This post was sent to my newsletter at the new moon, as part of the Word of the Moon series. If you'd like to receive this when it's fresh - as well as insights and announcements about other creations of mine - please do sign up!
“From this place of the heart rises the spirit of wonder and of play, born of a deep abundance.”
Lena’s voice finds its way to me through the thick dark, disembodied yet seeming to rise from every surface of this strange womb. I feel my heart yearning for what she speaks of: the lightness and magic of the child. Desperation stretches thin, measuring the perceived distance between my desire and my current miasma of loss.
“But this requires a deep foundation of trust, often buried because we take ourselves too seriously. Let the safety of the lodge hold you. Give up your fears to the steam.”
Obediently, fervently, I shift my heart to the space of open wonder, and I envision all the rest rising off like mist from a clear lake. Though I doubt its ability to leave me completely - I find it suddenly gone. The surprise brings a gasp to my lips, unaccustomed as I am to the power of shared ceremony.
Memory of the heart is both a blessing and a burden. All our loved ones reside there, our lived joys and celebrations. But so too do our fears and angers, the pain that comes from the unknown flows of love and dream.
Our bodies diligently hold all of this for us. As long as we give meaning or purpose to it, our body holds emotion as a living memory. But the leaves of the season past must fall before new growth can emerge.
And so, the word of the moon at the rising of the dark is
shed.
The trees are inspiration for this every year. We love them most, perhaps, when they are dying. As the proliferation of life fades, living memories fade gloriously from green to yellow to red.
But in truth, it is not dying. The tree created those leaves for a purpose, and now their purpose is done. The tree calls its life force back into the center. It gathers what the leaves have captured, brings it deep within, and holds it there for future days of opening.
The tree sheds its leaves not because they are unwanted, but because their time has come. And in the great cycle of gift and return, they fall to the ground to become forage and shelter for many critters, changing and absolving until they become rich soil that supports the very tree who shed them.
Just so do our own shed attachments transform fear to wisdom, pain to compassion. We open space for ourselves to grow, and for others to also grown in our presence.
The challenge is that we must choose it. In the exhale of our own cycles, we must release what we are done with, what is done with us, so that we can return to the core of ourselves. We must work to remove our own old skin, become too tight.
I have known no greater gift - and no more difficult choice - than shedding that which my heart held dearly, yet now is imprisoned by.
It is easy once you are willing. And o! What a beauty you become.
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