What the soul does for the body, the poet does for her people.
-Gabriela Mistral
Pagani. The snow falls and the wind sacks the naked trees. It is only the beginning, and already I can feel my bones creak as I trundle like an overburdened buffalo through the streets of the pretty-wild urban midwest. My intrepid spouse wisely directs me towards the vitamin aisle, where I stock up on D, pebbles of light. In the winter, I often think of Demeter, lying on the hard frozen ground, her best beloved, her own body, pressing her glorious, tear-streaked cheek against the dirt, wishing and praying until there was nothing left but bone. I make my way in the kitchen, baking out my restlessness and transforming it into warmth, sunlight. Crocuses seem so far away that I cannot even imagine spring, so I make Saint Lucia buns and braided breads and pick my way through recipes for pain au levain and wonder at yeast. Really, really, really. There is so much wonder, there is so much beauty. Even in the terrible wind there is this epic amazement, like the crazy world is laughing.
Last night before bed I started to read a wonderful book on interfaith relationship. My recent wrestlings have invaded my thoughts for weeks now, but something in the book’s candor and simplicity soothed me. I looked around the room – its flotsam and jetsam, its altars and precious things. I am convinced we own too much stuff, but for that moment, it was all beautiful…the mess. The veil of struggle fell some away, and I breathed. I thought about truth. I thought about poetry. I thought about poetry so much that I had trouble falling asleep. But I did sleep, and in that dreaming some little stone and glass wall inside me broke, and I woke up shining.
Last week, I stumbled upon the poetry of Gabriela Mistral. I was already familiar with her in some capacity: the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the first woman poet to do so as well….and it was she who told a young Pablo Neruda to keep writing, but, like many things, it wasn’t until now that her work struck me hard and fast in the chest and quickened my breath. Those moments where you knew but you didn’t Know, and something familiar lies in wait for you to be ready to receive it? That was one of those moments.
Poetry! An ancient hymn to Inanna, fragments by Sappho (oh Leda and her egg the color of hyacinths…..marry me, Sappho!), a gorgeous passage by Alan Watts regarding the rite of communion, a few poems by Mirabai. Words, carefully chosen and glorious, rise out of the lamplit books and hover, gilded, in the air. Spirits and angels prick the sheets with their sharp fingers. The room is washed with honey. This is its power.
But yes, I repeat myself. Beauty beauty beauty, poetry, Mama, bread, Beloved, wonder, death, god. I know that. I think this is because revelations fade so quickly and have need of refreshment. Clocks and currency – civilization strives to make us forget, and does a bang up job it seems. I forget the reality of things – I forget that life is enormous and can be grand. So the Word (god/poetry/breath/dream/living water/night jewel/sparrow/cradle/shadow/radiant wanderer/god) extends a hand, a grace, to my cheek at night and reminds me – here at the apex of winter, down down down towards the seething, the longest night, the Wild Hunt’s shattering ride…I catalog what I think may be true, what eddies in the lines of that Hand against my sleeping brow:
Everything is alive. Everything has a name, and a will, and a spirit. And everything dies, which makes everything precious. Even you. Even me.
Beauty is the first and best thing there is. And poetry is the language of god.
Religion – to have compassion at its core. Religion – to push its believers to give, to live authentically, to be in relationship, to see the Other with open hearts, to hurl oneself against injustice. Religion – to heal. To challenge. To bind the tongue to the Real, to radical generosity, to honesty, to the kind of ethical vetting that puts mirrors of truth up to the faces of sleeping angels and shows them their demon skins (or vice versa). Gritty, difficult, wonderful.
And, also and just now, that Identity does mean something, but not as much as we think it does, or maybe just differently so. If I call myself of the Pagani, or if I call myself a follower of Christ, or if I call myself a Christo-Pagan or an anarchomystic or a Mediterranean syncretist or a member of the dvoeverie….ultimately, it doesn’t matter much. I love the Mama. I love the Beloved. I shout and laugh in community, several of them. So it is. I will of course get mired in the fun sandtrap of label-making again, because we are a Naming and Storytelling people, and it is the way we live in the world, and I don’t happen to believe that this is a bad thing, and of course there are political angles to consider that are important… but for now, oh this moment right now, with no future and no past and only my nose cold and my fingers warm, I am happy to be sitting by an evergreen tree at midwinter, smelling its smells and loving its lights. I have a cat, and she likes her chin scratched. And snow, that dreadful, delightful bane, is a physical enchantment over the sidewalk and the grate….walking home in it, tasting it on my tongue and feeling my face frozen and happy…inside me there is a little hearthfire burning. Long, long, that shape, that lavender sky, that wild song of light.
I’m on a meditative kick, beloveds. Winter it seems has robbed me of clarity or purpose. This post, the last post….I’m not sure they’re saying anything right different from each other….or anything new…or anything at all. Maybe I should zip it and let things be things until my brain is ready to shake a different tailfeather. I think the dragon in my brain longs for sleep, mirroring its bigger sister, that Lovely Beast curled up in the heart of the land, dozing out big dreams of sassy coats and cozy hats, and voices ricocheting off of winter brick in the city – people laughing in spite of the freeze. The adaptability of the gorgeous.
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own….
Etcetera, etcetera…in the storm and in the midnight, friends.