Wednesday, May 15, 2019

It Begins With a Call (Part 31) - Mind the Gap!


I’m gathering up my courage and going to Deena Metzger's  Writers’ Intensive this year.  Although I have always been (and seen myself as) a writer, it’s the Healers’ Intensive I’ve felt called to three of the last four years.  Until now.  I don’t know why the original call or why the change, but I’m trusting my instincts.  In my experience, things start gearing up well before we get there.  Now, a little over a week before it starts, Deena sent a friend with some health issues the following:

What might spirit want? Why did this potential condition in particular come to you in particular in this particular time in your life and history? What are you dreaming? Might the dreams be speaking to you?  Why this kick in the ass? What might you be called to? What path emerges for you to walk and if you step on it, you can tell Spirit you got the message and the potential illness is unnecessary. “

Such good questions.  I myself have cycled back into some familiar unpleasant symptoms and find this most timely for me as well.  This entire piece, It Begins with a Call, has been me addressing these questions. 

I know Deena would say that what is happening in our bodies is what is happening to the earth. 

Topanga Canyon

Two nights ago I dreamed a lot.  I do not remember any whole dreams, but I remember five very distinct images:
1.    Facing two others, I assume their posture of arms upraised, bent at the elbows, palms out.
2.    Bringing a pomegranate tree in a tub out of a dark storage place.
3.    Bringing cups of tea from a corner shop to my daughter-in-law and her mother.
4.    Arriving on a residential street at night with others and exclaiming, “Oh, we’re mapping the inner landscape!”
5.    Cards with symbols or images on them being placed down in a square form.

These feel significant, and I think they are connected to the intensive, but I’m not clear how.  Fragments.  But gem-like and potent.  What does spirit want? 

I see: the posture of a priestess; Persephone and bringing the pivotal image of the story out into the light; service; laying out the divinatory images.  But what does it mean to map the inner landscape?  How do you do that?

There are gaps in my understanding of what to do, what is needed.  There is this:

Mind the Gap II


Life is full of gaps and holes,
Like a worn-out rag.
There are gaps in my thinking,
gaps in the floor in a recent dream,
gaps in this old house
where the rats squeeze through,
gaps in my understanding.

There are gaps between what I say
And what you hear,
Gaps in my calendar,
Gaps our hands and feelings
Cannot seem to bridge.

There are gaps in the heart,
holes made by departed loved ones.
There are gaps in atoms,
Spaces we cannot see but know are there.

Gaps are not always bad.
They may reveal doorways, openings
To the way out.
Gaps can be minded,
Carefully considered,
Filled, expanded, crossed
Or simply acknowledged