Listen to the Birds

Listen to the Birds, Honorable Shamans and Fellow Pagans.  Go out in the Wilds and be quiet and listen to their voices.

Or, sit by a window and listen…

Learn to identify them by their calls and songs, by where they live, their shapes and colors.

Birds stand at the gates of climate change.  The trees and shrubs and grasses and even the ice they nest in, are going away.  The berries and bugs they eat, are dying off.

Their eggs and their bodies are poisoned by trash, (oh the sorrow of watching birds try to eat cigarettes…) and by application of pesticides and herbicides in the places birds go.

Our airplanes and cars and cats and wind turbines pluck them out of the sky, midflight…

Listen to the birds now, while you still can.

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#PushDorianOutToSea

It is time to

#PushDorianOutToSea

HONORABLE SHAMANS AND FELLOW PAGANS, if you believe in prayer, then join me and many other people, to ask that Hurricane Dorian, swing East out to Sea, and not hurt anybody: #PushDorianOutToSea.

#PushDorianOutToSea

If you are not into prayer, then, skip this. If you feel it is unethical to manipulate the weather, then don’t.

As far as, “to whom do we ask this of?” We can ask:

Mother Nature, The Earth, The Universe, The Oshun, My Ancestors, my Gods, Your Ancestors, Your Gods, The Elements, The Directions, and even, The Storm Itself.

We have given the storm a name. Let’s talk to it. Ask it to become a “fish storm.”

Let us share our Peace with Mother Earth and Father Sky and All The Big Waters all around (me,)

(c) 2019 to present, WhaleMaiden for the Earthways Shamanic Path.

Please feel free to share the image, it is a group effort, and I do thank NOAA.

When Change Calls Your Name

Honorable Shamans and Fellow Pagans, sometimes it may seem like Change calls your name.

It might nose its way through your door like your cat or dog, with a nudge-bump, and mosey up to you, like they are looking for a snack.

They’ll say,   “Hey, whatcha’ doing? That? No, I have something else in mind, come with me.”

And you follow this animal, this Being, along a path and you have an outing — an adventure and you’re home the same day you left, or maybe the next day, if your adventure was extra-special.  Life is much the same as when you left, but you may have some nice memories and perhaps a souvenir.

Then there are times when Change comes like a buffalo or a bear or a rhinoceros bursting through your door.   You don’t have time to pack anything and you know you have no choice but to get out of the way.  You  might climb to the roof, or a tall tree for safety.  It might even be a nice view up there.  You won’t realize how far you climbed until it is time to come back.  And when you do, if you ever do,  you will find your life will never be the same.  You may find your home has been blasted to smithereens.  You may rebuild your home, right where it was — this certainly couldn’t happen to you again, could it? Or, you may decide to move far, far away from there.

While you relocate, or rebuild, more changes happen.  These are log jams or roadblocks.  Things you have to accept, or, things you have to confront.  And you have to decide whether to thrive or perish.

I’ve been going through massive changes in my life for the past two years.  Some of it –a great deal of it, in fact– has felt like my cat saying, “come with me,” and those many  adventures have been wonderful!

But the rest of it has been like a herd of fast-moving wild boars running through,  picking me up with their tusks, throwing me and my parcels on their backs, as they plow through, and deposit me 100 miles away from where I started. At times it’s been terrifying or exhilarating.

It was absolutely time for the boars.  The massive changes haven’t been easy, but, they have been exactly what I needed, at this point in my life. I’m thriving.  I’m content.  I’m happy.  I am so happy I said Yes! to this Change.

Now, I am watching the horizon and I can see a cloud of dust headed my way! The wild animals are coming!  It’s time to get ready for the next ADVENTURE.

How do you answer, when Change calls your name?

Until next time, “Share your Peace with Mother Earth and Father Sky and the Big Waters All Around Us,”

(c) 2019 to present, -~Whale Maiden~ for the Earthways Shamanic Path.  All rights reserved.

Autumn Meet Schedule

http://phoenixfestivals.com/hfschedule.html

Taking Action, sign petitions for Water Quality

PLEASE…

I urge you to sign this petition, and share it with your friends for them to sign.  We have serious problems in south Florida with algae and red tide and other pollutants.  Its killing manatees.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/clean-lake-okeechobee-cyanobacteria-and-prevent-future-blooms-while-moving-fl-amendment-1

The last days of Hurricane Season

In the last days of Hurricane Season in Florida, we begin to relax a bit. A few weeks after the Equinox, the days began to get cooler by one or two degrees.  In Southwest Florida, there is an appreciable difference between 89 and 84 degrees.  89 is oppressive.  At 84, we feel we can cope. At 84, I can get out of my car and walk into a building at mid-day, and not be drenched with sweat.

