To Honor Animals by Julie Caldwell
To Honor Animals
My home is an altar to animals.
Walls, windowsills, tables, shelves -
every surface holding offerings.
Whales, elephants, iguanas, robins, dragonflies
Spirits made animate in paint and cloth.
I gather found gifts:
sun-bleached shells, iridescent feathers, old nests
from one day, one place, one moment.
Holding these small animal lives
I learn to live among my elders.
Mountain gorillas, antelope, cats, turtles, cranes
carved in stone, wood, bone.
Photographs of family and beloveds,
of moose, leopard, hummingbirds.
These animal relationships – human, more-than-human -
these elder kin
are anchors in my unfolding
are wings in my expansion.
My home, my life, is an altar to animals.
Continue into The Listening Field
This article is part of a larger collective offering from the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries. Visit the main Listening Field page to learn more about the full conversation series and how to engage with this ongoing exploration of listening and relationship with the living world.
→ Return to the main Listening Field page
Julie Caldwell is founder of www.humboldtherbals.com
Julie lives in the Pacific Northwest coastal mountains of Northern California among the ancient Old Growth Redwood Forests and the wild Pacific coastline. For the past 25 years, she has happily cultivated a vibrant retail herbal apothecary, Humboldt Herbals, in Old Town Eureka along Humboldt Bay.
She maintains a private practice devoted to People and Plants, and loves to travel and teach about People and Plant relationships. She is deeply committed to the rights of the Earth and all her beings to flourish and thrive, and deeply aligned with the mission of O.N.E. to amplify communication with Nature Consciousness.
