El Dia De Los Muertos

October 31, 2009 at 7:43 am (Chickens, Hearth Tending And Cottage-Keeping)
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dayofdeadbadgeWelcome to the Day Of The Dead Blog Fest, hosted by Kara L.C. Jones at MotherHenna! Please step inside …

Bienvenidos a mi Fiesta!

Viva La Musica - art by Jane Valencia
“Viva La Musica” – art by Jane

As you can see, la arpista is offering an exuberant music.  You can’t help but feel like dancing!

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Winter Calendula

Outside, the calendula offer their sunny spirit and healing magic.

In a past year my friends and I prepared this ofrenda …

For the children

Altar por los angelitos

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... with calendula and tamales

We welcomed, celebrated, and nourished los angelitos — the children who passed on in the womb, birthed still, or passed on in youth.

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Sugar skulls and calendula

We decorated sugar skulls in honor of los angelitos, and offered them as well.

This year mi familia honors our animal friends who have passed on.

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Silly the hamster

Amri’s pet when she was a wee lass.

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Puff

Known as Mildred until we moved into the neighborhood, Puff was an abundantly loving and extremely furry little cat who came with the purchase of our house when we lived on the island.

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Spooker Bear

Our sweet cat Spook was a harper!  When she was hungry, she wrapped her teeth around the lowest strings of my harp, and sounded some notes.  Spook also followed us on family walks).  In the above photo she follows Amri and me into the forest.

Below are three White Wyandottes, bought as chicks to be raised for meat for our family.  We actually ended up selling these cockerels to another family (who did indeed eat them–they had too many roosters to keep these guys as well).  We try not to get attached to our cockerels, knowing we can’t keep them, but we thought that, with all their white feathers, these guys looked like little angels!

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Sickly - a White Wyandotte cockerel

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Squee - another White Wyandotte cockerel

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Red Hat - a White Wyandotte cockerel

Red Hat was our favorite of the ‘dottes.  He was just starting to crow when we sold him–his crow sounding like the whistle of a tea kettle.

When you love chickens as much as we do, and have a flock (or two) it can be pretty painful when the ways of nature and life and death move through.  This year we lost seven birds for various reasons.

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Mouse - a Black Gourmet hen

Mouse was one of the meat birds that we adopted to be laying hens.  Our first real winter–living in NE Oregon–may have been hard on Mouse, who wheezed at times and was not of the most vigorous health.

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Cheeseball - a Red Ranger hen

The winter was hard on Cheeseball as well.  Mouse was a bit of a nasty hen to some of the other chickens (we called her Bellatrix La Mouse) but Cheeseball was always stolid and kid.  She nestled on the ground with Bluestar, our lame hen, on those snowy cold nights.  Bluestar couldn’t get up to the roosts to perch.

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Quackstar - a wild Mallard duck

Quackstar sped into our lives as a small duckling, and flew away one day as a young adult.  We hope that he is still alive somewhere out here–perhaps enjoying a good life near the Baylands, or at some pond in someone’s backyard or in a city park.  But we don’t expect to ever see him again.  Farewell, Quackstar!

The difficult part about raising chickens is (for us) taking action regarding the cockerels (young roosters).  In a suburban home with a small backyard, close neighbors, and municipal codes you just can’t keep a bunch of roosters.  And, really, you can’t have three roosters in a small flock anyway.  Too hard on the hens, and things can get nasty.  We tried to find homes for these little lads, but failing that, we had to end their lives.

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Gold - a Serama cockerel

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Black (in foreground) and Knight (in background) - two Serama brothers

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Black - the nicest and most handsome of the Serama brothers

Farewell, Knight, Black, and Gold — may you find your flock and yummy fields in another realm!

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Trespassers - our Partridge Cochin hen

Our flock of laying chickens lives in Washington, while we live our year in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Alas, our beautiful Tres passed away a few weeks ago from egg-binding (she was unable to lay an egg).  She wasn’t all that personable as our chickens go, but I loved her gorgeous fiery pine-cone like feathers and her feathered feet.

Thank you for coming to our home and celebrating with us.  Please feel free to pick up one of the cards below to remind you of the rambunctious nature of life and death with one another, and of the music of those who have touched our hearts, or who even now rest in our hearts–a music that sounds, sings, and dances beyond the bounds of what we think we know.

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Day Of The Dead Artist Collaboration Cards by Jane

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Sacred Trees

October 25, 2009 at 9:17 am (Herbs And Trees, Magical Nature, Song)
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I came upon this beautiful video at the Gaia Community (an online gathering of environmentally and spiritually conscious people).  It’s called Pagan Tree Worship In Finland, but don’t let the title throw you off.  It’s really about honoring the sacred spirit of the tree, and how trees can have a deep, personal, strengthening relationship with not just an individual, but with a family, or a people, and how the a tree can connect with the roots of our being–our ancestors, and the voices of the land.

