This guest post is by Lorraine Jericevic in the UK.
Travelling in Peru with my husband, I meet a wonderful Hopi Native American, full of wonder, full of stories, songs, and chants. He carries a treasured bag of blue corn so that he can honor Mother Earth wherever he goes, wherever She is. It's a well-travelled bag of ceremony and healing, of symbols, of scents and sacred energies woven into the fabric of its heart.
We travel together and share laughter and sorrows. We feel each other's heart pain: his struggles in Hopi Land and mine at the passing of a dear friend whose spirit travels with us. He makes a ceremonial blessing for my friend with blue cornmeal. Photos of the ceremony site later show a huge orb hovering over the place of blessing. I can now joyfully release my friend to become part of the sacred mountain of Ausangate.
Too soon it is time to return to England. In the weary darkness of 3:00 a.m. as we're about to get into a taxi for the airport, my Hopi friend appears and presents me with his sacred bag of corn, the most precious gift I have ever received. I hold it close: I can sense its delicious textures and smells. It holds the secret of many stories... or is it perhaps the story of many secrets. I feel blessed to receive this.
When I arrive home, I place the sacred bag on my Healing Room altar, so that this wondrous energy can be shared by all who need healing and strength. I am drawn into its sacredness; I feel the need to share the gift of corn. Clients and friends ask if they may take a little. I watch as one by one my cherished seeds disappear.
In the spirit with which the corn was given, I continue passing on these seeds, but feel a sense of loss and sadness as I hand over the last seed.
Then, as the sun moves towards shorter days, friends begin to appear at my door, carrying beautiful corn, corn with the lustrous silken hair of the Corn Goddess who has returned to me in her glorious majesty, reborn. This is a time of renewal and blessings, of offerings and ceremony, of stories and connection, of joy and celebration.
Today, I take my bag of reborn Hopi Corn, daughter-seeds of the blessed Corn Mother, to my garden. The sun is about to break through the morning haze. It feels warm after a long UK winter, the grass under my bare feet wet, green, dewy. Fresh from my bed, I stop a moment to drink in that wonderful between time of spring to summer, of dawn to day, that magical between time of sleep and fully waking.
I am out in my garden, as I am each morning rain or shine. I perform my opening ceremony to connect to the Universe and her song of the day. Then, I carefully open my beautiful Hopi bag and feed corn to the Four Directions, Grandmother Earth and Grandfather Sky, the Ancestors. I look at my seedlings—there are the first tiny sprouts of new corn. And I wonder how far back its ancestors go. And I make a blessing to the very first Corn Mother, and to those who planted her. They live on.
My heart sings once more.
Lorraine Jericevic
The definition of METAPHORMOSIS is "the process in which one metaphor shifts, transitions, or blends into another." In other words, a series of nested metaphors... it can be one, two, or a hundred metaphors morphing from one to the other.
Where do you think the nested set of metaphors in Lorraine's story lies? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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