Gaia’s year turns round, and we find ourselves once more at Solstice time. Light and heat gather in the Northern Hemisphere, where the greatest expansion and exhalation of Gaia’s breath brings forth abundant flowers, ferns, and blossoms. And in the Southern Hemisphere, where Gaia’s breath is a fully contracted inhalation now, the last flowers and fruit fall to the ground as the cold, quiet darkness of winter deepens.
For two and a half years now, our Gaian Festival team–Freya Secrest and Lucinda Herring from the Northern Hemisphere, and Linda Engle and Ara Swanney from the Southern lands–have been exploring how to celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes in a Gaian way. We have gathered together online with others who have joined us from the Lorian Commons and with our invited allies and spirits of place and land to experience a more holistic understanding of these seasonal threshold times, and to honor the spirit of Gaia and the whole planet in our celebrations. A Gaian holistic understanding meant that we were not only celebrating where we individually found ourselves at a festival gateway, but also weaving the experiences our friends were having on the other side of the planet at the same time. We wove Summer and Winter Solstice together and Spring and Autumn Equinox together, and, in doing so, explored the question “What does it mean to create a Gaian Festival of Wholeness?”
But lately, we have been asking a different question, one that we trust will only enhance and deepen the one above.
“What does it mean to be a Gaian Human Being, and how can this be experienced, honored and celebrated at the seasonal festival times?”
This is a shift in focus–from experiencing who we are in relationship to Gaia’s seasons, to who we are in relationship to the planetary being and spirit of Gaia as a whole.
I thought I would share my own exploration of this question as the Solstice time draws near.
At our most recent Kinship Circle, during our meditation, I became aware of my mother, who died 22 years ago June 4th (the day we were gathering). Her presence was very strong, and she affirmed to me that I was standing in our Mother line or lineage, and doing a Mother line work in my life now as the Summer Solstice draws near. I have just moved to Baltimore for the summer, to help my daughter Eliza and her husband James relocate to the area, and to care for my granddaughter Gwenna until September, when she goes back to school. I, my mother, my daughter, and my granddaughter–four generations in my family–were all in the Kinship Circle together. And all of us were being held by Gaia, the Great Mother, in a powerful field of blessing and support and love–a field that also included my grandmother, great-grandmother and ancestors going back to the first human beings on this planet. It was a very special experience.
Later that day I found a quote on Facebook that underlined my experience in the Kinship Circle:
“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent five months in our grandmother's womb, and she in turn formed in the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythm of our mother's blood before she herself is born, and this pulse is the thread of blood that runs all the way back through the grandmothers to the first mother.”
–Layne Redmond, When the Drummers Were Women.
This quote was such an affirmation of my Kinship Circle experience and brought me even closer to a body and somatic understanding of a seamless Mother line that is sourced from Gaia’s greater womb of creation. I could tangibly feel that as a human being, I am an integral part of Gaia’s body and soul. And therefore, what I think, feel, say, and do truly matters to Gaia’s health and wholeness.
This affirmation is linked to a wonderful vision I received at our Equinox celebration and again at our Lorian gathering in March of this year. I saw within my own womb a “Seed Earth, “a vision of an evolving planetary being–Gaia–whose gestation and emerging manifestation is intimately a part of and even depends on my own growth and evolution as a human being. My festival experiences have affirmed that we are indeed Gaian Humans, being birthed anew ourselves, and in return helping birth a new Seed Earth for the future well-being of all life on this beloved planet we call home.
Please consider joining us for our Solstice celebration Monday June 19th at 1 pm Pacific time. Those who are participating have been invited to take a photo of their feet standing on their land/place/garden and to make that photo a work of art and beauty. You are also invited to work with a chosen ally in some way and to invite them to our festival and share about that partnership with others. We will be creating a special visual Circle of Wholeness (our feet and our land) standing together at Solstice and celebrating the wonder of being Gaian Humans together.