Wild Nature Heart
Journeys Into Reconnection
Hope Will Not Be Cancelled
Dear Wild Nature Hearts,
I wanted to get a brief message out acknowledging the difficult moment we are in and to offer a reminder of our resiliency and resourcefulness as intelligent and empathic creatures of the earth.
Do you wonder if the deeper meaning behind the pandemic, the power outages, the headlines screaming crisis is to release us from our superficialities and reconnect us to what really matters?
The growing ecological and social uncertainties of the moment has many of us searching for what to do and can elicit a range of emotional responses, from anxiety to denial to hope for a way through. Is it possible that the forced slowing and shutting down has within it the grace of a sacred pause that allows for deep listening, for cultivating deep belonging, and co-creating solutions for leaning into this Great Turning?
Is it yet another opportunity to take big steps toward another story?
In a time of social distancing, continue to offer your heart, your story, your grief, your wisdom; continue to listen to and move your body; continue to take walks in nature.
If you are in a place of emotional, financial, or spiritual resourcefulness, abundance, and health, please share and offer support to those who need it. If you need support, do not be afraid to reach out and ask for help from those who probably also want to connect.
Sure, stock up on canned goods and hand-sanitizer. But also stock up on your core values, your expanding heart, connection, and community.
When in doubt, introduce your bare feet to the earth, sit with a tree elder and wild water, hold hands with the sunset or a friend, and welcome the birdsong into you.
Some Wild Nature Heart in-person offerings may be postponed and re-scheduled at a feasible time. Some in-person events may migrate into Online offerings. The Ecogrief Resiliency Circle: Honoring Our Pain/Love for the World is re-scheduled for March 29. Deep Belonging Courses are now starting April 5 in McKinleyville and April 3 Online. The Write Your Wild River DayQuest is still on for April 18. Follow on Instagram/Facebook and check the website to stay up-to-date on happenings.
Ultimately, hope will not be cancelled. Meaningful conversations will not be cancelled. Love will not be cancelled. Poetry and song will not be cancelled. And our deep belonging to the earth, our wild purpose, and each other will not be cancelled.In all the best and wild mysteries,
Ryan
Director of Creative Earthiness
PANDEMIC by Lynn Ungar
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
One Step At a Time With A Fierce Heart
There’s only one way I made it 500 miles through the High Sierra. There’s only one way I was able to get to the mountain passes when at the trailhead it seemed almost impossible, when I wanted to give up so many times half way there, or even a quarter mile from the top:
One step at a time with a fierce heart.
Whatever our mountain is right now, whether cultural or personal, we will look back someday and ask ourselves, how did I even do that?!!
But we know the answer.
And we keep walking.
Out With the Old…
Well, we know it’s not always that simple.
A turn of an arbitrary clock, even with well-set intentions, is hardly a match for old habits, storylines, let alone outdated collective beliefs and cultural paradigms.
Sometimes a giant freaking wave comes and wipes the slate clean. But often it’s many successive smaller waves slowly eroding the the old. Sometimes the old is composted with hard work, big hearts, and well-practiced presence, becoming soil for the new.
Or just as likely, the new and the old co-exist like broken shells and washed up seaweed. Like new ferns on old rotting tree trunks. We birth the new while letting go, we grieve while celebrating. That’s how nature works, and we’re no different.
It’s okay. Let’s keep it real, so we’re not disillusioned when suddenly we wake up tomorrow and we still have work to do and play to be played. And we’re still our wonderfully messy and mysterious selves.
Still, like the waves on the shore and the sun at dawn, we keep showing up, raw and open, ready to give life, ready to shine on, ready to shape the next shoreline of our lives.
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INTO THE CAVE Course begins January 22. What emerges in the fruitful darkness?
DEEP BELONGING Course begins January 16. Re-Belong yourself to Place and Purpose.
Take the self-paced WILD NATURE HEART CHALLENGE at anytime from anywhere.
Links in Shop. 🌿
THANK YOU ALL FOR SHOWING UP AND SHINING YOUR LIGHT
Thank you wild nature hearts for all you do! Thank you for showing with your gigantic hearts and medicine.
Whether it’s regenerating culture, forests, soils, or souls, spreading the seeds of the new paradigms, lifting up the marginalized, fighting for justice, whether it’s deep listening, holding space, creating art, seeing people’s light and their sacred wounds, inspiring people, or connecting people more deeply to nature, their bodies, health and wholeness, their Inner Guide, their calling, or their best Selves, YOUR WORK OF LOVE AND PURPOSE MATTERS.
