Let us awaken to our duty to always be thankful. (Tuscarora Elder, Ted Williams)
In this season of thanksgiving, I am reminded that it is always a season to give thanks. As autumn starts to pack her bags, anticipating winter’s arrival, I am especially grateful for the presence of Apis mellifera, the honey-bearing bee … the pollen-laden, nectar-imbibing, soft-flighted flower ambassadors who flew into my life and took up residence in my heart.
Across fourteen years of being with-bee, some hives have flourished in their many-year’d lineages and others have passed away, returning to some sweet-scented sector of the star nation. In the last five years, those that have left the world have disappeared under more mysterious circumstances, but in the deep-down I know that has to do with human choices that fall somewhere within the spectrum of being more and less asleep.
What is it about Consciousness that lets us know when a particular life form is now a guide? when the honeybees became one of my most profound teachers? It’s like a subtle switch, some different internal sensitivity, activates and stirs a recognition of sacred relationship and kinship. Something far vaster than I can imagine is at play in the territory of my heart, this field so utterly governed by the quantum physics of love. The privilege of abiding with honeybees has alchemically changed me and everyone else I know who has felt their tug and leaned their way. Whether we are formally bee stewards or simply free-range bee lovers, some of us both, our hearts are filled to overflowing with gladness.
In this time of thanksgiving, I remember and raise a glass to the wing-ed families, so precious to me, that have departed over this last bee-reverent decade of my life: Never Forgets, Bliss, Anatolia, Ganesha, Old Faithful, New Faithful, Zia, New Zia, Orr, Ritchie, Hamburg, Sacre Coeur, Madonna, Muriel, Milagro, Crow, Wee Boo, Big Boo, Nowruz, Ankit and Wisteria … and there are others. I bow and touch your feet, all six of them. I celebrate you, all that came before you and all that will follow. I give thanks for your presence in my life and in the life of this world. You are not forgotten. You will never bee forgotten. I love you.
And to you … Mashallah, Naghmeh and Neva colonies … enjoy this season of holy clustering as you sing your sweet winter songs. I pray I will see you again in the spring. May all love and protection continue to surround you, now and always.
I am grateful to Jeff Firewalker for the invitation to write this for the Eagle Condor Council. And thank you to the remarkable community of practitioners in the Council circle that I have such respect for. All of your work, individually and collectively, blesses the bees, my life, and the seven generations unborn of all our fellow family, all our kith and kin in this Benevolent Multiverse.
Blessed be. Blessed bees.
Debra
