Cultivate Harmony

In search of clarity? Me, too. Here's a Lau Tzu quote and a new meditation/poem to help us on our quest.

In Japan, 2009. photo by Emily Erwin.

Cultivate harmony within yourself, and harmony becomes real;
Cultivate harmony within your family, and harmony becomes fertile;
Cultivate harmony within your community, and harmony becomes abundant;
Cultivate harmony within your culture, and harmony becomes enduring;
Cultivate harmony within the world, and harmony becomes ubiquitous.

Live with a person to understand that person;
Live with a family to understand that family;
Live with a community to understand that community;
Live with a culture to understand that culture;
Live with the world to understand the world.

How can I live with the world?
By accepting.

-Lau Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching



In waiting for opportunity, I've denied it.
Fearing failure, I've dismissed success.
In struggling for ease, I've crafted difficulty.
Acquiescing, I've withheld my truth.
Asserting ability, I've forgone capacity.
Attempting to contain, I've lost control.

Welcoming humility, I dismiss failure.
Acknowledging fear, I banish shame.
Resisting action, I bypass reaction.
Accepting weakness, I allow release.
Declining responsibility, I dispel obligation.
Avoiding attention, I circumvent tension.

Imbalanced, I allow myself to fall.
Forgoing power, I regain self.

-a meditation on clarity, March 28, 2011
  

Trying Times (Keep on Trying)

Thank you to everyone who spoke out against the deregulation of Roundup Ready alfalfa. I appreciate your support, phone calls, and shared outrage and concern. I can't help but feel extremely disappointed by -and in- our government at this time, and the short-sightedness that led to a decision that is so obviously dangerous to our environment, food supply, economy, and the health and well-being of not only Americans, but all our relations, across the globe.

At the same time as this is happening, though, I am encouraged by people's interest and creativity regarding ways to grow, support, sustain, and "green up" their local communities.

The paradigm is shifting; I can feel it. Not everywhere, and certainly not all at once, but it is happening, and in enough different and symbiotic ways that I remain hopeful and loving despite this calamitous setback. We CAN join hands. We CAN open our hearts. We CAN reshape the patterns that no longer serve us, welcoming in a new day of service, understanding, and respect for others and ourselves.
We are not waiting for change, we are changing. We are growing. And once again, we are holding the line of Light against what seems like the darkest part of an unending night; keeping the cold at bay with nothing but the warmth of our beating hearts. Yours in faith,

Blackbird's Daughter

Living In Season (also, some nifty news & NOFA notes)...

...all brought to you by your favorite vagabond herbalist, who finally got some business cards printed up, just in time for this year's Northeastern Organic Farming Association winter conference. Also handy as I travel down to Mexico this Friday.

Did I say Mexico? I meant Mexico. Viva la aventura!

Let's do a little backup, catch up, "what the heck has Blackbird's Daughter been doing for the past month and a half, 'cause it sure as shooting wasn't running a blog" Q&A, shall we?

The quick answer is that Blackbird's Daughter has been trusting in the slow, dark, incubatory energy of the post-Yule, pre-Imbolc season, that's what.

The longer answer is that I've also been working incredibly hard to envision and craft what the next growing-cycle of my life will look like, while also striving to stay grounded and present in the here-and-now.

The tricky part of this late-Winter, early-Spring time (and yes, according to the Euro-pagan -for lack of a better phrase- calendar, it is now early Spring!) is that there's not a whole lot you can actually do, other than wait to see how all those bulb crops come up, tighten your belt, plan out your new plantings, and enjoy the quiet of the woods. Sure there's lots of stuff like missing buttons and old mail and the back of the refrigerator to attend to, and that's all fine and good and necessary, but it doesn't have the same feel of easy production as, say, a few months from now, when you won't be able to set foot outside without walking over parties of tender, delicious little baby dandelions and plantains and other weedy delectables, all popping their nutritious and impossibly green little selves out of the ground and shaking their little baby groove things in the wet and warming air. I don't even know what to call them, they're so many and cute and everywhere, like a blanket of tiny green rainbow gatherings with miniature drum circles and euphoric ant dancers all over the place. Those ecstatic, brave little plant-friends aren't just adornment for the lush and muddy soil, they are a full-on, plan-ahead, bring-the-kids Event; a not-to-be-missed Happening unto themselves.

