For the tribes of the grand elder women...

So appropriate for this day, Samhain (Sah-win), the day when the veil is thin and the Ancestors lean in to listen:

Hymn of Gratitude, For We Are Pleased by Dangerous Old Women and Their Wild and Wise Daughters.

by CP Estés

For all the elders of the world,

each and every kind ever created,

those who have been carried gently by the waves,

and those who have been half-wrecked

by any number of storms and squalls,

those who have clung to the wreckage long enough

to make it halfway in,

and thence to have gained landfall.

For the elders,

who in all their variegations,

in all their sorrows and talents,

who now stand shy or certain,

semi-disheveled or pulled together,

but nonetheless hip-wide and proud.

For the tribes of the grand elder women,

in all their feathers and pelts,

and all their leaves and skins and skirts,

and all their las ropas guerreras,

their warrior full-dress,

in their wings and sashes and shawls,

with their ceremonial broaches and necklaces,

and staves of authority,

in all their athletic and tender pride,

in all their beaks and tails

and tulle and toile,

all flashing and sashaying,

and all their sauntering and sensuality,

in all their unexpected and outrageous behaviors,

and all their eccentricities,

in all their tribal paint and lace and denim,

in all their clan colors and insignias of power,

all their fierce and gentle blood and shining eyes.

For all their conserving and sacrificing and generous ways,

for their supreme caring

that decency, creative life, and care for the soul

should not vanish from the face of this earth.

For all this blessed beauty within them,

for them let us pray strength and healing,

straight down into their courage bones forever…

…let us be granted that we stand in their danger

… forever

Amen

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