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

The Mystic Marriage

Is all which I now see around me truly the result of my brief presence on Earth? Has all this truly been done in my name? I came among you with a single intent. Not, as you seem to think, to win redemption for all of you for the sin in Eden (how could you imagine such a thing?). There was no Fall in Eden. The Man and the Woman remained unblemished. So how could there be such a thing as universal redemption when there is no such thing as universal sin? No, the only sin is the personal sin of not being true to one’s own self. That is the greatest betrayal, for if we betray ourselves, then we also betray our true Selves.

But you do not need me to redeem you, for I tell you truly that each and every one of you has the spirit to redeem yourself, because each and every one of you is me, and I am each and every one of you. Why have you forgotten this? I will tell you why: you have forgotten this because you have placed me outside of yourselves. In your frenzy to banish bronze idols you have merely replaced them with another idol. And the idol which you have created is a monster, not of bronze, but of ideas. That idol is myself as you have created me. You have so occupied yourselves with building a towering plinth for me to stand on that you have forgotten that if I am standing high above you then we no longer can look each other in the eye.

And this is not the only idol which you have created in my name. You have built another idol to worship: an idol of words. You have transformed something that shone with the light of my being, something bright with radiant change, into something harder than stone. For even stone, which seems unyielding, changes its form over time. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is or is not ‘holy’, and yet I say to you now that all which is thought or said or written with a pure heart is holy in my eyes, and whether something is or is not holy to me is not something for you to decide. And yet this is what you have done. I speak with many voices, and yet how many of my voices have lain in the dust of centuries because of the choices which you have claimed to make on my behalf, because of your folly in believing that such choices were yours to make?

Look at my feet, and see how they are shod. Look at the footprints I leave behind in the soil. They are the footprints left by a mortal form who wore only simple woven sandals. And yet many of the footprints left by those who deign to place themselves nearer to me have sunk deep into my earth, weighed down by the finery of their wearers. Their footprints are heavier than my own, and I tell you that their weighty apparel, their jewelled rings and resplendent robes, distances them from me more than the pure of heart who must walk barefoot, for such earthly show is a greater barrier to drawing close to me than the simplest garments worn by those who leave footprints as light as my own. The footprints of the meek and my own are no different. Their footprints have trodden where I also have trodden, and therefore are the same. Lightness is a virtue, and a crown of thorns weighs less than a crown of jewels and gold, both in this world and in the one to come.

But these robes of earthly glory are not all that in my eyes truly weighs down mortal flesh. If the blood of even one individual is shed in my name, I say to you that the death of that one person is a matter of greater weight to me than my own mortal death, which was no death but a mere revealing of my true nature, as it is for you all. And yet the lives of millions have been offered up in my name. Where is the kingdom of heaven for those who have swung the sword, or caused conversion in my name by fear or by force, or torched the pyre beneath the stake? How can it ever be attained when all which I truly am has become so misshapen?

How could it have come to pass that so many innocent young souls so precious to me have been damaged by those who actually make claim to represent me, but who in truth only represent their own darkness? I, who have entrusted to the Woman the most difficult and the most sacred task of all, and who should only be honoured, now find Her damned by you. Do you seriously imagine that I will return in triumph when so much that has been done in my name has served only to create damage and division, and even a loss of life itself? Only a fool would think that I one day shall return. The pure of heart know that I have never left.

But why did I come to you at all, if not to redeem a sin of your own imaginings? If redemption exists in each and every moment (and it does), then my descent to earth, my entry into this world of coarse matter, must have been for another reason. And it was. Such events move on a stage greater than your imaginings. They arc across all of time and space, and from time to time these events emerge into your world, become momently visible to your histories, and you create messiahs and mythologies: stories and writings which are mere faint echoes of far larger truths.

So why did I come? Why, if not to redeem, did I descend into this flesh? I had been waiting. I had been waiting for my beloved Other Self, waiting for her arrival in the world so that I might join her and so on earth complete the sacred union of soul and spirit. I came, not for all, but only for one. You, my beloved one, who in these greater realities take the form of the clear voice of wisdom, my bride Sophia, were that One. You, who are the Ocean holding all life within your sacred womb. You, who trod the soil in the same place and at the same time as my own brief sojourn. You, who witnessed my mystic death and resurrection. You, who took me as husband at Cana in a marriage that was the earthly echo of our union which already had found place in the luminous Beyond. Mary, I came for you.