But of course, that time is not this time, and this time is, by most accounts, pretty darn stark. Money's tight. The apples are wrinkled. There are only so many root vegetables you can cook in so many ways before you find yourself re-rummaging through the back-of-the-cupboard international cookbook pile, desperate for any legume-based culinary inspiration, and even those $5.99 boxes of insipid, pinkish strawberries start to look like a possibility.

Luckily for us, it's not actually that long a season. I know, I know, I can feel readers' polar-fleece-lined indignation from here, but bear with me on this one:
I'm not saying that almost six months of cold isn't a long time - I'm saying that it isn't just one extended limbo of non-growth and desolation. What we think of as "Winter" is actually comprised of multiple seasons: Winter (from November 1 through January 31), and Spring (Feb. 1 through April 30). This doesn't show up on the current American (political) calendar, but then neither does Presidents' Day on mine, so I guess we're even. (For the full and righteous eco-faith shebang, you gotta git on over to the Mystic's Wheel of the Year - go on, git!)
The way I've taken to viewing the year means that while lots of folks are bemoaning a dull and dreary landscape, I'm taking emotional refuge in a richly diverse series of gloriously minute shifts and soul-expanding beauty. Look at it this way:
When the year ends at Samhain (October 31), we have three months to reflect on and cast off the old patterns of the previous year before Spring is born at Imbolc (Feb. 1). Now that Spring is here and the castings of the previous year have fully sunk into the earth to fertilize the new one, we can look forward to the growth that is quickly working its hidden magic beneath the soil. The past few months have been a time to let go and relax into the greater cycle, acknowledging that we've accomplished all we could with last year. It's done. Let it go. It's time to allow ourselves to have faith in what's new.In the counseling world, this would be considered the Season of Closure, followed by the Season of New Beginnings. (Mumma, I'm giving this one to you- the "Mental Health Wheel of the Year" - see bottom of post.)

There's powerful medicine in this particular season of darkness, but if we're not used to living cyclically, it can be a time of great depression and emotional difficulty. We can remedy that by 1) accepting the Truth that nature, the planet, and our bodies are telling us, and 2) letting go of the rigid expectation that we strive for chronic consistency. This (often self-imposed) drive for uniformity & peak performance is akin to planting a tree and then expecting it to take root, acclimate to its new surroundings and climate, bud, blossom, bear fruit, produce sap, store nutrients for later, use those nutrients, photosynthesize, grow a healthyMycorrhizal network, interact with said network, grow taller, insulate itself from cold, feed millions of critters (both minuscule and large) etc etc etc....all at the same time. We wouldn't expect that of our plant allies, so why on Earth do we expect it of ourselves?
This sort of seasonal disconnect isn't just unrealistic on a personal level, it's incredibly unhealthy systemically, culturally, and planetarily, and it's a recipe for exhaustion, burn-out, illness, and a whole host of other unnecessaries.

So while it's true that I've been staying busy bopping up and down New England, selling my car, reconnecting with my amazing and talented sister-goddess (you can find her amidst the vanilla-scented cloud over at Life Is Short. East Dessert First.), planning for a spur-of-the-moment trip down South to explore the Curanderismo (herbal medicine) of Mexico, attending the NOFA Winter Conference, and planting seeds of possibility for this summer, I've been consciously working at respecting the fact that this particular liminal time in my life is both necessary and healthy. And you know what?

It's working.

I've been in Vermont for eight years now, and the longer I stay, the shorter the winter feels, and it's got nothing to do with global warming. It's the fact that I quit my jobs and got out of my car.

Seriously.
Here's what my old Winter schedule used to look like:
-Get up in the dark.
-Drive down gray city roads lined with gray, exhaust-covered snow to my gray and green place of employment.
-Stay inside for the entire time it was light out, with occasional breaks to accompany students somewhere or dash across the parking lot for a pre-meeting cup of coffee.
-Drive the same gray route home in the deepening dusk.
-Repeat.

