I saw the pair of bald eagles again today. They are so heavy. (Feels like I should add "Dude" to that sentence.) The huge branch bent down as one landed. A pair of crows considered harassing them. I saw all this as I was walking along the water on Alki. As I walk I imagine that I am pulling my sacrum up out of my pelvis, lifting it with my ribs and shoulders, getting bigger. It helps.
Before Alki, I drank coffee and looked out the window at the birds in my garden. Ten different species in a few minutes. I've done that right. I set out to design a garden for wildlife, and they came. (Of course, it was that same garden that also fucked my back.)
As I drank my coffee, I read an article about the return of the sacred feminine. The article mentions a memoir by Cate Montana, called "Unearthing Venus." The article says of Montana:
"A turning point in her own understanding of the feminine comes when she interviews John Perkins, who lived and studied with the Shuar tribe in the Amazon rainforest. Perkins was told that one of the roles of women-the most important job, on which the survival of the tribe depends-is 'telling men when it is time to stop… [M]en Hunt animals and cut trees even when there is enough meat and wood, unless women rain them in.' Perkins tells of a Shuar shaman coming to visit the United States, asking, 'Where are your women? Why are they not telling the men to stop?'"
"Venus, Mary Magdalene, and the Re-Emerging Sacred Feminine," Emily Trinkaus, The Mountain Astrologer April/May 2015
Trinkaus (that's the author of the article) goes on to say that the European witch hunts were timed with the expansion of colonialism, and established the submissive role for women that still makes it hard for women to have a voice today. "The centuries–long war on Venus, which tortured the feminine out of existence and made it dangerous for a woman to speak up or speak out, left industrial civilization free to dominate and exploit the planet and its peoples."
(Um. I think it's important to say here that the sacred feminine can and should be present in every gender just as the sacred masculine should be. Expansion and contraction. Balance, not men versus women. And not the status quo, where the feminine is silenced in all of us...)
Anyway. I read that passage several times this morning. It breaks my heart. It feels so true. And I feel so powerless right now, in this state of limbo, when my body keeps me small in my daily ambitions. I want to do so much! I look out at the peace and balance of my garden and I want the world to look like that and I don't know how to spread my arms. I want to spend hours at my computer writing my books. I've been invited to teach at a prison about the hero's journey, I've been invited to speak before public health advocates about the power of storytelling. I can't say yes to any of it right now. There are so many more needs than I have capacity for. Though I am freeing my voice. It is true that my voice is more free now than it has ever been...
Anyway, this morning, when the eagles first landed in the trees, the crows dove at them. It is nesting time, after all. The crows flew close loops around the huge white head of the right-hand eagle. The eagle was just still. Why is it so hard to be still? The eagle was just still, and eventually the crows settled. Their black bodies looked so small. They landed on a couple of small branches next to each other but in between the two huge Eagles. I stood there for several minutes, watching and waiting for what would come next, but nothing changed. They just perched in the 90 foot Red Alder trees. The alders are just leafing out so they look as if they've been strung with tiny beads of green peridot.
Eagle, crow, crow, eagle. Still under a gray sky.