Spring Fever By Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman

During the first part of spring, the vernal birth waters break. The skies open. It rains, it pours, it mists, it drips fertilizing fluids from the heavens, which fructify the fields. The air is damp like a baby's bottom. The land is soaked through, water logged. The mud, like mucous, like after-birth, is seething with the stuff of life.

The defrosting sodden soil is teeming, churning with every creepy crawly thing that ever slithered out of a swamp. Hordes of birds descend, drawn by the juicy feast. Animals awaken from their pregnant hibernations, skinny, starving and suckling their young. Birds and beasts, alike, set out on a concerted feeding frenzy, gorging themselves and their ravenous, insatiable, mouths-ever-open offspring.

By mid-spring, the tantrum storms, like the terrible two's of the early, chilly part of the season, have finally stilled. The winds and rains have gentled. There is a new calmness, a certain steadier confidence in the air. Nature has dug in Her roots and taken hold. Once-tentative buds have unfolded and flourished.

Flowers, food and forage are abundant and extravagantly fragrant. The leaves on trees and bushes are that particular fluorescent pea green shade that we see only once a year at this time. Earth and Her species are spread green with the surging effervescent, aphrodisiac substance of life. The sap, the shoot, the root, the bud, the bark, the branch, the trunk, the tree of life.

The second half of spring is the growing time when life seems to shoot up out of the ground and keep on going forever forward, reaching and grasping for growth. This is the energy that we used to call, "the wonder years." All the vernal new-borns, having outgrown generations of teeth, baby down, feathers, pelts and ridiculously expensive sneakers, are now frenetic with raging hormones. All-too-ready, set, to go and strike out on their own, determined to produce and reproduce.

The merry month of May marks the high-spirited puberty rite of passage into adolescence for the flora and fauna offspring of Mother Earth. The season, itself, is a bang-up celebration of exuberant youth in all its boundless energy, innocent ardor and potential creativity. And all the land is dressed up and decorated for the festivities.

On these glorious days of May, it feels as if the whole world is in the throes of a contagious spring fever. We are aswirl in a delirious dance of motion, emotion, an exhilarating carnival ride of heady smells and riotous color. Life all around is gaudy, giddy, giggly.

The mood is catchy and we get carried away in the enthusiastic spirit. Almost without giving it any thought, we are suddenly cheerful, hopeful and optimistic, as Nature, Herself. And we are ready to spring forward into life with renewed energy and verve.

 
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Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman,
eco-ceremonialist, award-winning author, popular speaker
and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial
events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and
contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than
100 cities since 1972. She has published four books, a CD,
an acclaimed quarterly journal and writes a column for UPI
(United Press International) Religion and Spirituality Forum.
Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a
ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy
in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she works with individuals, groups,
institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful
ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.

For information about upcoming events and services contact:

Mama Donna's Tea Garden & Healing Haven
PO Box 380403
Exotic Brooklyn, New York, NY 11238-0403
Phone: 718/857-1343
Email: CityShaman@aol.com
www.DonnaHenes.net
www.MamaDonnasSpiritShop.com/
www.TheQueenofMySelf.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Henes

Read her blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/queenmamadonna
http://queenmamadonna.blogspot.com
http://mamadonnahenes.gaia.com/