"I was born in the wrong time..."
"I was born in the wrong time."
I hear that so often, from students, from friends, from my mother. Kind, earth-loving, craft-making, homesteading, community-oriented people. I used to feel it myself.
I, and perhaps you too, hearken for the days when most of our energy was spent gardening, putting up food, chopping and digging and mending. When village-style living was the norm. When we all baked bread in a shared oven. When we lived in tune with the cycles of nature.
We hearken for the time when the earth held us in love and provision, and when we held her in reverence and appreciation.
We hearken for a time when life moved more slowly, when the tasks of life felt more natural, when neighbors and family were close at hand, sharing chores and meals.
I've done plenty of hearkening for these times. And I bet you have, too.
I'm not going to tell you to stop romanticizing the past -- though there were unique hardships in bygone eras, there were also unique comforts, and those comforts are what we crave when we do all this hearkening.
We crave the comfort of community, of skill, of a wood stove being stoked and replenished with wood. Of the pot of stew that simmers all day, of the brisk frost of morning chores.
I understand the craving of these comforts. But I'd like to propose a radical idea:
What if you were born in exactly the right time?
What if you, a person whose deep inner being carries memories of community and gardening and putting up food -- what if you were born in the time that needed you most?
What if you, anachronistic weirdo that you may be, were born in the time that needs your weirdness (er, gifts) the most?
What if all this tincture-making and hand-crafting and mushroom foraging is the medicine that lives on in you, to be a gift that your community, that our world, desperately needs right now?
This thought has comforted my anachronistic woes, and has helped me to re-focus my attention toward creating the type of community that I crave, the type of community that I want everybody to have.
So I turn the question to you:
What special gifts have you carried through to this time? How can you help to build the culture that you want to live in?
Amid my travels and, yes, rather anachronistic lifestyle, I have decided that there is one thing that is so inherent to our experience of life as humans that is desperately, achingly missing from our current life:
Smoke.
Smoke emanated from the fires that kept us warm and prepared our food. It preserved meats and fruits. It lent fragrance. It cleansed. It healed.
Smoke has been so intertwined with human life and magic, and now it's mostly absent from our lives.
To me, being around smoke, whether from a wood stove or a burning pipe, connects me to that which has come before and that which will come after. It expands my spirit and carries my prayers. It connects me to my ancestors.
Smoke is pure plant magic. It invites us to see beyond the veil.
And guess what? We are moving into the season in which the Veil that separates our world and the Otherworld is most thin.
We are moving into the season of ancestral connection, of spirit communication, of deep release and understanding. And smoke will be here to guide us.
Smoking Herbs for Beginners
everything you need to know to start smoking herbs