The Real Winner + Red Clover
I know that we do not all see the world in the same way.
And that truth takes many forms and there are many roads to truth.
And I greatly respect that within my readership there exists differing opinions, so I mostly avoid touchy subjects in order to build common ground.
Mary Morgaine reading The Real Winner
However…Our Great Mother is our most common ground and this election flipped her the bird and I would be forever ashamed if I didn’t speak up. My Earth Devotions Substack is a devotion to weaving humanity with the natural world and our ability to do that is greatly affected by political policies. The environment—earth’s rivers, trees, waters, skies and more—already has little to no ‘rights,’ which is largely why I was left feeling betrayed and bereft by the results of this presidential election.
Yet not surprised. For a country that was largely built upon the genocide of indigenous peoples, enslavement of Blacks, oppression of women and dominion over nature, in the name of God, and has not yet acknowledged this fact nor made amends or reparations to the healing of these ancestral wounds, once collectively given the invitation, produces results like this.
Should Harris have won, we know that it would have been her job to uphold the American Empire as the most lethal nation in the world. World bully and world savior. But still—a woman, a woman of color at that, would have gotten her foot in the door and held it open, even if only a crack, for more women of color to follow and govern. It felt like we were so close to another portal, another way. The government this land needs for the goodness sake of the whole world is a Council of Indigenous Grandmothers. But for now and maybe forever, that possibility is gone. It seems as if it is easier for people to go backward rather than forward.
How can I know my power, yet feel so powerless? Many of us sit here discouraged and in utter dismay, knowing we are completely entrenched within a system that was born to fail, as it caves in on itself. We are living its collapse, and none of us yet knows how in the world to do that in a way that feels secure or exciting or comfortable or hopeful or any of the things we strive for as humans. Daunting is the word of the day. How do we not only ride the storm of democracy’s dissolution but find our way to the other side? And how do we do it when this storm is simultaneously occurring within a bigger tempest of climate collapse? The quest feels insurmountable.
Is this moment in earth’s story for us early waking grievers1 to stop obsessing about overcoming it but instead surrender to it? Must we first accept that we will not in our lifetimes live the answers to these questions? That is a really hard thing to accept! As a young woman, I sincerely thought we could change the world for the better in my lifetime! Yet just as many of our ancestors did before us, we must never cease working for change even if we know we will not personally reap the fruits. Fighting for what we want instead of against what we don’t, but first pausing to catch our breaths and just witness and accept things for what they are—is this an integral part of the winning solution?
Sometimes, like this time, I feel as though I am caught in a flooding, raging river, and I am going down fighting, kicking, screaming, being cynical and hating the reality of what is. I won’t accept it, No! I am swimming through emotions of Grief, Fear, Anger, Disgust, Helplessness, Despair, Numbness…. And it is all so very, very exhausting.
Then I see a life raft and I won’t grab it. The face of the life raft reads Acceptance and I mistake it for meaning Apathy. But I must get in it before I drown in my own sorrow and let me let this river take me where it is already going anyway.
Deep down, I know surrendering now is the only way I can continue to have energy to do what I know I need to do. What I was made for. Only by accepting and surrendering to the reality of this moment can I be of any future use. I coach myself that Acceptance is not Giving Up. It is the Serenity Prayer. It is Isvara Pranidhana. It is being steadfast in giving our attention to what we know to be true. Attention is the beginning of devotion.2 What we give our attention to thrives.
My crow-nie sister Daneen shared something with me that C.S. Lewis said about not catastrophizing the plight of your time when someone asked him how to live in a (then brand new) atomic age. I replaced the words atomic age and atomic bomb with ‘you know who’ and these old, wise words were a balm to my soul:
“In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made.
And the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children…—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies
(a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
I would change some of these words to be more inclusive but the point remains. There’s good reason to feel what we feel. And…with my acceptance, a space is made for a new resolution that I won’t let the dividing tactics of this government dominate my mind. I can refuel and get back to my assignment of behaving in accordance with the wisdom that we all share common ground and that united we stand, divided we fall.
