WindBreak: “Way Of The Medicine Tree” Vow

February 10, 2009 at 11:49 am (Forest Halls Folk College, Harp, Tree Of Tales)
Tags: , , ,

Playing harp for the mountains at Castell-y-Bere in mid-Wales, back in 1996
berejane1Week 5’s reading in 12 Secrets Of Highly Creative Women revolved on self-focus, challenges women may face to pursuing their creativity. At this point in my life, I don’t really relate to a lot of what the chapter discussed, though at various times I certainly experience what feels like an “either-or” situation: either I focus on home and family and other commitments or my art. But, honestly, for me, my art is my whole life, and when it is in balance, everything shines.

That said, I do enjoy a good deal of “solo” work. So, I have “arrows” for satisfying my creative will and play. I have dedicated time (my dream-tending, reflection, and nature awareness practice before the home gets moving, and a flamekeeping practice I’ve just begun before I go to bed, for instance, and usually a couple of blocks of same time-same place work (such as for writing my novel) with focused, achievable goals. Having long uninterrupted spaces of time to create does not work for me at this time in my life. Having specific intentions and goals that I tend to almost every day is carrying me far!

Other creative pursuits (deepening my herbal, healing, and naturalist knowledge, some of my music work) get fashioned into “arrows”. I set up a stream of targets (fancy way of saying a “to do” list), and consider which are “up” next. Then during the day, I open to opportunities to pursue this or that of them. Usually, I don’t tend to all in a day. They are arrows that I tend to over a course of days, or even weeks, until I’ve reached my final targets. When one arrow reaches its grand finale, I fashion the next arrow for its continued journey.

I also look to ways I can weave the things that excite me into my family life, into our homeschooling. Opportunities always open, if I’m open to that possibility. Often surprising and very fun connections firework forth, and that really is the best, because then my passions are really woven into the whole fabric of my life–our life, not confined to a “me-only and hopefully someone else out there in the big world”. Then it becomes more like ensemble work, playing off of each others’ passions, diving more deeply into our own solo work, etc., weaving the music into tasks of tending our family, home, and chickens :-). A real jam session of not-so-everyday life!

Okay, so back to the title of this post: My Medicine Tree vow.

Bardic harping has reemerged into the foreground of my life. I’ve flipped open my copy of The Bardic Handbook: The Complete Manual For The 21st Century Bard by Kevan Manwaring, and having begun working through it, as a way of rededicating myself to the path, going deeper with the threads of story, lore, ideas, and performance with which I work, and ordering the material and my artistry with it. The book is a a-year-and-a-day course in being the bardic path, and I am working through the exercises and ideas, which involve a vow.

Well, I am already a bard, and have been professionally so (publicly and not) for more than fourteen years. And while the Bardic path is certainly a rich and prominent stream in my art and identifies what “rocks” me in offering my artistic self, the archetype of the Bard doesn’t contain (for me) the whole mythic sense of myself. So what does? And why is it important to figure that out right now anyway?

To answer the last question: I have literally and figuratively moved into a new place in my life. As in other posts, I’ve explored various “branches” of art and knowledge, which I bundled into my imagined Forest Halls Folk College self-directed learning postgraduate degree. In a way, these “branches” are like the branches in the The Story Of The Medicine Tree — which, when broken off, plunged into the earth and formed unique trees: I could follow any one of these into a deep artistry. But instead, I have my own Medicine Tree emerging from the center of this forest. That is the place where I am (imaginatively) now. And so, I am attempting to weave the various branches that are flourishing, emerging trees in my soul-geography forest, into the deeply rooted, sturdy, flexible, many-branched Medicine Tree that is me in my center. (It’s so fun to find oneself in story!). In considering this image at my core, I realized the obvious: what I’m dedicating myself to is the Way Of The Medicine Tree, tending to its medicine, its veriditas, to listening, and being, and offering. Its artistry. It’s a slight shift in alignment from where I’ve been, into that place of the Tree, and the rhythmic pulse of the antlered harp.

This Full Moon was the perfect time for making a Vow, taking place in the Northeast of the year (a time of inspiration, mystery, ceremony, poetry, trickster-transformer nature, creative fire and healing waters), and because it occasioned a penumbral lunar eclipse. I actually initiated my vow the night before, and then punctuated commitment throughout the day. In the evening, I had my family come with me to Wallowa Lake, where in a snowy mountainscape illuminated by the Full Moon, we gazed in awe at the massive frozen lake. I’m stunned to live in a place of such incredible sparkling wild beauty–the lake is a reasonable walk from our home!

So there we are: my own personal “self-focus proclamation” by way of my vow to the Way Of The Medicine Tree (although can there be a ‘way’ of a Medicine Tree? Hm!). I have many teachers and streams of wisdom to guide me along my path, and my own internal compass to align me to my nature. I’ll let you know what I discover along the way!

And, yes, the harp is a “central fire” expression of my Medicine Tree!

