"In mystical terms, each of us is an entire world or garden unto ourselves. And just as there was a healing tree at the center of the Garden of Eden, so each of us has a healing tree at the center of our individual psyches." 
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone

Fellow Carriers of the Original Starter,
(keep reading and you'll see)

Anointing has always been an essential mystical component in all my prayer intensives, but during this quarantine time, it has come alive in a whole new way.

I am no longer the one doing the anointing. The anointing is anointing me.

Sound familiar? It’s a mirror of the theme song of my show:

You are not praying
You are being prayed
Prayed at the speed of love 

I loved partnering with Emma Kupu Mitchell in Hawaii to create these sacred anointings. She receives stunning and often surprising guidance on the sacred oil blends—often from the plants themselves. I typically get the anointing process and language before I know anything about the oils.

Then, when we get together on zoom to share what each has received, we’re always amazed by the way her oil guidance and my anointing guidance dance together to create a powerful transformative prayer.

But this time, we’ve somehow bypassed amazed and dropped into whole new territory. A more accurate word might be shocked.

And it’s not just Emma and me. When Rabbi Tirzah Firestone and I got on zoom this week to plan our opening gathering for Tuesday, I showed her the anointing that has come through me.

I don't know exactly why, I said, but the anointing wants to be called “The Garden of Reverence.”

In order to put the anointing in some kind of context, I read her a few things from what, at first, might appear to be disparate and unconnected sources including:

• the concept of the “Imaginal Realm” in mystical Islam
• Our Lady’s outrageous statement: "The rosary is my body" in The Way of the Rose
• the three components of anointing—perfume, anointing, garden—in Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Meaning of Mary Magdalene
• Then I read a paragraph in Felicity Warner’s Sacred Oils on the ancient priestess lineage of myrrhophores who knew how to serve the mysteries of life, death, and rebirth(I had to add that Emma and I and Tirzah—and everyone who comes to my intensives are all myrrhopohores)
• And I explained that when I asked the Masters and Teachers for help understanding my call to be a “prayer artist,” they told me I carry the “original starter” and so do many others
• And the time to reignite this precious mystical “starter” is now

I read all of this to Tirzah to try to explain why in this anointing I begin by stepping into an imaginal Garden of Reverence as I spray Emma’s 5 sacred perfumes all around me.

And then, as I move through the anointing, oil by oil, I activate my own energy channels—my own Tree of Life.

The anointing ends as I plant a seed dancing with the memory of what it is to live in a state of reverence for all, and then I open my arms to share that sacred memory with the world.

I wrapped it all up reading this from her own book, The Receiving:

“Although the mystical Tree of Life may look flat and unmoving on paper, it is in reality far from the two-dimensional; and it is never still. It is rather, a ceaseless dance of energy that pulses with life force…. In mystical terms each of us is an entire world or garden unto ourselves. And just as there was a healing tree at the center of the Garden of Eden, so each of us has a healing core of energy at the center of our individual psyches.”

Image "Tree of Life" by Willow Arlenea

I finished reading and looked up. Tirzah was staring at me agape. And I stared back at her with my own mouth hanging open.

Because Tirzah was dancing her own prayer of embodying Shechinah, the Divine Feminine—and it was the exact mirror of my movements in “The Garden of Reverence” anointing.

It was instantly clear to both of us that this anointing and our entire intensive is ALIVE with the vibration of Shechinah—the divine feminine by any and all her names.

And She is calling us to create a new world overflowing with reverence for all—NOW.

A few minutes later, Tirzah sent this note and asked me to share it with you in today’s Notes from the Field.

Beloved Friends!

This time is positively sacred. Please do not let it pass you by! Yes, it's annoying, frustrating, makes you want to yell and cry or just resign from this dang world. But—we are not going to get this time back. If we spend it complaining or curled up in a ball, we will be missing the terrible gift of this moment.

Here's my invitation to show up full-strength in the edgiest, most potent prayer intensive you can imagine. I will be teaching on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life through the lens of the Shechinah with my dear sister Janet Conner, prayer artist, feminist mystic, and devotee of the Divine Mother in all her guises. 

Please don't miss the moment! We are embarking soon on this sacred pilgrimage of transformation to which She has called us. Join us.

Tirzah 

The Radical Path of Shechinah Revealed in the Tree of Life 

to becoming the healing tree at the center of the garden of reverence 

Janet

PS: I can host 100 people and we're almost 70. So please register today. I'll send the first welcome email with things to do to prepare as soon as I see your registration. We open Tuesday.

The Radical Path of Shechinah