I journey fairly often
into the underworld these days,
To learn how to see in the dark,
Because you can see things there
that you can’t see in the light.
I go so I can remember all of what I find there, and still see it in the topside world.
I go to learn how not to be afraid of the creatures who come there as baby predators –
fox, wolf, fisher, eagle, rattlesnake.
Like Inanna, I go to learn that I can lose everything over and over,
Be stripped down, and still have it all.
So that I and we could be whole,
No part left out.
Nothing to prove.
I want to spend more of my life dancing,
And speaking in the language of my hands.
I want to spend more of my life writing
about the things that matter to me, to all of us- whether we know it yet or not.
I want the beauty I make everyday as an act of grace to be enough.
Enough to remake this world,
Enough to start a revolution based in Beauty.
I want to spend my life - these remaining years - inhabiting the woman I am,
Who I came here to be, Fearlessly.
Living Life as a ceremony,
As the “Chosen, Chooser and the Choosing”,
Of this miracle, this grand trickery, this perfect imperfection that it is to be here -
As we who are continually re-membering ourselves from the Forgetting,
from believing & trying to be something we are not.
Until we surrender to what we are.
My ancestors come to me these days as a yantra of light and color,
Mirrored hallways leading the way back Home.
They come to me as mudras,
and as code syllables I am working to re-member clumsily with my tongue
so that it will hit the right synapses to make the magic work again.
My teachers are a beautiful old woman and a beautiful old man.
A mother, a father. A grandmother, a grandfather - whom I met as a maiden -
Generous enough to share the “inner meanings” of the words with me.
My ancestors come to me as the Earth and the trees,
and the birds on the branches, the mosses and mycelium underfoot.
My ancestors come to me, to all of us,
as this eternal dance of planets.
This story so big we forget that our life is just one small movement -
a flip of the wrist.
This: a year of breaking apart at all the seams.
Of having my greatest fears come true:
The end of dreams, The end of illusions.
The end of holding onto something that didn’t work,
that perhaps barely ever did.
Of surrendering pain as an identity.
Of coming to terms with my own brokenness -
not as something to fix, but as a place to begin gently unfolding.
Ache another teacher who reminds me not to forget -
Unfurling itself as a seed caught in the crook of a precarious ledge
growing into a small banyan tree.
My wound is that resting place for the seed,
The seed is my ancestors’ prayer -
To be whole and to know love’s promise in this lifetime.
To grow in order to spill out yet more fruit and then seeds -
That might take root in other courageous rocky places,
In our shared landscape of Being.
As the sun returns slowly, I say that
I am happy with the darkness,
I don’t want it to end too quickly,
I need to learn to see so well in the dark
That I can find my way on moonless nights inside and outside
of the caves of my own mind.
Back home to where they've always been waiting for me
To make the offerings, sing the songs,
Do the small things that need to be done,
To sustain life for another circle dance around the Sun.
into the underworld these days,
To learn how to see in the dark,
Because you can see things there
that you can’t see in the light.
I go so I can remember all of what I find there, and still see it in the topside world.
I go to learn how not to be afraid of the creatures who come there as baby predators –
fox, wolf, fisher, eagle, rattlesnake.
Like Inanna, I go to learn that I can lose everything over and over,
Be stripped down, and still have it all.
So that I and we could be whole,
No part left out.
Nothing to prove.
I want to spend more of my life dancing,
And speaking in the language of my hands.
I want to spend more of my life writing
about the things that matter to me, to all of us- whether we know it yet or not.
I want the beauty I make everyday as an act of grace to be enough.
Enough to remake this world,
Enough to start a revolution based in Beauty.
I want to spend my life - these remaining years - inhabiting the woman I am,
Who I came here to be, Fearlessly.
Living Life as a ceremony,
As the “Chosen, Chooser and the Choosing”,
Of this miracle, this grand trickery, this perfect imperfection that it is to be here -
As we who are continually re-membering ourselves from the Forgetting,
from believing & trying to be something we are not.
Until we surrender to what we are.
My ancestors come to me these days as a yantra of light and color,
Mirrored hallways leading the way back Home.
They come to me as mudras,
and as code syllables I am working to re-member clumsily with my tongue
so that it will hit the right synapses to make the magic work again.
My teachers are a beautiful old woman and a beautiful old man.
A mother, a father. A grandmother, a grandfather - whom I met as a maiden -
Generous enough to share the “inner meanings” of the words with me.
My ancestors come to me as the Earth and the trees,
and the birds on the branches, the mosses and mycelium underfoot.
My ancestors come to me, to all of us,
as this eternal dance of planets.
This story so big we forget that our life is just one small movement -
a flip of the wrist.
This: a year of breaking apart at all the seams.
Of having my greatest fears come true:
The end of dreams, The end of illusions.
The end of holding onto something that didn’t work,
that perhaps barely ever did.
Of surrendering pain as an identity.
Of coming to terms with my own brokenness -
not as something to fix, but as a place to begin gently unfolding.
Ache another teacher who reminds me not to forget -
Unfurling itself as a seed caught in the crook of a precarious ledge
growing into a small banyan tree.
My wound is that resting place for the seed,
The seed is my ancestors’ prayer -
To be whole and to know love’s promise in this lifetime.
To grow in order to spill out yet more fruit and then seeds -
That might take root in other courageous rocky places,
In our shared landscape of Being.
As the sun returns slowly, I say that
I am happy with the darkness,
I don’t want it to end too quickly,
I need to learn to see so well in the dark
That I can find my way on moonless nights inside and outside
of the caves of my own mind.
Back home to where they've always been waiting for me
To make the offerings, sing the songs,
Do the small things that need to be done,
To sustain life for another circle dance around the Sun.