Lover Earth

Earth Day is here, this annual time where we recommit ourselves to this planet, rededicating ourselves as planetary beings to the work of living well upon this planet. Earth Day also coincides with my wedding anniversary, and it isn’t lost on me that there is something resonate between these two observances that causes me to wonder: what if we weren’t proclaiming our commitment to Mother Earth, but rather trumpeting our affection for Lover Earth? 

Sit with this for a moment and reflect on the relational differences you have between your own mother and your most beloved. Personal Internal Family System dynamics aside, there is a sense that with mothers we experience a kind of unrestricted love that will pardon all affronts; whereas with a lover, there is a commitment that bends behaviors towards fidelity, respect, kindness, and support. I’ve certainly worked very hard to be celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary; being side by side with my husband today reflects investment in our interrelationship and in our mutual flourishing that looks different than the love I have for my mother. \What would change in your approach to Earth Day if you came to this day as an anniversary with your Lover Earth? Is there the possibility that we would recommit to our vows, doubling down on words that flame love, remembering that the two shall become one in this mystical union?

Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German mystic who throbbed with a Celtic worldview, understood the potential of this deep love affair with Lover Earth: “If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” Passion is different than duty or obligation. A passionate response is unreserved, unabashed, palpable, and heated. Our language for our beloved is infused with love. Desire drives us towards union. This is the kind of passionate unitive consciousness that lived within the Celtic spiritual soulscape, revealing an ecstatic interrelationship that was whispered with the sacred, wild world.

Mythologist Martin Shaw encourages his students to develop a practice of giving twelve secret names to the plants, animals or ‘things’ they encounter in nature and to speak those names out loud. It is evidenced that those that are in deep abiding love for the land they live upon have a hundred names for rain or twenty different names mountains or, at the very least, three different names for the spring time daffodil. In giving something a name, we deepen our relationship with it and create conditions for falling in love for you cannot love that which you do not know; and in finding many names we find ourselves watching, listening, thinking more deeply about that rain drop in the watershed, the mountains, or the spring flower — by engaging through language, we come to know it better—love it better. 

This Earth Day I encourage you to give this 12 Secret Names practice a try. Imagine speaking the names like you would to your beloved, to your Lover Earth, and witness the enlivening force that blooms between you. 

Michaelmas: Lay Down the Sword

We have come to the threshold crossing from Summer to Autumn. Wednesday, September 22 was the Autumn Equinox, a solar event that sees the light of day and the dark of night in equal balance. In pre-modern cultures, this cosmic crossing was celebrated with thanksgiving through harvest feasts, bon fires, and preparations for the darkening months to come. It was a time to gather together with community to participate in the rhythms of the calendar of earth. There was a deep sense that their celebrating mattered; that their noticing and knowing of the seasonal shift companioned the turning of the year. To not participate in some way with the calendar of the earth could mean witnessing the whole thing coming undone! By bringing in the harvest, they maintained an equilibrium resonant with the season. What has been been growing out there is brought inwards; the inner and outer worlds are held in balance and honored before giving fully into the fallow inward times of the deepening dark. And so the rituals mattered, the gathering was significant, the harvest had consequence. They understood that they were characters in the grand play of life; that they too were interfacing with ancient archetypes of dark and light, and how they journeyed through the story had import and magnitude.

tile at lincoln park, Seattle, WA (US)

And so myths and stories have swirled around this threshold time of gratitude and growing darkness. Pre-Christian stories mixed and melded with stories of saints and festival days. It is no wonder that around this calendar time of full harvest moons and Autumn Equinoxes that we celebrate Michaelmas, the Christian feast day of the archangel Michael celebrated on September 29th. Within the wisdom of this festival are themes of harvest and community, threat and injustice, and courageous bravery. It was common practice for the Christian church to “baptize” pre-Christian nature-based celebrations into the liturgical calendar with Christo-centric themes. Michaelmas is no different. This seasonal celebration sits squarely within the turning of seasons from Summer to Autumn, and resonates with the themes of light touring towards darkness, fear of the elements, and strength in community. What I truly appreciate about this particular feast day is not its place within Christendom, but rather the invitation into a mythopoetic imagination that invites some really good inner work that is seasonally based. 

As long sun-filled days turned to slanting shadows, the legends of St Michael--principal of angelic warriors, protector against night's darkness, and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels--were told around the bounty of harvest as a way of distilling the fear associated with the coming cold winter months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defence during the later months of the year. The epic heavenly battle against Lucifer and his dominions would be retold with light-filled swords slaying ghastly dragons, similar motifs as found in the tales of St. George and the Dragon. This story and celebration would encourage the "looking-to" for protection (the looking-to a good harvest, strong community, and faith in a Sacred Presence), the "looking-for" collective and individual strengths and the "looking-back" with thanksgiving and praise.
 

In Michael we engage the essence of the Hero archetype, one who’s cunning and keen ways would vanquish the dragon, keeping the community safe from harm. And in this story, like so many other tales that require a confrontation with the fearsome thing that resides in the dark, we witness the requisite energies of engaging our shadow-side, truly a perfect mythological picture of the balance of dark and light energies as we cross into Autumn and pay attention to the wheel of the year. 

tile at lincoln park, Seattle, WA (US)

Let’s revisit a basic understanding of what has traditionally been referred to as the Heroic Journey, the archetypal framework for most epic tales. Joseph Campbell's concept of the monomyth (one myth) refers to the theory that sees all mythic narratives as variations of a single great story. The theory is based on the observation that a common pattern exists beneath the narrative elements of most great myths, regardless of their origin or time of creation. However, Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, in some respects, fails to reflect the journeys taken by women or those who live closely to the patterns of the earth. Whereas the monomyth’s hero may be all about the EGO, we are left wondering in our current age, how does this impact the ECO? How does the story speak to the realities of the chaos of Covid and Climate Change? Campbell’s framework for the Hero’s Journey is inevitably associated with the values, conventions and perspectives of the sources from which it draws – and also, the values, conventions and perspectives which predominated at the time and in the place he was writing. And so the concept of ‘hero’ and, following from this, of heroic action, fitted perfectly with the dominant (American) Western culture of the day. There is a bit of dust on this way of reading to say the least!

 Mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie has argued that this traditional concept of the hero, and the heroic trajectory of Western civilization, is at the root of much that is wrong with the world. It reflects values that are patriarchal, conquering, oppressive and martial. Archetypal psychologist James Hillman attacked the concept of the Hero throughout his work, stating that it is egocentric, narcissistic, and self-referential. "Because the movement of classic heroism is forward and upward," he argued, "the most difficult of all tasks for heroic consciousness is looking inward."

 How do we make this pivot? How do we turn the heroic gaze inward, and what happens when we do? We are in desperate need to read and tell our stories through a post-heroic lens, one that deconstructs Campbell’s Descent claiming that it isn’t the dragon we are after, but rather our own wholeness. Blackie, would say that Post-heroic stories aren’t focused on individual glory; they’re focused on community. On diversity. “It’s not about slaying the dragon,” says Blackie, “but about harnessing his special skills – making him part of the team. It’s about understanding, and valuing, the black, feathery, croaking wisdom of a crow. It’s about living with a half-empty stomach so you can feed some of your porridge to the hungry mice – who, if you are lucky, will help you to sort the wheat from the chaff. Post-heroic stories aren’t about winning the hand of the simpering, golden-haired princess: they’re about kissing the boar-toothed, blue-faced hag.”

“What is inspired within ourselves and our communities when Michael chooses to not slay the dragon, but rather lays down his sword and offers the dragon soup?”

— Mary DeJong

A post heroic journey, or what we could even call an eco-journey is one that sees our bliss and the bliss of the world braided together. Our gaze must be inward, looking to the inner-soul world in which the story is unfolding, as a way to develop and form our soul life, our inner life. When we go through the archetypal stages of the heroic round with an inward gaze, it isn’t to further flame our dragon-like egos, but to align our rapture with the rapture of the world. And we recognize that this kind of unity cannot occur unless the dragon is met, greeted, and embraced; courted back into the halls that had at one time exiled it. 

We are at a time when the old tellings of stories no longer serve. And the great thing about myths is that they are dynamic and responsive to the contexts of our times and speak on behalf of the Earth. So, we get to participate in evolving these stories, telling them in ways that honor the season we are in, and pushing the mythic envelope to call forth the kind of heroes we so desperately need today. What is inspired within ourselves and our communities when Michael chooses to not slay the dragon, but rather lays down his sword and offers the dragon soup? When we conquer our fear with kindness, we engage in a powerful form of integration within our self, and transformation within our community. The post-heroic journey calls forth the prophet, and we see how this much-needed turn of this story echoes with the Hebrew prophets’ imagination for transforming beaten swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:4). 

This is the time of the year to greet the balance of dark and light within your community, and to participate in the shift of the seasons within yourself. But to perpetuate a fear of the dark and the unknown preserves a violent form of heroism that represents a story from the past. There is a new story forming from the Earth, one that requests that we court the exiled dragon, that we woo instead of subdue it. And when we live into this kind of story, a new kind of hero will emerge! A hero who brandishes the tools for the harvest and one that plants deep roots. 

Michaelmas: Embracing the Dragon

St. Michael | Watercolor | By River DeJong

Michaelmas is celebrated on September 29 and is the Christian feast day of the archangel Michael. Within the wisdom of this festival are themes of harvest and community, threat and injustice, and courageous bravery. It was common practice for the Christian church to “baptize” pre-Christian nature-based celebrations into the liturgical calendar with Christo-centric themes. Michaelmas is no different. This seasonal celebration sits squarely within the turning of seasons from Summer to Autumn, and resonates with the themes of light touring towards darkness, fear of the elements, and strength in community. What I truly appreciate about this particular feast day is not its place within Christendom, but rather the invitation into a mythopoetic imagination that invites some really good inner work that is seasonally based.

This traditional Celtic holiday associated with the Autumn Equinox. As long, sun-filled days, turned to slanting shadows, the legends of St Michael--principal of angelic warriors, protector against night's darkness, and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels--were told around the bounty of harvest as a way of distilling the fear associated with the coming cold winter months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defences during the later months of the year. The epic heavenly battle against Lucifer and his dominions would be retold with light-filled swords slaying ghastly dragons, similar motifs as found in the tales of St. George and the Dragon. This story and celebration would encourage the "looking-to" for protection (the looking-to a good harvest, strong community, and faith in a Sacred Presence), the "looking-for" collective and individual strengths and the "looking-back" with thanksgiving and praise.

While this festival has agrarian and pre-Christian roots, I greatly appreciate the challenge that it still holds for us today. I have been reaping the benefit of bounty a plenty this summer: berries, plums, tomatoes and herbs have piled themselves on our sun-drenched kitchen counter these warm months. But as my family and I enjoy this harvest, I am mindful of the lack that is present in the lives of so many today around the world. We all know and feel the tension that exists between our reaping while another is weeping and herein lies the proverbial dragon that makes this story of Michael a needed one, even in our one-stop-shop lives.

The mythic elements of this storied festival is also showing up in our mythic times and as social upheaval and climate chaos breath the fiery demands for systemic change. A foundational truth within a mythological world view is this: when we exile the beast, it does not go away. It grows and grows until it is a force which demands confrontation. This is the moment when we must contend with our past and courageously forge a new way forward. We are being called to courageously confront the dragon of our times: the beast that has grown out of the West’s illusion of separation. We can no longer ignore the fierce form that has emerged from the large scale exile that has occurred.

Dragons do exist and they lie in wait everywhere in all forms of injustice. This is environmental and climate chaos—forest fires, tropical storms, warming sea temperatures. The loss of life—both human and more-than-human alike—as a result of these human-caused natural disasters is absolutely a horrific injustice. This is the chronic and systemic injustice that continues to perpetuate oppression of our BIPOC brothers and sisters. This is governmental control that would seek to reduce freedom and democracy. This also looks like lurking overwhelm and preying despair, making victims of those without a voice to be heard. In our bounty, in our blessing, we are called to wield our swords of light on behalf of those who desperately need advocacy and speak for those who may not be able to even scream as the beast aims to gobble them up. We summon courage, we look-to the source of Love and Light and demand that our sword be as bright and bold as Michael's so that we can vanquish the dragons of this world, living forward with the possibilities of peace and justice, the possibilities of bounty, for all.

The traditions around the Michaelmas festival all come with delicious community sharing, this being the acknowledgement and celebration of the cyclical nature of the gifts of the Sacred Living Earth. So, while we traditionally gather to celebrate the harvest of the summer season and come together in strength of numbers to combat the darkness of the coming season, this year we must creatively create ways to enter into this mythological story—creating communion within our families in our local homescapes, and offering thanksgiving for a battle already won, the dragon already defeated.

Reflections 

As you move into the darker, quieter months of Autumn and Winter, what interior light invigorates and inspires you?  

Where do you draw strength for the courage to fight the dragons of your life? 

There is injustice that surrounds us in all our elements-from the earth, to the water, to our air, to all the creatures that live and breath here. For whom can you advocate in your community during these approaching seasons? 

Often our greatest fears and challenges are related to a part of ourselves who has been exiled. Like the dragon in many stories, this is a part of you who has been banished from community, from the Castle, from the Village. What would it look like to lovingly and carefully begin to court your dragon back into yourself, back into your “castle?” Can you befriend your dragon instead of besting it? And maybe, just maybe, that is the actual way to “beat” the dragon in the first place.

It is important to look back on our journeys and offer thanksgiving for the battles already won!  Can you share a "dragon-vanquished" story with someone in your community?

Our Favorite Dragon Books (or books that feature dragons)

Our family has been slowly collecting books about dragons for years. These books come out en masse in September in a specific basket and these are our go-to reads during the day. They spur conversations around what are the current dragons in our life, and how we understand ourselves in the context of community. The best of the books have the common thread of befriending the dragon, which is an integral part of our developmental journey. My children inherently resonate with the process of reconnecting to an exiled dragon and the courageous process of wooing it back into a relationship that is profound in its creativity and collaboration. The best stories are about how the dragon energy becomes in service to the whole community! Here is a list of our favorite current dragon books:

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
The Dragon Stoorworm by Theresa Breslin
Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon by Ute Krause
Tolkien’s World by Gareth Harrahan and Peter McKinstry
The Voyage of the Dawn Trader by C.S. Lewis
Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton
A Gold Star for Zog by Julia Donaldson
Sir Kevin of Devon by Adelaide Holl
The Land of Long Ago by Elsa Beskow
The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin
Saint George and the Dragon retold by Margaret Hodges
Waking Dragons by Jane Yolen
The Sunflower Sword by Mark Sperring

Dragon Bread & Soup

We are fortunate to celebrate the Michaelmas Festival with our Waldorf school community. Pre-COVID would have seen our eighth graders carrying large platters of homemade bread shaped in dragon forms, and our families gathered together to enjoy a potluck of soups. Top favorites for this seasonal celebration are Three Sisters Stew and French Lentil and Potato Stew. Enjoy these much loved recipes from our home to yours. Any bread recipe will work to create your own ferocious and delicious dragon bread! Create a festive meal to nourish you and fortify your courage for the months to come. Goodness knows we are in times where our courage is most needed!

