FREEDOM OF CEREMONY

With the approaching Winter Solstice, I have been considering all the gifts of that might come our way this time of year. Some of the gifts I ask for are clarity, insight, awakening. One gift that stands out on my GRATITUDE LIST is the gift I call Freedom of Ceremony. It doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? I mean, Christians have Freedom of Religion. But what do we call Freedom of NO Religion?

In planning and preparing for a ceremonial gathering I've been invited to, I was working on something light. Something white.... musical....  poetic. But then a different something popped into my head that propelled me into the studio. I found myself in the company of the witches, healers and wisewomen burned at the stake, and the Spanish Inquisition, and other things I hadn't meant to be thinking about today.  A new huipil was born, one I hadn't ever imagined to create. It is called HERETICS AND HEALERS. 

 

 

It began as two perfectly clean sheets of rich, cottony paper, as white as I had been imagining for a Solstice Ceremony. Taking it out to my back patio, to the area known to some of my friends as "the bruja's burning place," I hung it on the brick wall. At a height that was level with my own body, it began to speak to me of all the wisdom that has gone up in flames, literally, since the beginning of patriarchy. All the wisdom that now, today, we must learn to reclaim as our birthright.

 

 Call it magic, call it brujeria. 

 It is our right to joy, consciousness, love and wellness. 

 A deep re-connection to all that is. 

 

And so, on this Winter Solstice, I open my heart to the wisdom of the grandmothers, the guardians, the guides, the healers, all those who went before and all those who are here now, the lightbringers we so need right now. This I do for those who will come after we leave this place.