I’ve significantly filtered my news intake out of a desperate need to sustain my mental and emotional well-being these days. I still read plenty - but I am intentional about the sources and the voices I choose to let in.
Then last week I started reading all the headlines that come through the News app on my phone. I clicked on a few articles and I simply felt impotent. It felt like if I had opened my mouth to respond, nothing by f-words would pour out.
Now don’t get me wrong, I typically have no problem with the f-word. I have found it to be a useful and liberating member of my vocabulary. I often know I can trust someone if they are willing to let an f-word slip now and then. I’ve used the f-word in my prayer life because I know God is not is not as pious as we were all led to believe she is.
But here’s the thing - I chose not to go there because I knew deeply that this time it wouldn’t be helpful. I knew it would stoke a fire that wasn’t fueling me, but charring my joy, peace, clarity and purpose. So I put the phone down.
The next morning I woke up with inspiration. I needed to write! (This connected to a long journey of healing my inner voice, something I’ll write more about one of these days.) I needed to let something flow, but I needed it to be from my essential self, my soul consciousness. I wanted to practice listening and letting something more powerful flow through me. So I put out an offering on Facebook - if you gave me a word or phrase, I would mail you a poem within a week. Even the thought of it was giving me life! Then I waited. In one day, I received 20 requests. I couldn’t wait, and I didn’t have to. I sat down and I let it flow. In one day, I had written 20 poems.
How could I possibly do this? Well, the point was not to create a masterpiece each time. The point was not to publish a book on poetry. The point was the leaning in and the letting flow, trusting that deeper place, and being vulnerable enough to share it with people who were vulnerable enough to share the weighty words they were carrying in their hearts. This was communal prayer.
Anyhow, I wrote the poems, or rather, I let the words arrive. I typed them on my typewriter on individual cards, then I mailed them out. My daughter watched and read some of them. She loved it. All of this was making my soul feel a lightness and expansion that I desperately needed.
Then another response came onto the post. A friend shared the word Peregrinatio. I had to look it up. The definition reads like a poem:
I knew I didn’t have it in me at that moment to write about Peregrinatio. I didn’t judge this feeling, I just felt it. So I waited. Sometime later, I was reading a Rilke poem posted by a friend:
Book of Hours II, 16
by Rainer Maria Rilke
How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing—each stone, blossom, child—is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.
This poem was what Sharon Blackie based the title and theme of her book If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging upon, along with Celtic wisdom. Excited, I commented about that connection. A little while later, the friend posted one of Blackie’s poems….Peregrina. What!? There it was, the poem I couldn’t write but was called to remember. I had read it two years prior to that moment. Excited, I sent it to the friend who had posted Peregrinatio, for they were the same thing!
Peregrina
O mother of the seal end me a wave that is strong and true to carry me from this Age which unbinds me.
I do not need a ship, mother, but make it a buoyant swell to bear me up and float me on the sea’s dreaming then beach me on some lighter shore.
When I land there, give me warp and weft again, and an urchin quill to remind me how the prettiest barb can lodge under your skin and leave you undone.
Only lend me a loom and I will take up the threads of this unraveled life. I will weave a braid from three strands of seaweed I will wind it three times around my finger I will dig my salt-encrusted hands into the soil and wed myself to the thirsty brown roots of a new beginning.
My friend’s response to receiving it was, “This is perfect.”
How was perfection happening? How was any of this happening? I can only say that I trust that there is a voice much greater than my own, calling us all to return to a place where this sacred weaving is the norm, where we begin to expect it.
Well, if you’re brave enough to continue on with me, I’m about to burst the Utopian bubble. I woke up a few days later and was in the kitchen trying to make tea when I saw a fleet of police cars pull up in front of my our house. This is a story that is not fully mine to tell, but I can tell you my experience of it. I watched children from a neighbor’s house huddle together crying. I watched a woman resist arrest and get pinned to the ground by five police men so that she could be restrained. I watched a man also get willingly led away in handcuffs. At this point I was outside. I tried to ask questions of the officers. Some ignored me. One told me they couldn’t share the details with me. No doubt the Black Lives Matter sign in our yard was putting us all on edge. Our neighbors were not white. A sergeant made a decision to come and talk with us. He let us know what we needed to know about what happened to understand who called them and why. I asked hard questions of him about what I had witnessed. I thanked him for the information. I told him that we wanted to be good neighbors. After the fleet left, I spoke with the children who were with a trusted adult sibling. The most important thing was that they were safe and had a plan to remain safe. I gave them my cell number and offered to bring them food or feed their dogs or whatever they needed. I’m also asking myself: How can I stay present even if I don’t have a specific role to play?
