Dawn, and the skies are cloudy, or so it seems. But this haze is not clouds, and there is no rain in the forecast.
No, today’s gray pall, a veil for the skies and a shroud for the earth, is smoke: the toxic output of wildfires far distant, driven on early autumn winds to settle over the land in a suffocating blanket.
With so much that is terrible in the world, it seems less like one last indignity than a final pronouncement on humanity’s chances: as the old phrase from a tradition born half a world way puts it, weighed in the balance and found wanting. That applies to humanity itself, I suppose, as well as any chance at a future, given how thoroughly so much of its population has internalized the evils of colonialism, intent not only on reifying and reinforcing them, but on continuing to spread them until no corner of the earth is left untouched by its harms.
This is where we live now: in a world dried out and cracking open, amid the flames, at the center of the storm and slipping inexorably beneath the tidal waves of rising seas — literal seas, yes, but also waves of pandemic and disease, fascism and Nazism, of genocide.
This is a time to dig deep, to find strength we never knew we had, to resists, yes, but more, to defend. It requires us to internalize the oldest of teachings, and then to act upon them: to be brave, to be generous, to seek wisdom and act with humility and respect, to honor the truth . . . and always, always, to act in and from love. Each is inseparable from the others, but love makes the others possible. Our love is an active love, one that calls and causes us to be brave beyond what we think we can do, one that illuminates the darkest, most forbidding path.
And our world needs that kind of love now.
Today’s featured works, a pair of pairs, embody such action, one manifest as proof of the spirits’ love for us and our world, the other as that which we seek on the world’s behalf. The first is symbolized, aptly enough for this place and time, the rain — certainly active, absolutely necessary to survival, in its way a symbol of love and growth, of survival, yes, but more, of abundance. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
The Heart of the Rain Earrings
At the heart of the rain flows the First Medicine. Wings honors medicine, mechanism, and the love of the spirits underlying it all with these earrings, centered around a pair of stunningly beautiful Bisbee turquoise cabochons in the shaped of throated hearts. Each stone is the perfect blue of the morning desert sky, finely webbed with the rich smoky-red siltstone matrix that is Bisbee’s hallmark. Each is set into a hand-wrought scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, small organic tabs extending from the throat and the tip to hold the sterling silver earring wires and the four hand-made pendants, two per dancing drop. Each teardrop pendant is hand-made of sterling silver, stamped repoussé-fashion to create rounded, graceful depth and edged with tiny rays. Earrings hang 1-5/8″ long (excluding wires) by 1″ across at the widest point; heart cabochons are 7/8″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point; teardrop pendants are 1/2″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; Bisbee turquoise
$675 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Love, as we understand the word, is an elemental force: earth and air, water and fire. It’s the thundering rains that strike the hot earth in summer and the blanketing snows of winter; it’s the hot fire of the rising and setting sun, the cool illuminating glow of moon and Morning Star. And if the earrings above embody the nurturing love of the rains, the pair below are the at once gentler and more difficult love that wisdom requires. From their description in the same gallery:
An Illuminating Love Earrings
An illuminating love warms and guides our whole world. Wings honors the heart of Father Sun and the Eye of Spirit alike with these fiery earrings, built around a pair of extraordinary cabochons of highly-polished spiny oyster shell the color of flame. Each gentle throated heart cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel, trimmed with twisted silver. Dancing from each sunny stone is a unique, distinctive pendant: from one, a hand-made repoussé heart, a classic symbol of love; from the other, also hand-made and repoussé in form and shape, a diamond, the traditional representation of the Eye of Spirit, a motif signifying wisdom, guidance, and illumination. Both earrings dangle from sterling silver earring wires. Earrings hang 1-5/8″ long (excluding wires) by 7/8″across at the widest point; cabochons are 3/4″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point; pendants are 3/8″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; spiny oyster shell
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And it’s true that there is nothing easy about the seeking of wisdom, of illumination. Sometimes it comes in flashes, unexpected and perhaps even unsought, flames that rise in the air only to burn into ash in seconds. Mostly, it’s the product of hard work. But it’s part of the work of love, and it’s work with which the teachings charge us.
Colonial understands of love tend toward the romantic or the possessive — most often, both, because it’s a worldview, a way of thinking and being that cannot conceive of anything outside proprietary contexts. And it renders love passive, a thing to be idolized and idealized, its objects worshiped from afar or held too tightly to breathe. But it does not understand the word as an act, as a way of life and being, as the force that underlies the most ordinary work of our most ordinary days any more than it understands that in our way, to be a warrior is to embody love.
But it is these ways that this ill and injured world needs so desperately now: an active love, one that refuses to rest until the earth is healed, and her children too.
Yes, there is catastrophe everywhere. Yes, the news is unrelievedly bad. None of that obviates our own obligation.
This is our task now, an active love to nurture, to illuminate, to heal this one earth that we have.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
