The lame pheasant wobbles and hops his way through the pigeons and the rabbits as the dogs watch nonchalantly. I can see the horse field down the lane from where I sit, and send my thoughts especially to the white mare, Scout, and her loving protector, Angel. Foxes, badgers and songbirds – and I thought I sniffed skunk this morning – magnanimously share this place with the people. I am at the Martinsell Centre in Wiltshire, England (http://martinsellcentre.com/about/) , but it feels like home…..

Nicola and Kelly run the centre, a power point at the base of Martinsell Hill, with love and an honouring of the Land. They, like so many of us, it seems, are holding on by the skin of their teeth, knowing this place and its creatures must be kept safe and trusting that Life will support them in their task. Somehow, the bills get paid…not always on time.

I’ve seen my life at Heartroot Farm replayed for me like this so many times now. In Sovana in Tuscany, Sabrina and her mother run the Agriturismo San Vincenzo – a jewel of peace in an exquisite setting, on a hillside of olive orchards and vineyards in the epicentre of the sacred landscape of the ancient Etruscans.
They, also, are conscious caretakers of this place of power.
There is never time to get everything done, but somehow it mostly all does – and with a gracious hospitality that belies the true loneliness of their task. “I could go to town so I am not so alone…” The mother’s sentence trails off. We both know this is not yet an option.

Our friend Lynn is up there on the Orkneys at Via House (http://www.orkneyretreat.co.uk/peatfire-tales.htm) , holding that amazing space at the top of the Rose Line in the midst of the megaliths, weaving the bill payments from her words and her welcome… Lynn is a bard for the original Pictish inhabitants of the islands – the small dark people who have left their mark in stane and song and little else that can be touched or measured. (I have often thought, these past days and weeks, of the first people of the Americas, judging the worth of a human being by how little he left behind…. What would they, or the Etruscans or the Picts, have thought of London and Rome?)

The situations of my sisters; the work being done to release the Land of the energies of discord; the various Springs arising across the face of the Earth – human dignity finally refusing suppression; the “discovery” of immense temple complexes of previously unimaginable antiquity in Bosnia, Turkey, Italy, Arkansas….these all seem to me pieces of the same puzzle. The warp and weft of what we have called Civilisation now hang in rags about us… we are left stripped back to Nature….

Stonehenge embraced us as we made the altar and drew our circle of conscious connection at the heart of the stones. I last entered this space decades past, when I had just begun my moontime; I was now returning, a crone…. Catherine is one of the Guardians of this space and brings groups in for sound ceremony at propitious times – this was why we were here, doing a sunrise celebration of Wesak (full moon in Taurus, when blessings are available for humanity:  http://www.souledout.org/wesak/wesakfestival03/wesakfestoverview.html ) for this threshold year of 2012.

I had not yet recovered from the previous couple of days. I had travelled to England, found my way through London and done an impromptu film interview. The next day I worked with a new group of people, touching the ancestors of each one and, in the group and afterwards, helping release some of the layers of energies trapped in plague pits, temples and crypts under London City. After the group, I packed and scurried to a variety of train and bus stops, was picked up in Marlborough by Catherine, and arrived at Martinsell in a state very near to panic. I was not just experiencing the cold and wet – the memory of being perpetually cold and wet rose from somewhere in my being and brought me to teeter on a very very fine edge – on the other side, it felt as if madness waited. I sweated a cold sweat and woke from fitful sleep before daybreak, bone-weary, and chilled through and through.

England is not exempt from global wierding… “But it’s MAY!!” was repeated with a shaking of heads, as we all layered on whatever clothing we could find for the morning ceremony…. I was grateful that Catherine had me do the smudging – I was able to touch each person and feel part of the circle before we went in. A lovely couple with a new baby lead the meditation and prayer, then the gongs were sounded, resonating the stones, the Earth, our bodies and everything in between with the same blessed sound….

Catherine brought me back to Martinsell and I collapsed. Memories of torture and pain flowed through my body; I wept with disbelief at the violence that we are capable of conjuring, and the clinical rationale of the torturer…. As the full moon rose and ambled across the night sky, spreading the blessings of the Elder Ones, I sweated, slept and drifted amongst dimensions…and my body cleared what it had gathered. This is what I have been called to do, and I feel honoured to do it….

Shadows now stretch across the bunny-speckled grass outside the window. It’s bloody cold, but no one out there seems to mind. Even the squirrels are so relaxed that they’re walking across the lawn!

I am so grateful to Nicola and Kelly for this haven ( and I am certain that I echo the sentiments of all the four-leggeds, the flying and hopping and slithery ones on this land) – this time to assimilate, digest and recover…. I know that back in Canada, Heartroot Farm serves the same purpose for those weary in body and soul.

Pray with me, please, that the guardians of these places around the planet receive the support we need to continue…to thrive….

Blessèd Be….