Old Heart December 5 2014

Old Heart

December 5th 2014

What a depressing day for no reason at all.  Yes, cloudy and rainy and I had to drive to Poulsbo and back, but really?  I feel like crying?

December 6th, 2014

Same sort of terminal feeling this morning; it’s not anxiety.  I think it was triggered by watching a fb video of 2 or 3 cops harassing a black family in a car.  It was horrible.

The whole world is exploding right now.  The media is so toxic I cannot stand to listen even to music.  Riots country wide, protesting low wages and racial prejudice, police brutality and riot brutality, terrorism, and people just trying to escape.  Isn’t it clear YET that we are refugees?  All of us?

Anxiety is a rising feeling.  THIS feeling, however, is a bitter death curling in feeling, that wants deeply to be done.

Angry Gods.  Righteously vigorous Holy men.  Suicidal crusaders and zealous politicians.  Generals.  Brigands and cartels; Anybody who thinks it’s their divine right, duty, profit and/or delight to hurt another human on philosophical, economic, or just plain insane grounds.  I am a woman.  I cannot live here.  It’s grinding the life out of me.

Still, in this America, there is rank prejudice against our own U.S. citizens and small regard for the thousands of souls trying to find refuge legally or not, in the ideals of our country, who are fleeing from murder and mayhem, and we to storm off to other countries, policing their own bigotry?  I saw race riots in our cities.  I watched us extend ourselves with great precision and destruction overseas.  All these mounting conflicts and abominations, because one person thinks he’s better than another.  Actually has the right, or duty, or license, or spiritual authority, to kill.

I am 64 years old and have not yet personally experienced war.  But I grew up on it; Newsreel footage of extermination camps, watching in horror as naked skeletal people, many still barely alive, were dumped by loads into huge graves.  World War II movies with John Waynes of many descriptions.  Supper for four years of high school watching the 6:00 news with my folks.  Nightly body counts, bombings, warnings, and Vietnamese streaming their lives to the ground.  This, padded with the Man from UNCLE, Bond, and several more decades of increasingly brutal war movies which I struggled to avoid, since they make me physically sick, give me terrible nights, and depress me with no end in sight.  

I have watched, with crumbling heart, a world at war boasting the ability to annihilate everything, and proceeding to do so, starting with violence, forming into politics, moving into agriculture, stock, commerce, and ending in extinction.

This is an evil spirit we have aligned with, which despises our potential for peace and quiet and neighborliness, which hates the underlying truth that ultimately, we all have the same mother.

I am not strong or clever enough to deal with this, any more than the whales or the dolphins or the rhinoceros or the elephants, or the cows and pigs, or the vegetation, or the orphans and the homeless.  He has all the weapons, and he has the science, and he has the money, the media, and the governments.  All I have is this hollow old heart.  He is in every way wicked, coldly holier than I, and in spite of all this exposure, my heart still feels every exquisite pain as deep as the first cut.

Anam Cara, I ask you to forgive me my abandonment of manly structures and channels; even ritual and intercession lie almost inert. My stomach is gone.  It is impossible for me to consider myself holy; my own journey is circuitous and I hide a lot.  I too am a refugee--from the world of mankind, from the troubled havens of spiritual community, even the holiest courts of the unseen God;  I have sought these harbors; but all that we have, preached of the Most High in his fury, terrorizes me so much I cannot form even in his mildest presence.  My vapor evaporates immediately in this holy zeal.  This is the fear of Almighty God indeed.  So, where to run?

I have fled to lesser Gods.  Buddha, my guru.  Jesus, my blessed savior.  The Tao, my map and my mother, branching slowly over Europe’s grassy fields into the Celts’ restless wanderings, coming to roost in the Bards and Druids whose blood runs inside me, urging me to remember.  Saint John, my walking companion, who breathes my heart back to warmth. And here, in this America, with all the coydogs, I stumble along with Wakan Tanka wishing I could call down the Rain, wishing I could call up the Buffalo, crying bitter tears because my Red relatives are not. I cannot side with one against the other, brethren, we all serve the table.

Little Steps Toward Blessings Oct 4 2014

I want to wriggle out of the old skin                                                    
The old food, the old emotions                                                
The old tactics of fear and anger                                            
Truly, I cannot breathe like that any more.

Please, look.  Everything transforms.