I don’t have a plan or policy, but I do have a testimony and it’s this: life has shown me that we are all woven together. That a wall divides more than just people. That the end does not justify the means. That what you do ripples and will return to you eventually. And if not to you, to your descendants. And that we are privileged to be stewards of such a wondrous planet and we best rise in solidarity to steward it well.
I don’t know if this makes any sense but my quirky mind is just now thinking about Math even telling us where to put our energy. A positive giving its energy over to a negative always makes a negative. That’s so much of what I have been doing and it hasn’t been working. (On a positive side note, let two or more negatives augment and they will eventually do themselves in, opening up space for new positivity, yeah!!!)
For me, November 6, 2024 handed me an unsolicited invitation to change my approach to this, and maybe it did so for you, too?
Hope is still on our side and standing right beside us. She hasn’t left. Let us hold her hand and rise to higher levels of faith in action while practicing the acceptance of what is. And when we crumple, can’t do it anymore, let us remember to humble ourselves and call upon our allies- the plants, our animal friends, our people, the elements, God, and then pick ourselves up and rise yet again.
May we know our devotion to the Great Web of Life to be the real winner in all of this.
Mary Morgaine Squire
November 15, 2024
Beneath a Full Moon in Taurus
~Love Letters to our Plant Allies~
Red Clover
Trifolium pratense
Fabaceae
Listen to Mary Plantwalker read a love letter to Red Clover
Dear Red Clover,
Every morning, I call upon my plant allies, and you, Red Clover, for whatever reason I am not quite sure, are always at the top of the list. Is it the sweetness of your taste or your strange resinous scent when dried or the way you feel inside or maybe something in my history that makes you the herb for me? You and Nettle and Yarrow- you’re always there when I close my eyes and call upon my closest plant allies. Thank you for being such a dear, dear friend.
I am not able to collect enough of you for my annual use since you are included in all my herbal tea mixes. But purchasing you elsewhere is tricky because you need to be harvested before your red round head turns brown and people don’t seem to pay close enough attention to that. Or they may harvest your flowerhead above the stalk, causing you to lose blossoms because your pretty flower is actually hundreds of florets! I pluck you in your prime, right below your lovely three-leaved collar and dehydrate you whole like that.
Where did you come from? Sources say different things, and I can’t go back in time to find out. No matter. You are naturalized all over the world now, and like I said, I can’t get enough of your medicine! I love seeing you blooming in fields and meadows and those edgy places, from early spring until autumn. Covered in bees sipping your nectar, I want to dance in your patches, but I don’t want to scare off the bees nor get stung on my bare feet. Oh, the dilemmas of being in a field of clover! If we mow you though, I notice you will make more flowers instead of fading out.
Trifolium pratense, your botanical name, means a plant with three leaflets that lives in open land.
All the Clovers, or Trifoliums, live in open land, so I don’t know why you got that species name. I would have named your species Trifolium medicina, but no one asked me. Which brings me to another bone I have to pick with your name and that is that you are not red! Who named you Red Clover, I want to know! Were they color blind? Pink or Purplish Clover makes more sense. Anyway, I like to call you Healing Clover.
I think it is so cool you are a bean family member! A part of the fabulous Fabaceaes! Banners, wings and keels make up your every little flower to prove it. And your nitrogen fixing roots do too. You hug the soil so tightly that when I try and remove you from a garden bed (sorry), it is like minor surgery getting you out! Probably you root down and strongly hold onto to the ground to withstand ruminants activity of snatching up your leaves and flowers.
It occurs to me as I am sipping on your tea that these love letters I write to plants do a lot of telling you all about who you are, as if you don’t already know;-) But then I think about how if I received a letter from someone acknowledging my story and gifts and praising me, that would feel really, really good. So I am going to keep at it. I love reading them to each of you individually. Right now, it’s mid-November, and there aren’t any clover flowers about, but the rest of your plant is still holding on. I will sit down among you and read to your green. And then I’ll tuck the letter in my leather notebook for future generations to find.
