Pagan Godspell

We are beseiged with ice today in the not-so-wild midwest, and the sleet and occasional slushy snow fall seem to highlight the dull gray of the sky - and it may be difficult to perceive the day as beautiful, the weather as a gift, the seasons as blessings.  They are all of these things, it just may take a certain craziness to see them that way on days like this.  Luckily, I’m well stocked in crazy. 

Though that raises an interesting question – does Ugliness exist in nature (for me, no – nature may not always be pretty, but it is always Beautiful)?  Which raises thornier and tirelessly circular questions/arguments about the subjectivity of beauty and ugliness, which leads to nasty briarpatches about relativity and the theological/moral morass contained therein.  But let’s avoid all that for a moment and do a little swimming around in Beauty instead – wondering at the play of the world (when in doubt, say something nonsensical – that’s my motto).

It may be that, in the course of emphasizing the absolutely critical nature of relationship in the spiritual development of our people, the quest for/authentic appreciation of/submergence in all the glorious diversity of the World’s innate Beauty comes in an achingly close second (so much so that they are, in my mind, practically synonymous).  Beauty, which is the Subject of poetry, and thus possesses its own language, is that which whispers in the core of my body and makes my heart sigh and laugh and dance – it is that which makes me involuntarily inhale in joy – that holy gasping in the face of something so purely wonderful that your body knows it as true Beauty before you do.  The first time I consciously witnessed a perfect example of this was when I was 11 years old.   We had only just moved to Colorado, and that summer the days were particularly hot and we were particularly bored – school hadn’t started yet, and we hadn’t been there long enough to have friends.  In order to relieve us all of our growing discontent and the oppressive heat, my mother piled my sister and I into our craptacular minivan and hauled us up into the Rockies to visit a “park” called Estes Park (much to our delight, we promptly discovered that Estes Park, CO is not a park but rather a scenic touristy mountain town, home of the Stanley Hotel, which was the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining).  We toodled up the mountainside dutifully watching the creek and looking at the pine trees, and then we rounded a particular turn, and the Luminous World literally unfolded itself in front of us, revealing snow-capped peaks, a golden valley and a sparkling lake.  My mother clutched her chest and inhaled sharply, and in a teary, breathy voice cried “Oh!” and then launched into a passionate paean to the mounains that didn’t end for nearly the entire day (we’re on the whole a rather emotional people, my family).  I’ve never forgotten that moment.  Whenever I think of Awen, of Imbas, of that Holy Gasp of Knowing and Breathing In of Beauty (as noted in many books on creativity – the word “inspiration” comes from Latin meaning “to breathe”), I think of that moment with my mom, and how the Earth unfurled Herself in that moment of utter Revelation.  This is what I mean by Beauty.

I once wiled away some hours writing up a list of my beliefs (while it seems a trifle on the facile side, I found it to be an really interesting exercise).  First on the list was the statement “I believe in Beauty.”  Figuring out what this means and how it is applied in the practice of my polythea/ologies is a lifelong pursuit, much like anything else in my spiritual journey, but I feel absolutely safe in declaring it as my primary belief, born out of concrete experience, personal gnosis, and exquisite revelation.  I do believe in Beauty. 

I believe that it is a fact of our existence, that it exists independent of our perceiving it, though in also exists in intimate concert with our perception of it (hey man, it’s a mystery), and when this true relationship with Beauty is engaged, Beauty is enhanced, and movement and growth occur in fantastic ways.  I believe that Beauty creates and is created.  In the practice of my faith I try to make the seeking of Beauty a priority – I may even go so far to say that the pursuit of Beauty is close to the summation of my spiritual journey as a whole.  The gods and goddesses are the personifications of the diverse complexity of Beauty in the world – this does not always make them safe, or “good” (just as Love is a deeply complicated thing, so is Beauty), or even pretty or nice to look at. 

Being pleasant to look at does not necessarily indicate Beauty.  Take, for instance, compost – an ingenious, Beautiful, gorgeous, unattractive, gross, icky and glorious process.  Decomposition is Beautiful.  Death, in itself, is Beautiful (though the methods by which Death is achieved are not always such – while Death may be Beautiful, oppression, torture, murder, genocide, war, all of these are insurmountably Ugly).  When I pray, I pray for Beauty.  I pray to Beauty.  I pray because of Beauty.  When Beauty is broken, my heart is broken.  When honeybees, messengers of Gorgeousness in the World, are murdered en masse for the benefit of our corrupt, unsustainable agricultural methods, my heart is broken, because Beauty is lost in a million ways, and maybe forever.

