Tree of Dreams

I am the tree of dreams

crows in my hair

children in my branches

lovers' names scratched in my bark.

In timeless times

and endless winds

my rustling leaves

are weary of singing

songs of times when I

was young myself.

Only the dreamers can

change the dream

so I am here till the end of times

to keep the dream alive.

The Angel of the Labyrinth

Resourceful Ariadne saw me not at all, although I am sure that she felt my presence as I glided silently at her shoulder. How ingeniously she wound the skein of thread that would be unwound by Theseus, there in the tortuous corridors of the Labyrinth. Ah, bold Theseus, claimed by myth as a hero for slaying the Minotaur that waited for his arrival at the heart of the winding ways. Hero indeed! The wretched monster already knew its own destiny, and needed only to await the arrival of the son of King Aegeus for it to be fulfilled.

I tell you that Ariadne’s deed was more heroic, providing as she did the means for Theseus’ return. And what was her reward? To be deserted by him on the island of Naxos, left behind like any castaway, to be rescued by a god who showed clever Ariadne more honour than he ever did.

All these things I have seen, for I am the witness of history, although history sees me not. Secretly I stand at the gate of every labyrinth, and as you enter the gate of your own labyrinth you will be sure to pass me. But you as well will not notice as I slip my skein into your hands. Unknowingly, you will begin to unwind it as you enter the turning ways. And at every turn it will be laid down, and every measure of it records the event which you experience. Here at this turn you made the decision to go either to the right or to the left, never being sure which path might be the right one to follow. Here farther along, you fell in love, and the path ahead changed for you because of this. And here, you suffered a loss, and the path changed direction once again.

All this is known, because all of these things, these life events, are recorded on the unwinding skein as they happen. Look closely: you can see them written on the skein. All which you experience is faithfully set down, a true document of your passage inwards. 

But what you cannot know is what will be written on the part of the skein which has yet to be unwound, because you can only discover that by unwinding it. And you can only unwind it by travelling farther on your journey. And since you cannot see what is ahead of you, you must have trust. You can read readily enough what has been written as it unwinds behind you. But what is yet to be written is negotiable, and up to you, and dependent upon the paths of choice which lie ahead of you in the labyrinth. And I, who have wound the skein which you now unwind, will help you to make those choices if, like Ariadne, you allow me to help you to reach the labyrinth’s heart.

Painting: Labyrinth, by Jake Baddeley.

The Loom of the World

Seeing patterns in things is a reassuring thing. It comforts us to feel that something, some experience, has an underlying purpose, even if that purpose is not clear to us at the time. We trust that it is so. All across the world, in different places and in different cultures, women are weaving. Women have been doing so for thousands of years, creating cloth from the wool of their herds or from other plants and animals to make into clothing, or baskets, or blankets. They might be spinning on a simple hand-held spindle while they watch over the same herds which provide what they spin, or they might be sitting outside using a portable back-strap loom, or using a large frame loom in their house. I myself have done my own share of weaving at the loom.

All of these women, wherever they live or have lived, are creating different things, using different patterns, distinctive to their times and cultures. But perhaps there is a sense in which they are actually creating the same thing. The activity is the same, however it is produced. What connects these women is that they are all weavers. They are all familiar with the warp and weft of the loom – the vertical and horizontal threads which create the weaving.

We readily recognise this warp and weft which creates the weave of our own life’s experiences:  pain and pleasure, loathing and delight, sorrow and rejoicing, regret and anticipation. Darkness and light are also part of this pattern, and the pattern tells us that the weaving would not be possible, would not even exist, without both of these experiences. But what is the weaving?

Perhaps a network, all-unseen, connects all women who weave, and who have ever woven. The common activity is in itself enough for a connection to be made. Perhaps through this connection one vast weaving is being created, a weaving whose mysterious form we might glimpse through the creative activity of all these individual women. And as long as there are women, the warp holds. As long as the warp holds, we can weave our world into wellness. We are all weavers, weaving at the loom of the world. From our sorrow and our love, from pain and forgiving, from all the darkness and the light, the weaving of love takes form.       

Copper Cascade by Donna Sakamoto Crispin

Hunger

HUNGER

Are you hungry, my Little One?

Never mind - soon it will be time to eat.

Look: Mamma is putting yams in a pot to boil;

you can eat them mashed,

that way your mouth will not hurt

the way it does when you have to chew.

Why don’t you lie down and rest now?

