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"Deep in our bones resides an ancient, singing couple who just won’t give up making their beautiful, wild noise. The world won’t end if we can find them." Martin Prechtel

 Healing the Wounds of War, Women & Weans
*  ’Weans’ (pronounced ’wains’): Scottish vernacular for children, wee ones, also ’bairns’)

 My solar plexus is my Will
That ganglia, like the radiant sun
Blesses my abdominal organs
Of which my womb is one

 I never felt my distant womb
I never felt my will, so still
But now my womb is stirred and grieves
And here I feel my rising will…

 An ovum
Embarked upon her journey from the east
She came upon a sperm
She did not greet him
Did not meet him
Willingly in the least

 No will was there to welcome him
No will there to resist
The sperm, with all his being said
I insist insist insist

 And she, from her position,
Wherever that place was
Showed no response or preference,
She was amiss, a loss

 No will was there to welcome him
No will there to resist.
The sperm with all his being
Said I insist insist insist

 So in he went and settled
And there began the ’sin’
For sin is separation
Here formed with
His insistence and
Her cave-in

 Biologically
They merged
Urged another life to grow
And there she grew
Holding their predilection strongly
To and through
Her miserable eviction:

 The child who chose this union to be born
Turned at her birth and stubborn screamed
Eviction!

And through her primal scream
The die was once more cast:
I insist insist insist
I have no will
And have no past..

 *~**~*

For 30 years she lived the lack
Then slowly slowly slowly
She came back.

 Silver moon
I watched her come and go
And with her learned to ebb & flow

 Sister moon
Gentle yet strong
Awakened my desire
My yearning to belong

And here in this arena I trembling take my place
To find the sun was always here
Waiting waiting for me to greet him
With an open welcoming face.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The moon…I found her in the South
The sun on the lowlands golden cast
But my heart o’erflows in the Highland hills
My spirit soars as I touch my past

 Bereft of mountains, wind and streams
And heather of the softest hue
Moss like rich velvet to the touch
I ached for what I never knew

 My voice belies my Highland blood
With southern sounds intone
But as I climb and scan the brae
I heartfelt know it as my own

Highland women fought and lost
Foremothers wept with voices hushed
Driven from their native land
Gave up their homes with spirits crushed

 O women, lay aside your hurt
For daughters of these mountains must
Reclaim their spirit borne through time
And held for them, a sacred trust

 O Sisters of the Highlands fair
Rekindle now the tiny flame
It burned through all the bitter wars
Is burning still for you to claim.

(Scottish Highlands, 1989)

 *~*~*~*

 ...She took the flame and cradled it
Knowing it to be
the very life she thought she lost
when she was wee

 She held it close, so very close
deep green and treasured child
she carried it half round the world
to all the places green and wild
and knew one day she would somehow
be reconciled

 Now in her eyes are pools of blue
and in his eyes the same
and what was left
undone, bereft
Is calling us by name

 Return return, Oh Highland kin
the mountain folk now call
wildness and wet undone and yet
the Land has held it all...
In Trust
Return
and not to dust:
It’s Life
fecund, full and green
Vibrant still and resonant
with heretofore ’unseen’...

*~*~*~*

 What is: FEY

 The Highland folk are fey
they’ve always been that way
though we with sheep
may fall asleep
forever and a day.

 Forever’s gone
A day has passed
And we with wonder wake
The house was raised, the sheep have grazed
(it really takes the cake)

And yet and yet
and yet and yet..
the Land breathed in and out
through sidewalk cracks and concrete slabs
through walls of crumbling grout

 we’re nationalized and categorized
and formalized to boot
yet nothing ever jeopardized
the Highland’s deepest root

 In jeopardy we play the game
in jeopardy we dare
and outcomes all depend upon
how deeply we all care

 How deeply we can all step in
how brightly we show up
to dance to laugh to dream to drink
this overflowing cup

 *~*~~*~*~*~~*~*~~**~

 This Highland thread now being en-livened...

________________________________________________________________

 We Are our grandmother’s prayers
We Are our grandfather’s dreaming
We are the breath of the Ancestor’s
We Are the Spirit of God

We are mothers of courage, fathers of time
Daughters of dust, sons of great visions
We’re sisters of mercy, brothers of love,
Lovers of life and builders of Nations
We’re seekers of truth and keepers of faith
Makers of peace, wisdom of ages

For each child that’s born,
A morning star rises and sings to the universe,
Who we are
We are one.... (Sweet Honey in the Rock)

*~*~*~*~*

 We are called to pull up, to full conscious waking life, this knowledge that is so much a part of who we are but not yet fully integrated and applied in our day-to-day lives. We are on an epic journey.

 Shortly after I am diagnosed with a mass in my womb the size of a six-month fetus that "100 out of 100 surgeons would say has to be removed along with my womb", I encounter Jack.

 Jack is not the first young man I have met lately who appears to me to be very ’awake’. I had an experience of him at the dinner table in a crowded restaurant when he asked me, with a palpable softness; "What is the Highlands like? His eyes in that focused question cracked something in me, turned a key. My visceral response was a tender upwelling of my deep deep love of the Highlands. What I saw in his eyes was what I had seen in my own eyes only days before (for the first time): some vast and profoundly beautiful being looking straight out at me.

 When I got my diagnosis/prognosis regarding my womb, it was from an MD of sufficient depth, and together we discerned that something is going on here, that I am profoundly tuned into it, and that it is connected to my grandmother’s grief from giving up her sons because her preacher husband said she was needed at his side for the "Lord’s work" (and his babies weren’t). We connected with my hard anger towards him and the fact that this story goes back further than those two.

 We first thought I would embark on a course of acupuncture and Chinese herbs (which I did immediately) whilst continuing with the ongoing psychic/spiritual processing personally, with my husband, and with whomever else. The plan was to reduce the mass to a size where I could go home to Scotland and have the rest  removed surgically and hopefully at that point, save my womb. We identified that I was supposed to do this part of the journey with my mum (big tears of confirmation). I already had plans to be in NY in mid-April and we agreed, this was an appropriate period of time for me to do everything I was prompted to do prior to the surgery (give me the best chance to work with it from every other angle I was guided to do). The space opened up for this timing/trip to Scotland without any resistance and felt exactly right to everyone in the picture.

 Within 24 hours I had received information that clued me into the reality that I (almost certainly) am not going home for surgery but going to the Highlands with my mum for a completion in this deep healing journey. My mum (surely one of my medicine women) was right there in her response (that sounds lovely dear..) - clear passage again.

 I have learned over time to really pay attention to my ’inklings’, which means attempting to put words to emerging realities while they are still terribly fragile and not fully in form. The Highland journey was, by this point certain,  though the details of my journey were not. (April 1st, 2005)

"I waited and watched where the shadows hung
I knew for a 1000 years you would come
And the memory’s long of the stone woman
the roots run deep in the Greenwood man..."

 Carolyn Hillyer (Great Britain), Songs of the Forgotten People