I've finally migrated my blog over to Substack; it allows subscribers, which Blogger no longer does. You can find my posts at Hanging Out with Hecate.
Thanks for stopping by.
I've finally migrated my blog over to Substack; it allows subscribers, which Blogger no longer does. You can find my posts at Hanging Out with Hecate.
Thanks for stopping by.
We were fortunate to be able to bring Rumi's Caravan to two places this month, Berkeley and Redding. Soul nourishing for us, and hopefully for the audiences. We had our largest audience ever in Berkeley, and stayed with good friends in Redding, so both were wonderful.
This little poem arrived after we returned home.
When the caravan leaves,
all that remains are the story
and some leftover poems.
We sit around the lavish breakfast table
and tell the story, intone the orphan poems,
feast, laugh, and bask in the memories.
The tent is packed up and stowed away,
the instruments are in their cases,
the lavish garments folded and stored,
but the afterglow of good company and good words
lingers, as everyone departs for home
or the next oasis.
Photo by Larry Robinson, set by Larry Robinson and Rebecca Evert
SoulCollage® card - The Woman of the Woods
She instructed me
to come to her,
told me that if I did,
she would train me.
When I asked how to find her,
she said to come to the woods,
and I would be found.
So, I followed a path through
dense redwoods, and arrived at
a cottage in a clearing.
She stood outside, as gaunt
and skeletal as I remembered.
In front of her stood a fire pit.
"The first thing you have to do,"
she said, "is to learn to sit
with the fire."
"What kind of training is that?"
I thought.
But I sat down near the fire.
And do you know,
I could not stay with it?
Either I got up,
or I wandered off
in my mind.
She shook her bowed head at me.
straight white locks swinging side to side.
"I am an old woman, not a child,"
I snapped at her.
"You have no idea
what old is," she said.
"I tell you, you must be with the fire.
Once you can attend,
once you can carry it with you at all times,
once you are incandescent,
then we can begin."
In the dream,
she was repeating
the opening lines
of the 23rd psalm,
over and over.
But King James's
language
was not her own.
She wanted to
keep the words
as a prayer,
as a mantra,
as a call.
And so she
re-wrote it:
Spirit is my guide.
I need nothing else.
It has me rest
in the peace of
the green world.
It leads me to
calm waters.
It restores my soul.
The dream was
a healing dream.
And so she kept it
as a gift.
A new poem....
Exactly one year ago,
she heard the words
Begin with the stones.
Not understanding how,
she moved on.
Forgot.
Dropped the matter.
Today, a year later,
she heard the words
She put down the stone.
Well, she had no cause
to keep carrying it.
Its weight was a burden
unfulfilled.
She would never
have thrown it.
She had no idea
what to do with it.
So, she put the stone down.
The words today
arrived not as a rebuke,
not even as acknowledgement
of her actions.
She realized they came
as new instruction.
So, this time
she put down the stone
as a prayer.
Her prayer was meant
to sink down
into the earth.
Unlike fire or air prayers,
it was not meant
to ascend to
the heavens.
It was a deep
and solemn prayer,
a story, meant
to descend
into the soil,
to be carried by
roots and mycelium,
down into and through
the body of
the Great Mother.
After she put down the stone,
she picked up another
to hold, to carry,
and to put down.
More stones,
more prayers,
more healing.
She finally did begin
with the stones,
only a year late,
understanding now
what the words meant,
what these carriers
of slow stories,
offered and gave.
When I thought
there was nothing left,
she showed up.
Not to teach me
a lesson, no,
not to reprimand
or preach,
but to lead me
to the door.
She didn't say,
"Get your butt outside,"
the way I might have.
She wrapped a red shawl
around my shoulders
against the chill
of the wintry wind
on the spring day.
The sun was so bright,
I wanted to close
my eyes, but she
demanded in her
soft voice - "Look."
And I looked.
And my eyes and heart
were flooded with spring's
flowering renewal.
Still here.
Beauty and I.
Still here.
Here is the last piece of my musings on the loss of my womb.
Hysteria
To the ancient Egyptians,
it was caused by a displaced
or wandering womb.
To the Greeks,
it also stemmed from
the inability to bear children,
or the unwillingness to marry
(for surely, if you refused to marry,
you must have been hysterical).
They named it for the word
for womb, hystera.
Augustine called it
satanic possession.
Later, its definition mutated
into any mental disturbance
in women. Men?
No womb, no hysteria.
When psychology arrived,
diagnoses of anxiety and depression.
eclipsed those of hysteria.
Hmm...
Perhaps women were always
anxious and depressed.
Now, women are called
hysterical when they express
"out of control" emotion.
Is it time that we reclaim
the word, the way we did
with "witch" and "crone"?
Let's stop letting them
demean us.
Do we not, in this world,
have so much to
get riled about?
If a woman expresses big feelings,
she is either "shrill" at best,
or "hysterical" at worst.
My sisters, we have the right
to our righteous hysteria.
Do our hysterics scare them?
Let's stop apologizing for
our fury, our fear, and distress.
Let's let tears flow in our rage.
Then let us move on to do
what we know how to do -
Caretake the earth, the children,
and each other.
Facing the Unknown