The winter crossroads
Grasping at threads
Apothecary Update: The 2026 Luna Terra Planners are now on sale. The year has still just begun, there is plenty of time to shift and start again. Using a paper planner has been shown to improve task completion by 20% over digital planners and calendars, greater brain activation, reduced anxiety over organization, and 42% more likely to achieve set goals. (Not to mention all of the benefits of journaling which there is plenty of room for.)
We are at the midway point of winter, just on the waning edge of a full moon. While the light is beginning to return, this also means we are at the deepest depth of the season. It is bitterly cold. I rarely want to venture outside of my den these days. Instead of traveling outward, I love this time of year for traveling inward.
Friends, our nervous systems are in a constant state of fight or flight right now. We are not meant to casually watch the constant barrage of violence we see every day. I sat and thought about what I need to give and what I need to receive. This is what came forward. Now more than ever I need something grounding, a thread to follow, to show the way forward.
So at this turning point, I’m starting a little series of newsletters that I call Nature as God. My deepest desire is to get as close to the Source as possible. It is at the core of everything I create. I look to plants, stars, animal kin and soil as teachers in this pursuit. Here there is a universal language, a codex to understanding all things. I want to take you back to the beginning, to take a peek behind the veil of the great mystery that is life.
When I took a step back from selling herbal products two years ago, I wanted to see what was left. I wanted to remember why I started all of this in the first place.
It was this:
I am not separate, I am the Universe experiencing itself.
I used to think this path began when I chose a random book to read called Spiritual Ecology in a small mountain town of Colorado.
The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.”
~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth
But I see now that the path started long before then. It started as a child in the laundry room where I sat on the floor, my mom folding clothes. I asked her, “what am I?”
“You’re a human,” she replied.
“But what am I,” I said again, frustrated that I couldn’t put this feeling into words.
It was the moment in a child’s life that they become conscious of their own existence. But it is deeper than that. It was a tendril of the universe unfolding, searching for wholeness.
It started in the dark, staring up at the ceiling in my childhood bedroom, worrying about eternity. What happens when you die? What am I to do about any of this? It was a voice from somewhere within and without myself that said, the answer is something the human mind can’t possibly comprehend, worrying is not necessary. The fear fell away instantly. It was the universe learning to trust itself.
It started on a camping trip as I stared up at a night sky blanketed in stars so dense even the dark space in between the shimmering lights seemed to be holding more stars just a layer away. The feeling of awe and dread was the universe taking in the entirety of its existence.
It started in my room as a teenager when I scoured the Bible, highlighting every passage I could find that made me feel something. It was the only source of spirituality I had access to. It gave me a spark of light, the tiniest glimpse of that unknowable truth. But it also left me deeply disappointed to sense the human ego layered on top with its contradictions, threats, and fear tactics. It was the universe learning to think for itself.
It was feeling my baby breathe for the first time. Not his heartbeat, his eyes opening, his little hands curling, but his breath. This thing so many cultures believe is Spirit itself, here outside of my body, in this new body. Life gives life, consciousness gives consciousness. It was the universe learning how to expand.
What all of these experiences lead back to is the singular point of existence: truth.
This truth lies behind every religion, spiritual belief system, folk culture, ecosystem, psyche and creative expression. It is older than our ancestors, older than life, older than time. It is the unifying point on the grid of all things.
The tricky part is that “truth” is also subjective. Or rather, the translation of this truth. It is this translation that results in religious wars, violence, and separateness. But no single doctrine has claim over truth.
When we try to give a name to the nameless, we put up barriers to our own understanding and to our understanding of others. The truth must be interpreted billions of times, by each individual person. So this is meant to be a guide more than a definitive gospel.
The truth is better felt than said after all. You know it when you gaze into the face of a flower, take in a crimson sunset, feel the breeze rush through your bones. There are no words for the truth that echoes through our spirit, but there are ways to get close. It is in our human nature to want to express these things.
While it is impossible to get to the center of this truth, this project seeks to explore the edges of it, to set one foot inside of it, to answer that original question: what am I?
To do this, it is necessary to take into account both the exoteric (mainstream religion, science and history) and esoteric (visionary science, spirituality, land-based traditions) perspectives. Both are critical to knowing the world.
Wisdom is a putting together. Knowledge is a taking apart. Wisdom synthesizes and integrates. Knowledge analyzes and differentiates. Wisdom sees only with the eyes of the mind, it envisions relationships, wholeness, unity. Knowledge accepts only that which can be verified by the senses.
~ Gyorgy Doczi
In spiritual circles it’s common to witness earth as a divine being in an intangible sense, that it must be felt wholly in the ethers, in dreams, prayer and meditation. But I think this does our cosmos a disservice. While it would never admit, science gives us a physical way to see and observe the divine in nature. Both of these things we will explore.
We are at a point in time where it feels almost impossible not to lash out at the madness of the world. In many ways, I think it can be necessary. But I also think we need to find other avenues forward. We need to find a way to survive without imploding.
I want to leave you with this to begin as contemplation.
These are ice flowers. They are one of the rarest and most fragile natural wonders in nature. Very specific conditions must be met for them to form. Frigid cold air temps with zero wind, plus warmer water beneath a paper thin layer of ice collide to create meadows of crystal blooms like these within seconds. The relatively warmer water vapor escapes through microscopic cracks in the ice and instantly condenses to form the flowers. Yet a single breeze or ray of sunlight can make them disappear completely. In Arctic coastlines and northern fjords, ice flowers can carpet entire lakes.
Stay safe. Much more to come soon.
Much love,
Val
So many people I know (myself included) are finding their own ways to heal all that is happening. We are at that point in evolution where heart-based practices are vital. My practice has been the flow of unconditional love to all, to let all beings know how much they are truly loved, and the emphasis has been on humans. I don't watch the news, read anything about it, and I don't have to because so many people feel sad, angry and many other emotions. I let people know that I am not interested in the violence and the ridiculousness that is happening. I choose to focus on these beings as infants, how brimming with Spirit they were when they were born and they still are, they've just forgotten. I ask them to remember this, that we are Love and we Are Loved. When we send out Love, that's the vibration that we are emanating. When we are fearful or say mean things about people, that is the vibration we are emanating. So despite all the violence that is happening, there is way more Love and the vibration of Love out there. We have to focus on that and look for that. And yes, we can stand up for our rights and the rights of others, and we can do it without hate, without fear and without violence. Change is happening, systems are crumbling. We have to go through this to get to the other side. And I believe the other side is beautiful.