Glimpsing how the people of Finland once regarded and honored trees  caused me to reflect on the trees in my own backyard. The towering California Incense-Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) is a guardian indeed (though my grandfather was often nervous of that tree during windstorms!). Its majestic presence fills me with deep peace when I set with this marvelous tree. When I make up spirit plates for my ancestors of food I’ve prepared for meals, I always set them at the base of the Incense-Cedar. In the video I see that food was offered to the Guardian tree in this way, in thanksgiving for a successful hunt.  The video also mentions that the Guardian trees were not worshiped in and of themselves but were regarded as facilitators of connection with the ancestors, and with the land.  So I see that my gesture was intuitive of this connection!

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Viewing “Tapia’s Table” — a spread of boughs for placing offerings to Tapia the God of the Hunt in thanskgiving for a successful hunt, I can easily see that next time I offer food I will spread fallen cedar boughs and perhaps some flowers from the garden, offering food both to the ancestors and thanksgiving for our bounty and to our Guardian tree for its continued protection and rich presence on our family land.

Picking haws from the Grandmother Hawthorn
Picking haws from the Grandmother Hawthorn

On the opposite side of the yard is the insect- and woodpecker-chiseled Hawthorn. It seems to me that she watches over us as well. I consider her a sweet Grandmother tree, sheltering us with her still bountiful arms of leaves, pink flowers in spring, red-orange haws in the fall.

Generous heart medicine.

Here is a dragonsong, my favorite for celebrating trees. You’ll recognize the melody. Think of four kinds of trees from your bioregion and substitute them for the ones I sing in this version (click on the words to hear the song):

Trees, trees, trees, trees

Every dream I dream of trees

Cedar, alder, fir, and hemlock

Let them all grow!

I learned this song from the folks at Wilderness Awareness School.  Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I sing “Redwood, cedar, live oak, manzanita”, or substitute other trees as inspired.

Gwynne's doll, Beth, makes her home in the Guardian Tree

Gwynne's doll, Beth, makes her home in the Guardian Tree

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We Are And Dragonsinging

October 22, 2009 at 7:51 am (Song, Village Nature)
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Art by Amri

Art by Amri

Music is such powerful medicine.  And there is nothing like coming together in community and giving full voice to a song that is full of the good stuff: our truths, our hearts, our souls.  This song “We Are” by Sweet Honey In The Rock, an incredible all-woman African-American a capella ensemble is good medicine indeed, a true dragonsong.  I think of it as a perfect “East” (energetically speaking!) song, welcoming each child — each one of us, really — and placing us in the context of the ancestors, the cosmos, and God.  And it’s a great “West” song, celebrating the fullness of who we are and can be, and giving a real sense of a fully-woven, bold, courageous, heart-centered all-of-us.  It’s our potential to be this way in our villages.  When we sing this song, “We Are” indeed so!

(For a little more about Directional Energies, please see my post What Does Where You Are Say About Where You Are)

Before we move onto the YouTube video, I’d like to reprint an excerpt from an article I wrote a few years ago, to tickle your imagination, especially if you both love to sing and yearn to make a difference in reweaving our culture.

What is a Dragonsinger?

In the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, dragons and their riders fight Thread– a deadly organism– to save all Pern from its ravages. Harpers of the Harpercraft Hall are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that ancient knowledge and teachings are preserved, so that the social weave can maintain its strength, as well as to support the dragonriders in their quest to keep Pern safe from Thread. In addition to those tasks, the Harper Hall also acts as idea-bringers to all of Pern–wrapping new ways of thinking, or details of momentous events and decisions into the messenger of song or tune–which are then specifically taught and performed throughout Hold and Hall.

The term “Dragonsingers” soared into my mind one day–at first I envisioned it to mean a guild of individuals who would caretake and carry songs and the stories of those songs–that supported a rewoven fabric of our culture, a creation or recreation of a culture of belonging. We would experience songs as homeopathic remedies, as the one thing you might offer when there is nothing left to offer. Songs can be mirrors, then can be threads that help you find your way home to your heart, or weave you back into the lifebreath of your community.

So in this scenario we are not destroying Thread, we are offering a renewed, life-giving Thread. It is the Thread of compassion, of heart, of healing, of strength, vision, nourishment, celebration, and silliness, your own delightful work. Songs may be the blessing of the ancestors, and the fiery light of the youth. Songs can remind us of our animal nature, even as they offer the breath of silences and the hum of the stars. Dragonsingers offer intentional song– heartsong–whatever is the sounding that needs to be heard, even if that song is harsh, or keening, or anguished. We sing so that others too may find heart to sing.

(Read more of the article in this pdf: The Tree Letter ~ Leaf 6 ~ 2007.  Check out other Tree Letters here.)

And Now: “We Are” by Sweet Honey In The Rock

I invite you to listen to the words of “We Are”, and learn them.  (I’m going to learn the “ba-dumm” bass part too!). No need to fret about trying to sing like a professional or anything like that.  This is just about being true to your own voice, all of us just trusting and celebrating our love of song, and how it can wing through us in its own quirky, fiery, elegant, or frolicking, wild dragon way.   Perhaps someday you can sing “We Are” — alone or with others — for someone who desperately needs to remember who she/he and we truly are.

Thanks to Amy from my women’s circle back on the island for pointing me to this video.  We have sung part of this song in circle for years (the “For each child that’s born” verse, and the “We are” chorus).  I’m delighted to learn the rest of it!

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