Here's a sample of what it looks like now:
-Get up when I want.
-Work for someone else when I want.
-Work for myself when I want.
-Go outside when I want.
-Travel when I want.
-Repeat (when I want).

This new schedule leaves me very broke, extremely open to possibilities, intensely aware of my choices & challenges, and pretty darn happy. It forces me to be consciously vulnerable. It lets me be stressed out in way that I have control over changing. It teaches me to breathe.

And for the first time since I was a kid, it gives me the opportunity to really live with and in my surroundings, experiencing the climate and ecosystems the way we used to, from our feet on up.

On that note, I'd like to offer a huge thanks to NOFA and all the amazing agriculturally-minded folks that attended this year's Winter Conference.
Thanks for bringing the median age of farmers down for the first time in over 40 years. Thank you for revitalizing our soil and keeping our food chain real, healthy, and local. Thanks for taking on the absolutely critical role as the next generation of farmers, growers, bee-keepers, and more. Thanks for following your passion.

I guess the long answer to the question that started this all - What have I been doing? - is simply that. Following my passion. It's all I know how to do. But I do it well.

The Mental Health Wheel of the Year

In which Seasonal Affective Disorder is not an illness, but a positive sign of unconscious connection to our animal, place-based Selfhood; a "sane response to an insane world"; a 'symptom' of deeply-rooted wellness and an opportunity to grow and live in synchronicity and ease with Nature.

Samhain Season – active (act of) change making

Winter Solstice – closure

Imbolc Season– planning and readiness, new beginnings

Spring Equinox – new changes, skill growth, reflection on new needs

Beltane – big new change/awareness of possibilities/fertility of choice

Summer Solstice – maintenance/balance

Lammas – harvesting new changes

Autumn Equinox –reflection, readiness for change

For those who don't know, my mom is a pretty amazing holistic mental health counselor. She founded a practice called Liminal Therapy, where she references things like the hero's journey and helps her clients change "I should really..." to "I could really...". Here's a quote from her:

“Liminality”
Refers to the middle stage of change, the threshold between what was, and what is yet to be.
It is when we are forced by circumstance or choice to leave what is familiar; to journey into a place of uncertainty. It is a normal part of being human.

So inspiring! Anyway, I bet she does amazing stuff with this one :)

Backstory, Bounty, and Blessings from the Universe (sometimes painful, always good)

A great big "Thank You!" to whoever slipped fifty dollars into my coat pocket at some point between Georgia and Mississippi. Seriously? Seriously. I'm tickled and humbled and totally grateful.

Everyone keeps saying these adventures of mine will make a great book, but I'm pretty sure the above example and the following Cliff's Notes version sum it all up:

I travel. I give away herbs. I open my heart, strangers open their homes, and miracles occur. Together, we turn Enough into Plenty.

How far-out awesome is that?

................................................

Of course, that's not the full story.

A year ago I told my students I was leaving.

I didn't tell them how sick I'd gotten; how my adrenals were shot and my heart was heavy and I could barely make it to 2:15 before collapsing at my desk. I didn't tell them what I couldn't yet tell myself; that my six-year relationship was also reaching its desperate, terrifying, life-altering end, and with it, all the dreams and stability my partner and I had worked so hard to craft. I didn't tell them how hard I was trying to hold things together, or how scared I was of not knowing what would come next, or how I was so busy vacillating between euphoric and desolate, I couldn't tell if my inner self was singing, screaming, or just plain numb.

Instead, I told them how much I loved them, that I was looking forward to traveling and cooking and learning about plants, and I hoped someday they'd do the same.

I had no idea that three months later, I'd find myself on the other side of the world, prostrate and sobbing before the Goddess of Compassion. Or that three months after that, I'd move to a tiny, one-room cabin at the edge of the woods, throw myself into a new job, and leave three months after that, so I could spend the next three working my way from Pennsylvania to Mississippi, cooking breakfasts for strangers out of my car and dispensing tinctures and chocolates, bath salts and teas, from the depths of an ever-rotating reserve.

A season of death. A season of germination. A season of growth. A season of change.

Once again, we've come full circle, and I find myself marveling at the painful, wounded, necessary place I was in back then, and how little it resembles the (sometimes) painful, (mostly) healthy, and completely necessary place I've arrived at now.

