I Call My Tribe

My parents named me Jennifer. I was born in the Tachikawa Air Force Base in Tokorozawa, Japan, on the island of Honshu, surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. My parents said they chose my name because they liked the way it sounded. While this simple explanation may be perfectly true, the name they chose for me has a deeper resonance which has been revealed to me over the years as I have changed and grown, as I have dropped leaves and grown roots, as my branches have been tossed and tumbled in the stream of life. The name Jennifer is derived from Guinevere, King Arthur's Queen. In Welsh it is Ghwenyvar, which means "white wave," or "rough water."

I have always been attracted to the sea. For reasons that many don't understand, I have isolated myself on an island. Sometimes the waves seem to limit me, but most of the time I feel them expanding my consciousness as they spread across the planet. Living here, one can never forget them. They touch all the senses--I watch them crash and reform from high on the bluffs, I listen to them thunder or lap at the shore on the beach in front of my house, I smell and taste their salt on my skin, and I swim in them--ducking under to explore the world underneath, or riding them to shore.

Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, are all part of a wave to me. The fifth element, spirit, is the one that enables me to weave the elements together, the wave of knowing that passes through me when I let go of my fears and concerns about my daily grind and feel my connection to every being on Earth.

It has not been an easy journey.

Some of you have read my book "Siren," which documents the beginning of my spiritual awakening to the global apocalypse which is now unfolding, in a personal way. It is a book full of cracks through which pain seeps out on every page. While I tried to end the book with a vision of hope, I didn't feel it at the time I wrote it. I'm not sure why I ended the book on a note of hope. All I can say is that the poems just come to me. I felt despair every day. I felt that extinction of every creature on the planet, including humans. I was ashamed of who I was and what my kind were doing to the earth. I felt that I had no choice but to sit back and watch the world die.

As I have become more balanced emotionally and physically, the synchronicities have been coming more rapidly. One of them that came--a great turning point for me--was the etymology of the world apocalypse. Contrary to the visions of annihilation that we associate with the word, apocalypse, etymologically speaking, means "the lifting of the veil." The word is derived from the name of the sea nymph Callypso, in the Odyssey, who offered to lift the veil between the two worlds for Odysseus by giving him immortality.

This was a great gift to me. I began to see how we humans have internalized materialism to such a degree that we are unable to see that we live in a multidimensional universe. The lifting of the veil that is occuring in our time (how incredible to be alive now!) will allow us to perceive dimensions beyond the physical. We (meaning everyone) will realize that we are part of a web. We will realize that we are the ones that weave the world, and as we let go of our fears, we will begin to do this in a conscious manner, instead of blindly. What kind of world do you want to weave with me? One where we live in peace with ourselves and with the earth, or one where we continue to kill ourselves and our bountiful home, who gives us everything we need, and more. So much we can't even see anymore that we're not giving back, only taking.

I recently completed a course called Earth Activist Training, a synthesis of permaculture, activism, and magic, magic being the changing of consciousness at will. It is my intent in this blog to outline the principles of permaculture, a name for a system of thought which includes the concepts of "permanent agriculture" and "permanent culture," while at the same time personalizing my struggles to live in balance on an imbalanced earth. In my next entry I will delve into defining permaculture in more detail.

In the meantime, thank you for reading these words. I hope you find sustenance and hope here and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

My name is Whitewave. Sometimes I am known as Whispering Shadow. Tell me, what do you hear? I am there with you in the dark, and I will break with you on the beach.

I call my tribe!