Green thursday, for me, is about the tree of life, which yes, they did hang jesus on, but it is more about the tree than the person. Although, I think he was a fine person, or the stories of him anyway, teaching love and the refuge of peace, of kindness to one another. All of which we seem not to have learned. Which I tend to mourn this time of year. That the death of this one person is, firstly, the cause of millions of deaths in this world because stupid people have to fight over it. And second, that we continue to kill each other and this earth and all of the trees and starve each other and bomb each other and pollute absolutely every square inch of earth we can get our greedy hands on.
But green is life. Green is the return of what is living, of the possibility of love. Of the sun and the warmth and the planties in the garden. Green is the color of hope, which I have been told over and over again to abandon. Been told that hope just sets me up for disappointment, after hanging out with her younger sister expectation and her abusive parent, Greed. But Hope, I think, is actually the tiniest sliver of a promise that the human heart, and the spark of whatever is divine in all of life, can ignite the potential of all of us to go through the process of true maturation and forging in the fires of life's experience to burn up all that is raw material in our hearts in the fire of love. To let what needs to die, die, and make a space where the phoenix can rise up out of the ashes into new life.
"Our tools are better than we are. They grow better, faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it." Aldo Leopold
Green Thursday, reminds me of Aldo Leopold's "green fire". He was out hunting, and shot and killed a wolf. "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce, green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and I've known ever since; that there was something new to me in those eyes. Something known only to the wolf and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves meant a hunter's paradise. But after watching the green fire die, I sensed that neither wolf nor mountain agreed with such a view." A.L.
So maybe there we have the death of the christ. The death of the green fire, of the wild, of the indigenousness in all of us, of the genocide of people and cultures, and of the destruction of our land. Each day we watch the green fire die in our world, right in front of us. And our own heart dies slowly with it.
"We the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad that i will never be young without wild country to be young in." A.L.
If I pray for anything, it is for us to see and remember and be awake to what is holy all around us. And to act from this realization in our own lives each day, in the particulars of life, and through these acts, be reborn, all of us dying on the tree of life, rather than killing Her. Sacrificing what is old and used and worn and what is beautiful and holy as an offering. Giving our whole lives to feed the holy, rather than trying to steal the green fire we see around us in what is left of the wilderness in the attempt to own it. When we try to control it, we kill it.
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." A.L.
We have a great big Chestnut tree in the middle of our courtyard. Our neighbors have a dog called Wotan, and we are, after all, in germany. Bringing together wolves, offerings and sacrifices, poetry, and the holy, here is a bit of Norse, pre-christian mythology to balance the christian story of the next days...
Odin is the chief divinity of the Norse pantheon, the foremost of the Aesir. Odin is a son of Bor and Bestla. He is called Alfadir, Allfather, for he is indeed father of the gods. With Frigg he is the father of Balder, Hod, and Hermod. He fathered Thor on the goddess Jord; and the giantess Grid became the mother of Vidar.
Odin is a god of war and death, but also the god of poetry and wisdom. He hung for nine days, pierced by his own spear, on the world tree. Here he learned nine powerful songs, and eighteen runes. Odin can make the dead speak to question the wisest amongst them. His hall in Asgard is Valaskjalf ("shelf of the slain") where his throne Hlidskjalf is located.
From this throne he observes all that happens in the nine worlds.
The tidings are brought to him by his two raven Huginn and Muninn. He also resides in Valhalla, where the slain warriors are taken.
Odin's attributes are the spear Gungnir, which never misses its target, the ring Draupnir, from which every ninth night eight new rings appear, and his eight-footed steed Sleipnir. He is accompanied by the wolves Freki and Geri, to whom he gives his food for he himself consumes nothing but wine. Odin has only one eye, which blazes like the sun. His other eye he traded for a drink from the Well of Wisdom, and gained immense knowledge. On the day of the final battle, Odin will be killed by the wolf Fenrir.
He is also called Othinn, Wodan and Wotan. Some of the aliases he uses to travel icognito among mortals are Vak and Valtam. Wednesday is named after him (Wodan).
Amongst his gifts to us, his children, was the greatest of all: the gift of writing. To accomplish this Odin hung himself upside down upon the World Tree, [Tree of Life] the gigantic ash Yggdrasil (a compound meaning "terrible horse").
After nine days of fasting and agony, in which "he made of himself a sacrifice to himself", he "fell screaming" from the tree, having had revealed to him in a flash of insight the secret of the runes. Their initial manifestation took the form of eighteen powerful charms for protection, increase, success in battle and love-making, healing, and mastery over natural causes.
This story illustrates an important dynamic of the Northern pantheon, which did not allow for omnipotence - even Odin must pay his due. At Mimir's well, which lay deep under the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the god had earlier chosen to undergo an important forfeit. Odin paid with one eye for a single drink of the enchanted water. His mouthful granted him wisdom and fore-sight. It is due to this sacrifice that Odin's face is depicted with a straight line indicating an empty eye, or alternately, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the missing orb.
His quest for knowledge was never-ending. Upon his shoulders perched two ravens, Hugin ("Thought"), and Munin ("Memory"). These circled the Earth each day, seeing all, and then at night reported to Odin what they had learnt. He cherished them both, but particularly Munin, which seems to underscore the importance he placed on rune writing, record keeping, and honouring the heroic deeds of the past. There is another bird associated with Odin, the eagle. The god often transformed himself into this canny raptor, both to view the workings of the world and to intervene when an avian form was better suited to his ends.
(Thanks to crystalinks.com for the info on odin)
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