Prayers for the Water EARTH DAY, April 24,2010

Today is Earth Day all around our sacred home some call "Earth" others call "Papa Honua" and still others call "Turtle Island" and more still call "Gaia."  By which name you call her, this home and the all her elements cries to be healed.  Palaoa, the great whales sing songs that mourn the pristine seas, Salmon with memory of the great migration into the sea are stopped from their traditional journey weakened by the toxic slough of Human Kind's chemicals. 

Earlier this week, Pete and I made our own historic journey in Scout the trusted Subaru (sometimes our home, and often our mode of getting keia to kela).  With fears faced, I sat in the back seat with an oxygen tank, ceramic mask and many prayers said to have my spirit guides and my belief that the risks of travel through two hours of pollens that tax my system and a large gathering within a building were risks that I was willing to take. 

The gathering as I have written in a previous post, was one of the first in the Pacific Northwest, to honor and bless the waters of Earth and in particular The Salish Sea (the waters from the south Puget Sound of Washington north to the waters along Vancouver Island in the Canadian) known to the Peoples of this continent's First People.  We did make that journey to gather at the Long House on the campus of Evergreen College along with 400 others who knew this gathering was of great import.

Oxygen in a tank allowed me to be within a building with many people for the first time in more than three years.  I used to ceramic mask that is necessary for many who have sensitivities to the plastic cannula usually used for breathing oxygen.  Regulated at a very low mixture, the oxygen gave me just the reassurance that I could breath fresh air instead of chemically fragranced or volative organic oils from Nature's storehouse.  I am grateful to say, it worked! 

Pete and our long-time friend Joan, reunited in our own celebration of renewed friendship chatting and being part of a sacred ceremony to bless the waters of Earth, and the water that is within each of us humans.  With songs, words and the inspirational photography of water crystals --the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto of Japan, a sacred Long House was filled with messages and directives.  The song A DROP OF WATER written and sung by Washington artist Dana Lyons was the invocation.  The singular and power drip of water as a drum beat and a heart beat called to each of us.  Songs for the Salt Water and the Fresh Water from The First People of The Salish Sea graced us with connection.  Words from the elders of these First People inspired us with their strength, their actions and their unwaivering commitment to maintain their birthright and their kuleana (responsibility) to maintain their traditional rights to a way of living that was unseparated from clean healing water.  Among the many powerful messages I heard, the story of one First People's leader, touched me at such a tender place.  His story linked the Creator's exquisite sense of love and compassion for Earth and the Human through the single drop of water -- the tear.  Through that duct placed in the corner of a human eye the water within makes its way back to Earth ... connected always.

Waters of Life Blessing: two events worth knowing about, April 21st and April 24th

http://sacredceremonialsforthesalishsea.wordpress.com/

(Link above for more information about the sacred ceremonials)

We are mostly water.  We human are more water, and particular salty water than any other element.  At the core of our being, the connection with water on the planet Earth is as essential as fresh air.  Yesterday was one of my walking-by-the-sea times, graced with energy and capacity I am able to get my dear old self from the vardo to the shore of water in Mukilteo.  Lately, my walks along this shoreline has filled me with both the refreshment of clean and enlightened water-infusion and the meeting of young people who are the inspired stranger.  The park was busy with others --young children with parents, youthful bikers with their helmets and leathers, a former neighbor from a lifetime past out with her beagle and then there was the young couple perched on a log not far from where I parked myself on the sand.  With my cellphone minutes plentiful, I called my brother in Waimanalo and told him when he answered how it is his inimitable island-pidgin and his voice that stirs me to call.  In years past our relationship was so chaotic, too much the result of patterns of dysfunction that neither of us could be blamed for, yet we have created messy times.  Those times seem to be tempered by time and attending, at least on my part and to the boundary setting that we both respect thanks to the on-set of my life with MCS.  Funny, how that works.  Anyhow, my brother and I enjoyed the company of our conversation laughing deep and long at the relativeness of 'what is cold' or 'what is a life lived well.'  Bundled was he on O'ahu because the winds make for a chill at 75 degrees.  I told him I was in short sleeve shirt in the muted sunshine of 56 degrees.  He was amazed.  Back to that couple perched on the log. 

When I finally said "I love you," to my brother and stood with the help of my o'o the walking stick, the sandy path led me within eye-view of the young people on the log.  The young black man looked me directly in the eye, I smile at him.  "Are you on an adventure?"  "Yes, I am."  I extended my free arm in a gesture of all-there-is-ness.  "What are you looking for?"  "I'm out looking for life as I find it."  The young man engaged continued, "Where's life all around you?  Is it sea life you're looking for?"  I think I might have repeated myself and said, "I'm looking for life just as I find it!"  The young man nodded and said, "I value that."  "Thank you,"  I said smiling back at his companion who was broadly smiling back under the large dark sun glasses.

This beach I walk is less than two miles from the home where I lived, raising a son that is older than that young stranger.  Also on my walk yesterday, I met a very young boy with a haircut that was the sort I would have given Christopher at the same age.  His mom, a Native First People woman smiled in my direction as I called a friendly hello to her.  The isolation that is so dense sometime with the life I live as a vardo-woman can overwhelm me.  Connections with this mom and her young son and the couple on the beach log, dilutes the isolation and reclaims my self-regulating brain cells retraining them to believe there is more than despair and isolation. 

Being by the water or in the salt water has calmed and healed me in small and miraculous ways over my six decades.  The Waters of Life Blessing that will happen next week, both here in the Pacific Northwest and all other the Planet are events that can connect us with ourselves and our core self.  Dr. Masaru Emoto has been instrumental in raising consciousness for the Healing Nature of water.  He will be at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington on Wednesday, April 21, 2010.  Pete and I will head south and meet two old friends ... all goddesses willing!  I will need to invoke all the help I can get to travel that distance and gather with as many people as will be there.