It may be said that for all the things that I believe in passionately, behind them all is Beauty. 

Which all serves to remind me of one of my favorite poems of all time:

I Died For Beauty
by Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain 
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms.
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

—–

Oh Mama.  Those last two lines give me the big delish shivers every time.  I would hope that as we all find our paths to Beauty, we might see those pieces of it, whether in simplicity or in complexity, that are our own, and when even our names have been obscured by moss and time and good Death, we rest happy, scattered in and among the Beauty we died within and beneath and through.  And for.

Time time time.  See what’s become of me?  While I look around (checking my pockets – I had it this morning) for my possibility… Hey – coincidentally (or not, depending on your belief system), the sky here in the not-so-wild-midwest really is a Hazy Shade of Winter – once again, I am amazed by the Mother’s gift for symbols, for signs, for the a-mazing “coincidences” of image gifts and omens.  I’d be happier with a hazy shade of spring, but then again, maybe I’m not quite ready to let go of the deliciocity of days shrouded in cool, mean secrets, the slick tongues of ice, the roil of snow.  Encouraging more lost hours under blankets, tucked into thick socks and under yellow lamplight – gloriously losing all sense of the tick-tock, entering into that timeless space between minutes – into a space where it may be possible to reach out and touch any moment in the spiderweb of organic time…

Ah, Time.  My ancient foe, my eternal walzing partner.  We Pagani are notoriously bad with this particular Father (Ye Olde Daddy Time), so much so that we have our own Standard.  Folks operating on PST (Pagan Standard Time) can usually be expected to show up approximately 15 minutes to 2 hours late for any given occasion (and be completely unapologetic about it to boot).  I’ve seen more than one ritual set to start on a curve.  Now of course, we are individuals after all, and plenty of us are committed to being on time and everything, don’t get me wrong.  But as a whole, we’re a loosely wound bunch a lot of the time, and to be honest I hold a lot of good, solid faith in that as a collective we move and gather according to something more nebulous than the fascist dictatorship of clock time.  I think it’s an integral and crucial part of our spiritual being.  Truth be told, I cheerfully hope we get worse.

As you perceptive folks may have discerned, I’m not a fan of clock time.  This seems ironic at first to some who know me, given my near apoplectic fear of being late for anything – but, as a development of contemporary civilization (particularly in relation to the devlopment of labor schedules), timekeeping in this culture is undoubtedly a mechanism by which I am kept (domesticated, one might say), along with the rest of our corporate, product-driven monoculture, and as such I have a problem seeing it as a natural expression of the deep, rhythmic susurrus of organic, cyclical time.  My craven cleaving unto the demands of the clock is part and parcel of a conditioning that I may chafe under intellectually, and fight against for the rest of my life, but is deeply ingrained nonetheless.  Thus, I find solace in the fact that within the anarchic primordial ooze of relationship-based spiritual practice, there be the dragons of wild, untamed, organic time, waiting to subvert the clock and eat it whole.

I do believe that as Pagans, much of our spiritual work can be seen as a collection of methods by which we undermine the insidious tyranny of clock time.  Any work that engages in trance, ecstatic dance, dreaming, the mysteries, or organic worship – the deepening relationship with natural cycles and beings and spirits of the earth, is going to happen outside (or in between) the domination of clock-time.  Poetry and prayer (intimately related pieces), due to their natures as divine language, create radical space outside of clock-time.  We are poets and prophets and bards and sorcerors and crafty cunning folk – here we are in the mess, in the chaos, in the sticky center!  Witches are reported to be able to dance between raindrops (an image that has caught and held me since childhood – so much so that I make an effort to attempt this every time I find myself walking under the blessing of rain…) – why not the power to dance between a ticking minute and the next? 

