The Flowering

Childlike Wisdom, Beltane, and the Season of Light

There is a sensorial luxury to spring that I love. Flowering trees, frog chorus, butterflies, and birdsong so sweet it halts me in my tracks.

The leaves are unfurling, and now there is a shushing susurration as the breeze travels through. Yesterday the oak leaves were three-inches long and reddish, velvety. Today or tomorrow they might just find their fullness. The crab apples are at peak flower, dressed as a queen with their radiant, magenta jeweled crowns.

An owl just called out from the woods beyond our open bedroom window. Last night there were two, Barred Owls I could tell, preaching loudly to each other. Yesterday I could still see the apple, flowering amongst the monochromatic spindle of trees. She was a burst of light pink blossoms too lovely for words. Today the green has tipped the scales, petals are in the driveway, and the earth begins to drink the sun - becoming more and more each minute.

Spring comes every year, but every year is a new turn on the spiral. This spring has never been before unto all the universe. We too are new in this spring, as this spring is new in the world.

I like that thought.

It feels fresh. And joyful. Just like the little boy I saw galloping down the sidewalk the other day. He was wearing a hat, and keeping the kind of distance from his mother that told me he was deep in his imaginal world. When I bring the scene back to my mind, and really let myself feel it, a buoyant sensation washes through me, especially my heart. It lasts about three seconds. Sometimes longer, if I ride the upswell and deepen my focus - so that I feel in my body that childlike sense of forward driven pure curiosity and carefree, bippity-bop in the body bouncing, no sense of limitation, the whole world open and available.

I know those three or more seconds are well spent, and I go about repeating the sensation many times. I know that I am quite literally healthier as I focus on that buoyant feeling. I know my vibration is tuned to a frequency that feels like Me. I know my electrical system is coherent. I know my hormonal countenance is telling my cells to upregulate my genes, to code for thriving, rejuvenation, wellbeing. I know my physiology is humming with Life, I can feel it.

These few seconds and minutes are moments of true medicine and natural empowerment. I go about my days, if I’m really alert, collecting moments like this one that I can take out of my pocket like a luminous gem and appreciate.

The usual and astonishing beauty of spring

I have been reading “The Little Prince,” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. I read a chapter every night. They are short, and I want to savor each one. Just like I want to savor each one of the thousand violets growing amongst oaks. My favorite part of the book so far is how Saint-Exupéry juxtaposes the lucid mind of childhood with the kind of logic the grown-up mind seems to require.

When you tell them (grown-ups) that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead they demand: “How old he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him…They are like that (grown-ups). One must not hold it against them. Children should aways show great forbearance toward grown-up people.¹

What questions! “What does his voice sound like?” Oh goodness, can you imagine answering that? Wouldn’t that cause a different sort of perception towards the person whose voice we are describing?

Her voice sounds sweet and melodic, like the happy song of an orange oriole.

His voice sounds like thunder, rumbling through the hills.

Their voice sounds like laughter and the ocean, swelling up towards the beach.

When I meet someone for the first time, I usually like to ask questions that encourage them to share about their passions and deep life interests. But what about games?! What a fun knowing to have about someone you have just met. I like the idea of encouraging more playfulness. As for me, one of my favorite games is Sardines - reverse hide-and-go-seek. In Sardines, one person hides and everyone else has to look for them. Everyone who finds the hider has to hide with them (hence the name), until there is only one person left (who becomes the next hider). I love this game because it is impossible not to laugh hysterically while everyone is trying to squeeze into what is invariably a small space. Everyone is trying to be quiet, so the laughing becomes even funnier. There’s hardly a better moment than trying to stifle laughter that we’re all sharing to the point that happy tears stream down our faces. This is the kind of fun I want to have with everyone. This is the joyful thoughtscape our child selves know so well.

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I saw a video the other day, of a young boy no older than six or maybe seven. He was clutching his rooster friend, while he kissed the head of chicken after chicken, and rabbit after rabbit - ten or more animals perhaps, each in their own little cart, connected one to another and all to the tiny child-size tractor. Nothing seemed to be keeping any of these animals in their carts, besides their own decision. After all the animals had been kissed, he (with the rooster still in his arms) got onto the tractor and drove slowly down the lane. Several ducks and goats followed alongside.

The observation felt profound. Clearly a parent was filming this scene, but that was secondary to the obvious rapport the child had with all the animals. I was moved to see such love, trust, affinity, and care shared between this little boy and such a menagerie.

This brings to mind the chorus from the first song I ever wrote on guitar, “We are Kin.”

