EcoBirth-Women for Earth and Birth : There is no beginning and no end- it is all one- and we are it

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

There is no beginning and no end- it is all one- and we are it

I just participated in an animated discussion led by Michael Meade, author and mythologist, with drumming and storytelling, silence and audience interaction. He told a Native American Myth about a woman in a cave, weaving with porcupine quills and her black dog who unravels the years and years of work she had done to create the fabric of the world. She had worked her teeth to a nub, chewing the toxic quills and now had to start over again. But she started immediately again, imagining a more beautiful woven world.

The lesson being that there is no beginning and no end, just rebirth, constantly. So there is a real reason to continue to see the world as it is, in all its "chaosmology", and work to better it, because there is no such thing as "the end of the world". We are in difficult period now: our culture is not even kind, much less compassionate. I see this in the way we treat our Mother Earth and our mothers and babies, particularly at the moment of our most powerful act, birthing. It is hard to see and face and name. It is dark and grievous. But, we must start immediately again, imagining a more beautiful world, as the woman did in the cave.

We cannot separate what happens to the earth, from what happens to us and to our children and grandchildren, unending, holding all of us as one and we are it. This is important work, but Michael Meade reminds us to laugh, enjoy, joke. Stories and myths are fun and profound. They can help us to continue to hope for good change, to work for good change. We can live in the chaos, knowing that life will be rewoven, differently from what we have worked on for years, wearing our bodies out, but using our creative imaginations to continue with beauty and love.

I am looking forward to reading Michael Meade's book, Fate and Destiny- The Two Agreements of the Soul. I particularly appreciate his dedication, handwritten to me- much peace and many blessings...And may we all have the same.

Molly Arthur's Maternal Lines digital story from molly arthur on Vimeo.

We women can face the pain and grief we have for our suffering Mother Earth and reclaim our story of creation and redemption with the power and beauty intimately held in our body’s cells from our maternal lines since the beginning of the cosmos. Our existential and communal grief heals within the loving gathering of our feminine compassion, connecting us to the truth and strength of our Mother Earth and all our kin. We start with Molly’s Personal Environmental Story-to explore the birth stories and places and times of ourselves, our mothers and grandmothers.Using the stories of our own maternal lines, with sharing, active listening and intention, we call on our ancestors, our inner wisdom and the shared circle to witness our story with compassion. Using ritual, song, movement, and sharing of our truths, in community and powerful circle as well as spending time on the land - we can acknowledge the oppression in our lives, feeling it in our bodies, grieving it, transforming it and ourselves in a safe, loving space. Our healing path connects our sacred lineage from the womb of our Mother Earth to integrate our inner and outer lives and discover our place in the connected caring cosmos. We are a part of a continuum of sacredness, lifeforce, divine energy including our Ancestors back to the stuff of the stars. We can reclaim our cells, our lineage and our legacy to the future generations. Like in birth labor, we must yield to our bodies innate knowing, to progress, to open, to birth our love. With our active surrender to fierce compassion we can restore our connection to the natural world and our own inner wisdom. We can drop our obsessive addictions to control and return to our healing, caring, befriending tendencies- innate for us nurturers. And then we can repair, regenerate, and renew our culture for tenderness and kindness, naturally embodied by us. We will be able to guard and protect ours and all descendents - becoming their Beloved Ancestors- by asking - What is possible now to transform our world for Future Generations?

Molly Arthur of EcoBirth- My Personal Environmental Story November 2012 from molly arthur on Vimeo.

Why EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story
EcoBirth’s My Personal Environmental Story will help women tell their life story by considering the two primary environments- place and birth- for themselves, their mothers and their maternal grandmothers. Through this process each participant will come to realize the hazards in their environmental genealogy and realize the healing in telling their own story. And they will be empowered to affect the changes that are necessary for our Mother Earth and our children and grandchildren to thrive.
Imagine looking back to your grandmother's and mother's birth time to figure out what environmental influences you might have inherited? And have passed onto your children and grandchildren? Would you wonder what was in the air, water and food in their lives- and look twice at what diseases, birth defects, addictions there are in your family?