Sharing Pain of the Earth
Join in the lament
(photo by M. Fritchle)
In the early evening it was cool enough to walk the path up towards the high red cliffs. Winding through low brush woven with the toughest wildflowers and cactus spines, every footstep a rasp on the pale dry earth. Even now the air is hot and dry and each breath feels weighted in my chest. The desert will not allow me to rush by her.
The rocks rise up and seem to lean over me. Their deep red is animate, aware, holding the bones of dinosaurs, bones of ancestors, remnants held in place in layers. I have come here to share my wish to be of service to the future of this Earth, to hopefully repair and tend to an interconnected community we can co-create. But this place seems to speak only of the past, of survival and hanging on.
Each riverbank is carved with flood lines and footprints of beings who traveled through weeks ago. Deep mountain lion print where her weight sunk into damp clay, on the search for food or a place to sleep as the heat of the day came on. Memory seems desiccated, preserved and flavor-deepened like a dried apricot. You need your teeth to digest it. You need hardened skin.
And yet I felt welcomed by a group of rocks glowing orange in the lowering sunlight. They seems tumbled together, haphazardly resting on one another, creating pockets for shade, windows of light. So much like a body you could imagine them moving gently with breath, sighing, stretching. My fingers trail over their curves and I am surprised I do not find my fingertips stained red from the touch.
And then I saw the metal plaques, drilled into ancient boulders, so out of place I immediately wanted to erase them from view. Each plaque announcing a human life, bought by a no-doubt loving relative, now marking this living boulder turning it into a reminder that humans own this place and can sell what they think is theirs. This place used to be a sacred burial place for the original tenders of this place, a private place to honor the dead by placing them in the body of the Earth. My head throbbed. I felt rage rising in me like a flush of mid-day heat. I wanted to get away.
I heard a cry rise up all around me. This was not the calm composting of ancient forests or the vast perspective of ocean, this was a wail of survival unique to the desert, an ancient injustice in bones too dry to decay. A battle cry that promised to not forget.
This Wild said To join me is to feel my pain. I am not here to soothe you; I am here to call you into grief.
Later in a darkened room, I journeyed to listen to these desecrated boulders and the growling I heard under the ground. Show me, I said. And so, I saw a metal plaque screwed into my chest, deep barbs going into muscle and bone. I felt the times I had been sold, my own strength and light taken in service of someone else, someone deemed more worthy. I felt the betrayal and the erasure of my own sovereignty and all the ways I had come to believe I was only here to reflect others.
I called in those I knew to be responsible, those I remembered bargaining with my agency. There are many more that I never met, systems and ad campaigns and political deals that encouraged or demanded that I do not belong to myself. And I called in my own sacred NO and my guides and we wrenched the plaque out of my skin. It was difficult and left a gaping hole in my chest. But then I saw the boulders throwing off their plaques, bronze metal popping out and falling to the ground.
I saw the boulders dancing and giving off light. I saw liberation.
The liberation was in realms other than the one I generally walk in. Outside of my room in the harsh light of the next day, the living boulders were still marked as offerings to human capitalism and self-glorification. I still bear the wounds of being objectified, commodified, was well. But the imagining of liberation is important.
And it is important that I was willing to join the rocks and the land in lament and protest. That I could turn towards this wound and allow my own to throb in response. The land spoke to me through my own pain. Sometimes that is how we learn what we need to hear.
(photo by M.Fritchle)
The Sacred Wild can be so kind and loving and can be a source of such deep healing and holding. It can also be a well of grief and righteous anger, a story of such in justice towards all of its beloveds, a history that must be accounted for now. Do not go to the Wild just to be comforted. Go humbly to be allowed in.
Be ready to face pain, your own and the Earth’s. It can be overwhelming and I think that is why some people avoid time in the Wild; they hear and feel things that are hard. The Wild has all kinds of stories and many, many lives of suffering and wonder.
And please also be ready to imagine liberation. To call it in again and again. Yes, for yourself - and for all beings. Use your agitation to create a Sacred No. Use your tears and your stinging sweat to put things to rest in a revered way.
The desert requires that you protect yourself. That you are aware of the harshness and how it can harm. The desert says remember cruelty and make wise choices. The desert’s song can sound a lot like crying. It can bring on a fever that leaves you wrung out and without words.
But along the old floodbanks of the river in the cracked and flaking soil, wild sweetpeas are growing and full of pale maroon flowers. Willows are rising and Cottonwoods sparkle their songs with the wind. A tiny hummingbird runs his wings through the air showing us how to move with lightness and constant hope. A human sits in vigil calling in the prayers needed and true.
(photo by M.Fritchle)
What do we do in times when grief rises up and it feels hard to envision the future? Sometimes the best thing to do is to call in your creative expression and hear what your inner realms are singing about. Bring something new into being for the adventure of it - Join us this summer for a 4 week dive into Living Your Muse.
LIVING YOUR MUSE : EMBODIED CREATIVITY WEDNESDAYS JULY 23-AUG 13, 2:30PMPT-4:30PMPT on zoom. $295
The Sacred Wild speaks to us in unknown languages that we learn through creative listening, sensing, and processing. Often we understand our interactions with the Wild only after we have put an image to paper, or allowed poetry to flow out, or felt the gestures and movements of a dance. Within each of us is a Muse who, if called, will help us to fully engage in a deeply embodied, soulful way with the Sacred Wild and our own inner landscapes.
Join us for an experiential journey over 4 weeks of a full moon cycle, of Living Your Muse. Together we will stoke the fires of our creativity with drawing, expressive writing, photography and movement. Each invitation to create will be rooted in connection to the natural world and our internal reflections of it.
Hosted on Center for Wild Spirituality’s Mighty Networks ecosystem, we will have a private group page to share our creations and thoughts, as well as recordings of sessions you miss. Attendance live is important though, so plan to be present with us as often as possible. No art experience necessary - this is about tapping into the innate creativity within you.
Facilitated by Michele Walker & Melissa Fritchle, Guides for Seminary of the Wild Earth