Ancestral Veterans

Burning of the USS Philadelphia, painting 1897.



War is in our history. It’s in every rise and fall of culture. The ghosts of battlefields long forgotten are littered with the blood of our ancestors. This year, for Veterans Day, I honor my ancestors who both waged war and stood defense, in service of their people.

Early Settlement

Captain Roger Clapp (1609-1690) was born in Salcombe Regis, England. He sailed to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1629 on the Mary and John. In 1665 Captain Clapp was placed in charge of the Dorchester Company stationed at Castle Island, the oldest fortified military site in North America, in Boston Harbor. He held the post for 21 years and was given a nine gun salute when he retired.

William Pond (1622-1690) was a Sergeant in the colonial militia from Dedham, Massachusetts, first generation of his family born in the new colony. Peter Wolfe (1606-1675) was born in England and immigrated to Beverly, Massachusetts. He served as a Lieutenant in the colonial militia in 1646, in defense of Salem, Massachusetts. Jeremiah Gillette (1650-1707) was a Sergeant in the colonial service of Connecticut. He was also the first generation of his family born in America, having emigrated from England.

Isaac-Etienne Paquet dit Lavallee (1636-1702) came to Canada, at age 28, in the Compagnie de LaMotte, Regiment de Carignan-Salieres in 1665. The first French regular troops arrived in response to pleas from the colonists of New France for aid in dealing with the Iroquois. Immediately they were dispatched to Richelieu, to begin construction on the forts of Saint-Louis and Saint-Therese, as well as the roads between. In the spring of 1666, Isaac's company built Forst Saint-Anne at Lake Champlain. They were dispatched into Iroquois country in September of 1667, but could not rouse the Indians into battle. The Iroquois used the end of this expedition as a means of brokering peace and LaMotte's famous regiment was disbanded. Isaac was one of 400 soldiers who elected to stay in the colonies rather than return to France. He was married, with his own homestead, in I'lle D'orleans three years later.

1754-1763 French & Indian War

Lemuel Lyon (1728-1781), born in Stoughton, Massachusetts, served in Timothy Walker's company during the French and Indian War in 1755. He is listed on the muster of Captain John Carpenter’s regiment in August of 1757. He was involved in the 1758 Battle at Fort Ticonderoga and kept a 35 page journal of his time there, which has been published with some other soldier accounts in the book, Narratives of the French and Indian War (2): the Diary of Sergeant David Holden, Captain Samuel Jenks, Lemuel Lyon, French Officer at the Siege of Quebec.

1775-1783 American Revolutionary War

Oliver Lozier, also Delozier, (born 1747) was born into a family well-established in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. He was a Bombardier, a noncommissioned officer, in Captain John Doughty's company, in Colonel John Lamb's regiment (2nd continental artillery). He was on the muster roll for April 1781 at West Point. Oliver enlisted in 1778 for the duration of the Revolution and was discharged April 4, 1783.

Born in Connecticut and taking up residence in Massachusetts, Freeborn Moulton (1717-1792) was Captain of a company of Minute-men of Monson. They were part of Colonel Danielson’s regiment which marched at the Lexington alarm of April 19, 1775 to Cambridge, where they remained until May 6, 1775.

Joseph Riddle (1763-1812), grandson of Captain Freeborn Moulton, enlisted young and served almost the full duration of the war. He was a Private in Captain Isaac Colton's company, Colonel David Brewer's (9th) regiment enlisting in 1775. In 1776 he is listed in Captain Joseph Munger’s company, regiment of Colonel Robert Woodbridge, the “Massachusetts Line.” By 1777 he shows as a Fifer in the 4^th Massachusetts regiment under Captain Caleb Keep and Colonel William Shepherd, and later as a Drum-Major in General Glover’s brigade. He was at the battle of Burgoyne, charged with guarding the road to Albany as well as the battle of Monmouth, NJ in 1778. A year later he is mustered for the Continental Army in the 9^th company for Colonel John Bliss’s 1^st New Hampshire regiment. He was discharged from the Continental Army in June of 1780. Pension records list him as a cripple, so it was likely he was wounded.

