Life Death Life Cycle

​This season pulls me in
I want to feel my bare feet in the cold dark earth
I want to feel my hair stick to my cheeks as the fog dampens it
I want to smell the freshly chopped cedar waiting to be fed to my wood stove
I want to sit in the long night pondering the death of things within and around me
I want to feel the crisp of the early morning as it wakens my skin
and then the cool damp of the night air
while I watch the owl hunt and the candle flickers
I want to re-member where I came from
I want to re-member where I have been
These are some of what makes me feel alive in these days of deep, mysterious, and vulnerable change. And that is why we have gathered, to honour, to ignite,
(and as Gandhi said)
to be the change we want to see in amongst our people and in the world.
We are the great granddaughters of generations of women who had to hide their ability to heal, to hold wisdom, to know. Women who were told to be feared.
We are the granddaughters of generations of women who were told that they were savages, uncivilized, sinful, crazy, disposable.
We are the daughters of women cut off from their truth, their birthrights, their grounding, their voice. Women who were not to be believed.
We are the daughters who walk with those stories in our bones, in our blood
Our cells hold the stories of all those who walked before us
And we feel the suffering, and so we gather
For this is the time of reclaiming
We are the daughters who are
re-membering
re-claiming
what was hidden due to oppression and fear.
 
Tonight,
We are reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and re-birthing it through our shame-less and wild, feminine bodies, into this modern world.
We are reclaiming the Lost Voices, as we sit in sacred space
and listen, with sacred pause, to what they have to tell us.
We are reclaiming our magic
We are reclaiming our ritual
We are reclaiming our ceremony
We are reclaiming connections, with ourselves, each other, the natural world and
to The Great Mystery of The Spiritual Realm
We are reclaiming the wholeness of ourselves, our light and our dark
We are reclaiming the traditions of our peoples
And we are honouring the traditions of the lands we now live on
Together we re-member and re-claim all that was forgotten, punished, ignored, shamed, and dismantled
We do this together, because in this place of togetherness, we are stronger
We all know death
We all know loss
We all know suffering
In these places we can stand together, equally.
Our skin, our genetics, our heritage does not stop this connection
Do the trees not stand together, even though they are different?
So it can be, and is meant to be, with Us.
Together
Together, we are stronger.
Together we are re-claiming our connection to each of our own Sacred Feminine Life Force and together we reclaim our communities as places
where values and traditions are honoured,
by bringing back what we have re-member
by bringing back what we have re-claimed.
 
We are in a time where the tower is crumbling,
a great unraveling is in motion
and it is in this time of great change, that we are called
Called to Re-claim our birth-right
Our birth-right of The Sacred Feminine. We have re-turned.
​And it is here, I remain.
 
-Catherine Beerda Basso
Samhain Gathering 2022