INCANTATION FOR LAND BACK
/
Image: from Narrow Bridge Candles chanukah gelt for Palestinian liberation.
Every wound has a remedy. The earth provides all. Earth Humyns are brilliant and I believe we are here to collaborate with the great healing we are amidst! Those people who are Indigenous to the lands we live on, I know hold the knowledge for our collective healing. When we participate in supporting their healing, we participate in our own healing, our bodies change and we remember we are a part of all that is.
I am grateful today to have learned from Indigenous and Black folks, from poor folks and from other disabled people these lessons. I want to lift up the work of Canoe Journey Herbalists today, an organization that I have been privileged to volunteer with and learn from. They are working to buy land as part of the Land Back movement.
Watch their super sweet video and find out more here.
AN INCANTATION FOR LAND BACK
Shechinah, help me wade into the dark night back to a memory of spontaneous gratitude,
for all that grows, that emerges, that forgives, that breaks apart.
May our remembering of who we really are be a compass for collective healing.
Thank you for the strength to hold the hand of my own broken heart, to care for my precious body, to dig into the soil and mineral rich cultivate together.
May we stop settling.
May we stop settling for disconnection, for zoning out, for corporate numbing, for forgetting.
May we become unsettled by a society that forgets, that does not tell the stories of abuse, of slavery, of Indigenous genocide, that covers up and forgets the names of Black people killed by the police. May we become unsettled by the forgetting of stories of resilience, resistance, of art and beauty and love these communities have modeled throughout time.
May we become unsettled by our disconnection with the plants, bacteria, mycellium, animals, moonbeams that bless our days without our noticing.
May this unsettling bring our bodies into the work of prayer, acting, as loving faith. Knowing that together we are an intricate network, communicating with ESP, astral traveling to our love for all that is.
May we in this moment feel how those of us who are settlers, live with DNA that has settled and still settles, knowing we have been and are instruments of colonialism.
May we incant a prayer for transmutation. Let our bodies be compost for what were weeds to be known as reverence. The old image of a dandelion growing through concrete, may it be so, EVERYWHERE!
May we grow towards humility. Doing what our bodies naturally want to do, heal. As a collective. May we together build Olam HaBa.
To the Squaxin, Nisqually and Chehalis people of this land. Thank you. Thank you for tending. Thank you for stewarding. Thank you for the gift of living here as an uninvited guest, as a settler.
I pray to align with what is right and true. I bless us all to know the bright feathery flower of the dandelion, with kavod, deep inside.
And may we see that land’s are returned to Indigenous folks across Turtle Island. For the good of ALL beings.
I learned this idea of “unsettling” from my friend Sophie Geist who works with Canoe Journey Herbalist. CJH is working for LAND BACK, to buy land to steward, tend and cultivate healing for their greater Indigenous communities. Please find out more and watch their super sweet video, here.
Feel free to share any of this piece with credit.
