A Dream for the New Year

I woke up in the night with a dream that included pomegranates and wandering through hidden, dark places.  Persephone is clearly knocking at my door after a hiatus, and I feel responsible to honor that.  I haven't felt so connected to Her of late, and so I'm grateful for the dream.   And, given the timing, it also seems like a message for the new year.

Because of the appearance in the dream of someone known for his humor, I'm taking it as a sign I need a lot more of that next year!  I'm not alone in that, am I?

On the grocery store shelves

            I find two pomegranates:

            one is broken open;

            one is squashed.

A helpful clerk offers

            to look for others,

            fresh and whole.

In the meantime,

            I meet an old acquaintance,

            a celebrity, in fact, one known

            for his humor and political savvy.

Together, we roam the store

            and nonchalantly enter

            the back rooms, the dark storehouses

            and cold corners inaccessible to the public,

            and then finally the night-time parking lot.

When we reach the holiday’s long

            check-out line, I am still waiting

            for the clerk to reappear with my

            sought-after fruit.

After I wake up, I appreciate that I have had

            a congenial companion and guide

            through some hidden other/underworld.

I hope that Persephone’s

            healthy, whole, ruby red and

            burgeoning fruit will soon

            be in my hands.

The Tension of the Opposites

Sitting in the tension of the opposites is apparently where I find myself these days.  I’ve been reflecting on our recent trip to the Czech Republic and Austria.  So much beauty, both natural and cultural.  I fell in love with beautiful Prague and the charming Czesky Krumlov.  I admired the artwork of Alfons Mucha and Klimt.  We had the sweet companionship of friends and family.  I was thrilled to see the Artemis of Ephesus in the museum in Vienna.  And the Austrian Alps – what words can truly describe their grandeur? 

Then there was the old Jewish Quarter of Prague and Terezin.  There was beauty – the Spanish Synagogue, for instance, and the old cemetery.  And there was also the horror and sadness of the names of all the Holocaust dead covering the walls of the Pinkas synagogue.  And then there was the strangeness of Terezin itself.  The Nazis had adapted the fortified town of Terezin as a ghetto and concentration camp. They evicted the Czech residents and interred primarily Jews from Czechoslovakia, as well as Jews deported chiefly from Germany and Austria, and some from the Netherlands and Denmark. More than 150,000 Jews were sent there, including 15,000 children.  Although it was not a death camp, about 33,000 died in the ghetto.  And of the 15,000 children only 100 survived the war.

But going to Terezin… It is a charming little town, once again inhabited by Czechs.  The odd paradox of this fine little town and the horrors that happened here….it is hard to take in.  Only in what they call the small fortress do you really get a sense of the nightmare.  

We were there around the same time as Charlottesville was happening here at home.  The synchronicity was chilling.

But doesn’t this all make sense in a larger context?  We are, many of us privileged and (relatively and so far) safe, yet horrified by what is happening in our country both naturally and politically.  Shortly after we came home we got word of the sudden death of a friend.  Hurricane Harvey hit, and all the California fires.  And yet, I, for one, am in almost daily contact with the most beautiful and wonderful of granddaughters, for whom I have to have hope. 

How do we sit with it all – the beauty and the horror?

Breath in. Breath out: A SoulCollage® Story

Most days I do readings with my SoulCollage® cards.  Sometimes it's just a single card as an orientation or focus for the day.  Other times I'll have a particular question that I draw cards to answer.  It's rare for me to feel unsatisfied with what I get, and often it's jaw-droppingly accurate.  But there's another way I use my cards, and that is as writing prompts.

Today I pulled these 3 cards in order to tell a story:

This is what emerged:

Things were beginning to get clear.  By sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she got in touch with the waters and the sands drifting in the wind.  She hunkered down further, feeling the rocks beneath her anchoring her to the earth, sensing the covering of protection around her and the open way to new life.  Breath in.  Breath out.  Clarity.