1801-1805 The Barbary Wars

Peter De Lozier (1786-1849) was born in Connecticut. He joined the Navy and was on board the USS Philadelphia in 1803 when the government made moves to end piracy on the Barbary Coast. Commodore Edward Preble commanded the Mediterranean Squadron into a blockade in October. On Halloween, the USS Philadelphia ran aground on a coral reef. The entire crew, with their Captain, William Bainbridge, was captured and the ship was used by the opposing Navy as a gun battery. Peter De Lozier and his crew spent 30 months in a Tripoli jail. When the conflict was over, he mustered out of service and claimed residence outside of Lockport, NY. He married, took up cabinetmaking and had a daughter, but eventually left his family to return to the sea. He died of cholera in Connecticut without ever seeing his family again.

1812-1814 War of 1812

Martin Dutcher (1796-1872) was a Private in Captain Andrew A. VanDerzee’s “New Baltimore” company, Colonel Barnabas Carver’s 61^st regiment in the War of 1812. He fought in the Battle of Plattsburgh, 1814. After the war he retired to Somerset, NY.

1861-1865 American Civil War

Adam Art (1836-1896) immigrated to New York from Hesse Darmstadt, Germany in the 1850s and served in the Civil War under Captain Levi Bowen, 29th Congressional district.

1914-1918 World War I

Royal Levant Eaton (1873-1931), a New York state prison guard, served in the National Guard during WWI.

Honoring Roots and Freedoms

I believe in peace and practices of non-violence. I know that I am able to believe in peace because I have known peace, and that I have known it because of the sacrifices those who came before me made, to acquire it for our country. Soldiers are men of principle and purpose who believe that the side they are fighting for is a just cause, no matter what history will later decide.

My ancestors were farmers, ministers, soldiers, crusaders and Norman invaders. In all of our histories, our ancestors were defenders and colonizers, pawns and pillagers, and brave men and women facing uncertain futures. They faced those futures for us, whether they knew it or not and we can honor them today by learning from our own history.

I have deep gratitude that soldiers past, present and future have and will risk their lives in the pursuit of freedom. They are more than regiments and companies. The most important thing I can remember is that an army of fighters is made up of men and women who have names and families. They are men and women who are husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. They are people of flesh and blood, of dreams and desire.

I am,

that they were,

that they are,

that they will be.

For the Recent Dead

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart

(i carry it in my heart)

~ e. e. cummings

We passed through Samhain and the axis of the planet tipped those of us in the Northern Hemisphere into winter, just as the axis of the overlapping worlds tilted us into a place of thinning veils. In that place we bid our loved ones to slip into that other space we know as death. We don’t know it’s true nature or form and we all call it by differing names. It is a place that none of us shall know until it is our time, a mystery we must accept or spend our lives fearing and fighting. It is hardest to honor the Recent Dead, for the grief is still fresh and real in our bodies. We strengthen our reserves and let them go, holding memories instead of arms.

Who you were is no more, though who you were to us remains, shining brightly in the hearts of every soul you touched, every mind you moved and every heart you stirred. What was becomes something new. We light a lantern to show the way.

What was breath and laughter becomes memory. What was flesh and bone becomes earth. Vital fluids nourish what remains. What was spirit becomes star. We open the way for the dead. We open the way, within our breast, for the dead to cross over. We unlock the door to our grief and let the water flow through and become the river bearing spirits across. In our hearts, we become the way for the dead to cross over. May they be at peace.

The very first Spring Equinox I celebrated was while I was in college, facilitated by my partner’s T’ai Chi teacher and spiritual mentor, Thomas E. Malinoski, known to the Seneca people as Tom Kingfisher. He was an adopted elder in the Wolf Clan and a student and friend of Grandmother Twylah, as well as an artist and faculty member at SUNY Fredonia for many years. He led his T’ai Chi class, which he offered free of charge every Thursday in the Newman Center, and afterwards, as some people went home, he prepared the space for the Equinox celebration.

