Starting in January, I will be doing rune readings at Journeys of Life in Shadyside – you can call 412.681.8755 or email to schedule a reading. I will also be doing a forum discussion on runes at the store on January 13 – more details… Read More
Ehwaz/The Horse by Amoret BriarRose I approach her slowly, bit of apple in my hand, hoping to coax her? Befriend her? I’m not sure either is truly possible. I know in my heart: she is a wild thing though the path near the fence is… Read More
Image: A Bridge is No Country by Amoret
The Risk
by Amoret BriarRose
They say that a bridge is no country
and thus I wonder, when I reach out,
extend toward another, do I then
lose sovereignty to gain connection,
risk self to touch other…
or do we blend together, boundaries
wavering as watercolors, soaking up
the pigment of what we become
together?
I am ready to meet the autumn,
picked for a twilight brew
ready to know the tastes
so bitter on Her tongue.
Not all mothers birth.
See and know:
Silence will not protect you from need.
Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be. ~Clementine Padford
Image: A Spine For All Seasons by Amoret
A Spine For All Seasons
by Amoret BriarRose
And if your spine was a sword, what then?
Could it bear the weight of all seasons,
cutting when necessary
blessing when necessary
knowing hearts are both stones and feathers?
We Are the Ones by Amoret BriarRose Don’t despair! We are indeed made for these times, born for this dying empire breathing tired air and drinking troubled waters, rising from so many fires, exactly what is needed. Image: Need and Joy by Amoret
My first response to the image A Gift for a Gift is a flashback to the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I have always had huge issues with book’s message, depicting a relationship between a tree and a boy wherein the tree gives the boy everything, all that it has down to its very stump, and the boy does not respond in kind. Appropriately, this card was pulled with the rune Gebo, a rune that I read as being about love, gifts, relationships and reciprocity.
Image: A Gift for a Gift by Amoret
I see the tarot Aces representing the gifts of the element in question. When the Ace of Pentacles shows up in a reading, I ponder what gifts I am receiving from the beautiful and abundant world in “whom we live, move, and have our being” (Victor Anderson, Feri traditional prayer). I pause and remember that I my life is comprised of unearned blessings, that I breathe, taste, feel, that I laugh and cry, that “existence itself is an unearned benefaction” (Joanna Macy and Molly Brown, Coming Back to Life). When I see Gebo, I immediately think of equal exchange and how relationships of all types function and dysfunction. I hear the traditional Heathen words, “From the Gods to the earth to us, from us to the earth to the Gods, a gift for a gift.”
This image is a wakeup call. I will not be the boy from The Giving Tree, allowing the Earth to support me through abundance and love beyond measure while I take and give nothing back. I have meditated, done tarot readings and rune pulls, I have observed my world through my own eyes and what I witness in the media and on the streets. Deep in my bones, at the very core of me, I know this: we must get into right relationship with the world before it is too late, and “too late” is approaching very quickly. We humans have taken so much from our beloved Earth; it is time to step in and step up and become reciprocal before our planet is unable to sustain life. It is time to take what the Gods have given us, a beautiful and sometimes terrible sentience, and use it in service to life.
May we feed what feeds us.
May we love what loves us.
May we save what gives us life.
So mote it be.
(I would love to see comments that share one thing you are doing to step up, step in, and/or give back. Let’s encourage one another to bigger and bolder actions.)
Image: Conspiracies of Blessings by Amoret
Image: Breathe Your Prophecy Into Being by Amoret
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