Thoughts on Becoming Essay

In April of 2008 I enrolled in the East West Course of Herbology, on a pure whim.  To be sure, it was an ecstatic whim, and although after a year and a half in, I find myself behind in lessons and struggling with time constraints, I am fervently committed to this path, because at its core, it is congruent with my own. Herbalism, its study and application, is a big round subject, to which I warm immediately, both mind and spirit rising. 

This may fit one more for a quiet life in the woods than a large profile in town, especially if one is more walker and forager than visitor of people, but it aptly combines both, since its virtues bring the very soul of the forest to the malaise of the inhabitants of town and city.  It starts in the wild, where we started, long time ago. It can heal the soul, and it marries the spirit. The nose detects a plant, perhaps, or the eye melts around its form. The hand initiates a truce, a tryst. It  makes its way into the hair, the basket, and the garden, and is later hanging in bunches from some rafter, steeping in teapot or soup pot, powdered in the mortar, tinctured in wine or suffused in oil, and from there, to the mouth, or the skin.  From here, it travels in mystery into nerves and blood and bone. Its subtle finish is in the mind and heart, drawn always and finally to the spirit, where it finds its nest.  

I speak not of herbs here, but herbalism as a way of life, as a way of being connected finally, directly with the mystery of life.  This is not a new subject; rather, just my expansion on a subject well known and well travelled by many who have found a way to slip the collar.

Because, in truth, we have been imprisoned in an manufactured circle, which has separated us from our traditions and our environment, our mystical souls and our deep wellspring hearts, by a culture which has superceded the wild way with the powers of the modern age, which seek to rule the world.  

This of course is inevitable, it is the way of the flesh.  We have had many conquests and many rulers, compelling us in one form or another.  They forbid us our language and our hides, they require our tithes and direct us with their theory and science, political, religious and physical. It is in man’s heart to expand and rule, it is part of this fallen destiny that he puts so many of his own children to the sword and so much of his ancestral grounds to the dozer and concrete.

But the weeds grow in the back yard, and when we have disgorged the kings meat and wine, we find the weeds still, abundant and tenacious, growing through the constructs erected to finish them, blooming under the sun, the most common of them fittest for what ails us worst, as provided by a Benevolence that ultimately supercedes the powers of the modern age with simplicity and generosity; against this, the constructs of power have no recourse.  We may yet eat the weeds, and humble wisdom is to be found there.

"Ah, but our colonizers will destroy our forests and canyons and plains, our lakes and rivers and oceans, our mountains and valleys, and finally, all will burn."

Yes, this is widely known.  Search it out.

I have a sister, Clarissa, who carries The Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die, The Tale of the Faithful Gardener.  The forest does come back; and it’s initiation is through fire.  Perhaps this earth is a seed waiting for the initiation of the fire, and we must allow this possibility, else we would despair, something of our spirit would die irretrievably, and then we would be conquered.  But rather than run from the specter of this apocalypse, I will walk through the winter garden, murmuring the unknown language, under the patient eye of the Benevolence, who waits for the cycle which rolls like a spangled sky.  We all speak finally of The Tale of The Day, and every day is a day closer to it’s dawn.  Beyond its sunrise I will travel to the Tree, to the River, to the most gentle Healer.  Fruit of vine and field to You, then; for here is reconciliation and the Land herself is requited. 

It is a deep desire, to be united with both Land and Benevolence.  It runs deeper than fear of death.  It is a grounding whose roots sink to the kernel of the earth, and whose root hairs tendril into the mystery, and it is a heart that recognizes its lover through any veil.  Yes, I will sup to this.