When we are done with the fighting
Open Letter from the College of the Melissae
Brothers and Sisters,
These are uncertain times. These are the times for Evolution.
In the chaos of this country, the murky cauldron of conflict, social media and propaganda cluttering the billboards of our brain, the voice of the bee is still buzzing. A centering tune. A reminder of what matters.
The book the Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk opens with a scene in San Francisco, post apocalypse, where rioting has been ongoing. Starhawk brilliantly foresaw a potential reality, but what I hope comes true is the part that truly starts the story; In the midst of the fighting three grandmothers begin breaking the street with pick axes. This startles the rioters and they ask “what are you doing?” The grandmothers reply “we are making a garden. After the fighting you will need to eat.”
This inspired me. Something deep in me. Like the seed, this idea planted itself inside me and began to curl and form throughout my innards, creating a rhythm as it grew. Forming around the substance of me until it began to fruit into an idea. An idea for the time after the fighting. There is another part of the Fifth Sacred Thing (that I read 25 years ago), that has the Melissae, the Bee Priestesses, forming a guild. I forgot this but remembered in a way that became my own idea, or so I thought. These Melissae studied the Bee and soon this became my duty. To create this school that did not exist but in a beautiful mention by brilliant thinker, Starhawk, as she crafted this story of how to emerge from dystopia. Visioning a Utopia and now, at this time, the school is ready to share in its developed fullness. To carry our part into the Restoration Epoch. Six years of development and patient support of brilliant students as we begin to craft this study. Incomplete as it will always be, for the study of the bee has infinite pathways, but showing itself a strong foundation. In the nick of time.
I have built the College of the Melissae from many ideas; but I always refer to the BeeHive, the Bein, the colony for it’s structure. The Bee’s needs as the emergent goals. The communion, the dream, the oracle the true honey to harvest. The bee a body, a clear voice of the Earth, a Source of spiritual symbolism, It is easy to hear the planet’s voice when we speak with, observe and witness the bee.
The bee is, right now as she has always been, an incredible metaphor or guide for humanity. The working together parts, the don’t forget to sing parts, the listen to the babes part, the sacrificial action of service, the sacred act of pollination, the dancing on the miniscus of the earth and sky, the love affair of the seasons.
I started with bees 100% committed to the US standard. Splitting, dividing, intruding into the body of the bee. Siphoning honey, feeding sugar, all the wrong and regular ways. Unknowingly overlaying my cultural misogyny into their life cycle. Feeling the gut instinct that it was wrong, but delighted and curious to be elbow deep in their luscious, sensual, mystical, fearsome body.
Over time I broke it all down. My methodology, my voice, my leadership, dissolving and forming, reforming, resolving. Faith the only thing that held it together. A strand of “knowing” so resolute I could turn to it and remember exactly what is to be done. Trusting this instinct. This Leadership formed inside me, not from the enlightenment itself, but from the process of Shadow delving. Warrior and Explorer. Intellectual, Spiritual treasures of discovery. Break it down, build it up. Fall down 9 times, get up 10. Listen listen listen.
When I look into my hands I realize the map is legible! Beautiful! I excitedly run to you to share it.
The time in the Maze taught me:
Unmake it to reframe it, it takes us all.
We are undergoing an evolution in thought, a r/evolution. We will form a new way, a better way to learn and teach and work together.
We are re-member-ing the right way. The path of the Beauty Way. For our People.
But first the deconstruction. The messy mess of deconstruction.
1000 mistakes were and will be made, what choice but to make honey from old failures? And the process of returning to turning it over to the question: what is the bee asking of us. The honey of it, and the venom. What must die so that life goes on? Is it the bee? Or is it our idea of the bee?
And so we grow. The cluster still lives even in the howling winter. The cluster grows in the pollen filled spring time. We break it down and re-emerge to swarm. We work like the bee, so tiny we are. But we are working aren”t we?
How else do we confront the terrifying egoic mess of corporate godhood, a greedy gollum, a chortling chameleon. This stuff of nightmares. An ecocidal train wreck. Our knees numbed by the prostrate prayers of coming before the beauacracy, the infinite headed hydra of the jolly green giants with their big super soakers of biocides, the apex of power in gmo and mono-cropping. Treating plants and animals and field workers like slaves. The army of giants.
As Activists, we work like the bee. We take our breaks, and we wake up and work. We sing our prayers and we wake up to work. We rest in the cluster, we get up to work. Know this, the bees teach us, work is the joy, not exhausting when the bee does her job. It is about going toward the inspiration. Finding the flowers to passionately pollinate. Sharing the good vibrations. Shaking loose the pollen with the dance, attracting it to ourselves with airborne magnetism. Feeding the hive. Listening to what the hive would ask of us. Resting in the inner knowing you discover when you listen to her. This guidance from our first animal besides mother we eat from (bees probably pollinated your mashed carrots) Learning the song of hope, of diligence, of Good Ancestry.
The College is still collecting students. The scent of Hope and collectivism our Nasanov offerings. The promise that there is enough and many makes more, we call you in. We continue to build so that there is something to believe in, a map to follow when we are done with the fighting. A way to educate for the Restoration Epoch. A spiritual ballast, something to trust.
