Hair

Consider the power in your hair

Whether dark or ginger or fair

Or short or long, up or down,

Or springy or curly or straight

Or red or blue or green or brown,

You can use it to weave men's fate:

Unbinding your braids can open the gate

Of birth, and unleash the power of your sex.

They say that the wildness of hair

Can cause destruction and death

Oh the mysterious powers of hair!

Delilah knew all too well

The powers of hair to weave a spell:

It crackles with magical power

Like fire from Rapunzel's tower.

Hair like the wings of night

Can cause a terrible fright

As it shines in the pale moon's light

Unleashing bats and owls

As we dance with cackles and yowls

About the full moon fire.

(inspired by Crystal Blanton's post, My Hair Doesn’t Get Longer, It Gets Tighter: A Symbol of My Path)

This is how the message ran...

I had an amazing dream this morning. I was standing on top of a city that consisted of a collection of small houses, which we realised would have to be turned into a tower for defensive reasons. Just then a tiny spaceship about the size of a coffee pot came and settled in my hand. It started making a humming noise, so I put it to my ear and I could hear a message. The message was that we must stop hurting the Earth. The aliens who had sent the message had despoiled their own planet with pollution and carbon in the atmosphere, and they wanted to save us from the same fate.

The seeds are sprouting

We are telling ourselves a story of inevitable destruction,
that the environment is doomed,
but the seeds of a new way of life are sprouting
beneath the cracks, beneath the concrete,
and the rivers are rising,
the Earth is protesting,
the winds of change are blowing.

The spirits of place are calling
for a new story, for a new paradigm.
A story of hope, a story of renewal.

Ancient Goddess of Earth,
hear our desire for change,
forgive us for wounding you,
over and over.

We begin today to tell a new story, a story of hope, a story of renewal.
The wheel turns, the fire burns, the winds of change are blowing.
The spirits of place are calling, the seeds of change are growing.
We dare to dream, we dare to hope, we dare to change.

~ Yvonne Aburrow

Inspired by this article by Nafeez Ahmed: The global Transition tipping point has arrived - vive la révolution

And this blogpost by Sophia Bonnie Wodin: Story: the bigger picture

Borrowed

The festival of Borrowed highlights the idea that we do not own the Earth and its finite resources, we only borrow them, and share them with all other life.



The world hangs in the balance,
a blue bauble on a pendulum
swinging in the void.
Change begins with a butterfly's wing,
a tiny flutter gathering into a storm.
We can all be butterflies.
If you worship the green growing things,
if you honour the three-toed sloths
and the hummingbirds and the pandas,
and the strange beasts of the deep places,
the furry, scaly, leafy textures,
the divine exuberance of life,
then please remember
we are living on borrowed time,
borrowed places, hallowed spaces,
and tread lightly on our sacred home.

Ned Ludd

The machines must be fed constantly
not just with oil - they take the arms and fingers
of those who tend them. They invade the dreams
of the workers, who hear their clattering
even in the furthest reaches of sleep.
So we creep by night into factories.
Ned Ludd - general of the armies of night -
is with us. His strength was in my arm
when I smashed the machine loom, smashed and smashed.
Strength like the grip of ivy, crushing
stone and metal. The power of roots is in him,
relentlessly pushing up from the earth.
He is the land fighting back, rising up.
against the encroaching iron and steel.



by Yvonne Aburrow

Inspired by A choice of worldings by Rhyd Wildermuth

Vox clamantis in deserto

The wilderness is not desolate when
it is illuminated by one who
sees every leaf and branch for its own self,
and patiently teases out its meaning.
The prophet’s voice is heard, speaking softly,
close to the earth, divining the waters
that well up unseen. Softly the creatures
of the wild places gather to hear him,
eyes like lamps in the night as they hear his song
re-enchanting the world, weighing its meanings.
One day the waters will run free again,
awakening the land from sleep. Till then,
listen to the man who sings of trees and stars,
waters and woods, a voice in the wild.

(for Andrew Brown)

small beauties 2

24 September
Every spider's web bejewelled with dew from the morning mist. The red leaves of Virginia Creeper and Boston Ivy draped over walls and fences.

8 October
A cat that looked like the Egyptian god Anubis. The sunshine. The reflections of the light from the water bouncing off the trees. A second and fuzzy shadow of me, made by the light from the water. Golden birch leaves, red virginia creeper, snowberries, tall lavender-coloured roses.

21 November
Green and gold leaves alternating on a silver birch. The first frost yesterday, leaves of many different shapes outlined with tiny crystals of ice. Autumnal trees, red, gold, copper. A rowan tree with blush-red leaves and berries the colour of pale peach flesh. The way the autumn sneaks up on you gradually.

22 November
What a beautiful morning. The sun is shining, the air is crisp and clear. The trees seemed almost to be glowing from within, with the gold and copper of the leaves lit up by the sun. Red dogwood stems stood out boldly against the background of a dark wood. A flock of Brent geese came down on the river, honking madly.