Certainly to make the larger case against clock-time and the importance of a spirituality that subverts it would take a little more time (har!) and energy than I have, but it gives one pause to consider that what we do as Pagans, operating on our own Standard of that mysterious body of Time, may by its very nature be a course by which we can dive down past the shallow end of the clock into the holy sea of dreaming, of Mystery, of Nothing Certain and Everything Possible.  Of syncopated time and dangling conversations (I’ve a notion that Paul Simon’s early lyrics betray an intimate knowledge with subverting clock time…or, I could just really be on a Simon & Garfunkel kick today).  Of the kind of time that’s borne out of bodies and movement and decay and birth, of rising and setting, of leaping and sobbing. 

That this is, in fact, a part of what authentic spirituality does, innately, like Salmon returning to the place of their birth.  Return, return. 

That when we build our circles or open our gates or invoke our Beloveds, we do not remove ourselves from time (the old standby “time out of time”), but rather immerse ourselves in true time, real time, the time in which live all the splendid Shining Bodies that Sing us into Being.

That’s a nice thought for a weekend.  Sleep in, dream of Singing.

When the sun shines in a certain way and the wind blows in smelling of warm promises, my brain gets a little fuzzy.  I question our devotion to reason and logic and start to ponder instead the undeniable value of spending all day watching the sun move across a patch of melting snow, or the complex mechanics of daydreaming (the practical applications of which are staggering, and woefully unexamined in my not-so-humble opinion).  So, what I’m trying to say is – I have these loose threads of thoughts all happily floating around in my holistic self (some coming from my heart, some from my head, and some from the Aether…ooooo, Aether), and they may or may not form a cohesive post.  *cackle*

In thinking about relationship as the bedrock of spiritually and holistically Being in the World, I have been cha-cha-ing around with the concept of gifting and the deeper meaning of gifts in a world of exchange-based capitalism.  I’ve been reading about the idea of “gift economies” and such, and I do find all that particularly interesting – but more, I’m thinking about how a gift thea/ology might work in the context of a radical spiritual worldview steeped in authenticity, relationship, and reciprocity.

The practice of giving gifts creates and maintains relationships that cannot be sustained by mere exchange of goods.  The Earth gives and gives – it is her modus operandi – all things give and receive.  It seems like we humans have mostly forgotten how to do both.  This is partially out of a fear of obligation and attachment.  Obligation, in a sense the holy debt we incur by being in permanent, sustained and holistic relationship, binds us to place, to people, to community. 

In a 2004 interview with Derrick Jensen, Martin Prechtel, a contemporary author on Mayan spirituality, notes:

In a sense, all of us — even the most untechnological, spiritual, and benign peoples — are constantly wrecking the world. The question is: how do we respond to that destruction? If we respond as we do in modern culture, by ignoring the spiritual debt that we create just by living, then that debt will come back to bite us, hard. But there are other ways to respond. One is to try to repay that debt by giving gifts of beauty and praise to the sacred, to the invisible world that gives us life.

Prechtel also talks about the importance of debt, that to live on this Earth in true relationship with it, and with the Spirits and Powers of the other world who sing us into being (Prechtel: We are its song. We’re made of sound, and as the sound passes through the sieve between this world and the other world, it takes the shape of birds, grass, tables — all these things are made of sound. Human beings, with our own sounds, can feed the other world in return, to fatten those in the other world up, so they can continue to sing), we must engage in giving, in paying our spiritual debts for these many gorgeous gifts, through “beauty, grief or language.”

For me, this comes back to rites of offering.  Offerings and prayers are both conversations and gifts – gifts we make in exchange for the precious gifts we receive, for the air we breathe, the seasons, all the small moments of goodness, even among the gross devastation and the sickness.  The grief we suffer is an offering – to right damage, to acknowledge pain, to connect and name.  We are in debt – beautiful, perfect and glorious debt. 

