...In the Neighborwives’ Garden

In the twilight
The highway’s rhythm a few blocks away
Creates a lulling to cradle the occasional barking dog, crying child
And basketball dribbled down
The center of the street
Streetlights overtake the stars in the city,
Punctuated with flashing lights from the police in the distance

Deep in this city
On a good block in a not-that-good neighborhood
Lives the Neighborwives’ garden

Leaves blaze tawny and russet
with bright beauty in this last fall of light.
Seedpods thicken on wild grasses,
elderberries shake fistfuls of dark rain,
quinces shine treasure brighter than coin.
We give thanks for Gaia’s storehouse of plenty,
for this true wealth, as she gives and gives of her body:
berries, squashes, beans—
more and more we request and receive.
Eat, she says, to all creaturely life—
this is your being.
Honour Gaia’s nature
by refusing to squander or disrespect her.
Learn to need less and waste nothing;
find ways to create sustainability and
safeguard the magnificent diversity that is
the body of the Goddess.
We are living in the Sixth Great Extinction,
losing our beloved creatures and plants.
Take time to care for something that is other,
and in need;
from garden bird to snow leopard,
all ecology is linked directly to our hearts.
We may grieve for the lost summer of the world
but change is our certainty:
the balance of all future abundance
is in our hands.

Rose Flint © Mother Tongue Ink 2013

     Earth ripples alive in her golden skin as wheat ripens under summer sun, pulses to fullness fattened by rain and wild airs. Bronze rods of barley brushed by the weather, shimmer in fields of light as Corn Mother moves amongst us. Her fertile body is swollen with grain, sheaf after sheaf—enough to bring bread to the whole planet, even to famine, if we work with the climate, tend our fields as holy places, share with those who lack as an act of Compassion. Her belly is big with promise, with miracles, wonders, but our shadows stretch long on the harvest acres as we eat up the land. At the heart of the Eleusinian mysteries lay a single grain of wheat—sun-energy so small, holding the future. Women everywhere engage with the sacred alchemy of making bread: grain, water, fire, to feed their families and those who are in need. Loaves and flatbreads, chapattis, sour rye unite us in simple ritual: May we break bread in peace with all nations, in the name of Goddess.

Rose Flint © Mother Tongue Ink 2013

Summer Solstice is just around the corner. This Saturday marks the longest day of the year.

The sun-drum is high and taut as the wheel lifts to the peak of ascension. Gaia stretches out luxuriously; flowers pour from her, colours, light, heat—time to rest, play, blossom—flowers in our hair and our hearts wide open to celebrate Beauty, Grace of Earth. We gather together, travel and dance, campfires opening like stars on the land as long lovely blue velvet nights wrap us in ease. Yet we have Gaia's work to do: Earth is heating up, strangely, erratically, scorching lands into deserts, setting wild fires. Water, that sweet companion of solace to heat, comes ferocious in floods and storms, or refuses us rain, so we thirst. Our crops are now burnt, now drowned. Earth, Air, Fire and Water spin out of their true integration.

Let each circle be a powerhouse—each drum, each throat open in prayer for Gaia and her continuance to be at the heart of all we do. Our world will only come into balance if we make our own radical shifts, bringing women's wisdom into the centre.

In this time of increasing uncertainty, when climate change and world politics are altering Earth in ways we can barely comprehend, Grandmother Earth cries out for the restoration of Balance, for the interconnection of all that is living, all the Peoples—human, creature, plant, rock—to be honoured, so that the sacred Web of Life may continue. It is time to work with her energy, however extreme, aligning ourselves and our communities to the sacred Wheel of the Year: to the Equinoxes and Solstices that follow the dance of sun and earth through light and dark, to the four Fire Festivals that mark the agricultural year and the living and dying of the wild.

As the world turns she spins with her shadow. Learn to see negative and positive in balance; sometimes it is the darkness that shows us her gift, sometimes the light. As we become more and more dependent on the virtual world for our community and relationships, our adventures and realities, so many of us are losing our visceral connections to Gaia. Balance the shift of mind and imagination with the ground beneath your feet.