Category Archives: Seasons of Healing

Seasons of Healing, Untangling

How It Happens

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Sometimes we wrestle with demons in order to show them -and ourselves – who we truly are. The demon is annihilated or transformed or disappears into a mist.

Sometimes the battle coming on is old and too similar to ones we have fought before. In these times, we kick ourselves and murmur, “Let it go!” after which we can simply turn the page and move on to a new chapter.

Sometimes change comes upon us like an avalanche, an earthquake, a tsunami. We are torn apart and have no choice but to survive it and later, languish on the road, waiting for rememberment. We may find a few pieces and put them back together but more likely, we encounter ourselves in new ways, finding our flesh growing back over our bones all on its own.

Sometimes we hear a click in our mind and the whole world changes. Old patterns are no longer compatible, old friendships drift.

Sometimes the need for change, it’s shape and the way to it have been sitting our doorstep for a long, long time. An event in our lives pushes us into a situation where we have to make a choice. Allow the change to enter or endure a suffering that has nothing left to teach us.

I heard somewhere that wisdom is not a collection of knowledge but rather a shift in perspective, again and again until all the perspectives fit together in a great flow upon the earth that sings under the cosmos. I heard somewhere that peace is riding the wheels of change.

1 Imbolc: Fallow and Planting, COVID-19 Pandemic, Peace, Seasons of Healing

You’ve Come So Far

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And She said,

“There will be times in your healing process when you will be reminded that you don’t need to fight anymore. You don’t need to endlessly scan the land, looking for trouble, as you once had to. Each gate you go through, there will be a clear sign of certain dangers falling away. You will forget those signs and need to be remembered.

But here’s the clincher. In the lack of danger, there will be a void that will seem as frightening as your life was before. You will feel like you are floating out into space, into the unknown.

Remember your mantra, ‘If lost, return to self.’ 

There is always something to hold onto. It is you. The gorgeous light you have found inside yourself. Sing your song. Kiss the blessed earth and don’t forget to enjoy the garden you have cultivated within. Survival skills do not understand gratitude practices. They seem ..not very useful when things need to be done.

Walk into this terror. Feel it enliven your body. It is the first good terror you’ve come across. Remember the gates. You know what you have survived, what has left you and what is still to be mastered. Trust the truth of what you have accomplished. Trust the changes you have already made in your life. 

This work you have done – you have earned your own trust, so use it.
What does life have to offer when there is not imminent danger? It is not what they tell you. Go find out for yourself. Go make the life you wanted when you were held down.”

Seasons of Healing, Spiritual Guides and How To's, Spiritual Sociology, Untangling

Unraveling the Curse of Original Sin

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One of the greatest curses cast upon the human race in the last few thousand years is the concept of original sin. Some religions insist it is incurable. Others claim that it can be wiped clean with baptism. Regardless of theological interpretations, many of us who are laypeople carry a deep-seated sense of being an awful, rotten, bad person. Shame is the great motivator for many of our actions, often without our realizing it. This curse struck not only those who believed in original sin, but everyone else too, as it was distributed through the collective psyche. Too often, events, people and situations are qualified as good or bad, which traps them in a fixed state, not allowing them to be multi-dimensional. When we are good, we can look down on the bad, while still afraid of being bad. When we are bad, we can never be good. Either way, we cannot grow. I cast down this curse. You are not bad. There is no mark on your soul…. Tasara Jen Stone More in The Ancient Bones of Ceremony, found in paperback and eBook at: Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Audiobook in production.
3 Beltane: Blossoming, Reverence, Seasons of Healing

The White Bird Rising

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I am the white bird rising, she who rose in the sky over my body when my back was broken, whose feathery gust sent grace into my life.

I have listened to the cackling of crows.

I have risen from the cauldron with the white raven,

and now, I am told, it is time to be these things I so love,

to fly,

to bless,

to spread grace.

Seasons of Healing, Valley of Death

Bedrock

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Inside me,
deep,
deep,
you will find only black rock

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borne from the storm
that day,
under the shawl
when the raven never left me
and winds tore at my soul,

polished in the heat
of the fire
you set
before you ran.

You will find basalt,
for the agony has
left me
metamorphosed,

finally
at peace.

You cannot push me anymore.

You cannot have my blood
and this rock will not move for you.

You will mislead me no longer,
my song will not change for you

because it is my song,
the one which can be no other,

this song,

my life’s

nectar.

Here, springs a flower,
alacritous, luscious.

It will be tended
by only
me
with all the wisdom I have.

It is no longer open
to your viewing,
for its soil
will not be poisoned
by your throes
to avoid
the silent
weeping
of your wounds.

My mind grew keen,
in the forges,
the mastery of my beauty
– you chose not to see –
attained.

This sovereign land,
held strong
in ancient customs
of honor
and
truthfulness,
is closed
to you.

You are not welcome here.

Not because you are bad, but
because your shape will no longer fit
with mine.

I have no need or reason to reach
for a black hole

for my heart is a rock,
a gate,
a flower.

Your door is elsewhere.

– Tasara

2 Ostara: Awakening and Rising, Remembering, Seasons of Healing

Skeleton II

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This life,
ever fought for,
sought for, sacrificed for,
runs fresh in my veins,

It shifts my body before the notion to do so arises.

