My Body is the Field.

Autumn blessings, rituals, and offerings.

Sep 20, 2024

I find myself rooting back into routine after having had it pleasantly disrupted by a visitor on a holy quest over the last couple of weeks. A widow on a journey of self-discovery and recovery, a woman who is both a client and dear friend.

I give myself to those I love and upon rare occasions, I can also take things from them that they are no longer meant to bear. This I did for her—my friend, the widow—and though it took its toll on my own body it was and is holy work, heavy work, and work that can only be done under truly auspicious and protected circumstances. It is sometimes possible to draw things from people and dissolve them into back into the soil or whatever places from whence they came.

It didn’t surprise me in the least that her visit ended on the eve of the harvest moon and partial eclipse. It seemed fitting to wind up our time together with a lunar event and for me an evening of excellent music and dancing. I saw Father John Misty, a man who could rightfully be called a modern troubadour. I even bought a shirt.

This is my favorite song by him, though he did not play it the other night. It’s also the song I dance to with my granddaughters.

We humans have been following the movement of the moon for as long as we have been gazing at the heavens while interpreting what her various dances mean.

The moon tugs on us, on our bodies of water, on the water within us as well as our personal and collective emotional currents.

Eclipses and partial eclipses tend to bring things up for me. As someone who is aware of astrology, but does not follow it, I cannot say what this most recent partial eclipse holds for the collective because though I do hear whispers here and there, astrology is not my vocation.

What I do know is that it is vitally important for us to tune into our own senses and signals when it comes to navigating our own lives as well as collective and celestial events. Those who claim to have maps may offer suggestions as to which paths to take or what trails to avoid, but ultimately it is our feet that traverse those paths. We are the ones who stub our toes and rub salve into our cracked and thorn pricked soles, or deter our trek to soak our tootsies in cool mountain streams.

We are also the ones who may find ourselves gazing in awe at an unexpected starscape alone or with a love, or in love with being alone. In love with life or wistfully wondering or cursing, “What the hell am I doing here?”

Upon speaking with a friend online yesterday, I heard that she and many of her clients were feeling strangely unsettled in the wake of this most recent partial eclipse. Apparently many are experiencing strong emotions, heightened volatility, lack of sleep, and disturbing dreams. I have also heard various reports saying to expect ties being broken, relationships dissolving, etc. But also unexpected healing.

I don’t know for certain about any of it, but I pray we may each uncover what we need.

I am feeling gently pulled downward. I am feeling quiet, sensual, and grounded. I am trusting more deeply in myself, my instincts, and my own gnosis than I maybe ever have before.

There is a tendency to want to draw correlation and compare this experience of this eclipse to others and that seems normal. The one at the beginning of April was unsettling to me. It marked the end of a cycle. It was then that my granddaughters who I had cared for over the winter returned to their mother. It also brought a revelation in a certain relationship for which the dust has not yet fully settled and maybe never will, but there are glimmers in the swirling particles that then got ‘kicked up’. And I can now see the stars, too.

This takes me back to the memory of something that this person repeatedly said to me, “You cannot say the wrong thing to the right person, and to the wrong person nothing said will ever be the right thing.” I take comfort in that statement. It is not that I give myself over to the whims of fate, but as I grow in maturity and deepen my trust in the Mystery, there is a faith that is carved from both experience and from the warm bellows of my own gut. I know who I am, what I need, and more often than not who and what is meant for me. To allay my own ego’s need to control those outcomes, I still pray to my ancestors: “Benevolent Dead and Dirtbound Bastards, please clear the way for that and those who belong with me.”

Then I feel, listen, and wait to see who and what approaches and who and what departs.

Is ambiguity unsettling? Of course. Is not knowing what comes next anxiety inducing? It sure can be. And I think I can speak for all of us who are riding the waves of the ‘state of the world' when I say there is much unknown and there is much which will surface and come unraveled in the coming days. We cannot keep doing what we have done and expect different results. That is as true for us personally as it is as a collective.

I am as aware of the collective storm raging as I am aware of the rain falling heavily on the roof of my little tin cottage, but I am not getting wet. Well, other than from the luxurious immersion into the hottest water I could stand a little while ago. I submerged my flesh suit letting the hot water slough away and residual resistance to what is, whatever that is.

My angst rides most often in my shoulders, the ligaments between hips and the muscles in my mandibular. The softening comes as I surrender, as the water washes over me as moonlight washes over the freshly cut field.

I am the field, but I am also me.

We do have the ability to choose to what degree we immerse ourselves in whatever is going on. We can ‘check out’. It’s okay to do so; sometimes dissociation is the only thing that keeps us sane. There is no shame in consciously or unconsciously saying, “I can’t handle this.” It is a survival strategy and what that needs to be respected.

No one is expected to stand naked in the glaring heat of the day at all times. Our skin and our souls need the quiet night, the starlit velvet, the deep comfort of quilts and comforters and Netflix and social media at times. And at times we need the mossy forests and red squirrels chattering about the coming of Fall and the need to replenish their winter’s stash.

At times we need to take account of who and what we are carrying and what is the cost for our body and soul. Maybe we do that in the lonely hours when we cannot sleep. Maybe we do that as we sort through our closets deciding what will be put away for colder months and what will be released permanently, pulling out sweaters and other warm things. Maybe it’s not quite time for that, yet, but soon.

Maybe there is no permanence. We are simply seeds sinking into the soil, roots seeking purchase, stems seeking light, eco systemically growing with each other for a season or two or four or four thousand. We bloom, fruit, and decay. All of us. We return to the soil and sail on the wind as wild orange leaves searching for a new home in some foreign land.

And over and over again we find our field.

Lotsa love,

~Justice

My Body is the Field.

Autumn blessings, rituals, and offerings.

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