Coyote — Wise One or Trickster?
In short, stuff must be lost for everything to keep rising. This tells me two fundamental truths: one, that in order to evolve and grow, we must be prepared to face the erosive aspects of life. Two, it’s the weathering that creates the finest landscape of our lives, shaping us and defining us over time. Ruth Allen (Weathering: How the earth’s deep wisdom can help us endure life’s storms)
Waking to three ‘caws’ of Raven flying nearby and to a sense that I’d dreamt about new ways of Being with Life, I thought about the pinon pines in the woods out back. ‘They don’t fear fire,’ was the clear, deeply felt message. Indeed, if we would train ourselves to listen to the tree beings, we would likely learn that, in their deep wisdom and understanding, they welcome fire as an essential element to all Life.
Each morning over the last week as I’ve built the morning fire in my wood stove, I’ve felt the spectrum from gratitude to horror and sorrow. I’m grateful for my fire contained in a box of metal and stone designed to safely bring the warmth of burning wood into my home. I’ve recalled seeing evidence of long past fires that over time have maintained Nature’s balance in these woods. Fires that burned themselves out. Earth’s knowing. Earth’s ways.
Then my awareness shifts as I recall the devastation of nearby fires in recent years and, once again, witness devastating fires in California, now in Los Angeles. My heart is heavy for the suffering and the loss. I wonder how much destruction and devastation we must witness and experience before we see ourselves, our choices, our ways as an element in the ignition and gestation of such disasters. How much time and how much more futile effort to control natural systems will we waste?
When will we awaken to the reality that we are part of those systems? That all Life depends on cooperation within them and learning from them/with them?
I think similar thoughts about wars – past and present - and all forms of our inhumane, yet human, attempts at domination. How, I wonder, do we break these corrupt systems, each reflecting our own corruption, the rupture of our hearts disconnected from Nature, from the truth of our interconnectedness, our Oneness with All that is?
And as I wonder, I’m quickly reminded of the abundance of wise threads being woven into the fabric of Life around the globe, co-creating WITH Life a world that reflects these Truths. Although you aren’t likely to find them in the fear-mongering divisiveness of mainstream news, such choices and actions are ever present, building new scaffolding and creating opportunities for those willing to seek and for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Inviting us to play and to understand that Mother Earth has the wisdom and the ways of weathering Life’s storms.
As this new year unfolds, I’m looking and listening. Let’s BE and DO this!
A Bit More Snow on the Peaks