There’s so much happening in the cosmos this weekend. Well, not just this weekend; we’re not out of the thick of things for quite a while, actually. But this weekend feels huge to me, and the best recommendation I can make (that I will be following as well) is that we engage in strategically holding space. We must hold this space for each other and ourselves. Our country and our planet.
There’s no other way to describe what’s happening in the U.S. right now but to say we’re being bombarded. Information, revelations, lies, conspiracy theories, a pandemic, isolation, fear, sickness, death. We’re being confronted with irrefutable proof that people of color do not share the same freedoms as white people. And we’re seeing a huge majority of our brothers and sisters (or perhaps for a lot of us, our sons and daughters) stand up and say, “The system is broken. It doesn’t stand for what we’ve been taught it does and we won’t pretend or allow it to persist any longer.”
Some of us will join in the protests continuing to unfold all across our nation in support of Black Lives Matter. Some of us will lend our support in other ways. Each as they are able, as they say. But as we witness injustice, as we begin to see with clear eyes the ugly parts of our history that have conveniently been left out of most of our educations, I do believe we will unite to create the ideal we all, deep down, want to believe is possible.
New Moon
We have so many indicators of a new paradigm coming to the fore, and a new moon (coupled with all the other major aspects) is, as we know, the time to set in motion the dream we wish to manifest.
As a result, I feel in my heart and soul that we are also being confronted with radical hope. Deep within our souls, thousands – perhaps millions – of people of all skin pigmentations are resonating with a seismic shift that will change our country forever.
Perhaps, just maybe, we are witnessing the birth of a new world.
Opossum Reminds Us
This opossum was just visiting me only minutes before I sat down to write this post tonight. I felt like its appearance was fortuitous. It’s urging us to use strategy to accomplish the change we demand. We need to expect the unexpected; be clever in seeking our goals. And above all, we’re being reminded to use our brains and sense of drama and cleverness to change the world.
We don’t need to stoop to the level of violence. We’re smarter than that. All of us.
We need to strategically hold space for each other to get this done. We can do this. It’s time. Time for an evolution.
A Heart in the Center of the Fire – Photo: L. Weikel
Knowing a good thing when they’ve found it, several grackles continued to frequent our feeders today. While they did become a bit petulant and mouthy as the afternoon grew long and the peanut coil emptied, this only reinforced my commitment to sharing with you the message of Grackle Medicine – Part 2!
And so it was that, when I checked my trusted and dog-eared copy of Ted Andrews’s Animal Speak*, the entry for Grackle made my jaw drop. I will synopsize here:
Grackle –
Keynote: Overcoming Excess and Emotional Life Congestion – Cycle of Power: Early Spring
Although the grackle is often considered part of the blackbird family, along with crows and starlings, it actually is not. It is part of the meadowlark and oriole family of birds. It is a large black bird with an extra-long tail. About its head and shoulders are iridescent feathers that change from blue to green to purple or bronze, depending on the light.
This coloring often reflects a need for those to whom the grackle comes to look at what is going on in their life differently. It says that situations are not what they appear to be and you may not be looking at them correctly – particularly anything dealing with the emotions.
Keep in mind that black is the color of the inner and the feminine. The purple and bronze coloring about the head especially usually indicates that emotions are coloring our thinking process. The grackle can help us to correct this.
During courting season, the male grackle will fold its tail, creating a diamond-like trough. This diamond shape is often reflective of activation. It hints at a need to become active in regards to emotional situations. Have we been too passive in our emotions? Are we simply rehashing and talking about them without doing anything to correct the emotional situations of our life? The grackle is a noisy, chattering bird and may be a reminder to quit talking and do something.
(…)
Grackles have inside their mouths on the hard palate a keel which helps them cut open acorns and eat them. We have often heard the expression, “It’s a tough nut to crack.” Well, this reflects the role a grackle can serve as a totem. Dealing constructively with our emotions and those people and things in our life which aggravate them can be a tough nut to crack. The grackle can show us how to do this.
Grackles love to live in pine trees. Pine trees are very therapeutic to emotional states. In a form of homeopathic medicine known as flower essences, the essence of pine can be used to help alleviate strong emotional states, particularly feelings of guilt. Again this reflects the grackle showing up as a sign to help you clear the emotions.