I am alive.
What I gained on the other side,
this glowing rock,
this molten lava,
this star bursting from my chest,
is not meant to be beared, but shared.

In stillness, I would cave and fester.
In movement, a booming echoes around me, from me somehow.

The magnet of my compass has grown so strong,
it is more trouble to ignore, now, than to follow.

What will I do?
What will I do?

I will discover in the doing.

[photo credit: https://downtheforestpath.com/2013/03/06/little-pagan-monastery/]

Remembering, Sabbats - seasons, Seasons of Healing

Skeleton

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Once you have fallen down and rotted upon the earth
and dreamt your dreams
and picked yourself back up,
you cannot remain a skeleton.

The wind that blew through your ribs
to teach you its song
will only keep singing the same song,
and you have learned it already.

The ravens will not come back
because the have sated their hunger
for the dead.

Child of this earth,
the guardians give you a home now.

Grow flesh,
choose garments of color,
hum your song
and listen for the wind
when she wraps herself around you
on a late summer day.
She has secrets about being whole
as well as being dead.

We pass through a door
into nothingness
and as we return through another,
all the rest close.

It is the way of being mortal.

It is a good way,
for without song we cannot express.
Without song we cannot swell and beam,
shape and teach
what has come through us.

This time you will be different.
This time the terrain will be taken more carefully.
This time your ear will be attuned more keenly
to the authentic.

Remembering, Sabbats - seasons, Seasons of Healing

That which comes without warning

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And then there is the time when after the long awaking, after the split, the sleep and the recovery, after the faith has been held for so long, that sustenance seeps up from the ground. Things look the same but the doors are open. Medicine pours into the dry wounds and pleasure for living returns. The fallow period has passed. All the dreams, the prayers, the offerings to the mother have been heard and the answer is now in your blood.

Live. Live the life you wanted. Defend the new life as if survival depends upon it, because it does. And you know that now so there is no more deliberating. It is a fresh page and you are not a young thing, so take the pen and stroke from your life, the tapestry which cannot be undone yet can always continue.

Not knowing has become fun again, only because of the rock inside. This rock which has been formed through so much hardness, this hardness which has become your strength. To trust in that strength is to find the will to be gentle again. To know that you have become your own protector grants freedom to be able to choose to be open again. This child, inside is safe and brings a joy to carry you forth.

Blessed be the seasons that pass. Blessed is the ground beneath our feet. Blessed is the food and the wake and blessed has been the silence.

We do not run, nor push nor fend. We stroll into a new world with the patience of time. We savor and we test. We choose again and we go for what we always wanted. With skill this time.

Blessed be.

1 Imbolc: Fallow and Planting, Mediumship, Remembering, Seasons of Healing

Final Reprise

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PART ONE:

When the warrior finally reaches the green pastures and sunny meadow,
when the warrior puts her weapons down,
she feels the heat rise from the ground beneath her and lies down to rest
under the high grass,
smell of lyrical flowers.

Further no purpose, no quarry in sight, she dreams of battles
and then when she rises, all comforts greet her body
and she sighs, and she sleeps again.

When the warrior has found her way out of the darkness
into the light of her own heart
there is no longer need to strive

for arrival is come
and the land is still.

There is nothing left to seek,
yet the song still awaits,
and she waits for the song.

Soothe the jagged remembrances of evil.
Remember the misplaced soothing of jagged affairs.

Awake she is, like never before and
like never before, she draws from her sleep,

every fiber,
her being whole now,
glistening and listening to the holy voice within.

PART TWO:

I asked, “Once the debris has been cleared, the demons faced and transformed, what is left in the sacred vessel, in the shadow within us?”

and I heard the reply,

“That which one is connected to
but has no words for.

That which gestates and must not be disturbed,
lest it be damaged in the process.

The Great Mother, who holds us, who nourishes and weeps and cheers for us.

This is also the realm of the White Raven, she who has been burnt through and still lives. She who is Grace with a thin cloak of iron unseen and unshakeable. She who is container, soft as feather, hidden power capable of those very things she yearned to do when in pain but put down as soon as she was able. She is Death, she has seen and understood every aspect of Death and yet she has no need to bring on Death. She holds forgiveness, her compassion gently touches us with the naked light of presence aware.”

Once the stagnation is broken in the sacred vessel of shadow,
once the river is flowing freely,
dreams of the Gods quickly,
our journeys clear in the slipstream of their inspiration.

Then when we tell, we tell from a place of the Gods.

This is all I know and I pray for.

Seasons of Healing, Untangling

That Engine

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I just finally got underneath the car and fixed it.
You know, that rattle, that pulling back when I am trying to move forward, that shaking, threatening to fall apart while I am distracted about what is on the road before me.

The adventures I have chosen have been filled with potholes to move around (dropped a wheel a few times), filled with close scraping branches (no bother until the scratches start to rust through), filled with high winds and some furious storms.

Well, I stopped the car and got underneath it and fixed the darned thing. And when I got up, wiped my hands on my jeans, a road opened up that was level and open. The sun shines down and the engine purrs and I think, “Wow I could’ve done it before.”

But I didn’t. So I did it now and the ride will be so much better now.