Hello lovelies
Here is this Sundays Connection letter.
Im afraid I scheduled this letter to come out on the wrong date! and so it was already hours late by the time I noticed the mistake. But here it is eventually!
The jewel has been lost in matter
and everybody is looking for it.
Some look for it in the east
and some in the west,
some in water
and some among stones.
But the servant Kabir
has found its value
and has it wrapped with care
in the seam of the mantle of his heart.
- R. Tagore
I have often wondered, if the dark earth, held dormant and trapped under the cold hard concrete, longs for the feel of wild flowers, medicine weeds and ancient forest.
Does it miss the nourishment of bone like roots and the language of mycelium moving and whispering within their body.
Does it crave the community of forest, does it feel its own wild will urging it to un-tame, does the urgent call to rise up and be alive echo through its marrow.
The earth, metres below my feet under the modern human concrete and paving stones is wild, has potent treasures held within - an ability to grow again, to recover, to be the creatrix once more of medicine, of life.
If human control and ideas stopped having a hand in the upkeep of these concreted spaces, wild life would once more reign.
I believe that just like that earth, stunted by human intervention, we too have the wild ability, the encoded information of how to re-wild and be medicine for our own lives, and the world beyond.
For within us, under the concrete and the taming, the trauma and the disconnection, lies a magic, a beautiful animated wildness, a treasure that breathes within.
Just like the rich fertile earth containing the seeds and roots of next years medicine, our bodies and our psyches hold astonishing resources that wait inside the darkness of our being.
This magic, this treasure, is what flows through a tiny seed and opens its potential, it’s what lies within the soil and creates a forest, it brings birds to flight, the weeds to form around the concrete to rewild the deadening into life.
This ancient and animated magic is what I believe, each and every living being, including human, has woven into their fabric.
For it is the essential quality that comes with being made of wild.
You could call it spirit, entelechy, god, will or life force. You could even call it the hardwiring that is within all wild. The hardwire being a function that is physically built into the computer instead of programmed into the software. Hardwired functions cannot be removed from the computer and usually allow hardware to control the operation instead of software, just as this wild magic is hardwired into us all, no matter the software and programs that are downloaded in the form of taming and domestication, trauma and repression, still it remains under it all, patiently waiting for us to come back to it.
An intelligence that has our best intentions at its centre. Just as a dandelion seed will be filled with the need to find and follow the ways that enable them to form, flower, seed and thrive, just as tamed and domesticated land will push to come back to a place of balance, wellness and harmony. So too, are our psyches, bodies and hearts filled with the innate pull to thrive.
A wild magic carved into our bones since the beginning of our time on this earth, like original instructions that came with our human bodies, etched through our cells, our psyches, our bones, gut, blood and heart, instructions filled with the story of wilds modus operandi.
Yet we have largely forgotten the earthy spells, alchemical properties and the cyclical undulating cadence of these original instructions. We have forgotten what we are made of and what we are a part of.
We are not, as many have grown to think, unnatural beings, crafted from some other vastly superior ingredients than our more than human community. We are, just like all flora, fungi and fauna, earthly beings, spun from the threads of wild.
Yet wild has become tainted with stories that disconnect us, until many people have lost sight of what true wild is. The word ‘wild’ often bringing up thoughts of chaos, craziness, nonsensical ways, dirt, meanness, savagery and unkindness.
With these stories shaping our perception, it is no wonder so many of us lean away from wild.
Yet in my own journeying with the wild, during my childhood, then later for my own recovery and then training, I began to understand wild as something very different. I saw that wild is kind, loving, full of sense. I saw how each being, when allowed to be their inherent selves, brought medicine to the whole. I saw a place where everything was reciprocal, each being carrying a medicine, rich and needed. I saw how the spirit that inhabits wild is a will pulled fiercely to rewild and bring balance, brimming with tenacity, recovery and the need to thrive.
I watched the way the wild moves through ravaged land and body to recover its spirit. I witnessed concrete spaces and trauma filled minds turn back into wild flower meadows, from intensively farmed fields and toxic beliefs, to the beginnings of medicine full forests.
I have seen bees, spiders, foxes, orchid and bird along with belief, hope, bacteria, and flow return to what was once bare and stagnant. I have seen empty river banks and empty bones with their litter strewn edges become clear and welcome back otter and kingfisher and life. I have watched as the wild with its weeds and the earth under our feet, the fungi, the insects and the soft worms turn death into life, alchemising shit into medicine.
It is miraculous to witness how the wild in all things manifests and creates wholeness again. No matter what harm, lost and disconnected humans do to the natural world in the name of progression or economic growth, the wild rarely gives up. Bringing forth beauty and good medicine in the form of earthy angels - the plants, moss, baby trees, seeds, grass, insects, fungus and worms, who eat, compost, grow and shift a place back into balance. There is an astounding skill, a powerful symbol of belief and hope in the way wild recovers and restores.
And as wild ones, this skill of recovery and re-wilding is part of us too, it is the warp and weft of our own fabric. It is the magic I spoke of that thrums within our wild animal bodies, waiting beneath the concrete of conditioning, story and belief. “It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves, there is none such” wrote Thoreau
To watch and bear witness to these changes, to see what is inside the wild push through and create medicine is therapeutic, it engenders hope. But when we start to understand that the power, the wild that pushes for recovery is within us too, when the stories of the wild guide us to our own innate being, to the will within, it is empowering indeed, life changing even.
“To speak of wildness is to speak of wholeness. Human beings came out of that wholeness” - Gary Snider
Inspiration for the day-
Play BBC Witch podcast - To be called a witch
THANK YOU for being here, and may the wild inside you always be known to your heart.
Much warmth and autumn beauty to you
Brigit xx
Brigit, thank you for that wonderful essay. So much truth, wisdom and hope 💕
This was a beautiful read, thank you Brigit!
A while back I asked if you'd consider reading a few chapters of my memoir for potential endorsement and you said yes but I wasn't sure where the best place to send it was. If you have the time to read it could you let me know xx