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Synesis: is a traditional grammatical/rhetorical term derived from Greek σύνεσις (originally meaning "unification, meeting, sense, conscience, insight, realization, mind, reason") This morning it is cold frigid air has cast a spell and from where I stand in my parka and boots warm on the inside of the door nothing moves out there

A few years back, while in the beginning stages of weaving a cross-cultural story gathering technique for The Global Culture of Women, I had the honor of sitting with a group of Lakota Sioux women in South Dakota. In that fierce circle of mostly elders, I was given one of the more profound gifts of my life. I was in the midst of reassembling my life after divorcing the father of my children, a man who was, hands-down, one of my dearest closest friends in the world.

Tonight (and for several days now) I am sitting with the awareness of the truth that we (those of us who make our living sitting with others, guiding, offering wisdom, tools etc) can be so eminently helpful, wise-seeming, perhaps even perfect in our tidiness, all the while we are spinning in our own lives. I fit this category at the moment. Right now. It is humbling. Oh, is it ever humbling. It is so tempting to imagine I'm a fake.

Don't take up the fight without first falling in love. It is a dangerous and slippery thing to imagine nobility in the fight against. We must learn how to fight for, which isn't fighting at all. It's loving. Do not believe the ones who tell you "We must do the things we least want to do!""Now! There is work to be done!""We must get strong! We must fight!" These are tempting invitations for a world filled with heartbreak that, in its ensalvement, can only express itself as rage.

So I want to talk about something that is as precious to me as the beat in my children's hearts, the breath in the Earthquake Man's lungs and the sound of the chickadee's song outside my window this warm winter morning. The wild and necessary primary partnership of Life/Death. Warning: if you err on the side of the linear, empirical and non-mythic this post IS absolutely for you. A few years ago, after a vision fast brought the name of 'Night Mare' into my life, as I was coming alive to so many things, I was awoken in the middle of the night by a presence. In the dark of my bedroom I felt a cold, fierce energy standing next to my bed. The fear I had was deeper than merely for my own safety and the effect this fear had was to call me to attention rather than to flee. I sat up, wrapped my blankets around me, grabbed my notebook and pen and carefully asked "who is here?"

(In honor of my mother, Ruth Shenstone Harris Pelmas, who died suddenly in the shower just after her 75th birthday)

This morning I have a bold proposition for you. But let me back up. We hear so much bad news. We see such incomprehensible violence, against self, against other, violence as entertainment, violence against Life. I don’t know about you but it is possible for me to feel despair and hopelessness. But let me tell you what I think I’ve learned after 47 years. Despair and hopelessness are ego. They are not soul. They are not feelings. They are imposed states of mind. In order for us to feel despairing or hopeless we must make judgments about the way things are. About the way we are. Once we start down this road, we often lose our capacity to hear what it is we are here to do.

It is the bleak mid-winter...straight up. Now that I'm both tending bees and a pond, I have a much greater awareness of the details of winter. And despite how many of us, in this western world, view winter, so much happens at this time. We just can't see it. The irony of our perception vs. the reality of it all is that, without these still, bare moments, nothing would happen...ever. And it's worth our effort to re-train our minds to allow for the extraordinary activity that happens in the subtle realms. In our subtle realms as well as the wild world's and the season's. It's not business as usual. Our commerce might enforce this 24/7/365 notion, but we will not shift the way The World conducts its business. Likely, we will be evicted as poorly behaving tenants long before The World changes its ways.

(stream of consciousness, unedited...with apologies) It is five fifty-eight am....the Earthquake man has just driven away to the airport for a business trip. The elkhound is working on a bone in the light of our beautiful wild-caught christmas tree (still up but not for long I think). One cat has found the chair next to me at the kitchen table. The other is already out hunting - at this hour and at this frosty temperature, he’ll be lucky to ‘catch’ a frozen carcass left on the lawn from yesterday’s carnage. The moon has set, and it's pitch black outside. Not even a hint of dawn. But that will probably change in less than fifteen minutes. Even though I’ve lived to see 17, 235 sunrises this moment will never get relegated to the mundane. I am moved to tears each time I am fortunate enough to witness the sunrise. And, I’ve often got skin in this game of sunrise happening, every day on time, just like it always has, just like it silently promised us it always will, by virtue of its relentless envious unwavering predictability.

It’s hard to know what of *this* is the cleanse, the situation, or something entirely as yet out of my awareness. But for two days I have been feeling so permeable. Like a fragile weathered leaf or a very thin layer of ice. None of that actually captures the full truth of where I am in this moment; poised to take greater risks than ever before in service of my work (which is my life, there is no separation). I’ve committed to cleaning up my relationship with money (oh lord, what an epic feat for my intrepid guide, Bari Tessler); committed to publishing my poetry (thank you to the Earthquake Man and Max Regan); committed to speaking my truth no matter what (thank you, again, Earthquake Man, my incredible women’s council and Jayson Gaddis); committed to finally completing the Women’s Wisdom Card Deck & Guidebook; committed to finally prioritizing my relationship with The World, my place within it, and my unapologetic outrageously all-consuming love for it.