Meditation: June 4th, 2025
"In the place where thunder meets silence, where lightning kisses the earth, all masks fall away and we remember the fierce tenderness that moves mountains and grows flowers with equal devotion."
Physical Setting & Preparation
Seek a place where you can feel both the power and the vulnerability of early summer—perhaps where strong trees bend with the wind without breaking, or where delicate flowers bloom despite the intensity of full sun. Sit where you can sense contrast: shadow and light, soft earth beneath sturdy stone, the gentleness of a breeze that carries the promise of storms. Let your body find its natural posture, neither rigid nor collapsed, but alert and yielding like a willow that knows how to dance with whatever comes.Today we work with the maturing energies of June's establishment and the emotional currents of fierce intensity and vulnerable openness that flow through us like lightning and rain, each essential to the other.
Opening Invocation | Fosgladh
Màthair na Talmhainn, thoir dhomh misneachd
Mother of Earth, give me courage
Airson a bhith cruaidh agus bog
To be both hard and soft
Airson a bhith làidir agus fosgailte
To be both strong and open
Ann ad ghaol nach gabh a chlaoidh
In your love that cannot be conquered
Place one hand upon your heart, one upon your belly, feeling the places where courage lives in your body. Feel the pulse that has beaten through every moment of tenderness and every act of fierce protection, the same life force that enables both the delicate unfurling of rose petals and the unstoppable growth of oak roots through stone. On this fourth day of June, as summer finds its rhythm between gentle and powerful, we acknowledge the fierce protectiveness that rises when what we love is threatened, and the vulnerable openness that allows love to touch us in the first place.
Body of the Working | Corp
Ann an neart na gaoithe
In the strength of the wind
Ann an caoimhneas na h-uisge
In the gentleness of water
Breathe into this June morning that holds both storm clouds and sunshine, feeling how the air itself carries tension and release, power and peace. Notice how your breath can be both fierce and tender—fierce enough to sustain your life through every challenge, tender enough to whisper prayers to flowers. This is the paradox you embody: you are both warrior and lover, protector and nurturer, storm and calm.
Your fierce emotions are not violence but passion made visible. They are the same force that drives mother birds to defend their nests, that makes flowers push through concrete, that causes mountains to rise from the earth's deep caring. Your fierceness springs from love—love so powerful that it will not allow what is precious to be harmed without response.
Tha mi borb mar a' ghaoth
I am fierce as the wind
Tha mi caoimhneil mar an t-uisge
I am gentle as water
And your vulnerability is not weakness but courage made manifest. To remain open when the world can be harsh, to keep loving when love brings risk, to stay soft in a world that often demands hardness—this is the bravest thing any being can do. Your vulnerable heart is like spring earth after winter—receptive, fertile, ready to receive whatever seeds of beauty want to grow.
Feel how these qualities dance together in nature around you. The fierce summer storm that brings the gentle rain that nourishes tender seedlings. The vulnerable flower that courageously opens its petals to receive both bee and butterfly. The strong tree that grows tall precisely because its roots go deep into dark, soft earth.
The Deep Working | An Obair Dhomhain
Sìos gu ionad mo neart fhìor
Down to the place of my true strength
Far am bi an gàirdean agus a' ghràdh còmhla
Where warrior and love dwell together
Descend now with your awareness into the deep places where your fierceness and vulnerability arise from the same source—the source that the Mother knows as love so vast it encompasses both protection and receptivity, both thunder and dew. Imagine yourself as both the stone that cannot be moved and the water that moves around every obstacle.
See your fierce emotions not as departures from love but as love's most passionate expression. When you feel fierce, you are participating in the same force that makes lionesses defend their cubs, that makes storms clear stagnant air, that drives rivers to carve new paths when old ones become blocked. Your fierceness is love refusing to accept anything less than the flourishing of what matters most.
Tha a' Mhàthair a' teagasg dhomh
The Mother is teaching me
Mar a bhios mi làidir ann am bog
How to be strong in softness
And see your vulnerability not as defenselessness but as the ultimate act of trust in life's essential goodness. When you choose to remain open despite hurt, to keep loving despite loss, to stay tender despite the world's hardness, you participate in the same courage that makes seeds break open in dark soil, trusting that earth will support their growth.
Your vulnerability is your portal to connection, to beauty, to the miraculous. It is through your soft places that wonder enters, that others can touch your heart, that the Divine can reach you. Without vulnerability, you might be safe but you would be alone, protected but never transformed by love.
Tha mi fosgailte mar fhlùr
I am open as a flower
Tha mi dìonta mar charraig
I am protected as rock
Let the Mother's healing flow through this recognition: you do not have to choose between fierce and tender, strong and soft, protected and open. Like her, you can be all of these simultaneously. Your fierce love protects your vulnerable heart. Your vulnerable heart keeps your fierce love from becoming mere aggression. Together, they make you fully human, fully alive, fully capable of both receiving and offering the love that heals the world.
Feel how this integration changes you. You no longer need to armor your tenderness or apologize for your intensity. You can be as fierce as necessary to protect what is sacred and as vulnerable as necessary to receive what is beautiful. This is your birthright, your true nature, your gift to the world.
Afterthought | Smuain Dheiridh
Ciamar a choimhdeas tu
How will you protect
Na h-àiteachan bog nad chridhe?
The soft places in your heart?
Take a moment to contemplate:
What would change in your life if you understood your fierce emotions as expressions of love rather than as problems to be controlled? How might honoring both your capacity for protection and your capacity for openness allow you to love more fully and serve more effectively?
Closing Blessing | Beannachd Dheiridh
Beannachd na feirge naoimh ort
The blessing of holy anger upon you
Beannachd a' chridhe fosgailte
The blessing of the open heart
Gun robh thu mar an teine
May you be like fire
A' dìon agus a' blàthachadh
Protecting and warming
May you carry with you the understanding that your fierce and vulnerable natures are not enemies but allies in the great work of loving this world. May you trust your fierce heart to protect what is precious and your vulnerable heart to receive what is beautiful.
Go both strong and soft, beloved child of Earth. The Mother's love honors all that you are.
Beatha mhath dhut
Good life to you
This is the kind of liturgy that doesn’t just name the sacred—it embodies it.
Your words braid together the fire and the dew, the protector and the bloom. I was especially struck by the line: “Your fierce love protects your vulnerable heart. Your vulnerable heart keeps your fierce love from becoming mere aggression.” That’s the Pentecost I just prayed for—the one that doesn’t burn to impress, but to heal.
I wrote a Prayer for Victory Over the Scourge of Christian Nationalism recently, and your meditation feels like its gentle twin: not just resistance, but deep restoration. Not the hype, but the hum. Not either/or—but warrior and flower.
Thank you for offering a path where strength and softness don’t cancel each other—they consecrate each other.
Virgin Monk Boy