The phrase for today’s image is one of the steps I’m working on in my current novena. I’ve taken it from the Ereshkigal card in The Goddess on Earth Oracle by Lisa Levart.
I took this photo of part of a painting in the dentist’s office. Is it the way in, or the way out?
I usually choose five words or phrases or archetypes or ideas for each novena, for my focus during each decade of the daily rosary. For this novena, I chose five random cards from The Goddess on Earth Oracle, and they flow beautifully from one to the next:
Alligator: Primal Instincts
Ereshkigal: Accept rage and imperfection
Aphrodite: Awaken to Love
Arianrhod: Live Large
Guabancex: Stand in your power
In the center is the Owl: Knowledge, who is also Wisdom and Truth
My friend Eryn said she found her word for the year through bibliomancy, where you open a book, point your finger to a random spot on the page, and that’s your word.
Excited to try it, I opened my new book that I got for Christmas, Sophie Strand’s Madonna Secret, and pointed to. . .frightened. Nope. Try again. I pointed to. . .denying. Nope again. Third try is the charm, they say: Braver. Now I like that one. It feels process-oriented, not Brave, once and done, a state accomplished. But Braver, as in, “Today I can be a little Braver than I was yesterday.” Every day is just a little Braver than the last.
And it answers those first two words. Frightened? In denial? Be a little Braver. You don’t have to be Brave, just a little Braver than you were before.
It seems my New Year dreams are trying to tell me something about living in the space between wildness and domesticity.
At first, I am rescuing four half feral kittens (who all clearly needed vet visits–one was shaking with a tremor) from a basement in which a sinkhole has opened up. I have to actually pull one falling kitten up out of the hole by its tail. (That feels so awful, but I know in the moment that it is the only thing I can do.) Then I have to carry them through a dark confusing city using a GPS that takes me through a hospital emergency room, to get them to a safe place, where it will be my job to get them medical treatment and to tame them so they don’t get into trouble again.
The second dream fragment I remember, I am walking down a hill in a rural area outside of a small village or town, and my friend who has glorious curly red hair is riding her bike up the hill past me. We are passing beautiful community gardens–not separate plots, but cooperatively farmed and tended gardens, with careful rows, and wooden structures, and even some arbors to protect plants that shouldn’t get direct sun. Without stopping her bike my friend calls out, “Hey! Make sure you check out the black fox kits!”
I look down the rows and into the little spaces created at the ends of the rows, but I cann’t find the kits. But as I am looking down one long row, at the end, I see a beautiful vixen, a gray fox, almost coyote, she is so big. She is blinking in the sun, and I see how tentative and timid she is, clearly staying away from the people working down the rows, and yet this is clearly her place too. So while it isn’t friendly interaction between people and fox, it is coexistence in what appears to be a healthy and symbiotic way.
My spiritual path, my inner work, has focused on me breaking out of the boxes of heterodoxy, exploring the wildlands beyond dogma and creed. This dream feels like it’s asking me to protect the ways in which the wildness seeps back into the gardens.
I’m curious that it was two distinct dreams, but joined by the theme of wildness and domesticity, and kits and kittens. The kittens needed to be handled and tamed, and the fox kits needed to stay safely hidden. Maybe my dreams are about discernment.
Today was my day to write for the Way of the Rose Annunciation Novena: THE ANNUNCIATION NOVENA Day 5, Sorrowful Mysteries
There’s something so inexorable about living. One thing happens, and then the next, chain reaction following chain reaction, and one domino topples, so the whole damn line just cascades, one thing after another, until it’s all a pile of rubble on the floor.
You hear the rumble of thunder, lightning strikes the tower, and before you can think what to do, it’s all just tumbling down around you, crumbling to dust and ashes. Sometimes it just feels as if all life does is happen TO you, you know?
