I am learning to strengthen my connection to the earth by reading a book by Medicine Grizzleybear Lake titled Native Healer. The author describes the importance, when life seems out of balance, of asking, "What signs or omens am I seeing around my house? What is happening in my dreams?" I have recently fallen down hard on a large rock, and am struggling with pain in my feet, and so I asked myself, "how are these experiences a sign of something out of balance?" I realized that I was spending perhaps too much time working in the magical realms--designing the text for new Journey Oracle website, painting shamanic frame drums, doing shamanic counseling with stones-- my connection to the earth had become weak.
One way I have made my connection with the earth is by leaving flower petal offerings on the ground around a deep tree well on our property on Cortes Island. I understand from my time with Martin Prechtel that such a place has strong spirit medicine. Instead of bringing flowers inside the house to enjoy, I give the petals back to the earth with a prayer of thank you. Yet Martin taught that "we cannot give the earth back to the earth." Because the earth made the flowers in the first place, I must alter their purpose with my effort for these to become a gift back to the spirits, and so I give all the parts of the plant but pulled apart with my joy and sadness, because for me to make this gift the flower can no longer fulfill its destiny.
I am now understanding from Medicine Grizzleybear Lake to offer tobacco as payment and thank you to all the plants I work with, and stones I speak to, and energies I invite to come and sit with me. And I understand from Martin that to take a picture of food for the Holy is to keep a part of it for myself. The photo stops in a moment of time the process of decay, which is the slow consumption of my gift. So this is an image of what I am not showing, the shell in the upper center full of tobacco burned to ash as an offering to the stones that taught me how to come back into balance.