When you wake up, it will be time for dinner.

My Little One, my Beloved, watches me,

sees me take yams from a basket,

sees me place them in the cooking pot.

I make a show of putting the pot on the fire,

cleaning pans, busying myself

with preparing the meal to come.

From the corner of my eye I watch.

Little eyes grow drowsy at last with waiting.

Little eyes fall closed at last, still wondering

when the meal will be ready to eat.

I look down at the stones

which I have placed in the pot.

The water is boiling at last.

I let it boil. My Little One will sleep now,

and I will let my Little One sleep.

Letting Go

Dear Brave Souls

To let go 

Some have a hard time 

letting go of what is no longer, 

what cannot be, what is not,

what has never been. 

People say 

'just let go, 

just let go, 

just let go' 

scattering the platitude like confetti 

immediately swept away by any wind. 

What is it exactly, this letting go? 

No longer allowing the eye

to be caught by the hook...

No longer fastening the lock on the door, 

just letting the door swing as it will...

No longer visiting the graves 

where there is no love 

and no blessing in both directions...

No longer reviewing and reviewing the past, 

even the last moment, 

as though there will be a test. 

There will not be a test, dear soul.

What is it exactly, 

this letting go?

Not reading the same chapter over and over

and over and over, futilely attempting 

to make the indelible facts be rewritten… 

Making new memories of quality

to bathe old scars and new life...

Moving into a larger world 

in which the past 

is but a dot on the landscape

rather than the only continent in sight.

We all find our ways… 

letting go is shaking loose,

letting go is turning

in your great coat, into a new wind

forward into new sky and open road

leaving what cannot be,

and taking all treasure

from the wreck. 

Each in her own way.

Each in his own way.

This comes with love. Hang in there. No one deserves to be nailing the hem of their cloak to the crossroad that once was, but that is not now.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Painting by Helene Knoop

Touching Empty Ground

Through the lives we lived, I learned the harshest gift-lesson to accept, and the most powerful I know - that is, knowledge, an absolute certainty that life repeats itself, renews itself, no matter how many times it is stabbed, stripped to the bone, hurled to the ground, hurt, ridiculed, ignored, scorned, looked down upon, tortured, or made helpless.

I learned from my dear people as much about the grave, about facing the demons, and about rebirth as I have learned in all my psychoanalytic training and all my twenty-five years of clinical practice. I know that those who are in some ways and for some time shorn of belief in life itself - that they ultimately are the ones who will come to know best that Eden lies underneath the empty field, that the new seed goes first to the empty and open places - even when the open place is a grieving heart, a tortured mind, or a devastated spirit.

What is this faithful process of spirit and seed that touches empty ground and makes it rich again? Its greater workings I cannot claim to understand. But I know this: Whatever we set our days to might be the least of what we do, if we do not also understand that something is waiting for us to make ground for it, something that lingers near us, something that loves, something that waits for the right ground to be made so it can make its full presence known.

I am certain that as we stand in the care of this faithful force, that what has seemed dead is dead no longer, what has seemed lost is no longer lost, that which some have claimed impossible is made clearly possible, and what ground is fallow is only resting - resting and waiting for the blessed seed to arrive on the wind with all Godspeed.

Excerpt from The Faithful Gardener ( 1995, Harper Collins) by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

photo: India Flint, Botanical Alchemist

Kindness

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters 

and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say:

"It is I you have been looking for"

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

*

Naomi Shihab Nye

Painting Circle of Light by Sandra Bierman

No Lack of Love

Dear Ones, 

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious...take heart. There is yet time...practice. Andele! And again. 

To begin with, take on meaning wherever you can, as though it is the air you must breathe in order to not only survive, but to thrive. Find work and events that leave you feeling well used, rather than just aggravated and angry. If on the road you encounter a sign that reads "Keep Out", understand the true nature of wisdom, consider carefully and most of the time, do not "keep out". Remember, there is almost nothing that cannot be helped or improved by love, warmth, mercy and a small but wild gleam in one's eye. 

Caveats? Beware of people with smiles that light up quickly, but drop away like black eels as soon as you turn away. Beware of grinning people carrying daggers who say they are not daggers but rather gladioli that just happen to be painted to look like daggers. Avoid those who maintain minds so narrow that they can see through a keyhole with both eyes. 

