Echoes

In the thin air of morning

I speak with sweet sounds

drawn from all the

unknown murmurs

that yesterday were left

at the waves' edge

Listen!

Listen to what I release

into the morning:

each tone

another story:

unearthly tableaus

shards of myths

and ancient voices

echo over the shore

I am the daybreak

my slender body

born from the sea

my flute now whispers

and then cries out

for her:

my other self

who stayed behind

among the waves

having no desire

to be tailless

Now at each sunrise

and again at sunset

I make my flute speak

I know the night is near

when my eyes colour

from meadow green

to the deeper green

of the waves

I shiver

while my heart listens

waiting, ever waiting

for my love

in the light

of the silent moon

Sculpture:  La Sirène by Camille Claudel

Predestination

In  my
 mind I need only to hear

that soft rush and sigh

of imagined waves at my feet,

feel the wash of wet sand

and hear the harsh cry of sea birds.

In that imagined moment

I am there once more.

I search for her, my eyes straining

in the white light of a thousand morning stars

as the sun strikes sparks from the breakers.

And I wait, and I wait

to glimpse her amazing Otherness.

At times I wonder:

will I see her now?

Although secretly I know the truth:

she will be there somewhere

for she waits for me also.

Patiently she waits

as she has waited for a day,

or a year, or a thousand years,

knowing that I will come,

knowing that our meeting

has already been inscribed

in the fixed patterns of stars,

even though those same stars

are now dimmed by the day’s white light.

How could I not love the sea?

I, a landsman with a mariner’s heart.

How could I not love the very thing

that I know is so dear to her?

How could I not love her true home?

Those secret blue deeps

gave birth to her,

and to me also; but for that

I must journey further back in time:

much further, to a world of silence

and ancient corals, and the beginnings of us all.

Her amazing Otherness fills my life,

fills my heart, as I have chosen her,

as she has chosen me,

for I have as my wife

The Woman from the Sea.

*

Written for me by my dear husband David

to commemorate our 30th wedding anniversary

Today, 7th May, 2016

*

Tiamat’s Tears

“In the beginning…” These opening words of the Old Testament have a ringing familiarity, perhaps even to those who might seldom visit a church. But the human imagination allows for many ‘beginnings’, and each culture and belief creates its own beginning appropriate to itself. So…

In the beginning there was only Tiamat. Tiamat, the mother of all which will be, out of whose celestial womb all life will flow, fills all of space. She is the primordial salt ocean, and the rising and falling of her fertile waves are but the outward signs of the momentous acts of creation which are even now taking place beneath her surface, in the dark depths of the cosmos. At first it is as if there is only a vast nothing, a void without form. Then gradually, gradually, small flashes appear. At first they are only scattered sparks, shining briefly at random. Then come more and more, until the darkness is pierced by countless stars.

But Tiamat knows that more is needed: something to complement her own salt body. From her void emerges her husband Apsu. Her husband is also of water, but his waters are sweet. His waters are freshwater. It is this mingling of saltwater and freshwater which produces the potential for all the other gods to emerge. But in the eons to come a great sacrifice will be needed if the world itself – our world – is to be created.

The gods, who are Tiamat’s own creation, rise up and rebel against Apsu. Apsu is slain, and Tiamat, in her attempts to win justice for her lost husband, is herself torn in two. Out of this rending, this great separation, dry land at last emerges. Tiamat’s defeat and sacrifice have made it possible for life on earth to begin – and so for us to exist.

This particular ‘beginning’ myth of Tiamat is from Mesopotamia. In it we recognize many key elements of such stories: the creating Great Mother, the ‘alchemical wedding’ of opposing but complementary forces, the resulting struggle, and the need for sacrifice to drive things forward if further creative goals are to be achieved. Sacrifice is of course also at the heart of the Christian story, and it is the idea of sacrifice in such stories which also contains within it the promise of redemption. And what is redemption but an act of sacrifice with a further purpose? Tiamat’s sacrifice was needed to create the separation of land and sea, and so allow life on land to flourish.