Stained Glass Jesus and Mary Magdalene - Glastonbury

Dreaming of an Angel

Last night an angel came to my side. At first I was only aware of a brilliant clear light which seemed to fill the space around me, and with the light came calm, and a sense of trust that all would be well. Then it seemed to me as if the light, although still bright, grew softer, and in this velvet softness a form took shape. The form looked at me with eyes of love, and I understood that she wished me to come with her. Whether she truly spoke to me, or whether I felt her thoughts enter my own I cannot say, but I knew that she had been waiting for the moment when I would open my eyes, see her, and follow her. 

So I was dreaming that I had awakened, and despite the feeling of trust I found myself feeling a little uneasy in this strange waking/dreaming state. Still I followed where the angel led me. I half-walked, half-drifted through fields and along pathways where perhaps I had been before, but had since long forgotten: the half-remembered landscapes of dreams. But because of my lingering unease my own movements were not as fluid as those of my companion of light. Perhaps it was this hesitation which the angel felt, for she urged me to awaken more fully, that although I thought that I was fully awake, my hesitant manner betrayed the fact that I still had a further stage to go.

And so I trusted more, let go more, and realised that my hesitation, and the fear which caused it, was groundless. When I dared to truly look around me a new world was revealed: an intense world full of light and colour, and my feet finally felt firm ground. I no longer needed to half-drift in this world. I could leave my footprints firmly in this place, knowing that it was where I now truly belonged. Knowing that it was a part of me, and that I could freely claim my place there, and that the intensity of all which I saw there was how things truly are, always, as long as I felt total trust.

The angel now took my hand in her own and led me even farther. With all fear gone, and with my presence in that place now fully experienced and accepted, my body became feather-light. I no longer needed to leave my footprints there to know that I was a part of this place. Now I seemed to glide through this new land without effort. But there was one more stage to go through, one more awakening for me to experience. And that was my awakening into my own everyday world. When touched by morning light once more, my dream of the angel stayed with me, filling me with a deep sense of peace and solace. No longer was I dreaming for I woke up - awakened.

Guiding Angel - Tiffany Glass & Decorating Company, circa 1890

Mary of Egypt: A Heart in the Wilderness

Is there a defining moment in which all and everything changes for us? If so, perhaps the lives which we have led up until that moment, which might seem to us as mere wasted years, can with hindsight come to be seen as having a value in themselves, as being the very experiences which have, unknown to us, been all the while preparing us for that change.

As a young woman in 4th-century Alexandria who had at an early age run away from home, Mary led a very dissolute life, offering herself to anyone who would pay her price – and at times even, apparently, not bothering about payment for the sake of the mere experience. She eventually journeyed to Jerusalem, not on a pilgrimage, but hoping to find more customers among the pilgrims themselves. Wandering the streets, Mary arrived at the great doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In her harlot’s dress she sought to enter the church, but felt her way barred by some inexplicable force which seemed to press against her and hold her back.

The experience was so intense that Mary was forced to confront the life which she had chosen to lead. She opened her heart, begging forgiveness – and in that moment entered the church freely. Her style of dress might have scandalized the congregation, but God sees what is in our hearts, not what we happen to be wearing. The experience was Mary’s turning point: her defining moment.

From that moment Mary would dedicate her life to a devotional simplicity. Turning away from the world, and taking with her only three loaves of bread, she crossed the Jordan to the harsh desert beyond, settling into the life of a wilderness hermit that would last for the rest of her life. 

It was in the last two years of her life that Mary was discovered in her hermitage by the monk Zosimas, who himself had ventured into the wilderness to meditate. He found her completely naked, with long straggling hair, and the startled monk hardly recognized her as anything human. Mary asked Zosimas for his cloak to cover herself, and they sat quietly together while she told him her story. They agreed to meet again the following year, this time on the opposite bank of the Jordan.