Then again, a year ago, I still thought the right combination of willpower, stick-to-itivness, and emotional duct tape could keep the swiftly severing threads of my chosen life-rope from snapping apart. A year ago, I had no idea that in the end I'd find the strength to saw through them myself, choosing to lay the clean-cut ends down with love and reverence, rather than tear myself ragged in a futile tug-of-war against the inevitable.

I remember driving through the frozen streets of Burlington, singing and re-singing the same two lines of a song I've yet to complete:

I had nothing left to cling to
once my bridges were all burned
I felt ashes slip through my fingers
each a lesson that I'd learned.

................................................

Change can be a scary thing. Sometimes it manifests as a choice, and other times, it leaves us gasping and flailing, scrambling to stay upright in a newly-overturned world. Whether we're responding or reacting, anticipating or recovering, it's all part of the Journey. No one's immune. No one's exempt.

And no one's alone.

Namaste,

Blackbird's Daughter

PS- Funny how the other definition of change - the leftover bits of riches that most of us have scattered through our pockets and cars, the dull and shiny pieces we pool together when we're desperate and worried that we don't have enough - means pretty much the exact same thing.

Bits o' Wisdom & Crumbs of 'Huh': part 1

It won't go in words but I know that it's real...

-Willie Nelson, Still Is Still Moving To Me

Brook (Woodstock, NY)

Long ago and far away, the favored servant of a favorite king was shopping in the marketplace when he came face to face with Death. The two stared at each other in surprise before the man, recovering his wits, ran to the king and begged the use of his fastest ship, "for death," he concluded, "is surely out to get me."
With the king's blessing, the man saddled the king's fastest horse and rode to the harbor, whereupon he set sail for a foreign land. Arriving in port the following week, the man stepped off the boat and onto the pier, only to find Death standing there, waiting.
Sighing, the man bowed his head in resignation, then looked up with a question.
"Before you take me, I have to know - why did you look at me so strangely that day in the marketplace?"
"I was surprised to see you there," she replied, "For I knew we were to meet here today, and I could not fathom how you'd manage to arrive in time."

-my retelling of Fudail ibn Ayad's "When Death Came to Baghdad" (9th century)

.........

So, remember my plan from a couple weeks ago, the one where I'd go to a Zen Monastery in New York where I'd find a Messenger who'd impart some sort of divine, critical wisdom?

Turns out he was waiting in a garage in New Jersey.

No, seriously.

But first...

...After traveling from Bard to Mt. Tremper, only to not find the monastery, I held my own services in the woods. By which I mean the woods talked and I started to listen. What exactly did they say? How to "draw out" the arthritis from my hand by breathing in different patterns. How to receive blessings from certain place-energies, where the trees lean together to make pyramids with their bodies. How to look underneath horizontal branches to reveal the paths you might not otherwise see.

Believe me when I say that I know how strange that sounds. I, maybe more than most, have spent a good chunk of my life worrying at the line between what's Sensible and what Makes Sense, balanced nervously between what I experience as truth and what I know I can talk about without people thinking I'm unable to distinguish between reality and imagination.
These days, in some ways, that may be the case -but only because I've worked to become both practical in my methods, and expansive in my approach. And in doing so, here's what I've learned:

1. Reality is obviously a web of illusions, individually and collectively crafted.
2. Truth exists in fiction, parable, myth, religion, poetry, art, and dreams, and does so in quantities far greater than any one person's waking reality could ever hold.
3. The imaginative and magical worlds are valid, significant, and real.
4. There are myriad ways of accessing and experiencing knowledge and wisdom from the Collective, as well as those realities beyond the ones we're most familiar with. Every faith has them. Every lay person has access to them. From meditation to mitzvot to medicine, to just stumbling into the right place at the right time, we're constantly presented with opportunities to connect with the rest of existence, to establish and reestablish the little root-tendrils and hand-holds that bind us all together.
5. The old phrase "all the Gods are one God, and all the Goddesses one"? True dat, yo.

I have a degree in Transpersonal and Counseling Psychologies, and the more I travel and talk to people about their experiences of reality, the more I learn that I've got about half a degree I don't understand. I'm tempted to go back to Burlington College and take up Consciousness Studies.