There was no pomp or pageantry to the ceremony he led us through, which only amplified its intensity for me. It was my first experience of awareness with sacred space outside of institutional religion. He opened a doorway for me that Equinox, though it would be a bit longer until I saw it and walked through it. Thomas Malinoski-Kingfisher passed away July 3^rd, this last summer, after illness. May the Ancestors welcome him home and may his reunion with Grandmother Twylah be sweet and full of laughter.

At midnight on Samhain, I spoke a prayer for the recent dead, those of mine and the loved ones of friends. When we pass we do not cease to exist. We cease to be. But once we were here, once we were, we cannot be erased. We honor the memory of those who have gone before us:

Edward W. O’Rourke, beloved Godfather, passed April 4.

Be at peace, Edward.

Tom Malinoski, beloved mentor and friend, passed July 3.

Be at peace, Tom.

Pretty Penny the Guinea Hen, beloved companion, passed September 27.

Be at peace, Penny.

William Russell Norcross passed September 29.

Be at peace, William.

Ann Herrington, beloved Grandmother, passed October 9.

Be at peace, Ann.

Willis Kingsbury Rowell passed October 10.

Be at peace, Willis.

Debra Ann Martineau passed October 16.

Be at peace, Debra.

Sophie F. Bachurz passed October 17.

Be at peace, Sophie.

Josephine Elle Rispoli passed of cancer October 23 at the age of 7.

Be at peace, Josephine.

Michael Pullano, beloved teacher, passed October 26.

Be at peace, Michael.

Paul Sachs passed October 28.

Be at peace, Paul.

To those unspoken and unknown…be at peace.

As long as we live, they too will live;
For they are now a part of us:
As we remember them!
At the rising sun and at its going down we remember them.
At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter we remember them.
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring we remember them.
At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer we remember them.
At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn we remember them.
At the beginning of the year and when it ends we remember them.
As long as we live, they too will live, for they are now a part of us. As we remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart we remember them.
When we have decisions that are difficult to make we remember them.
When we have joy we crave to share we remember them.
When we have achievements that are based on theirs we remember them.
For as long as we live, they too will live,
For they are now a part of us, as we remember them.

~A prayer from Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer book

**If you feel so moved, please add the names of those you loved who died within this last year in the comments section. May they all be at peace.

Songs from a Samhain Night

It’s important to know the history and etymology of the traditions we include in our lives, to be aware of their purpose and adapt them as needed. That is what our Ancestors did before us. What began as Samhain (sow-en), a Celtic fire festival honoring spirits, became All-Hallows-Even in the Christian calendar, honoring saints, and by the 16^th century was called Halloween, which fell out of practice by the English in light of Martin Luther’s Reformation. This new religious system did not include the belief in saints and forewent the holiday set aside to honor them. Everything changes, all is in motion.

Like my Irish and Scottish ancestors, I believe the dead walk on Samhain night. For me, it’s not a myth or a folk superstition. Multiple worlds exist over top of one another. We live in one. Spirits live in others. On Samhain everyone can perceive this as true if they choose to. It is the most important festival I celebrate, and I dedicate several days to its activities.

At events throughout the year I facilitate Ancestor Shrines where people are invited to write the names of ancestors and deceased loved ones on ribbons and strips of muslin. I safeguard them until Samhain, where we ritually read the names of the remembered dead out loud. We pass the ribbons, taking turns to speak and honor the memories of loved ones. After the names are spoken into the dark, we burn the natural fiber strips in fire. The smoke sends the wishes, prayers and petitions into all the worlds, so those at unrest may know peace, both living and dead.

Harold Lafayette Riddle and Elsie Elizabeth Durant

Richard James Riddle and Donna McDonald

Mark Dutcher Eaton and Ruth Emma Ruston

Charles Duvall and Jurgen Banse-Fey

Tommy Amyotte and Paul Seeloff

Karl Weber and Susan Alvarez-Hughes

I carve my pumpkin with the intention of creating a lantern, as the jack o’ lantern is called. I create it to be a lighthouse that will guide spirits to my working. Whether I cut out the image of a tree, owl or series of stars, my jack o’ lantern will be a source of light in the darkness to help guide their way to me. On Samhain day, when the lanterns are lit, the house begins to smell faintly of pumpkin and apple.

