The Gesture: Part 2

            Here is another revelation.  I believe that I turn from Spirit, ignore it, forget it, don’t trust in its existence.  I believe that I am fundamentally alone in the universe – no help, no hope. 

            These beliefs are lies.

            My writing itself exposes the lies; it is infused with Spirit.  Every morning I light candles and sage and make the call.  Even when I think I am writing garbage, it is all done in Spirit.

            The gesture becomes the mudra of my elder years, acknowledging shame and love, pain and compassion. 

            This is how I know:

            She speaks to me, and I listen.  I have learned over time to do this, and it has taken both the strength of Her reaching out to me and also a certain surprising willingness on my part to entertain the possibility that the communication is real.

            In Malta, in the mother temple of Ggigantija, my back leaning into Her ancient stone body and feeling a hand on my head, I heard Her say, “You love Persephone because she is one of my forms.”

            In the Arizona desert, I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the words, “Go out and pay homage to the night.”  I dragged myself out of bed and walked outside, looked up, and saw a shooting star that swam across the sea of the dark sky more slowly than I had ever seen before or have seen since.

            At Eleusis, I had a vision of Demeter and Persephone, and I trembled seeing offerings left for them by other devotees.

            A few months ago I dreamed an aardvark crossed my path. In waking reality, I had recently written a piece called Walking through Walls.  The morning after the dream, I googled “Aardvark” (after searching for pictures of squat animals with snouts, not even recognizing what the animal I had dreamed about was).  I read how magicians in Africa use aardvark parts to walk through walls.

            These are just a few episodes of spirit presence in my life.  There are others.  I have sat with Persephone in my meditation, and She has told me She would walk with me through life and into death.

            Persephone’s path to the underworld is a downward spiral into the center of my heart.  She appeared just this morning as I uncovered the shame I had buried as a child, perhaps my first journey into her realm.  Here is the revelation – the underworld is at the core of the heart.  Only kindness and love can lead me out.  It was, after all, my mother’s misguided but well-intentioned love that led me in.

            But I do have another mother, a dark mother of heart-breaking wisdom and compassion.  If I ever know trust, if I ever take refuge, It is in Her hands that I place my soul.

It was a solitary road.

She’d seen no one

since leaving the women

at the crossroads.

All she knew was

the sound of gravel

crunching underfoot,

the wind in the Monterey pines

and the sound of the sea.

“Pacific is the wrong name,

for something so immense,

so powerful, so relentless,”

she mused.

“Maybe they named it that

as a prayer that it would prove true,

as a wish for their safety.”

She laughed aloud,

and the wheeling gulls overhead

cried out too, as if in response.

Memory was like

the ocean’s waves,

rising and falling,

touching shore and

running back

to the dark depths.

She realized

that she had now

lost her fear

of its failure,

had even relinquished

the worry about

where she was going and

when she would get there.

The wild and bitter wind

swept her mind clean

and left only

the pounding of her heart

and the rhythm of the waves.

The chopping barks of seals

called to her.

She could see distant splashes

where their sleek bodies

dove into the heaving sea,

disappearing below, below,

down into the dark, cold

depths of their home.

            Early in childhood, prior to assuming shame, I found the world to be wrapped in magic.  Things sparkled and glowed with energy, and words created images and stories.  They revealed what was true, what was real, what was sacred.  Words were a puzzle one could put together and take apart, forming and reforming, a magic that was endlessly fascinating. 

            If I root out and clear away the shame and self-doubt, I may find the old and eternal magic below it all.

            I want words to flow, falling as if over cliffs, in waterfalls of syllables that might be beautiful or clunky, or shining, or bouncing off rocks and open to the sky, the wind, the trees, the clouds, the stars.  I want to find words that will be ladders to the universe without and to the dark chambers within.  I want my magic back.  I want to be the purveyor of words and the conveyor of Spirit. Here is my (probably unsurprising but necessary) confession:  I am a mystic.  I claim it.

            My hand is on my heart.