Michaelmas Mandala

Go outside and co-create a nature mandala as a way to ground into your emplacement and call in the courage needed for these times. Much of what is occurring globally is the chaos that follows a prolonged exile. In many ways, this is the hard work of returning home: home to one another, ourselves, and our planet in ways that honor the interrelationship of all life. The practice of mandala making is a beautiful and mindful way to create this connection, and intentionally focus on the courage with which we must cloak ourselves in these times. As you create your circular form, imagine this as its own kind of nature-based Caim Prayer, or encircling prayer. Place the elements in a way that corresponds to the cardinal directions and call in courage from the North, South, East, and West. Imagine yourself at the center and that the plant world is showing up as sacred protectors offering you courage, besetting you with bravery, and reminding you that your strength is from communion.

Celtic Michaelmas Prayer

O Michael Militant,
Thou king of the angels,
Shield thy people
With the power of the thy sword,
Shield thy people
With the power of thy sword.

Spread thy wing over sea and land, East and west,
And shield us from the foe, from East and west,
And shield us from the foe.

Brighten thy feast From heaven above;
Be with us in the pilgrimage
And in the twistings of the fight;
Be with us in the pilgrimage
And in the twistings of the fight.

Thou chief of chiefs,
Thou chief of the needy,
Be with us in the journey
And in the gleam of the river;
Be with us in the journey
And in the gleam of the river.

Thou chief of chiefs,
Thou chief of angels
Spread thy wing
Over sea and land,
For thine is their fullness,
Thine is their fullness,
Thine own is their fullness,
Thine own is their fullness. 
Amen

-Celtic Prayer

Autumn Equinox: Healing Ritual with Elderberries

The feast day of Hildegard of Bingen (September 18), the harvesting of my elderflower bush, and the Autunmn Equinox (~September 21-23) are all aligned curiously close. The former invites us into the wisdom that coursed through the life of a particular life; the latter reminds us of the wisdom that runs through the rhythms of the seasonal world. What with the reality of COVID and forest fires in the mix, I can’t help but think that the best seasonal ritual for this Autumn Equinox is to be safely tucked inside in our kitchens, making up a batch of healing elderberry syrup.

Fire of the Holy Spirit,

life of the life of every creature,

holy are you in giving life to forms.

Rivers spring forth from the waters

earth wears her green vigor. 

—Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard is a personal heroine of mine. Her intimate connection to the land, understanding of Sacred imminence, knowledge of herbal healing, and bold teaching that all of nature is numinous made her a prophetic voice in her 12th century German time. Her place-based knowing is both timeless and universal, and offers us much in our current age.

Hildegard is a guide for how to live an ecstatic life. I do not believe that she was divinely chosen or any more unique than you and I. What she did do was fully give herself over to the magic and mystery of living an interconnected life with the land. And in this emplaced and enmeshed interrelationship, she became witness and conduit to vereditias, the greening power of God that flows through all of life. This is something that is for all of us! We need only get out to the garden, become intimates again with the plant world, and lean into the wild knowing that God is here, as present as the ground beneath our feet.

Hildegard as healer and mystic poses a challenge for us today. We have much to learn from the wisdom expressed in her visionary theology, which makes ecology a spiritual and social task. Hildegard lived in a right relationship with the natural world. She embodied a mutual meant-for-ness, and as a result of her sense of belonging to a place, she became a channel: the imminent sacred and the transcendent communicated to and through her. We each have this potentiality. If we could recover her ancient ways and methods of communing with the divine through our local lands, perhaps we too could develop a stronger prophetic voice and political agency to confront the destructive forces operating in our world today.

Hildegard is noted for having the first literary reference to the healing powers of Elderberry in her medical treatise, Physica. She lays out the healing benefits of this gorgeous berry that comes into fruit just around the time of the Autumn Equinox. In light of our times—global pandemic and the fires ravaging the West—it feels right to light up the stove instead of the bonfire, and create a healing remedy as a ritual for this turn of the seasonal year.

Homemade Elderberry Syrup

With the change of the seasons towards Autumn often comes the beginning of "the cold" season, the seemingly incurable cold that one gets with living in the damp Pacific Northwest. In addition to the common cold, we are also all living during a global pandemic. Never before has our health been so interconnected to the health and well being of one another. Our family has found that daily doses of Elderberry Syrup is just the remedy to keep wellness around a while longer, and fortify and nourish our bodies during this COVID era (in addition to wearing masks, physical distancing, and avoiding large crowds of course). Several years ago I planted our own elderberry patch and from this amazing bush we gather elder flowers in the summer for water infusions for a refreshing drink on a hot afternoon or an invigorating facial spritzer to calm sun-kissed skin. We also use the flowers to make a delicious speciality seasonal sugar for baking.

The berries are packed with antioxidants and flavonoids, and contain 87 percent of the daily value in vitamin C, and high amounts of vitamin A, potassium, iron, vitamin B6, fiber, and betacarotene. This is one amazing berry! Want to know something else interesting about this berrying bush? As a moniker, the term "elder" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aeld," meaning fire, because the hollow stems of this plant were used to gently blow on flames to intensify the fire (and yes, my children do this too!). Native Americans once used elderberry branches to make flutes, so the tree was sometimes called "the tree of music." I'm so grateful for my elderberry patch and for the health and happiness she shares with my family. In these ways, there is resonance with

Here is our favorite recipe for Elderberry Syrup: 

• Collect berries from bush after introducing yourself, asking permission and expressing gratitude. 

• For easy removal of berries from stems freeze first in a brown paper bag. A good shake will detach most berries from the stems.Those that do not detach easily with a shake can be easily plucked off the frozen stems with your fingers or fork. This is a meditative practice! Enjoy the work of this preparation. 

• For every cup of ripe elderberries add 1 cup of good filtered water to a stock pot. 

• Add a couple of cinnamon sticks. 

• Add a dash of cloves 

• Add a finger size of grated ginger. 

• Bring to the boil. 

• Then simmer (lid off) for 30-45 mins, (make sure it's not less time simmering or it won’t destroy toxins that will make you ill if you eat the raw berries) .

• Remove from heat.

• Now mash. 

• Strain into a mixing bowl through a fine mesh sieve. 

• Wait till mixture is a little cooler then add one cup honey and mix (the general ratio is 1:1:1, berries:water:honey). 

Pour into dark glass bottles or glass jars. Cap. Keeps in fridge for months.

A tablespoon a day for preventative measures. If you are sick then a few tablespoons a day until you are better. Various opinions on how long it lasts. Also delicious over vanilla ice-cream, drizzled over yogurt, or dashed in some sparkling water with a splash of cream for your own Hildegard Soda! 

“To be of the Earth is to know the restlessness of being a seed the darkness of being planted the struggle toward the light the pain of growth into the light the joy of bursting and bearing fruit the love of being food for someone the scattering of your seeds the decay of the seasons the mystery of death and the miracle of birth.”

— John Soos

Rewilding Rites-of-Passage Retreat

She’s had her eye set on the dagger for years. All our children receive a legitimate dagger at the turning of age 10 and my daughter has watched her older brothers receive theirs with a deep longing. Its a gift that is symbolic of a threshold crossing, a rite of passage that that facilitates the beginning shift from childhood into adolescence and ultimately into adulthood; a departure from the more childish realm of innocence and toys, to the territory of knowledge and the heavy weight of knowing their life force can be one that is destructive or regenerative. The weighty question behind this representative gift is, “Will you be a Life-Giver or a Life-Taker?”

My daughter has also always wanted to participate in my seasonal Rewilding Retreats, so we decided to create a Rewilding Rites-of-Passage Retreat for her at the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island. It was a weekend filled with ritual and ceremony, and activities to cultivate and center her intuitive senses of awe and wonder. This natural state of childhood is often the first thing to be abandoned as children come into themselves, and it is a state that I believe can remain intact. Our work as adults is to raise these children into young people who are connected to a sacred and enchanted world. Truly, our future depends on it!

Please enjoy a bit of a peek into the ceremony space of this rites of passage weekend. This is something that I’m feeling inspired to create for other parent/child dyads in the future—and possibly even with virtual resources so parents feel empowered to accompany their child through threshold crossings that preserve the child’s connection to the natural world, and witness their emergence and becoming.

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Opening Ceremony

Our arrival to the land began with the Rewilding Seven Directions Prayer, which includes a tribal land acknowledgment. This is a way to call in the unique forms and energy that Sacred Presence takes in the traditional forms of the cardinal directions, elements, seasons, and even our bioregions. We created a nature altar upon which we would place meaningful encounters with wild ones, as well as elements created during our retreat.

A walk through the woods began to ground us into the land, and to begin to practice an animate and enchanted worldview. We read the phenomenal poem, “Lost” by David Wagoner, and invited animal guides to accompany us, and sure enough, we were attended! My daughter, who has sadly never seen a real life frog, perceived 12 of them on our hike! We were both delighted and are learning more about frogs-their species, their habitat, and their sacred symbology as a result. Such a meaningful way to begin our attuning and you can already discern the pattern of noticing, begetting, knowledge, which begets love. This weekend was full of invitations to know more and subsequently love more—to delve into the inherent dignity of the earth body and all the wild ones as well as our own bodies and our wild selves.

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Garden Prayer Stick

The great ecotheologian Thomas Berry often would say that “its all a question of story.” What are the stories we tell? How are they functional? Maybe more importantly, how are they dysfunctional? We must take account for the stories we tell our children through our religious and spiritual traditions that cause them to separate from a love affair with our wild and wonderful world. We must change the stories that we tell that inform them that somehow their bodies are bad (sinful) and that the Earth is going to hell in a hand basket (fallen nature). It is critical we tell a new story.

So, we cuddled up and told stories. The myth of Fox-Woman-Dreaming was a soft and quiet call to my daughter’s wild self to never allow someone to exile or be repulsed by her truest nature. We spoke of the harm done by the Judaeo Christian creation story when the woman, Eve, is blamed for all things bad and distorted in human nature because she ate the apple. We shared apples as sacrament under the canopy of an old apple tree within a garden’s gated holdings, reclaiming our sovereignty and right to be back in the garden. We blessed her body and the Earth body speaking to its inherent goodness, and created Garden Prayer Sticks as a way to express this sacred and holy truth.

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The Story Staff

In preparation for a forest hike to her sit spot where she would receive her dagger, she made a Story Staff. The Story Staff is simply a stick that is selected to accompany and bear witness to their journey. The stick can be adorned with fiber color bands from which to tie in encounters within nature that spoke to them on their walk; leather (we used faux leather for her hand grip); and other elements.

This activity is a wonderful way to tap into the wisdom of the “songline,” a sacred path within the animist belief system of Indigenous Australians that would guide a person home. In terms of teaching a new story of belonging to herself, the Sacred, and this wild and holy world, the intention with the Story Staff is to elevate the practice of perceiving the wild guides that surround her and remind her always of her belonging—that home and heaven are actually here. This piece is a dynamic one that can continue to accompany children (or adults!) on their journeys and take up more feathers, fronds, or other items that tell her a story of her belonging, a truth that will always lead her home back to her true and wild self.

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The Dagger

The “main event” for this weekend long rite-of-passage is the gifting our child with a specially selected dagger. Completely not-child-proof, this becomes a symbol of their own readiness to wield an instrument that will either serve them by creating life, or sever their connection to others if they take it up to kill. Of course, this is all offered in language suitable to the child, but the weightiness of the gift is felt. This isn’t fun and games. This is a real and transformational gift that honors that the child now walks taller and with more options before them. Note on safety: our children have been participants in wilderness awareness schools for years and have received knife-safety training. We covered together the best practices of how to be well with a knife in hand. This is a gift that says, “You are old enough to go beyond the Village gates and out into the Forest to engage your transformation.”

After gifting the dagger, our daughter was invited to select a sit-spot, a place in which she would be present to herself, the dagger, and the more-than-human world for a couple hours. Ensuring she was set up well with water, snacks, warm layers, and an emergency whistle, I went a safe-distance away (within earshot but out of sight—for both of us). She wasn’t afraid, an emotional state that surprised both of us! I was witnessing such empowerment and a rapidly forming sense of self—incredible! I left her to Wren, Crow, Deer, and Frog after tearfully and joyfully singing The Lost Words Blessing song over her, a lovely and earthy-imaged song that captures the arc of a sacred journey.

When I returned to her some time later, she was in a state of complete calm. She wasn’t aware of how much time had past and showed me things about her dagger that she had explored with absolute confidence. Again, the strength of this symbol is not lost on me. In so many ways, she was showing me aspects of herself that she had never explored before, the gift of her own confidence being evidently clear.

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Moon Time Crowning

The girl becomes a maiden. Little Red Riding Hood goes into the Forest wearing the cape of innocence and, in the best told tellings of the tale, comes out of the woods wearing the pelt of a wolf. This time in the wilds with my daughter was a time to ritualize the coming-of-age time that is nearer than farther. In a soft space created by cabins, blankets, candles, rose tea, I washed her feet and and hands in rose oil and gave her a pedicure and manicure. The color pink was intentionally chosen to hold the echoes of the Pink Tent ceremonies that are created by elder women to honor the first menses of a young woman. It was a set apart time to speak together about the mysteries of love, and her power to to co-create and sustain life. Well versed in the phases of the moon and all her monthly names, we speak of menstruation in moon-time terms. She understands that her body too will wax and wane as it prepares to cradle life in her hips. We spoke positively of her sexual power and to see it as gift to self and gift to other—again the theme of the dagger came through: will you use this energy to bring life or to take it? As adults we are aware of how too often the sexual self walks the fine line of a dagger’s point and can easily fall to either side—regenerativity or destruction.

She walked the labyrinth as an outer representation of this inner journey. Walking in she carried her Story Staff and a stone to place at the center as a gift for the life she has been given. I met her at the center and anointed her with more rose oil and crowned her with this moon-time crown created by my amazing friend and proprietor of HexHouse Crowns. She walked back out of the labyrinth holding her crowned head high and a candle in one hand, walking with care to honor both the crown and the lit flame.

Reconnecting our body’s rhythms to the rhythms already existing in the natural world is a powerful part of rewilding. This is a conscious way we begin to weave our lives back into the whole, re-membering our bodies to the cycles that thrum throughout all of creation. By connecting the girl’s body to the moon not only makes sense to her storied imagination, it elevates her body’s rhythms to the cosmos. Her body’s capabilities are no longer seen with shame, but with starry-eyes. She and the moon move together!

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Closing Ceremony

We close ceremony-time with gratitude and by releasing all of the energies that we have called in. We offered our gratitude to the land that held us so well by co-creating a nature mandala and offering liturgy to the land.

The mandala, which is ancient Sanskrit for “circle,” is a symbolic circular design that portrays balance, symmetry, and wholeness. Mandalas are found in almost every culture, and can serve as a sacred reminder of the path we seek to walk. I see nature mandalas as a continuing practice of learning the land—connecting to the plant and tree life that make up my homescape, learning from them of the medicine and food they offer, leaning into their seasonal stories, remembering our interrelatedness and meant-for-ness. Its a time when we can consciously offer gratitude to the wild world for accompanying and witnessing our journey to a deeper sense of our belonging.

This is a practice of forming what theologian Steven Bouma-Prediger calls an ecological perception of place. To offer this way of seeing to our children is to gift them with a lens and way of being that will contribute to their flourishing selves and a future for our Sacred Earth that is flourishing as well.

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A Nod to the Important Details

Please don’t read this retreat as a perfect rite. I’m certain I didn’t do certain things well, or forgot about other elements entirely. My drum was damp and cold so wouldn’t work. Rain drops kept falling on the candle at the labyrinth’s center. I got us lost on our first afternoon’s hike. I stepped accidentally on one too many slugs much to my daughter’s disappointment. We did read almost half of Harry Potter’s Sorcerers Stone, ate chocolate and smoked gouda cheese, and gave in to cuddles whenever the fancy struck, which for my daughter is near all the time. In its imperfection, this time was near perfect for us, and my sense is that with your own intention and imagination, you too could create a meaningful rite as well.