At dusk I light the candles on my ancestor altar, which sits year-round in a permanent place in my office. It can be as simple as a glass of water and a candle, and as elaborate as you wish to make it, adding personal items like photos and mementos. At Samhain I fill the water glass with fresh cold water, for the spirits who thirst. I light a new candle and add candles to illuminate the space. I call my ancestors home, to feast with us.

In the gloaming time between light and dark we wait by the door for the knocks of small children wearing new and different skins. I offer them candy as a reward for their bravery. I remember how much knowledge I had as a child of the wholeness of the world that I lost as I grew into adulthood. I honor that in the children I meet until the dark falls and our supper begins.

A modest table set on black tablecloth is our Supper. The spirit chair at the head of the table is shrouded in black fabric. This chair is for All Spirits who wish to dine with us. Then a chair for me, a chair for my partner, and one each for the spirit we chose to invite. I always invite my Great-Grandmother, who I knew in life. I call Elsie in, light the candle on her plate and take care to offer her food before myself.

The Dumb Supper is served in silence, so as not to scare timid spirits who might wish a bit of remembered humanity when the veil is thin. I usually play instrumental music low, like cello or piano, to help drown out the noises from outside. The food we serve is homemade, prepared with loving hands. We dine backwards, dessert to salad, serving the spirit chair first, then our guests and then ourselves.

            Everything about the supper is the reverse of how we would normally eat. The courses and the place settings become a mirror image of life, the line where reflection meets image, where shadow meets physical form. The house is dark except for candlelight and we open ourselves to any impressions we might receive. We welcome in images, thoughts, perceptions from any spirits who wish to speak. Even in years when the spirits are silent, the supper is a deep and profound meditation.

Beneath Elsie’s plate is a note I wrote to her. I love you and remember you, always. You are as important to me in the spirit world as you were in the living one. Please continue to watch over our family and be a source of comfort to those struggling or in need. I will have you in spirit for as long as you wish to remain.

            Before I go to bed, I extinguish the lights in the rest of the house, all save those on my altar. I speak the names of those who died within this last year, separating the fresh grief from the old and opening a way for those who have not yet crossed over to do so if they will. These are my traditions, adapting and changing each year as my spirituality deepens. I remember those who came before me so that I better see where I stand and where I’m going. In my dreams I will pay attention once more, to visitations I might receive and messages I might be given, on the night when the edges are softest and the worlds and I are open to each other.

Relevant Posts:

Simple Sweeping Lines (posted September 29, 2010)

Setting a Place for the Dead (posted October 27, 2010)

Reflections from a Dumb Supper (posted November 2, 2010)

The Rite of Passage in Trick-or-Treating

When I think of Halloween, my mind drifts to cups of mulled cider, the scent of fresh apples, bright orange jack o’ lanterns, crisp leaves underfoot and smoky breath in the pre-winter air. The Halloweens of my childhood pull up memories of monster movies and spider webs, candy, bobbing for apples, spooky houses and things unknown. And trick-or-treating.

Once a year we had permission and were encouraged to dress in costumes and travel door-to-door collecting candy in our pillowcases. Looking back, I understand that Halloween was a chance for the insecure girl-I-was to wear another skin, to pull in the energy of someone-I-might-be. Our parents would ask me, my brother and sister, “What do you want to be for Halloween?” and the universe would open before me. When I didn’t have an idea for a costume I would raid my parents’ closet and come out some version of hobo, hippie or gypsy. Halloween, dipping us into darkness, was ripe with possibility for those of us who were living.

Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain, pronounced sow-en, eventually coming to America with immigrants in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Children went out into the night carrying lanterns lit with candles, called samhnag. They made them from turnips, carved with frightening faces to scare away the spirits wandering the night. Children went home to home, guised in supernatural costumes, where they were given offerings of food or coins. The gifts were meant to help the children ward off any spirits wishing them harm Samhain, the night when the dead walk again.

