Embers – la Chispa

Juliette Gordon Low center founder of Girl Scouts

Maker’s Moon – What wants to be conveived/born/shaped/made from our own minds/hearts/loins/hands? – CAYA’s Moon Question

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without spiritual life” Buddha

 O ignis Spiritus by Hildegard of Bingen

"Scouting rises within you and inspires you to put forth your best."  Juliette Gordon Low

According to Mrs. Z, in order to make a good campfire you need: patience, a good foundation, fuel and a mechanism to start it.  Oh and using safety precautions. 

Mrs. Z was my Girl Scouts Leader from juniors through senior scouting.  She was a hands-on leader – meaning everything we did she did.  My first fire building experience started with a 30 minute training walk in the woods.   We gathered three different types of fuel: tinder, kindling (finger to wrist size), and fuel (bigger that your wrist).  She was very keen on the “bleached out wood.”  This type of wood was found without its bark on the floor of the forest.  It appeared to me looking more bone like in color.   Mrs. Z described how this particular kind of wood had been aged and now had a minimum amount of moisture in it.  This would allow it to burn well.  Mrs. Z also liked it because it didn’t give off a lot of smoke. We would next bring the wood back and stacked in its categories next to the bucket of water which of course was several feel away from the stone circle campfire. 

Mrs. Z was a purist.  She didn’t believe in chemicals to start a fire.  Her idea of a Girl Scout was someone who was concerned about the air and taking care of nature to show to our Grandchildren.  This would always lead to a discussion about factories and acid rain falling in Western PA and the poor Cuyahoga River catching fire.  We were to use one of the following, dryer lint, pine needles or saved wood shavings from making marshmallow sticks to get the fire going.  Her favorite fire structure – the tipi. 

I was always amazed at how Mrs. Z had a knack at getting the fire started from something unsuccessful.  I can still picture her blowing gently on the embers.  Coaxing it with a little more lint to leap up and ignite the rest of the wood.  She’d rebuild the wood structure to let more oxygen in giving the revived embers the best wood - that “bleached out wood.”

~#~

O Comforting Fire of Spirit

By Hildegard of Bingen

O comforting fire of Spirit,

Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving life to All.

Holy you are in anointing

those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.

O sacred breath,

O fire of love,
O sweetest taste in my breast
which fills my heart
with a fine aroma of virtues

~#~

Sometimes my creative spirit becomes like an ember dying.  It’s a half burnt wood with a tiny glow that’s just hanging.  The reality is that my creativity hasn’t gone away.  I haven’t tended it by giving it fuel or a gentle puff of air to get it going.  I haven’t found space to allow it to grow.  Often, I’ve allowed the nasty voices to get in the way that extinguish my creative passion.

The same can be said about my spirituality.  I find it easy to conform to other’s truth rather than lacing up my hiking boots for my own unique journey.     

Sometimes you don’t know where your journey will take you.  Last year I became a member of the PBP, and I’ve been lead through many different twists and turns.  I accredit my 2013 Lenten study of Hildegard, creativity and mandala making from a fellow PBP.  It was through them I read a quote about the sacredness of nature and I followed it back to the source.  I crossed over through a door to a community made up of women from many different traditions.  They were discussing and practicing creativity and spirituality.  It was a group I never knew existed.

A new type of wood has been laid.  The fire is crackling.    

~#~

The Three-FoldFire of Brighid

Fire in the forge that

 shapes and tempers.

Fire of the hearth that

 nourishes and heals.

Fire in the head that

 incites and inspires.

Designing a Garden

BEMS@2013

Silent Moon - How can we find silent time to restore and regenerate our enthusiasm for our lives/work/relationships? ~ CAYA's Full MoonQuestions.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~ Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg

Love which planted a glorious garden redolent with precious herbs and noble flowers--roses and lilies--which breathed forth a wondrous fragrance… ~ Hildegard of Bingen letter to the Monk Guibert, 1176

It’s getting close to spring.  I can see the days getting longer.  The sun is above the trees when I drive home after work.  I’m anxious for that change in the rain smell.  I’ve been getting e-mails daily from all the seed catalogues enticing me with 2 for 1 deals.  And, I paid my fee for my community garden plot.

Last night my Gurney’s Seed Catalogue came in the mail.  I flipped through it relining on the couch.  The cover shows three bright photos: Ka-Bluey Blueberries, Big Beef Tomatoes and Biggie Sweet Chilies.  I’m pulled into the size and redness of that tomato.  My mouth waters as I imagine its July sun sweetness – right off the vine - sliced between a baguette with fresh basil, mozzarella cheese, salt and fresh cracked pepper.  My finger itches to press its seeds into the dirt.

~#~

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is considered to be a master gardener and herbalist. Her two treatises on medicine and natural history were widely read even today and probably have influenced modern pharmacology.  In her Causae et Curae, she catalogue over 47 known diseases during her time period (i.e., cause, symptom and treatment).  The treaty also provided lists of 300 medicinal plants and their use in treatment. 

The abbey Hildegard was prioress would have followed the Benedictine tradition by being self-sufficient. There would have been a vegetable/kitchen garden, farm fields, orchard, and physic garden.  Her medieval kitchen garden would have included: turnips, parsnips, onions, leeks, various legumes, mint, basil, wormwood, borage, mugwort, nettle and melons.  Whereas the physic garden would have traditionally grown sage, rue, aloe, rosemary, southernwood, poppy, mint and pennyroyal, parsley, gladioli and marigolds.