In Hurricane Season, Honorable Shamans and Fellow Pagans, we are reminded of many spiritual lessons:

1.  In my case, my relationship with the Divine is real and sustaining.  This Season more than the other times of year, tests my faith, again and again.  And the Divine guide and protect me, and comfort me.  Listening to the Divine, is a daily practice.

2.  Striking the balance between planning and going with the flow, is an on-going lesson.

3.  Spiritual people are people.  This year, at least two of my spiritual mentors, people I admire, trust, and learn from, experienced the humbling reality of fear, and anxiety during Hurricane Irma.  So did I.  The best I can do, is learn from this.  What triggers fear?  Too much unknown.  What can I do about that?  Learn more and listen more.

4.  Hurricane Season teaches me,  again and again, how to ask for and receive help, and how to provide help to other people.

5.  The end of Hurricane Season is marked by the arrival of tourists.  Some of them will stay for a weekend, others will stay for the next 6 months.  As our population swells, our food banks need our support.

You may want to consider celebrating the end of Hurricane Season, by sharing some of your hurricane provisions with a local food pantry.

Share your peace with Mother Earth and Father Sky, and the Big Waters all around us.

(c) 2017 to present, Whale Maiden for the Earthways Shamanic Path.  All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Earthways Shamanic Path meets AutumnMeet 2017

I have returned from a short trip to AutumnMeet, which is a pagan festival put on by the great folks with Phoenix Festivals, Inc.

I presented a workshop on the Earthways Shamanic Path.  In this workshop, we learned about the Earthwats Path, and about Core Shsmamism, and ushered  out Hurricane Season, and welcomed in Dry Season.  I had a small but very attentive audience.

Then, Dayan Martinez and I co-led the workshop called, “Encountering the Native Goddess.”  Dayan is a generous co-facilatator, and it is always fun to see Dayan in person.

This was a nice family-oriented festival, at a lovely camp ground North of Lakeland, Fl.

I hope we get invited back next year!

Hurricane Timewarp

One of the odd dynamics of a hurricane, is that we enter a Timewarp: we loose all track of time, for several weeks. This happens for several reasons.

First, our normal schedules get interrupted with the effort of monitoring a storm. The storm predictions are posted at 2am, 5am, 8am, 11 am, 2 pm, 5pm, 8pm, 11pm. Once a storm is close to making land-fall, the advisories are posted hourly. You would think the rhythmic nature of this service would help you keep track of time, but it does not.

That’s because suddenly, you have so much else to do, preparing your home, and deciding whether to stay or to leave.

Then you are either in your home, eating all your hurricane snacks, too early. Or, you are traveling away frim your home, evacuating. Time is moving at a different speed. You might even go to a different time zine when you evacuate

Then, you are inside some shelter for 24-48 hours, and all the windows are boarded up. It is dark and quiet. You don’t know what day it is. Or the tine.

Then, the lights go out. You sit in your room with a few tgings poeered by a distsnt humming generator, or a flashlight, or candles. Waiting. The longer you sit there, the longer it seems to take. Eventually, you know the storm is over, and you go outside.

The sky is grey-yellow, dark, and ragged. The clouds are beat up, it’s windy, and exhilarating. But you have no clue whst time it is. You return indoors.

Then the clean up begins, while you wait for things to happen: when will the streets be cleared of tree limbs, when will the utility trucks arrive, when will the debris piles be collected, when will insurance agents arrive, when will the gas stations open, when will flood waters receed, when will school reopen, where the heck is FEMA, and when will my lights come back on?

When the lights do return, we all pause to do the Happy Dance.

And then you begin to return to your normal life, while all around your town are the very real signs of a hurticane having passed just a short while ago. Was that just yesterday? Or last week?

It will take awhile before you know.

(c) 2017 to present, Whale Maiden for the Earthways Shamanic Path. All rights reserved.

What Have We Learned, After Hurricane Irma

Now that Hurrican Irma has passed through all of the Florida Peninsula at somewhere between 9 mph and 15 mph, we can all sit somewhere, and reflect upon what we have learned.

