Medicinalmeadows

THE PLACE WITHIN

Tag Archives: rituals


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Belonging

I moved house at the beginning of this year so you could argue that I have had plenty of time to get to know my place and my space this year. I did all the usual clearing and cleansing of a new home with incense, sound, clearing the hearth and the modern day ritual of decorating the walls. But something was missing….

I grow up in this part of the world and you would think that is enough to create a sense of belonging. But industrial towns have a different story. My grandparents like many, came here for work making me the second generation of my family to be born to this town. So you see I don’t have lineage here, so does that make me feel like I belong? How do we create a sense belonging?

I think it is a complex set of rites that take place over time. This involves relationships not just to people, but to the land. It is an investment of time, connection and emotions. Life experiences foster a sense of relationship at pivotal moments both within ourselves and with a place. The relationship we develop with the land can be the place we go to express those complex emotions, whether that is the physical home, garden or the town. It can be that favourite place where we take a walk that sooths us. A path that we foster comes to be familiar. Just like a meeting of two minds who become friends, the land becomes the friend as we walk a repetitive path. In this communion we take in the land marks, its contours, and changing aspects in the year. As we walk the thoughts, the words, our emotions are expressed inwardly and outwardly as our feet caress the land beneath us.  

At one time we would have had rites and ceremonies that did this purposefully and we would have held the land in sacred reciprocity. When the land becomes sacred to us then we have reached a sense of belong as we feel a connection and value the communion with the land not just to the land. I feel this is when belonging becomes anchored. The words that come to mind when considering anchoring into a place as home are, “what have you planted here?” Is it a deep connection, energetically, emotionally, historically,…..or in reverence and respect as keeper to the land, place and space?

To anchor into a state of belonging is when we feel at home to the land and within ourselves. To truly feel like we belong, is to develop the same state of a relationship to our inner selves.

Belonging is more of a decision to be,

To be home within and where I Am,

I Am home.

For me I feel it is both the internal and external sense of being. One can’t be achieved without the other. Believe me when I say if the outer world is not fitting, the inner one is disturbed. So for me the land and the inner landscape are both important in unison. “What have you planted?” becomes a question of presence of the inner landscape and the outer landscape.


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Wish You Well

So when did we stop wishing well with sacred spring water, at waterways and sacred sites? Do the words, I wish you well actually correspond to wish you well with sacred water ?

In the last 6 months most correspondence both business and personal have begun with the words, “ I hope you are well?” It occurred to me that this term in our beautiful language, “well”, is a word for health and for the place once associated with healing, a water well. When I searched the word “well” in old English, Latin and in Germanic the word refers to “wish well”. So a little play on the words “wishing well”, how wonderful. In the present time that we have been in these challenging times and wishing each other well are we actually wishing each other well with an age old intentional act of wishing you well with healing water? Are the ancestors and the ancient ones right under our nose at this time, referencing us to wells, healing springs and old ways of healing. I believe we are being directed to think about the ground we live on,  the meandering paths we have been walk on and the places that have been bypassed and forgotten….the ways of wishing and healing near sacred waters.

So my weekend project for the autumnal months is to go and look for some water wells of the land I call home.

So wish me well as I go exploring……

Image by Janice Turner Salmon here at Medicinalmeadows taken at Janet’s Foss, Malham, UK. “The name Janet (sometimes Jennet) is believed to refer to a fairy queen held to inhabit a cave at the rear of the fall.[1]Foss is a Nordic word for waterfall, still used in Scandinavia” (www.wikipedia.org).


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Land, Ancestors and Heritage

Our connection to the Land brings us to a relationship with our ancestors. It was their settlements and their community that became our towns and cities. We have a responsibility to pass on a place worthy of the ancestors commitment as they weaved their lives into ours. That also includes a responsibility for the challenges they experienced on the Land as well as the trauma. You see our ancestors knew how to be caretakers to honour, cleanse and clear the land of loss and grief. Their rituals have long since withered and the medicine for the Land bypassed.

Healing can be considered a place of self care but we also have a custodian relationship to the land that is our physical foundation. When we integrate the Land as we heal ourselves we truly known what healing becomes. We are actively responsible for the patterns and vibrations in relation to our locations. Think about remembrance, the last monument we placed for commemorating our ancestors. When did we last lay our thoughts and prayers to ground? When did we last position a plaque in gratitude? When did we grieve on the land? Clear the air with sounds and song, When was the last time we celebrated?

Healing the ground we live upon doesn’t necessary need to be done with with duplicated rituals and ceremony of old. I feel that oral handed-down traditions were most likely updated to be relevant to the next generation and time of relevance. Key features of gratitude to the ancestors would probably be upheld but the way in which this would be performed would be modified to the present time. Think about music, food and ways of clearing and cleansing would most probably have been meaningful for the community of the moment. It is the act of remembrance, the act of honouring generations past and generations of the future.

Is it time to recreate Land rites and ceremony? At this time of great loss, great change. Is it a time to honour the Land as Sacred, as Sanctuary? Is it time to clear a way for healing?, a cycle of remembrance so we have a sense of belonging not just to each other but to the place our feet caress every day?

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