 Dearest Friends,
The word "corona" means crown and the corona virus is so named because the virus looks like a crown. As shamanic folks, we know that everything holds meaning. I was reminded recently of the meaning of words and it made me wonder: How may we choose to frame this experience? How may even the name of the virus, this word 'crown', hold significance for us; even be a signpost to support us as we move through precarious times? How might it help us find the intelligence that underlies what we perceive now as threat and chaos - to not only make sense of the moments and find our way through dramatic change, but also to embrace its gifts? I have birthed two babies at home. You can see in this photo of me with my children Sayre and Eben, taken last summer in the Olympic Mountains, that they are now wonderful adults! Being a mother, what naturally comes to me in reference to the word 'crown' is the birthing process. Crowning is when the baby's head engages the birth canal. When a baby's head crowns, there is no turning back. Birth is inevitable. Are we in the birth canal now, undergoing the impending birthing of new ways to experience life on Planet Earth? For me, it helps to reframe things in this way. No childbirth is without pain or potential danger, which may include the death of the baby or the mother. Eben was a strapping baby boy of 10 pounds, 2 ounces. He almost died when he was born and my life was threatened, too. Birthing itself is a death journey. A release of one way of being, to another. In indigenous shamanic cultures, as in nature, death and birth are always linked. AND - there is never death without rebirth. A baby cannot hold back the dying of life in the womb, to birth into the life yet to be. It helps me to reflect upon what's happening in the world right now in the above ways. It helps me surrender to the suffering, grief, confusion and fear that so many people experience now; acknowledging that the very rhythms of these feelings, like contractions in birthing, can guide us to deeper places of knowing and embodiment. Despite, and not dissociated from, all that's playing out around us. To be born is to surrender. To new life. To die is also to surrender. To new life. Embracing the threat of death, this is a time to trust. To corral our racing minds and our panicked hearts. To do our ceremonies and rituals. To spend quiet time with our own hearts, and with the Earth. To apply good energy to whatever our experience, to nature, and to whomever we can. There are many examples of how nature is flourishing as our human-created reality structures slow down. This is part of the new life already arising from the death-birth passage. And, for humans, we can look deeply into that nature-mirror, remembering that we are nature. Nature is clearly showing what and how to restore. We each have to find our own way through this gauntlet. Inseparable from the loss and turmoil, the promise of new life is there to nourish. New perspectives. More whole ways to be. For that I am grateful. I am honored to be in circle together during this powerful time of opportunity. From my heart to yours, Llyn Cedar Roberts |
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