Medicinalmeadows

THE PLACE WITHIN


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Who is Mary Magdalene ?

Beetham Church
Sketch by Janice Salmon
Shap Abbey dedicated to Mary Magdalene
@shewhoisart

Mary Magdalene is many things to different people.

She is healer, myrrh bearer and medicine woman

She is consort, companion, wife, mother, sister, daughter

She is mystic, magic, miraculous

She is spirit,  soul, and transformation

She is priestess, prophetess,and leader

She is roseline, bloodline, holy line

Royalty, ancestry and secrecy

However we begin the connection, the light of who She is transforms us. Her words change us, her image, the story is different to each of us. This is her mystical, manifestation of her diamond light. She meets us as we need to be met. She presents what we need, her truth is our truth reflecting back, what we need to see in ourselves.

Beautiful,  Light, Divine, Mystic, Missionary,  Preacher, Healer, Regent, Ancestor and Sister.


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Fancy Jasper

Meet Fancy Jasper sourced from all dry continents of the Earth. It looks like a palette of the desert sands. It is smooth chalcedony and quartz, nice to hold for meditations. It brings in a connection to Earth Based Wisdoms for recall and journeys of old lineages of the land.

Fancy Jasper aligns the Root Chakra to the Higher Chakras. Opens up energy of stability and peacefulness, to a place, situation and safety. Creates a sense of belonging to practices of ritual and ceremony, to being at one with the land around you, from gardening to homemaking and settling in.


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In times of chaos….pray

Shap Abbey

Divine Mother

My prayer for the year ahead is to meet my edge with more grace. In times of chaos, challenge or conflict help me stand strong and walk towards my boundary, my edge.

Help me be curious and walk towards my uncomfortable feelings with love and an open heart.

In times of mistrust or division help me raise my head, my lungs and breathe in a stride towards that tension.

May I lean towards my limits with a new learned sense of familiarity. Let this become a place I know and a space of recognisable wisdom.

Let my body and spirit know my edge as much as I know my centre. And may the retraction inward be a soft walk back to myself with compassion in tow.

I pray I walk within my self with affirmation of safety. That I being to recognise this boundary as a recognisable place which is part of my whole. So my edge is a place I grow to know as much as my resting repose.

Amen


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Slow Walking

Pilgrim Path

Slow walking this week is teaching me to be present to all that is around me and within me. I can feel the tension in my body and where the tightness lies. I feel every part of my foot on the ground when I walk slow. I can sense where I am out of balance, overstepping, trampling or avoiding. Mindfulness walking helps me read my steps, my tension, my needs, inside and outside my body.
And then there are the birds that fly towards me, reminding me to go even more lightly on this path.
The sounds of the wind come closer to remind me of the things I hear that can be overwhelming, or soft and charming to my releasing breath. There is music that sings inside me and a voice I hardly use.
And the warmth of the sun soothes some of the tension at my back, telling me that there is also warmth behind me not just regret. Some of that warmth can be helpful as I contine to walk my path, always forwards, always slow, and always with every feeling rising up from my feet upon this earth.
#thewalkofanempath

#everystepaprayer

#magdalenemusings


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February Irises

February always seems to be a bit of a slow path to spring, with some glimpses of blue skies and sunshine on still days. I look to my Irises and watch how they are so resilient to the morning frost, the low temperatures and strive towards the yellow streaming light at noon. Each day I check they are making it through. We are forecast icy rain and snow again, I have many things I seem to worry about, but these flowers just soak up the light. They spread their petals fully open without a bit of concern.


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Pathways of Prayers

I pray today for new ways of walk this earthly reality with my feet firmly planted in each and every moment.

May my feet connect to the one place, one time, one love. May my feet anchor me sturdy and strong. May my feet feel the pulse of Mother Earth, the temperature of present awareness.

May my feet be open to pull in all the valleys, alleys and avenues of choices, considerations here present. May my feet be able to spread my weight evenly with equanimity as my teacher.

May my footsteps be met with desired movement. May forward action be with a tender greeting of all the elements playing a symphony of encouragement and guidance through All the paths and passages of life.


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The Prayers that Walk us through the Darkest Winter

Memories of last years snowy visits to my Fathers bedside are arising. This time of year is a reminiscing of those dark nights in heavy white snowflakes and the determination to get to him no matter what.

The car got left at the roadside at the foot of a hill too slippy to climb. We had our faces dipped down and hoods tightly pulled in.

The ground was fresh and crisp and cars that normally litter the carpark where nowhere to be seen. Just clean inches of snowfall outside the hospital entrance.

I sat that night too worried to hold his hand with my freezing fingers. Instead I kept them wrapped around the rosary beads. Pattering through the Pater beads and stringing along my Hail full of Grace. The beads are still in my bag from last year and maybe it is time to give them a new purpose, with winter walks. Once upon a time I wouldn’t have dared to walk about with the prayers pacing aloud but now it feels more necessary. These prayers bring me to the awareness of the nature around me and to my Father. His love of the Robin tweeting, the leaves still orange and the pink skies a 4pm.

For me it also reminds me of the support and nurturing around me. Of the prayers offer to me in my hour of need by a circle of friendship. That night as I said the prayers I knew my friends, they call them rosebuds, where saying them also and thinking of me. Prayers hold us up, set us down and hear our grief even in our silence.

My prayers this year are allowing me to release these body shivers and somatic sparks of electricity as I remember Him. I still sit in circle with those who held me so near from so far across the globe. Our prayers transverse continents and encircle us when we need it the most.

Thank you Rosebuds. You are always in my heart and in my walks of prayers.

#wayoftherose #sevensorrows


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A year of passing

It has been a long time since I wrote about my 50 something life. This last year I have been navigating the loss of a parent and the grief that arrives and stays as the other parent tries to pick up pieces of the day to day after 60 years in a partnership. Their companion has departed and the one left behind is struggling with night time anxiety.  As well as days to fill in a quiet house once filled with noise in abundance.

The year has passed me by with scheduling and rescheduling of appointments and it feels like there has been no space between the loss of a loved one, no silent  breath, no pause to reflect.

Today I am sitting waiting for the instalation of an emergency call device while I am greatly aware of the first year anniversary of the death of my Father. All this feels like pivotal moment but it is more like watching leaves fall to the ground. I have sense of time passing and grief that does not change but everything has change from last years fall.

I wonder moment by moment as I try to remain unnerved but my body remembers my state of anxiousness. I wonder if a tree remembers the leaves from last year or if the release is complete each year?

Will I be able to release my grief entirely to the ground this fall. Maybe winter is teaching me to go bare into the darkness and let it all go….