Rewilding Wheel Seven Directions Prayer

Rewilding wheel mandala created by rewilding retreat participant Lisa decker

The Blessing to the Four Directions has its roots in Native American culture. It is centered on the belief that human beings are tied to all things in nature. It is this belief which assigned virtues to the four cardinal directions; East, South, West and North. When one prays to the four directions, it is a way to call in Spirit through the unique energies of the directions. It is also a prayer that is resonate with the Celtic Caim Prayer, or the encircling prayer. This is a way of praying that calls in Sacred Presence all around one, and literally asks for Spirit to be present at the front, back, sides—even above and below—of an individual. It is a prayer of protection and sets the expectation that Creator God will be present as both a shield of protection, and the intention that one will now move through the day in a sacred rhythm.

The Seven Directions Prayer includes the directions of up (Cosmos), down (Earth), and within (Soulscape). This expands the prayerful imagination to include the universal principals of diversity, particularity, interiority, and communion. It honors the indigenous tradition of knowing that God’s presence is as diverse and particular as the directions, and invites the supplicant to ground their prayers in a place. The Rewilding Wheel Seven Directions Prayer weaves in the corresponding sacred energies of the elements, the seasons, and one’s emplacement within a sacred bioregion. It is a prayer that honors the rhythm of our days, the sacredness found within the seasons, and how that is reflected through our life’s journey. It also provides a way to speak an authentic land acknowledgment, honoring with the respect the traditional tribal lands upon which we live.

When I lead other through this embodied prayer, we take the posture that one would use with the Caim Prayer. With right arm extended, the forefinger is pointed to the specified direction. This gesture indicates the intentional acknowledgment of the direction as well as begins the drawing of the circle of protection and intention. As one turns to the next direction, the right arm and forefinger remain extended symbolically drawing the sacred energies around oneself. This is a wonderful prayer to use to open a personal ritual or community ceremony. Please change the land acknowledgment within the direction of “Down/Earth” to reflect the traditional lands upon which you live.

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REWILDING WHEEL SEVEN DIRECTIONS PRAYER 

East

We turn to the East, the direction of the rising sun, new beginnings, Spring Time and the element of Fire. We thank you Sacred Mystery for how you are revealed through the wild mercy of every morning, when the sun, our guiding light, warming fire, and inspiration for a new day rises yet again. And we acknowledge the shadow side of fire as it can cause destruction; our prayers and activism are with and behind those whose lives—human and more than human alike—are being impacted by forest fires even today.  We bow to the East in gratitude and honor for this new day, and all the wisdom within this eastern direction.

South

We turn to the South, the direction of the powerful sun in its full force, growing awareness, summer time and the element of the warming and fecund earth. We thank you Sacred Mystery for how you are revealed through Earth, the primary incarnation, the place from which life is seeded and grown. We bow to the South in gratitude and honor for the work of this day, the particular purpose for which we each have been created, and all the wisdom within this southern direction. 

West 

We turn to the West, the direction of the setting sun, courage and introspection, becoming and belonging, autumn and the element of water. We thank you Sacred Mystery for how you are revealed through the watershed, seeing how we too are meant to be held within the flow of the essence of life. We bow to the West in gratitude and honor for another day well-lived, and as the sun sets below the horizon, and yellowed leaves fall to Earth, we lean into the grace and wisdom of what is for us when we let go and allow ourselves to be in the Flow. 

North

We turn to the North, the direction of the sun at its coldest (and darkest), sage knowing of the elders, winter time, and the element of Air. We thank you Sacred Mystery for how you are revealed through air, breath, and wind—that you blow wisdom through the winter-time air like a generational seed, that will become planted in the coming months of spring. We bow to the North in gratitude and honor for the cover and quiet of night, for the inspiration of dreams, and for the much-needed sacred rhythm of dormancy and dark.

Cosmos

We reach to the cosmos, the home of the planets, stars, and galaxies; the creative cosmic reach of the Divine Spirit who flared all things forth. We thank you Sacred Mystery for how you are revealed through the principles of the universe: diversity, interiority and communion. We expand our reach upwards remembering and reclaiming our at-oneness- with all beings —in the sacred community of expansive life.

Earth

We reach down to Earth, the holy humus from which all planetary life is derived. Here we humbly acknowledge the sacramentality and revelatory nature of our planet. Here we acknowledge that we are each guests upon the lands of host peoples, indigenous communities who have been living upon these various lands for time memorial. I acknowledge that I live and work upon the unceded territory of the Duwamish people, a people who have been here, are here, and will continue into the future with their wisdom and worldviews —may that our presence of acknowledgment and gratitude be an honor to these host people. We thank you Sacred Mystery for Earth’s energy and nourishment for the plants, trees, animals, and humans. We acknowledge the inherent dignity of all beings and the divine presence that is made manifest through Earth and all her regulating systems. We bow to the ensouled Earth in gratitude and reciprocity. 

Soulscape | Heart

We place our hands on our hearts, honoring the divine spark in our core, the presence of the holy within that honors the holy throughout. We thank you Sacred Mystery for your light, power, wisdom and guidance that you placed within each of us. 

Half Season Celebration | Lammas: Gratitude for the First Harvest

Happy Lammas, or Lughnassadh, to you!

Today is the first day of of August, an ancient day of celebration called Lammas, or Lughnassadh. In the Celtic Wheel of the Year, this is the ancient festival of the first harvest or the first fruits. It was traditional on August 1st to make a newly baked loaf (Lammas meaning 'loaf mass'), which was presented to the local church by the village bakers. It was made from the first fruits of the early harvest. This loaf was consecrated and offered to God as thanksgiving for Divine provision and supplication for a good store for winter.

However, this ancient worldview of celebrating the harvest, offering gratitude for the gifts of the Earth, and storing up for the winter precedes the times of the Church, existed even before the Celts and Druids of the current United Kingdom, and many thousands of years before that. In this way, this half-season celebration is truly an ancient and cosmic-celebratory time which no one religion, faith or tribe can lay exclusive claim.

This day represents a collective threshold crossing, a liminal space where we cross over from a summer that was faced squarely towards greening and blooming, towards a season that is now witness to fruiting and harvest. We witness within ourselves an interconnection, a green and tendrilled mirror that invites us to look within to the season of our own life and see what is there to harvest. What is it that was planted within—what new idea, inspiration, action, desire—at the beginning of the summertime that is already fruiting, requiring the decisive action of the first harvest? We find ourselves entwined with the harvest, honoring the legacy of creating sustenance out of Summer’s gifts and giving thanks to That Which Is Larger Than Ourselves, the Great Provider.

The echoing-day of this agricultural and seasonal festival invites us to still offer gratitude, to still go out and harvest the first fruits and put up stores with a sense that this is a practice of providence. We are being given nourishment and substance from Living Earth as Summer turns towards harvest. May we give thanks!

“Oh, what a catastrophe for us when we cut ourselves off from the rhythm of the year, from our unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love...cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox!”

— D. H. Lawrence

I'll be going out in the garden today to gather up my first fruits. My "Lammas" practice won't be a loaf of bread per se; rather, today's first-fruit harvest will be my pole beans, which I will be canning as a Lammas practice, jars which I’ll be sharing with my community this winter.

What about you? What can you go harvest today as a way to celebrate this ancient festival on the wheel of the year? Reflect on the liminality of this day and the thresholds upon which you stand. What is ready to be harvested within you?

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Lammas Celebration Practice

Supplies: mug/thermos, hot water, basket, clippers, an open and attuned spirt

• Begin by making a tea from herbs or flowers in your garden. Place a small handful of leaves (mint, sage, or yarrow are some of my seasonal favorites) and/or flowers (lavender, borage, chamomile, sage flower) in your mug of hot water. While you allow your tea to steep, offer this prayer:

Hymn for the Harvest by Tadgh 

Lord of the harvest we come to you,
we thank you for the ripened grain
(for) the circle turning year by year.
Great provider of all humankind,
we thank you for the sun and wind,
the earth and all life-giving rain.
Surely, surely, you are good,
The God of Green Hope, good to all.
The Sacred Three, The Three in One.
Nature once in vernal green enrobed,
gives up its bounty, gifts for all
(and) prepares to sleep as autumn comes.
On our table you supply our bread,
We share with all, for all to be fed,
And joy in our heart at what shall be.
Surely, surely, you are good,
The God of Green Hope, good to all.
The Sacred Three, The Three in One.

• Sip your tea as an act of ceremony and gesture of readying yourself to harvest in an honorable way. Save the last sip, the dregs, of your tea.

• Take your basket and clippers and mindfully harvest the first fruits in your garden-space. In a spirit of gratitude and with the intention of not taking it all (remember to save some of the first harvest for the wild ones who also need this sustenance to survive!), harvest your fruit. Be aware of how this action is taking the fruit across its own kind of threshold. They are now leaving the tree, the shrub, the plant from which they have grown and become. Now they will be processed to become something else, an act of alchemy that witnesses their form become preserved into future nourishment.

• Pour the dregs of your tea into the Earth as a sign of gratitude and communion.

• Before leaving your garden space, close your time of gathering with this prayer:

Spirit,
You inhabit the thresholds,
the liminal spaces of my life.
Teach me to meet You here,
in these in-between places.
May I gather the strength of past seasons,
bringing it with me as I face
the next season of my life.
by Melina Rudman

• Set aside time to enjoy processing your harvested item into something you can store up for the winter. Perhaps you can make a berry cobbler, or an apple preserve. Maybe you can make a batch of nasturtium pesto, or pickled beans. You can even cut and hang herbs with the intention of saving the dried herbs for culinary salts, cooking herbs, or teas!

“The sun shines different ways in winter and summer. We shine different ways in the seasons of our lives.”

— Terri Guillemets

Summer Solstice Celebration

The Summer Solstice marks the beginning of summer for the Northern Hemisphere and typically lands on the calendar between June 19-21. This is the longest day of the year with sunlight shining far into the night-time hours. It is a time to celebrate light, fire, and the hope for a good harvest.

This summer is calling us towards the hard, heavy, laboring work of working the soil of supremacy to weed out systems of racism. If we want climate justice, we must have social justice. These are the two sides of the same seed, if you will, that must be planted this season. As we move into a celebration of the Summer Solstice, may it be that the light we honor, and the harvest for which we hope is one that is truly a regenerative light for black lives, and a harvest that is equitable, honoring, and one of deep love. 

In the excerpt below from his Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, Catholic priest Edward Hays reflects upon the significance of this day and then offers a ritual for the solstice fire.

Summer Solstice Celebration

"In the northern hemisphere the season of summer begins on about June 21 and extends to about September 23. The intense rays of the sun reach the northernmost tip of our planet on the June summer solstice. And because the northern half of our planet tilts fully toward the sun, the hours of sunlight are the longest on this day and the hours of darkness the shortest. From our vantage point, it appears that the sun stops at the peak of its northward journey. For several days it lingers at this point and then slowly appears to move southward.

"Our ancient ancestors, who lived in harmony with the sun and the moon, knew within their bones the sacredness of such times. The eve of June 21, or midsummer's eve, was a night of magic and feasting. Deep within our bodies the memories of those sun feasts are still alive. We are children of the sun, the daystar that makes all life possible, as we travel in the icy darkness of frozen space. It is only fitting that we celebrate this turning point of our planet, even if we have a more sophisticated knowledge of the Earth, sun, moon, and planets than did our ancestors.

"It was believed that on midsummer's eve, the walls separating the worlds of the spirits and humans became as thin as tissue paper. The spirits of field and forest, of river and stream — all the inhabitants of that inner world — were free to pass back and forth between those walls and play among humans. It was a festival of fire, celebrating the full force of the sun-star. It was a time for feasting, a summer Christmas for play and pretending.

"Summertime allows us opportunities for celebrations outside — ideal for a fire feast. Whether you celebrate the solstice alone or with family or friends, you are in communion with all peoples, ancient and modern, who are touched by the magic of the feast and who gratefully honor the blazing gift of the sun."

Rituals & Ceremonies

Ritual of the Summer Solstice Fire
a fire or a simple candle flame may be used

Sacred is this fire of midsummer's eve, and sacred are you, O God. From your blazing heart, you brought forth a fiery sphere and cast it into the void. Your laughter reverberated through the empty cosmos, filling the darkness with your love and light. You reached in once more, drawing out fire and planting it like yeast in every atom, plant, animal, bird, fish, man, and woman. You gifted us with a special star, our sun, burning with life-evoking energy, making our world green and fertile, soaked in your love.

As we honor this solstice feast, open our eyes to the countless wonders and the sparks of fire-life you have placed within each of us. May this holy and magical night be illuminated with star-fire and divine light as we begin the sacred season of summer once again. Amen.

"NOTE: In ancient times to dance about or to jump over the solstice fire was said to be a cure for disease, a prevention against snake bites, and a deep blessing."

Create Communion | Summer Solstice Recipes

By bringing in food that is made from our local landscapes into our seasonal ceremonies, we begin the critical shift into a sacramental worldview that is essential for a good ceremony. If the Earth is the Body of God (read Sallie McFague for more on this incredible theological metaphor), then the nourishing food that grows through the earthen body is holy, sacred, sacramental. “Take and see that the Earth is good!” is my favorite proclamation when eating a thoughtfully prepared item created from locally foraged plants and flowers.

This is one of the yummiest elements of rewilding. We remember that rewilding is, simply put, just that: re-membering. Becoming a member again of all of the biodiversity-all the forms of life-that are around us. I attune to the food cycles of my bioregion by foraging food growing naturally on the land. This is more than just acquiring food; it is a way to commune with the generative forces of nature, what Hildegard of Bingen called vereditas, the greening power of God.

Here are a few of my family’s favorite recipes to make for the Summer Solstice. The featured herbal or flower partner is found in my certified wildlife habitat urban homescape or just beyond in our neighborhood woods. These recipes are a profusion of what Earth is offering at the Summer Solstice in our bioregion: garden herbs galore, Elder flower, and lavender are our favorites with which to work this time of year! Try some of these out as a way to deepen into your own personal Summer Solstice ceremony.

Elderflower Infusion

If you are fortunate to live near an Elder bush, this is the time of year when it is a’bloom. The large, white, umbel (flat) shaped flowers really make the large, shrub like tree stand out, as they will often be covered with them!

This simple recipe calls for a three to four pre-washed large clusters of flowers placed in a one gallon jar and covered with purified water. Allow to rest in a refrigerator over night. To enjoy this floral water, pour your desired amount through a strainer and into your glass.

Elderflower Honey Muffins

Elderflowers bloom around the time of the Summer Solstice and partnering the blooms with honey, which is like liquid sunshine, is a delicious way to celebrate the solstice. This favorite recipe comes from the good folks at Grow Forage Cook Ferment. Enjoy!

Summer Solstice Tea Infusion

This delicious tea can be made from dry or fresh flowers and herbs. My anise is not quite ready, so I substitute in lavender, mint, and lemon balm with my elderflower and nootka rose petals. Grow Forage Cook Ferment gives good details on how to create this concoction for yourself!