Hildegard was also a woman ahead of her time.  She adopted a way of eating that was based on color.  She believed and wrote about how foods offered specific viriditas associated with their colors.  She encouraged eating a multi-colored food diet as a way to promote well-being - mentally, physically and spiritually.  Today her “diet” for healthy living is better known as the Rainbow Diet, the Chakra Diet or My Plate 

Hildegard held the emerald colored foods above all.  Today we know that these dark green leafy vegetables are the powerhouse of the vegetable.  They are rich in minerals (i.e., iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium) and the B vitamins.  It is written the fennel was her favorite green colored food.  The herb is known to help with digestion and improve sight.  Eaten it tastes a little like anise.
 

~#~

"... Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: 'Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal creation' (Faust, II). And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions." ~ C. G. Jung

~#~

BEMS @ 2013

My class on Hildegard also includes learning to draw mandalas.  Up front, I’m not an experienced mandala drawer and consider at the most an amateur mandala coloring in the lines person.  

What I’ve learn so far is that some people consider mandala is like a garden temple or sacred space.   In many traditions it is used as a tool where one can use for meditation or trance.   It can assist the meditator on their journey for inward towards their sacred center for healing and commune with the Divine one.

Each day I focus on one of Hildegard’s writings and let my creative side take over. 

During my silent times of coloring, cutting and pasting, I’ve been inspired to move away from the boxy 9”x9” squares in my community garden to circles and fluid lines.  My research landed me on sites discussing mandala and keyhole garden structures.  These kitchen garden structures are non-linear and fluid.  They are considered more ecological and kinder to the soil.  Additionally, the design is said to be more pleasing to the eye - meditative. I can picture the rectangle I'm renting to look more like a mitochondria - the powerhouse organelle of our cells who's DNA is from our mothers.   

My mind contemplates the possibilities and my finger itches to press seeds into soil.

~#~

Recipe for rainbow eating – inspired by Martha Stewart and BonAppetit

Blood Orange, Beet, and Fennel Viriditas Salad

Ingredients

2 medium 1 red and 1 yellow beets, tops trimmed and roasted and peeled and sliced

3 blood oranges, peel, pith cut off and sliced into segments  (Make sure you catch the juice)

1/2 small fennel bulb, very thinly sliced crosswise on a mandoline

1/4 red onion, very thinly sliced on a mandoline

Small container of greens

2 Tbsp orange juice

2 Tbsp of olive oil

1 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar

1 small container of feta crumbled

Into salad bowl, greens then beets, fennel, orange, onions.  Mix orange juice, olive oil, and vinegar together and dress the salad.  Add feta cheese and serve.

CCWWW 2013 Lenten Walk

Illumination from the Liber Scivias
showing Hildegard receiving a vision
and dictating to her scribe and secretary

The Origin of Fire - Music and Visions of Hildegard of Bingen sung by Anonymous 4

Today a closed portal has been opened ~ Hildegard of Bingen

“I am the fiery life of the essence of God; I am the flame above the beauty in the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars.  And with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life.  For the air is alive in the verdure and the flowers; the waters flow as if they lived; the sun too lives in its light; and when the moon wanes it is rekindled by the light of the sun, as if it lived anew: Even the stars glisten in their light as if alive.” ~ Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom (69-70).

This past January I was exploring walking mediations and stumbled upon a Lenten on-line retreat.  The invitation had two key words for me: artists and Hildegard of Bingen.    If people aren’t familiar with this woman, she lived during the 11^th Century.  She was a German Christian mystic, herbalist, feminist, writer, composer, philosopher, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath.  Hildegard had moxie.  She would be someone to aspire to be.

In 2012, Hildegard was given sainthood.  Somehow this doesn’t sit right – after all these years?  It feels like one of Christ’s stories about the rich giving from their richness, in this case it has to do with power.  I feel like Hildegard’s nod to formalized sainthood is a way to divert my attention away from the real issues: the treatment of the American Catholic nuns, the child sexual abuse by clergy… 

I see my Lenten journey this year becoming an extended Imbolic over the course of 40 days.  My Lent is about opening doors that have been blocked by clutter.  It's a time to not be distracted away from the real issues  - the glittery stuff that comes from modern living.  This is what blocks the entrances to my heart.  Lent to me isn't about depriving.  No, it is about being silent, observing and listening.  It is a time to examine my heart to identify where I’m blocked and out of balance with love and humility.  Lent is about opening the  doors to closed portals.  Airing things out and getting ready.  Lent is hard mindful work. 

One of my favorite books growing up was A Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett.  In the story we learn that the walled rose garden was locked following the death of Mary’s Aunt.  The key was buried.  Like many in the household, people are hurt, angry or grieving.  Mary’s healing adventure begins when she sets her intent on finding the key.  Her journey reveals the things that block her heart from love and friendship.  Mary isn't afraid of hard work. 

When I think of that garden door, I also think of the Hebrew letter found on the Empress Card.  The door shaped card allows me to peer in.  I find the pregnant Empress sitting in a golden wheat meadow with a lush forest behind her.  People have told me this card represents both the subconscious and the creative.  She holds the seeds for inventiveness.  For me, anyone who has a creative imagination is able to magically enter another world - think about stepping over the threshold of a book.  It’s a door that can provide you with fresh opportunities, a clean slate or perhaps allows you a new way on how to do something.  Her kind face welcomes me in.       

This Lent I plan on pulling away some boxes, push away the cobwebs so that I may insert the tarnished key into this forgotten door.  It's the one that has been blocked with many excuses.  She sits behind it calling me.