Some later customs refer to it as Souling, where children would offer prayers for the dead in return for a small cake. At houses where they were refused, they would batter the door with the butt ends of turnips. One of the earliest records of guising for Halloween comes from 1895 Scotland. The earliest reference to it in North America was from a newspaper in Ontario in 1911, reporting that children would go guising between 6 and 7 on Halloween, spilling songs and rhymes and being rewarded for them with candies and nuts. Trick or Treating as we know it in America, didn’t begin until the 1950s.

Our parents carried us door-to-door when we were children and later, when we could walk on our own, they would coax and encourage us to go up and ring the doorbell while they waited for us on the sidewalk after whispering a quick reminder of what we were supposed to say. The walk to the porch felt long to my short legs. The temperature itself seemed to drop between the familiar figure of my parent and the heat behind the unfamiliar door opening before me. After a hearty “Trick or treat!” and a piece of candy dropped in our pillowcase we would run back to our parent, back to safe, and on to the next home.

The first year that we went out trick-or-treating without chaperone- our own little gang of tricksters- was an early, and personal, rite of passage. Mom stayed home to mind the door and was busy making sheets of homemade pepperoni pizza so it would be hot and waiting when we came in out of the cold. We walked the neighborhood and then the same route we walked every morning to elementary school. Up one side of the street and home the other. It was familiar and known, but in the cloak of darkness it felt foreign. Landmarks stood in shadow and we needed new eyes to find our way.

We were being trusted to watch out for each other, to stay safe, to cross streets wisely and not to stray beyond the streets we knew, or the ones we were told we could travel. As children we didn’t realize how far the web of grown ups-who-knew-each-other spun and we were not hip to the fact that we were never in any true danger.  But that unknown is an essential element to the rites of passage that test our mettle and help us grow. The cold leaves crunched underfoot as we ran from porch light to porch light, pillow cases filling fast with candies my brother and sister and I would later sort through and trade (always setting aside some tootsie rolls for my dad).

There was one house, always decorated fantastically in creepy themes for the trick-or-treaters. Approaching it on our own, however, the house was barren, the only decoration a scarecrow flopped onto the porch with a bowl of candy in its lap. A lot of houses that closed for the night would put the candy bowl out on the porch with a note. As we closed upon the porch, I felt a strange feeling in my belly and I stopped. That’s a person, I thought. I knew that when we got up there, the scarecrow was going to grab us.

We stood still, watching the scarecrow and debating whether or not it could be a real person. We dared someone to see what kind of candy was in the bowl so we could gauge whether or not it was worth it. The scarecrow didn’t move the entire time and was sitting at a strange angle. We approached in a group and as I reached into the bowl… yes, the scarecrow moved and grabbed my hand as we screamed and ran halfway back down the sidewalk. A familiar voice laughed, assuring us it was our neighbor. We stood our ground and made him show his face before we went back for the candy we had earned.

There was a thrill in being able to be brave without the need for a parent. On our own we had evaluated the threat, calculated a plan and supported each other in carrying it out, calling on the energies of our Other skins to aid us. On Halloween we stood in the shadow of no one. It was always light when we started our adventure and in the joy of running from porch to porch we would lose the subtle slip into darkness until we were cold and tired and our bags were heavy with loot. Often, home seemed far away. We would make our way to share stories with our parents of what we had seen on our travels.

The next morning I was aware on the walk to school that the same-old route I had been taking every morning was different. It was bigger. The houses weren’t just landmarks anymore. They were also skins of homes with families and faces inside of them, containing other children who thought the world was no bigger than the size of their house. On that morning I understood the world was bigger than my house, my block, my route to school. There was more of it than I could comprehend.

As a child, on Halloween night I walked with demons and devils, witches, ghosts and ghouls borrowing human skin (and superheroes and princesses). I dared to enter dark places and returned from them unharmed. In the turning of the world, I learned I could enter the darkness and return. Maybe not unscathed, but I could return and know the healing would come. Each year now, as I drop candy into the bags and baskets of little cows, superheroes, witches and pirates, I hope they will remember their fearlessness on this night. I hope they will remember how they learned to move from jack o’ lantern light to jack o’ lantern light as a means to get through the darkness.

