edition #5 - from Zohie
Dear folks,
My goal with the Letters platform is to simply share love and spread dharma. Whilst it remains open for others to contribute, my intention is to continue sharing from my heart in the hope it will inspire others to come forward out of the shadows.
Letter #5 brings to mind the Tarot suit number 5, which denotes conflict, usually personified by a figure overcome amidst external forces seemingly weighing heavily upon them. The medicine of this card is an invitation to recenter and recalibrate ourselves within individual energetic boundaries, to practice the level of detachment needed as to not blow over from a tumultuous wind. Whilst I acknowledge everyones experience of 2020 is remarkably different, I feel it’s safe to say conflict, whether internal or external, is the main challenge we collectively face this year. I am personally learning to maintain inner stability despite the whirlwinds that surround me, and look to the surrounding trees for guidance, grateful am I to have immediate access to such a vital asset of nature in my home environment.
The property my father owns in Jan Juc, was a grassland hill purchased in 1969. He regenerated this small piece of land by planting native trees over grassland around what now is our family home. Most of these trees are presently 50 years old and provide homes and refuge to numerous animals, most notably native birds such as galahs, magpies, gang gangs, black cockatoos, rosellas, crows, kookaburras and carrawongs. A couple of these trees I helped my father plant as a two-year old, and this interconnectedness symbolises the root systems surrounding me as one I’ve grown from, and still growing with. This is my privilege I acknowledge as a woman born of a migrant family, born from hard work and sacrifice in the throws of the cultivation of a stolen land, which renders me internally conflicted. My father told me he once saw an old photograph of our property, a grass plain centred with only one tree, standing where what is now the kitchen, the communal area of our household. Apparently this tree was a meeting place for the local Wadawurrung People because it was situated within in a valley of temperament climate overlooking the ocean at Bird Rock beach. My heart broke.
“Did you cut the tree down for the house?” I asked.
“No”, he said, “it was already gone.”
Our house burnt down at the end 2007, which was both a physical and spiritual devastation. I can’t help but wonder if the energy of the lost tree’s ghost had a part to play, or maybe this was a karmic action, wiping the slate clean to rebuild anew. We didn’t loose the concrete slab though, our foundation remained to return, just as the surrounding trees didn’t loose their root systems. The animal families remained to welcome us back whilst the house was rebuilt. I reflected on fire, an unavoidable aspect of the Australian landscape and yet our avoidance of it only fans its flames.
I am practicing an acceptance of the regenerative quality of fire. The burning of eucalyptus seeds brings forth rebirth. The land we walk on is forever holding us and gravity anchors our connection. The fire of the sun photosynthesises the soil to bear all that feeds and nourishes existence. The seeds of the trees my father planted have grown mighty branches, and they embraced our homecoming, anchoring the beginnings of a new chapter.
I share these musings as a symbolic story. We reap what we sow and there is still much to rebuild here. We mend the holes and repair the damage to the psychic net by weaving our experiences into the tapestry of existence. This is the micro of my world and tending to it will, I hope, ripple out into the macro.
The trees of Djab Wurrung are in need of our support, offering a perfect example of the sacredness of the Earth. May our cultural amnesia end through our realisation of the moral indigenous obligation all people have to our home.
May we strengthen our roots and tend to the inner gardens of self-care.
“Oh what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic and connection of the solstice and equinox. This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding from the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep blooming in our civilised vase on the table.” - D. H. Lawrence.
Sending love from my heart to yours,
