HOLD!!

I’m headed into a few days of silent retreat, something I haven’t managed to do in about a decade. That’s how much technology has infiltrated our daily routines. Over the past few days I’ve been progressively catching up on as much as I can, while also minimising my diet, so that I can fast from food as well as media. So today I am doing some last things on phone and computer, like scheduling posts, hand writing materials from my devices so I can continue to work on my thesis while offline, and checking in with family who might worry if they can’t reach me.

One particular US-based relative I haven’t been in touch with since before the inauguration of a maniac into the presidency, so in our brief catch-up I got a small ear full of the mayhem said maniac is managing to unleash in my homeland. Of course, I’ve had some sense, even as much as I heavily filter what comes into my mind by carefully choosing media — thus being primarily here on Substack, but I have not heard from too many folks on the ground in recent weeks.

I find myself heading into this prayerful resetting time for myself with a heavy heart for my countryfolk. What can I offer? What can I say from this distance on the other side of our precious planet that might be of any assistance, comfort or inspiration?

What came to mind is a scene I had attributed to the wrong film (Gladiator) in last weekend’s wrap-up of the Quaoar course at DPU. There is so much shifting in this month, in these very days, hours, and minutes, and I am beyond grateful to be able to carve out some solitude and stillness to better incorporate these tremendous shifts.

And to stay on the side of consciousness.

So when folks on the astro call were feeling a readiness, almost agitation, from the fullness of energy about to flow forth, the cry to HOLD!! is what surfaced in me. It’s not the politics or the details of the scene (which is of a bloody battle) that I had in mind, but the capacity to command our collective power.

I want to say that again.

The capacity to command our collective power.

Here’s the scene and, even without seeing the rest of the film, you can feel how crucial the timing is. And the immense energy of all those standing behind that one leader who determines the moment to act together to oppose what threatens freedom, the right to life.

I realized, as I watched this clip, that I haven’t rewatched this movie since 1996, the year after it first came out. It shot hackles up on my arms, lumps into my throat, and tears into my eyes. Tapping into the spirit of my heavily Scottish ancestors.

It also brought back memories of the night in Idaho when my family and I were readying to leave the next day to visit Arkansas family I barely knew—my father and his parents. After turning the movie off, I had a few brief hours of sleep before a knock came on the front door in the middle of the night, and, as I happened to be the closest one to it, I opened to the police with news that my cousin had been killed.

It led to a great many other things that I won’t detail here, but I do want to say that Ryan loved this film. AND there was no need for him to die. Sure, he was drunk and unruly, as Scots/Irish can be, but that does not justify being shot by a plainclothes cop without a holster for his weapon, whose family was waiting in his unmarked car. We learned afterwards that Ryan was one of 19 young men killed by local cops in what should have been routine traffic stops, over too short a period of time to be coincidental.

As I head into stillness and prayer, these rough memories and emotions surface. The injustice, the corruption, the violence, the generations of trauma, the lack of love for those struggling.

What can I do?, I wonder.

When I got off the call with my stepdad I recalled how I had been judgmental in my late teens. Seems to be the age for that sort of arrogance in humans, and if we’re wise we grow out of it. How that maturation happened in me is that I later made the same sort of mistakes, lived through the other side of what I had judged, and felt the pain of being judged by others for it. The only way, it seemed, that I could truly understand the people I had judged was to make similar choices and suffer similar consequences.

I have now lived half of my life outside of the US. The first years were enormously informative, simply to be able to see our culture and ways of being from a distance and through the eyes of other cultures. I regularly return to connect with those I love and what I see from this distance of popping into and out of people’s lives is how slowly things change. I haven’t had the patience and fortitude to struggle against the machine, in any country.

And I do know from teaching yoga for nearly half my life as well, that almost no one makes changes when they’re comfortable.

It’s the breaking open, breaking apart, broken bones, broken hearts that leads to learning how to Hold ourselves upright better. And how to mend.

We’re midstream through the current Venus Retrograde which cycles around to the same sign every 8 years, nearly to the day. I had to scroll back through my photos to find that image and, wouldn’t you know!, it’s from the last time Venus was going inwards in Aries and Pisces. Astrologers advise thinking back to 2 Mar - 15 Apr 2017 to see how what was seeded then is showing up again now. How about for you? Where were you and what was uppermost in your heartmind?

For me, having followed an Aries love to Sweden, I dove into ecological activism training there and at EcoDharma in Catalunya when the dynamics around the love were too complicated to sustain itself. My dear Pisces friend was working there and through her I met an artivist whose project I joined a few months later. This post goes into a little of SeaChange Voyage, our journey down the Hudson River on Solar Sal.

a necessary hole

So much was learned and shared with the artists on board, and with the communities on land, as we aimed to bring the issues the river faces into sharp relief through art. The solar boats are still being built by David Borton. My Instagram account is the best way to see the travelogue of all these adventures. Below is from Day 2 of our journey with some good Akwesasne Mohawk folk who were still recovering from the trauma of Standing Rock, yet singing their way through it.

melissaelvirabillington

A post shared by @melissaelvirabillington

And just after that epic journey I was launched into an even more epic 54 day ceremony water-walking the length of the Missouri River with Ojibwe and Dakota elders. For more on my journey with water, here’s a storymap I made for geospatial tech class last year.

I’ve gotten a bit sidetracked, but then that feels right for this deeply internal time with not only Venus retro but also Mercury and the asteroids Juno and Vesta retro too. So how and what we love, how we think and communicate, and how and what we are faithful and devoted to—these are all coming up for inquiry and review. And by month’s end our planet of spiritual consciousness, Neptune, enters Aries.

It’s all on! Even without the astro forecast, you knew that.

We are all doing the best we can in a maelstrom of miasmic mix-up.

So, again, I say HOLD!!

Hold to what is true for you.

Hold to what, and how, you best love what, and who, you best love.

Hold to your integrity, your wholeness, and hold others to the same.

We’re burgeoning into birth. We’re pregnant with the lives we most want to die having lived. Don’t let idiotic distraction sideswipe “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”.

This is the moment to check your values, your thought patterns, and what you’re married and devoted to. Are you aligned the best way you’d like to be?

Would your ancestors and descendants be proud?

Because soon enough, within mere months, it’ll be full steam ahead and you want to have that army at your back when the cry shifts from Hold to NOW!!!