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Connection
‘’One night, while studying Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God series, I read for the first time that the Garden of Eden story was the retelling of a much earlier motif in which the woman, the tree, the serpent, and the garden formed an emblematic expression of the highest spiritual quest. I was absolutely stunned, as though an explosion had gone off within me. At that moment, I realized I was not wrong, as a small child, to yearn to become Eve―not the biblical Eve, but the one who is simultaneously the tree as axis mundi connecting earth and sky, the serpent of death and regeneration, and the garden as the matrix of all life. I asked myself: What ground am I standing on? The answer came in a flash: that my feet had been cut off and I was planted with my bloody stumps on the desiccated ground of the Punitive Father. At that moment, I knew I had to find the Sacred Ground under my own feet, and to recover this ancient female lineage within myself.’’
— Joan Marler
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…I suddenly realized that the tree standing in front of me allowed my movement to be possible. I saw very clearly that I was able to breathe in because of its presence in front of me. It was standing there for me, and I was breathing in and out for the tree. I saw this connection very profoundly.
In my tradition we speak of ‘interbeing’. We cannot ‘be’ by ourselves alone; we must be with…