And yet, sometimes right there in the pile of debris, among the wreck and the ruins, in the quiet moment when the dust is settling through shafts of light falling all around you, or sometimes it happens in the dew-bright garden when every possibility seems to be in bud, or in the roar of traffic when you are on your way from hither to yon, just trying to keep up: sometimes you can hear the Angel’s voice, asking
“Will you carry the light? Will you carry and share the mystery of seed and egg and birthing star? Will you be the hands and feet of something beyond your current kenning? Will you use your heart, your strength, your cunning, help to make the new thing within you, in the service of Love?”
I keep forgetting that I get to choose, that even between the crazy race and the cascade, even in the dawn garden, even in the rubble, I can choose when and how I participate, how I collaborate with life to co-create a destiny beyond my imagining. No longer is it simply that I am made for this moment, but I make myself for this moment, and for the next, and for the next.
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” —Mary Oliver
“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.” —Barry Lopez
“With every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.” —Rob Bell
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” ―Albert Einstein
“Love will find you, wherever you are. It will seek you out in the most hidden places of your heart. It will search the crowded cities and walk the empty hours after midnight. It will overcome any obstacle placed before it, even those you create for yourself, to find you and to bring you its gift. No matter how far from love you feel you have drifted, it will never give up on you. Love is the Spirit, watchful and persistent, enduring and forgiving, the steady presence of a reassurance that will keep you safe whatever chance may bring you. If you are a believer, then believe this: love will always find you.” —Steven Charleston
“I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.” ―Rumi
“How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world.
Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we talk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them.” ―David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
In the Sufi way of seeing it, longing is a divine inclination, drawing us towards the Beloved. Just as lover and beloved long to be in each other’s arms, so too is it between us and the life which is meant for us. Like a plant growing towards the sun, longing is nature inclining us towards the light we need in order to be fruitful. But also, as Rumi writes, “that which you seek is seeking you.” So longing is not only the quality of seeking reunion, but the sound of something in search of us: the calling homeward.” —Toko-pa Turner
“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky.” —Kahlil Gibran
“I believe dignity emerges in the way you finally carry your own story. Through your painstaking reframes to write yourself as the heroine of your own life, your losses cease to consume you. They are not forgotten or made invisible, but rather aggrandised in your telling, eventually passed down through the line of mothers and daughters as the mythical ‘obstacles to flight’ that they were. But dignity also lives in one’s willingness to step wholly into a new life of love, even as its first strands are being woven together to create a shape that will warm you.” ―Toko-pa Turner
Sunday Morning Prayer
hope like a seed buried deep within the earth; hidden covered by layers, disappointment, struggle, pain; buried yet stretching, growing and becoming. hope like a seed becoming new life.
Today is the last day of November’s Poem-a-Day. As always at this point, I am ready to be free of the daily discipline of poeming for a little while. And today was long, filled with beauty and good family time celebrating the life of my Aunt Gloria, and many hours on the road. So I’m happy to finish the poem process today.
Tomorrow, however, I will begin a new series, suggested by the Advent materials we received at church last week. Every day for the next 25, we have been given a word (one each day) to meditate on and to illustrate with a photograph. So I might post some or all of those here.
Here is today’s poem: First Lesson of Poeming by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Grasp the idea, I mean the corncob, firmly, but not so firmly that you harm the tender kernels inside, and pull it firmly, but ever so gently, downward and away from the stalk.
Holding it in your palm like the golden treasure it is, begin to pull away the layers of husk. Some people tear the husk down in two or three neat strokes, but you should take your time, noticing the way the tough and weathered outer husk gives way to tender green beneath, the way the silk shifts with each layer you remove, the grass-sweet corn smell released, and finally, the rows of sweet kernels, golden and waiting.
Gratitude List: 1. Cousins and aunts and uncles 2. Aunt Gloria’s wise words: “Go with the flow.” 3. Cousin Karen’s wise words: “Stay curious.” 4. Traveling with my parents to the Shenandoah Valley, on a golden day. 5. Cherry Delight May we walk in Beauty!
