To The Heart of the Sacred

To the Heart of the Sacred                                   December 4 2015

(Where are You calling me?
You have come up from the ground for me, this I know.)

In this great horde of tribes, I am looking for mine.
I am not of the dry tribes.
They had their true seers, but they have little in me; neither their logic
Nor their legal brilliance
The zeal, the stony damnations

For a season, I settled there in that sandy city under the silent shawl
My heart understood, but how tired I am now of all the bloodshed
So much blood in the name of God.
I wandered off, looking for the River, and lost the way back, so I kept on.

I traveled with one from a Green Island,
Who sat in the trees delighting in birds and bees
Antlered like an elk, 
And he was wise, he showed joy to me
And a heart that my own skipped after.
Music comes from there.  Healing also, and histories of the sun.
My memory dances, there.

I traveled as well with one from a New World
All up and down, like a tree in the ground
Spreading, like an Oak, like a Joshua Tree
And he was kind, he showed wonder to me
And pattern that my word could not describe.
Music comes from there. Medicine also, and milk of stars.
My memory rests, there.

The golden moon sometimes slays me
The sky sometimes translates me, with beauty
Or the incense of trees
Of grass
The smell of the forest, her aromatic apothecary
Rising up from the ground

Long before the city and her ruffians,
Merchandise and politics and religion and their unnatural seduction and hell
I was working out the walkabout
By heart, and You were my lover.

These ones in all fervent foolishness
Keep offering You blood
Blood of their enemies
Like some kind of propitiation
Blood also of land and sea
Until all becomes dry dry dry

Here now, one grows more kind
Another, more bloody.
The ground waits for all.

You came up from the ground for me
I will follow thee.

As A Woman Who Watches Over The Earth 12/4/2015

I think that before Europe invaded the new world, the Americas were like Eden.  The people who lived here had not yet been cast out, but were living an unbroken life in an unbroken land.

As for Europe, Europe was conquered by Rome and eventually by the political Church, and group after group of indigenous were controlled, or cast out, or quenched, or enslaved, and sadly much worse, once the Church fell to politics and murder instead of conversion, until all of Europe seems nothing but a confusion of trauma and abuse.  With such history, how could there have been anything but tragedy for the American, the New Zealander, the Australian indigenous?

They came upon people who were unbroken in unbroken lands, and did not recognize the new world.

I come from European stock, mostly English, Irish and German.  These are all fierce people in their own right, and in their own lands, Celts unbroken from their sacred lands.  Dispersed for every reason now to other corners of the world, the call of the homeland is still audible in the heart.

My ancestry in America goes as far back as the mid 1600's, when Josef Bartels got tired of the border fighting between France and Germany over Alsace Loraine, and gave it up. And there is a huge assortment of bloodlines and countries all in my genes, yet my ancestry is here, in America, for between 12 and 20 generations.  Is this long enough?  Once here, many families suffered further as their particular group was singled out for prejudice, even though we all came here from somewhere else.  Is it any wonder we live tentatively, on the very top surface of this land?  Insulated in houses and barely connected through various cultural impositions? Displaying the shattered patterns of our lost souls in our inability to connect?

My quest over my life has been to retrieve the connection with the land, and to dream of living here imperceptibly.  To dream of community there.  My success has been slow and gradual, marked frequently with the stories of how cruel we are, and how devastating.

I watch in deep sorrow as the first people are dispersed and harried and all their words, wisdom and knowledge lost, replaced with the mind functions of science, chemistry, gadgetry, machinery, and the people who have lost their souls to a colonial church/government that sanctions such.  For whatever Christianity was in the Deserts of the Middle East, by the time the title was assumed by Rome, and a single man was ever ordained as the only representative of Christ, every particle of spiritual reality seems to have evaporated in the edifice.

For people who have lost their souls, there is God who restores the soul.  I have met this God.  In my own personal life, I have evidence of the love of this God, and the slow restoration of my soul that has been, in this lifetime, scattered in the winds of this age.  I have experienced the gentle power of this God. But this is not government, or parties, or denominations, or gerrymandered territories, or mandates, or loud culture, or warring religious factions. This is a foundation grid that predates all that, rendering them unnecessary, or obsolete.  There is a river in the desert, that brings the green life back.

I cannot make a difference, anymore.  That is, I must conform to this foundation grid, realize that this is holy, that this time, this place, this soul, this is holy.  This ground, this very ground, obviates the need for a built altar, a temple, a ritual.  Because I am the altar, my body is the offering, we are the temple, and breathing... Breathing is the ritual. The beating of the heart, this is the ritual.

Such is the state I am in.

Language of the Mother Tongue ca Spring 2013

1.  The Right to Have.  The Right to Be.  Security.  Food, Clothing, Shelter, Safety

(Sleep, sleep, my dreamy eyed treasure...I've waited so long, hoping and praying..Now you lie sleeping so close to my heart...You know the God finds HIs way with us, He sends us Dreamy Eyed Treasure..)

