Beautiful souls, I’m so very excited to reveal an intuitive portrait of me created by the talented The Art of Glory (check out her website here).
I’m so in love with the beauty of this piece, and it brings to my heart and mind a phrase that I learned in my Irish lessons last year.
Is duine nádúrtha í
She has nature in her
For me, Glory’s portrait expresses one of my most simple and sincere longings…to be a woman who is woven into the heart of nature.
In this blog I want to speak a bit about what it means to remember and root into our inherent connection to the natural world, or at least what this means to me.
When my Irish language teacher shared this beautiful phrase with me – “Is duine nádúrtha í” – he told me that his father from the Gaeltacht area of Connemara often says that people don’t have nature in them anymore.
There is an epidemic in the modern, Western world where so many of us have become disconnected from nature. Or rather, we have forgotten our connection to nature, because we can never truly be separate.
There are deep places within ourselves that belong to nature, and without this connection, I think it can be very easy to lose our way. More and more I see a hunger, a deep longing, for this reconnection and re-enchantment with nature.
Honoring the beautiful lands where I live; a view near my house in Colorado, ancestral lands of the Ute and Arapaho people.
Becoming re-enchanted with nature
So much of my spiritual journey is about becoming enchanted with the beauty and power of nature…or perhaps an even better word to use is re-enchanted.
This re-enchantment has invited me to take root, to weave myself into the fabric of the earth and her sacred rhythms, to live by the seasons and appreciate the beauty of each phase.
I currently live on the ancestral lands of the Ute and Arapaho people in the mountains of Colorado where there are endless forests of evergreens and aspen trees. The spirit of the snow here is strong, gracing these forests with their majestic beauty for up to nine months out of the year. Sometimes at dawn or dusk, the temperatures get so low you can hear the sounds of the lakes freezing; deep sounds that resonate like the belly of the earth. There are some days when the wind blows across the mountains and lifts up the snow; lifting it into the sky like a dance, turning the white powder gold in the sun.
The warmth of spring always takes so long to come, and when it does it brings an abundance of snowmelt, softening the earth and making the river flow once more. The melting snow calls in the summer, and the flora and fauna explode into life and the mountains are graced with lush grass and thousands of wildflowers. Yarrow, wild roses, uva ursi, horsetail, chamomile, red clover, red raspberries, wild carrot, osha, white grandfather sage…these are some of the beautiful plants and medicines that grow here. Summer is so short that every moment counts. Each moment is precious. Then when Autumn comes, the aspen trees turn to gold, and entire mountain-sides will glow in bright yellow splendor.
Although these lands are not the lands of my birth, or the lands of my ancestors, this year marks my 10th year here and I’ve come to appreciate the act of rooting into the land wherever we are.
By becoming re-enchanted with the beauty and power of nature, we allow nature to take root inside of us.
We become receptive to the stories of nature that are part of our own story. We allow for all of the complexities of humanity to fall away and make space to remember the simplicity of our own wildness. We open to the softness of our animal bodies and the miracle of simply being alive.
So many of us in the modern, Western world are constantly rushing through life without truly living. Over-stimulated…pumped full of so much noise…we forget to stop and be grateful for all of the blessings that nature provides.
Nature reminds us of our place. It reminds us to slow down. It reminds us that we belong. It reminds us of our inherent worthiness by just being, simply breathing in and breathing out.
Nature gives us a pathway back to our true essence, and the beauty of living with a grateful heart.
This is what it means to invite nature inside of us. At least, that’s what this means to me.
I recently came across the work of Sophie Strand and feel inspired to share some of her eco-rich words of enchantment with you:
This is my invitation for you today. Go into nature and listen to the stories of the land. Become enchanted with the place where you live, from the smallest mushroom to the largest tree.
Allow yourself to be filled with the spirit of nature and feel your own sense of belonging to the ecosystem where you are. Love your place upon the land, and let this act of reverence be a prayer for humanity, the earth, and yourself.
Gratitude for Glory
Thank you Glory for your beautiful painting and for inspiring these reflections today. I would like to complete this blog with a poem that Glory wrote (which accompanied the painting).
She stands as a bridge
Legs stretched across the chasm of time
Back arched, a path for the weary,
Lost travelers.
She leads the way,
Her voice resounds at heart frequencies,
Vibrating the waters,
Body liquids,
Blood, DNA,
Moving with the heart rhythms
Keeping time with the march of her feet
The clap of hands
The breath of living
The breath of dying.
Her voice wraps its warm arms around my body,
Lifting me, carrying me,
Above the water’s edge,
Above the treeline,
Giving me sight,
Awakening the spores in the inky darkness,
Calling their creeping roots to reach,
Gentling their rounded heads to push through.
She is grandmother,
Bent like the bow string pulled back.
She is daughter,
Curious spirit, still wild.
She is mother,
Legs spread wide,
Birthing and screaming wet,
Writhing new consciousness
From her nurturing portal.
Blood, water, birthing fluids mix together,
Steam of life for the dry places.
She is father,
Standing on cliff edge,
Voice echoing out,
Calling his offspring home,
Sounding the way out for the lost ones.
To receive an intuitive portrait from Glory, be sure to check out her website and her instagram.
Sacred & wild blessings,
Tara
“I Am” music video, inspired by the lands where I live (ancestral lands of the Ute and Arapaho people), my ancestral lands of Ireland, and the four elements.