I’m reminded of a time when one of my best friends and I spent a few years waxing and waning out of financial solvency, each of us amazingly broke when the other was flush, and we happily traded debt so often – buying each other dinner and whatnot – that eventually we couldn’t remember who owed who what or how much.  Most likely we’re still in debt to each other for something – neither of us care.  This is the holy debt of real relationship – of gifts and friends.  This is the kind of debt I wish for myself in relationship with my gods and goddesses, with the spirits of the Earth, with Holy Mother Earth Herself, with my ancestors (Prechtel has some very interesting things to say about ancestral relationship: One of the ways those who remain behind can help repay this spiritual debt is simply by missing the dead. Let’s say your beloved grandmother dies. Some might say you shouldn’t weep, because she’s going to “a better place,” and weeping is just pure selfishness. But people’s longing for each other and for the terrain of home is so enormous that, if you do not weep to express it, you’re poisoning the future with violence. If that longing is not expressed as a loud, beautiful wail, a song, or a piece of art that’s given as a gift to the spirits, then it will turn into violence against other beings — and, more importantly, against the earth itself, because you will have no understanding of home. But if you are able to feed the other world with your grief, then you can live where your dead are buried, and they will become a part of the landscape in a way), with the Everything that Is and Should Be.

In gifting beauty, tears, prayers, grain, fruit, honey, bread, words, singing - I am a whole part of the whole, paying my debts, receiving my own gifts, dancing with the planet.  May I never be free of it.  May I never be square with the World.

I am a woman 60 years old, and glory is my work.
- Mary Oliver (from The Leaf and The Cloud)

When the snow falls thick and fast as it is today, often a sense of strange peace comes over me.  I start to stare out the windows at the flurry of white bees and ponder rest, devotion, prayer (as well as the plight of the Honeybee Sisters mentioned yesterday, the terror and mourning of which still has me fully within its icy hold…).  I wonder if glory can be my work, too (of course, the answer is yes – but the method…the method is a little fuzzier).

For many many years I’ve longed for something akin to a Pagan monastery – where the discipline of daily practice was instilled into every moment, where every hour is sacred, where a community of people worked together purely for the love of Earth and the gods and goddesses, the spirits and powers, the ancestors, each other.   All of these can be done, of course, in the world, and I do them to the best of my ability.  And yet.  And yet.  I’m not the only one who has these yearnings, it turns out.  I’m not even the only one who has thought about it in minute detail. 

It is a deep vocational call, towards this kind of religious life, and one that I’ve heard over and over for years, with no way to truly answer it.  I went so far as to investigate taking vows as a Sister of the Catholic Church (before the advent of current relationship, of course), knowing full well that this would never be the right path for me (for obvious reasons), but drawn to it nonetheless.  A good friend of mine from high school is currently on the path to becoming a Catholic Sister, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy every time I hear about her journey (like me, she is also committed to ecotheological principles, and the opportunities for living a Catholic monastic life in concert with sustainable principles and earth education are growing, which I find very exciting).

What is it about this that appeals?  For me I think it’s partly the discipline – as I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not terribly good at self-discipline and daily meditation/prayer, yet when I’m in a community, I am able to maintain a daily practice due to the fact that it is built into the community schedule.  I’m also simply attracted to living a completely religious life – of rising and greeting the gods and goddesses, of sustainable living in community, of being spiritually committed with a communal group to helping others via many different kinds of action and service, of prayer and reflection, of intense study.  Of course, a Pagan monastery would by necessity look different than a traditional monastery for obvious reasons – the theological differences are vast.  And, of course, contemplative living is only one Way among a million of being Pagan in the world – always the multiplicity and complexity of everything is the way in which the Holy becomes manifest.

Certainly there are retreat centers and places where one can enter into brief periods of rest and reflection – for instance, I intend to take a three-day silent retreat this spring at a small religious center near my home – and these places and opportunities should not be ignored.  Yet, there is a deeper yearning there for me – one that will continue to be explored, one from which I will work and move about in the world and pray and fight and all of those things – one that may never see its full flowering but will radiate out through my work nonetheless, informing some choices over others.

And in the quiet almost-hearbeat of the snow, when the wind sounds more like slippered feet and the bustling of the world is blessedly mute, I will stare out the window and pray to the Powers always to lead me towards the Way wherein Glory can be my Work.

Et Voila!  The Good News Bookshoppe’s Religion List is complete…for the moment.  These lists will no doubt evolve and change over time – that’s what I love about ‘em.  Next up: Culture, Ecology and Activism.  Woo!