Summer Solstice Honey Cookies

These solstice cookies are everything! They actually look like the sun and are decorated with edible flower petals, and they taste delicious. My children love helping me create this recipe to enjoy around our solstice fire as the sun is still brightening the evening sky. Happy to share this recipe from the amazing ensouled hearth of Gather Victoria.

Solstice Herb Bread

Going out into the warm-earth garden to pick fresh herbs for this bread is a favorite solstice ritual. I also add in oregano and lavender as well.

3 C. flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 pkg. dry active yeast
2 tbsp. chopped fresh chives
2 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary

1 tsp. fresh thyme
1 1/4 C. hot water
2 tbsp. Crisco

Mix 2 cups of the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add herbs, water, and Crisco. Beat slowly, stirring in remaining cup of flour until smooth. Scrape batter from sides of bowl and let rise in a warm place for 35 minutes or until it doubles in bulk. Punch down and beat with a spoon for about 15 seconds. Place dough in a greased loaf pan, patting down and forming a loaf shape with your hands. Cover and let rise again for about 30 minutes or until it again
doubles in bulk. Bake at 375 for 40-45 minutes. Brush top with butter or margarine and remove from pan to cool.

The Knee at the Neck: The Earth Cries Out "Black Lives Matter!"

Life as we have known it is cracking open, the ruptures revealing great potentiality. These cracks—more like crevasses really—are doing the important work of slowing us down. The global pandemic, the critical response to George Floyd’s murder—these are potholes that no longer serve to be paved over, says my wise friend Bayo Akomalafe (follow this powerful and beautiful human being at the the Emergence Network). For too long the Western mind as made manifest through the United States project has paved over the potholes, covering up the rupture, which reveals that something vast was buried, a truth too hard to bear so instead it is hidden beneath the swaths of systemic racism that cover like concrete. The weight is the knee at the neck, a bruising and life-taking posture that keeps brilliant diversity down.

We are being called upon to fall to our knees at the cracks, reaching down into the dangerous and liberating dark that offers to reveal the truth that lies beneath our superficial structures. Falling to our knees is a far different posture of the knee at the neck. When we fall to our knees we do so because the fallacy of the Great Chain of Being has collapsed. There is no hierarchal structure to climb. Instead, we find that our personal sense of freedom comes through the collectively liberation when we are all kneeled upon a sacred earth together, working together to dismantle the concrete cover of racism. The land—the loamy earth that lies in wait underneath the concrete of our culture—holds the seedbed of our truth; the bones of discarded lives speak of enslavement and stolen land. We are being called upon to do the work of the Descent, descending to the level of microbes to be reminded of reparations and restoration long overdue. To come to terms with that which has been covered up so that Whiteness can build hierarchical ladders pursuing the lie of supremacy and exceptionalism.

Through the fractures and fissures that now mark our times (I live and write just two miles south of Seattle’s now notorious CHAZ), we are being invited, called, challenged to find our collective felicity. Through rooting into our ruptures, we can collectively be enraptured. We cannot continue ascending on our own. The truths that lie beneath the pothole must be resurrected so that we all might rise. 

My heart is marching in solidarity and raising my voice in protest along with many around our world. My hand holds a pick axe, willingly prying open further the cracks of certitude to reveal the structures of systemic and institutional racism that perpetuate death and illness throughout the land. It is each of our responsibility to take up the axe, shovel, hoe, and do the heavy lifting work to make the pot-hole even bigger so to reveal the microbial structures that continue to dominate and oppress. 

I am not making light of our times when I align what is going on with the Rewilding Wheel. Energetically, I find it fascinating that just as the novel Coronavirus erupted during the Spring and the archetypal landscape of the Forest, we are now turning towards the high-sun of Summer and the sacred bioregion of the garden/field. This is the quadrant where we are working with the wisdom of the Earth element; the heady heat of Summer; the hard labor of working the garden from seed to fruit; the Descent that leads us on a journey of reclaiming that which we have exiled. Kernels of supremacy and manifest destiny were planted into the soil of colonialism. And, while there have been efforts of racial reconciliation over the years, some would say we were merely covering up the damage with more colonizing concrete. The Earth has a way of ensuring that that which is buried will resurface. Whether it is a seed planted in the garden, or the structures of racism, the shoot will emerge demanding that we do the work to identity it; cultivate it with our complicity; or descend into the earth to uproot that which is causing the cracks in the first place.

Where the Earth body is is dominated, you will always find black and brown skinned bodies oppressed. This is a through-line of truth for millennia. Environmental injustice is done with the same White hands that build the hierarchical ladder of supremacy. To dominate Earth or another human, structures of dehumanization, the removal of one’s personhood, had to be created. This is the knee that is at the back of the neck of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color the world over. The Christian scripture speaks of how the Earth is crying out with pain (Romans 8:22). What does this cry sound like? Certainly not a groan for a kingdom come or an eternity of celestial justice. We hear this cry through George Floyd’s final words: I can’t breath. We hear this cry through the protestors chants for change. We hear this loudly through march’s silence of solidarity.

This season we have work to do, together and on our own. Get your gardening tools—your pick axes, shovels, and hoes. We’ll be needing them to root out racism’s seeds.

The Rewilding Wheel: Turning Towards Transformation

The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols within one’s particular homescape for the purpose of spiritual formation. By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheelis unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout your landscape.

I constructed the Rewilding Wheel as a model--as opposed to a theory--with the primary design objective to fashion a sacred bioregional approach to a seasonally-enmeshed spiritual practice. Creating this wheel was, in many ways, similar to stacking many variable wheels one on top of the other, and slowly turning them into alignments that would get at this intention of landing the seemingly ethereal energy in a landscape. This idea of sacred bioregionalism invites us to discern the “spirit of our place" and lean into the deep wisdom that lives within the land.

I sat down with Lisa, a member of the Rewilding Community and a practitioner of the Rewilding Wheel. Lisa is a faithful partner, mother, and owner of her own dog-walking business. I was curious to hear from her how this particular life has fostered soul formation and connection to the Sacred Wild. A women of practiced intention and an already established relationship with nature and animals, Lisa appeared to me to already have her wild connection established. It has been a joy to witness her further tap rooting through this particular life wheel. Read on to hear from her about how the Rewilding Wheel has impacted her life.  

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Interview with Rewildling Community member Lisa and Rewilding Community Guide Mary DeJong

Question: How has the Rewilding Wheel cultivated a more ensouled approach to your life?

Lisa’s Answer: The Rewilding Wheel has helped me to connect with the seasonality of my life in the rhythm of my days, months and years. It is a good metaphorical reminder of the times of rest and incubation that I need to give myself so that I continually grow, evolve and birth new parts of myself, while staying rooted in who I am.

Question: What are some of the practices that you have gained through this life wheel that have inspired your spiritual life?

Lisa’s Answer: I have a deeper connection with the land since joining the Rewilding Community. I now understand the importance of land acknowledgement, and have a relationship with the plants and non-humans in my own garden that feels more interconnected and respectful. I especially like the practice of creating nature mandalas, which invites me to refine my attention and notice more detail in the world around me. I’ve learned from Mary to do simple things that awaken my senses, like making a morning tea from plants in the garden and spending a few minutes each morning breathing in, tasting, and being in conversation with the life around me. I’ve become more aware of the lunar cycle, and find that embodied connection both comforting and stimulating. I’ve also brought the Rewilding wheel into my crafting hobby, and am creating a needle felted/embroidered version of the wheel, which is a fun and rewarding way to engage my creativity with my practices.

Question: In what ways has the Rewilding Community provided you with meaning and connection during our global pandemic?

Lisa’s Answer: The online community has been a source of comfort and relationship, often bringing beautiful images and ideas forward and offering the opportunity to connect with those on a similar journey. I enjoy the monthly online gatherings and find them to be a nourishing ritual. Mary has also introduced me to many teachers of whom I was unaware, poets, philosophers and storytellers who I have begun to listen to and learn from. I’ve included members of my family in my new practices, and know that the experience is deepening our connection with one another and helping to keep us all grounded and kind during hard times.

Question: The Rewilding Wheel unique aspect is its approach to sacred bioregionalism-how we attune to the spirit of our place. Do you have a favorite bioregion that has emerged through your engagement with the wheel? What have you learned through that locatedness?

Lisa’s Answer: My region of deepest connection is the forest. I spend a lot of time in the forest, and had been feeling that I wasn’t fully present there, wasn’t fully appreciating what the forest held. Rewilding practices have increased my awareness. I move differently in the forest, with greater intention and care. The forest holds both darkness and light, and I’m at home in that filtered, dappled light. Trees are also important for me, and I have so much to learn from them. I’m particularly interested in the mycorrhizal network and the interconnection of a forest community, which helps me feel my own interconnection.

Question: Anything else you might want to share?

Lisa’s Answer: I’ve been seeking connection with a largeness beyond me since I was a child. I’ve never found a religious or spiritual  home that felt right to me, except in wilderness. The practices of the Rewilding wheel helps me to connect with that largeness, and helps me to feel a part of a “we” that is expansive and meaningful. We are all stardust, all a part of one another, and this community and set of practices holds that for me.

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing of your Rewilding Wheel journey! If YOU are interested in deepening your relationship to your place—your homescape—join the journey! Learn more about the Rewilding Wheel Community HERE.

Rewilding Wheel altar at a rewilding retreat

Rewilding wheel nature mandala created by lisa at a rewilding retreat

Forest nature mandala at a personal rewilding retreat in the north cascade mountains

The Rewilding Wheel can be practiced at home and doesn’t require any supplies, brick and mortar locations, or human guides. More than ever, as we are needing to stay close to home for the sake of health and wellness for our communities, deepening into the spiritual nature of our local landscapes has value. Within the more-than-human world you can be intimate, close, profoundly present. Join the journey and deepen your relationship with the Sacred Wild!

Rising Rooted: How Creation Theology Roots Us in Belonging

California’s fires are flaring and fast. Powerful winds are fanning the fires with force, seeing burning areas twice the size of San Fransisco. Risks of human lives, more than human lives, trees and vegetation, and structures are all at risk as the Kincade Fire alone grows to over 75,000 acres. These fires, and their accompanying rolling electric blackouts, are indiscriminate and they speak with a collective voice: our house—our oikos (Greek for “house”) is on fire.

The Amazon is on Fire. The Congo River Basin, is on Fire. Oceans are warming. In September 2019 the New York Times amongst other news outlets reported the research that the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past half-century. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. This is the age of the Anthropocene—the age when Humans activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This is the age when in many ways, humanity behaves like a voracious fire, rapaciously consuming everything in our path.

How does our faith respond to this crisis? How do our theologies—these are our religious stories we tell ourselves about the nature of God and subsequently ourselves—respond to this ecocide? I’ll tell you what is not helpful—stories that tell us that our home is ultimately in heaven and that we are just passing through this planetary domain. No, we need theologies that are functional in that they tell us the truth of our existence: that we are created from this earth. Let us recall that Adam’s name in Hebrew is adamah, translatable as ground or earth, and that in this creation cosmology he is formed out of humus—a large group of natural organic compounds, found in the soil, formed from the chemical and biological decomposition of plant and animal residues and from the synthetic activity of microorganisms. And we are part of this organic earthen material! We belong to the land, to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us.

We must shift from a consuming people into a communing people, a people who commune and are personally and sacredly connected to our places and our planet. To lean into this kind of worldview, we need a sound and rooted Creation Theology, an understanding of God that is present in our planet, placed here as a liberating and regenerative rising incarnation force for the sake of all of our—human, more-than-human and our planet’s—future.

I want to go to the book of Job for the wisdom it contains regarding how we are to be in relationship with our places and listen intently to the sacred guidance given by the more-than-human world.

Job 12:7-12 The Message (MSG)

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.

Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.

    Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree

    that God is sovereign, that God holds all things in God’s hand—

Every living soul, yes,

    every breathing creature?

Isn’t this all just common sense,

    as common as the sense of taste?

Do you hear already how a good Creation Theology upsets the Great Chain of Being—this hierarchal social structure that places humanity at the top as the crowning glory? It says that the wild ones—the untamed animals, lands, waters—have been given the gift of speech, that they can be read as sacred script—that they have a subjectivity and personhood that cannot be controlled, coerced, or conquered. They offer an ecological way of living that is interconnected, and interrelational. They hold a mirror to God, reflecting to us how to live in flourishing ecological relationality. We are meant to court this wisdom of the wild, not corner it, capturing it and reducing its life purpose and value to a commodified and objectified thing. For to do that would be to crush the very presence of God.

A Good Creation Theology is a Decolonizing Theology.

For at its core is a liberation for all human and more-than-human life that occurs as a result of getting rid of this hierarchical illusion of separation—that we are separate from one another, from the earth, from the orcas…. for this illusion of separation—this dysfunctional myth— is what has allowed the colonizing hubris to take, to desecrate and oppress.

A good Decolonizing Creation Theology honors, respects, listens to, and affirms the indigenous and native voices and way of living that was generative and symbiotic for millennia. It joins with the Lummi Nation in saying: “What we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves. If any strand of the web is broken, the whole web is affected.”

A Decolonizing Creation Theology centralizes the voices of the voiceless and unheard—specifically the earth and more than human communities—and gives them dignity and sacred value.

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

 Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.”

What do you think Tahlequah also known as J35 in our resident orca whale population was saying as she carried the remains of her baby on her nose through the waters of the Salish Sea for days during her display of grief during the summer of 2018? Do you think she has something to teach us about the damming of our watersheds? Our over-fishing practices? How to make salmon populations thrive?

What do you think the albatross chicks were telling us with their dead bodies on Midway Island in the northern Pacific Ocean, their bellies filled with plastic? We must retune our ears to those who speak in the tongue of the wild—hearing clearly what they are saying through their silent slide into extermination. I invite you to meditate on this and connect to your own answer.

A Decolonizing Creation Theology aligns oppression of the earth with the oppression of bodies and understands that liberation of marginalized people will occur in tandem with liberation of land. C.S. Lewis rightly said that what we call human power over nature has actually become the power exercised by some people over others, using nature as a tool. Ecological injustice leads to social injustice, and vise versa. When we look to the bodies made invisible by systematic oppression, we see a demonstration of what has been done to the planet. We see the interconnection between empirical power and the deforestation and development of the Amazon and the life-threatening impact on indigenous tribes.

“Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.” Earth teaches us that a Decolonizing Creation Theology is a move toward solidarity with the subjectivity of the natural world. Hear this: humans have been limited in how they understand “personhood” (this is the quality of subjectivity of a being, often tied to liberty and equality) to the degree that we have given personhood only to human beings and to corporations…I’m sorry, but what?!? Corporations are attributed subjectivity, liberty, equality, but a vast population of humans are not let along the self-regulating body of Earth?!? Thank all that is good in the universe that this is changing with the development of Earth Law, a global movements to give personhood back to the planet.

In early July, Bangladesh became the first country to grant all of its rivers the same legal status as humans. From now on, its rivers will be treated as living entities in a court of law. The landmark ruling by the Bangladeshi Supreme Court is meant to protect the world's largest delta from further degradation from pollution, illegal dredging and human intrusion. The Ganges has also been granted this status as well as An Indian court has recognised Himalayan glaciers, lakes and forests as "legal persons.” There are various court cases and decisions happening like the globally.