It had been a horrible morning. I started thinking How could I possibly sit in my house writing beautiful poems about Love when all of this is happening next door?
But here’s the thing about cultivating that inner knowing - you know when there’s an impostor present. This was not the voice of my essential self. This was the voice of my ego, calling me to compare, and to base my purpose solely on the world’s dysfunction. But wasn’t that why I had needed to write the poems in the first place? Yes. The voice of my soul responded with the truth: How could I not write these poems? The poems were woven into being present with what is and feeling it all.
My work is to stay present and respond from the inner knowing, grounded in the truth of who I am. It’s from that place that I want to show up in the world, interact with my neighbors, and use my voice. My search for God is not the leaving of my homeland. This is the hero’s journey. Blackie’s book called me into the heroine’s journey - entering the cave of myself. That’s where I find God. That’s how I rise up rooted each day, remembering who I truly am, who we all truly are.
It’s from this place that I can say the poems I wrote are magic. I’ve received many lovely responses from their individual recipients, which simply makes me trust the abundance of the flow we are called to step in. It’s a river that runs through the inner homeland of our souls. It’s calling you too. Come home.
Below are the twenty poems plus two more that were added later. Twenty-two poems. Find the one that calls your soul to a place of returning home.
BURN
I heard the sage ask
Why not become fire?
So I became the fire
And I burned the sage.
This was the whole journey.
And now everywhere I am
There is wisdom and smoke.
SELF RESPECT, BOUNDARIES
Listen. I’m about to grow
Into the fullness of myself
I was once taught to abandon.
No longer will there be room
For things that kept me small.
Towers will fall.
They are named
Nice.
Tolerance.
Self-silencing.
Deference.
I assure you
This is the work of Love.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK
A swollen heart.
Pulsing forth into the world
Longing to penetrate.
To be felt and received.
To seduce and reproduce.
To deeply inspire.
All this love-making
Plays out on an ethereal stage.
The playbill reads
GRATITUDE.
REMEMBRANCE
I tore out all the pages
Of a book titled
TREES.
I ripped, arranged,
Assembled.
To resemble.
That of which they speak.
I shredded the words
And wrecked the spaces
Between the lines.
Now I can be present
To a new landscape.
Chaos.
Color.
Texture.
I know what it is to feel deeply.
The title of this piece is
RE-MEMBER.
THERE IS THAT IN US THAT HAS SEEN THE LIGHT
There is that in us that has seen the light.
It was during a dream we had at birth.
When we passed from the space of knowing
To remembering what we know.
We call this The Great Mystery.
But if we are inwardly still
We know.
We know.
We know.
We have not only seen the light.
We are the light.
This is what it means to Be.
Engaged in the work of Love.
CRONE. WISDOM. GARDENER.
The crone walks in her garden at night
For the company of the owls.
Time is a circle, not a straight line.
She plants seeds.
They are prayers
Calling the maiden
Mother
Herself
Into being
And becoming.
Time is a circle, not a straight line.
Wisdom. Magic. Abundance.
The three sisters grow together.
There’s so much to harvest.
Time is a circle, not a straight line.
She is planting herself.
She is harvesting herself.
The owls bear witness.
HEALING
A wise healer once said
Be born again.
So go ahead.
The womb space
Calls you back.
Saying
Be tethered.
Be nourished.
Be held safe.
Be.
Push, kick, twist.
Feel.
Rest.
Grow.
Trust the timing.
You will once again emerge.
GOLDEN WINGS
I saw them silent and wide
Traveling under the moonlight.
I saw them radiant and graceful
Under the mid-day sun.
I felt them in my heart
When I found my inner fire.
Gold is not a color,
It’s a knowing
There is no other,
Only oneness.
The wings are the light.
The sun is the moon.
The day is the night.
There is no you and no me.
The barbed wire
Has become the sky.
RAGE
I am blessed
By the brilliance
Of this fire energy.