To remain strong choose able fellow travelers. Bypass whiners, blamers and complainers. Whiners trail long slimy weeds behind for everyone to trip over; blamers waste everyones time by pointing to the same problems over and over, without ever truly putting their own cajones or ovarios on the line. Complainers drain and delay everyone with petty predictabilities. Their ice cream is always too cold and their soup is always too hot. 

Elude, as well, people who nip away at your time, your resources, just a little here and there. "Surely you don't mind...." they wheedle. Mind. 

Practice mercy. Don't be ashamed to be a person of faith, whichever faith that might be. If you follow Christ, act like Christ, if you follow Buddha, echo Buddha. Whether you love Theotokos, or the Goddess, or The Prophet or study the great Rebbes--all the great ones are characterized by kindness and kinship with all, rather than by bickering, keel-hauling and killing. When you hear a politician or "reformer" disparaging the poor, the uneducated, the sick, the lonely, the tormented, the helpless--change sides. 

Rekindle forgotten beatitudes: Speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Practice Descansos y flores blancos: planting the dark ground with white flowers wherever atrocities or death have taken place. Be mindful that in la lucha, matters of deep change, God is often put on trial by detractors. Step forward as lead counsel for the defense. 

Vigor and humor are the keys to longevity, helping one to rise up again and again. Do not forget to appall your critics often: Tell them "I have worse news for you yet; there's more of my work yet to come; much, much more." In disheartening moments, remember that you can weep and be fierce at the same time. Let the tiny lights of your tears be lights on the path for others. Resist much. You will be asked to accept the conventional wisdom: "First you crawl, then you walk." Confound them all! Get up off your knees. Fly first. Soar second. 

So it may be for you, so may it be for me, so may it be for all of us. 

No lack of love,
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
On behalf of "The Grandmother of the World"

Photo: 'Masks' by Molly Kate Taylor
www.raggedwing.org

Gaia's Agony

Upon the iron ground she lies

hands grasping the earth

to hold what cannot

be held or bound.

For what is sought

cannot be found

beneath this iron land.

She lies unmoving, blind

her face upwards

searching the sky

where in her darkness

no light breaks through.

Nor where the wings of prey

cut through the air

to scream

aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

A sacrifice

from herself to herself

sustaining her being

with her own body.

In the space between the earth, 

hard, unyielding

and the space between the sky, 

predatory, unforgiving

she must forge her shield

from the fires of her own

surrender..

Upon the iron ground

beneath the iron sky.

Photo credit: Selma Sevenhuijsen

Stolen

Stolen

Before you were my daughter come into the world,

before you were even born,

you were promised to the darkness

deep beneath my giving earth.

I never knew

what one brother had promised to another,

I never knew

what great Zeus had promised to dark Hades:

I never knew.

Now you have been taken.

Perhaps a part of you went all-knowing

because your soul already knew

what was necessary:

the abduction of the self

the rape of the soul

the violence which comes with transformation

the violence that is necessary for separation

from me, from your mother.

And so for me begins a new state of being:

A new silence, like no silence I have known.

A trifle: a handful of pomegranate seeds

sealed your fate forever:

my child, you are now in Hades' world
and his realm is not mine. 
I, Demeter, who am mother to the earth itself

have had my motherhood stolen from me.

Now my own earth knows my rage
now the dry soil cracks with grief,

now Autumn has come in Spring:

new leaves wither and die in bud,

birds fall silent, fields lie fallow,

and I, the Mater Creatrix, rule a waste land.

Where are you, my daughter,
living out your shadow life
in the dark lands far beneath my feet?
Do you still live,
or are you now a shade among shades?
Where are you, my changed one?
Where are you, my Persephone? 

Gust of Wind by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer

If I Had Something That Was Me To Give

If I had something that was me to give..

If there was one piece of advice that was mine to give because of the life I have lived it would be to merge with all aspects of the Earth.

Merge with a tree and know what it feels like to be a tree, feel your roots go deep touching the roots of the trees and plants around you, know what it feels like to share of yourself in a place no one else can see, yet reflects on the outside world so beautifully.

Merge with the water, run free, talk constantly like a babbling brook, enter into the stillness of the deep, roar like white water rapids, go places impulse leads, trickle down the path of least resistance, throw yourself off of the edge of your world with abandonment, not knowing where you will end up, be the water falling into a new world and discover that even there you are still who you are.

Merge with that which you are scared of, merge with two of those tectonic plates pushing against each other.. opposing views make mountains come forth.

