A Kiva, Ancestors, Birth and The Wisdom That Lives in the Liminal…an Invitation for This Weekend
I have sat with hundreds of women over the last few decades who say with excitement and foreboding, "THIS is my favorite time of year..."
It is mine too. For two reasons (at least).
The very first fire
The first reason for this love affair is that this is the time of such profound liminality - a time of shifting and in-between. A time of no-longer-this-and-not-yet-that. It is a time of the active boisterous Dying. As opposed to Winter, which is a time of the peaceful quiet Death. I believe women in particular love this time of year because we know about the Liminal. We have regular cyclical dances with the Liminal with our menstrual and fertility cycles. And for those of us who have given birth (especially - but not only - if we have done this without anesthesia), we know about the most intense, most painful and most initiatory of liminal rites of passage as the cervix opens to its most dilation and baby passes through the threshold between the infinite Universe of the uterine world into the vaginal entrance to the material outer dayworld: the moment that has been accurately called the 'transition' stage - a liminal place of no-longer and not-yet. It is a time when many a brave and noble woman has thought, 'surely...I will die right here...' This is where my North Norse ancestry came in very handy. We believe that if it's not worth dying for it's certainly not worth doing. I dug deep for this lineage mantra during the transition stages of the births of my sons.
The Kiva with a cover and entry pillars
The second reason for my – and our – love affair(s) with this late Autumn time (intricately related to the first reason) is that this time of late Autumn is the time of Ancestral celebration and remembrance. It is a time when, across many cultures, it is said 'the veils between the Worlds are thin' – that our departed family can venture across the threshold to be with us, tell us stories, help us remember integral pieces of our own belonging and wellness through quiet reflection as well as mysterious sensory experiences like random smells, sounds, and somatic, or embodied, experiences. When we think of ancestors many of us think of our immediate relatives, who tend to (not always though) be people we don’t feel an affinity with, or even more pronounced, might have had specific painful experiences with. It is often life altering to remember we have ancestors that go back to the beginning of human time. Of course, logically that’s true but many of us orphaned and bedraggled, untethered folk in Western Industrial Culture can’t imagine having deeply well, land-based relatives who have intimate relationships with the Earth, who have no word for ‘sacred’ because everything is sacred. All of us alive today have noble, wise, joyful and reverent folks in our lineage, just as we have colonizers and perpetrators, victims and thieves. It’s hard to be of genuine service to the evolution of our species if we do not know the noble ones of our blood and bone. Hard to know what is ours to do if we have only the directives of a patho-adolescent culture to tell us what is important. We need more ways to listen to what exists beyond this narrow and unraveling dayworld story.
The ground breaking moment
When I first took up the stewardship (called 'ownership' in this culture) of 6482 Jib Court here in Boulder, out of the thin blue air came a strong and un-ignorable message to build a Kiva. And so we did. With the help of farmer Bill from Firestone, and his back hoe, we dug the initial hole. Then Bill drive away and left us with a shape that was anything but usable – an inverted triangle in the absolutely-impenetrable hard Earth that is our soil. Thank goodness for having birthed the two sons mentioned above. Thank goodness they were now (back in 2010) at the age of young manhood where the drive to 'best' each other is a thing. Thank goodness for pickaxes and muscles and jovial banter that might turn, at the swinging of a pickaxe, into cursing against the endless rocks and clay as our ancestors surely must have done. Thank goodness for determination and irreverence. Thank goodness for reverence. Within a few weeks we had a Kiva, with steps and a fire pit. That’s all we needed to take our seats in the Earth around the Fire and simply deliver ourselves to the longing we had – to remember something old and simultaneously brand new. The old ways are not our ways. But what do we do if we cannot even remember them to know what we are pushing off from?
The endless physical focus of adolescent boys
Ten years later and more community groups, individuals, memorial services, pre-wedding ceremonies, marshmallow roasts, all-night plant journeys singing and wailing with our ancestors, slumber parties, threshold crossings for student cohorts and more than we have been able to, or even need to, track, the Kiva is full of wellness! The Kiva has had several evolutions as we have added a cover, pillars, directional Staffs, and more. It is its own threshold to the other Worlds; an autonomous entity with humor, grief, joy, and fierce rage held in place just enough by the giant male Cottonwood Tree that arches benevolently above it, its roots encircling the Kiva like a woven basket. The Fire that lives in the Kiva has been both the gentlest, lapping, flame and the most brutal, ruthless scouring creature (and everything in between). Ten years ago, when I heard the message to dig a giant hole in the Earth and put a fire pit in the middle I certainly did not have any idea that this relationship – and the endless unfathomable experiences that come with it – awaited me, and all those who have ventured down the steps and into the Earth around this particular Fire.
Like coming home…stepping down and into the Kiva
This weekend, Saturday November 2, from 7am to 11pm, we will be holding the second All-Day Community Kiva, in honor of the pancultural celebration of this time of year – when the veils between The Worlds are thin and the opportunity ripe to feed our ancestral wellness and to remember what is brilliant that lives uniquely in each, our blood and bones. We will tend the Fire and check in occasionally but largely this is a time for community to come together un-curated and without formal ceremony. Please come any time, sit in the Earth, around the Fire. You may find you have to slip in between two bodies to make a space or you may find you have the whole Kiva to yourself. You may arrive to singing or a poem being read aloud. You may find you barely make it to the bottom step before your tears start flowing. Or you may discover the raucous laughter you’d misplaced sometime this last Spring, or last year, or perhaps as you crossed the threshold into adolescence.
Just come.
For details and orientation to parking and other things, read this page and this one too.
Bring an offering for the ancestral altar. Bring a little snack for those who will come after you. Bring a rattle or a drum (though we will also have a few things in the Kiva for you).
We can’t wait to see you. And I’ll bet your ancestors feel the same way.