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See More. It was in childhood I first greeted the treasures of the EarthHeart. I would venture to nature… to be amongst the trees, with the rocks, to listen and learn from the wind, rain and sun. As I grew I discovered nature had imbued and awakened an eternal connection to Her wisdom that was accessible if I quieted down and simply asked for it.
It became something I did not know as separate from myself. A life-long connection anchored inside even as I looked around and perceived the natural beauty of an outer environment. It was during childhood I experienced my heart and the heart of life as one. The great mystics and sages received divine inspiration while on their sojourns into nature, and most often people describe spiritual awakenings happening within a natural context… an interchange with a sunrise or sunset that leaves the body in waves of ecstatic sensation, a moment of increased capacity to see beyond the veil while hiking, a softening into inner heard voices or palpable guidance while resting beside a tree or body of water.
Our own personal connection with nature takes us unbiasdly into the spirit within matter, and the matter of spirit. We become an experiential point where these two seeming unique energies engage together and can be felt as one. This discovery whispered and oftentimes yelled! I would return again and 7. And so I invite you into this realm… one you each already know intimately, intuitively and innocently.
It is a realm in which you may return to a child-like state of wonder, into the mystery and vulnerability… into direct discovery, feeling and finding out for oneself.
I offer you full permission to claim this as respectable, worthy ground for discovering truth and enlivening this part of your life no matter how or where you live or what you have prior called it. It is this realm of being the unifying treasure of spirit and matter we must personally claim for our sacred power to be authentically awakened here on earth and through us.
This does not take month-long sojourns into the woods alone. Enter here now… it is the time and passage of this season and global cycle to uniquely discover and know oneself as the direct link to and force of Love. Let us play together in the richness of our entreasured existence. There is endless beauty to discover, unbounded love to experience, and unmatchable relationships to be awakened within and around. Sharon Wesolowski, M.
Here she shares her unique blend of support services, For Sacred Family Living, through her private practice, Ministry of the Mother. This is a resource of divine feminine wisdom and nourishment in support of each one of us discovering our open-hearted capacity to live within the realms of I and We in no separation from Love. Visit her website: www. Love is coming into its own right and light now… seen as the great unsurpassing force it is. Collectively we have misconstrued the power of love as a passive expression, something attainable only from outside of us, if we are lucky.
Love has been seen primarily as soft, serene and compassionate. Softness in its original nature contains gentile forces and also hard, firm edges… here Serenity is both still and also dynamically moving… Compassion is not only bestowed on a perceived outside other, but also upon the self.
Such things go beyond our idle notions of claiming Soft as less than Hard… or Compassion as less than Detachment. Such truths can not be seen by and in a world that believes existence is separate and works alone. Into the world of your own EarthHeart Treasure you are invited to travel and remember, permitted here and destined to find the truth… to discover the edgeless place of total surrender and dynamic free will in which you know yourself as a unique, distinct being, and also as an.
Venture outside at a time and place you feel works well into your day. Gaze towards the sky, breathing in the vastness of what you can and cannot see. Wiggle your toes and look at your feet upon the ground, breathing in the vastness of what you can and cannot see. Place your hand on your heart and simply become present… receiving the feeling of yourself as a great vessel that unifies the forces of spirit and matter here and now.
Honor this most cherished role and right you have to discover how spirit and matter dynamically work within and through you. Look to your feet and notice the heavens below… look to the sky and see the soil of the earth within stars, clouds, sun and planets.
Breathe in the non-static forces of life moving, changing, unknowing, flowing into the next form… and feel how you are a part and source of this and so much more. Breathe in such simplicity… into your EarthHeart vulnerability.
Om Shanti -SW. You have come to do this — it is your purpose because holy consummation is my only outcome. Burn the world of my mind send the earth of my belly into scorching flames deep, red, wild, untamable. It feels I will die never recognize this being I claim as Self again. You destroy the world I have lived in I consent, in trepidation. We come undone as I follow the spiral claiming the I that knows how to see without need to explain.
