August New Moon: Letter of Belonging

I received a love letter today from a friend—a note accompanied by holy tokens of remembrance and hope. A well-traveled sweetgrass braid, a reflective stone, a handmade dish carved with plants. The letter and items are given in a goodbye—as her and her family leave our town for a new one. Materials of love that are helping to hold me through this change, this grief.

Sitting in the quiet of the family nap, I held this letter, burnt a little of the sweetgrass, sipped tea and wept the delicious tears of grief's love, or love's grief. I felt this letter as an embodiment of love, this moment of full presence, of being here.

Our children had become each other’s first best friends—their first Beloveds found outside our family lines. Us adults too, seemed to have found solace in the company of each one, Robin always asking for each of them by name. It has been a relationship full of belonging. And the feeling of belonging has not, does not come so easily to me. The trust it involves has often been too big a risk to take. And yet, I know I belong to Her. She to me. I to you. Robin to Her. Her to you. And yet sometimes I forget to belong. The belonging feels fragile. Feels fleeting.

And She is changing. The Creek here whose banks were burning up when I wrote last, has now brought floods of ash and mud through parts of our town. Nothing lives in that liquid. It is the water that carryings the death of the beings burnt in our fire here. The thunderstorm rains that brought the floods kept the smoke of the rest of the burning West at bay. Now the air is thick. Much of the beauty of this place hidden behind smoke.

How do we endure this change? Any change? How do we hold onto our hope of love and belonging when so much is impermanent. When the bodies of our Beloveds have left, are forever changed and changing further, or have returned to the earth.

There is also the beauty of the garden right now too—that we delight in with our eyes first, then our noses and tongues. Our ears delight in the crunch of a freshly pulled carrot, our hands in the tending, the cooking, the loving. I am aware of how much of a vessel we are to receive this generosity.

And so this is the wander I wish to suggest. A letter to the land you love. A letter of belonging, of grief and hope, of acknowledgment, of beauty. Go and read it aloud to Her. Or if she is far away, or if you no longer recognize her, ask the land you find yourself in, to transmute it for you.

And perhaps while you are writing it, or reading it, She will speak back to you some of your own beauty. Maybe you can find yourself in front of the mirror, noticing the same beauty of the Land in the land of your own body, your own heart.

Oha