Bless the whenua

For ages, whenever I’ve seen a certain tohu, I would karakia to bless the whenua. Well, I just had a visual of my brain as the whenua. A feminine expression. Receiver of ideas and notions, messages, and whispers. I see Papatūanuku.

And Ranginui provides messages, forewarnings, seeds of ideas. Ranginui, a masculine expression, giving of his seed.

I can see how if my mind is a maara (garden), I would need the whole lot to be burnt down, weeded, even violently axed, to clear it for the new season. Maybe this is a learning I need too. I am, like this realm, seasonal. When it’s axing/burning/pruning/wintering time, I don’t fucking like it. I resist it, and think all hope is lost. Like, Mahuika is giving her assistance and all I can see is the world on fire. I cry and wail and despair! I believe the end hath come. 

I need to learn that I am miraculously and magically made. I need only look at nature. It mirrors my true self. It has its times. Cyclical and seasonal. Wā-hine. Papatuanuku is a woman with her cycles, her times. Our very bodies mirror her. If we are here in this, a feminine realm, it makes sense that our energies would need to align with it. 

We can learn the times, and cycles, and seasons - and not despair. When we look at nature, it tells us – in living colour – that balance is always restored. The wheel of fortune may just be the wheel of seasons. Trying to remind us that life is not all the bullshit constructs we were taught it is. 

I never knew we had spiritual seasons too. But I guess it makes sense. 

I also think about the mental maara, and where it gets its sustenance from. All the artificial light is not the same as te Rā. All those screens don’t feed my garden the way truth does. Truth and all of it’s illumination connects me in this realm. Screens pretend to connect me while encouraging me to isolate. 

It’s so much harder to weather storms in isolation. Tawhirimātea comes to clear any blockages, and if you’re caught outside, alone, you might get zapped. Ultimately, even the fire from heaven is not cruel, but creates food for other beings. Nothing is wasted. I feel a bit better about my own pruning and hacking of social media and news. 

If I read the news and see korero of our tirīti being taken from us, that seed is what gets planted in my mind/maara/garden. I watch more news on TV and hear more korero on the grapevine, and it waters this seed. Nurtures it! This idea that I am losing my rights. But I will no longer make space for foreign seeds in my maara. 

This is a foreign seed. It has no place here. It is someone else’s truth. Someone else’s narrative. Someone else’s agenda. I am free to choose what I wish to grow in my maara. I am nurturing my own seeds of tinorangatiratanga, my own kawanatanga. I want my maara to become so healthy and strong that it starts providing kai for anyone who needs it. 

I will not just hand over this whenua. The weeding of this maara is busy work! It feels like I build one fence while another gets breached. But one day at a time, my maara is being restored. 

I’m even starting to notice some of my tupuna around, that were there the whole time, but hidden from my view by choking vines of fear-based narratives/indoctrination/conditioning. I’m so grateful. 

There is still so much work to be done, and my muscles are more like pipis at the moment. But it’s a relief to know that a whole new season is beginning. 

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Thank you for being here. You too get to choose what is allowed to enter your maara. The stuff I publish here on substack is usually copied straight outta my journal. I remove a lot of swear words. I’m surprised my journals don’t burst into flames sometimes… I’m thinking of adding artworks here too, but I need to figure out how to photograph them first… the hoha phone changes the colours!

For now here’s a page out of my sketchbook. Acrylic and watercolour pencil.

©️2024 K Te Amo