Legend tells us that Zosimus duly waited at the appointed time and place, and was astonished to see a transfigured Mary walk across the surface of the waters to his side. A further rendezvous was arranged for the following year at her hermitage, but when Zosimus arrived he found that Mary had died. Zosimus performed the burial with due reverence, and legend again steps in to have his labours assisted by a desert lion that with its great strength pawed the hard desert earth aside that would form her remote grave.

Mary’s legend grew. She became known to history as Mary of Egypt. But history and legend can become woven together. We do not mind these embroiderings, because so often they speak to us of a greater truth: that a wilderness can lie as much within ourselves as in the harsh desert beyond the Jordan. But for the heart which has truly surrendered, which has been touched by a compassion beyond earthly understanding, any wilderness, within or without, can be transformed into a recovered Eden.

Hermit Woman by Wojciech Gerson

Night-Silence ~ Nachtstilte

Night-Silence

Hush now, hush: on feet of silver

Through the night see silence go,

Silence that from gods delivers

Greetings to the watch below...

What ’twixt souls could not be spoken

In the daytime’s empty din

From high realms that night has woken,

Into light star-bright now broken,

Sullied by no word or token

God speaks deep within.

*

Nachtstilte

Stil, wees stil,

Op zilv’ren voeten

Schrijdt de stilte door de nacht.

Stilte, die der goden groeten

Overbrengt naar lager wacht.

Wat niet ziel tot ziel kon spreken

Door der dagen ijl gegons

Spreekt, uit overluchtse streken

Klaar, als ster in licht zou breken,

Zonder smet van taal of teken

God in elk van ons.

*

Poem by the Dutch poet P.C. Boutens (1870-1953)

Translation by Emma & David Bergen

Painting: "Licht" - Juke Hudig

Conversation with a Butterfly

I am sitting relaxing in my garden. The day is warm, with a few fluffy sheep’s-wool clouds sailing through a sky of piercing lapis, although the shade of the young maple tree under which I am sitting offers me some relative coolness.

A butterfly alights on one of the maple leaves, close enough for me to reach out and touch it. I do not do so, of course, being glad enough of its company. Its wings match the blue of the sky: a little piece of heaven flown down from above. ‘How are you?’ asks the butterfly courteously. I feel the need to be honest. ‘A little down’, I replied, ‘but rather better since you have come to visit me. ‘Ah,‘ said the butterfly unsurprised, ‘that is to be expected. I tend to have that effect upon those whom I visit.’ I noticed that I felt better the longer the butterfly remained with me. ‘Perhaps you could stay with me, then I would always feel better.’ I suggested.

‘Oh, no!’ exclaimed the butterfly emphatically. ‘It just doesn't work like that. Were I always to stay with you, my attraction would diminish to the point where you would not even notice my existence, because you would then simply take me for granted. In my experience, that is what tends to happen, which is why I prefer just to visit, rather than remain.’ I had a mischievous thought. ‘Then perhaps I could capture you!’ I said. ‘That way you would have to stay with me, and I would always have you close by!’ The butterfly smiled knowingly. ‘No, that would not work either! As soon as I am captured, I change. I become something else entirely that you would not even recognise. So you see, there’s no point in trying to catch me.’

‘Then when you fly away, I will follow you wherever you go!’ I laughed, rather smugly pleased with my own persistent ingenuity. ‘That way, you would always be free, and I would always be near you.’ ‘Still no good!’ The butterfly patiently explained. ‘You may chase after me for as long as you want. But if you chase me, you will discover that I always stay just out of reach. Better to just be still in yourself. That way, if you are lucky, I will come to visit you as I have now. Besides,’ the butterfly continued with a flutter of its azure wings ‘my little life is over soon enough. My visits tend to be brief ones, sometimes short, sometimes a little longer. And sometimes those whom I visit do not even realise that I have visited them until after I have flown away. That is the way it is.’

The butterfly fluttered its wings more vigorously, and I felt that it might fly away at any moment. ‘Please wait just a little!’ I asked. ‘’Won’t you tell me your name before you go?’ The butterfly smiled. ‘My name is Happiness.’ It replied. 

