Middle Earths Origins
My story
my hands
become the art
of my souls
calling.
No other path
can I follow
Because this is who I am
And only by giving to it
every breath
every dance
every meaning
Can I fulfil
my reason for being here.
My soul
my story
my offering.
And I choose to live by this, to believe it, to nourish it, because my soul knows no other way. I have learnt through living just how it is to bring our soul-purpose to earth. I have watched through my own journey, the flow of energy that has at times tried to burst its way through, sometimes too fast and sometimes without fully knowing why it is there. And I have had to slow down, take deep breaths, be patient for its coming, for its arrival.
The journey of the soul is a timely thing yet it knows no time. But for it to be effective and truly find its way, without bursting into madness, great care must be taken.
I have felt pregnant many times in my life with this energy force, searing at the seams of my desire and daring to show itself as a passionate dancing warrior with a tool bag of medicine, creative objects, bones and feathers of remarkable quality and smells and sensations that fingers love to touch and curl themselves around, seeking stories from every lingering passer by, that visits me in a dream or a shamanic journey.
My souls calling, that Hollow Bone state that follows through my middle earth being, living in this world as a middle earth child. Born on the Winter Solstice, inbetween, the dark the light, the shadow in-between, stretched between the differences ready to bring that same difference to the world and learn to live in that central place of not one or the other but both, to be stretched, always stretched. Yet calmly finding a way to accept, to deeply accept this place of conflict that can be so easily danced with, once we know its mighty force!
And to know its mighty force we must stand in that Vesicus Piscis, invite the dark and the light together, just as we do the masculine and feminine, the yin and the yang and all of the forces of separation that they represent. And knowing then the brightest of lights, we become ‘one’ with all that is, we become the Divine Spirit that only this place can know.
Born a middle child, an older brother and a younger sister, I am in the middle, holding my own, am I male? Sometimes yes, I wear my brothers hand me downs, old jeans and sneakers, I try, yes only try to let him teach me football and rugby, there is at times no other ‘boy’ to play with, so I must. I fail at this sport, this sport I can make no sense of. But he digs up the old bones with me and that will suffice, our little pets that had to be buried, we look beneath the grave and find the oddments and to this day the bones are resurfaced to make medicine tools and creative pieces of wonderment.
Am I female? Sometimes yes, the little girl who came along needs her bigger sister, sometimes, to play those games that only girls will play, and then we find the dolls and the cuddly toys and the dresses and a pram that goes rusty when we leave it in the garden on rainy days, but in it amongst the slugs and snails who take refuge and seek out the crumbs from our picnics, we put our rabbits and our guinea pigs and push them around the garden, singing little songs and donning them with white lacy baby hats tied under their chins. I was introduced to jealousy however, in those days, I felt that curse begin to surface from under my skin, that pretty thing with the long golden hair and mine a strange reddish sort of ginger, my mother called titian blonde. I cut it off once, hers I mean, one day whilst left in the car at a parent teachers meeting outside the school. I found a pair of scissors and that was that. I spent along while in my bedroom, ‘contemplating’ I am told!
Was I a boy or a girl, I could do both it seems, quite well. A useful way to merge in the world, one day doing my ballet classes and then being amongst ponies and horses and another with the boys on motor bikes and leather jackets, my yin and yang developing quite well as I found that pull with how to be correct in my mothers world and wear nice dresses and be good at the all girls public schools I spent my time at, until they told me to leave!
The environment was a nice middle class family, in a nice home with a garden, in the Midlands, the middle of the country I suppose that means? But it was the Midlands and somewhere near the Black Country, where my father worked in factories as a director, an important role, running the family business. The Midlands it seems is a good place to be, it holds many adventures from inner city life to the rural countryside that we eventually escape to. It seemed to hold a good array of interest for me, liking the going between, city and nature, city and nature. I liked the factories with the machinery, loud rhythmical sounds, smell of sacking and oil, the voices of the working classes, they swore a lot, even in jest, I liked that, my mother would never allow such words, I even said a few myself, when she could not hear. I put three-penny bits in the drinks machine and took them all cups or tea and coffee, I loved the smell of that dark rich roast, it looked like it stained their teeth, but it might have been the endless cigarettes they smoked?
And then the countryside, ah sweet nature, the animals and the places to hide, the deep dark tunnels of the stately home we lived in the grounds of, all wrecked and ruined but a wonderful adventure for us all. Trees, old hedgerows, metal gates and a wonderment of elemental experiences. I could be on my own here, but with my animals of course. They understood more than most I felt.
I plunged into adulthood, with not much preparation, no middle ground to ‘practice’ from, to learn more mistakes and make some changes from them, I immersed into it well with many challenges sometimes losing that ground, but having to find it very quickly because of that baby in my belly and my mummy instincts for survival for us both, a necessity for me for him and the blind boyfriend at my side. Pregnancy was a strong teacher for me, as was and is motherhood.
Three boys and three girls, I stand again in the middle of the masculine and feminine, a mandorla of my own making, a balance of yin and yang, holding this youthful energy field as I created and brought human-beings into this world, each one with his or her many gifts and soul offerings. I watched them grow into theirs, knowing they were teaching me about mine, so fully so deeply, so determinedly, so matter of factly, ordinary lives meeting ordinary lives, we had our challenges and struggles, we came through time and time again and we became the poetry of our lives.
And now to learn why this all matters, and why it sculpts in to who I am now and why I must see this as my souls offering to humanity and beyond.
If we were all to look deeply into our lives and our history, what might we discover about our own souls calling?
from Hollow Bone; Middle Earth Medicine Ways © To be published 2017
Caroline Carey
http://www.alchemyinmovement.com/the-hollow-bone-medicine-ways/
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