Daring Mondays: Inexorable Life

Have you ever had one of those moments where everything just seems to line up and all these little thoughts and incidences suddenly all seem to be pointing in one direction? What was random becomes pointed? It’s the kind of things movies are made of, but in my life they always seem to lead to these small and (seemingly) inconsequential thoughts and ideas rather than big dramatic movie moments. This post is the result of one of these alignment thoughts…

Just so you know, I am a killer of plants. It’s sad really, because I truly love them and the house seems so empty without them. But, inevitably, when left in my care, they die. I either water them too much, or don’t water them enough. I put them in too much or too little sun – or maybe some combination of the above. This is not made any better by planting things outside. In gardens, in pots, in vases, all things green and lovely die when given too me. It’s just something about myself I’m going to have to accept.

Having said this, you may be then wondering what the heck I was doing outside yesterday planting a garden. Well, the fact of the matter is you can’t just leave a front of house flower bed empty and full of weeds. And, I can’t help but hope that if I put the right kind of plants in the right place they’ll find a way to thrive despite my presence.

Moment #1

Planting the garden was the final instance of alignment which seems to have solidified an idea in my mind and turned it into a blog post. The first instance happened some time ago while I was reading The Dance of the Moon.

In the book, Furst talks about the changes in time keeping that happened as we shifted from more matriarchal cultures (and time systems) to the patriarchal ones we know now. He says that when women kept time it was understood as a cyclical thing – a circle. It wasn’t until men took over the role of time keepers that we started to think of time as a linear thing; until then we had no concept of something like the “end of the world”. I find this to be a fascinating line of thought myself, so I tucked it away in my inner file of “Interesting Things to Ponder.”

Moment #2

Last Monday my period started (sorry guys, don’t mean to offer TMI, it’s relevant though). Walking is always a particularly good idea on Day 1 of my cycle so I took myself out to this little grove within the local Eco-preserve and sat down to meditate. I was doing something between meditating, thinking, and praying (which is what I normally mean when I say “I was meditating” – that whole “empty mind” thing isn’t very effective with me) and the focus of all this was, of course, my cycle.

I’ve been trying to revision my cycle as a blessing rather than the curse we so readily accept it to be, and so I was pondering what the gift within our cycles could be. My mind drifted back to what archeologists consider to be some of the original calendars: drawings and carvings that clearly seem to track a woman’s cycle. Thirteen notches, or markings, for thirteen cycles and moons – one year.

Suddenly, it popped into my mind that we (that is, women) are natural time keepers. We can’t help but think in cycles or circles; we can’t avoid recognizing the patterns both in the seasons and in life in general, because every month we find ourselves starting back where we began – at Day 1 again.

I think it might be Man’s gift to remind us (human kind at large) that things change, that all things die, and shift and end. But, that Woman’s gift is to declare that all things stay the same, that something new is born, that everything begins again. Together, in balance, we wouldn’t track time as a line with a beginning and an end, or as an unending circle of repetition; instead, we would understand time, and life itself to be an ever upward moving spiral. Things change, but they go on too. That is a woman’s gift, my heart told me, to remind people that you’ll have another chance, that things come around again, that flowers always return in the spring.

Moment #3

Which brings me back to the garden. The other reason (besides the ugly front yard weediness, and eternal hope) that I was planting the garden was for a class I’m doing studying various goddesses. One of the final projects is to plant something bearing the aspects of nurturing and creation within the Goddess (the category of goddesses I’ve been studying) in mind while you plant. So, as I was digging up weeds I was asking myself, what does this garden have to teach me about the Limitless Divine? About Goddess? About my life?

I pulled up the rampaging grasses and tried to work all their roots out of the soil. I pulled up the tiny, lovely purple flowers that were growing wild because I needed to turn the soil. I found snails and worms, grubs and little beetle bugs. The garden, on deeper inspection, was alive with millipedes and centipedes and all kinds of ‘pedes and spiders and things I couldn’t hope to name.

I also found that the trees we had cut to the core last year were now sprouting and happily returning. New branches and thriving leaves grew off three or four stumps in my (tiny) front garden. It seems they simply cannot be held back.

As I worked, for hours scrunched up in the dirt and grass I ket asking: What lesson does this project have for me? What do You have to say to me here? And one thing came to me over and over again: Life.

The Point (I hope)

Life is ruthless. Life cannot be held back. We can cut, and kill, and pull. We can dig, and hack, and give up. But life will move on anyway. New bugs will move in, the roots will still thrive, and new buds will sprout where all hope had been given up on.

Life, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not is inexorable; it marches forward (with or without us). Winter is always, without fail, followed by spring – even in the most desolate and harsh places in the world. There is no force in the universe that can stop life from happening, from moving, from turning.

I suspect, it may be this truth, above all, that we have forgotten in this industrial, technological, patriarchal, linear world. And without this truth we have forgotten how to Hope. We have forgotten how to celebrate endings and death as invitations to birth and beginnings that they are. We are so separated from the natural world that we forget about spring until the very moment that it is sprung upon us.

I’ll tell you something else I’ve learnt while reading Dancing with the Moon; it’s nothing Furst has openly said, it was instead a hidden lesson that I realized by accident (by asking the right question at the right time). I discovered that the ancient winter holidays were not celebrations of winter itself, nor were they meant to simply bolster spirits during the hard times in life. No, they were full on celebrations of hope. At Yule, when we feel the heaviness of winter (and celebrate Christmas), they were celebrating the promise of the return of spring. Because, this might be the darkest time of year, but it means the darkness is no longer growing and the return of light is inevitable.

While their spring and summer celebrations honoured the sun, and the life they were experiencing, the fall and winter ones were all about the promise of the sun’s return. They knew life could not be stopped and so, even in the darkest moments they celebrated the inevitable, ruthless, return.

Things end. There is darkness, cold, and winter. Winter is necessary, and death fosters life. But, as a woman, it’s my job to remind you: Life Goes On. You’ll come back around again. Day 1, spring, returns without fail. The moon is reborn every month, as am I (as a woman), it’s a promise of bigger things. It’s a promise of hope that’s held out for your life.

So, this week, I dare you to celebrate Life. To dare to embrace Hope. To welcome Spring. This weekend was May Day (or Beltane) a celebration of the fertility and renewal happening all around us, (Traditionally, it’s a sun celebration as Bel was a god of the sun…) so it only makes sense that this week in particular we would choose embrace Life as an unstoppable force.

Ask yourself, how can you celebrate life this week? What action can you do to remind yourself to hold onto Hope? If you are in a winter season right now, plan something to celebrate the coming promise of spring – to remind yourself of the inevitable return of life. Is there some action you can take to anchor yourself in the truth of the cyclical nature of all the aspects of life? Then do it! Plant a garden (or just a plant), walk a labyrinth (Wakizashi and I are building one this week), go for a walk, or read a book in the sun, light a bundle of candles, say a prayer, take a breath… Embrace Life – I dare you.