When a New Name Calls.

When a New Name Calls

 

 Last year, in March 2017, I unexpectedly received a new name.

 

I was standing in a circle with twelve people I had just met in the beautiful Wind Wolves Preserve just north of Los Padres National Forest. As participants in the Ecology of Awakening program, we had just been asked by the guides what name we’d like to be called. I heard “Greenheart” whispered in my ear, and before I knew what I was doing, I stepped into the circle and said “Greenheart.”

 

“That’s the name you’d like to go by?”

 

“Yes,” I replied.

 

It was an unequivocal Yes, though I had no idea where the name had come from. Who or what whispered it in my ear? What did it mean?

 

A year later, I am still apprenticing myself to the name Greenheart. And maybe I always will be. Maybe that’s its medicine—setting me off on a journey of exploration and inquiry into “next steps” of my evolving ecological self.

 

There certainly was no shortage of questions this past year. 2017—the year of dismay and disbelief over the many actions and inactions of the newly-installed Trump administration. “How did this happen?!” “How best to respond?” At the same time, 2017 was my personal sabbatical year. I had decided to participate in the year-long Ecology of Awakeningprogram as a way to give purpose and meaning to this extended period of time away from work and to explore how I might participate in what Joanna Macy and others call the Great Turning. Essentially, Who is Leslie now that she no longer works for a large company in downtown Oakland? What is she going to do with what’s left of her one wild and precious life?

 

So a few short months into my sabbatical, as if in answer to my questions, I hear/receive the name Greenheart. It’s probably not a name I would have chosen for myself, but I feel the need to take it seriously. Is it pointing to my contribution at this stage of my life? How best to grow into the name, to honor this gift?

 

Several things have come to mind as I’ve played with these questions over the course of the year.

 

Free-associating, I think first of grass and trees, the miracle of photosynthesis, the tender shoots that push up through the soil in the Spring, even in areas devastated by fire. The whole big, beautiful green world of nature when we allow it to do its thing.

 

Then I remember that green is the color of the heart chakra, the fourth chakra in the center of our being. Connected with love, relating, creativity, abundance, and compassion, it opens up a deep feeling sense of our interconnectedness with all life.

I think of Green Tara. Originally a Hindu goddess, the Mother Creator, she represents the eternal life force that fuels all life. In Sanskrit, the name Tara means Star, but she was also called She Who Brings Forth Life and The Great Compassionate Mother. Later adopted by Buddhism, she became the most widely revered deity in the Tibetan pantheon.As an archetype of our own inner wisdom, she guides and protects us as we navigate the depths of our unconscious minds, helping us to transform consciousness and our own personal journeys of freedom.

 

And there’s Hildegard of Bingen, one of my favorite female figures, a sort of 12thcentury Wonder Woman. A German Benedictine abbess, Christian mystic, author, poet, composer, painter, and healer, she coined the term “viriditas” or “greening power” to describe the divine spirit at work in the world.

 

Hildegard also spoke of “the greening power of good deeds.” She saw compassion as “the divine seed” and the essential activating pattern of the universe. She encouraged us to go about our lives cultivating that divine seed in ourselves and others through our words and actions.

 

So I’m back to the question of—How best to do that? As Leslie, as Greenheart? How to embody greening power in a way that both honors my gifts, what makes me come alive, and also serves the needs of the world?

 

There is so much that needs to be done, much of it quite urgent! I feel a tension between wanting to do something big, important, and significant in the world and for the world; and wanting to listen to my evolutionary self which is prompting me to slow down and delve into a world of creativity that I held largely at bay while working a stressful, more-than-full-time job at a large organization.

 

Howard Thurman says, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

 

I believe that is true. Certainly the planet needs allof our particular gifts, all of our greening power, to keep it vital and viable.

 

There is an image I often reflect on which illustrates dramatically, for me, the transformation that can occur when we cultivate our greening power and the “divine seed” of compassion.

 

Many years ago, I spent several months in Ladakh, a Tibetan Buddhist region of India in the Himalayas. The whole region is a high desert, quite brown and barren. You wonder how anyone could scratch out an existence there, much less thrive as the Ladakhis have done for centuries. The area is encircled by the snow-covered Himalayas. Every spring the snow melts, and water comes pouring down the mountain side. Left alone, the melt water would flood the valleys and destroy everything. So over the centuries, and with painstaking care, the Ladakhi people have gathered thousands of rocks and created irrigation channels from the foothills of the mountains to the valleys many miles below.

 

The result is a truly remarkable transformation. In stark contrast to the barrenness all around, the valleys and villages are bright green oases filled with flowers, apricot and apple trees, and fields of barley swaying in the wind.

 

It seems like a miracle that the dry, rock-hard earth could yield such an abundance of nourishment, enough to feed the Ladakhi people through the long and bitterly cold winters. And in a way, it IS a miracle. A miracle of joining with others to cultivate a challenging environment so that it may bloom and benefit all.

 

I picture the Ladakhis undertaking this arduous labor of constructing miles of irrigation channels, rock by rock by rock. Rather than being overwhelmed by the size of the task on the one hand, or selfish and diverting the water to just their fields on the other hand, they patiently and purposefully worked together to direct the floodwaters to allthe fields. Such beautiful co-creation! With each other, with the land, with what is.

 

Surely I can do that! Surely wecan do that. Can use our hands and hearts to pick up rocks and move them to where they are most needed. Can work with others to create processes and containers for the greening life force which enlivens us all. Such integrated, whole-hearted effort is what’s needed for the complex environmental disasters such as climate change which threaten to destroy our home.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk has said:”It is probable that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.”

 

Maybe in that first hour of meeting the Ecology of Awakening folks and hearing the name Greenheart, I was being reminded of this wisdom. I know EOA was and is such a community of practitioners. I know what is possible when one lives in a community practicing mindful, reverent, wild, sacred living. And it is that sense of “active hope” that I now carry with me out into the day, even if I don’t yet have specific answers to “what does this next chapter of life look like?”

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