“I don’t always feel like I belong, or like I understand the unwritten rules of certain groups, even though I think I am a pretty good observer of human nature. So when I am in a group whose rules accept everyone’s awkwardness and oddness unconditionally, which loves each one not in spite of our oddities, but because of them, then I feel safe. Then I feel belonging. I am especially grateful to those of you who know how to extend unconditional welcome in ways that make everyone believe they belong.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. Our primary need for the various life forms of the planet is a psychic, rather than a physical, need.” —Thomas Berry
“All through your life, the most precious experiences seemed to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.” —John O’Donohue
“The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don’t encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.” —Pema Chodrun, From her book Becoming Bodhisattvas
“Quiet the mind enough so it is the heart that gives the prayer.” —Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” —Martin Luther King Jr.
“People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Creative acts of social justice constitute life’s highest performance art.” —Rebecca Alban Hoffberger
“If you will, you can become all flame.” —Abba Joseph
“Become all shadow. Become all light.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider
“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.” —Audre Lorde
“The first duty of love is to listen.” —Paul Tillich
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.” —Paul Tillich
“When you go to your place of prayer, don’t try to think too much or manufacture feelings or sensations. Don’t worry about what words you should say or what posture you should take. It’s not about you or what you do. Simply allow Love to look at you—and trust what God sees! God just keeps looking at you and loving you center to center. ” —Richard Rohr
“People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.” —Shakespeare, The Tempest
Today’s poem is a grounding liturgy. Reading David Steindl-Rast’s little poem “May You Grow Still” the other day, I felt myself returning to my morning’s grounding, growing still, finding center. I’ve begun using those beginning words in my own daily grounding.
Grounding by Beth Weaver-Kreider (after David Steindl-Rast)
Draw in a long slow breath. Pause. Slowly release your breath.
May you grow still enough to feel the Earth beneath you call forth your roots to burrow deep.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May you grow still enough to feel your roots push through soil through mycelium past bones and underwater rivers.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May you grow stiller yet and feel the pulsing starfire at the center of the Earth.
Draw in another breath and pause. Release your breath and listen:
May your stillness bring home to her heart where you feel your roots absorb her fierce and tender fire.
Breathe in and listen.
May you feel that fire rising into your roots, drawing courage into the seat of your being, drawing love into the center of your being, drawing truth into the crown of your being.
Breathing in and out.
Feel the energy of Earth’s fire fill you to your branches and burst from the crown of your head, sparkling above you and around you like a thousand thousand stars. Feel the life force pulsing through you.
Breathe, and breathe, and breathe.
“Healing comes in waves and maybe today the wave hits the rocks. And that’s ok, that’s ok, darling. You are still healing, you are still healing.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo ***** “I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, A Left-Handed Commencement Address (Mills College, 1983) ***** “No matter where we are, the ground between us will always be sacred ground.“ —Fr. Henri Nouwen ***** “The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.” —Gretel Ehrlich ***** “The fact that these words and the jumble of lines that create their letters has no real, inherent meaning outside of a human context, yet they hum with life, is a wonderful reminder that what we imagine can easily become real and powerful simply because we decide it should be so.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist ***** “Writing at the library. Surrounded by thousands of books, windows into other minds. Some of these writers are living. Some are not. Neatly ordered rectangles of concentrated human life and intellect. A book is certainly a kind of ghost and libraries are pleasantly haunted places.” —Jarod K. Anderson, The Cryptonaturalist ***** “The beauty of the world…has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf ***** I know nothing, except what everyone knows — If there when Grace dances, I should dance. —W.H. Auden ***** “I do believe in an everyday sort of magic—the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.” —Charles de Lint ***** “The innocence of our childhood lives on, in each one of us, no matter how old or battered we may be. Still that original goodness, that simple goodness, remains within us. Our best nature never grows old. What the Spirit first intended us to be is still there, peeping out from wrinkled eyes, caught in a quick glance in the mirror: the laughing, shining, curious child who lives again. And again and again. For we are made of the intention of heaven, a part of the perfect life at the center of all creation. Watch for your inner self, the ageless soul, and see it smiling back at you, like a little child caught beside the cookie jar.” —Steven Charleston
Even as I celebrate a deeply enriching and inspiring day of conversation and play and good food with my family, I want to also acknowledge that today is a Day of Mourning for Native Nations. The link in the previous sentence will take you to a MCUSA page with brief descriptions of some of the November massacres by US forces against Native communities that took place in the late 1800s, along with some resources for ways to educate ourselves and our communities, and to respond in helpful ways.
