A Spontaneous Leap Year Feast

Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Feb 23, 2024

l love being spontaneous! The coming week includes the ‘once in every four years’ leap year day, the 29^th February. Leap year highlights for me how a system that isn’t fully Earth centred is going to have gaps and cracks that become visible that then need to become incorporated or appropriated into its dominant narrative to include the bigger story. It is said that if we didn’t have such a leap year, our Gregorian calendar would gradually move away from alignment with the seasons. So, rather than creating a calendar in alignment with the seasons, with Earth, the calendar is changed to fit a particular kind of culture. What else is being shape-shifted to fit a particular narrative?

You could say that a leap year is one of such times when a gap becomes visible between a socially/culturally constructed way and a deeper reality. I love these gaps.

Much of my earlier research explored how dominant narratives always have gaps where the truth creeps through. Such gaps are something l have an antennae for. The Gregorian Calendar used from 1582 in the dominant economic Earth extraction culture was part of a shift towards a rational scientific ‘objective’ view of the world. From my culture historian days and publication in the 1980’s/early 1990’s, l understand ‘human’ as a particular construction, a particular part of a cultural form and also part of a dominant narrative that became normalised particularly through science.

My research, as part of a radical feminist collective, particularly tracked the formations and allying of the legal and medical professions with increasing power to define language, roles, bodies and more into a statute book with consequences. My research showed how these narratives didn’t fit ‘a deeper truth’ thereby, when studying them, cracks appeared when the jigsaw could not be put together. See reference

Diving into the cracks, into Earth’s truth, was certainly a way we explored after that research … If what we’d been taught and lived is not the truth, then what is? Wandering with that question we found:

that birds communicate with us in deep intimacy and reciprocity
the enchanted aliveness of all life is in sacred conversation and humans are part of the conversation that we have become autistic to (Thomas Berry)
that trees sing and invite us into their song from the depths of love cracking open
that love impacts tending plants ie growing green heart shaped tomatoes to red from a battered plant lovingly tended
that wandering with our dreams on the land and the beings on the land continued the dream, or was/is it us in their dream where we are in their deep and sacred conversation rather than us being in control. That’s how my long black hooded cape was crafted from a dream and wander over 30 years ago.

and so much more unbidden and surprising … (to come) …

So it was that l found myself inside another kind of wonder Earth rather than human centred narrative. I found myself in a world of dream, deep imagination, symbol, sacred conversation, more than metaphor, plus as a way of not only crafting a cape, but crafting a deeper more connected, purpose-led, intimate and sacred Earth life.

In the early 1990’s this way was not fully articulated, rather something to work towards manifesting and is way more in both regards now. We might, in Thomas Berry’s way, call these experiences of ‘primary community’. Such beauty experiences led us into guiding folk on the land in Scotland/Alba, like ‘The Walk’ from 2001 enabling people to experience our own wildness and to map their intimate conversations through the day in kinds of songline living relationships with land and beings.

These contributions deepened alongside others, particularly Animas Valley Institute who l graduated with, also enabling these sacred conversations being even more possible over these years. Now, of course, launching Abbey Of Soul with the way of being, encouraging, deepening, offering and initiating into ways of stepping fully into participating in animacy with Earth Community. The logo above of Abbey Of Soul symbolises such a way, stepping into wild eco-circle being led into soulcentred living in full and wild participation. I spoke in my last Museletter (and many previous times) to the importance and relevance of listening to Earth now precisely because of the current unravelling Thomas Berry spoke to in The Great Work.

We speak here too of ‘primary community’ in relation to his writing, where Berry proposes that we are moving from the Cenozoic Age into the Ecozoic Age including a current shift away from the Scientific Revolution towards a more ecological understanding/way of living. In Evening Thoughts (pg 20) Thomas Berry stated:

“The primary community is not the human community, it is the Earth Community. Our primary obligations and allegiances are to this larger community.” (that is, rather than “property to be used by the human”

He continues:

“Especially in religion, the human depends on the natural world, for it is the wonder and majesty of the universe that evokes the sense of the divine origin and sacred character of the universe.”

