More on redwood trees (continuing from the last post) …
I had a dream about them and the teacher. In the dream, she is bringing a group of us
to a redwood forest to perform a ritual. I am
stunned by a particularly beautiful and huge redwood tree and go to hug it, while the others
sit down next to a creek. When I join
them, I see that a group of young people is approaching from across the
creek. We get up to go somewhere more
private. The scene changes - we are now in a retreat/spiritual
center where there is a large room with an altar and many Native American
artifacts. The teacher hands me two
slender rattles and tells me that although I will need to share them with another person, I’m to use them while I dance in the ritual. She then goes and lies down underneath the
altar table, to begin the ritual. I go
back to pick up the rattles and see that someone else has already taken them,
so I pick up a larger gourd rattle to begin to rattle and dance.
I had been considering getting a phone consult with her for a
while, and after having the dream, I decide to go ahead and schedule one. In preparation, I listen to the recording of the one-on-one I
had with her at the intensive last June.
It turns out that I had forgotten a lot of it. We had
talked about my sense of what my mandate is at this time. I told her that I knew I had the ability to
hold space, and that my sense was that my mandate was tied to that. We talked about what holding space meant to
me, and she spoke now of me needing to do it not only for/with people, but for/with
the trees.
We then (in the phone consult) talked about fire, and how last year at another workshop I had written a powerful fire piece that led her to say that I was to
carry fire (recounted here). Six months later, I developed lung or
pulmonary problems after the ash from the fires up north drifted here. I wondered if it happened (even partially) due
to my inability to carry fire appropriately, or if I’m overly sensitive and
take too much on from the intensity of the work with her. Two years ago I came back from her intensive with
the head/neck pain that is now chronic, and this last time I came back and almost
immediately developed respiratory distress.
Gratefully, I listened when she said she didn’t believe that to be true.
In her4 view, we are all suffering, just as the earth is suffering. In a recent, deeply moving and troubling
article, she labeled if “extinction illness.”
I understand that redwood trees are resistant to fire. Sequoias actually use fires to open their seed
cones, release their seeds, and clear the ground to geminate. I hope to learn something from them.
At least, I know I can go out and breathe with the trees.