Somewhere in the distance there was a home I came from
A mother who cared for me, fed me from breast and fingers
Her cup and garden
I was a gift from her to the village
A gift to my father
My soul incarnated through song and prayer and effort and grace
"What will she become?"

This is the promise of embodiment.  She said, "I will build you a People."
You are born.  THIS is your right to be and your right to have.

But this time
It was so inconvenient.  I came at the wrong time.
Too early.
And ever since, it has been more important how I could fit in
Than what I could become
The expectancy of gifts and wonders tarnished
By the scuffle after coin
Which is the only measure here, now
The only measure of the right to be and the right to have

Thrown back on myself, I feel alone
And not at all the center of the universe.
Still, She calls me back to Herself; to an earlier and simpler home
A wilder sustenance where medicine and food are not separate,
Clothing made of plants and trees and skin
Safety rests in the camouflage of the deep home.

II.  The Right to Feel.  Sensation and Emotional Response.

(Weep, weep, my dreamy-eyed treasure...I've waited so long, hoping and praying, now you lie weeping so close to my heart...You know that God finds His way with us, through our own labors and pleasures..)

It was as if you were God the first;
There was wonder and awe as your eyes
Swept around everything that appeared when you simply opened your eyes.
And there was something else; feelings of hunger.
Feelings of comfort in the warm breast and the breath of The Other
Feelings of sorrow when The Other went away
And delight when The Other returned.
So, the emotions took shape and were tempered by relationship.

But this time, it was so painful!
The breast was dry and instead, a foreign substance,
Which induced pain in the gut and remorse in the heart.
I longed for the breast, but it had been usurped
By an impostor.
So finally, I didn't need my mother.  I had a bottle.

Still, she calls me back to Herself; to the warmth of Her Body
And the comfort of Her understanding.
Her wisdom sent me a boy cub who became a man
Whose whistling throws light all through my heart,
Whose whispers in the night throw my sorrows into sparkle dust
And my fear into the cocoon of grace and possibilities.

III.  The Right to Act.  To Be Effective In The World.

(Creep, creep, my dreamy-eyed treasure...I've waited so long, hoping and praying,  now you come creeping so close to my heart...You know that God finds His way with us, it's just His natural gesture)

And why was I born, if not for some purpose?  Is it possible to be born without it?
It is the quest of the seeker to discover.  Am I on time?  Is it the right moment?
Who am I?

They were expectant for me, for my role
For my ability, my power.
In that time, I was needed for a purpose,
To have an effect upon my time and people.
The Mother who cared for me also trained me and gave me to learn.
For the honing of power, which we need, if we are to survive and thrive.
They watched me,
To discern how to lead me to my power.

But this time,
Instead of the gifts and wonders within me,
They want something else.
They train me against the grain, to buy and sell the soul
When I wake up I must slip away
Fan the fire until the wood flares up
And in the light of that sacred fire, I see what it was I was meant to be
I was meant to be free.

Still, She calls me back to Herself, to the wisdom of Her way,
The ebb and flow, the cycle that circles,
The spiral that recovers the sacred ground;
The sun that rises and sets
The seasons world without end.

It is simple.  To act at the right time
In season
There is power
And there is the catalyst for change
In a present time when people have forgotten.

Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach.  Sept 2013

The Man-cub runs down to the waves
With whoops and arms outstretched
He prances like a horse, ecstatic
Stops in awe
To watch the thundering weight of tide
And froth of foam

Wondrous beauty:

Rocky beach:  Rocks, pebbles, sand, millions of years.  Surf.
Tree bones silver, front line of the green behind
Silver on silver water making green
Flashing sun making every blue, green, yellow

Pelicans glide in perfect oddity
Ancient souls sliding just above the sensuous water
Tipping casually over waves and banking back up
Running the sequence again
Whirling and arrowing down into the magic waves

Surging water aprons up the sand and over my bare feet
Soothing and washing and rinsing back to sea

At first I am exhausted
But my strength builds with each plodding step
I am as strong as stone
As rhythmic as water in her holy mass
Stalwart and exquisite as wood sanded by tides
A small "selah" to the improvisation of the ages
Etching my brevity on the eternal shore.

The Winds Sept 29 2013

The Winds.   Sept 29 2013

So strangely has panic entwined my heart strings
My gut
Shrieking inner wind rattles my bones
Tears at my inner forest
In truth, I am not legion
But the leaves of my days number thousands
Each aware

Adversity strips the branches
It has been hard to let the leaves fly
Even knowing there is only this option

My prayer flags fray
I have tied them tight
The colors once bright
Now they yield their hues
To wind and rain and sun
As I bend under the roar of the wind

Advent of a new cycle
Monk's slow footsteps toward a new age.

