The divided world… Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum, 11th Century
I woke up last Friday to the sound of the wind, blowing from the South, and I thought of the forest fires in the Amazon and the hurricane preparing over the southern oceans. Where was I feeling this storm, this burning? A few weeks ago I had the shingles and felt that they were the reflection on my skin of the forests in Siberia burning. The Amazon, I think, I’m feeling as a burning from within. There is a rage at how things ARE. I observe this destructive time and the small or big ways I see it all around me. Then there are the ways this destructive time is within me, and I am a part of it.
I recently I bought a car. This is something I thought I would never do, since I saw the car as the epitome of all I dislike about our current system: speed, waste, environmental destruction, blind humanity racing towards its own demise. But the reality of living in rural Vermont has dawned on me and to my surprise, now that I have bought one - with all the harrowing emotions of the first time! - having a car is one of the most freeing things I have ever done. So I’ve had to hold these two parts of myself as one: the me that hates using fossil fuels and the me that loves to be independently mobile and who is a very part of the destructive world I can observe as if I were separate.
This realization was humbling. Seeing the world as separate from ourselves equals holding ourselves above it, and I think so many of our problems come from this perceived division between ourselves and the world around us. I put a barrier between myself and others, between me and the Earth and Sky, because I fear that I can’t integrate my own complexity. But my recent illness taught me once again that we are one: my body is your body is the Earth’s body.
When I sat down to listen to the wind, the New Moon in Virgo spoke to me of duality. Virgo wants to do everything right (one of the first things I saw when I woke up was the image on the right, the cover of a magazine on the kitchen counter!) and on Friday the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars and Mercury were all there, in Virgo. That’s called a stellium in astrology speak, and that’s a lot of energy focused on everyone wanting to do everything right. My Sun is in Pisces who sits opposite Virgo in the sky, which means that all of these planets were hanging out reflecting the light of my natal Sun, my shining Self (some call it the ego). Pisces, in some ways, represents the opposite of wanting to do things right. Sometimes Pisces is the opposite of doing anything at all. Virgo is about distinction, contrast and duality, while Pisces is about merging, nuance and ambiguity. Virgo doesn’t want to go with the flow. Pisces is content to sit in the water and float. Sometimes she doesn’t even care if she is going anywhere. So I know this duality. And we all have it, just as we all have all the other contrasts that the sky represents for us: the outgoing and the shy, the confident and the embarrassed, the joyful and the depressed. These all make up a part of the little fractal beings that we are and each one of these parts is illuminated differently by the stars at different times. It can be a lot to get used to. Especially with all the planets staring at you.
So just as the darker parts of ourselves can seem overwhelming at times, sometimes the devastation we see on the outside, especially if we focus on it exclusively, can seem like a lot. People are more or less touched by it and we all have different strategies for dealing with it at our disposal. I think it is good to remember this too, that we are all touched differently by the outside world, with more or less privilege and protection, and this realization can also bring its own breath of welcome humility. As for my strategies, I tend to search for historical explanations and create through it, that is I use the catastrophe to motivate me towards some form of artistic expression, or the destruction becomes the matter for creation. I like seeing the big picture too, and if this doesn’t work, I notice my divisive thoughts and choose not act on them. I may choose to open them up for discussion with a trusted friend or two. This often reveals my contradictions for what they are and helps me step back into a more holistic view. The plants also help me do this. They are constantly reminding of the blessings in perceived difficulty or darkness. I realized my illness – the shingles! – as uncomfortable as it was, was also an introduction to the healing powers of Saint John’s Wort, who is now forever in my heart, in my apothecary and within my body of skills as a healer to offer when someone else might have need for it.
It’s also good to see our one-sided vision for what it is: a kind of blindness. Not that we should ignore the calls for change, the new wind that is blowing, which are becoming louder and more demanding by the day, but just that we should insist on seeing the whole picture, for ourselves and the people around us. My whole picture includes driving a car but also doing a lot of work on the land and in my community in order to embody the change I want to see. It’s not going to be perfect, I’m not going to do everything right, but I am going to live in my corner of the world and shed light and peace around me, as much as I can. You are probably doing this too.
The fires are burning and the animals are dying, but more and more people are waking up. It’s as if the fires are lighting up collective consciousness, showing us the way. And in the burning, there subsists a little green. I talked to a fisherman the other night and he said there were no fish in the streams, but I took a walk through the woods to a pond and saw them, small, swimming upstream. I don’t know where the world is going, but I know it’s going to be okay. I’m becoming more and more friends with myself every single day.
A friend sent me bits of this poem by Mary Oliver the other day. Here is the whole thing, for her, and for you. It captures something.
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass
1.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat
of the sweet grass?
Will the owl bite off its own wings?
Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or
forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream?
Behold, I say—behold
the reliability and the finery and the teachings
of this gritty earth gift.
2.
Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
thrillingly gluttonous.
For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.
And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.
And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.
3.
The witchery of living
is my whole conversation
with you, my darlings.
All I can tell you is what I know.
Look, and look again.
This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.
It's more than bones.
It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.
It's more than the beating of the single heart.
It's praising.
It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.
You have a life—just imagine that!
You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe
still another.
4.
Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,
the dancer, the potter,
to make me a begging bowl
which I believe
my soul needs.
And if I come to you,
to the door of your comfortable house
with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,
will you put something into it?
I would like to take this chance.
I would like to give you this chance.
5.
We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
change.
Congratulations, if
you have changed.
6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some
fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
your life—
what would do for you?
7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements,
though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment
somehow or another).
And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
***
The poet is clear here, so I don’t need to say anymore.
Love and later summer gleaming,
Amy
P.S. Let me know how this new moon felt to you by getting in touch (amy@enosburghessences.com) or setting up an appointment to talk!