I tried coaxing a collaborative poem out of some of my family members gathered around a puzzle this afternoon, but we had trouble keeping focused enough to finish a thought, so my nibling Keri suggested we do an acrostic. The Old Woman of Winter had made an appearance in the first attempt, so I wrote CRONE OF WINTER down the side of the page and asked them to give me words or phrases beginning with the letters. We ended up sticking to words, and this is what happened, and I like it.
Gratitude List: 1. The thoughtful and wise and tender and hilarious conversations around the table and the puzzle and the living room today. It appears that perhaps the members of the family with the strongest executive functioning skills are under the age of 22. 2. Pie. So much pie. 3. The Turkey Trot! I walked a lot more of this one, but came within a minute of my PR last spring at the Race Against Racism. 4. Bald Eagle flying over Codorus Creek 5. The healing properties of laughter May we walk in Beauty!
“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’” —Parker Palmer
Solace is your job now.” —Jan Richardson
“I have noticed when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling ~ their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights, then I start thinking about projects, demands, deadlines, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.” —Jeanette Winterson
Joy Harjo: “When I woke up from a forty-year sleep, it was by a song. I could hear the drums in the village. I felt the sweat of ancestors in each palm. The singers were singing the world into place, even as it continued to fall apart. They were making songs to turn hatred into love.”
“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” ―Meridel Le Sueur
“I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.” ―Madeleine L’Engle
“Alas, the webs are torn down, the spinners stomped out. But the forest smiles. Deep in her nooks and crevices she feels the spinners and the harmony of their web. We will dream our way to them …
…Carefully, we feel our way through the folds of darkness. Since our right and left eyes are virtually useless, other senses become our eyes. The roll of a pebble, the breath of dew-cooled pines, a startled flutter in a nearby bush magnify the vast silence of the forest. Wind and stream are the murmering current of time, taking us back to where poetry is sung and danced and lived. … In the distance a fire flickers – not running wild, but contained, like a candle. The spinners.” —Marylou Awiakta, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom
“Do it right, because you only got one time to walk this earth. Make it good, make it a good thing.” —Grandmother Agnes “Taowhywee” (Morning Star) Baker Pilgrim (1924-2019)
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” —Robert Frost
“I believe war is a weapon of persons with personal power, that is to say, the power to reason, the power to persuade, from a position of morality and integrity ; and that to go to war with an enemy who is weaker than you is to admit you possess no resources within yourself to bring to bear on your fated.” —Alice Walker
“The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in our selves.” —Cassius, from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
“Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the River.” —Proverb
“Perhaps too much sanity may be madness.” —from ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes
I’ve been feeling like it’s been a good month, poetry-wise, this time around. I am often more consistently disappointed and uninspired by the output of a poem-a-day. I do this not because I think I will end up with thirty excellent poems, but in the hopes that I’ll get one or two that satisfy me. Ray Bradbury suggests that you write a short story every week for a year, because it’s impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row, and I think it’s impossible to write thirty bad poems in a row. This month has given me more than one that I like so far. Today’s is lacking in energy, but I might revisit the theme again and rewrite it.
Now Is the Time by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Now is the time for web-building, nest-making, mycelial connection.
Now is the time for shoring up our courage, for remembering who we are, and why we’re here.
Now is the time for listening, for receiving our names, for calling in the ancestors for dreaming ourselves into the dream.
Now the time we were made for, the time to enter all the tales we learned in every book we’ve read, where brave children enter the wood, and uncertain heroes take up the quest.
Good advice from my friend Barb: “Find and wear your orange hat honey. There are 750,000 deer hunters in the yard today.”
