Autumnal Equinox: Balance and Change!
Balance
May we all be blessed with the gifts of balance within ourselves: balance of light and darkness, sunlight and shadow, not denying our inner dark places; of activity and repose; of noisy and quiet; of hot and cool, moist and dry; of playfulness and responsibility, of our child selves and adult selves; of our masculine and feminine energies; of our individual identity and collective identities.
What are you letting go of, letting fall away like a golden autumn leaf? What are you harvesting, in your life since the Summer Solstice? What wisdom, what learnings, or connections? What progress in your life goals would you like to celebrate? What beauty and harmony would you like to bring to each of your relationships? What partnerships would you like to form and nurture?
Change
According to astrology, the recent full moon with a lunar eclipse, plus a powerful conjunction of the outermost 3 planets, invoke positive transformations. This will be a season of enormous change, with many opportunities for insight, creativity, compassionate action, cooperative collaboration, and spiritual awakening. What we envision and intend is exceptionally powerful as a creative force.
Please, join me in this dream: May there be a great rebirth of humanity in the coming season, this turning of the wheel, with so many winds of change blowing. May it be a Great Turning, away from the destruction, despair and darkness of the toxic colonial industrial war economy empires and the societies they spawned.
And toward the heart’s calling: a more beautiful world, where nature is once again revered by us humans, all streams and rivers have rights; we who believe in the Spirit that lives within all things, are valuing water, the youth are now leading us in taking responsibility for treating our waste and drastically reducing the use of all fossil fuels and toxic chemicals. May peace reign as the fossil fuel empires fall away and the new earth-honoring cultures and economies take form.
The Future We Want
Imagining a local stream flowing clean, purified by Effective Microorganisms, infused into clay balls that children launch into the stream with focused intention on love and gratitude for the water. Children test the water regularly.
Imagining a biogas digester at a rural school with a cafeteria, children eating food cooked with biogas from kitchen waste and toilets, while the effluent is treated with Effective Microorganisms and then diluted for agriculture.
Imagining a strong alliance of water protectors and defenders and people working on water harvesting, filtration and purification.
These dreams of mine are slowly taking form!
United for Water of Barichara
I’m excited to share a moment from the third meeting of our group:
Rosa led us in blessing the water within our own bodies and in the person next to us. It was beautiful to experience this sharing of energy.
We had invited Alejandra Medina from Pasos de Agua (Steps of Water) to come and present. She spoke about the group of children and supportive parents, who have at various times in the last 3 years, walked many sections of the Quebrada Barichara and even camped overnight.
“Water reflects our intentions,” she said. When the children saw the garbage, plastic and contamination in the stream, they wanted to clean it up. The kids did a creative exposition of what they had learned and what they want the mayor and council to do, which was on public display last year. They held a fundraiser, featuring T-shirts with their art work and promoting a clean quebrada, and made a petition to the mayor asking for biofilters for the stream. Using some fairly simple test kits, the children and adults were able to measure the water’s temperature, pH, various metals, minerals, chlorine, lead, cadmium, sulfates, and dissolved oxygen.
Alejandra is interested in the potential of Effective Microorganisms (EMs) to clean the stream, and the child-friendly project of making porous clay balls and infusing them with EMs then tossing them into the stream with intentions for healing the water. I’d found a “recipe” for EM-clay balls. It would be interesting to take measurements before and perhaps a week after.
People were curious about where to buy EMs and how to use them. They are sold at a local animal feed shop. EMs can be diluted at a ratio of 1:100 and have applications not only for purifying water, but to help compost and gardens. Since they counteract pathogens, they help prevent odors and can be used in household cleaning applications. Juan Carlos shared with us about a proposal in 2006 based on a study showing that EM-infused bricks in toilet tanks can remove a high percentage of pathogens such as E Coli from wastewater. It wasn’t well implemented here. Perhaps now the time is more ripe!