Tag: creative writing

The Dark Heart of Winter

1 Comment

Winter is here and the wide world grows smaller as I huddle into the safe sanctuary of my sweet home, my little nest. Here I live in a round ruby-colored haven, a jewel set in a meadow of green.  Winter has not yet ensconced us in terminal grey, warmer days than usual and even sun have greeted us. The tall trees that stand around my home are reaching upward. As I sit, right outside my window, hemlock is waving her soft fringed branches in the breeze, sunlight pouring down on her.

The sun is setting at 4:30, and I am indoors so much more this time of year. There’s a sweetness to this, life feels very small and contained. Not in a rigid way, but in a way of gentleness, of tending hearth and home. Both on the physical plane, and on the inner plane, the realm of soul. This is a time of turning inward, looking into the dark places inside myself, making peace, and making space for new blossoming to come when the time is right.

I’m acutely aware of how busy my life is, how often I am pushing and striving, how I fill my time with social visits, work, even the garden which takes so much care. Seems I always have something I “must do.” I’m choosing to set that down for a while, choosing to get still, and small, and quiet. My perception of the demands of the world will always be there, there will always be something I must do, and I am the only one who can relieve myself of that burden. And I’m not saying that’s an easy thing! These patterns are so ingrained that creating pockets of stillness feels challenging, creates unease in my belly, and I even feel fear arise.

I look back over the years of my adulthood and I think I’ve missed many opportunities to take winter deeply in. This time of year gives us a chance to slow down, but we have to be willing to take that chance, to set things down, to choose to embrace the fertile darkness and the inner time. I know this, and I feel it to be so true, but I tend to get stuck filling long dark evenings with television or scrolling on the Internet. But there is an opportunity here to deepen into my own heart, to make beauty with my hands, and to have more time where I’m doing absolutely nothing. But I have to choose this. I have to be the one to put down the remote, or maybe even unplug the television for a while. To bridge the moments of uncomfortable stillness and trust this intuition that stillness and quiet are so necessary.

Just now there are two towhees on the ground outside my window, their tails held high, they bow and dip, digging in the earth for some delightful morsel to eat, they lift their heads and look about,. make contact with their companion and go about their work. How right they are in the world, how totally themselves. How would it feel to have freedom like that? Freedom to eat, fly, and nest, but most of all freedom from the tyranny of the mind that tells me I always have something I must do. How can I break that cycle, and find deep peace and ease in my bones? A recalibration in my nervous system towards stillness? A true setting down of the puritanical work ethic that seems to thrum inside of me all the time pushing me ever forward or chastising me if I refuse to be pushed…. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

As usual, I don’t have any solid answers, just more questions and more questions. Yet I do have a sense, a glimmering of possibility, a knowing that it could be another way. And I’m going to choose that, even if it’s unformed and not quite tangible yet. Even if it makes me uncomfortable as hell. Even if I forget, and fall off course, and beat myself up for it. I’m still going to try, I’m going to follow the thread of longing, for still and quiet dark winter nights.

The Christmas tree lights sparkle, I sit and look at this beautiful altar to the Christmas spirit and to light returning. I sip my tea and feel grateful for the safety of my home. The containment of my small world that feels so gentle. My tea is hot and creamy, spicy Chai with just a touch of sweetness. My body is cozy, wrapped in layers and warm slippers. Mac the cat sleeps on the cushion of the chair beside me, pouring out a sense of radiant contentment at the comfort of his body, nestled just so in the softness of the cushion.

It’s all so beautiful, this small and quiet life of mine. So far from the hustle and bustle, the fray of the years of active parenting. Now I only have myself to get ready for the day, and the evenings are luxuriously long. A fact both startling in its beauty, and arresting in fear. What do I do with my wild and precious life when I I’m the one who must make it what I long for it to be? Sovereignty, so beautiful and so terrifying.

For this day, for this season I am going to choose to let myself not know. I am going to choose to be in the liminal space between things. I am not young and I am not old. I am not rich and I am not poor. I am not certain and I am not lost. I am, slowly, so slowly, arriving. Arriving into what? I couldn’t tell you… But something is unfolding inside of me that is mysterious and magnificent. This life that I am weaving, I can’t quite see the warp and the weft forming together into tapestry yet, yet I sense and know that tapestry it will become if I stay the course. Maybe that’s what this winter is about. Maybe this is a winter of weaving, of pattern making, of allowing the colors of the thread to choose me rather than me choosing them. I trust the pattern. I trust the slow growing of cloth. I trust myself. And I trust the darkness.

Leaves – A Love Song

4 Comments

The trees astound me with their generosity. They hold nothing back. Each year the cycle begins again, the gathering of sunlight, the storing of energy, carbon, the creation of new leaves. Leaves that emerge baby soft and fine, pale yellow, light green, chartreuse. Leaves so tender they look like blossoms. Putting on bulk and weight, spreading out over the tops of canopies, glorious crowns, snarled reaching branches, forming the lush foliage of summer’s blessed shade.

Autumn comes and the slow surrender begins, the letting go. Leaves lose their luster, the edges beginning to dry, spots of brown or gold mottling their surface. Some change to brown, light and crisp; they float on the air, piling up in mounds, drifts, oceans. Some blaze bright before they fall, gold and red, orange and amber, and every shade in between. Death can be beautiful too. This I learned first from leaves, and then from old people.