Merge with the volcano and surf the lava to the center of the Earth.

Merge with Thunderbeings and sing their song.   Feel what they feel when their lightning strikes the Earth.  It makes protoplasms upon her body that looks like the roots of a tree going down into the Earth, touching the Crystal people, adding charge to their creativity, to the mathematical reason for their being.  In that moment they are one with the outside world, a portal, a doorway is opened..  Merge with all of her.  Do not be afraid to see what she has to tell you about how it should be.

Do not be afraid to get swept away by emotions that travel in different directions. Be the tornado, and be the beautiful sunset that reveals its face at the end of a tornado kind of day.

Be the seed inside the shell, struggle to break free and become all that you can be…  and when you break free let go of the shell (the memory of being confined) and just be.  Grow like you were meant to grow.  Turn your face towards the light and feel the love that is coming to you. Feel the clouds share their rain with you, the soil share its nutrients… and grow, grow, grow.

When disaster strikes give yourself permission to feel sorrow, but merge with the birds and ask them what they do and they will say, “it is time to rebuild”.  Going forth we find them building a new nest.  We find them singing like they do, gathering food..  They do not just sit and hold their sorrow inside of them for the rest of their lives. They say, ‘We go on. We rebuild.'

All of the rules for how we are supposed to walk through this dimension have been written upon the Earths body. There are many trees that grow in the forest, together in harmony they make sacred sharing of how we should be. All the rules for how to walk here in this world we know were written upon the Earths body.

Merge with the Earth, see the bigger picture, embrace the bigger picture.  Then there is no need for prejudice, for war, for hate.

There are opposites that work against each other, but even they have their place in the grand design.  When the two winds blow against each have a big emotion, but when again you find that other wind is somewhere else, then be the gentle wind that sneaks up and kisses a friend on the cheek..

Merge with the Earth..  if I had one piece of advice to give for guidance, that is what it would be. Merge with the Earth. 

Do not be afraid to hug something different than yourself.


My thanks to Earthen Girl for her permission to repost this post from her blog https://earthengirl.wordpress.com

Painting The Planting by Sandra Bierman

Sacagawea

To know the ways:

The wide rivers’ courses,

the secret trails

untrodden by the steps

of those who walk without seeking,

the unseen traceries

left by the flights of birds

like lace across the sky:

For this she journeys 

with the makers of maps

and of history,

plotting her own charts

invisible to others:

She crosses inner meridians,

strange horizons,

new wildernesses of the heart.

Earth and Sky

We tend to think that the Earth has always been regarded as Feminine. Mother Earth, nurturing and stable. But has this always been so?

In the wall paintings of Ancient Egypt we find depictions of the Sky goddess Nut bending the arch of her star-covered body over her consort Geb, who is the earth below. But as times and attitudes changed to become more patriarchal, the sky mother and the earth father changed places, just as the moon became feminine and the sun became masculine – all part of the process of re-assigning the 'superior' and 'spiritual' elements to the masculine and the 'inferior' and 'material' to the feminine.

But is Mother Earth a real concept or a patriarchal one?

Venus of Willendorf

In the earliest times there seems to have been a strong emphasis on feminine deities. Apart from male shaman figures painted on the walls of caves, prehistoric carved male figures are exceptional, with only one or two rare examples being known. Far more common from these distant times are carved female figures – the so-called ‘venuses’ – which powerfully suggest a reverence for the creative role of women and the fruits of the earth. Masculine gods were apparently introduced slowly, first as consorts and subjects of the All-Mother, then as equal partners, then later as superior partners, and finally, in the current monotheistic ‘religions of the book’, the feminine deity has been willfully banished altogether from patriarchal theology.

Now there are many signs that the goddess is returning. Kwan Yin, Tara, Gaia, White Buffalo Calf Woman... in all her aspects the goddess is the bearer of a principle beyond herself. What is this principle that is so unique to the goddess? Perhaps it is compassion. 

But what does this quality of compassion truly mean? Not all women are wise, but  ‘wisdom' is a feminine attribute. She lives as a quality in men and women who search for her. She is prepared to transform any human mind into wise certainty - if you ask her, if you love her, if you search for her. In ancient Egypt she was named Isis; the Ancient Greeks and early Christian Gnostics knew her as Sophia, and she appeared in human form as Mary, the Magdalene. She pours herself into every soul that goes through the catharsis, the purification. Every refining, however small, yields wisdom - the wisdom of a woman.