But is there perhaps a further meaning that we can draw from the myth of Tiamat? Why was Tiamat specifically the salt ocean? Men wage war, and women weep. Strife and struggle are mingled with the salt tears of those who are left to mourn, and those who are left are the wives and the mothers who remain to grieve. Our mother is the earth, whose freshwater rivers that are the remains of Apsu always flow to be reunited with his beloved ocean. And our mother is also that ocean, containing the salt tears of Tiamat who, as mothers do, knows both the pains of sacrifice and the sweetness of redemption.   

Painting by David Bergen

The Journey of Ambergris

It has a strange and rather unglamorous beginning in, of all places, the digestive tract of a sperm whale. When the whale expels this strange by-product of its oceanic menu, it rises to the surface, there to float upon the waves until, perhaps after many years of drifting, it eventually is washed up on some distant shore. But in these years of drifting, a miraculous transformation takes place. From a waxy and rather smelly lump, it undergoes a mysterious change of its own. It becomes one of the sweetest of scents, formerly prized in the making of the costliest perfumes. We know it as ambergris.

In the Near East, ambergris is burnt as an incense. But in some countries such as the United States, even the possession of ambergris is considered to be an unlawful offense due to the protection of the species from which it comes. Two years ago here in the Netherlands, a sperm whale was found stranded on the beach of the island of Texel. Over eighty kilograms worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were found in the animal.

This marvellous substance was even thought to have medicinal value, as a cure for a variety of ailments from headaches to epilepsy. In days gone by Dutch gentlemen were said to sprinkle some on their breakfast eggs, and so enabling the substance to make the journey from the whale’s to the human’s digestive system via the oceans of the world! 

I myself am lucky enough to have a few small grams of this precious substance, which I keep in a small covered pot. When I remove the lid, the released scent is astonishing, like the costliest perfume – which indeed it actually is! I rather wish that this post had a button that you, my reader, could click on which would allow you to share the experience with me. Not possible, I realise (but maybe Google are working on it, who knows?).

In the East the lotus is used as a symbolic way of illustrating the soul’s progress from darkness to light: the transforming progression of the lotus from the muddy river’s bed to emerge into the light as a beautiful bloom. Nature holds many such valuable lessons if we are open to them. Perhaps the journey of ambergris is also one such lesson. Adrift on the waves, a mysterious alchemy is worked upon the ambergris to transform it into the rarest of sweet perfumes.  The stir of the great ocean is all that is apparently needed to accomplish this magic, and like many a true transformation, it asks no effort, only time.

Painting: Scent of Ambergris, by John Singer Sargent

The Shepherd and the Shell

She has come from the sea, and he, all uncomprehending, can only wonder. His flock continue to graze on the salty grass of the coastal dunes, but he, the normally-attentive shepherd, has already forgotten their existence. Unawares, he sinks to his knees, suddenly suspended in a world between the commonplace of the everyday and a larger reality in which anything can – and does – happen.

She strides confidently out of myth, crossing the impossible space between the waves’ edge and the intervening sand, wading across a shallow lagoon to confront him. Her golden hair, decorated with strands of marine plants, flutters in the sea breezes as it must have fluttered in the more measured rhythms of the currents beneath the waves. She is no more aware of her nakedness than he now is of his surroundings. Her presence is more real than his reality. His water flask also lies forgotten on the ground at his side, and his shepherd’s crook, the emblem of his task, is grasped in his now-unsteady hand.

In her pale hands she holds a shell, and her simple gesture indicates that this is her gift to him. No word is spoken, for none is needed. Were she to speak, her language would perhaps be incomprehensible to him, as his earthly dialect might be to her. So she does not speak. And he cannot, transfixed as he has become by her miraculous appearance in his world.

All that he can do is extend his wondering hand to receive this offered gift from the sea, barely aware of his own gesture of acceptance. She smiles down at him, seeming somewhere amused at the consternation which she has caused, but comprehending as well, compassionate in her invasion of his reality. For a moment, for a brief sliver of time, her fingers brush his own as he takes the shell from her, and he feels an impression of pale skin more silken than human skin could be, like the smooth pelt of a seal.