The idea of environmental personhood turns that paradigm on its head by recognizing that nature has rights and that those rights should be enforced by a court of law. It's a philosophical idea, with indigenous communities leading the charge. This is the worldview shift that Jewish philosopher Martin Buber talks about in his theories of an I/Thou relationship. This is the seeing the other as a sacred Thou, a holy person in all their inherent dignity. And you know, you cannot steward a person…you can only steward an object. That has an inherent power-over position. When we move towards a solidarity posture with Creation we stand up for the land, we stand besides the watersheds, we speak for the Orcas, we see ourselves no longer as separate but AS the wild and wonder-filled body of the more than human Other. Do you see this critical move?

“We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we've lost our connection to ourselves.”

—Andy Goldsworthy

A decolonizing Creation Theology recovers an indigenous worldview within the Hebrew and New Testament scripture that sees land as central, nature as revelatory, and creation as sacred—the Body of God. The world as God’s body is a way of re-mythologizing our sacred stories and elevating them to a planetary and cosmic scale. While it invites the whole cosmos to participate in the divine unfolding and meaning of life, it also gives deep value to the very essence of creation. It allows for a planetary scope down to the particular particle. This model allows for the Sacred to be seen, sourced, and sacramentally present in and through the world and leads us into a knowing that “that we as worldly, wild, creaturely bodily beings are in God’s presence.” The world becomes not only a source of the sacred, but a place that must be profoundly cared for in response to our interanimating connection.

We need God to inhabit this place, for such a creation-centered religious interpretation leads to a deep sense of the sacramentality of all things. We will grow into the kind of people we are meant to be insomuch as we are rooted, connected, re-membered within the whole assembly of creation.

A good creation theology is also common sense theology that understands affirms the science of ecology, opening us up to think about what is a good climate theology—especially poignant this season as we witnessed the first ever global climate strikes this past September 2019. Therefore, I would also suggest that a good Creation Theology is a sound climate theology, one that speaks through the elements demanding attention and action.

You ride on the wings of the wind,

You make the winds your messengers.

Psalm 104:3-4

The Sacred is revealed through the elements. As much as Holy Mystery is revealed through wind, so too is this Sacred Presence revealed through Fire. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God, it will flame out like shining from shook foil.” Where have we seen this in scripture? Remember Moses and the Burning bush in Exodus chapter 3? Could this not be the moment when God is saying to us with each forest a’flame: take off your shoes for this is holy ground? Could this not be the moment of transformation when we awaken to our deepest calling? A call to bear witness to the holiness of creation?

Could climate warming be the very fire that is calling us to take off our shoes—our colonizing ego, our Western mind, our capitalist consumption—and recognize and reconnect to the world as holy ground? I ask you to put your imagination to this uptopic task for the sake of a flourishing future for all living beings.

A Good Creation Theology is a Climate Theology.

Climate Theology is a justice-for-all theology. If our faith communities are not talking about, and putting action towards, the Amazon fires and the reality of catastrophic climate warming, then we must come to terms that our faith is complicit with climate change in that it orients around a colonizing worldview, one that is based on the violence caused by an illusion of separation and that abundance is for the few and rich.

The ancient symbol of God as Trinity discloses truths about the essential interconnectedness of both the fragile ecology of the human soul and of the planet we inhabit. The interrelatedness that ecologists find in the biosphere on Earth and the interrelatedness that science discovers at all levels from quantum physics to cosmology are all sustained at every moment by a God who is Persons-in-communion. Humanity along cannot bear the image of the Divine. We can only do so in our own interrelatedness with Other—the more than human world, other-than-us humans, and the cosmic presence of the Sacred.

Black writer and activist Alice Walker, most notably known for her best selling book, The Color Purple, and her impact on womanist theology, understood that the Earth will assuredly undo us if we don’t learn to care for it, revere it, even worship it. Walker warns: “While the Earth is poisoned, everything it supports is poisoned. While the Earth is enslaved, none of us is free….While it is ‘treated like dirt,’ so are we.” We will be image bearers of God insomuch as we are in communion with the Earth and subsequently with one another. When we are persons-in-communion we will live into our essential interrelatedness, spurring us towards climate activism and creation solidarity. A justice-for-all climate theology attunes and demands our attention to a collective response to global deforestation, the EPA’s rollback of clean water protections, the frenetic drive to continue to mine for finite energy sources. And this only scratches the surface, am I right?

“What is good for the world will be good for us.”—Wendell Berry

Climate theology would affirm that is good which conserves and promotes all living creatures (human and more-than-human alike), especially the most vulnerable; that which is bad is everything that prejudices, oppresses, and destroys living creatures. A good climate theology demands a hard gaze at how our collective and personal human actions are complicit with the reality of climate crisis, and challenges us to make lifestyle choices NOW that will honor the future of the sacred earth, the more-than-human world, and provide hope for a flourishing future for ALL life on Earth.

Climate theology then is an earthy spirituality that reunifies the sciences with religion and spirituality affirming the spiritual potential of matter, fundamentally changing how we experience the material and living worlds. This is a theology that speaks with birdsong and whale tears; that speaks with winds and fire; that speaks with twining roots would have us LISTEN to the wisdom within these voices and in response, fall in love with this beautiful home, our oikos, our Earth.

A climate theology would be about the political and civic work of renewing commitments and reconnected communion in such a profound way that we will participate in the heart of the world, by directing our living and sacred earth towards life instead of death.

Hear how German poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke is in conversation with Job, and how this poetic offering affirms a creation theology that is decolonizing in nature and climate responsive, and therein lies our hope:

How surely gravity’s law,


strong as an ocean current,


takes hold of even the smallest thing


and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing

—
each stone, blossom, child—


is held in place.


Only we, in our arrogance,


push out beyond what we each belong to


for some empty freedom.


If we surrendered 
to earth’s intelligence


we could rise up rooted, like trees. 

This orientation lifts up a new kind of people, remembering that we are meant to embrace creation in a posture of solidarity, cultivating an ethical responsibility toward “the least of these” on our planet. Let us remember a sense of wonder, kinship and belonging to the world. This remembrance of a vital, sacred connection WITH creation is for our sakes and the sake of the wide and wild earth in whose being we are profoundly and beautifully entangled.

Waymarkers: Categories of Inspiration

As I have more opportunities to teach and accompany others on their soul-formation path, I am often asked what are the areas that have most influenced my work and Waymarkers’ offerings. As I was clearing out my office recently, I came upon a writing project and drawing that aimed to get at three primary categories of inspiration and influence. I created this in October 2015 and it is amazing to see how these categories continue to shape and form my thinking and my work! I am also incredibly happy to see that my thinking, theologies, and theories (in short, my praxis) continue to emerge and evolve!

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I am using the concept of a Venn Diagram as represented by a Celtic Trinity Knot to describe my three primary passions (and ways of seeing the Divine at work in the world), their intersections, and ultimately, what they reveal about myself in relationship to the Sacred. Following are my core thoughts related to each trisection.

Placemaking/Theology of Land

Theologian Walter Brueggeman states that “…land be handled always as a gift not to be presumed upon and land be managed as an arena for justice and freedom.” And, it is true that those historically denied justice and freedom, power, place and voice, could see the arena of a wooded landscape as an absolute threat. Walter Brueggeman’s hermeneutic of Israel, provides understanding that, “Israel experienced the bitterness of landlessness, being totally exposed and helpless, victimized by anything that happened to be threatening. However, also as Israel, we take up a new identity vis-a-vis the land. It is important to be very clear about what the land is, how it addresses us, what it expects of us, and how we shall shape our faith and admit our identity in relation to it.

How do communities work on creating meaningful places that invert political and capitalistic powers on behalf of the other and the future?

Our neighborhoods are never singular communities, but are actually a mesh of myriad overlapping networks. We all belong to many different communities, from the diffuse (i.e. a professional association, or an online message board), to the intimate (i.e. a family, or a group of friends). In consideration of the paramount impact of how a landscape informs an individual and how they connect to the other in their community, there is an emerging theory called “Placemaking” that aims to create a balance of uses in public spaces that serve the many communities at once; in this way a landscape can serve as a therapeutic response to the needs of a neighborhood. A single place can’t do everything at once, so “Placemaking” prompts us to look for convenient and clever ways to make limited space serve multiple functions. De Botton and Armstrong (2013) have suggested that by balancing ones need with those of the people by which one lives, one finds their place, literally and figuratively, within a community of neighbors. By inviting the presence of a place to participate in the lives of communities for a common good, there is an acknowledgment of something profound and beyond human-limitations that is unleashed: God is revealed as intimately involved and present within the neighborhood and neighborwood!

Celtic Christianity

The great Celtic teacher John Scotus Eriugena taught that God speaks to us through two sacred texts, two books if you will. One is the book of scripture…the other is the book of creation, vast as the cosmos. Just as the Sacred speaks to us through the written words of scripture, so to does Spirit speak to us through the wild elements of creation. The natural world—the creatures within it and the elements that form it—then are a living sacred text we can learn to read and interpret.

Just as we prayerfully ponder the words of the Bible in Christian practice and as other traditions study their sacred texts, and even as we engage our sacred imagination in the practice of Midrash, so we are invited to listen to the life of creation as an ongoing, living utterance of God. This way of "reading" requires seeing the soil as a sacred story, and realizing that many of the narratives that have been told within the reverential spheres are ones that separate us from the reality of the biosphere.

Influenced by the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament and the mysticsm of John’s Gospel, Celtic spirituality sees creation not simply as a gift, but as a self-giving of God whose image is to be found deep within all living things. Sin may obscure God’s living presence, but never erases it. The divine voice can be heard speaking through all created things.

EcoPsych/EcoTheology

Author and psychologist Bill Plotkin believes that the way towards a collective societal shift towards wholeness and sustainability will be to progress from our current “egocentric societies (materialistic, anthropocentric, competition based, class stratified, violence prone, and unsustainable) to soulcentric ones (imaginative, ecocentric, cooperation based, just, compassionate and sustainable).” Plotkin draws from the collective academy of cultural thought provocateurs ranging from Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell to imagine how to cultivate more mature human individuals to inform an evolution into a more mature human society. He believes that nature has always provided and still provides the best template for human maturation. Plotkin unpacks this further:

“…every human being has a unique and mystical relationship to the wild world, and that the conscious discovery and cultivation of that relationship is at the core of true adulthood. In contemporary society, we think of maturity simply in terms of hard work and practical responsibilities. I believe, in contrast, that true adulthood is rooted in transpersonal experience—in a mystic affiliation with nature, experienced as sacred calling—that is then embodied in soul-infused work and mature responsibilities. This mystical affiliation is the very core of maturity, and it is precisely what mainstream Western society has overlooked—or actively suppressed and expelled.”

Western civilization has buried most traces of the mystical roots of maturity, yet this knowledge has been at the heart of every indigenous tradition known. In this light, we see that our self-imposed exile from an honoring relationship with creation has stunted God’s design for human development, and even a proper revelation of God. Creation is imbued with the wisdom and presence of the Sacred, and to stifle and ignore the inherent value of the created order, stifles the very voice of Wisdom in our lives. Our way into the future requires new cultural forms of the old ways of being in relationship with the earth. As urban-dense living becomes the increasing norm for countries around the world, re-imagining how urban greenspaces provides the opportunity for a relationship with the wild world becomes critical. The health of our psyche, and the planet, depends on it.

Center

The challenge of loving and caring for one another well in the 21st century requires one to recover a primordial sense of the vast mystery of God and apply that energy to paying attention to the earth. Our love of neighbor needs to be extended to the greater community of things on this planet and our neighborhood needs to considerably broaden to include our universe as well. Historically anthropocentric views have concerned Christians with the redemption of this world alone, and have disconnected the very nature of a connected, covenantal God with the diversity of his inherently good creation. Nobel Peace Prize two-time nominee Ervin Lazlo (2011) attests that “seeing ourselves as separate from the world fuels selfish and irresponsible tendencies: we are only responsible for ourselves, and not for ‘foreigners,’ ‘competitors,’ and ‘others’” (p. 117). In bringing the care of the earth into the folds of reconciliation, there is acknowledgement that human-centric modern history has caused great harm to marginal people groups, and environmental injustice to a host of living beings on this planet, as well as a severe disconnect from the goodness with which the earth was designed. By engaging in restorative acts of reconciliation with the planet, there is an openness to the endowed goodness of creation and the intention that it was created to participate in the whole person and health of a community.

In returning to a grand sense of awe before the God of the Universe, God’s relationship is placed with humanity into the context of billions and billions of galaxies. This profound placement of the Great Mystery has immediate effects on how we engage and encounter the other and all living things. “The experience of our connection with each other and the universe would inspire solidarity among people and empathy with all life on earth” (Lazlo, 2011, p. 124). Leonardo Boff would call this the “socio-cosmic,” where mountains, plants, rivers, animals, and the atmosphere become the new citizens who share in the human banquet, while humans share in the cosmic banquet. Only then will there be ecological justice and peace on planet earth. In embracing the world. we shall be embracing God.

Autumn Rewilding Retreat | Reclaim the Skin You are Meant to Be In: How Stories of the Selke Guide Our Becoming

"Myth insists that in each of us a great kingdom presides: filled with forests, remote castles, giants, witches, lovers, the dreams of the earth itself. To hear a story well told was to bear witness to the wily tale of your own life meeting the bigger epic that those before you had walked. Such speech was a way you tasted your ancestors. We don’t have such stories: such stories have us.” ~Martin Shaw

This immersive Rewilding Retreat went deep into the mythopoetic realm of the Westward Autumn Quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel circuit. Within this context a group of courageous women learned together from the archetypes within the Celtic Selkie myth and its potential form and meaning for the woman’s journey towards authentic be-ing and belonging. The retreat took place on the Saratoga Passage, a part of the whale-trail within the Salish Sea. It was the perfect setting for all things salty and sea-worthy to express themselves!

We were present to do this work together: to re-member ourselves within the voices of the earth, to the myths she tells us and the belonging together these stories bring. Ultimately myths help us to unravel who we are and what we need to work out. These are not our untruths, but in many ways, a good myth will hold the most archetypal truths about our existence. Stories help us find our path in life, and other ways of imagining our world and our place within it.

Whatever journey we imagine ourselves to be on, myth and fairy tales can inform our sense of what is possible, and enable us not just to cope with life’s challenges, but to live more intensely, and more richly, in the world. Spiritual growth—soulskin growth—lies at the heart of every archetypal tale—this is about a journey to develop one’s highest potential and in many ways recover a sense of our primary existence. We are often drawn to specific stories or characters, and if we explore the reasons why, deeper truths about our life and our meant-for-ness may emerge as a result.

This was our weekend’s work! Through various iterations of this mythic tale, Black Out Poetry, wild wanderings, sea-side Morning Matins, Council Circles, and even a showing of the Irish indie film, The Secret of Roan Inish, we invited our soul’s to speak of their primary existence and to what waters they would want to return. We wove together desires, prayers, and blessings onto a seaside loom, our collective “soul-skin” that was ceremoniously released to the sea as an offering of gratitude and a metaphoric return to our own skin.

Roughly eight thousand acres at the seashore;

a tension between

human and wilderness.

In this threat I find a relationship full of possibility.

Go beyond the philosophical arrogance

of exclusive emphasis upon reason

to experience interrelatedness and

a new ecological way of life.

God, speak to us by

tree, canyon, and ravens.

The new beginning has come

as a seed.