The magical lore surrounding you, Healing Clover, is wide. You are known as the Flower of Hope and that’s partly why I chose to write about you this time around. You can strengthen our spirit and protect us with your essence. You specifically are known to offer psychic protection and help us connect to our soul’s purpose. Some associate your three leaves with the Trinity of maiden, mother and crone. On each one of your leaflets is a chevron symbol, like a seal of promise for nourishment and good fortune.
For the female bodied, Healing Clover, you are a fertility herb. You have phytoestrogens that mimic estrogen to add unto ours which is good to know, for if we already have enough it may be better to only appreciate you visually. We make a powerful breast massage oil by taking your fresh blooms on an afternoon and immersing them in oil then setting it under the sun and moon. You are a galactagogue, a big herbal word that means you help milk to flow. Poulticing your blossoms on sore breasts while drinking your tea combined with Echinacea is a healer of mastitis. Should we have too much vaginal discharge, let us also turn to your medicine. For hot flashes, your isoflavones bring relief!
Another gift you offer us humans is relaxing spasms, particularly of the bronchial passages. We call that an expectorant, and can smoke your flowers to get that affect or drink your tea or take you as tincture. You are a top remedy for whooping cough, thank you! And this property you have of relaxing spasms also helps with easing our nerves.
The famous Hoxsey Cancer Formula had you at the center, working on the liver as well as calling on your genistein and other constituents to starve tumors by reducing their blood supply. You work so diligently on our blood, Healing Clover, which is why if on blood thinners you are contraindicated. Your high Vitamin E and other antioxidants help alkalize the blood. Our blood is also purified by your effect of removing metabolic wastes through our unitary tract as a mild diuretic, stimulating the liver and gall bladder to detox and by being a mild laxative. All of this helps with altering troubled skin like eczema, acne and psoriasis and works especially well with kid’s skin conditions. Our fancy word for this is that you are an alterative (not to be confused with alternative.) You maximize our blood’s capacity to do its job well. That’s amazing!
Homeopathically, you are a remedy for mumps. As a vinegar, you load us up with needed minerals and trace elements. We can steep you in apple cider vinegar for 6 weeks then strain and make a healthy bones vinegar. You contain potassium, iron, magnesium, calcium, manganese and more. The calcium will be absorbed more readily to provide for healthy bone density, preventing osteoporosis. Your high magnesium content is relaxing.
Animals love you and so do we! I give gratitude to how you both nourish and heal. If we really want to get herbal serious and shift a persistent ailment, let’s tincture you and take doses 4x/day for 6 weeks. Being human often means we have chronic problems rooted in toxicity, whether it be environmental or emotional or both. Healing Clover, you make things better by embodying simple sophistication like a gem. My little plant jewel friend, I thank you for being you.
Love,
Mary Plantwalker
Weaving Community~
~The Black Mountain Community Garden in NC is hiring a new Garden Manager. This place is a beautiful, successful example of how a community garden can thrive and if I weren’t already doing what I do, I would be applying for this incredible opportunity. Please spread the word!
~Does anyone have a good quality source to recommend for purchasing dried Healing Clover flowers?
~Do you know about Ourparks.org ? It is an organization that was formed in the first presidency of Trump to bring awareness of how this administration’s policies are affecting our national parks and to advocate for responsible stewardship in this time of complete erosion of environmental protection. So grateful for this grassroots organization- please pledge if you can.
Thank you for being here & bless your life.
Mary Oliver
Yes, it is hard to see the bank robber be handed the keys to the bank. As they say, we all lost; some people just don't know it yet. I like "when we crumple, can’t do it anymore, let us remember to humble ourselves and call upon our allies- the plants, our animal friends, our people, the elements, God, and then pick ourselves up and rise yet again."
Beautiful and much needed!