“You have done infinitely more good than you can imagine. You may not be a worker of miracles, but you are a worker of compassion. Your kindness is reflexive. You instinctively want to help others in need. Like a first responder: you have the stamina it takes to help someone and it shows up throughout the story of your life. You have done more good than you know.” —Steven Charleston
This year I do not want The dark to leave me. I need its wrap Of silent stillness, Its cloak Of long lasting embrace. Too much light Has pulled me away from the chamber of gestation. Let the dawns Come late, Let the sunsets Arrive early, Let the evenings Extend themselves While I lean into The abyss of my being. Let me lie in the cave Of my soul, For too much light Blinds me, Steals the source Of revelation. Let me seek solace In the empty places Of winter’s passage, Those vast dark nights That never fail to shelter me. -Joyce Rupp
“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.” —M. C. Escher
Blessing for the Visitor by Beth Weaver-Kreider
May you who wander, who sojourn, who travel, may you who make your way to our door find rest for your tired feet and weary heart, food to fill your bellies and to nourish your minds, and company to bring you cheer and inspiration. May you find comfort for your sorrows, belonging to ease your loneliness, and laughter to bring you alive.
And when your feet find themselves again upon the road, may they remember the way back to our door.
“A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a seed is bringing back this memory-this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the creative universe. There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom of the seed.” —Vandana Shiva
“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern
I was back at school today after a day off for this bad cold. My head still feels like it’s full of rocks. So the poem today was slightly lower effort. In a little break today, I went through the first few chapters of The Scarlet Letter and pulled out words and phrases that seemed to go together in order to create a found poem.
I think I’m going to have to come back to this again and see what possibilities arise. I’m actually more pleased with these results than I expected to be.
At the Gallows a poem found in The Scarlet Letter by Beth Weaver-Kreider
I. a throng of bearded men heavily timbered founders of a new Utopia on one side of the portal kept alive in history under the footsteps of our narrative
II. on a certain summer morning in that early severity that witch was to die upon the gallows
on the summer morning the women appeared to take a peculiar interest they were her countrywomen
III. make way, good people, make way open a passage iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine the spectacle of guilt and shame woman, transgress not beyond the limits of heaven’s mercy on this wild outskirt of earth art thou not afraid
IV. her sin the roots which she had struck into the soil the chain that bound her here could never be broken her shame that all nature knew
V. a torch kindles a name destiny had drawn a circle about her witchcraft gathered about her the sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue
VI. the fallen woman had been on her pedestal of shame possessing the lock and key of her silence
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” —Nelson Mandela ***** For a day, just for one day, Talk about that which disturbs no one And bring some peace into your beautiful eyes. —Hafiz ***** “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” —Doris Lessing ***** “Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.” —proverb ***** “All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun’s light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.” —Rumi ***** The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn’t ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know. —Elizabeth Coatsworth ***** “. . .fairies’ gold, they say, is like love or knowledge—or a good story. It’s most valuable when it’s shared.” —Heather Forest, The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies ***** “Sacred is another word for energy. Some physical spaces are sacred because they vibrate with the energy of the Spirit. Some rituals are sacred because they connect infinite energy with finite creation. Some memories are sacred because they transmit the energy of those who are now our ancestors. Some visions are sacred because they are the energy of hope, transforming our lives, right before our eyes.” —Steven Charleston
Hold a lit flame in the palm of your hand Quanesha, Strawberry, Honee Kassim, Redd, Vanity Tai’Vion, Dylan, Monique, Pauly listen as the silence gathers wings around you Kenji, Shannon, River Neveah Liara, Jazlynn, Yella, Africa Michelle, Tayy Dior, Reyna their faces like wisps of smoke and mist looking over our shoulders Kita, Andrea Doria, Kitty Sasha, Starr, Meraxes, Chevy Diamond, Alex, Tee These are just the names we know of those who lost their lives this year to violence.
Hold your flames high and give them light, let light shine into their memories, let light pour through the scrim of their stories that we may hear again their voices. We have a right to be here. We have a right to exist as ourselves.