The etymology of ‘religion’ is Latin and Old French: to bind, obligation, bond, reverence, under monastic vows. (Oxford Languages) ‘Human’ is from Latin humanus ‘man’ and ‘earth’ which acknowledges an ‘of earth’. ‘Human being’ was interestingly first used in 1694 when that shift, stated above, was forging towards The Scientific Revolution (A. Rupert Hall, 1957 and more).

Abbey Of Soul is very much part of questioning, exploring the underneath, or maybe a different kind of hidden inner centre accessed often through the cracks and edges. of land/narratives to become aligned with Earth ways. The word we use, a Scottish word, is to shoogle things up, shake them up and even create the cracks, the shaking; to be curious, wonder, identify and disidentify.

So, what if this Leap Year day on Thursday could be a moment of diving into such a crack, be shaken like a seed into Earth’s truths and into the wonder and majesty of the universe that evokes the sense of the divine origin and sacred character of the universe? What if you are open to where you might be asked by Earth to re-align? What if foolery can play a part?

Are you with me here?

To be more precise, how might this 29^th become a portal, a crack to fall into and give ourselves over to a greater way, a greater story, one you are Earth born to live and may even, likely, be surprised about.

The 29^th is also a day that is ‘generally’ known for a moment when a woman can propose marriage; we don’t hold to that particularity here, of course, but it is interesting; a day when topsy-turvy ‘queering’ of life and identities are invited in. Perhaps a crack for the sacred feminine to enter, or … perhaps we can subvert the dominant paradigm in a way that there is no return as was before. What we are inviting here and now in the current dominant narrative’s crack, is to fall evermore deeply in love with Earth again; that we offer ourselves to deep listening and other ceremonies; even propose/bind/bond/make a vow to Earth, or commit to apprenticing/working towards such a proposal.

Maybe we can wonder evermore deeply who the ‘l’ ‘we’ are? The term ‘we’ in Abbey Of Soul is used in identifying, currently Wendy, as multiplicity in trans-species shoogling; bringing awareness to human/individualised ways. Everything opening again in the crack, what/who might be possible…

Are you in?

Of course, you may, even likely if you have been working with me a while, have your own cultivated ways already for being with ceremony that day, or all days. It’s likely that you will have a foundational ground of knowing yourself strong enough to be shaken even a tiny bit at this point. So you might take a moment at this point to reflect if you are indeed ready and prepared for such a Ceremony. There will be other offerings you can join in with and experience if not. Arrange a 30m exploratory call with me if this feels like a way of clarifying .

If you would like to participate within what is currently a shoogling ‘human’ community, or to have an exploratory conversation, or/and to join in with others here in Abbey Of Soul, let us know. I’ll send out an invitation for a wander beforehand that you can offer on the land during that Leap Year morning. Invitations for writing/art and more too. We’ll meet in Council early evening, 6pm for two hours GMT (11am MT etc) to circle for sacred speech through the zoom portal; to offer space for who and what arises in the conversations or dream.

Here's a way to make this delight accessible: £29 - £50 per person depending on financial means. Otherwise contact me regarding a donation/offering that makes participating possible. No one is excluded. You will need to contact me by Tuesday 27 February at the latest though, so come in now if you feel a call, a tug, a longing pain, a proposal whispering under your breath. Let’s see what we shoogle up together. Maybe a further offering will be weaved from …

Loving these cracks this year, the betwixt and between of Imbolc on tidal Holy Island, Lindisfarne; the Leap Year Portal coming soon …

A few of our Testimonials from the courageous wild beauties who enter the Pilgrimage Of Soul; the Mystics, Seers, Misfits and more at Abbey Of Soul

I feel a deepening intimacy with myself, the land and the human/more-than-human community plus a stronger feeling/understanding sense of my place in belonging within the glory of this whole universe - such gratitude and joy! Thank you. SC

“You have held me with compassion, challenged me with love and offered me intuitive invitations to help me come back into relationship with my deep imaginal.” BS

A Spontaneous Leap Year Feast

Wendy Robertson Fyfe

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