To escape the past that shaped us,                                                
One must die                                                            
Or be transformed                                                           
Or maybe, both, since some things can only be erased in the grave                                                 
I walk with quiet little feet.  Hospitality is paramount.                                              

(Please, look outside.)                                                   
Humans could stampede like a pack of lemmings over cliff side                                            
And the birds feast,                                                          
And everything transforms.

But in the meantime I will continue to wriggle out                                                     
To achieve a movable truce                                                                 
With peace                                                  
With food                                                    
With stuff                                                     
With people
                                                           
With love                                                     
With God and all the powers that be.

My own righteousness, 
Humbled to dust and ash by vast upheaving ages of transformation,                                              
By huge galaxies of light and dark that spin out to destinations inconceivable-                                            
( I am obliterated..and yet, I live)                                                                
By the grace of benevolence..

Is it then that we die to our dejection                                                      
And live always to benevolence?

Death of The Godmother

Life rises above itself

We go to sleep

And sometime during the night

We slip out of our body of pain.

Perhaps we just want relief

Which doesn't strike one as particularly noble

Still, we leave everything the way it is

And face a great unknown.

One may say, "I know where I'm going,"
 Or, "I know who's going with me,"

Yet it is a high trust;
Faith beyond measure, when we yield up the ghost.

Since we hardly know where we are, or who indeed!

All along the way, we partake. 

Where we came from, such a mystery

Who we are, such. 

"Know Thyself," is well said.

But you are none-the-less, unknowable

All your very suchness beyond sacred

Held in trust for a few decades

After which it wriggles out

And the mystery envelopes you completely

Leaving only wing dust.

Out of some other chrysalis then, mystery slowly spills

Into the light of sun, moon and stars.

One part falls to earth. 

Another rises into light.

Sacred Fire

Sacred Fires July 9th 2012

First they say yes, you have the right, because they must, 

According to their own law. 

But then later they come secretly and forbid us.

You would think that by now, the irony would shame them so much 

That they would relent; and realize.

To trespass against one’s own soul is sorrow. 

This place, this piece of land  
                                                                                                                                                                
Is holy, and we reverence it with fire and the tradition.

If this were a war of Gods, then perhaps we could feel their power.

But it is a war of skin.  The power is only fear, and the insult is to the Great One.

How long can a people insult the Great Spirit?  

The Great One is very patient, it is true, and we have learned to sit with Him there, 

In humiliation.

But we light our sacred fires, and this is a ceremony that cannot be forbidden.

It cannot.

The truth is, I am a sacred fire.  

Long Walk In The Woods

A long walk.  Very long.  I walk not just to get somewhere..I am curious.  My heart beats inquisitive.  How shall I be a pillar when I must ramble?  The Sanctuary is my heart, it’s true.  But I must process.

I sometimes muse on the obvious thought that for all those people questing for a higher level of existence, for peace, for enlightenment, this kingdom here is our Hell.  No wonder we haunt the edges.

Once again, I must admit that the life and future which this unnatural culture panders is not the one I want.  Especially as a woman, one who early outlived all the reasons her brothers hold knives to each other’s throats.

Every tribe has its hero stories, the legend of quest, war, victory, and defeat.  Our heroes have lived or died, and we sing the songs, wave the flags, watch the movies, read the books, and it never ends. My heroes are not these heroes.  In times of my own struggles, in the agonies of conflict, this knowledge gently haunts me into remembering that there is more than material victory and martial peace.

Man has proven that he can penetrate and destroy any sanctuary of this earth.  There is no place to hide from his appetite.  He will come at you with his demands, his system and pin you in shrouds.  Kings must rule or murder trying.  Their purposes marshall us like chess pawns.  Is it any wonder then that I sit in the garden murmuring my apologies to the roses and the fir trees?  We are all just firewood.  Can you see a future?

My tribe is a scattered tribe communicating in the prayer of healing.  Prayer is not some high holy precinct of monastics, it is the way we live.  We hold up life.  Of course, sometimes we grieve, because this earth, this once-upon-a-time sanctuary, is captive in the grip of those who would destroy her.  But we hold up life, for her sake, for our sake, for the sake of the creator, even for the sake of our destroyers, because of what we know.

We know about the agony of rejection.  Bad enough, the cruelty of humans.  Worse yet, the eternal destructions of an Angry God.  I cannot walk with that one.  So we pray for the now future with the living Trees, not for an armageddon followed by a fiery hell roasting the losers.  Can you see see this?

True North

True North                   2011

Oh my love!

He brings me thunder and light!

He brings me a song in the sunshine 

And a candle in the night..