How this union has tempted me. I felt protective… thought it was for the world, afraid embodying my own wild fire would destroy the earth leave everyone homeless and hungry desperate and alone. Sabbatt Journeys A timer beeps and brewing coffee replaces the smell of cool fresh air. I can hear the coffee maker gurgling away in the kitchen. Better get the Hubby up You will miss the fun. Depends on what you mean by fun. I mean dressing up all warm and festive. The Hubby wears his best kilt for the occasion.
I don my bowler and putting a sprig of hawthorn in the hat band. Then I grab a travel mug full of coffee for the road and a flask full of single malt to share with friends.
To keep the morning chill away of course. Outside in the cool of the wee hours, I stop to wash my face in the clean, May morning dew. This is part of the tradition on May Day, and it links me to my ancestors. From an open window I can hear the first furtive chirping of birds as the scent of dew and wet earth fills my nostrils.
I try to open my eyes but they are glued shut. May Day. I open my bleary eyes, and click on the bedside lamp. Soooo tired. We went to bed at midnight, after an evening of ale with friends at the pub. Like good Celts we started the eve before. I lie in bed a little longer, wishing I had gone to bed at 8pm instead of midnight. Young couples and old couples, single folks, children and babes who rose up from their beds to witness the rising of Sunna. We mark this day with the joyous sound of concertina, fiddle and drum.
The Morris dancers clashing with sticks or swords. Happy people dancing around the Maypole, twisting and turning. Weaving, and laughing. The song birds lustily singing high in the trees all the while. The eastern sky turning golden as May Day dawns, cold dew yet clinging to the wild roses bloom.
Then suddenly the sun crests triumphant over Mt. You and so many others connected by this magic, down through time. At this time of year the winter sewn wheat covers the fields like a green carpet. The hedgerows are lush with new vegetation and alive with the chatter of nesting birds.
In the orchards the bees are busy flying from bloom to bloom. Sunna has returned to warm the land. The season of work begins, of planting, reaping, preserving, and herding.
After a long, cold winter our ancestors, from the Italic peninsula to the British Isles, held rituals and festivals to honor this time of year. To the Celts this festival was Beltane, a high holy day that marked the start of summer and the start of battle season.
To the Romans it was the month of Maius; it started with the Floralia a celebration of the blossom Goddess Flora, and ended with the Ambarvalia, or purification of the agricultural fields.
We still honor this season, this holytide of passion, warmth and life. The pre-Christian rites have been distilled down through a filter of time and place to become the folk traditions we know today.
Yet at its heart is the ancient need to celebrate the rising life force. To the secular world this need is met by the festival days of May Day and Walpurgisnacht. For Neo- Pagans it is one of the holy days when the secular and the overtly pagan come together and cultural heritage overlaps with spiritual traditions.
Others believe it has roots in a more pagan past. Morris dancing is danced in America not so much as a ritual dance but as a fun activity and a performance art.
A team will typically dance in a few traditions; a particular style of dancing that comes from a specific village. Newly created dances are also often influenced by a particular tradition.
For many years now I have made getting up at the crack of dawn on May Day morning part of my Beltane tradition. To go and watch the Morris dancers, grown men and women leaping around waving hankies and bells. They perform intricate dances, waving ash sticks in the air; they bring them down to clash together, with a shout, the dancers leap into the air. The higher the dancers leap the higher the crops will grow they say. Then everyone heads off to a day filled with dancing, ending at the pub to sing songs and drink ale.
Where it did it come from? No one knows for sure, but scholarly types within and without the folkdance world have their theories. Some people would claim that there must have been something before Morris under another name. Whatever it may have been, if it ever existed, its function in society was absorbed by the Morris, not the other way around. What exactly is Morris Dancing? I think this passage from the website of the Renegade Rose Morris explains it better than I could. Morris is often danced in conjunction with those events.
Some people believe that Morris. As to the origin of the dances, this is a matter of continuing dispute and argument. Recent historical studies place the earliest Morris records in the time of Henry VII , and firmly in with They are all participating in a cultural tradition, one that is a hell of a lot of fun.
Here in Portland we have several excellent Morris Dancing sides or troupes who uphold the tradition of dancing in the May. These groups dance at many cultural events in and outside the area, Folklife Festival up in Seattle being one of the biggies. All of these people love what they do, happily giving their energy to the dance.
