Making Honey, Building Comb

Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt – marvelous error!
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
-Antonio Machado

There we were — in the blushing dawn of our awareness. Shining from our minds, warming all we beheld was a brand new perspective that yet, no matter how we tried to remember its absence, seemed always to have been there.

We looked around us — sky and earth.  Dead leaves and fresh fruit.  Baby animals and the sound of melting snow.  We awoke with our sisters, mothers, brothers, fathers and the generational variations of these, our first relations.  We saw Him and Her in All, each singing in harmony the song of creation.

Strong and wise and fierce, coming and going and always there, we put our lives firmly in each others hands.  We knew the smell of the herbs, the sound of soil and rocks, sent emissaries to the other People of our Mother — the Animals — sending our thanks to them and praise, learning from them.

Her body from which all things emerge and back into which all things return filled us with awe and wonder.  We saw reflected in Her the rhythms of our own bodies, our own lives — the rising in the spring, the fruiting, the withering.  We felt Her life pulse within each one and together, from this mystery, we built the comb of human culture.

Our minds melded and we became through our receptivity to Her the All Creating, a hive; all working, living, creating (as though these are separate things!) in ecstatic worship of Her, and Her children, our siblings, all things.  We made the sweet honey of art and ritual, fed richly on the rewards of our generous participation.

Image Credit: © Eric Tourneret http://thebeephotographer.photoshelter.com

For years now the fields of our reality have been sprayed with chemical Inquisitions and witch hunts, denying the very knowledge that sparked the flame of all our creativity.  The original songs of her multitudinous majesty have been duplicated, cut, spliced and reworked into the GMO-jingles that sell our birthright back to us as products to be bought at a price.  The hero’s journey that keeps each of us small and subservient to fear.  We are separated from each other.  The hive has grown quiet.

We’ve been living from reserves of honey we put up long summers ago.  We are depleted and too exhausted to put up more each year; we are starving in isolation from each other, no longer remembering how to dance to tell each other where the good food is.  We suspect also that something has been stealing our honey, to feed its own endless hunger for power and control.  Our hive is in grave danger.

Can we recall our dance?  Recognize in ourselves the magic we once knew?  Hear each other buzzing with the same anxieties and hopes for the future, the same deep knowing from the past?

Can we remember Her, who we once adored, and who, even now gives us life from Her own?  Will we come together, to swarm around our Queen, and make a mighty push towards a new life (far from the honey-stealers), where we might once again, build comb and make honey to house and feed us all?