Relevant Posts:

Setting a Place for the Dead (posted October 27, 2010)

Ritual for an Unnoticed Passing

It’s never easy to move away from people you love, both physically and emotionally. But life is not stagnant. It’s not static. We grow towards and away from people all the time, spending periods of our lives in fellowship with others, either working towards common goals or bonding in shared experiences. Those lengths of time are important for our growth. They’re necessary. We meet people who become part of our lives at the right time in the right place. Then things change. We change. When that stretch of the journey is over, someone always moves on, growing in another direction. Sometimes it’s us.

That doesn’t mean the love we carry for the people we were close to ever fades. When a connection ends it isn’t necessarily because someone did something wrong. Change is natural and though physical distance may grow, the emotional quality doesn’t. Loving people is the best thing we can do and once we love, we carry that bond within us wherever we are.

What happens when you don’t know someone you hold close to your heart has died? What happens when you don’t discover their passing for months, or even years? What do you do then?

I have often had the misfortune of discovering that a friend has died, the funeral has occurred, and everyone who knew about it is securely in the process of moving on. But for me, in the sudden knowing, the grief is fresh and painful and often met with dismissive attitudes by others, as if it’s different because the person died months ago. As if it should be different that I haven’t seen them in years. As if any of that truth diminishes the loss of them from the world.

When someone we love dies we hold funerals to honor the vessel, the body that held the deceased, and send them back to the earth, the place we all come from. The second purpose of a funeral is to serve as a space where we can grieve the physical loss of them, honoring who they were to us and the part they played in our lives. This part of the funeral is about the living.

It was hard for me, to grieve far from home for people no one around me knew. Over the years I’ve created a simple ritual that speaks to what I need. It’s my way of honoring the person who has passed on and speaking to the impact they had in my life. It is also a way of wishing them safe travels into the Otherworld, whether they have already crossed over or not. This is something you can do alone or something you can do with mutual friends. It’s something you can ask your close friends to be part of, so that they can hold space for you and witness your memory of the life that passed. Make it personal.

 What is remembered, lives.

Ritual for an Unnoticed Passing

Light a candle. The flame is a focus point. It requires oxygen to flourish. It reminds us to breathe, to be present. It reminds us of the task at hand. If you associate a particular scent with the deceased you could use a candle with that fragrance. If not, but if scent soothes you, the smell of lavender is calming for those in grief.

Speak the name of deceased. Say out loud when they died. Speak aloud how they died. I cannot express how important a person’s name is. It’s how we’re taught to identify ourselves. It’s how our loved ones call for us and speak to us while we walk the earth. Speaking the name of one who has passed brings the vibration of their energy present. Intention is good but vocalizing that intention is better. Our thoughts get muddled in our heads and we can feel multiple complex emotions at the same time. Putting those thoughts and emotions into words sharpens the picture and brings clarity to what we intend.

Allow yourself to admit the sadness you feel at their loss. This is important. This ritual is for you. Share the news of how you found out they died. This is your chance to speak to that moment of grief.

Physically burn something. It’s important that we mortals use tangible tools in working emotional rituals. It keeps us present, grounded. It keeps us here when our spirits might want to be elsewhere. If you have access to an outdoor fire, or an indoor fireplace, you could burn herbs, like dried rosemary or sage, or squares of muslin with prayers written on them. You could make wood fetishes to burn, or even a muslin and herb poppet.

Whatever you burn, use this moment to say farewell. If you have no access to a fireplace, carve a separate candle with words or images and burn that in a holder. Say a blessing for their spirit as the flames consume your fetish. Let your heart speak to your wish for them to be at peace. Let yourself feel what it is you are feeling. Cry, sing, laugh…

Drink some water. Take in a bit. Remember that water is necessary for life. We are made of it and for every tear we shed we can take in more water to replenish ourselves. Don’t be afraid to cry, don’t be afraid to let your body drain. You can always rehydrate. You can always take more in. Offer some water in memory of the life no longer lived.

Take a breath in. Remember you are alive. Remember you are here.