Emotions that are not dealt with can congest our life, aggravating or even creating congestion in the body at some level. The grackle can serve as a warning to be careful of this possibility, but it can also help show us how to prevent it from occurring. The droppings of grackles can serve to culture fungi which, if the wind blows, can cause a pneumonia-like infection.**
Most illness is symbolic. Congestion, especially pneumonia-like in appearance, can tell us that we are holding in our emotions. It can reflect a suppressed crying or a refusal to deal with certain long-standing problems and issues. (Have we neglected situations, giving them time to be cultured?) It can reflect a refusal to take in new life and new approaches to life, and so we become congested with old emotions.
The grackle shows us how to handle this. It can teach the proper expression of emotions. They can show us where excesses are dissipating our life force and facilitating a congestion of growth and movement. They can teach how to get back to creative and beneficial experiences and expressions of emotion.”
Grackle sampling – Photo: L. Weikel
So Many Take-Aways
Hmm. Wow. A lot of the information contained in this entry set bells a-ringing and whistles a-blowing for me.
First of all, who can deny that emotional overload hasn’t been an increasingly powerful factor in our lives as Covid-19 took root in our country? Since none of us have faced anything like this pandemic in our lifetime, we don’t have a first-hand frame of reference with which to deal with it. So our emotions are all over the place. And when we don’t know what to do with them, they clog up our systems; we become congested with emotion.
Secondly, I had to laugh at the admonition: “The grackle is a noisy, chattering bird and may be a reminder to quit talking and do something.” Umm, yeah. Point taken. Indeed, I think we’re all realizing the importance of action over words. Social distancing. Wearing face masks. We either do it or we don’t.
Biggest Confluence of Meaning
But almost immediately, I see how much more Grackle’s message applies in a cultural sense, in light of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter eruption over the past two weeks. Indeed, it was easy to draw parallels between our current social experience vis-à-vis guilt and facing hard emotional lessons (tough nuts to crack) in the first several paragraphs.
But I nearly fell over when both the trauma of the pandemic and the trauma of systemic racism in our nation dovetailed in the paragraphs on illness. It is as if Grackle was signaling me with flares and sirens that our current experiences are a perfect storm for transformation. We must process our emotions instead of deflecting and burying and denying them as we have, as a culture, for 400 years.
The pandemic is a symptom of the guilt and shame we carry, collectively, over the shameful act of exploiting others based on the color of their skin. And this infection is, in a sense, carried on the wind (which is why face masks protect us all), yet the brutality and inhumanity we are confronting now has been carried on the winds of time.
A Lot to Contemplate
I’ve read this information by Ted Andrews over and over since I finally succumbed to Grackle’s insistence that I pay attention. And I keep gleaning additional perspectives and tidbits of information that can help us all navigate this cultural storm.
Probably one of the most important concepts we can all apply to our experiences at this point is something one of my most beloved teachers, Puma Fredy Quispe Singona, suggested in a FB broadcast today: We must take care of ourselves as we deal with these great changes. And beyond that, we must remember that Mother Earth is here for us. She wants to support us; she loves us; she stands with us; and she is always there to ‘back us up.’
Grackle – Yum – Photo: L. Weikel
*affiliate link
**Clement, Roland C. The Living World of Audubon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, 1974) p. 254.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m finding the task of ‘keeping it together’ exhausting.
And the weird thing is, it’s not as if I can feel my energy and resilience being drained in any given moment. No. Instead of creating a bodily tiredness that stems from sustained, productive physical effort, such as mowing a lawn or digging a garden, this exhaustion is mental, emotional, and energetic.
As a result, the profound weariness – at least as I’m experiencing it – sneaks up on me when I least expect it. It’s as if one moment I’m chugging along just fine and the next moment I’m struggling to take one more step up the steep hill we encounter every day during our walk.
Looking to Sheila
“What in the world’s the matter with me?” I wonder out loud. The expression on Karl’s face tells me he’s feeling it as well. We look to Sheila, ever the faithful hound, to save us. She happily (if obliviously) obliges, standing in the middle of the road halfway up the hill to take a breather. We kid ourselves that we’re stopping for Sheila, but we both know it’s as much for us as it is for her.