(Black Out poetry composition by a Rewilding Retreat participant. Shared with permission)

The Lost Names of God: A Solstice Reflection

I come to this pinnacle of the solar year, this hot and heightened sun, with a posture of vigilance, a stance that might not be all too surprising given our times, but one that is consternating all the same. Already in our Pacific Northwest part of the world, the fires are burning. Smoke cloaks the sun's intensifying rays, amplifying the heat. Seattle's urban streets are buckling under the sweltering strain. Gun violence is already intensifying (the corollary between inescapable urban heat and social tensions is a studied reality). While children may be enacting the summer rituals of swimming and sandal-wearing, there is a sense that the adults are diligently looking over their shoulder, or even up at the smoke-filled sky, discerning when to return to the relative refuge of home.

Not the picture that you might have expected to kick off this quarterly newsletter offering, I'm sure. And not one that I necessarily want to write about either, and yet.... And yet, it speaks to the grief that I know I am not alone in experiencing as each consecutive season brings with it more suffering change, so markedly different than the perception of the assured rhythmic seasonal changes in which I grew up. And yet, even that which I knew was its own iteration of shifting environmental degradation that had become its own version of an accepted and normative existence. This psychological and sociological phenomenon is termed shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), which is increasingly recognized as one of the fundamental obstacles to addressing a wide range of today’s global environmental issues. When one forgets over the course of a couple years, decades, or generation what once was, or who once was, it becomes near impossible to advocate for those places, people, or other remarkable forms of existence. Do you remember the Passenger Pigeon? Probably not, and if you know about its one time form of life, its likely you don't stand around missing it.

We are a forgetful and fickle species, us humans, and if we continue to not remember, we will end up forgetting what has been lost. But even in our forgetfulness, there is something deeper still that remains, a cellular memory that longs for what once was; a longing for a home that no longer exists.

While working at the University of Newcastle in Australia, ecophilosopher Glenn Albrecht coined a word that seeks to describe this feeling. 'Solastalgia’ – a gladstone of the words ‘solace’ and ‘nostalgia’ – is used not just in academia but more widely, in clinical psychology and health policy in Australia, as well as by US researchers looking into the effects of wildfires in California. It describes the feeling of distress associated with environmental change close to your home, and speaks to growing unease around what this loss portends for the future of all life on our planet. 

The magnitude, rate, and extent of the changes that humans have made to the Earth’s more-than-human world are hard to grasp. What is easier to grasp is the idea that it has always been this way. And yet, we find that we are awaiting the fist summer sight of the Monarch butterfly flitting through the wasting away Sword ferns, but the waiting is endless; or we realize that the ache in our eyes is do to the relentless searching for the nesting pair of Red tail hawk that have been in the Big leaf maple down the hill for twenty years...but they are no longer there. The solace found within the dynamic constancies of one's environment is waning as the "lived experience of negatively perceived environmental change to one's 'sense of place' and existential well-being is increasing" (Glenn Albrecht Murdoch, 2010).

The human caused degradation to our home planet is causing massive species extinction. Indeed, we are within the Anthropocene Extinction, or the sixth mass extinction, which is one of the most significant events in the history of the Earth. Every day there are unique and particular life forms that are closing their eyes to the hope of a future. And with each eye lid shuttering, I would maintain that we are losing embodiments of the sacred. Every species that becomes extinct is a lost name, and form, of God.

Ecotheologian Sallie MacFague's seminal work has been around our metaphoric language and symbols used to describe and define the divine. In our era of global heating and climate catastrophe, she urges us away from metaphors that describe God as separate from the world and creation--words and resulting paradigms related to monarchy, kingdoms, hierarchies, dominions, etc. Instead, she advocates for the mindset shifting metaphor of seeing the Earth as the Body of God. Sit with that for a moment. The Earth: The Body of God. How does this land with you? If we lived within this worldview, how would it change how we are presenced upon this planet? This understands the world, and its host of wild and wonder-filled life, as sacred, every aspect and being a numinous element. So when the Passenger Pigeon, Monarch, and Red tailed hawk no longer exist in the air, or when the Salish Sea resident Orca population rings the death knoll at the brink of their extinction, we are literally witnessing a diocide, the killing of God.

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What do you do when you lose something? You ponder its whereabouts, and then go out to look for it, and sometimes you end up recovering that which was lost in places that surprise you. We have lost the knowing that the earth is sacred, that we are surrounded by hallowed presences who bear witness to our lives, as well as express their own inherent divine qualities. Grief is a handmaiden to loss. Studies show that within the realm of environmental grief and anxiety, practicing nature-based rituals and ceremony can help one be resilient in these grief-filled seasons, and be a way to respond to feelings like solestagia.

Seek through the practice of ceremony. Find a recovered and reconnected way of understanding that the holy is Here. And hope beyond hope, may your ceremonial search yield the surprise of the divine ground of being that is within your particular place.

May something within this Summer season whisper to you, beseech and beguile you, rooting you deeper into the places you call home. Or perhaps you haven't yet found your way home, and this is why you are here. May you be invited into a ceremonious way of living that seeks to recover the sacred within the wild.

Waymarkers' mission is to bear witness and act as a guide to your journey, to your rooting and to your rising, and to your pilgrimage journey of belonging to this wonder-filled and wild world. May the wisdom-seeds that were planted this past Spring be about the critical work of differentiation and particularity. May that they become the wild and precious fruit that only you can bear and bring to the world. May something in the potent summer heat and long, light days ripen in you your purpose and your belonging. May that the sun, present and demanding, remind you that it is time to become; for it is now time to allow Summer's heat to transform the seed into an offering. And in this work, may you observe and be guided by waymarkers~ones from the wild who will accompany and apprentice you, reminding you of the way back to the belonging we have within the sacred reality that we live within an ensouled world.

God on a Wing: Winter Rewilding Nature Altar

Our family keeps a nature altar, a way to not only bring the out-doors in, but to also attune our senses to the phases of the seasons, the beauty of the natural world, and as a portal to the deep wisdom that resides in the wild. This sacred space has taken up various iterations in the years we have done this practice. When the household was generally filled with very little people, these silks were piled high with sticks and stones; every item outside was a treasure and little hands begged that every one was brought indoors. To an uneducated heart, this space would have looked like a random pile of rocks, but to us it was our Ebenezer. Our collection of nature was our stone of help—a waymarker that provided direction and clarity to our sacred belonging to and with the Earth community. This pile dynamically grew through the year, representing so many different journeys and encounters with awe and wonder.

Now that half of my children have their toes in teen-hood, this space is taking up more thoughtfulness and creativity. Furthermore, we are using this altar to mark our seasonal journey through the Rewilding Wheel. This has given a bit more focus and direction, and invites our family to pay attention to particular theophanies (God-showings) within the natural world.

The Rewilding Wheel is a sacred circuit that seeks to locate the wisdom of universal nature symbols with one’s particular homescape and spiritual formation. By locating the psychospiritual patterns found within the natural world to a particular place, the ancient wisdom inherent in the cardinal directions and elements takes on a practical shape and invites a focused seasonal practice. In this way, the Rewilding Wheel is unique as it invites a sacred process of remembering and recovering relationships within various ecosystems throughout your bioregion. This is a practice of sacred bioregionalism—where the particularity of our place educates our soul and brings us closer to Spirit that resides there as well.

The Rewilding Wheel was developed to be an integration of critical aspects of the cycles and seasons of nature that would bring one into a deep sense of belonging within their particular bio-regions. This is a move from an ego-centric posture on the planet to an eco-centric one where one’s whole identity is rooted and interconnected with all of creation. This posture requires sensory participation and deep paying attention to the phenomena that is going on about one in their surrounding landscapes.

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

-Simone Weil

For those of you practicing this sacred circuit, we know that the season of Winter is associated with the cardinal direction of North, the element of Air, and the bioregion of the Mountain or High Place. This is a time of deep darkness that is held in tension with the lightness of breath, bound to the found-wisdom that is associated with mountain tops and high places. A symbol for this season is that of the bird, a being who rides the wind currents and alights in high places with ease. This is the season of the work of the Spirit, who breathes inspiration and insight into our souls.

This wheel invites seeing the Sacred with sensuality, an embodiment through the elements that gives form and shape to that which has been traditionally transcendent. The Spirit is air. The Judaeo Christian cosmology tells a story of when God breathes air into the lungs of the first human being (“then the Lord God formed adam from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and adam became a living being”; Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word for this primordial breath of life (ruach, or pneuma in Greek) also means Spirit. God’s Spirit is God’s breath, signaling the sub stratosphere itself. All that we and all other beings need for survival, is the animating power of the Sacred in our midst—God swirling and whirling around us, making all things live. The research and study of ecotheologian Mark Wallace in his book When God Was a Bird: Christianity, Animism, and the Re-Enchantment of the World (2018) looks at how the Spirit is generally figured as a winged animal, a bird. His claim is that within this tradition is an animistic understanding of God, that the divine actually is visible, enfleshed, incarnate even through the more-than-human world. This idea of a winged bird God is something I am meditating on and allowing to work on me in this Winter season. Pair this holy avian form with the mystery of the mountains during these dark and dormant months, and my goodness! There is a treasure trove of wisdom into which to huddle.

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We have been putting together our Winter Nature Altar slowly following Epiphany last week and the closing of the Christmas season. Guiding this practice are the thematic elements found within the Rewilding Wheel. We have all been making these stone feathers—what a fun way to play with the form of mountain and air!—and wanted to share this seasonal altar craft with you.

I’m grateful to the artist Marisa Redondo for this inspiration within the pages of Nature Art Workshop (Quarto Publishing Group, 2018). This was the seasonal wild-craft offered to registrants of the Winter Rewilding Retreat as well. Such beautiful stone feathers were created!

This simple stone design reminds us of the primordial presence of the mountains and high places in our bioregion, and how this location is often associated with wise-people and sages. Pairing it with the intricate beauty of the feather is a mediation on God as a feathered bird and the belief that all beings, including more-than-human animals, are imbued with divine presence.

Feather Stones

1. Go outside and find a rock that seems to speak to you. Ask the rock permission to take it home. This is a great reason to intentionally go out to the mountains or local high place to find a rock or stone!

2. Gather your materials: stones, craft paints, matte varnish, paint brushes and paint pallet. We chose white, light blue, light green and a gorgeous gold (a precious element found deep within mountains!) for our paints and love the use of wax paper for our palette. While you work, listen for birdsong outside your window, or the sound of the wind in the trees. See this as a sacred presence around you while you create this item for your seasonal altar.

3. Apply a thin and even layer of varnish to your rock. Once dry, paint a thin line centered on your rock with a small round paintbrush.

4. Paint a feather tuft outline around the centerline.

5. Paint V-shaped lines to divide the feather into sections.

6. Fill the tip of your feather with fine lines.

7. Create a triangular shape within the feather by painting two lines in each section.

8. Fill the area outside the triangles with fine, feather-like lines.

9. Add dots or embellishments along triangular border.

White-Eyes

BY MARY OLIVER

In winter

    all the singing is in

         the tops of the trees

             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

    shoves and pushes

         among the branches.

             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,

    but he's restless—

         he has an idea,

             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

    as long as he stays awake.

         But his big, round music, after all,

             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.

    In the pine-crown

         he makes his nest,

             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

    I only imagine his glittering beak

         tucked in a white wing

             while the clouds—

which he has summoned

    from the north—

         which he has taught

             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall

    into the world below

         like stars, or the feathers

               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

    that is asleep now, and silent—

         that has turned itself

             into snow.

My Rewilding Year

The past four seasons have been an intentional journey of re-membering—rewilding—myself to my bioregion and to the landscapes that create my home. This has been a year of sacred eco-awakening, a reconnecting to an integral communion with the sacred wild. Through a practice with the Rewilding Wheel, I have intentionally sought after relationships and wisdom inherent in the energetic associations between seasons, directions, and elements within a particular bioregion. The scientific world would describe a bioregion as a region defined by characteristics of the natural environment. I like poet and environmental writer Gary Snyder’s understanding of a bioregional consciousness much better—a bioregion is a “spirit of a place.”

When one is actively engaged in relationship with their local landscapes, there is a profound connection to the spirit of that place.

This is beyond the scope of relational recreation (although recreation and play are critical aspects of relational development). I am talking about sensing into a place so deeply that you encounter the Sacred, almost like the experience of digging for a well and finding the wellspring. Soon after beginning this practice of attunement and bioregional apprenticeship, I began to form a core question that stayed with me the whole round of the year. Essentially, I had to recover the answer to the intersectional question of whether I had access to the spirit of a place. As a white woman with settler ancestry, did I have admission to the depths of spirit that resided within my bioregion? Could I dig deep, root deep, and find the Sacred Well-spring that I sensed was present in the very ecosystem of my homescape?

Last January I was in conversation with Celtic scholar and theologian John Philip Newell about this search for the spirit of a place. In response to the question I carried he replied with a perspective that was enormously helpful and wise. He said that “the Spirit of God is like a subterranean stream that percolates up in particularity.” John Philip would understand that one’s bioregion is evidence of this divine particularity and further evidenced by the vast diversity of human and more-than-human life that emerges from particular bioregions. Furthermore, and in answer to my question, he said yes, I have access to that Spirit, for it is the same Spirit that I have come to know in a particular way through my faith tradition, but this invites an engagement with local understandings, stories, and myths that understand the Sacred through again, the particularity of a bioregion.

Good answer, right? Indeed yes and that wisdom carried me around the wheel and through the seasons. And then I had the opportunity to bring this question to another wise elder. You might remember that I spent a few days this past summer at Eloheh Farm with Randy and Edith Woodley. Over the most hospitable cup of never-ending coffee one morning, Randy asked me directly why I had come to see him, why I had come to the land he co-sustained. I brought my question about accessing the depth of a spirit of a place and my thoughts around sacred-bioregionalism.

I was preparing for a dissertation of wisdom that would take days to talk around and through. I received it, but in a word and with the promise that this will take the whole of my life to unpack. Permission.

Permission. Had I asked permission to have that access? Had I asked permission from the land, from the bioregion into the spirit of its place? Had I asked the original inhabitants of the land permission to tap into this deep and sacred soil? Permission.

Permission is the fundamental posture of a practice of sacred-bioregionalism, and it is one that is counter and contrary to the Western mind. It is a humble and vulnerable posture as it assumes that the other has the right to answer, and perhaps contrary to your hope. It is a question that is opposed to the self-entitled position of steward, a role and effort heralded by the Western (especially Christian) mind; a steward doesn’t ask permission but one who is in solidarity does. What would happen if we asked the resident orca whales of the Salish Sea permission to dam the rivers for hydropower, depriving them of the salmon needed for their survival? What if we asked the large marine mammals in the Atlantic permission to allow seismic blasting for oil surveys? What do you think they would say? And how would their response cause you to act and advocate differently? This is the kind of permission-asking that will not only result in the requisite posture shifts to attune to one’s bioregion, to commune with the spirit of a place, but will ensure that the Sacred within and with-out this holy world can continue to speak in full depth into a flourishing future.

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.”
-Job 12:7-10

Spring | East | Fire | Forest

Summer | South | Earth | Field/garden

Autumn | west | water | Watershed/sea

Winter | North | Air | Mountain

The Song of the Sea: Reflections on a Selke Soul-Skin Rewilding Retreat

The sun was just warming the sky with the first blush of pink and purple; the sounds of daybreak resonated over the threshold of land and sea. While I was starting the fire for a beach front morning matins, I heard the song—sonorous notes rippling over the waves coming from a lone kayak put out to sea. And then, the bobbing heads of seals emerged through the waves, encircling the modern coracle, receiving the morning melody that called to them and affirming the enchantment of the moment. It was as if the myths were awakening, or more likely, that we were awakening to the myths. For as our gathered group told and retold an ancient tale of shape-shifting seals, attunement began to occur—a tuning of the senses to the song of the more-than-human world happening all around us.