Hold your flames higher still, for their number is greater than thirty. Hosts of beloved ones join our circle, lives lost not at the hands of another, but at the hands of society, at the bitter end of despair, caught in the crosshairs of some preacher’s sanctimonious condemnation, some politician’s pandering to the puritans, some school board member’s unctuous dissembling.
Rise up like smoke, they tell us, their voices like ashes caught in the arms of autumn wind, spilling into our circles. Stand up, step forward, speak out, so that the ones who come after us may live.
Gratitude List: 1. Pileated woodpecker, towhee, shadow of vulture 2. The white breast of the yellow-throat catching the afternoon sun among the red leaves of the Japanese maple 3. Beginning to feel good again after feeling rotten 4. Cinnamon tea 5. How hearts reach out. Can you feel it? May we walk in Beauty!
“Here is what the elders call a starting point. If we seek to welcome people into community, then mutual respect must be our foundational practice. We commit ourselves to respect the dignity of every human being. It does not mean agree, authorize or approve. It does mean treat others as we would have them treat us. Respect is the gate we open to all those looking for a place to belong.” —Steven Charleston
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” -Oscar Wilde
“Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh
“…when women speak truly they speak subversively–they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert. We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains. That’s what I want–to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you–I want to hear you.” —Ursula Le Guin
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser
“Oh to meet, however briefly, the greatness that lives under our surface. To summon enough bravery to be without armour and strategy, for the chance at meeting that irreducible power. Oh to make of our terrified hearts a prayer of surrender to the God of Love; that we remain safe in our quivering ache to be near that Otherness, even for a moment. To touch that ancient life who will never relinquish its wilderness, who lets instinct make its choices, whose knowing lives in bones and whose song is a wayfinder.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.” ―Parker J. Palmer
“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” ―Emily Dickinson
“One of my favourite teachings by Martín Prechtel is that ‘violence is an inability with grief.’ In other words, it takes skillfulness to grieve well, to grieve wholeheartedly. It requires us to bravely, nakedly come to face all that is lost, keeping our hearts open to loving just as fully again. “When we make war, lashing out in rage and revenge, it is because we are unwilling to make this full encounter with grief. It is easy to enact the same violence which has taken so much from us―including towards ourselves―but the greater work is to let that which is missing enlarge your life; to make beauty from your brokenness. “Whatever you hold in the cauldron of your intention is your offering to the divine. The quality of assistance you can generate and receive from the Holy is governed by the quality of your inner offering. When you indulge in fear and doubt, you are flooding the arena where love is attempting to work.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh
“An awake heart is like a sky that pours light.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant
It’s been a busy day. Here’s a quick poem that expresses some of the conversations I’ve had.
Regulating by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Don’t tell me how to feel.
Don’t tell me how to get over this. No, wait. Tell me how to get over this.
Tell me how to feel and still keep my spine straight.
How do I herd the twining snakes of my central nervous system into their regulated rhythm while allowing the wild horses of my feelings free range to thunder over the plains of my heart?
“Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.” —Marshall B. Rosenberg
“Our original instructions are to listen to the cloud floating by and the wind blowing by. That’s poetry and prose in English, but it is wakahan in the Lakotan language. It means to consciously apply mystery to everything. Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.” —Lakota elder Tiokasin Ghosthorse
“We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious.” —Louise Erdrich
James Baldwin: “To be sensual is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” —Samwise Gamgee
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” —Miles Davis
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” —Frida Kahlo
A little story by Amrita Nadi: At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?” The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.” Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he added, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back. . .but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”
“There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.” —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life
“Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.” —Mary Oliver, What Do We Know
Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together, that overwhelm the world. —Desmond Tutu
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” —Jeannette Rankin
When we see the Beloved in each person, it’s like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. —Ram Dass
“You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises. I’m not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, “Be yourself,” I don’t mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage. When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the self that says “Thank you!” to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. I mean the rebel creator who’s longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. I mean the dissident bodhisattva who’s joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment. When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who’s scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.” —Rob Brezsny
“The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ―Brother David Steindl-Rast
Mockingbird Chronicles 