Story by Suzan Stone Sierralupe
The day after a neighborhood friend had his big birthday party, I was in the kitchen getting an easy Saturday lunch together when I noticed three little heads bobbing under the dining room window. I stepped into the dining room to see what the children were "up to." As the window was open, I could hear as well as see them clearly; my eldest daughter (age 7) was rustling around in one of the herb patches under the window under the close scrutiny of my youngest child and the birthday boy (who was holding his stomach.) Since my children are still quite young, I don't grow any toxic plants, so I wasn't concerned for their safety -- just curious. My daughter held out a handful of freshly picked leaves for the boys to see. "You should chew on these," she said confidently, "This is peppermint. Mom makes us drink the tea when our tummies hurttoo. It tastes pretty good if you don't chew it too much. "I leaned quietly against the door frame blessing the sacred hoop that showed me this moment.
The previous week, I had experienced a terrible day. My plans were dampened by the misunderstanding of another; I was heart sick. I wandered over to the herb patch in the back of the house to check on a new Chamomile patch, when a motion caught my eye. A large raven was sitting in the Hawthorn tree. When I saw him I thought "Ah, the Hawthorn berry is good medicine for people with heart conditions. It is also given to people grieving of a broken heart. Raven must be pointing out that this is the healing that I should seek." But instead of eating the ripe hawthorn berries as I expected, the raven was picking at the beads of the medicine bag I had hung in the tree branches. He caught hold of the sinew stitching with his beak and pulled. The sinew snapped back and he lost his footing and fell backwards, flapping his wings wildly to keep upright. An avalanche of berries fell and rooled toward my feet, which I hopped over as I laughed. Meanwhile, Raven had escaped in an indignant huff to the confines of a nearby cedar tree. His laughter squawks of irritation soon turned to what sounded like laughter, laughter at himself and laughter at me. Raven had given me a merry heart and just when I needed it. I thanked him and heaved a handful of ripe seed heads under the cedar tree as an offering.
To live the life of the Green Witch is to live with many different levels of understanding at once. I call this path Green Living. It means that what we see is a window to all worlds and that when we are asked to help lift life back into balance, we do so. It means that we heal with the knowledge that all beings are Raven's children and deserve love and respect. Green Living means learning a sacred language of the beings around us, a language without words -- the language of life. |
