INVOCATION: Hildegard von Bingen ~ Anonymous 4

In June of 2013 I posted my Invocation, which I wrote both as a prayer and a blessing for all women who are oppressed, in whatever form that oppression might take. Since then the Invocation also has been accepted for and now appears on the World Prayers website. Now my husband David has realised the Invocation as a video, featuring his painting of our dear daughter-in-law Anneke. The video is set to the haunting music of the 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, as sung in plainchant by the quartet of women’s voices Anonymous 4. In creating his video, David’s wish and intention has been the same as my own: to allow the Invocation to be released further into the world so that its words may do the work for which I intended them.  

Invocation on Sophia’s Mirror: Invocation

Invocation on the World Prayers website: World Prayers

To Her Mourning Daughter

To Her Mourning Daughter

My keening daughter, stare not too long

at the darkness of the grave.

Avert your eyes in time

and do not lose yourself in kindred’s tears

your veil too thin, your skin too sear for this

and you, too young in years

to bear such bitter bliss:

you, who have no need to be so brave.

Rather, be a bone as hollow as a birds, and as light,

see in the stars’ sweet drift the one who knew you

and let these currents of a dark and sadder night

flow through you, through you.

Do not assume the tint of faded leaves

do not allow the kindred here to cast you

as the one who ever grieves.

But rather, channel the water

where you wish it to follow.

Carry it with you, willow daughter

give voice to the pain

keen for the silence

be a flowing river

meander full and hollow

be both carrier and giver,

and life will surely flow

into your soul once again.

And only shed your mourning weeds

and casually toss your hair

when you are once more safely in my arms.

My daughter, I fear I abandoned you there

to a life of mourning and dark armbands

but life has other charms

and you have other needs.

Freely rewritten from a fragment of a 16th-century Hindi poem.

Artwork reworked by DutchPuh from an original painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau

Spirit of the Samurai

From feudal Japan there comes a story of a young woman who, when the castle in which she had sought refuge had been overrun by the opposing clan, and knowing that her fate would be to be ravished by the victors, threw herself down the castle well. On reaching the well’s mouth, the clan leader discovered this poem fluttering weighted beneath a stone: 

"For fear lest clouds may dim her light,
Should she but graze this nether sphere, 
The young moon poised above the height 
Doth hastily betake to flight."

Using the moon as a metaphor for herself, the young woman had chosen for her own light not to be dimmed, to be sullied, by rough desires. Her action embodied the true samurai spirit more surely than the band of armoured samurai who had overrun the castle. For quite some time now, coping with the challenges in my personal life seem sometimes to be beyond my strength. When I feel that way, I usually go hunting for my power. Today is such a day, and I am finding my power among the examples of women who fought as samurai.

But as the story shows, being true to the samurai spirit does not necessarily mean to fight. The spirit shows that it is how we acquit ourselves, how we cope in a situation, that counts. When we find ourselves in a difficult situation to cope with emotionally, it is so easy to allow ourselves to fall victim to thoughts of desperation, of helplessness. We allow our inner castle to be overrun, and rather than standing firm, we succumb to feelings of powerlessness. The young woman showed that there is always a choice – although our own choice need not be as extreme as hers. But we can still choose. We can choose not to give way to despair. We can choose to go on trusting that time will change a situation, as, sooner or later, it always does. We can choose to keep our power for ourselves, for no one can take our power from us – although we can choose to give it away.

And neither do we need always to think of ‘winning’ in a situation. Perhaps the most famous work to be written, both in this period and from this place, is ‘Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai’, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. The book contains the wise comment that if we think only of winning, then our victory will be more wretched than a defeat. Neither defeat nor victory, but a simple acceptance, can bring change, can offer a measure of solace. ‘Hagakure’ can be translated as ‘hidden among leaves’. The typically poetic title contains its own wisdom: that it is in what is hidden, rather than what we can obviously see, where we can find the essence of the true samurai spirit. And this hidden essence cannot be taken from us, in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.

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