Fear belongs to the raging sea called flesh
Which is the manifest
At any time, flesh may die
Which is reason enough for panic
Ample stimulus to run

I recognize you
You are afraid.
Please, come in out of the wind.

Shelter is an immeasurable grace
And who offers it
Has already the pin feathers of angel's wings
I must remember this.

Wild horses run like the wind
Ears flattened and tails flicking
To run, strength.
The big birds cavort in the sky
They strengthen themselves in it
And when they ride the gust
Ecstacy

Lucy June 16 2014

Lucy   June 16 2014

My cousin.

When I woke up this morning
The old familiar fear-ache leaped into my stomach.
I know what to do, now, immediately begin the Lord's Prayer
It's not a bloody battle, more like offering the breast to a crying infant.
Then I cradle the Infant Fear-Ache and whisper "Sh--sh, it's okay."
Harder for her own children, her husband.  Beyond any words at all.

Such a death rips a huge hole in the world
And wind rushes through like a tornado pulling us with it
As we are helpless to grab at anything
Death ends the world as we know it.

The Fear-Ache Babe falls asleep suckling
And I am reminded that what is internal will stay
What is internal will stay.

Lucy
I am reminded of others who precede her
I want to tell her children,
You will change,
But you will never be unrecognizable.
You are her blood.

I want to tell her husband, Life.  But this takes time.

Everything changes.  We are fools to ignore this.
Born, lives, dies, disintegrates, and disappears.
Rocks, trees, insects, rivers and seas
All they carry.
Tigers, rhinoceroses, humans, all they carry.
Even the earth.  Even that.
When I realized that, I began to sit in vigil.

It is the Other Half of Life, which we ignore as long as possible,
Which is inevitable
The Other Pole of this duality.  Life and Death are absolutes
We don't rock back and forth, we travel from one pole to the other
This much is linear.
The individual life is a linear thing, holding within it the cycles and seasons,
But traveling toward an end.
Life continues because dualities must cycle, even though individuals die.

On Earth, as it is in Heaven.
This is the Incarnation I want to carry internally
As I fall through the huge hole in the world.

It is pure solace.
Imagine the shroud of the Monarch,
Which becomes transparent, revealing the caterpillar
Transforming into a folded butterfly
Waiting for the world to split.
What else can we possibly know?
Back to Mystery.

Mystery never leaves.
It needs no veiling since it is beyond comprehension
Even in its most naked glory
It is dawn of the deepest trust
This is internal, to be sure.

It Is Good July 21st 2014

                                                  Box of Pictures, Garden of Flowers  July 21st 2014

(Molded I am by The Grieving Woman.  I do not turn her away.
        Her Low Places are familiar roadways to me.
                Her Great Load, my most faithful companion.)

On the table in front of me, a Box of Pictures
Evidence of my life: the Storage, the History
                I don't live there, anymore,
                But the imprints remain, the themes continue..

We decide about Good and Bad, Happy and Sad
However, You, when you made Everything,
                 Simply said, "It is good."
                 I am ever under this mercy.  It is the Garden of Flowers.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to sit
To remember
To sift
Realizations of what was true then and still
This Box of Pictures reminds me.

(I was always asking then.  I am still.
        I ask to see You.
                You show Your handiwork and it is beautiful,
                        Whether I stand back or peer close.  Peerless handiwork.)

This is the turning wheel, the Garden of Flowers,
And the farther we walk, the more we are here now;
               We are crossing thresholds, like jumping rope,
                In rhythm, in sequence, with every turn.

(Oh.
        It is the Grieving Woman, dancing in the whirling ropes.
                She is laughing.
                        When She dances, all of life gathers to her energy
                                She will delight and affront
But She goes through all the movements.)

We stylize her unfolding with memory's expectations,
Recording and storing,
                But she always interprets the dance anew
                Right now, the Garden of Flowers, astonishing.

She moves and changes,
        Shape-shifting through the whirl of the ropes,
                Swinging around a core like a revolving door
                        Like an actress
                                Defining an eyebrow
                                        Grading through every emotion of color
                                                   Every state of being and service,
                                                          Every calling, every imagination

However subtle
However transcendent
There is a Matrix giving context for our sake.

It is in our nature to rebel against its form and function
To despair of Life's Fleet Nature,
Of the blood and dirt of Her Birth and Death
We even find fault with the unique signature impressed upon us
Our likeness, our family

But there is a threshold!
Jump over!

Oh, Look!  She becomes You
        And You become
                Me
                      And suddenly (although it is gradual)
                                   The Incarnation is Everything.

The Box of Pictures is a reminder.  We were That.

I realize, I will always ask.
I will search for meaning and purpose, and direction
                And I will be surprised, relieved,
                By secret pathways in plain sight to the Garden of Flowers,
                The confirmation of Who We are Now.

You, Beloved
        Are the Guide who is silent through all my cycles
                And who opens the Secret
                        Back to the Sanctuary