Mythtelling assumes that the stories already exist in nature, waiting to be overheard by humans who will listen for them…a myth is the power of a place, speaking. -Sean Kane

The collective energies of the Autumn (season), West (cardinal direction), and Water (element) land themselves in the work of the watersheds and seas within the coordinates of the Rewilding Wheel. In the westward quadrant of this wheel we gravitate towards bodies of water, an elemental way of binding back to ourselves. In this place we fully explore our becoming as water reflects the nature of the soul. It symbolizes the principle of “as above, so below, as within, so without.” Spiritual traditions teach that everything in the outer world is a reflection of our inner world, which provides a sobering invitation when looking at how our water sources are being mistreated. However, our spiritual growth around the wheel provides us with a sense of vision and imagination now that we are in our westward posture. We can draw deeply upon Source, as if from a deep well, and imagine how our waters should be treated, honored, and respected. Woman are particularly empowered in this quadrant as our bodies are profoundly tied to water literally and metaphorically.

As water flows from the mountaintops, through the forests and fields, and ultimately to the sea, this becomes a bioregional expression of fullness, of completion. Here the water shows us what it is meant to become through its appearance as Winter’s snow, Spring’s rain and snow-melt rivers, Summer’s wellsprings, and then the final meeting with the oceanic body. This journey bears echoes of our own psycho-spiritual formation as we too make our own journey through the seasons—bringing us West towards our own fullness and mellowed maturity. This is an invitation into an enchanted way of living—we see a reflection of ourselves within our bioregion as we re-learn to speak the language of seasons, of the sea, and even of the Selkie.

These interconnected themes and energies inspired the Autumn Rewilding Retreat, a weekend away on the Salish Sea where the Celtic myth of the Selkie was explored as way of reclaiming aspects of ourselves that were lost or dismembered along the way, and rediscovering core aspects of our True Self that are critical to an authentic way of belonging within our world. This shape-shifting story is one that honors the process that one goes through to become and belong fully to themselves as well as to the wild and sacred world. And so this retreat engaged this story as a way to recovering the “skin we are meant to be in.”

The particular location of this retreat provided a variety of sacred spaces. We created a “Sea Sanctuary” where individuals were invited to engage the collective energies of the Rewilding Wheel through prayers and practices that clarified how these elemental aspects of life itself are connected to our human lives as well. Prayer sticks created from Hedgewood herbs and plants were gifts that linked the elements together—earth, fire, air and water were all in tandem as praying participants were invited to light the prayer stick while standing in the sea. This is a powerful tradition of speaking your prayerful intentions into the water. The practice of praying immersed in water was one of the more extreme ascetic traits popular amongst Celtic saints. It is said that even Columba on the Isle of Iona would wade deep into the sea to pray for hours upon a time. Consider how water conducts energy and is very transformable. It changes depending on what the offering or intention is. In the Lakota way of prayer and worldview, Mni Wiconi means water is life and water is alive. Water has consciousness. Water has personhood. Water is eternal as our planet is a closed planet. This element of water has always been. Praying in the water intensified your prayer. Literally water evaporates so that water that has just been transformed by your words, your intentions, your energy, travels into clouds, which then travel the world. Your prayers can come down in the form of rain on the other side of the world. So your prayer and your intention you are sending may come down as snow in the Andes, or rain in the Amazon. You are sharing the consciousness of your prayer with the consciousness of the planet through praying within the water.

“May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through
widening channels
into the open sea.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Weaving is another form of prayerful intention that shows up in myths from around the world; the weaver is often associated with the feminine and crone and shows up as a symbol of the Present who holds the threads of Past and Future within her omniscient knowing. With this mythopoetic understanding in mind, we created a sea-loom where retreat participants could co-weave a soul-skin, an expression of hopes, desires, and prayers for the reclamation of their meant-for-selves. The woven work took the whole weekend to create and then this “soul-skin” was sent out to sea on the last day, representing our prayers for reclaiming our re-woven self.

When one begins to recover the dismembered or buried feminine, one taps into a wellspring of creativity. This creativity is often conveyed archetypally through foundational creating often through the act of weaving. In Native American traditions you can find stories of Grandmother Spider who weaves creation and stories into being. In the Greek tradition it is Gaia who creates the cosmos. In Celtic tales you have the Old Woman of the World who spins and weaves the continuity of time. Through participating in this ancient practice, there was a sense that we were not only weaving ourselves back together, but we were weaving ourselves back into our very place. Much of our sense of dismemberment and soul-loss is a result of not being deeply rooted and connected to the spirit of our place.

Rewilding Retreats aim to provide nourishing foods that reflect the energies of the seasons as well as provide a pallet that reminds us of where we are, the foods that actually help form and shape our bodies through their biochemistry. This retreat was no different with the meals offering seasonal sustenance through apples, nuts, squash blossoms, rosemary and elderberry syrups. Most fun was the sea inspired smoothie bowls that were created every morning with the use of an extract of spirulina, a fresh-water algae that carries water notes and an amazing dose of B12.

In many respects, eating well is an invitation into dwelling well. We can be in a place and not know where we are or how to be there. We can also come to forsake or degrade places because we do not appreciate how vital they in fact are. Growing and eating the unique foods found in specific bioregions enables us to inhabit the places of our lives with a more detailed understanding and empathy. Ecotheologian Norman Wirzba states, “Food creates a profound connection to a place. To fail to know places in detail, and the wisdom that has collectively been learned there, is to lose the possibility of detailed understanding. Failing to understand, human action will grow to be out of step with, and perhaps even destructively contrary to, the processes of life that feed personal life”(1). The food served at these retreats hope to create this sense of reciprocity and sacred balance that is critical for all life to flourish in our bioregion.

The elements that were aligned for this Rewilding Retreat weekend created a portal for the Sacred to be seen and experienced in profound and powerful ways. There was a sense of sacred enchantment present as we played and practiced at the sea’s threshold. While we were praying matins one morning, a group of seals came almost right up to the shore, staying at the water’s edge throughout our liturgy! Mythologist, psychotherapist, and writer Sharon Blackie says this of how local knowing and detailed understanding creates connections within the seen and unseen world: “Enchanted living embraces a wider world, and acknowledges the value of respect and interdependence between richly different cultures—but it does so from the perspective of a deep grounding in its own locality, and in the unique bioregion which supports it” (2). This then is the process of rewilding—the practice of awareness and reconnection to the cultures (both human and more-than-human), the niches, the ecosystems, which we occupy, and re-membering ourselves to the sacred stories these places speak. This is the great work of reweaving ourselves back into our places, belonging once again not only to our True Self, but within the wild world that has given us rise.

Selkie Drawing by retreat participant Sarah Bylsma (2018)

“I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens! Nothing…Silence…Waves…
—Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?”
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

(1) Norman Wirzba, Food & Faith: A Theology of Eating (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 40.
(2) Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic in Everyday Living (Tewkesbury UK: September Publishing, 2018), 214.

Cultivate the Wisdom Within the Wild: Biomimicry as a Spiritual Practice

Boehman, Jessica. Bedtime Stories. 2013.

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” -Joseph Campbell

We are approaching the threshold of Winter, and these days that come before that elemental edge are known as Advent, a sacred time of the year when rituals attune ourselves to the growing darkness and when hope is kindled by the coming of light.

But before the light is the darkness—a darkness that is the deep color of sunless earth. All life is being drawn into the depths of soil, a migration of descent that is both a lull and a longing. Life is slowing down, quieting, and entering caves and underground caverns wherein sleepy darkness will be the only thing that will satiate this elemental pull.

And yet isn’t it ironic that the farther the Western mind moves from celebrating this season and the upcoming solstice for its earthen guidance and wisdom, the brighter the holiday lights become; the louder the market cries for over-consumption; the more frenetic the pace and demand of over-worked holiday cheer? This is a way that is contrary to the descent the more-than-human world engages as they wait for the light.

Every Advent I see new methods, books, and calendars that aim to connect ourselves to the meaning of this season. These seem to exist at the margins, hardly able to compete with the trumpeting chaos of holiday calendars and over-played carols. And while I admittedly do attempt to engage these new titles or traditions as a way to center and slow down the pace, I find that rarely do the intentions last as there is little grounding and rooting into the reality of what my body longs to do—this longing to go inwards and follow the others with fur and four-feet, to find the kind and nourishing dark within my inner-self.

Truly, the light that breaks with promise on the heels of the Winter Solstice only has power because of the darkness through which we have just come. But how can we truly know the Light if we’ve been kept from going into the Dark?

This Advent I want to do something different, or more aptly, something deeper. I want to look to what Nature is doing, how the wild is behaving, how Earth is quieting and model something of a spiritual practice of it. Instead of buying another book to guide my Advent season, I want those with rhizomes and heartwood, those whose voices rise to moon-howl, those who curl confidently within their fur to counsel my quest for holy days that leave me with a renewed sense of faith, hope, and love. I want Nature to be my scout this season towards an ancient nativity, showing me how to rest like roots; when to withdraw like wolves; and when need for warmth demands a festive fire with family and friends.

These days before the brink of Winter will be ones where I lean into and look deeper into the principles of biomimicry, an idea that by imitating models, systems and elements of nature we might discover ways to solve complex human problems. Frankly, there is no way anyone can engage the news and social media and not see the human and ecological grief and suffering that is happening all over this world. And I believe that Albert Einstein was absolutely correct when he said:

We can't solve problems by using the same thinking we used to create them.

Our anthropocentric attempts to solve our human-engineered problems need to be reoriented—rewilded to the rest of the whole from which biotic life is bound. If the Winter Dark is the time when the natural world renews itself for the regenerative life-burst of Spring, how do we expect to do the same if our Winter looks no different than the frenetic force that pressures the Western world to be lit year round?

We know we are intimately connected to earth-systems. Our bodies get sick when our planet is sick. Our ability to flourish is fastened to the potential for all life to thrive. We have awoken to this reality in the eleventh hour of climate chaos. Janine M. Benyus, author of the profound and popular book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997) says this, “We are awake now, and the question is how do we stay awake to the living world?” I would say, it will take practice—disciplined regular and repeated rhythms or patterns of behavior that bring about this awoken state of perception. Following are the nine basic principles of biomimicry that come from Janine M. Benyus’ work:

Nature runs on sunlight

Nature uses only the energy it needs

Nature fits form to function

Nature recycles everything

Nature rewards cooperation

Nature banks on diversity

Nature demands local expertise

Nature curbs excesses from within

Nature taps the power of limits

How different are these than the common consumptive energy of this season? And how different would the holidays be if we engaged them from a spiritual practice of biomimicry? My sense is that we would be incredibly awake to the sacred and wild world in ways that would transform how we experience these threshold days of this season. We would come to find that we have enough. We are enough. And from this place, we will be able to open up and sink deep into this beautiful dark and rooted place.

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Advent Practice

Instead of spiritual practices that that lead us away from the dark, demanding a journey towards the light as if it wasn’t already within us, let’s re-engage rituals that place us here, that designate the dark earth as holy ground, sacred soil within which we rediscover the life that has always been within and with-out all things. Over the course of Advent, engage each of the nine elements as an invitation into a personal and spiritual practice.

• Take 2-3 days to reflect and respond to each principle and imagine ways in which you can bring that principle into practice. Begin by simply reframing each principle with the personal pronoun, “I.” For example, “I run on sunlight.” “I use only the energy I need,” etc.

• How does this statement feel to you? Is it true? Does it invite a response of longing or desire for a different way of being? How does this challenge you in this season? It becomes very interesting to think of these principles through the lens of holiday gift-giving, and even holiday activities and festivities; these foundational aspects of the natural world don’t work within a world of capitalistic consumerism, over-consumption, and narrow religious views.

• Let’s take this reframing into our inner-world, our soulscape. Are you able to restate the basic principles of biomimicry as a spiritual or soulful practice? Does your spiritual tradition or practice reward cooperation? Does it demand local expertise? If yes, how? If not, how are you being invited to a biomimetic lens of your faith?

• What rituals can be created to honor the sacred rhythms within the principles of biomimicry? Perhaps you bring in a cup full of dark humus earth into your home and create an Advent altar with it, pairing it with a candle. Do you already have an Advent wreath for your family table? Place the cup of earth at the center! This creates an earthen awareness for darkness and connects to the question: “What do I need to stay grounded through this season?” In our family we gradually begin turning off electric lamps or lights in our house and replace them with candlelight so that our eyes can begin to re-sensitize to the dark; by the time we are at the Winter Solstice we have only candle light within our home and boy can you feel the dark! This is a dark that is hard to come by in the city as light shines year round in the night from street lights, cars, businesses, exterior house and condo lights, etc. I also like this move towards the candle light as I find that we move more slowly in the house when only candles are lit. This honors what our bodies want to do naturally in this season, instead of the push to rush towards the coming light.

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“Seeds grow in the dark—so do we.
Let’s stop making such a virtue out of the light.
Let's turn toward what’s in the shadows and breathe it in,
breathe it here, meeting it face-to-face until we realize
with more than mind that what we are seeing
is none other than us in endarkened disguise.
Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. 
Let’s not be blinded by light
Let’s unwrap the night 
Building a faith too deep to be spoken 
A recognition too central to be broken 
Until even the darkest of days can light our way.” 
― Robert Augustus Masters

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Summer Rewilding Retreat: Scraping the Ground for the Grief Seeds

Willamette Valley, Oregon

The sun was high and hot these summer months. The ground was cracked open revealing crevasses of dry dirt. The traditional rains and cooling cloud cover transmuted into a thick covering of smoke as wild fires smoldered all over the West. And yet, even in these despairing conditions, tendrils of green hope grew into the form and shape of beans, tomatoes and peas; flowers became berries, apples, and plums; herbs returned to offer their healing. I was astonished at the hard and accomplished work these plants exhibited. In spite of the hot and harsh conditions, they were bound and determined to flourish.

This captures the collective energy of this season’s Rewilding Wheel quadrant, which brings together the ancient wisdom residing within the coordinates of the Summer season, the Southern cardinal direction, the element of Earth, and sinks these coordinating energies deep into the bioregion of the farm, the garden, the field. Here, the prayers and practices, and rites and rituals that reconnect us to the sacred rhythms of the earth-bound seasons and celestial phases take on a particular form. Within this soulful practice, one recalibrates the consecrated connection between season and site; natural rhythms and neighborhood residence; the beatific and the bioregion. One begins to explore how this landscape and season speak into their own psychospiritual formation, and how diving deep into the associated mythopoetic realm reveals transformational truths about ones soul.

“How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you are always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? [We] need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.”

— Rumi

My attempt with this practice is to bring into focused awareness practices that bind me to my bioregion, that sutures the sacred into the soil, and that reconnects me to the spirit of my place. A critical question has emerged through this effort, one that I have been bringing to each landscape. This question formed after a powerful moment that I shared with a Deg Hit’an Dine elder in my neighborhood woods. It was a moment that called into question all that I had been taught about the posture of stewardship, and earth-tending; the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. In a moment I realized that my custodial care of this particular urban forest was another iteration of colonization. As much as land is intersectional, my Rewilding Year has demanded I do the work to confront the intersectionality of bodies and how they are colonized by the dominant power—earth bodies, animal bodies, human bodies. The question that has led this sacred round is this: how may I be about the work of decolonizing my bioregion, and more specifically, my homescape so that I may have access to the “Spirit of my Place?”