Also – as a brief aside before diving into the topic rattling around in my brain this morning, let me just say how consummately unfair it is that somewhere between the time I learned to type (which was only 20 freakin’ years ago maybe), and now, someone eliminated the extra space between a period and the next sentence.  I was taught to hit the space-bar twice after the end of a sentence.  *fume*  Thus, the experiment in retraining begins here and now.  More ways in which civilization is just plain ridiculous.  But again, I do go on.

As the temperature peaks out today in the balmy 20s (and maybe even 30!), and my fellow townspeople sweep about the streets flagrantly opening their coats and breathing in the lovely “warm” air, and a sweet sense of freedom moves through the world, I am pondering the fascinating question of secrecy within the Pagan movement.

Much has been written on secrecy in Pagan religion. There are a multitude of opinions and reasonable arguments on both sides of the issue.  Of course, I’m not talking about necessary secrecy – the privacy of faith that is necessary in some areas in order to protect one’s self, family or business from discrimination or interpersonal drama (as hard as it is to believe – there are a few people in my life who are unaware that I’m Pagan because I see no reason to cause a lot of unnecessary wailing and gnashing of teeth).  No, I’m talking about “oathbound” material, secrecy designed to “preserve the tradition,” or delineate between the initiated and outsiders. 

I struggle with secrecy (as a sworn Pagan Evangelical, this seems logical).  On one hand, of course there is a place for Mystery, for the intimacy that comes from keeping rites a private affair, for the deliciousness of knowing that here, within this room or this circle or this hedge or this grove, there is a specific uniting knowledge that keeps a tradition alive.  Yet.  Yet.  Yet – there is a difference between privacy and secrecy.  And then there is that lingering scent of elitism (or is it just burnt toast?), that makes everything just a trifle off.

Privacy is important – my coven practices it ourselves.  Privacy and confidentiality amount to the fact that we do not flagrantly toss about the content of our coven conversations, the intimate details of our particular celebrations, the visions we see or the dreams we have that might infringe on the confidentiality of our covenmates – privacy in this case is about establishing trust, creating safe space. 

I guess the question that I would ask is: when instead we speak of rites and prayers and polythea/ologies, particularly among our sister and brother Pagans - what is the motivation for Secrecy?  What does it really accomplish?  We can all think of times that rules of secrecy have accomplished a certain superior attitude about the elite privilege of knowing treasured occult secrets that untrained plebians aren’t privy to (Ah, to be accomplished – “I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished”). 

The justification for Secrecy that I struggle with the most is the one based on the claim that any material particular to the tradition in the hands of the untrained would result in the dilution and desecration of the tradition.  As a quasi-traditional who floats somewhere between rampant eclecticism and hardline traditionalism (leaning more or less towards the latter), I value tradition.  Yet.  Yet.  The wind pulls by me here in the first new gasps of spring and I wonder – is this kind of Secrecy ever completely enacted for the greater good?

Here is a Secret: when the wind turns suddenly, it can smell like Memory.  Sometimes, the memory isn’t even yours.  This is the way the wind tells all the secrets of Earth – everything is hidden, in everything is a Mystery – and not one is hoarded, but given freely to anyone who knows how to find them.  Not such a secret?  Well…I do my best – it is a small kind of accomplishment I suppose.

It is the heart of winter here in the not-so-wild-Midwest – a season of walking head down and hands clutching coats and big bags full of scarves and wrapped in gloves, muttering obscenities (well, if you’re me anyways) and losing the feeling in toes and fingers.  While the badgers continue to growl and chew about my ankles, and the wind chill factor rockets down below -20 degrees, I try to steal a little light in pockets of time – a handful of minutes in a coffeehouse chair or a library couch, feeling my heart blossom out a little, trying to meet peace.

During one of these stolen precious moments, I find myself reading The Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver (which no poet should be without), in which she says:

If Romeo and Juliet had made appointments to meet, in the moonlight-swept orchard, in all the peril and sweetness of conspiracy, and then more often than not failed to meet – one or the other lagging, or afraid, or busy elsewhere – there would have been no romance, no passion, none of the drama for which we remember and celebrate them.  Writing a poem is not so different – it is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (the courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.  They make appointments with each other, and keep them, and something begins to happen.  Or, they make appointments with each other but are casual and often fail to keep them: count on it, nothing happens.

