That is my joyful primal awareness prior to words but I need those words now to express the knowing. That linear string of mundane words -
I HAVE COME HOME - do not express the magnitude of the felt-sense of being cradled by the earth, the magnificence of embodying nature and the gratitude for coming into awareness.
My four legged friends stir as I reach for the pen and paper on the floor beside the bed. Thank you Muse for showing me what it’s like to arrive home.
Then I blaze That is my joyful primal awareness prior to words but I need those words now to express the knowing. That linear string of mundane words -
I HAVE COME HOME - do not express the magnitude of the felt-sense of being cradled by the earth, the magnificence of embodying nature and the gratitude for coming into awareness.
My four legged friends stir as I reach for the pen and paper on the floor beside the bed. Thank you Muse for showing me what it’s like to arrive home.
With an epiphany. That’s it! That’s it! No wonder
we modern, urban two leggeds are alientated
from the ground on which we walk. I was born in
a high rise sterile, clanging, clanking, square cornered, hysterical environment. Weren’t you?
My body was immediately taken from my mother for measurement and weighing by a stranger with gloved hands. I am quantified and charted for excellence of birth condition - a product for comparison from the get-go. I’m even labeled as male or female and if by chance, horror of horrors, there is ambiguity, then my parents assign me gender. Having spent my entire consciousness in the dark, I am put under harsh lights and sterilized with sudsy chemicals to rid me of potential germs/bacteria/viruses/funguses/who knows what.
With humility and reverence,
I offer this to you:
May we all remember we are born here.
May our ancestors greet your ancestors with
open hearts and hands,forgiving the fears that
have triggered our hatreds.
May we each craft our own blessings and release them with gratitude.
May we make time to art-fully pray rebirthing ourselves in gratitude for belonging to this earth home.
Immediately upon being separated from everything that I know within my mother’s body, I am traumatized in my own skin, my senses assaulted, my soul fractured.
I share this dream with my friend, James, a brilliant thinker and compassionate Hospice chaplain. With stark precision, he sums up the situation: “Oh my God, Deborah, we’re born into terminal separation and permanent anxiety and we don’t even know it!” With a jolt I realize we modern “civilized” folk are all born with a form of autism.
For most of my lifetime, I have not been conscious of that fact, but I know it is buried in my cells and bones creating a malaise of confusion.
Where do I belong?
To what land am I native if not the land where I was born?
No wonder we have forgotten reverence for earth, air, fire and water, forgotten how to bless all the other beings around us, forgotten gratitude for the life we live.
A few days ago I stumbled upon a contemporary Native American prayer site on a mountain hillside. Trees wrapped with prayer flags and two prayer sticks of potent beauty planted in the dirt. Remnants of several deer were nearby but no evidence of a sweat lodge so I am guessing these were placed by hunters offering gratitude to the animals recently sacrificed. I have treated this place with respect, praying every day this week nearby and not entering the area until I felt the call of acceptance.
Deborah Jane Milton, PhD