Sword in Stone

Sword In Stone

In my dreams I fly away

I leap into the sky

In my awake the wings won’t stay.

There is a face I hold in the memory of my heart

The face of life itself

And the one I love

Who draws me all these years

That which cannot be named

Remains the foundation

And the one who is named is the footing.

Anchored in it

Like a sword in a stone

Yet when wielded

It is as if the stone is anchored in the sword

This is a power beyond.

In this cycling earth

Light returns and so does warmth

In the world of experience, the same.

In the ages of God there is revelation and turning into darkness

Then, the light returns.

Never has man been so bright by his own fires

He has cauterized the earth in great flashes of power

But I know that when my love returns,

He will bring back the green

A salve for burns

A soft Wine for the heart healing

And will turn my face to nuzzle his.

In my awake I am broken, I am not shiny

But let this spirit dance for you

My heart beats for you

In the darkest valley of the shadow of death

Where there is no apparent future

Only a grim past

I still remember

You are with me, 

The stone in my blade in the stone, power beyond. 

This is the faith I bring: I have a high Mystery.

I am eloquent in sorrows:  Make me ebullient in joy

That I may provide light and shine upon the path

A Trobairitz to the high King

Strong in confidence and fearless in my walking

Life, you are all powers

I name you Highest of all

Anchor in the Stone

which cannot be broken by men.

Lead me out of sorrows and into your jubilation

I see a Kingdom of lights unhindered by turning

Give me keys to spring locks 

And music to unbind

Give me hands of healing and love

And a heart that is round and strong

Me in you

A sword in a stone

You in the One

A power beyond

The Spirit within us all 

Within, the realm of Heaven

Behind the thinnest veil

Slow Wheel, Transformation. 2.12.2011

                Slow Wheel, Transformation. Feb 12 2011

Energy, courage, fear, decision.  Vision.  Direction.  How to revive the spirit when knowledge brings such reluctance.  Well said, that much knowledge brings sorrow.

To continue to show kindness and to cultivate love, and to support the awakening of freedom; these traits become all the more important.

Who DOESN’T leave a train wreck?  How CAN you plan for any contingency?

I keep waiting for some illumination that will save me from the unpredictabilities of life, but the only one I find again and again, is the grace of love, from this benevolent God I follow in huge mazes, like a bird dog in rough country.  I run and run, occasionally freezing on point, more often loping through the undergrowth after elusive and irresistible scents, while the master, who understands my wild spirit, follows my progress and takes note of whatever worthy is flushed into the air.

I am not a wolf or coyote; the wild is not my home.  I am not quite a house dog, though I love the fire in the house and the master’s voice, his hand upon my head.  I am somewhere in between, living on borderlands, still running off, turning up lost, and then straggling home, stiff with burs and tangled as the woods.

(It is a pity to keep hunting dogs in the city.  They are half-wild and running is their very heart.)

Living alone requires a very disciplined, simple lifestyle.  Working for a living in this culture is itself enough to quench the spirit, if the work is antagonistic to the heart.  Even if it is a good thing, the single life is very hard; I’ve been paired for 30 years and I wake up now single, sick at heart.  To give due time and consideration to every single aspect of living that is required seems impossible to me at present.  In part because I am exhausted in every way, and in part because my heart has retreated behind many veils.  Not that she won’t speak!  She will!  But that her trust and her guilelessness have been punctured and she must attend to her wounds.

I very much want to go outside but it is cloudy, rainy and cold.  Or, it seems cold, and I am loathe to face those elements. I long for the heated scents of summer, the songs of birds and insects, the pungency of melissa and chives, the dewy roses that ravish, the lilies, astonishing in their ecstatic purity.. The smell of the river.  All here now is damp cold and grey.  I burn incense.

Character

Feb 8 2011

Death of former spouse has exposed me to the reality of financial/security lack.

But the true issue is my character.  Do I have courage?  It’s true I have been loathe to give myself permission.  Given the emphasis on paternal culture which rewards a woman’s precociousness with shunning or worse, I find myself leaning harder into my Celtic roots, farther and farther from the children of Abraham, wondering what it is like to be a Druid.

Or a Bard.

To refresh the minds of those who need to remember who they are; that they cannot be valued with currency or clothing or style of life, but there is a priceless value to their souls.

Jung states, without the foundation of the past, we are in chaos.  

This is the chaos I have grown up in.  I have had a cultural foundation that is not congruent with my soul.