Dear Common Awakening Companions,

After our son died, we buried his ashes on our farm and planted a sugar maple on top of them in remembrance. I loved the tree. It was the closest living, breathing being I could touch, hold and connect with in his physical absence. As part of my morning walks, I would crouch next to it, feel its bark, caress its leaves, talk to it, and relish how his body supported growing new life.

A few weeks ago, a beaver crawled out of the lake nearby and felled the tree, leveling it to the ground with a few gnaws.

I was livid, enraged, incensed. I felt sucker-punched to the gut, stripped of my tangible connection with him. I railed against the beaver. I seethed about my loss. I screamed for justice. I bellowed to the divine.

A few days later, I lost my physical voice completely, barely a squeak. It felt like my voice had been taken from me, stripped of my power. 

About a week later (and I was still angry!), we decided to burn his tree on Samhain/All Saints’ Day/Day of the Dead and continue to honor his spirit that lives on with us. A new sensation emerged as I gathered around our fire pit and watched the first spark ignite the leaves and trail down to the trunk. It wasn’t what I thought would happen. For the first time, I felt my anger dissolving. The grief alchemized into a settled peace within. I entered a place of stillness, and, at the moment, all was well. It was unexpected but welcome.

We stayed by the fire until each ember smoldered, softened by the glow of the light and the thin spaces of souls that surrounded us. We gathered the burned ashes of the tree into a container and began to dream about replanting the new ashes with a big, sturdy oak (and a fence!) in the Spring.

The following day, I walked to the tree stump and crouched by the extinguished embers. I rubbed my finger in the sooty physicality of our son and noted how the alchemized grief and anger had opened a new position in me. At that moment, I looked across the lake, and there was the beaver swimming by me, plain as day.

I felt a rising sensation in my throat, and before I could think or adjust my response, the words rushed from me. I whispered, “thank you.”

We are in a season of unwelcome uncertainty. What we believe is needed to make the world right seems rarely delivered to us. The world's chaos grows daily, and we scramble to make right side up what may feel upside down. If you are like me, anger billows within you and compels you to create a new way of countering the noise of our world.

Learning to welcome the unwelcome is not an act of passivity or acquiescence. When we accept what it is, we invite alchemical transformation to turn pain into joy, suffering into healing, and sorrow into peace. We are cleared out, and we become transformers rather than transmitters of more anger into a raging world.  Only when we place whatever we deem “unwelcome” in the fire of transformation can we see the hidden gift that opens from the coals. We do not bypass the seething anger that is ready to rise. Change is possible when we welcome whatever lives at the angry edge of our awareness, be it the fury at an overzealous beaver or whatever unwelcome nuisance is ready to move you and me from anger to ash.

With great love,

Annie

P.S. The community at Common Awakening continues to expand, and one of our gratitudes is that word-of-mouth continues to be what primarily invites people to join in. One of the gifts of these weekly emails is that you can easily share them with loved one or friend who might just need a good word, especially with the many, rapid changes that are shifting our world. Consider sharing with a friend!