If Winter is for storytelling, what is Spring?
Updated: Mar 23, 2022
Spring is new. I'd been sending myself little one liners to remind me to write about Transformation, Intention, and other important elements of practice when I began writing again. But what for this very first entry of a new journal?
Saturday evening I opened the Winter issue of The National Museum of the American Indian magazine, and there it was. Am I late? Not really. It's still winter here in Wyoming. We got about 5 inches of snow over the weekend in town, and -amazingly- no wind to blow it off the trees and fenceposts as the temperatures dipped again below zero.
On page 6 of American Indian Greg Sarris, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of NMAI and Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria recounts the words of Mabel McKay, a renowned Pomo basket maker and medicine woman, who warned to "Only tell stories in winter, never in summer." She continued that in summer the stories are only remembered, while in winter, we sit and think about them.
It's still Winter, and I've been thinking. Haven't we all? A crisis in Europe that is consuming the news and peoples lives and livelihoods, Covid still in the headlines, crazy weather- you know you've said that at some point in the past few months, right? Heavy stuff.
But Spring brings hope. We have had a season to move more slowly and observe our surroundings, to sit and ponder those Great Questions and the Stories built around them. Now we are in between. We still have time to sit and think before walking back out into the brightness of a new season. Many of us who are shamanic practitioners are gathering now to work together for peace, balance, transformation. It's a slow and complex process. We do not practice without permission. But we are working.
What will you do with this day? This season?