But what is compassion in its essence? And how do we find the balance between strength and vulnerability? Being compassionate requires an active step. We 'see' the other, we are moved by that other and we act accordingly. Or do we? Karen Armstrong writes in her latest book 'Twelve steps to a compassionate life': "This is a struggle for a lifetime, because there are aspects in it that militate against compassion. For example, it's hard to love your enemies. We are driven by our legacy from our reptilian ancestors. It makes us put ourselves first, become angry, (and) when we feel threatened in any way, we lash out violently."

But an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

So we must look to our collective history, and within ourselves. In my post about the yin-yang (Symbols and the Tao), I mention that each opposite contains the seed – the potential – to become the other. The earth and the sky have at different times been thought of as either feminine or masculine, and if we identify with both, we as well can feel compassion for both the masculine and the feminine, so that neither dominates the other, and both exist in compassionate harmony with each other.

Earth

Photograph: Edward S. Curtis

Earth

These days, when I look
At the others of my people,
At the others in the village,
I see that everyone
Is younger than me,
Even the council elders.

Sometimes they ask me,
‘Mother, how old are you?
You must be as old as the Earth!’
And then I smile
Because it is not true.
I am older than that -
Much older.

The Winding Path

The winding paths of labyrinths fascinate us, and seem to pull us into their mysterious patterns. Following their paths carries us to their heart, whether those paths can be traced with a moving finger (as with the engraved labyrinth on a column in San Martino cathedral) or are large enough to be walked around (as with the famous labyrinth set into the floor of Chartres cathedral). But what was the original significance of these patterns?

The labyrinth is an archetype. It is a tangible metaphor for one’s own spiritual journey through the winding pathway of one’s life. The point of building a labyrinth, as emphasized in myths and dances, was always about a process of initiation. When you walk a labyrinth, you follow a single circuitous path winding inwards and out again in one direction. The way to the centre of the labyrinth leads to the experience of the turning point. Without this turning point it is impossible to leave the labyrinth.

In Ancient Greek Asklepieions - sanatoria founded on the healing principles of Hippocrates - the labyrinth had an essential function as part of the healing process. Then as now the philosophy was that the true essence of initiation into the hidden knowledge is knowledge of the Self. In order to achieve this knowledge, one first has to meet one's lesser self, one's personality. And so, after the patient had gone through the first three phases of treatment in the Asklepieion, he was brought into trance by way of a dance of progression through the labyrinth. The parts of his being - his physical, etheric and astral bodies - had already been  'loosened up' during the first three phases. Now his spiritual core - his 'I' or self - became the crux of the therapeutic process.

And while the person snaked on to the sounds of solemn music, approaching the centre of the labyrinth in a meditative follow-up of steps, the dancers saw specific images appear before their mind's eye. Then they would become aware that they saw, not just the labyrinth of their surroundings, but the labyrinth of their own life-walk. The catharsis comes with the discovery that they did not lose themselves in the labyrinth, but instead found their own inner selves. In the labyrinth we do not meet the Minotaur - we meet ourselves. Only through the purifying effectiveness of the catharsis do the inner transformations become possible, which, according to Jung, is always considered a profound religious experience. 

When we walk the labyrinth, we are engaging not just our senses, but our whole bodies, our physical selves. And so walking the labyrinth becomes a form of prayer which is prayed, not just with the mind, but with the whole being. It is this physical involvement which the labyrinth demands of us that becomes a form of ‘body prayer’, allowing the process of the turning point to become a real and vivid experience.

But even a physical labyrinth need not be necessary  to achieve the experience which a labyrinth has to offer. For life itself is a labyrinth, a winding path which all of  us tread, and ultimately it is up to us all individually to what extent we choose to make that experience a conscious one.

Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame

in which a thing escapes your grasp

while it makes a glorious display of transformation.

That designing Spirit, the master mind of all things on earth

loves nothing so much in the sweeping movement of the dance

as the turning point.

Rainer Maria Rilke

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.

Autumn

Autumn

Gradually

she celebrates the secret of letting go

First she gives away her green,

now her orange, 

her yellow, 

and then her red,

until the fire fades

at the last, to lose her dying embers.

All, all is given away, to her very last leaf

There she stands, empty and silent,

disrobed.

Leaning naked against the Autumn air

she begins her watch of trust.

Painting Autumn by David Bergen