It’s the difference between managing the land and minding its spirit. It’s coming to terms that custodial care is another iteration of colonization.

In response to the Rewilding Wheel coordinates, and in need of wisdom to guide my question, my husband Joel and I headed south for my personal Summer Rewilding Retreat to Oregon’s fertile Willamette Valley to spend time with Reverend Randy and Edith Woodley at their community-restoration and teaching farm, aptly named Eloheh Farm (“eloheh” is a Cherokee word meaning harmony, balance, well-being and abundance). Utilizing and teaching principles found within permaculture, biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK), Eloheh Farm is a model for a flourishing and abundant future as it displays the wholeness that occurs when cooperation with and permission from the more-than-human world are in alignment. Randy Woodley, PhD, is a Keetoowah Cherokee (legal descendent) teacher, poet, activist, former pastor, missiologist and historian. He and Edith’s work in the ongoing discussions concerning new church movements, racial and ethnic diversity, peace, social justice, interreligious dialogue and mission made me eager to bring my question and have him help me with my thinking and Joel was excited about the opportunity to interview him for his Emerging Future podcast (you can listen to this deep and vulnerable conversation here). We came with the expectation of being transformed by this place and its people.

The hospitality of this land and its people knew no bounds. We stayed on site in a rustic bunk house with windows that opened up to the star-soaked wind that whistled through the dying branches of neighboring Filbert farms. These money-driven monoculture plantations stood in direct contrast to the thriving bounty at Eloheh Farm. Randy, who understands his role with this land as a “co-sustainer” (note: not a steward, an important difference that comes into play in response to my question), led us on a tour around this 3.26 acre water-wise and regenerative landscape that not only feeds his family year round and provides produce for local markets, heritage and indigenous seeds for the Woodley’s Eloheh Seed company, but also provides a niche micro-habitat for a host of more-than-human species who now make their home in this incredible web of life. Within this web were a myriad of stone fruit trees; a well-visited pollinator garden; herbs and medicine plants including heritage and ceremonial use tobacco and tulasi; tomatoes, cucumber, and 800 year old squash strains. The list goes on! A walk through Eloheh Farm was like walking through the fabled Garden of Eden with the Wise Gardener who knew not only the names of every living being, but their essence and critical role within an ecosystem.

Our mornings together would begin seated in a circle with bottomless coffee cups. Within this unhurried space, stories were told—stories of violent racism, stories of grace, stories of healing, and stories of grief. Here we were invited to cross over from the White Western worldview into the indigenous mind, a conversion that Randy takes up very seriously, and which informs his work as a Distinguished Professor of Faith and Culture and Director of Intercultural and Indigenous Studies at George Fox University. He was very clear about this intentional effort. This isn’t appropriation, shared Randy. “This is what the world needs. Don’t take our stories or our prayers (without permission) but do take up our world view! It’s what the world and our future needs!” This circle became my fertile ground, the earth in which I planted this elder’s wisdom, hoping the storied seeds would take root, stabilizing and nourishing my rewilding journey. With a freshly poured cup of coffee in hand, Randy asked me why I had come. What prompted me to this place? I shared with him my stewardship story of Cheasty Greenspace and the moment when I began to feel that there was more to these woods than just matter and the resource-minded posture of stewarding. And while I knew that the forest was numinous, a place of inspirited presence, I needed to know if and how I had access to this depth. He listened. He waited. And he responded:

“Did you ever ask permission?”

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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

— Aldo Leopold

Permission. I took Randy’s return question with me as I worked on transplanting dozens of peppers in the greenhouse. Permission. With each pepper lifted out of a now-too-small container and placed with organic compost into a much bigger planter the question took root. Permission. Did I ever ask permission from the land to steward it? Permission. The roots began to work through the too-dry soil of dominance. Had I ever asked permission from the spirit of a place to access it? Permission. Root tips worked against the hard lodged foundation of Whiteness and cracked foundation of colonization. Had I ever asked permission from the Duwamish tribe to restore this land? Permission. This question was both about the place and its original people. And the inherent answer required a profound shift in posture of power to one of vulnerability: stewardship doesn’t require permission as it assumes an entitled practice of resource dominance; co-sustaining or solidarity is the posture granted after asking permission from the entity by whom you want to stand beside.

To be vulnerable is to fashion yourself after the posture of the Holy—we are most like God when we are susceptible to the forming influence of the essence of others. And we see this throughout ecosystems and flourishing communities! We thrive when we are in inter-relationship and interdependence with others, sharing our very nature that is inherently mutually enhancing. This is the active work of encounter others and allowing others to encounter you. This is moving from being the beholder, to being beholden. Can we move into this vulnerable space? Can we assume the vulnerable posture of asking permission of a place and its original people to be there and be there deeply and well? For in that vulnerability lies the key to our belonging.

This is the marrow of this year’s journey. I cannot belong to a place because I believe I have the right to, the entitled access to all its resources, the power to move in and through it. I may get to belong to a place after I have asked permission and been granted access to the wisdom that lives in its blood and bones.

My reinhabitation, my rewilding into the whole of life requires the reintroduction of permission, and from that place, abundant renewal and regeneration will take place within my soul and the soil of my belonging. This is the work of rewilding, of land liberation, which works within the inner nature as well. It is a sacred act; an apology, a reconciliation. And it begins with the posture of permission followed by a perpetual posture of gratitude, the combination between the two being that which will heal our grief from our separation from the land.

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Field and Farm Rewilding Practices

“We can no longer hear the voice of the rivers, the mountains, or the sea. The trees and meadows are no longer intimate modes of spirit presence. The world about us has become an ‘it’ rather than a ‘thou.’ ”

— Thomas Berry

Within the 140 pages of the Waymarkers Rewilding Workbook, you will find many invitations to prayers, practices, rites and rituals that will assist in your tuning into the natural world. This sacred setting is no less than our soul's resonance with the natural rhythms and seasonal movements found within the natural world. I find that as every new quadrant of the Rewilding Wheel begins, I am more than ready to learn and lean into the lessons contained within the corresponding bioregion. This Summer I delighted in all things Earth, Farm, and Growing. It truly felt like the heated and heavy passions that push forth the emergence of life were energies that surrounded me. My own work through Waymarkers was in full swing this summer, requiring presence, tending the generating heat of working metal on metal. Another story for another time would identify how this season was the work of the journey through the underworld, Joseph Campbell’s mythopoetic understanding that to truly become, one must meet and mount the dragons that thwart our heroic return to our True Self. In many ways, I was living deep in the earth in this season, subsisting on the nourishment that, ironically, the descent below demands. This has been the potent time of seeing the Upper World’s plants and trees from their underside—looking upwards into the fascia of their root systems, learning from this perspective and how this working network supports and sustains life.

Following are a few of the personal practices I engaged to deepen the earthen mood in me, and cultivate a daily awareness of how this particular landscape expresses the Holy and becomes a sacred messenger as well. This is the work of recovering the sense of the world as a “thou.” Coming to my homescape with the posture of asking permission transformed this season for me and how I entered into relationship with the element of Earth. The culture of consent is raising even with how we engage the more than human world!

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Farmers Markets

Any and every where we went this summer, I would make an intentional effort to visit the local farmers market, sampling the bounty of that particular place and paying attention to how the sacred is revealed through this particularity. More and more cities and townships are supporting local agriculture through sponsoring and hosting these mini markets that offering seasonally fresh (and often organic!) produce. Shopping for our fresh fruits and veggies in a way that support our local farms and husbandry vocations is important to healthy people and a healthy place. This intention also brought into focus current issues related to protecting the rights and lives of our migrant neighbors and workers whose very sustenance depends upon the work offered at these farms. This summer has been a time of activism and advocacy related to immigrant detention centers and resisting those in power who would believe that fences of separation are better than fostering solidarity. While there is much delight in this season of working (and eating!) alongside your land, the disciplined practice is to increase an empathetic response through awareness and action for those lives that are directly connected to the fields and farms in our lives.

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Visting Farms

Throughout the summer we visited farms. We went out to the fertile fields that provide the land in which our foods grow and flowers which feed so many others. It was a time to reconnect to our food sources. This was especially important for my children who are being raised in an urban context. We visited the vast fields and farmlands throughout the Willamette Valley; lavender farms in Sequim, WA; Butchart Gardens in Victoria; and the amazing biodynamic Jubilee Farm in Carnation, WA. Spending sacred time in what used to be the Benedictine Nunnery herb garden on the Holy Island of Iona was another powerful way to reconnect to how women have always been inherently connected to the work of growing things for wholistic health and wellness. We talked about the health of the earth, the integrity of soil, the medicine offered by herbs, the concentric circle of harm caused by herbicides and pesticides, bumblebees and why we need them. We participated in growing, working, listening, learning, eating, sipping, and being alongside of the earth this season. When we begin to rewild our lives, we begin the work of recognizing and reestablishing elements and features of whole and interconnected relationships. The work of rewilding this summer brought us back into communion with the eucharist-like qualities of creation. Life offers itself to be consumed by the other as a gift for life to continue to emerge.

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Foraging & Harvesting

We learned about what our local land grows for food and how it can be used for medicine, and its fibers to fashion utility and clothing. Long walks along the wild edges of fields revealed the abundance of berries. Our own urban homescape offered up lavender, apples, plums, herbs, eggs, and a finally-berrying elderberry bush from which our daily tincture of elderberry syrup is taken. We learned from the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh) peoples how to harvest cedar bark for weaving of baskets and making of rope. We almost daily engaged with Hildegard of Bingen’s understanding of veriditas—the greening power of God. It is truly within the working of the soil that we see how suffused the ground is with the Sacred; that through this element we see that the possibility of all life emerges from the dirt, the most holy of humus (see Genesis 2:9, 19). God draws near to the earth and then animates it from within—that is veriditas.

Tour of Extinction

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.”

— Job 12:7

"See Me" by Lori Christopher 

The world has been captivated by the display of grief as an orca whale mother (Tahlequah also known as J35) has carried the remains of her baby on her nose through the waters of the Salish Sea for days. A member of the critically endangered sorter resident clan of orca whales, Tahlequah gave birth to her calf on July 24. For reasons unknown at this time, the calf lived for only half an hour. Since the death of her newborn, Tahlequah has been carrying the lifeless body on her nose or in her mouth in an unprecedented display of grief as she and her pod have moved northward through the San Juan Islands. 

There are many excellent articles and reports about what Ken Balcomb, the founder of the Center for Whale Research, is calling a “tragic tour of grief.” You can read the timeline of this maritime mourning through The Seattle Times as well as through many other press and publications. This sorrow that we are witnessing is hitting our hearts hard. People are reporting feeling an empathetic response to J35’s loss as they reflect on their own profound suffering and heartache. Within this mutuality, there is also an overwhelming sense that we are beholding an anguish beyond the edge of even our own human comprehension. We may mourn with Tahlequah, but will it be enough to bring about the requisite change to ensure the future of this magnificent form of life? 

This grief tour is the death knell of extinction. How does one put down the body that contained the very kernel of hope for survival? How does one let go of the embodiment of faith that ensures that there will be a tomorrow? 

The beloved and decomposing body Tahlequah carries is a clarion call to awaken the world to the collective bones of mass extinction; it is beyond a strident warning. It is a SEE ME and WAKE UP demand to confront what our human presence is doing to the biodiversity of the more than human world. This is her flag, her desperation, her plea. We can no longer just bear witness without bearing the arms of action. We can no longer simply stand beside as another species ceases to exist on account of our human-centered ways. To think this orca pod will remain without changing anything is insanity for we cannot expect different outcomes while repeating the same behaviors over and over again. Furthermore, to not change our ways, to simply allow this precious form of Life to starve away is a form of evil for which I do not know how we can account. 

This week I have been daily present to the very waters that this pod calls home, a sea where I have seen the black triangular fins slicing through waters, orcas breaching and swimming my whole life. This week the waters have been still and silent, eerily echoing the steady loss of biodiversity and life of this orca calf. I have stood by the sea, salty tears streaming down my face, asking this great body of Living Earth what needs to be done; desperate for a hope that would emerge through the very lapping waves that also carry Tahlequah and the bones of her babe. It is not a mystery why these beings are being brought to the brink of extinction. She is informing us of what needs to be done.

Tahlequah as Mother, as the archetypal portal of future generations, as the very seat of Creation is stoically carrying her calf as a clear and stirring command to abandon our still-birth ways that lack the life-force to listen deeply to animals, birds, Earth, and those that live within the sea. She is calling out to us as a great prophetess of the sea, echoing Job's wisdom that the more-than-human world offers us insight and understanding to the Sacred and our True Selves. She is informing us in the most poignant and powerful of ways to no longer see ourselves as separate and apart from the great assembly of creation: will we hear and respond?

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Respond with Hope. Respond with Action. 

It has been 3 years since there has been a successful birth for the Southern Resident Orca. These whales have a 19 month gestational period and because they are starving to death they are losing these babies in the late term of pregnancy. There are very few breeding pair possibles left and if something doesn’t change NOW extinction is inevitable. This pod has lost nine of them in a one year period due to starvation. Now there 75 whales left....the lowest number in almost 50 years after the population of these families were decimated by a rush on Orca captivity for aquarium entertainment. 

Scientists agree that the only thing that will save this beloved species from certain starvation is the breaching of the Lower 4 dams on the Snake River allowing the salmon a habitat up river in which to spawn in cold clean water. Salmon is a key staple food source for this orca population and it is because of a lack of this food source that the orcas are starving.  

To find out more about this process please visit www.damsense.org

Contact Washington and Oregon Senators & Governors as often as you can in response to what Tahlequah is requesting. Below are then numbers that need to be called and a script to help you if you aren’t sure what to say. If you are asked for a Zip code and don’t live in Washington use 98101. And if you live in Washington and need a Oregon Zip code 97212.

Please call Washington Legislators:
Senator Patty Murray
(202) 224-2621‬
Senator Maria Cantwell
(202) 224-3441
Governor Inslee
‭ (360) 902-4111‬

Please Call Oregon Legislators:
Senator Jeff Merkley
(202) 224-3753
Contact: www.merkley.senate.gov/contact/
Senator Ron Wyden
(202) 224-5244
Contact: www.wyden.senate.gov/contact/
Governor Kate Brown
Phone: (503) 378-4582

Call Gov. Inslee (WA) (360-902-4111) & Gov. Brown (OR) (503-378-4582) and tell them to breach the lower 4 dams on the Snake River!

Call Script:
Phone or Email
"Hello Governor or Senator _____________ My name is _________ and I am calling to insist you implement the plan to breach the lower 4 dams on the Snake River with no further EIS (environmental impact studies) We have completed these studies for 25 years costing tax payers millions and the answer s always the same the only way to save our salmon is by increasing there spawning habitat. These constant studies are just a stall tactic. Meanwhile the Salmon of the Pacific Northwest and the Southern Resident Killer Whales are going extinct. The time is NOW.... Ken Balcom from the Center for Whale Research says if we are lucky we have another have until the end of 2018 to get started breaching. In addition these dams aren’t adding even adding power to the grid and are costing Tax payers millions. DON’T let this happen on your clock do the right thing....let it be your legacy Breach the lower 4 dams on the Snake River NOW to save millions of tax dollars annually, bring wealth & jobs to a region and restore salmon runs which will save the southern resident Orcas from going extinct."

Thank you to Michelle Seidelman for this wisdom and guidance for how to act in response to our empathetic grief.