Painting by Odilon Redon

Inanna and the Old Woman at the Gate

This is dangerous work, this thing we women do, feeling everything, passing through the gate that way. This is our play with the spirits: we gain what we risk. So it is with Inanna; what she would gain and therefore what she must risk is life itself. Inanna hears Ereshkigal crying, so she has to go. She has to go: after all, isn't Inanna a woman?

We stand on the crack between the worlds in our women's bodies. We look both ways on the horns of life, forward, to see our children through, backward, to remember. That's why our love takes so much courage. Inanna comes through here, asking me the way. I know her symptoms - haven't I seen them a hundred times before? I would have cried for her if she hadn't so many tears for herself already. I am Daughter of the Sun, Inanna says, but I am so wet, I am so wet, I am rain without a river to collect me, I am a flood with no banks to embrace me, and still I cannot stop crying. Old Woman, what can I do with all my water?

"You have the water of life itself in you", I tell her, "It is your responsibility to cry it home." How Inanna cries! She cries as if she has already become the wind: It's not enough, she says, the way I've made myself up, it's not enough; my crown and my kingdom, it's not enough, all my light - not enough, my stores of wealth - not enough, the soldiers who would trade away everything for one night with me - not enough. My sweet companion Ninshubah, who has stepped her path from childhood to womanhood alongside my own - not enough. Even Dumuzi, my king, flesh of my flesh, not enough. My own beloved sons - who are to me as life itself, not enough. There are some kinds of tears that cannot be wiped away. Like prayers, they announce us.

My body! Inanna cries, this hopeless beauty of mine is like the skull of a melon. I don't know who has eaten my insides. This candle of flesh I carry only illuminates everything yellow as bones of sand. I know what Inanna is saying when she asks me how to get through that gate, when she asks me how to dream. Old Woman, Inanna says, teach me how to dream.

"Don't ask me that!" I tell her, "We all know how to dream. Just some of us listen to our dreams. So you just listen to whatever it is stampeding inside you, pulling you over. You just ride it where it takes you. Aren't you yourself the morning and the evening star? There's no woman can't walk through walls, navigating her dreams. There's no woman can't walk through time - don't you have two sons to prove it?"

Can't I give her something more? Inanna wants to know. Something to make it safe? But all I can give her are the words I keep as the witness at the gate: "Ereshkigal is your own sister, and all the scribes in Sumer haven't any more power than what's written in the mother's milk you shared: that's the ink that draws us into this world. And what draws us in draws us out again, both directions."

I didn’t tell her the rest. What good would it do? What must be, must be. But even the underworld rewards the courage of love.

Text: The Descent of Inanna ©Madronna Holden

Photo: model Anna Chipovskaya by Nicolay Biryukov

Love

Love is so very much more than an experienced emotion. It is a universal force of being. It cannot be destroyed. At times it might seem to us that this happens, when we feel that other forces overwhelm us. But even then - especially then - love transforms itself, finds new forms to replace those forms which, sometimes for reasons which are difficult for us to understand at the time, it no longer needs. No, love cannot be destroyed. But it can be transformed. And in that process of transformation it burns even brighter.

Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning’s early light,

meadow lark on the rise

cotoneaster, feverfew,

wild thyme and bramble rose.

Step by step, each to each

to where the other goes:

hymnals and unison

seated in rows.

And I who walk behind them

to the valley down below

must trust in common wonders

and hope that it might be so.

Noonday shadows at their feet

mistle thrush in the hedge

hillsides and riversides,

saxifrage and sedge.

Pace by pace, side by side

each trusting in the way:

parables and stories

in the highest light of day.

And I who walk behind them

to the valley down below

must hope for common wonders

and trust that it might be so.

Shadows of the afternoon,

fieldfare and sage

measure out the silence

of another time, another age.

Tread by tread, step by step

each timing with the other:

sister blesses sister soul, 

brother blesses brother.

And I who walk behind them

to the valley down below

must pray for common wonders

and hope that it might be so.

Twilight shadows lengthen

with the evening’s lowering sun:

veiled shades and violet shades

as the long day is done.

Step by step, each to each

to where the other leads:

beatitudes and blessings,

miracles in the meads.

And those who walk behind me

to the valley down below

place trust in common wonders

and know that it will be so.

Painting Sunday Morning by Angelo Morbelli

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 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.