New Ash Moon Dreamboard...

... on Ash Wednesday, no less :)

Another powerful board, which came together very easily...

Somehow, I knew this morning as this landed in my mailbox from the lovely folk at Panhala.net, this would be a GOOD Dreamboard. And yes, I read it aloud as an invocation as I prepared myself to make this New Moon Dreamboard

Invocation

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,
to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,

to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.
Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing

solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides
and does not come easy to speech.  The pebbles

we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,
and we sing to the sea.  May the things of this world

be preserved to us, their beautiful secret
vocabularies.  We are dreaming it over and new,

the language of our tribe, music we hear
we can only acknowledge.  May the naming powers

be granted.  Our words are feathers that fly
on our breath.  Let them go in a holy direction.

~ Jeanne Lohmann ~ 

(Between Silence and Answer)

As always, I use Amy Palko's Bloom by Moon to learn about the Ash Moon...

The Ash has very deep roots to draw up the Earth's goodness. For the Celts it was the Tree of Life, for its roots went down so far into the Lower World, its branches reached so high into the Upper World, and its tall, straight trunk stood tall in the Middle World.

Left-hand page

Water and emotions are strong in this New Moon of Aquarius, but Amy also ties in the 'soft animal of your body' (from Mary Oliver's Wild Geese poem) as the outer expression of those emotions...

As the Ash tree connects the Worlds ('As above, so below'), can we in our animal bodies connect our deep, inner worlds and share them truthfully and honestly. Can we, as Mary Oliver says 

let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

I plan to ponder these things each day until my next Dreamboard on the Full Moon.

I'd love to know if you have any thoughts/insights...

And I just had to share this, taken this morning

Molly-cat knows her soft animal body loves to sleep in the warm sunlight (even though it's freezing outside!!)