Bring some joy back into the space now. Share something about the deceased that makes you smile, something they did to help you. Tell funny stories of madcap adventures. Do something they enjoyed. Make their favorite food and savor it. Listen to music you listened to together and dance yourself into the very edges of your fingers and toes.

Honor their life by living yours. When you look up into the night sky, see the echo of their laughter shining back at you from the stars above us. Those who walk with you in life, walk with you in spirit until the end of your days, even as their soul is at peace. May your heart be healed and joyful.

May it be so. Ase.

What I Thought I Knew

Every autumn, I travel to the Berkshire Mountains to attend Twilight Covening, an event created by the EarthSpirit Community. It’s a time to do deep magic of connection with other people, with the lands we live on, with the changing of seasons, and it’s a time where I find a deeper connection to myself. I use the sacred space and rituals to prepare for winter work, for there is always work to be done. Every time I find myself reaching a place I worked towards, I see that the path stretches out further still ahead of me. There is no end to the current. I am the current. There is more to do, more to learn.

This year the work I was doing was around learning tools to replenish yourself when you are depleted. I often ask the question, who cares for the caretakers? We all have someone in our lives we count on to have the answers and to solve the problems (even if it’s ourselves). We can’t care for others if we are not cared for. It doesn’t stop us from trying. Most of us often deflect from our own needs, wants and workings, thinking we are better people for sacrificing them in the wake of the needs of others. What happens when we have exhausted ourselves in caretaking? Who, in turn, cares for us? This weekend, I was given an answer, one that was so simple it should have been obvious.

We worked in the sun of the mountain top to connect to the spirit of tree, water and stone. The spirit of breath, fluid and bone. I thought it would be easy. I thought I understood what that meant. I have spent my life hugging trees, grounding in water and loving the stones of the earth. I forgot the layers of consciousness that are difficult to perceive from this side of the world.

We are one species of the earth’s children and many of us cannot hear its voice anymore. We have to learn to quiet and listen. It wants to teach us what it knows. And when we are depleted of energy down to our core essence and we have exhausted all of our resources in the care of others, we must turn to the natural world, our mother, and *trust* that she will help us, giving us what we need, moving through the world for us while we rest in ourselves and receive those gifts. It’s not the same thing as shutting down emotionally to do what needs to be done. It’s staying connected, and staying present, but being supported.

When we were connecting to stone, we were told to “push beyond the depths of our own silence,” to find stillness. Only I was rocking. I have nerve-damage in my left leg from an accident that is obvious to no one but me. Sitting on the floor for long periods of time causes nerve firings down the length of my leg. In that moment in the pine forest, when I realized I was rocking, I understood it to be something I do to distract myself from the pain, to move that excess energy through my body in a current and grounding it outward so it does not burn.

When I was sitting in my rock, a giant nugget of mountaintop with rough veins of quartz running through it, I didn’t know where to start. I took some deep breaths to my version of stillness and I opened myself to the stone beneath me. I whispered to the earth that I did not know how to find its stillness. I took myself to the edge and told the stone that I could not speak its language through the barrier that was my pain. I asked the mountain, the deep ancestor, the bones of our planet, to teach me to find stillness.

I felt so cold, sinking in until the edges between us blurred. I moved to the very skin of the pain of this body and then I took a deep breath. The stone beneath the pain was waiting for me. In one flash, pushing through the barrier, I experienced the fullness of the pain in a blinding white light like being electrocuted. And then… there was no pain. None. For the first time in ten years, I was sitting in exquisite stillness and silence, aware of the sounds of the world around me, but inside we were at peace, the stone and me. I wept openly for a long time, as our clan time commenced. “Once you know something, you can’t unknow,” my Clan leader said.

That peace lives inside me, and that place without pain does, too. It requires work on our part to find it. It requires that we take the time to build a relationship with those spirits. So to find it again I will build relationship with stone and learn its version of stillness. Anyone who has ever navigated a human relationship… it’s that big. It’s that serious. It requires that level of commitment. And once you open that door, the world opens to you. You just have to get out of your own way and listen.