Heat.
Smoke.
Burning.
Ashes, ashes.
We all fall down.
The great undoing.
The letting go.
Grief flows.
Tears water the ground.
This is how the phoenix is born.
This is how the world is remade.
WEARY
I grew tired of the world
And its broken promises.
I set out into the wilderness
And came to the borderlands,
Where strength ends and
Weakness begins.
There I found a sage waiting.
I asked her name.
Abundance was her reply.
And she was beautiful.
She teaches the wanderers.
She shows them the truth.
At first they don’t believe her
When she says there is enough.
Faith. Hope. Love.
She doesn’t try to convince them.
She simply gives them
Time. Space. Permission.
The Rest follows.
OF SECURITY AND FREEDOM
If defined by weak power
There is only violence and tension.
In the realm of abundance,
Weak power does not exist.
There is no need to choose.
The essence of both is Love.
The essence of you is Love.
AND THEN, THERE WAS ONLY LOVE
She tore the scriptures from the shelf.
She ripped out the pages.
She set them on fire.
She walked away.
Then the sage appeared.
He looked as if he knew. Her.
He said nothing.
His words were ashes.
Then she felt it.
The story she needed was in her flesh.
And her bones and her own racing heart.
It had always been there.
Then she finally heard it.
When she finally heard her own voice
She was singing.
DEFEATED. WEARY. LONGING.
It feels like a tomb
This womb space.
You are a seed planted.
Drop the weapon.
Close your eyes.
Give in to your desires.
Everything is calling you back home.
Let yourself return.
WORTHY
Such a curious word
Designed by old men
With limited vision.
It’s not a label to assign.
It’s a birthright to be lived.
The daughter of Love.
The red bud knows,.
So she blossoms.
The snake knows,
So she sheds.
The conch shell knows,
So she is formed.
Listen. The inner voice knows.
So she whispers.
You. Here. Now. Be.
INDESCRIBABLE MOTHER LOVE
It feels like the color pink.
It looks like the wind.
It tastes like the sky.
It sounds like the sunrise.
It smells like the moon.
ATTUNED
I am a plumb line.
I am made of stillness.
I am aligned with center.
I am.
CENTERED AND GROUNDED AND STEPPING OUT
The distance between
Prayer and action
Is measured in heartbeats.
The pulse of Love.
Flow.
There is one thing I know.
Love moves toward.
Toward pain.
Toward fear.
Toward despair.
Toward peace.
Toward hope.
Toward joy.
Held by Love
We move toward. Love.
This is how we know
Rock and sky
Are one.
MOCKINGBIRD
What if her medicine
Is the listening
Not the mimicking?
If our voices were echoed back
Would we be afraid
Of what we’d hear?
Her own call is like laughter.
What secret does she know?
Maybe we know it too.
Listen.
SLEEPLESS MOTHERHOOD SOCIETY
The mothers are awake.
Let me tell you why.
They hear the cries in the night.
They feel the cries from the hearts.
The see the cries behind the eyes.
They join the cries in the streets.
They have cried through their own nights.
Have followed tears back to their hearts.
Have learned to honor their truths.
Have created road maps of compassion.
The mothers are awake.
In a circle they have formed
Shining moonlight into the world
Singing at dawn and at dusk.
Birthing a new world.
TRUSTING THE OPEN DOOR
For too long we have been taught
To trust the open door.
Daughter, don’t you know
All doors are open?
We must learn to trust
The inner knowing.
The door has always been an illusion.
It is only the YES that is real.
ANTICIPATION OF A GRANDDAUGHTER DURING A PANDEMIC
Each of us comes into this world with medicine.
The journey that is this life is to find and use it.
We cannot do this without first remembering
Who we are and where we came from.
The ones who have chosen to come at this time
Are bringing their own necessary medicine.
Let her know that you know this is true.
Let your presence guide her to the place of herself.
And may she remember who she is and why -
That she has come from Love and for Love.
This is the medicine that will remake the world.
WITHOUT CEASING
The only way to understand these words
Is to understand what it means to be.
The only way to understand how to be
Is to know that what is truly unceasing
Is the Unconditional Love that holds us all.
__________________________________________
IF YOU HAVE MADE IT TO THE END, I THINK YOU ARE MAGIC!