Now she smiles at him, gesturing with her hands, cupping them to her ear to indicate what she wishes him to do. He obeys, holding the shell to his own ear. Entranced, he hears it: the slow murmur of the deeps, the tug and sigh of currents, the restless, wandering voice of the eternal ocean. He closes his eyes, surrendering to the sound, listening, listening. He has no wish to open his eyes now, understanding what will happen when he does. But he must, and eventually, he does so. She has gone.

Painting: The Sea Maid by Arthur Hacker.

The Homecoming

Corals spread wide like open fans of lace, purple and red anemones unfold like flowers, reaching with delicate tentacles towards the dancing sun’s rays that filter down from above. And through these watery gardens swim schools of blue and yellow fish like flights of tropical birds. Long fronds of sea plants wave gracefully to the half-silent, half-forgotten echoes of sea shells: the music of the deeps… and I float between them, adrift from the world of the land, from the breathing of air, from the heavy and difficult walking on unfamiliar legs, from earthbound cares and sorrows.

Here, far beneath the surface waves, beneath the tug and turmoil of the world above, is where I was born. I do not know, cannot remember, the first moment of my existence. Perhaps my becoming was a gradual thing. What I do remember is a first awareness, a consciousness of my being. Perhaps I was created by an unknown other, or perhaps, in that new awareness, I created myself. I only remember those distant times as times of drift and darkness. Then later, much later, an emergence of a lesser dark as, still drifting, I rose slowly from the deeps.

For millions of years my body drifted. The seas around me changed, became less barren, were now sown with new growth: gardens and forests of sea plants that waved gracefully with the currents, amphora-shaped sponges that among the age-old corals clamped fast to their rocks in a world of muffled light and silence. Now the subtly-changing song of the sea shells tells me that I have reached another ocean, and I drift over gardens of flowers that are really animals: delicate sea lilies that turn their tentacles to the winds of this watery underworld, as flowers turn towards the sun in the world above.

This is my world: a world inhabited by water spirits and nymphs, sirens and sea maids: beings invisible to those of the land, as invisible to them as the pathways we travel across these great oceans, drifting in a deep sea dream of endless blue currents. I drift with them; am myself one of them, ever drifting in this world of blue silence beneath the waves. We never leave the sea, would never wish to, for the sea does not experience departures, only returns. Whether you believe in my existence, whether you believe or not in my slim and spectral sea maid body, one day you also will return, for our mother ocean is home to us all. And I and the others of my kind will be waiting to welcome you home.

Sea Children

SEA CHILDREN

On the shore

the children of the sea

are playing,

Gathering shells, strands

of marine plants,

DREAMS

At the waves' edge

the children kneel,

Writing the secret name

of God in the sand

in the language of

INNOCENCE

Children playing on the beach 

by Bernardus Johannes Blommers - (1845-1914) 

Sophia's Mirror

The planet we call home is a mirror. This is literally true, as the waters which cover so much of our world reflect the sky above them. The sea appears soft and grey or azure blue, depending on where we are and what the weather is doing. The waves reflect the sky. Last Sunday I stood on the shore and took the photo of the sea that is the background of my new blog header. The sea was glass-calm, and the weather was very still, and a little misty. Such absolute tranquillity invites reflection: a moving beyond the horizon-spanning surface which lies before us as we stand on the shore. 

For me, to stand on that particular shore was something of a personal fulfilment: a promise kept to myself to greet the sea once more after many years of personal trials. I stood there in silence, feeling the crunch of wet sand underfoot, breathing in the salt air on that perfect October afternoon, listening to the soft wash and sigh of the incoming waves – the tallest barely more than ankle-high. The simplest experiences can offer consolation, even a sense of redemption, of being given a new reason to have inner faith when faith has been something that we hardly dare to feel any more.

Having such inner faith can give a sense of peace, a deep sense that things are unfolding as they should, that all is as it is because that is the way it needs to be. Even just a simple trust in what might be round the corner for us can be a silent wish. But even this silence can be full of fierce longing. We plant its flag on some shore known or unknown, and the mere presence of that flag proclaims: ‘I am here – this is where I choose to stand’. And where we stand is a place which mirrors our deeply-felt inner trust, and all is reflected in its depths. But when we gaze into this mirror of trust, is it always our own face that we see? 