At the crest of the hill, the land flattens out and we’re greeted to the familiar expanse of the meadows where we often encounter the somewhat aloof horse that resides there. Sheila wastes no time picking up the pace that’s impressive, frankly. We wonder where she gets her energy and spunk at 15 years and 9 months. Yikes. Do the math.
It’s Everything, Of Course
Keeping it together in the midst of a global pandemic that some believe is a ‘hoax’ and thus refuse to inconvenience themselves enough to even wear a mask that might protect both us and them is a stress. Add to that the horror of watching our country cry out in pain only to be met by the angry fist of a petty, insecure tyrant. And then, lurking at the back of all of our minds is the question of whether the coronavirus is spreading like wildfire as thousands upon thousands of us march and gather in protest to the corrosive effects of systemic racism and abuse of power.
Efforts are made to practice social distancing and the vast majority wear masks…but still. The crowds are massive in some cities. The risk is huge. The price of demanding justice may become stunningly dear.
Yeah, it’s exhausting. But this is when we need to tap into our reserves. We need to drop into our core and remember what we treasure most in life. We need to find our own unique, spiritual center of calm resolve and strength. What color is it? What does it look like? Is it a place? A feeling? A knowing?
Hmm. Good questions for pondering in these volatile times.
I might be exhausted now, but I’m going to permit myself to sleep. Rest up. You should, too. We’re going to need our wits about us in the days ahead.
Watching reports of the protests occurring nationwide in response to the reprehensible acts (or failure to act) of the four Minneapolis Police Department officers that resulted in the death of George Floyd is upsetting enough. But when you stop for a second and realize these protests and marches are taking place in the midst of a global pandemic, in the midst of a virtual plague, the fact that so many thousands of people are willing to put their lives at risk to demand justice speaks louder than any words they could chant.
A couple times today I heard or read someone express surprise that people are in fact gathering in these huge crowds, considering the considerable risk of spreading the coronavirus – particularly given that black and brown people seem to be harder hit, proportionately, than the rest of the population.*
But doesn’t their very willingness to risk exposure to the virus show how desperately our country needs profound systemic reformation – immediately?
What Trumps Who
If we’re honest with ourselves, black and brown lives are at risk no matter what. Sure, if they catch Covid-19, they’re at greater risk of being hospitalized and dying from it. But as things stand now, they’re at risk of being hospitalized or dying simply from being what they are. And yes, I’m consciously saying ‘what’ they are as opposed to ‘who’ they are.
For who they are doesn’t matter in the least. It’s all in the color of their skin, baby. That’s all that matters to far too many people who have access to instruments of power and lethal force, be they cell phones to call 9-1-1 on a ‘black man’ daring to call her out for breaking the rules to guns or choke holds or knees to the neck.
As we’ve nauseatingly seen time and again, people of color are not allowed to be in our country. They’re not permitted to play, or to jog, or to watch birds in the park. They’re not allowed to sleep in their own beds without being subject to lethal force when idiot police try to execute a no-knock search warrant in the middle of the night on the wrong apartment.
Mother Rage
As a mother myself, I cannot imagine the rage and fear experienced by mothers of children of color. And yet my sense that I would not be able to contain my outrage and terror is an indicator of my privilege. Why? Because my sense of justice burns hot for my babies. And yet mothers of black or brown children dare not risk expressing the rage I, as a white person, cannot imagine not expressing.
How do they live with that inexpressible terror and rage, simmering deep within? Any of us who contemplate such ongoing hell know – they can’t breathe. We can’t breathe.
There’s a plague hitting our country all right. While it exists all over the world, it is deep and ugly and pervasive all over the United States, but especially in places of power. And it’s time we stood up, link our arms, and say in one voice, “NO MORE.”
We’re all brothers and sisters no matter the pigment of our skin. We bleed. We love. We grieve. We breathe.
We must actively take a stand. We must demand systemic reform. We must demand that this scourge be condemned and actively eradicated by those holding positions of power. Now. No more waiting. And if they won’t do it?
Vote. Them. Out.
And if that’s snatched away from us?
Cletus Contemplating the Impending Chaos – Photo: L. Weikel
*To be fair, the footage I’ve seen shows the vast majority of protesters wearing masks – and in many places, actually marching and assembling while maintaining some semblance of social distancing, which is no mean feat. This shows respect and reverence for life – theirs and those around them, as well as those with whom they live – which, I suspect is precisely why they’re willing to risk it all.
