Peace Practice

Republished from October 2024, Returning to the Source on Substack

📸 Samhain Full Moon, Inis Mór, 2023 - Shannon Michaela

Peace with the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

Peace with the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

Peace in the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

This may be my practice, this may be your practice
in 9 minute dances (with Bernadette Divilly in the line of Barbara Dilley) and in other forms

You will begin practice with all your Medicine you are Carrying.

I acknowledge my ancestors

I acknowledge what they went through

I acknowledge that they wanted more for me

I will surrender the war with myself

(I will surrender my war with the earth)

I will Find a Way to live my life Peacefully

I will bring people home (to their ancestors)

I will find healing

I will demonstrate love

I will be kind

I will receive kindness

I will be free

I will be free

I will be free

I am in transition now. A work transition. A life transition. We are all at the edge. This edge is uncomfortable. This edge of not knowing my own mind sometimes. Today, completely spacing a meeting I go to every week, thrown off so completely by having an offer rejected, of having the car warning lights on again, of Mom not calling the Senior Center Transportation folks earlier in the week like I asked her to do to clarify her pick up schedule. Of needing to start work late, without coffee, after driving her into to town hoping the tire wasn’t going to blow (again). My overtures to go the extra mile to get a job well done rebuked and I’m thinking… how mysteriously I had time on my hands with mom out of the house and could go and check the tire and fix it if necessary. And I forgot… I had a meeting.

On this Aries Full Moon, (and I am Aries Sun, Aries Moon, Leo Rising, Aries Mercury, Aries Jupiter, Aries Chiron!) I went to Rev angel’s talk on liberation. I grabbed a notebook. There are many notebooks on the table - mostly full notebooks, intended to help in the writing of a book someday about my own ancestral path to liberation. I picked the Uisce notebook - Water, in Irish - and I thumbed through the pages and inserted photos including one of my Mother at 13 These are things I keep with me while traveling, to ground all parts of me. To remind me of all parts. To feel safe when I am traveling, because I am not alone.

I found a few empty pages after two or three attempts. I started writing notes about The Liberatory Path. I remembered Sam Grant saying something last night about Welcome and how it must precede the work… aware, aligned, alive…. creating conditions to tolerate pushback… set an intention and liberation presences itself… aware, aligned, alive… Belonging sits at the heart of the liberatory practice… (Remembering from each other through out time, I write - something it feels like I have learned over these years traveling through different cultures, learning our histories of colonization and oppression and our ways to work ourselves out. We remember who we once were. But sometimes remembering is hard. It was the entire goal of the colonial project no? To iradicate the personal and cultural memory of a people through oppression, suppression, threat, trauma and ultimately a people will police itself, teach their children to be ashamed of their culture. Teach their children to conform well to survive. A few generations later, we have very little memory left. But sometimes another people remembers for us, who we were before the colonizers came. And if we are lucky, we might find our way out and find the descendant of one of our friends who remembers who we were before the troubles came, before we became the enemy. Before we became the oppressors of ourselves. Before we became the oppressors of others.) ‘Liberation … Go back and Get Yourself’… (Samhain❤️ ?, I write. Can I go? Should?? Must??…) and Rev is talking about ‘no hope, no room, just in’ … and then what Melissa Michaels said last weekend starts to weave again… We practice with the intention and until … ‘Your life becomes the teaching… you become the teaching’… I go back to Rev and Sam talking about Prophetic Praxis… he says, “Until you have been appropriately welcomed, you cannot fully arrive.”

And I remember… I moved away for my own health and well-being… that I hang at the margins… and I turn the page and write … follow your journey - untangling + re-rooting (follow your own practices to liberation)

ReRoot

Spiral Road

Teisho

Overwhelm

Long term care

And my eyes glance to the next page on which there is already writing.

And it begins “Peace Practice”

“Ceasefire” is written in the upper right hand corner.

And I remember.

I wrote these words one year ago today… not today by way of the Gregorian Calendar but today by way of the cycles of the moon… today, Full Moon of Samhain in the lands and waters of my ancestors, full moon over the ocean, having given my offerings earlier in the day, dancing my first 9 minute dance / practice for peace in the dark with the full moon, even, an eclipse.

Peace Practice

Peace with the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

Peace with the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

Peace in the war with ourselves

Peace in the war with the Earth

This may be my practice || this may be your practice
in 9 minute dances (with Bernadette Divilly in the line of Barbara Dilley) and in other forms

You will begin practice with all your Medicine you are Carrying.

I acknowledge my ancestors

I acknowledge what they went through

I acknowledge that they wanted more for me

I will surrender the war with myself

(I will surrender my war with the earth)

I will Find a Way to live my life Peacefully

I will bring people home (to their ancestors)

I will find healing

I will demonstrate love

I will be kind

I will receive kindness

I will be free

I will be free

I will be free

10 years ago (now 11)…
2013 Samhain
New Moon Eclipse

I collected water for the first time from Brigid’s Well in Kildare. It was a healing journey for my Mother || who is a survivor of abuse at the hands of the Catholic Church || who said she had never been treated kindly by the Sisters before. She and I along with our ancestors were woven into the Brigid’s Cross and Flame / Latch Hook wall hanging in the entrance of the Solas Bhride teaching center.

I offer my gratitude for all who encouraged me to pursue this healing journey.

It is done.
It is done.
It is done.