Peace, Om Shanti, Salam, Shalom
Welcome to #34 in our Prayer Shawl Weaving series. It is nigh on a full moon and we are exactly half way through this turn of the seasonal wheel called Autumn.
In honour of the Fall we are traversing, let us again start in the West to welcome and introduce ourselves…I am Anne from B.C. and I will be our facilitator this evening. Let us weave our ancestors into our circle by also naming our parents and grandparents. I invite Tina and Richard my parents, I invite Antoinette and Rene and Josephina and Ryzard to this sacred circle with us this evening. (Each of the callers introduces themselves and their circle of ancestors)
This year our Service to the Divine Feminine as Vessels of Peace gifted us Grandmother Spider as guardian of our journey. This week She asks us to weave, with light or thread or prayers, whatever works for you, a connection next with each other in this circle…. then moving on to include other Vessels of Peace who can not join us in form, and further still to those beings who resonate with Peace wherever they may be or who they are, in the world. Breathe deeply and feel, see, hear us linking up…to weave together.
I was born on North American soil, a first generation Dutch/Polish becoming Canadian immigrant. Until I was twenty five years old I was unaware of the native presence of the First People that had walked the land of this North American continent before us. Within moments of stepping off the plane in Vancouver in 1978 visions of the people who had walked these trails before me flitted at the periphery of my consciousness. I knew I had been here as an aboriginal person by the sense of return, home coming and welcome that filled me. (This before I had any framework for or belief in reincarnation.) One of the consequences of reconnecting with the First People’s perspective was anger and rage at what had happened to them/us, most of which, though certainly not all, was directed at my/our ancestors. 
Now I’ve learned I am responsible for it all, there is no one to blame. Though you and I are generations removed from the wave of people who over ran this continent we can now make the choice to assume responsibility for the actions of my/our ancestors. In that choice is the wisdom and healing of learning and adopting where possible the ways of praying and gathering in the Name of God or Great Spirit that were sacred to the First People of this continent.
Breathe deeply in and out releasing any tension or resistance. Envision your toes growing, weaving roots that delve deep into the Earth... Let those roots find the sap of life, the Divine Feminine milk/energy of the Mother, and bring that sap or light back up into the trunk of your being to your open heart….and fill your heart with the milk of Mother Love and kindness…. Now traveling from your heart up your body/ tree trunk, out your roots or branches to the sky to connect with Father Sky…and then bring down that Divine Masculine energy to your heart….and marry those energies together…enlarging yet balancing your heart. Revel in your expanded and centered heart for a moment…
We entered this sacred circle of service through the Eastern doorway of Springtime to plant the seeds of our intention to weave a prayer shawl of connection with Gaia, each other, ourselves, all of life. As we fulfill and are filled in by our intention to serve life we move through, or better yet, become various embodiments of Divine Feminine energy, sometimes barely nameable, other embodiments known by a thousand names. In the West, deep in the heart of the introspective Autumn season one of the forms of Divine Feminine energy that has been invoked since time began is Shaman Woman.
Before we listen to Her (Shaman Woman’s) message, the bowl will sound…after we have listened to this message from outside yourself, the bowl will sound to signal our entrance into the silence…where we will go to listen to the voice of our inner Shaman Women…
Shaman Woman older than old, wisewoman whose deerskin cloak touches the ground. Her feet are brown, wide with her strides across the earth. Walking, she leaves tracks of puma and bear, skeleton tracks in the dust between the worlds. The Aurora Borealis, her shawl on cold winter nights, glimmers like fireflies, green, lavender, indigo.
Shaman Woman, long silver hair, stars wreath her head, a map of the universe in the wrinkles around her eyes. She sees beyond the veil of skin, down to our soul gifts, beholds the river of our destiny, the unfolding ribbon of our fate fluttering in the wind. Her laughter lifts spirits, bears peace to closed hearts. Shaman Woman, drumming since the beginning of time, she carries the heartbeat of life. Her drumming keep the galaxies turning, the plants growing, animals birthing and babies swimming down the birth canals. She is Guardian of the Gates of Life and Death. She sings into our births, holds us in her veil of moth wings at our deaths.
Shaman Woman has been called many things over the vastness of time: Lady-Unique-Inclination-of-the- Night, the Moirae, Grandmother. She holds the Medicine Bundle of Life. From it the stars tumble out, the moon waxes and wanes, the sun rises: the elixirs and healing formulas, mending medicines flow in a neverending stream. As we sleep, her drum beats softly like the heartbeat of the mother, steady, sweet.
The threads of life all begin and end in her Bundle, streamers of red, silver, gold. They flutter down to earth, join us at our birth, guiding the journeys that lie before us.
by Beth Beurkens 2006
(Sound the bowl) Gently, slowly coming back to our bodies…we offer thanks to our parents and grandparents, to our ancestors. We thank Grandmother Spider for her always timely nudges and guidance. We offer thanks to Shaman Woman for the mirror image She holds up for us to see ourselves within and send thanks to the creator of the poem Shaman Woman.
Peace, Om Shanti, Salam, Shalom
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