Feminist Beekeeping Friday⠀
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:::Pleasure as Purpose:::⠀
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“There is a sort of bee who moves from flower to flower, sipping nectar from each luscious blossom. Picking up pollen from this bloom, she deposits into that one, circulating pollen everywhere, fertilizing all the plants. As a result, the garden flourishes…⠀
…There is another type of bee who also moves from flower to flower, but does not sip nectar. Rather, she devours the blossom with all her senses: inhaling the fragrance, savoring the taste, absorbing the color. She imbibed the song of joy evoked by sunlight on petals. Back in the hive, she also shares her bounty with the community. As they gather in a circle, each bee dances and expression of the blessing she has gathers: dancing the joy, dancing the splendor, dancing the delight.”⠀
– The Shamanic Way of the Bee⠀
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If we are going to actively choose to move away from the kind of thinking that calls the bee the worker and tends to a hive as though it were a machine, we are going to have to remember pleasure. Not just the pleasure of honey on the tongue, but the unbridled pleasure of sun on skin, hand in water, wind over grass, firelight in eyes. ⠀
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To adopt a different approach to the earth and how we tend to her creatures, we have to reclaim Pleasure. Not the vapid pleasure of screen and consumerism, but true Pleasure. The kind of pleasure that turns your hand trailing in the river into something holy. ⠀
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My brand of feminism sometimes requires the fires of sting, but also exhales into the liquid nature of softening. Softening to our own hearts, and to the hearts of others. Recognizing when the wind is asking to be our mistress.
Dare we give pleasure a place in how we tend to our Eden?⠀
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If you had the ability to melt into a rose, wouldn’t you?⠀