From the Court it seems to have spread into popular entertainment, first in large houses, then to village celebrations, where it became associated with Church Ales and other seasonal festivities. In the s Morris was also a European phenomenon with versions in other European Court entertainments.
Before the fifteenth century? Who knows? When folk tradition and spiritual ritual start to merge. Beltane has arrived. The dancers get up even earlier than I, to dress in their ritual garb, gather their families, musical instruments, and their strength. It has come, in the hearts of many, to symbolize something magical and connected somehow with our pagan past. To celebrate the holy days, and turning of the seasonal wheel.
Does it make my crops grow? I say yes, yes it does. Because good ritual, or ritual performance, filled with energy and passion will tap into the forces of life. Or wake up the Gods and landspirits Even if some people are uncomfortable with that.
Rose Test Garden in the West hills of Portland. A few are even hostile to the idea. However some Morris dancers are overtly and Led by their Teazer, or handler, to the throbbing drums and singing of the May Day song.
It can be nippy up there on the hill. I would also recommend a chair to sit on. People gather in the upper section of the International Rose Test Garden around 5am ish, near the fountain and the Gift Store. Dancing starts with the Abbotts Bromley at am. Give it a Google, and check out the map for directions. Park by the tennis courts on SW Kingston Ave.
Look for people wearing bells and ribbons. They are the dancers they know where to go, just ask. Check out these link to the sites of the Morris sites mention here, and for some links to other events relating to Beltane and May Day.
In Scotland, on Beltane eve, throngs of people gather for the massive, throbbing, sacred drama that is the Edinburgh Fire festival, to await the return of the May Queen and Her retinue. Thousands of people and all the forces of nature process to the top of Calton Hill to take part in the mysteries of Beltane. It is a truly spectacular and powerful rite. There are two Osses, or Horses, who.
Check your herbs…. What was served at Pre-Christian Celtic feasts? What did ale taste like, say, in BC? In what I hope will be an ongoing series I will examine ancient brewing, with emphasis on, but not limited to, Northern European traditions.
With a balance between history, folklore, seasonal relevance and practicality I want to produce recipes that capture the essence of the ale and mead of long ago but can be easily replicated at home with minimal equipment. In this first installment I want to focus on traditional wedding-feast fermentations in honor of Beltane and the union of the God and Goddess celebrated at this time.
I ran across this excerpt from the Finnish epic The Kalevala, illuminating the use of a mix of barley, hops and honey to produce a wedding brew.
From The Kalevala, c. Osmotar, beer-preparer, Placed the honey in the liquor; Kapo mixed the beer and honey, And the Wedding beer fermented; ……….. Time had gone but little distance, Scarce a moment had passed over, Ere the heroes came in numbers, To the foaming beer of Northland, Rushed to drink the sparkling liquor Braggot A beer-mead hybrid: barley, hops and honey, is called Braggot.
Dryer than mead with honey flavor and hop bitterness, braggot is a beautiful thing. Any place beer and mead were made, braggot was likely made too. A popular feature in traditional northern brews, possibly predating the use of hops, is juniper. In addition to its unique flavor juniper has in many cultures been associated with purification, cleansing and the banishment of bad spirits. Juniper is sometimes thrown on Beltane fires to increase their purifying powers.
Indeed juniper has antiseptic qualities and these beliefs possibly arise from the observation that when used in brewing the rate of spoilage of the beer decreases. Heat water in large at least 4 gal pot. Place melanoidin malt in muslin bag and steep while water heats up. Remove grain before water boils. Add malt extract and honey to the hot water, stirring to dissolve. Add 1 oz blackberry leaves at 50 minutes 10 minutes after start of boil 1 oz each of juniper berries, rosehips, blackberry leaves and hops 0.
After an hour cover, cool and transfer into your waiting fermenter. I dump it through a strainer to aerate it and to get all the bits out.
If you used a boil pot too small to boil a full three gallons, you may want to add additional water at this time. When cool, pitch your favorite yeast. Before people understood about yeast, fermentation was generated from yeast on equipment, in the environment or from the residue of a previous batch. I pitch about ml 1 cup dense cell mass for a 3 gal batch. After fermentation slows, between five days and a week after start, transfer braggot to a sanitized fermenter.