This walk, this path, this work is opening before me and I accept it though it is frightening. I am opening myself up to something infinitely larger than I can comprehend. I am opening my consciousness up to something that will constantly keep me humbled and in service. But what am I if not a child of this world around me, part of its genetic make-up? What am I if not a daughter of the Earth? What am I if not breath, fluid and bone, if not also tree, water and stone?

Connect to the EarthSpirit Community.

Autumn Apple Seeds

When you cut an apple in half through its belly, at the center of the fruit sits a five-pointed star. This star, glistening beneath the surface of the skin, is a reflection, a mirror image of the stars in the sky above us. Where we normally look outward, into the night to see the light of that distant being, nature shows us to also look inward, into the core of the fruit of the earth to see the same image. What lives without also lives within.

If you want to speak to your ancestors, do not gaze up into the starry field of midnight sky and seek their names in the light of those heavenly bodies. Go into yourself, dive into the bloodstream towards those endpoints where memory lives. Speak to the voice of the ancestors alive in you. Speak into the darkness and they will listen. They will hear you. Find that edge, that meeting point of their footsteps and yours, and they will answer.

In the crisp and cooling air of autumn, the season is expressed in the crunching sound of dry leaves beneath feet. The orchards release a pungent and overwhelming fragrance. Apples taste best when plucked from the tree, when they are the same temperature of the cold mountain air around them. Nothing compares to fruit fresh off the tree. There is still so much life in the apple when it has been newly broken from its stem.

That crunch of teeth breaking the skin releases the sweet juice. Nectar runs down the flesh, and it is the purest liquid I have ever ingested. Synapses that had been sleeping since last winter begin firing and I can see the crisp edges of the world around me. I inhale them, feeding on them, until I am left with a knobby core filled with seeds.

There are a lot of meditations at this time of year, reflecting on the last of the harvest, and how we cannot escape the shadow of death as the landscape in the seasonal zones dries and crisps and is whipped into dust by the winds. Every year, on Samhain night, I swallow an apple seed as a reminder that death comes to everyone. Death is not unkind. Death is what takes us from the trauma of our failing bodies.

This is the season where we walk a long edge, where hallways to other worlds are everywhere. Close your eyes and whisper the name of your loved one who has passed. Remember the scent of them and the feel of their skin beneath your hand. Under closed lids, build that image of them and open a doorway, inviting them in. Be the lighthouse beacon that guides them to you. Feel your love for them and exhale, making it bigger each time, until it spills out past your periphery. Call them home. They will listen.

Rattling to the Edge

Every harvest season, I eat my apples down to the core, break it open and claim the seeds. I do this for all of the fresh apples from our local orchards. I keep them in a recycled aspirin bottle (washed and rinsed) and use it as my autumn rattle. The sound of the small seeds against the bottle is a gentle vibration that shakes the edges of my etheric body.

            Small seeds bounce against the container’s edge, blurring lines. I open to my ancestors. The world is turning towards the thinnest point between the layers of what is seen and what is unseen. What wisdoms do those who came before me carry that can help me through these dark months? What strength did they bear that I can tap into, plant in my core, and use as I grow?

            I rattle open a door.

            I rattle as the leaves whip up around me and the grey clouds roll in.

            I rattle as the earth sighs into slumber and in that sleep the spirits stir.

The Death inside the Seed

Apple seeds, or pips, contain a cyanide and sugar compound called amygdalin. When it is metabolized, it degrades into hydrogen cyanide (HCN). The tough outer coating of the seed protects us from the poison, and it from our digestive systems, so it can come back out and plant itself in the ground somewhere (theoretically). Unless the pips are pulverized or chewed, the amygdalin remains safely within the seed. Even so, our bodies can detoxify small doses of cyanide, so don’t fret if you have spent a lifetime swallowing apple pips.

Disclaimer: Death is not something to toy with. It’s not a game. Cyanide denies the blood its ability to carry oxygen and causes asphyxiation. There is no antidote for a lethal dose of cyanide and death takes minutes. The fact that ‘death’ lives in the heart of the apple seed is a reason I use it to symbolize death and rebirth. Speaking to the truth of something is in no way advocating for the use of it as such.