1. Florida is a long state, and it takes a really long time for a storm that is 800 miles across, to get all the way out of Florida. Paper maps would have been handy. A tv at the storm shelter, would have been reaally helpful. Or a marine radio.

2. If you bugged out, did you over pack? Do you know what you used, and what you didn’t use, what you could have left behind (strappy sandals) and what you wished you had with you? I wish I had brought more warm shirts. And a rain poncho. This is an opoortunity to reflect upon one’s ability to travel light

3. If you bugged put, did you leave soon enough? Did you get delayed by employers (Dang Them!), or by well meaning friends who were not tracking Irma since September 1st, when it was already a Cat. 3 Hurricane. Most employers were inflexible until the Governor issueed the state-wide disaster declaration (I think THAT happened September 5th), and the schools close. This is an individualized problem.

4. Many people reached out to me before the storm hit, to ask, what should I do, where should I go. I tried to provide suggestions, based upon your property’s elevation, and the age of the building and how it was constructed. The main thing I told people who were deciding whether to evacuate, was to get as far north as possible, as soon as possible, and then pick a diagonal based upon the storm’s updated information.

This is still good advice, but the difficulty is, it takes most people in Southwest Florida a long day to get that far north, and it creates a really long evacuation trip, if you leave soon enough.

I tried to guide some people to local shelters, too, depending upon their circumstances.

5. People who have not gone through a hurrucane before, have absolutely no frame of reference for how big a problem this storm was for Florida. Our state population is 20 million people, plus tourists and animals. At one point before Irma hit, 18 million people, were under evacuation orders. That is 90% of the state’s population. And none of us knew with any comfortable certainty, where the Eye would hit, or when. So, the opportunity to second-guess any decision you make, is very high. And, comments from well-meaning friends/family can derail peiple even further.

6. Making so many major decisions, is a brain-drain. As I edit this on September 20th, many people are still memtally exhausted and suffering from what we now call Post Irma Depression. Be nice to us.

Relaxing Into Irma

There comes a certain point in Hurricane Planning, Honorable Shamans and Fellow Pagans everywhere, where you have to just “relax into,” whatever the Impending Hurricane Irma is going to do. That is the moment where you finally stop second- or third- or even fourth-guessing yourself, and say firmly, “I have done all I could, based on everything I know, up until now.” There is an ever-expanding quantify of information about Hurricane Irma out in the internet at this time. You can’t possibly read all of it, and make a decision about things like, whether to stay in your home, or to leave. And then once you make one decision, then the decision tree opens up, and you are making multiple decisions for days and days. “Ok, so, we’ll leave.” “Fine. Where shall we go?” Here, here, here, … it depends on the storm track! “When shall we go?” Who knows. Go early. Go late. It depends. You can read numerous articles with helpful checklists of what to take with you, if you evacuate. (We like to call it, Bugging Out in my neck of the woods. Then you can put your vital essential objects into your Bug Out Bag.) Sometimes it seems like it should be obvious to take warm clothes with you, if you bug out to the north, in fall, for example. But September in Southwest Florida has no resemblance to Fall, and tge week before a Hurrucane it’s been 90 degrees out and himid, so it is totally out of our minds. Or, to take a rain poncho with you, because this is a Hurricane. No matter what else happens in a Hurricane, you can count on it raining. Just about every person I know in Southwest Florida carries an umbrella in their car. But since Hurricanes also bring WIND, you want the poncho. Sooner or later, the Wind and the Rain will find you. Ypur power will go out. You will light candles and wonder if you have enough, or what was it that article said about oxygen? When your flashlight doesn’t work, you may want to resist the urge to think, “gee, i should have bought just one more battery. I should have gone to the store an hour earlier when they had some…” Stop. Breathe. Be right here. If you are by yourself riding the storm out, know that it will be over soon. You did the best you could. If you are with pets and otger friends and family members, take care of each other, comfort each otger, and enjoy the timevyou spend together. If you are in an evacuation shelter, or a Bug Out Chateaux, smile at your fellow weary travelers. Say Please and Thank you. Hold doors open for people. Share limited resources. See if the Volunteers have a spare poncho. And remember, Hurricanes and other big weather events are just Mother Earth’s way of restoring balance, moving the hot and cold masses around. None of us can change this or control it. So we may as well Relax. Share your peace with Mother Earth and Father Sky and the Big Waters all around us. (c) 2017 to present by Whale Maiden for the Earthways Shamanic Path. All rights reserved.