Last fall, I had the good fortune to go to a workshop in Pt.
Reyes with Sharon Blackie. I love her
books, especially If Women Rose Rooted. She speaks to our need to reconnect with the
land, and also of the mythic imagination and story as a way to bridge to
it. Her teachings are very much in agreement with Deena
Metzger's, but she comes at her beliefs and approach from a different direction. Like Deena, she believes that stories and
dreams are not all for internal reference, and that psychology (as Hillman postulated)
has failed us, by making it all about us.
Blackie says that the land requires us to be in relationship to it, to
the place where our feet are planted.
Blackie also works from the imaginal world, the mundus imaginalis, which lies between the sensory world and the
mental realm. She agrees with Hillman
about each of us having a calling.
But Blackie is fortunate to not only live on wild land but
also in a place where the old stories of her culture are still alive, and
rooted. Most of us are not so fortunate,
and especially those of us who live in cities.
I have been thinking a lot about how to connect to the earth, right
here, especially since the last healers’ intensive. I have not found stories from my ancestry that inform my life,
and I don’t know much about the stories of this land, the stories of the Ohlone people who
were here before we invaded. So how can
I use story to help me root and connect into this patch of earth?
One of the exercises Blackie had us do was map all the
places we have lived. I also added to my map the
places where I had meaningful experiences on the land – Shasta, Delphi, Phaestos,
Malta, Kilauea Iki on the Big Island.
Really, connecting to the land of the places where I have lived has not, regrettably,
been an important aspect of my life.
Most of the places I’ve lived did not necessarily give me the feeling of
“Ah! I’ve found my home!”
But one thing that stood out on my map was the
significance of gardens and trees. I
have felt connected to so many trees – the oak at our house in Menlo Park, the
owl trees at the seminary when I lived in an apartment nearby,
the redwoods here and at other places, the pepper tree and eucalyptus in
Topanga, just to mention a few. And
here I l also love feeding and watching the birds here.
I am reminded of Blackie’s story about living in a place where
she found no geological feature or local tale about the Cailleach, her beloved
Old Woman archetype. And so, one day, seeing
a heron and hearing it screech like an old hag, she found her own Old Crane
Woman, an imagined version of the hag.
That set me to thinking; maybe there’s an Old Redwood Mother here that I
could adopt. Blackie encouraged us to
make stories about the places we live and to bring ancestral stories to
them. So, suddenly an insight! In my ancient ancestral lineage, the people
worshipped Asherah. She was Mother of
the gods, the tree of life, and also the Lady of the Sea. Asherim – carved or uncarved wooden poles -
were placed in groves and on hilltops in Her honor.
Sometimes trees themselves were seen as Asherim. Her priestesses and priests were prophets and
interpreted dreams. I have not seen
stories about Her, but She is one I feel connected to in ways that I do not
with much of my Jewish heritage. Maybe
Old Redwood Mother is my modern day Asherah.
Maybe She will help me connect to this land. She does not dwell right in my yard, but She
is within view, rooted at the house below us on the hill, and She has sisters a little further down the
street and in the Rose
Garden a few blocks away.
I need to be
outside to speak with Her, to breathe with Her, but I intend to do so.
Asherahs
No comments:
Post a Comment