Place remaining ingredients into a sanitized mesh bag and throw them in! You may want to weigh this down for maximum utilization. I have a nice chunk of tumbled quartz I think excels at this. Whatever you Boil water, honey and sugar. Place lemons in sanitized use, make sure you can 1. When cool pitch yeast. After one week add with your brew. Lots of the 1 cup honey dextrose, place five raisins in each bottle and bottle the aroma of the juniper, 12 oz white sugar mead.
This process raisins makes up for that. My braggot is still fermenting at time of writing. Three thousand years after The Kalevala, mead is still popular in Finland and is still the drink of choice on Vappu, the Finnish term for May Day.
Happy brewing! Katie Simpson Spain artistic life. Having grown up in a small forested community next to the salad bowl of america, this seems a perfect spot for me.
Being in the midst of so much growth, taking care of so many plants, gives me strength, inspiration and peace. I have been an activist, an educator, a scholar.
I enjoy working with the elements to create life, this gorgeous biological process which constantly changes us and our world. The growing changing world gives me plenty to work with. I love making. I love painting, illustration, sculpture; the process of making, that magic that emerges with creation.
I studied art at Portland State University, and have since shown art consistently in many various venues. I recently painted a huge body of abstract acrylic landscapes, as well as simultaneously creating a large series of abstracted plant sculptures from reclaimed plastic bags.
I recently found organic farming. That damp bark scent redwoods drying in sideways sunlight that afternoon — walking toward the hilltop. Above the seeping spring. Like my dreams. The ocean coming miles to meet us. Sweet swollen creeks over all these years built thick bars of mud and stone in the trees.
Cobbled bottles and lacey cans rusting between roots. The bee boxes are gone, the koi and the house on stilts. No boards remain. Fallen porches and plastic tarped roofs, in the dark below these tall trees. Still the spanish moss, the oaks, the oxalis, pebbled with redwood cones. Community Perspectives strength and in personal grace-- and to appreciate coming face to face with our deeper selves.
Who are you, when everything else is stripped away? It was only when I was nearly killed, and escaped with my life, that I came to truly appreciate being alive, to appreciate each breath I take as a bit of grace in my life. I have to face my problems, and work through them, and move past them, in order to live the life I want. What a gift that realization was. Knowing myself, being honest with myself, and appreciating what I am actually capable of quite a lot, really Such a bit of grace in my life.
For example, at work one day he was asked to get a couple of extra radios for his crew. Radios that everyone hates and wants to replace because they are constantly breaking. My friend picked up five radios, checked their battery levels, and distributed them-- keeping one for himself.
And to top it off, his radio was knocked off its clip during a climb, and shattered. He sees this as two examples of very bad luck. So although the experience itself was shattering-- what it shattered was my acceptance of a life half-lived.
It shattered my willingness to put myself in dangerous situations, and pretend everything was okay. A life in which I actually like myself, and am intentional about my choices, and am open to the possibility of something more. A life that continues to unfold. A hard life, but a life in which every day holds wonderful possibilities, and opportunities, and challenges.
An authentic life. No harm done. I see it as a bit of luck, really. Every day is full of possibilities for appreciating what we have, learning something new, and seeing the grace that fills our lives. We can choose to see our life experience as difficult and fraught with frustrations-- or we can choose to see the bits of grace that help us overcome those difficulties, and that inject our world with some wellplaced humor.
I have finally taken responsibility for my own happy endings. I know that— because of the strength and grace needed to survive those experiences and overcome them —I like who I am today a whole lot better than who I was before. More willing to trust that good given out will return, and that. How funny that the broken radio was the one to get smashed! Now, there are terrible parts. Horrible situations and painful outcomes. Moments when we just want to curl up in a ball and scream until it all fades away.
To grow in I could not have survived this long without them. And for that sure knowledge, I am grateful, too. What life do you want to live? What lessons do you want to keep, and what experiences do you want to overcome? Are you willing to look for the greater good, or are you stuck tallying up all the little bads?
In my perspective, life is worth celebrating! And every day offers us a choice of paths to take. Be Well. Staci Elliott --www. Community is an interactive, cooperative effort. Like family members, we get along with some members better than others. We have more in common with some than others. We spend more time with some than others. Sometimes we have issues or problems among us.
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