She goes on to talk about “that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live,” (delicious) and how in order to seduce it into engaging wholly and gloriously with your writing, you must do one regular, committed, seemingly simple thing: you must show up.

This is consummately good advice, both for the poet and the Pagan (and the Mystic, and the Contemplative…) – if we do not show up, we cannot expect the gods, or that “wild, silky part of ourselves,” or the indwelling spirit, or the stars within, to show themselves to us.  If ritual, and indeed spirituality, and perhaps the purpose of being, is relationship, then all the responsibilities and committments of authentic and life-long relationship comes with it.  Keeping dates – making time.  Making the house ready for guests – tending the bread.

This does not ever need to become a chore, or a discipline that sucks the joy out of living in the world completely.  Yet, there is something to be said for pushing past boredom or fatigue on occasion in order to meet that joy.  I did not want to attend my evening dance class last night – I was tired, and grumpy, and cold and weary to the bone (and my ankles were all chewed – *shakes fist at life-badgers*), and I sat in my car for a full 10 minutes, fighting with myself.  Luckily, I won (that’s the best part about fighting with yourself), and went to class, and the goodness rushed up to meet me after a few minutes of feeling my body move out into its joy.

I am also reminded of how the keeping of our Holy Days, or the regular meditations/prayers/offerings we make (I struggle with this in particular, the discipline of daily practice, but I persevere, and the gods are at least understanding of my good intentions), or the time we spend even just preparing for ritual – the writing, the gathering up of offerings, the baking of bread, the placement on an altar, the singing – how all of these things sound out through the world like great messages, saying “here I am, waiting for you – these are my promises, I intend to keep them – I will not leave you – here is my passion – here is your blessing.”

For today, and particularly in this week, as my postings grow a bit sparse and I struggle to keep appointments with myself (though the construction work on the Good News Bookshoppe continues!), I wish you all a little blessing in the freezing wind – pockets of forgiving light and heat and time – and the deepening relationships that come when we say to the world, to Awen, to Imbas, to the gods - here I am, showing up.

And in among the darkness of mourning and loss we feel at the passing of these great women the last few days, the seed of glory in spring makes our hearts laugh, and allows us the first stirrings of healing, the mantle of blessing laid over us by the Lady of Healing Herself.

I wish you all Brightest Blessings this glorious Imbolc/Oimelc/Candlemas Day!  Last night we here in the not-so-wild midwest received a dusting of light, clean snow that just covered the world – and with the cracking of dawn was taken up by the Wind and thrown through the freezing sunshine, filling the air with its rich glitter.  I am reminded of a teacher of mine, who once asked me, “If you cannot see the sparkle on the snow, how do you expect to see into Faery?”  What an excellent question.

A time for lighting beeswax candles after dark, and welcoming the Blessed Lady into the home.  Queen of Flame and Verse!  Much honor and praise to Brigid on this Her Feast Day.

May Brigid bless the house wherein you dwell
Bless every fireside, every wall and door
Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof
Bless every hand that toils to bring it joy
Bless every foot that walks its portals through
May Brigid bless the house that shelters you.
-traditional

I’m pleased to participate in the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading in honor of this gorgeous holiday, by sharing once again some poetry that makes me shiver:

Snowdrops
by Louise Gluck

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring–

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

———-

Dawn
by William Carlos Williams

Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings–
beating color up into it
at a far edge,–beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor,–
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change,–
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself–is lifted–
bit by bit above the edge
of things,–runs free at last
out into the open–!lumbering
glorified in full release upward–
songs cease.

———-

Oh, you didn’t think I’d go without something by Mary Oliver, did you?  I hope not:

Snow Geese
by Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

———-

An Imbolc Prayer
(me)

The birds are drunk on brilliant Hush – O Mother!
This is the sound my heart was made for.
The riot of grass beneath the snow,
the laughter deep inside the Secret.
Let my tongue be heavy with honey.
Sing the song within the shining of my dreaming!
New breath, new prayer, new light.
The serpent stem unlatches from the seed,
a candle lit in the core of silence,
burning clean in the advent of blessing.
May the year be heavy with fruit,
may our houses be shot through with grace,
may the bread be warm and risen,
may our hands be the gifts we bring to the world.
In the fire pouring from the frozen stars,
I pray.

May it be so.