A page from an imagined bardic harp primer
bardicharp1

2 Comments

Lunar New Year: The Medicine Tree

January 26, 2009 at 11:10 pm (Forest Halls Folk College, Herbs And Trees, Tree Of Tales)
Tags: , ,

redwood1With my first blog post, OwlsNest, I mentioned that the story of the Medicine Tree as told on Michael Meade’s CD ,The Ends Of Time, The Roots Of Eternity inspired a central guiding image for myself (which I’ll go into in a minute)–or rather, inspired me to recognize a central guiding image.  I suddenly understood that the Tree of my self-directed and imagined Folk College postgraduate program was this tree–The Medicine Tree as it appears in this particular tale.

On the CD Michael Meade also offered these thoughts, which I continue to ponder:

  • we all need meaning in our lives–an ever-deepening vision/story that anchors us, pulls us along as we age.
  • we are whole and have that meaningful story already within us.
  • our medicine becomes apparent as the result of adversity (if all is right).  We don’t find it by having an easy time of it, but as the result of clashing, crashing against the obstacles.

Okay, now the story:

This is it in a nutshell (if it tantalizes you I urge you to seek out Michael Meade’s retelling on the CD mentioned above).

The Medicine Tree - story from South America (alas, I have no more information than that on this tale!)

The world has burned up and all is in ashes. Two bird-people have been away in the Otherworld, and so missed being burned in this incredible catastrophe. When they return to the world, they have no idea how to find home. After all, everything–everything–is incinerated. The Trickster appears and tells them to point their index fingers out as they fly, and when their index fingers point down–like dowsing sticks, I imagine!–then that would indicate they are home. They do so, flying along with fingers pointed out, and time comes that their fingers point down, and they know they need travel no further. The place they seek is below, even if unrecognizable.

So, the two bird-people, Icanchu and Chuna, settle down on the ashes. Nothing, and no one remains. I imagine they are filled with despair. But in time Icanchu picks up a chunk of charcoal. It reminds him of a drum, so he starts drumming on it. And after awhile, he sings as he drums, and then he dances.

All of a sudden, a tree sprouts from the ashes! Icanchu keeps drumming, singing, and dancing, and this tree grows and grows. It sprouts branches and leaves. Then Icanchu is filled with a kind wild, joyful craziness, an abandon. Finding some rocks he hurls them at the tree, breaking off each and every branch. That’s quite an action to take when the first growing thing emerges in a totally destroyed world!

Surprisingly, as each branch hits the ground, it roots, and grows, and each branch growing into a completely different species of tree. And in time, all the trees that ever had been in the world before are growing again. And at the center, where the first tree had grown emerges a new tree–or the old tree–reborn. And this Tree is large, and abundant, and filled with the Medicine of the World. This source Tree is strong and sturdy and it roots deeply, and as it does so, the forests return, and the birds, and animals, and even the humans, and the whole world repopulates and is reborn. This center Tree–this reborn tree–is the Tree Of Life, the Shaman’s Tree, the Buddha’s Tree, the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil–all of those singular, mythic source trees at the heart of our human spirit and imagination.

grnleaf1

Whenever you hear or read a story, it’s good to take a few minutes to rest with the story, mull on the images that really capture your imagination.  This is how you find where you are in the story.

At the time I wrote “OwlsNest”, I found myself near the end of the story (if I pause right now, I find myself in a different place!).  The questions I asked myself at the time were these:

  • I can see how my world had become ashes. And even how a tree has grown and been fragmented into pieces.  Is there really a Medicine Tree emerging at the center?  What does it look and feel like?  What Medicine does it offer me? And how is this particular Medicine Tree my central story, my medicine to offer–quirky and idiosyncratic to me?
  • Today (revisiting the story in my retelling), I find myself pondering that crazy action of throwing stones at a newly emerging tree on a destroyed world.  Is there some place in my life where I am dancing with that Trickster energy, doing that contrary thing, apparently “destructive” action, that might actually be resowing my world?  What are all those branches breaking off and rooting into the ground?  What diverse forest might grow from them?
  • And, heck, how might I just be Icanchu at the beginning, surveying destruction, but choosing to make one gesture in play–drumming on a piece of charcoal, so to speak.  What happens if I choose to play, make merriment, in one moment instead of falling into despair?
  • And I ask myself a whole other set of questions.  Such as, how has our own world been destroyed?  What broken off branches of a new tree are sprouting?  Is that center Medicine Tree now emerging? — I’m thinking in particular of old ways of being, how in a large sense they have been incinerated through the centuries.  But I see that source tree emerging, broken off branches sprouting in the ground as we take up the pieces that speak to our hearts, are particular nature and ways.  And a magnificent, strong, and powerful, and life-giving Tree is emerging at our center.  Really.

As always, I invite you to wander in my questions and musings, and then take off–follow your own thoughts and questions, your own wonderings, your own indigenous knowings.  This is an ancient tale — “folk-myth”– Michael Meade calls it.  And such tales have much to teach us about beginnings and endings and beginnings, and how to make our way when all appears destroyed.