So keep on keepin on, and step even more clearly, more grounded, more YOU, into the next stage of your journey and work. Never forget that you have a unique way of showing up fierce and and sharing gifts that only you can and were meant to, and We are all medicine for each other, helping each other remember, walking each other home.
We are each GREAT REMEMBRANCERS in this collective initiation of THE GREAT TURNING. How amazing to be embodied right now!
Thank you for walking with Wild Nature Heart this year and I am grateful to be connected, whether that has been on social media, online gatherings, in circle, or out on the land learning alongside the river or among the trees.
Looking forward to continuing our journeys in the new seasons.
In all the best and wild mysteries,
🌿💚🐻🙏🏽 -Ryan
Solstice Blessings
| Solstice blessings and warm holiday wishes! Today marks the longest night, the point of absolute dark before the return of the sun. What emerges in the fruitful darkness? We have been experiencing the season contracting, things slowing down, energies withdrawing, going underground. The earth releases and composts the old in order to make way for the new and recharge. We honor the earth’s and our own season by doing the same. There is a reason for the seasons, and it is yet again an opportunity to be present with what is and apprenticeship ourselves to the necessary energies of dark, silence, and slowness. A time to integrate all the wonderful and difficult and intense experiences of the year and replenish our powers. And also to reconnect to the people, voices, and energies that are truly aligned. In the restful darkness we are able to see-feel our inner light more distinctly. In the silence, should we allow it, we are able to hear our own inner voice more clearly. We know the sun always returns. The light will now grow incrementally, the days becoming fractionally longer, as we begin to unfurl into the next season of our lives. What emerges in the fruitful darkness for you? Thank you for walking with me and Wild Nature Heart. I am so grateful for connecting with you, whether that has been through words, classes, circles of the Great Turning, wilderness ceremony, full moon hikes, or one-on-one sessions. We are all just walking each other home and I am looking forward to continuing the journey with you in the new year! In all the best and wild mysteries, Ryan Director of Creative Earthiness |
| Within the Cave Something Pulses I. Sip the Season Darkly Darkness has arrived wrapping its inky cloak across the season of our lives long shadows and owls stand tall and salute autumn’s bright slow song becoming winter’s march asking us not skip too quickly over the hour with an eager eye grasping towards cherry blossoms awaiting on the other side Drink deeply from the season, they say, from the cup overflowing with the sweetness of the fruitful darkness Sip the season darkly in its slow inward night embrace Wisdom hidden from summer’s glare may yet pass our lips should we have the thirst for it Until finally, the world becomes too much with us: We go to the cave, the secret one in the mountain of ourselves seeking stillness, a retreat an inward looking and listen for it, our own voice amidst The Silence – can you hear it? II. Within the Cave Something Pulses Within the cave something pulses. We hear it even now feel it even now that which deepest dark cannot smother, and even winter’s hands cannot touch tender tendrils of our very own vine, bearing the wine of our heart A Remembering–Aha! Some secret vial of our heart’s fuel distilled for this very hour to sip the season brightly And the sun too misses its lover earth and cannot too long stay away The sun was meant for this: to shine To not share the big love is a wounding So in this darkest hour the sun knocks on the nearest horizon and announces The Return with a subtle beat: “Dear Love, I’m Here.” Which is exactly what we find written on the walls of our cave “Dear Love, I’m Here.” And we open our new eyes of dawn with a deep breath and though it’s just a whisper now it is enough to start it all again and again…again….again… ________________________________________________ Included in the new collection, Within the Cave Something Pulses, forthcoming 2020. You can get RE-MEMBERING: Poems of Earth & Soul. and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest through your local bookstore, on Amazon or Indiebound. A book of mystery poems, Silence Begins Here, book of love and erotic poetry, Wild Rose Hips, and a celebration of the flow of rivers and souls, Riverever will also be out in 2020. |
INTO THE CAVE Courses begin January 8. What emerges in the fruitful darkness?
Two groups—one All/No Genders Cohort and one Men Only Cohort.
DEEP BELONGING Courses begins January 9. Re-Belong yourself to Place and Purpose. Day and evening times.
Take the self-paced WILD NATURE HEART CHALLENGE at anytime, from anywhere.