Threads

A beautiful essay was written by Christy Croft that I share here: Intellectual Curiosity as Holy Devotion.

The author touches on many themes that resonate with me; she and I share a similar path. As she writes about how to embrace the tension of opposites, she states evocatively that

I’m still learning how to knit these threads. Sometimes, I do so with the tight, precise stitches of academic study and critical reflection; other times I do so with the loosest of weaves, dancing between theology, personal narrative, myth, metaphysics, and ecstatic mysticism in my everyday language as if there were no divisions, no binding categories of speech or cognition. It’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress.

Hummingbird

From Ms. Emily ~ a Poetry Portal …

I taste a liquor never brewed — 

From Tankards scooped in Pearl — 

Not all the Vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an Alcohol!

 

Inebriate of Air — am I — 

And Debauchee of Dew — 

Reeling — thro endless summer days — 

From inns of Molten Blue —

 

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee

Out of the Foxglove’s door — 

When Butterflies — renounce their “drams” — 

I shall but drink the more!

 

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats — 

And Saints — to windows run — 

To see the little Tippler

Leaning against the — Sun —  

 

~ Emily Dickinson (#214 Johnson)

 

——————-and here is where I’m led …

Falling

{ You can listen to my recitation of this piece at Podbean – Falling }

Writing flow from down below that rises to the top like cream from the heart of life as dream, and into the flow we tend to go yet try to swim instead of float, allow ourselves to be the boat that is the bobbing star of splendor on the gentle waters and we wonder: here we go, up like a geyser then fall like rain, up and out, then down again.

The sleep of heavy tired lids on a pot that’s full and overcooked—skim the burn off the top and let the cream of sweetness dream into the moment stillness calling, then we are once more falling into the space of a moment’s grace that holds us all … to pause. Read the tea leaves of the morning and their message is a warning to go among the rocks and breathe their ancient calm … receive.

Hear the sighs of plants around, from high above us into the ground telling of their wisdom reaching far into the heart of what we’re seeking. The listening is what comes mysterious unto the pause. Gifts of healing from the plants and stones and all the energetic tomes unwritten in the human hand but held like dreams within the land as closing our eyes we hear and see the healing of our own mystery that we mistook for penitence is really the whole gift of innocence strung along with beads and feathers, a shaman’s touch, a priestess calls, a heart no more alone … falls.

Among my vision without sight is balance of the dark and light into the chants of ancient voice I hear the gift of truth and choice. We think so much we drown the sound of whispered magic earth caves lush along the squishy forest path where roots abound and fairies laugh.

We think they’re false because we’re blind when all we have to do is find the strength to pull the cloth from off our eyes and there! See! A great surprise! Within the space is twinkling light vibrating on the sacred night, entwined like lovers ever true, the gift of you! Play the flute and call the wind, for here we are upon a land that blesses us with heaven’s gate and all we are is in our own fated ways of journey, travel, hear and see the beauty, love and majesty of all diversity.

Falling off the edge of sleeping where the hawk soars and the bear snores and the cougar stealthy creeps along the very edge of the shores and woods at timberline between reality and the world divine unseen except by those who fly between so easily with their colored skins of rainbow trout and acorn hats that dance about and bring the rain and tumbled stones that soothe the pain of those alone who cannot see or hear.

Rivers flow all around and we can see them, where they’re bound to send us dancing to and fro, a journey where we cannot know. Upon the land is my heart beating, thumping, pause and pound, here is where I’m happily bound, not to go some other place, or transcend away from Gaia’s Grace.

Here, now, present, free, the land is you and me … Unity.

The Pause

The Pause is where I am most at home. This is where we dream our lives into existence, where we gather the tails of all those monkeys that have escaped and swing wildly from jungle vines, chattering incessantly. Breathe. This is where we bring to union the protocols of driving forces and the winsome willows of eternity that don’t fit into a golden egg coveted by society. The Pause comes in many forms and at different times and though seems to be a waste to some is also the bravest embrace we will ever offer to Self and others. Presence. Courage. Gratitude. Truth. Compassion. All are born within the Pause that all life inhales and exhales … the ether that is the background of joy and was never meant to be restricted to the examination of rules and chains and leashes that prohibit freedom of flow from liquid implement that holds the heart in union with mind. Set aside rigidity and control in some areas; set free the ability to read and write without precise form and the flowers will transform, will become more than we can imagine as new creations emerge in a continual cascade of Soul.

A Song of Mountain Currents

All the faces waking up are opening mouths and pouring forth the voices of Truth. Each one’s truth is a little different as they see through their unique nature and not through a group lens. Like the eye of the hawk, they see clearly and pour out their hearts and truth in beauty unparalleled and incomparable. No comparison!

On swift wings they dive and soar, their speed impressive as they quickly discern where nourishment is full or false. We sing them down from the sky to give them our voice, our message and they take it with them up high once more. The sound of the air through their wings sets the song free upon the currents that wrap the entire world in an embrace of breathing. We all breathe in each others songs and voices and truth, and the resulting score is a symphonic masterpiece, fresh and new each time. We share our songs until the universe is resounding in harmonic cords that have never been heard before!

