I walk the Sanctuary this morning, dreaming with the Nature Spirits about this year’s gardening projects. Elecampane catches my attention and asks to sing, ki wants to share his Lung medicine.
His song is deep and slow. After listening, I read about Ancient Trees being felled for money. I think, “Is it any wonder that our lungs are hurting?”
Our lungs came into formation with these Trees. We were meant to breathe in the moist air filled with the molecules of their medicine. This air is easy for our lungs, they are nourished with each breath and in reciprocal relationship, our lungs offer our gratitude with each out breath. Now every inhale includes a pollutant, a foreign object (actually many), making our lungs work harder to bring in the gift of oxygen. This is true no matter where you live, there is no escaping the poisons. Even in the Amazon, the magical place known as the “Lungs of the Planet”, you are likely to inhale the poisons from the oil refineries or the smoke from the burning forest.
Our bodies are incredible. Like Plants, they can adapt and survive under less than ideal situations. And like all living Beings, they have their limits.
Adding to this burden is the hidden stress of grief. Our lungs are the organ who holds our grief. We recognize the pain and heartbreak of losing a Loved one. Though we tend to forget that these Ancient Trees (and Wild Waters and Mountains and Birds and Pollinators and Coral Reefs and Whales) are our Loved ones. When we kill or destroy them for money, there is a (often unseen) toll on our bodies, especially our lungs.
We forget that these Loved ones are our Medicine, our magic. We are told that we can buy “magic” in a bottle. However, this is illusion, designed to keep us occupied, while our true magic is turned into dollars. I recognize that in our culture, money is important. It can provide food, shelter, and medicine. However, what good is that if our real medicine and our real magic is gone?
Have you ever walked in a Redwood Grove? It is like walking in another time. As you breathe in the moist air, your body relaxes. You begin to move slow and listen. Your Heart opens. You start seeing shapes and Beings everywhere, your body recognizes them as kin. It is here that you begin to understand what magic means. It is not smoke and mirrors. It is life.
We can not grow back the Ancient forests or replace the Mountain tops. However, we can recognize what remains as Sacred, as worthy of protecting. We can stop polluting the Waters and Air. We can plant new Forests and flowering Plants.
We can allow ourselves to feel the pain, the grief of our loss. We so often try to avoid feeling this because it feels too immense. We are afraid to look or to admit what we are sensing for fear that we will be consumed by this pain. Pain and grief are part of life. When we refuse to acknowledge them, we deaden ourselves to other feelings including joy and pleasure. The world becomes gray instead of technicolor. We try to enliven with stimulants and “magical bottles” (whatever the latest promise for happiness is) or try to quiet that pull to look, through numbing (drugs, television, alcohol, food). This only leads to more grief as our lives move further out of alignment with Nature and our Soul’s desires.
Fortunately, Nature does not give up on us. She is calling louder and louder asking us to open our eyes, look around, feel, and give voice to our experience. Yes we might cry, we might grieve. For that is appropriate and necessary. We cannot truly heal if we cannot acknowledge our experience. Grief opens the Heart wide. We say heartbreak; however, if we allow grief to tumble us, we learn that it is Heart expansion. With this wide open Heart, we are able to live more fully and experience the gifts of life and Earth. We come back into alignment with Nature and our Soul.
Elecampane is an incredible lung remedy. Ki helped me with pneumonia. As such, Elecampane also helps with grief. This is not always a pretty experience. As Martín Prechtel writes in The Smell of Rain on Dust, “Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
We have lost Home. Our Souls, our Hearts, and now our Bodies are tired and unable to ignore the pain and grief. The beauty is that we are not alone in this. We have each other and as Elecampane reminds me, we have the Plants. There is much to praise.