The Ancient World called her Sophia – Wisdom. She is the creative force behind all things, and a line from a text written in her name promises that she will come to those who reflect on her. That line was written over a thousand years ago, and the fragile text which contains it, known as Thunder, Perfect Mind, was lost for sixteen long centuries, buried in a jar in the Egyptian sands before being unearthed by chance. It is as if some things are just not meant to be lost. That text, which contains some of the most fiercely beautiful lines I know, was adrift on another ocean – the ocean of time – before at last being washed up on our own shore.

Written by an unknown hand, the clear voice of Sophia in that text reaches out to us once more across the centuries. Such endurance against all the odds provides its own powerful message of faith, for faith as well is not meant to be lost, however long it might remain buried. Now once more we can gaze into Sophia’s mirror and, if we choose to and if we are open to her spirit, it is her face that we will see there as well as our own.       

Tides

Like the tide of the ocean

my body just holds its balance

between sea and sky

between worlds

the drum of the wave

almost claims me

but I hold my ground.

Love is like the ocean tide 

that tugs and pulls 

then withdraws herself once more

returns to devour the land

leaving behind what no longer interests her

later, like a proud woman,

she slides back once more

in her fluidity.

How dear this ocean is to me

how I yearn for her fierce power 

when I cannot be with her

when she is far from me

Sea, sky, land

and the roar of the breakers

defining her territory with their song

There you can find me

ever again.

It is the motion

which draws me back

each time again

only to leave once more

just like the waves

just like the tides - 

these are the forces which sustain me

My stories are written

in the rise and fall of the waves

which carry the invisible imprint

of my existence

to the far and undiscovered shores

of Love.

A River has Many Voices

A river has many voices. Swiftly bubbling along and skipping over the stones in its early course, then growing more sonorous and contemplative along the more mature meanders of the plain. But these different voices are the same river. And in time those waters which reach the sea will evaporate, and in this transformed state will make a further sky journey to be returned to the source once more. 

It is a slow exhaling and inhaling of creative breath, as with the source of creative motherly Wisdom. Out of her longing for unity this motherly Wisdom stands at the source of every creation. But to achieve unity once more, creation must necessarily first pass through a condition of duality, and from duality to multiplicity. The One, in contemplating herself, becomes Two, and from Two all the multiple forms of creation flow forth. Wisdom initiates movement – and yet Wisdom herself remains still. The true act of creation is in harmony with nature, but more than this, it is nature, it is as organic as the flowing of the many-voiced river, as the flames dancing in forest darkness, as the changing clouds, or as the wind blowing streamers of sand over the crests of desert dunes.

All these forms have their own voices – even when to our ears they are silent.  But little by little, if only we open ourselves to the many voices of the river, we will hear the murmurings from its source.    

Water Mother

I breath the waves;

my age is measured 

in their rise and fall.

But old as I am 

there was a time before even I existed.

In that time, 

in that world of cracked raw rock, 

there was no water

and no life,

for life could not begin without me.

For a time that seemed forever

all remained dry.

But when the rains began, they fell 

for a time that seemed forever,

and in their falling 

was my beginning.

O Mare Creatrix!

Beloved daughter of my heart’s mysteries

whom I have enfolded in my depths forever,

this pain that you bear is a passing thing;

the sign of a soul overwhelmed by wonder.

Soon you will understand everything.

You will number without effort

the times that my waves rise and fall

in a thousand years.

You will describe perfectly

the traceries of my changing currents,

both as they are now

and as they will become

in an undreamed future.

Part of you has always longed for this.

Part of you has always known 

all that you are about to learn:

a memory recovered in the silence

between two waves,

in the silence

between two lives.

She Wanders the Shore

She wanders the shore

Listening to the waves’ rise and fall

And the sounds of stories

That wash onto this beach

Where she stands

From far lands they have

Ridden the waves

To be with her

Gratefully she stoops

To gather them

Where they lie

Among the shells

And the foams' whiteness

Soon her baskets will be full

She wanders the shore

Listening to the murmurs

And the secret whispers:

All the tales of the world

That drift in with the tide

From the great and giving ocean of stories.

Photo Princess Angeline (Duwamish) in 1896 by Edward S. Curtis