The world around was going to hell in a handbasket.  (She wondered where that expression came from.)  The air was growing toxic.  Even the waters gave no purchase to the flocking birds.  Saints of the old religion still watched, but they were darkening and fading away.  Soon they would be no more than the grains of drifting sands.  The bird calls were growing deafening as they searched for a safe place.  Breath in.  Breath out.

Climbing her way out of her thoughts, she had to ascend through the father line, for wasn't it the fathers who had brought all of this on?  Even the good fathers, the blessing fathers, who in one sense could not be termed culpable, even they bore some responsibility.  They praised women.  They may even have revered them, loved them, honored them.  But they did not truly listen to the women or regard their values as primary.  They assumed that women could not really know.  

But bearing children provides another perspective.  Mothering women cannot view children as worthy sacrifices.  That story goes way back, at least as far as Abraham and Isaac.  An old story the fathers tell of devotion to their God.  Women (other than those persuaded or forced to adhere to the ways of the fathers) never accepted that story.  Their Goddess - Asherah, Isis, Astarte, Demeter - however they named Her - had different stories.  Yes, the Great Mother could be fierce and even frightening, but Her ways always were in support of life.

So, sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she breathed and prayed for a new way, a new life, a resurrection for two-legged ones.  But even more so for the earth itself.  Even if humans had, so far, ruined everything they touched, maybe it was not too late.  There were still rocks, water, birds, and the sands drifting in the wind.

****************

I am holding one last SoulCollage® session before Fall, next Sunday, June 25th here in Oakland.  Our theme this month is "Radical Joy."  There's still space; let me know if you're interested.

Rising Up Rooted

Some time back my friend Jane turned me on to Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted.  If you don’t know it (and especially if you’re of Celtic descent) you might want to get a hold of it.  It’s full of stories, both personal and mythic, all on the theme of the importance of place and of connection to the land.  It’s not surprising that I love this book – its theme is so similar to what I’ve been learning from Deena Metzger.  Indigenous cultures not only know this, they live it.  Think of those who have stood at and for Standing Rock.  As Blackie explains, though, most of us come out of and live in a modern wasteland.

The book led me to the poem by Rilke that inspired its title (here translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows):

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the smallest 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 each 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 things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

That 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.

It’s curious how you can read a poem and gloss over it, and then some time later encounter it as if for the first time.  I read The Book of Hours years ago, but this poem did not move me then.  I guess now is the time I need it!

I am, of course, learning the poem for our next salon and for Rumi’s Caravan (July 8^th here in Oakland).  Like the book, the poem points me in the direction of where I want to belong, and how.  Learning this poem is a gift I give myself; it works on me as I work on it.

The one area I felt Blackie short-changed a bit is how city dwellers can connect more deeply to the land.  She doesn’t ignore it, but her discussion on it is pretty brief and perfunctory.  We are not all so fortunate to live in the countryside.  Most of us who do not walk outside of our houses directly into wild nature have to work a lot harder to feel and sustain the connection.  We are certainly not supported by the wasteland culture to do so.

So here are some of the questions I am living with.  How do I root myself to this bit of hillside in Oakland where I have chosen to live?  How do we be faithful to the land?  What does the earth have to teach us?  How can we rise up rooted?

 View from our deck

Obstacle

The sapling sprouts

on a slope

above a large rock.

As it grows, very slowly,

over years and decades,

it sinks roots down,

over and around the

cold, gray stone.

Some take the easiest path,

plunging straight down into

the topsoil.

Others must stretch

around the rock’s sides or

up and over the top,

tasting the naked air,

seeking, seeking,

the earth’s hold.

At last,

even these 

find purchase.

The stone is now

surrounded

by roots.

Rather than blocking

the tree’s path,

rather than causing

instability,

the rock becomes part

of the tree’s character.

The obstacle

is now intrinsic

to the nature of

the tree.

Distinct and original,

the tree survives,

thrives,

holding the rock in

its radical embrace.

One of my SoulCollage® cards.  It inspired this poem and some thoughts about dealing with obstacles.