My Medicine Tree

For most of my adult life my medicine tree was the California redwood.  Visiting Prairie Creek State Redwoods on the Northern California coast at the age of 17, I was entranced by the old growth redwoods, their majesty.  Julia Butterfly Hill’s experience and relationship with the old growth redwood, Luna, fueled my own desire to make a difference in the world–in partnership with nature.  Finally, the Redwood fueled me  to make a pilgrimage back to these amazing trees when I turned 40.  The artwork above is of an old-growth redwood in that state park.

On Vashon Island in the Pacific Northwest, I turned to the Red Cedar.  Here in the Wallowas, I find (to my surprise) that what emerges as “Jane’s Medicine Tree”–my teacher, mentor, and elder (one of them!) in this new place–is the Pacific Willow (Salix lucida).  Perhaps in another post I’ll wax poetic and scientific about the qualities of Willow–and how I love the deep furrows, broad trunk, and long-pointed leaves.   Right now, while leafing through my Peterson’s Field Guide To Western Trees as I work on this post, I’m amused by this sentence: “Once used widely to make charcoal”.  willow1

Leave a Comment

Synchronicity And Your Spacious Self

January 6, 2009 at 10:13 pm (Forest Halls Folk College)
Tags: , ,

I just got this book in the mail today, Your Spacious Self: Clear Your Clutter And Discover Who You Are by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.  I’ve done a lot of downsizing–especially in the past two years as we moved from a large home to a yurt, and finally to our current location in another state.  We plan to buy land (somewhere!), build a passive solar home and to homestead.  Anyway, I thought I was done with browsing books on clearing clutter, etc., but I came upon Ms. Vogt’s website, engaged with her free e-course and realized I had more layers of clearing I could explore.

Anyway, the book arrived today, and as I read the Preface, I was struck by several passages.

Joseph Campbell probably best captures the moment my life took a radical turn. This simple one-line summary I found on the Internet describes the first step of the Hero’s Journey, aptly entitled “Departure”:

‘The call to adventure is the point in a person’s life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.’

Hm.  At what point was I first given notice that everything was going to change, whether I knew it or not?  That we were to leave my beloved Vashon Island in Washington?  Or even before that, a decade before–that we’d move from myr beloved home in California, the house that my grandparents had built in 1936 and in which they lived for the rest of their lives?  When was I first given notice that everything was going to change?

Then this passage:

I know of know handbook that shows us how to deconstruct, and re-shape a life, no natural follow-the-dot sequence that takes us gently from Point A to B.  For a year after I left teaching, I simply followed my nose and improvised my life …  There was no unifying principle or plan.  I allowed my little dinghy, now repaired and in better shape, to float along looking for the next strong current.  The current came in the form of an unexpected query [asking her for her business card--then followed her exploration of what she might actually write on that card] and the unexpected gift of a book.

The dinghy again!  The boat!  Hm.  Pay attention, some voice nudges inside me.  I’ve created a dozen business cards for myself over the past decade, attempting to suss out what the heck I’m all about–what makes my heart sing to offer to the world.  It’s exciting and challenging to craft that phrase that sums you up, especially as you are continuing to discover what your unique something is.

And finally this passage:

If the business card exercise was like receiving a special key, my being offered a book about space clearing felt like I was being shown the first doorway to which the key offered special entry.  This gateway would lead me down to the next threshold, and the next, revealing new openings only when I was ready to understand and to live them.  These pathways covered a lot of ground and were not always comfortable or easy.  But they took me places that I could never have planned, orchestrated or predicted if I had tried.

Bundled together, the highlights that span the last decade of my life could easily read like the catalog of study of a self-organized, non-linear, graduate program. [emphasis mine! -Jane]  I like to think of these extraordinary opportunities not so much as a professional re-invention, but as part of larger, on-going journey of self-discovery.

Wow!  The Forest Halls Folk College–Ms. Vogt’s personal version–right there!  So what does it mean to view these words on the heels of dreaming and writing about boats, self-a-boat, and self-directed, organic learning that is as much about acquiring knowledge and skills as about deepened learning of self?  I have no idea!  I guess I’m just bobbing about in my own dinghy–my currach–and noting some familiar features of terrain, and little blossoms of synchronicity all over the place (there are a couple others I haven’t mentioned), that signify to me that I’m in the right current.

Questions For You

  • When have you received notice that your whole life was going to change, whether you were aware that this was so at the time or not?
  • If you were to hand me a business card celebrating what you love to offer to others , to the world (doesn’t have to be as a career or an actual biz per se) what would it say?
  • If you imagine the most transformative period of your life as a Graduate Degree Program, or sacred Path, or Game, or… (you fill in the blank!) designed specially by and/or for you what are the ‘courses’ or ‘markers’  or ‘doorways’ on the way.  Can you give that ‘Program’ or ‘Path’ a name or describe its essence (if names evade you!).  What story does this Path tell?

Please share your thoughts in my comments!  Feel free to come up with your own meaningful metaphors for to describe your journey!

4 Comments

« Older entries