to respond to the seminal directives that are planted in magical moments? Do they disappear with the sound of alarm clocks and over-full schedules? I wonder if in the days beyond when things were slower, if our time rocking on the front porch or reading by lamplight were cauldrons of rumination and propagation…when the dreamseed of the night or the silent voice in our h(ear)t were given space to weave themselves into our consciousness.
Grace walked into my camp in just that way last year.
On that morning filled with early winter sun on the edge of the Superstition Wilderness, I trudged the trail towards my solo spot which was hidden now in morning shadow made by the huge rock formation to the east of it, called “Praying Hands”. My friend, Wind, walked quietly beside me…both of us held in our own prayers and thoughts for the unknown mystery that lay ahead in three days of solitude in this desertscape on the edge of the metropolis called Phoenix. Even words align metaphorically in these times it seems. Mythologically a Phoenix is a long-lived bird who rises from the ashes of it’s predecessor.
I had just guided my last nature based program for the foreseeable future the day before. Phoenix lay to the west of my visioning spot.
I cannot recall the exact moment that the message was delivered, but true to the way of the subject of the message, a directive was offered to me as a seed would be slipped into soil. I received it and closed in over it, embracing its potent and timeless mandate.
“You must become seed now” was what I heard and I took it to heart.
That was the beginning of a beginning for me. I did not then know how integral…ie. integrated it would end up being in the year to come. I took it quite seriously during my days of aloneness in the space between Superstition and Phoenix…I practiced in my body what it was to be seed. Specifically I imagined myself absorbing this desert edge….inviting it all in. ..the silence punctuated with music of birds and unidentifiable creatures, the sage moist morning air, the searing heat of sun, the visions rich in color and scent…all of it.
What is it when a wild place of superstition is absorbed into the same space as a phoenix?
Three days later I walked out of that threshold of endings and beginnings, and into another kind of threshold…the lip of a tide that would move me for unknown months ahead…I called it my pause and thought it would last seven months.
Six months later, when garden seeds and wild seeds would be given cover and warmth and water, and encouraged to germinate, I had a dream…an apocalyptic dream:
I am watching a gigantic and ominous fire ball plummeting toward Earth…clearly Earth
was in its direct path and a catastrophic collision was immanent. Disaster was certain, death
was likely. Everyone knew it. As it hurtled towards our planet home with so many frightful
eyes paralyzed by its glare, I found myself telling myself and everyone in my path that “all
we can do is plant seeds. All we can do is grow food.”
I repeated this over and over again.
And when I woke, I took this directive earnestly and saw this task as one with many layers.
I must attend them all.
Now, months later, the seeds I have cast are being digested by the world…the birds, coyote, the chipmunk, Earth herself, and the People.
You are one of them.