From the spring on the mountain top gushes forth in scintillating silver the voices of every droplet of moisture that has collected within the wells of wisdom and we are jubilant in Her abundance. Song explodes around us and from within Her core we know our One Soul, our joined Spirit that unifies this planet into a beautiful biosphere. We see and hear and voice the truth of individuality and same — the song of dichotomy that makes no sense but is perfectly at home in our hearts.

When I remember to open my mouth, to set free the voice I hear, and record its shapes and symbols, I am at peace. Creative expression frees the soul and reveals what I need to do. “I know where I’m going” because I’m happy right here and now. Truth and love are settled in each others arms, cradled in my heart, and they sing me to sleep as I rock them gently within the mountain currents.

Integrate

I don’t want to transcend anything.

I want to integrate everything.

~ Judith Hanson Lasater

Darkness

The presence of the Goddess is echoed above and below and within. She does not hide Her face for all facets are beauty. Even in the dark moments where She is storming against the toxins within her system or the changes we are trying to make to conform her to what we think She should be or look like, She does not deny the chaos from out of which new life grows and transforms.

I hear Her voice echoed above and lift my eyes, my gaze, to see Her there, whether dark clouds or sunny skies. I like to imagine that I am complete when I embrace my dark moments, too.

For we all experience them and either acknowledge them or live in denial that we ever have dark thoughts/moments. Well, maybe some people who are finally far enough along their path no longer experience the darkness in themselves but still they must live amidst those of us who still do. And if we are embarrassed or ashamed of our darkness, where does that leave us in communing with the rest of the world? Do we fear and hate and try to hide the darkness of the manifest world or do we bring it into the light to be healed? When we hide our dark moments from our loved ones out of fear or shame, or perhaps not wanting them to feel our pain, are we not burying a part of them as well and telling them they should hide their dark moments from us? Is not our ‘hiding’ of that part of self a fester that will continue to spread beneath our outer persona like a fungus, touching all our cells and reverberating out into the world like a compression wave of disgrace? Where its tone is echoed above and below and shocks through the people around us like sonar? It seems that for every part of ourselves that is denied or hidden, there is one more stain upon the outer culture skin, spreading like a virus or multiplying like spores that are breathed in and out until we are all infected and re-infected.

We exist in form in duality–this is an illusion of who we really are in Spirit, but it IS the existence of us here and now in the world. Is it not wiser to feel the darkness and then embrace it? Transform it through loving acceptance? Just as we are transformed when we open to the Divine Feminine in all Her glory as she rains and storms, becomes tornado or quake or wildfire?

She is not angry, she is simply doing what is necessary to transform Herself into wholeness. Now, one could think that she is no different than the armies who kill all those who are ‘different’ because of the ‘cleansing’ but it is far and away not the same, not even close, for she feels no hatred or arrogance or disgust–those are human feelings and emotions from the aberrance of separative illusion–and she is simply cleaning house, compassionate toward the losses perhaps but knowing the wisdom of loving the whole first. There is great distance between the destruction of humans and the transformation of Gaia.

And is that where we still have so much to learn? That the whole is more vital than the one? To know that when I am in darkness, the light will always come but it is not ‘better’ than the dark, only different but necessary. There is a certain detachment from these dualities when we find peace in them, perhaps. The dark is not bad, it simply is … no shame in the feeling of it … and when we accept this then the contentment with past and present are echoed above and below and everywhere. To experience the darkness without attaching to it, without denying it or hiding it, allows it to exist in peace and move on just as night turns to day and then back to night. “This too shall pass.”

The concept of detachment does not mean lack of love or compassion, and it does not mean inaction, it means that we can experience a solid or flowing background of peace as we see dark and light come and go as the energies that they are, knowing our power and our limitations as well. In fact, peace–Sattva–is neither light or dark, it is an energy beyond duality that allows us to evolve here and now, not out there, or when we die or when everyone is finally “perfect.”

I feel that the dark moments might in some ways be the most precious from a holistic embrace of my whole self for it is during those times, in hindsight, that grace dances in and partners with the shadows for incredible transformation.

Why so much shame around our darkest moments? Like they aren’t part of us? Like the darkness is not the ‘real’ us? My journals reveal all aspects of myself … from creative to soul-searching to daily angst or joy, to contemplative to pure imagination. Funny, I used to keep the writing separate with a book for this and one for that and now they just all flow together as the complicated messy me that I love — I am the finger painting of a child and the dark storm on the horizon and the Monet and Gaia’s precious gift to Herself.

_____________

This piece was the result of several energies pouring into me … one was the ClarityWorks Online daily writing prompt of “echoed above” holding hands with recent comments about our ‘dark moments’ not being our ‘real’ selves and all swirling in the body-soul of where I was in that particular moment.