A Dream, or a Vision of Clarity and Gratitude

(original image, Zion NP, Utah USA)

Give, always give what you can,
even if your allies draw lines in the sand.
And dig, always dig a little deeper.
Sometimes it's hard to be my brother's keeper.
Love, so you let love in
Baby I am home in the wake of your skin,
and it's crazy how we wear our ceremony.
Always be open to your path and your journey.

I have an image... we are at the homestead, wide open prairie, a valley with mountains in the distance. Wooden cabins with a smoking chimney, the breeze blowing sunflowers, their golden heads waving back and forth. My husband and I sitting on the front stoop, me leaning against his legs, barefooted, and waiting.

Yes, she cradles my loneliness,
a home that I forage, nest
Universal test, feel the weight of my love
put your hands on my chest
and rest, in the cradle of my arms.
The battle that we face is the place where our scars come from
And to pick up the gun
My love, we are destined to teach these ones
to be brave

We look across the property, down the road. There are clouds of dirt rising in the distance. The muffled sounds of engines and tires crunching over rocks in soil begins to grow louder. We stand, slowly. But somehow I already know what's coming.

Courage is birthed from the womb on the first light of day.
Yeah, the day you were born, you came out
Perfect, never meant to be torn.
And silence, never been so loud in the violence
Never been so proud of a people
When we're fighting for a change
Not afraid to lose it all, despite all the rage.

I really don't know where the time went. Dreams are funny that way, visions even funnier. One moment you are sitting with your lover on the porch and the next moment, you pan through scenes and find yourself crouched behind a half wall with a firearm tucked between your thighs, half your home blown apart. I can see him crouching across from me, we are tucked behind the wall, looking at each other, knowing what this means.
This could be the end.

We are animals, and we cannot be caged
Provoke us to fight
So we burn a little sage and write poetry
Wiser than the enemy will ever be
The minority... and authority,
"Are you here to protect or arrest me?"
I can't tolerate the hate, and I'm losing sleep
Can't breathe, cause they're choking out a war
in me,
Immorality

I can feel them, they feel like mindless drones, following cues from who knows who. I can feel the dust on my skin, I hear the sounds of bullets slamming into wood. pat! pat! patpatpat! I wish I could say that I'm not afraid, but I would be lying. One cannot look toward the end of a life without sensing the darkness, and the fear. Without wondering just a little bit, what was the turning point? What led us to here? And does it even matter, now that we are here?
They say that meditation is like a Little Death. When we touch that moment where all else is oblivion, isn't that true wisdom, true emptiness? When all else falls away, all our petty squabbles, all our silly prayers?

Love letters to God...
I wonder if she reads them, or if they get lost in the stars
in the stars, in the stars?
So many parts to a heavy heart.
If there's no beginning, then where would you start?
Start, start, where would you start?

It was what happened next that shook me so deeply. I took one look at my husband, crouching there, dirty, with a fierce gleam in his ocean eyes that I will never forget. I couldn't reach across the gap, for fear of my arm being shot off, but somehow I knew what it was I needed to do. I could no longer live in a world where there was this unending, reckless hate. Was I ready to die? No. Nor was I ready to leave him. We had barely just begun. I set my gun in the dirt, and never broke that gaze. I said everything that was needed. Sometimes, words just don't matter.

Don't believe all your told.
And Open.
Open up your fist,
a misconception you can fight like this...
I live with the snakes in the Great Deception!
No court in this country for men
Who steal from the Mother on paper with pen.
And we're tripping, down a red dirt road.
And we're asking, is this the way we should go?

The gunfire stops. I imagine it's because we haven't fought back for some time now. I break away from my lover's gaze, knowing he may never forgive me, knowing he will still love me forever anyway. I feel my toes in the dirt. Grounded. For maybe the first time ever, perhaps the last. I note the irony in it all as I remove my shirt, my pants, my panties. I look down toward myself, how vulnerable, this skin? So soft, penetrable. I have no fear left in me, and I am ready. I put my hands in the air, and the silence is deafening. I stand, I ignore him. It's not about us anymore.
And I take my first step.

Kissing soft-top feet of my Goddess,
we walk the earth, baby, yeah we got this
Focus
and it's redirected
Grateful
and I'm resurrected
Stubborn, but I know the way
Your the skin of my drum
To your rhythm I will sway
Take my hand, I won't lead you astray
We will not go gently into the darkest of days
Grandma's here, and she says persevere
Take a walk in her moccs, taste the trail of tears.
... Maybe, maybe, be an island or an ocean?

Walking out on the Mother, naked, alone. Arms out, not in surrender to these people, but in surrender to the Universe. I have nothing here to hide, and nothing to fear. I am just me... and you, my enemy? Are you really my enemy? Or are we so lost in our quarrels that we have forgotten what we are fighting for? What is this world, one full of human beings trampled, of lizard-people and elite seeking our destruction? Or, is this the greatest deception of them all? I don't know anymore, and nor do I care. All I know is that this, right here and now, is every moment of my life, added up to the present, pounding heart, beading sweat, cleansing tears, leaving clean tracks through the dirt of my skin. Walking soft top feet of my Goddess, and yet, who is the Goddess? Are we so very different after all? This body was built for all that came before, exactly the body my soul asked for, the body that my spirit built from pure imagination, for it's purpose. This purpose.

I honestly don't remember what came after. I honestly don't think it matters. Perhaps, martyrdom is part of the old paradigm, part of that old Piscean Age. If my last thoughts are of touching my enemies, and caressing them with energies and skin instead of loading them with bullets and perpetuating the cycle of pain, perhaps that's enough.

Perhaps, it's always been enough.

Love letters to God,
I wonder if she reads them, or if they get lost in the stars,
the stars, the stars?
So many parts to a heavy heart.
If there's no beginning, then where do we start?
Start, start, where would you start?

I believe in the healing power of Dreams, and of Visions. Not healing for myself so much as it is healing for the community, for the world. It is Medicine, and I offer it to you, to me, to share, to the world. With love and gratitude.

Xx The Tree of Life

... and the beautiful words of Nahko Bear and Medicine for the People