Solstice Ritual

Facing shadow reflections

I set out on foot in the desert with a plan while Dave Mason curiously sang from the recesses of my mind There’s only you and me, and we just disagree. What?

Stepping over the threshold stick, I release my intentions. I am walking for healing. I am here to make good. I have brought some items to adorn the shooting range. I let go of my need for any of that to happen.

I have a destination in mind, descending, descending onto the Mesa towards the shooting range.

Two crows are circling

It is so steep, steeper than I remember

I think I’m lost

I come to a clearing and see that I have just taken a different route. The steeper way

I’m in the clear right now and I can see the old metal cross -shaped wellhead. It has known the elements, it is rusted and ancient. And now it is filled with holes from bullets. A makeshift target.

It looks like a war zone with shards and fragments of things blown apart. It looks like I feel.

Toxified, unholy.

I kneel before her and adorn her. I place a white lace shawl across the top, now clearly her head, and roses in her arms. She looks sacred. I wonder what she will look like in someone’s gun-sight. Will they shoot?

I think about the masculine that has been here and how much anger and rage I’ve had. How much fear. As I kneel down, to collect the brass and plastic shells, the broken glass of their old broken liquor bottles glitter like diamonds.

The sky is blue. Pinion and Juniper dot the brown earth. The goddess has been shot, and she is striking on this mesa. She cannot be missed.

Who am I to know if centuries from now these are the shards that help a new civilization gain awareness of their ancestors? Were the Anasazi as troubled by the shards left behind by their men?

Who am I to know the pain in the hearts of these men that have left parts of themselves here to be held by the mother?

I know the pain of not being able to trust the feminine. I know the pain of wanting to destroy her.

I know the pain of wanting a part in her demise.

I know the pain of not having a place to go that holds you

I feel compassion rising in me and a deeper return to the mother again. I have been keeping her at bay. So destroyed by the actions of my own mother, I let the poison color my connection with the land mother.

I am much more like these men than I have cared to admit.

I am aware that reparations must be made. Reparations with the young mother in me. Reparations with the mother that gave birth to me. Now is not the time, my body is weak. And I trust that bringing beauty into the creche of a gun range is the work I was brought here for today.

I feel community in spirit, and I have been refusing. The energy perhaps more aided by my compassion than my rage.

I take a piece of Adavasi incense out of my pocket and light it. I offer some of my water to the mother. I think of other women all over the planet today, in ceremony for the Solstice. In service, grinding their hearts to make us whole.

How many prayers will it take?

Who is to say that the mother has not offered this space for such a range? That she has no judgment of the child that scatters her room with his toys. She has no less love than for the child who burns a stick of incense and offers tears and water.

By her grace, I open.

I put the rest of the incense in my mouth like a cigarette and let it burn as I walk back to my threshold. Its perfume washes over me and the land.

And I question, as always, have I taken a wrong turn?

Refuse or Refuge I ask, as I touch my threshold stick with both feet. I am in the right place after all.

As I make my way home, I hear the lyrics to an old Laurie Geltman song in my head. “I have held you at bay”. Yes, brother. Yes, mother. Yes, I have. Forgive me.

If we are to be with light, we must be courageous enough to face shadow.

Brave soul, walk into your darkness and know you are not alone there. XOS

#solstice