Winter has swallowed us, taken us deep...

In the chill of ice, trees stand stark as bones, the land is cold iron, frost slows all movement so Gaia is still as death. Only the brilliant stars in the black sky remember the rhythms of earth as they wheel through the night. All is connected. As stars bloom and die, as flowers fall to seed, as bone becomes nurturing ground, the wheeling universe lives in its Beauty and pattern. We are stardust, born of the Great Goddess, and in her is all hope. Even in the most severe terror of darkness and cold that Kali brings, the Spark flares again to ignite the perfect miracle of life. When all seems lost, the mystery of the universe begins to lift us into light and renewal once more. Women will tend the sacred fires until the voice of Demeter is heard in the Halls of Dis, and Persephone returns, a Queen filled with the knowledge of great mysteries. The pomegranate seed will become again a tree of life.

Dream: ...I am in a crowd of people, and I hear a telephone ringing. Someone answers the phone and hands it to me and says, “It’s for you.” I say “hello,” and the person on the other end is a woman, and she says, “I am calling from the Hopi Nation. The ember is in the canoe. The time is now.”

The canoe carries precious cargo through flood-high waters in a desert land. The time is upon us and we are in this boat together, grateful that we are not alone.

The keepers are guided by helpers who send signals ahead.
They know the way by how it feels in their bodies.
It is a feeling of resonance that they follow.
The keepers are the guardians of the precious ember.

The ember will spark the imagination, allowing the slow burn of ideas to ignite and become clear harbingers of creative solutions for a troubled land.

Ahhh! Lunar Samhain: New Moon, in Scorpio, the Sun, newly in Scorpio, and partial solar eclipse coming up this afternoon...can you feel the shadows?

     Darkness sinks its teeth into day as the year’s descent deepens. Shadows fill up the street and cold creeps under our skin. Small valleys are bowls of mist brimmed with endings: bones, leaf-litter, rinds, skins, all the husks that held bright fires of life. This is the hour of the Cauldron of Transformation—from death comes rebirth. Listen for wisdom-voices in the storm: Kali, Crow-Woman, Ceridwen, Hecate—all know the need to cut and cull—let the Hag guide you to face down fear. Do not get lost in grief. Ride your power, disturb the air; be the witch, the shocking voice of truthful stories that shatter the status quo. Protest, refuse, fight for a new equality that places the wellbeing of Mother Earth in the centre. The seven generations that will follow us are waiting, crying for a vision. It will come from women working together: sisters weaving magic circles of intent.
Rose Flint © Mother Tongue Ink 2013

...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.