Oh brother, come take my hand

We are kin with four-legged, the many legged, the winged

With the Green People, the Tree People, the Rocks and the Sea People

May all be free to be

Because we are kin

Until the very end

We are wild brethren

We are kin

…

A few years ago I had this thought: The difference between a wise person and a child is that a child just is, while a wise person knows why they want to be like a child.

🌷

For us in the northern hemisphere, the solar downbeat of Beltane is just a few days away. On May 4th, at 6:11 pm Central we will cross the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Our friends in the southern hemisphere (Hello! ☺️) will be making their transition into deep autumn and the Dark Times. Up here in the north, we are stepping out into the Light.

More than any other cross-quarter day, Beltane feels like a children’s holiday. I think it is the unencumbered spark of life bursting forth. Beltane is the celebration of the senses, sensuality, fertility and new life - it is the season when the earth most vividly embodies the flowering, luminous gateway through which children of all species emerge in the first place.

I imagine a parade that I would like to be a part of, with children of all ages dressed in happy-colored clothing. We are playing bells and instruments, holding streamers and banners, singing songs. There is playful marching around the outside of our homes and gardens, forests and meadows - and we are saying hello to all the stones and the flowers, telling the trees we are so happy they are coming out of their winter meditations, cheering the fiddleheads, welcoming the migrating birds, and blessing our lives and places we live with our love and attention. We are awakening our awareness through the wisdom of play, to the livingness of all that surrounds us.

Every week, I learn more about the truly awesome, physiologic blueprint of gestation and birth, thanks to my year-long study with The Matrona. For the past month we have been focusing on the Cardinal Movements of Birth - the manner in which the baby instinctively navigates the birth passage. Before we were even born fully into these bodies, we were connected with an innate knowing and sense of personal direction. We can see these energies so vividly alive in young children, and in some of us older children too. I like to think about how the new ones coming into form here on earth hold the light-codes within their DNA for the evolution and expansion we have all been dreaming of. Just as we advanced life on earth for the generations that came before us, so too are the children of today ushering in a new future.

This is true of all children, whether human or deer, or flowers or trees, salamanders or crows. How can we know what they are bringing from the realms of spirit and pure consciousness? We cannot, fully know - and so, just like we trust the flowering of spring to happen in its open sweet time, we can trust the wisdom of earth’s children to bless us in new and fantastic ways.

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Solar Beltane occurs when the sun, from the perspective of the tropical zodiac, at 15°0' Taurus, the sign and season of fixed earth.

My dear friend

Elise

of Riverland Rose Alchemy - gifted essence creator and intuitive Light - describes Taurus in an beautiful, easy to feel manner:

The spark of Aries (awareness - sunrise) is absorbed through the senses and embedded into a body. Elementally, it is the soil/minerals/matter and the force of slow but expansive growth. Taurus is linked to Morningstar Venus and corresponds with roses and rose quartz, rhombic crystal structures. In your body, it is the sensory parts (ears, nose, mouth, throat).

Taurus brings you the energy of sensual and slow physical pleasures, simplicity, and stillness of being.

In a person, it’s that pillar of light and stability in your life. It’s the morning time, just after opening your eyes and grounding in your body.

To connect to the energy of Taurus:

Sit on a rock or lay on the earth and feel the support. Just after sunrise, absorb the world around you through your senses. Feel the wind on your cheeks, listen to the morning song of a blackbird, taste the sweetness of a dandelion flower, smell the scent of blossoms in the air, and see the sunlight dance through the leaves. Feel the unconditional loving support and embrace of rose quartz and roses. Let go, you are a child of the earth, and supported beyond measure.

In terms of the yang-yin energy flow through the solar seasons, Beltane is a touchstone. It is the beginning of the yang-dominant quarter of the year, the time when the growing, building, rising, generative aspect of the solar cycle is the most obvious and active. In the twelve weeks between Beltane and Lughnasah (at the beginning of August) we have the entire flowering to fruiting cycle for a majority of the northern hemisphere.

This is the season of Light and Fruition, illuminating and bringing form to the dream seeds we have sprouted.

The flow keeps flowing. And it is a good reminder that it is our flow. These energies that appear outside of ourselves are certainly external to our body, but they are not separate from the whole of who we are. I observe the seasons and the elemental qualities on display, and I like to think: This is me. This is who I am. As I think these thoughts, I feel for a blending with the present moment as I might blend with a sweet memory. Full bodied and focused, welcoming the buoyant sensation that washes through me. Feeling Life pulsing in sunlight and wind, petals opening, rain falling, clouds passing, birds singing, keeping time with the flow of blood in my veins.

A Fairy Happy Beltane 🌈

With Love,

Emma ♡

1. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de. “The Little Prince.” Livraria Lello, Portugal, 2017. Pp 26-27.