But back to my story. I should point out that I don't know how or why any of the things I learned in the woods the other day work. But I don't doubt that they do, and I'm sure that if I were to search around a little bit, I'd be able to find several cultures and faiths that understand those bits o' wisdom as common knowledge. "What, you mean you don't get a tingly, breezy sort of feeling when you walk under those trees? Get out, everybody feels that."
So remember the first lesson the trees shared, the one about breath and healing? That one's really interesting. I bet it's entirely possible to do a lot of healing with bones and joints through different breath-work; that it's an entire field of medicine, like homeopathy or chiropractic. Does anyone out there have any info on this? Maybe you've heard of some shamanic practice or folk medicine that sounds familiar? I am so curious, and it's so obvious that what I've got is the most cursory, minute bit of elementary knowledge.

Anyway, if this reminds you of anything, please call me.

To be continued...

dipping into the collective unconscious... (Boston, MA)

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

-from The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

Don't believe what you saw, believe what you see.

-M.M.

My time in Massachusetts was...unexpectedly intense.
I spent a week staying with an old friend and his loverly roommates (you guys rock!! also, James, whatever chemicals were in that leather-softening spray are amazing - my belt feels like butter), exploring the area, talking with interesting people, and making some wonderful new friends. Of course, Mark (who is not just an old friend, but also an old flame) and I spent far too much time arguing about the fact that we believe the same stuff, but arrive at our understanding of Reality from Entirely. Different. Directions.
In all fairness, we hadn't actually had any of these conversations in a decade, and that's a long time to arrive at our own, seemingly unique perspectives. We're also pretty stubborn, touchy people. Which might explain why it took the same amount of time for God to create the world as it did for me to say, "I'ma shut up and let you talk. Tell me what you think I need to know."
From now on, whenever I (re)meet folks, that's gonna be my new line:
"Hi, it's nice to meet you. Tell me what you think I need to know."

In addition to all of that fun stuff, though, I spent most of my time in Boston thinking about the nature of duality, and whether or not the concept is more illusion than fact, which is something I'd never pondered before, and which has opened up far more questions than I know how to ask, let alone answer.
The idea of polarity and opposites is so ingrained; I always took it for granted as one of those universal truths: male/female, macro/micro, good/evil, etc etc.... All of these existed -in my understanding- at different ends of various spectrums, with most things falling somewhere in between.

Now I'm starting to wonder if that isn't entirely too simplistic.

Here's a quick sketch of an dream idea I had. I know I don't have all the words to describe it with or the knowledge to comprehend it, but maybe somebody will read this and clue me in:

Two entities, appearing as glowing balls of light and energy, interacting alone in a vast expanse of darkness: a -the- cosmic Syzygy. Together, they encompassed totality. They pulsated and shifted, and though their aureoles -auras?- merged, they themselves could never connect - this was an important part of their nature. Now here's where it gets strange: when one of them experienced itself as a Self -single, whole, autonomous - the other became Everything Else. And when I say everything, I mean everything - space, time, creatures, concepts, the dimensions that occur behind and outside of time - everything. And for the one who was a Self, the overwhelming sensation I got was of loneliness, and a sort of resigned, unending boredom - because when you exist forever, and are the only one of your kind, it doesn't matter whether you're embodying War, or Karma, or the Light That Shines Through A Birch Leaf At Six Thirty-Four On Planet X... you'll always be alone. And you can hop through as many other entities and experiences as you want, but you'll never experience unity - and that, that was a sad thing to see.
(Here's a sketch of the Single Consciousness wearing one of it's infinite masks):

When I first started thinking about it, the word that came to mind was Syzygy. I didn't know that syzygy had so many different meanings - in math, philosophy, poetry, zoology...
At the time, I only knew the Jungian definition, but when I started to research the word, I stumbled across the Gnostic one, and that seems a lot more accurate.

Anyway, here's what I've got: duality - the concept of opposites - is just that: a concept. Because in reality, if this model holds true, there's never any actual balance of power. It's all just a dance between two entities that together encompass more than any spectrum could ever contain.
My brain is not entirely sure what to make of this particular idea. Thoughts...?