The trees seem to surrender their leaves so easily, they must trust that next year the cycle will begin again, they must know that as long as they are standing tall on this earth life will move in them, and through them, creating the magical rhythm of leafing out, spreading wide, and falling to the earth again. What if we had trust like that? Trust in our cycles, in the turning of time, in the rightness of it all. What if we knew our place in the web, could we surrender as completely as trees?

I walk among the leaves, and I bend to pick them up with delight. To look at their shape, the pattern the veins make across their surface, to feel the firmness of a leaf stem clasped between my fingers and thumb, I roll them back and forth admiring how the colors shift in the light. I will never grow tired of autumn leaves, the wonder of this generous beauty will always leave my heart humbled, gratitude echoing around the chamber inside my chest, a whisper of thank you on my lips.

I remember when I was small, and we lived in the city where streets had sidewalks, and many of them were planted with trees. I knew those sidewalks so well, I knew where every tree root pushed up against the surface of the pavement to create a crack, and I would roll over those cracks on my scooter, or my bike using it like a little jump of sorts, some novelty in my ride.

I remember walking in the autumn with my mother, and her teaching me the French words for the colors of the rainbow. Jaune is yellow. Yellow like the leaf fallen from a big leaf Maple, on the grey sidewalk, before it’s been crushed under foot. Yellow leaves lying perfect in their form, utterly beautiful.  I kicked them with my boots, my small feet loving the sound of the crunch crunch as I walked through piles of leaves.

I knew a marvelous old woman once, Ruth. Who lived in the retirement home where I worked. She was that perfect combination of spicy and sweet, a woman who loved deeply, and would also take you down a peg if you needed it, or maybe, if she was just in the mood to do so. She was legally blind but could somehow always tell if I’d gained a pound, and would not hesitate to tell me “ you are so beautiful, but honey you need to watch your weight.” I know you probably cringe reading these words, but I smile in fond remembrance. Those words truly were spoken with love.

I remember sitting with Ruth on an autumn day and speaking of the leaves. The beauty of autumn in Oregon, the way the sky sparkled blue, and there was a nip in the air, and the lovely scent of summer ending. The earth getting ready for a long winter sleep. A soft dreaminess came over Ruth’s face, and 100 watt smile emerged, drawing back the corners of her mouth creasing the corners of her eyes, the wrinkled cartography of her face transforming as she traveled in her mind. “You know I used to love to kick the leaves on the street, I can still hear how they would crunch crunch under my feet… I can’t walk anymore, but I remember.”

When I am old and grey, and sitting in a window. Will I still remember the look of the leaves on the sidewalk, the sound of the crunch crunch, the pleasure of walking hand in hand with my mother? Will I remember the generosity of trees? The thousand ways they’ve blessed my life, the hours spent sitting nestled in their roots, the days spent hiking looking up at their towering trunks and canopies… I think I will.  And if I’m fortunate, I’ll have someone to tell about it.

Could I be like maple?
Standing tall, always reaching for the light.
Roots sinking down through dark, rich soil, winding around stones and broken pipes
to find the wellspring of life.
The living water.
Could I burn brightly?
My leaves shimmering in an exaltation of gold and red and scarlet, vermilion, even lavender.
A cacophony of color, unbridled life that gives way into death.
Leaves falling from maples high branches litter the ground in a carpet of glory.
I walk on them, my boots feel too brown to trod on such a delight as this.
In a months’ time, these glorious tailings, falling from maples branches
 will turn to brown and then to soil.
Feeding her roots and preparing to once again set leaves come springtime.
Oh, how much I learn from the trees.
Their constant and ever-present generosity, their willingness to rise again, and fall again
and rise again, and fall.
Do they grieve their leaves as they drop towards the Earth, or is it pure surrender, the letting go of what must be done in order for something new to emerge, to sprout, to rise upward
Carbons knitting together, to create the pattern of life, everybody is reaching for the sun. Everybody is reaching for the water.
And this is life, the somersault of beginning, and ending, the way form gives way to absence and then form again, and I too am part of this.
I too, in my woman’s body one day will become dust and then perhaps, I will become maple.

Seasons Turning – Autumn Comes

2 Comments

Today is the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere. We arrive again at the threshold, crafted by seasons and time, the changing of the sun, the tide ebbs. I’ve been feeling the change since the middle of August, the sun hanging lower in the sky, a little bit of chill in the air at night, dry grasses giving the land that tawny autumnal glow. It’s a bittersweet time, in some ways I’m always ready for the seasons to change, to step into something new, to recenter. And yet its hard to let summer go.

 Summer is a season of incredible energetic outpouring, working on the land, outdoor adventures, later nights and less sleep. Summer feels full of fervor and exuberance, and I truly love it. This whole span of time from late spring until the end of harvest season I am out on the land so much. Hands in the soil, feet in the soil, body in the river, hair soaked with sweat. I’m watching the seeds go into the ground and whispering prayers over them, I’m watching the little shoots sprout up and begin their cycle of life, watching them put on leaves and fruit, harvesting and eating and preserving. I love it, and I am exhausted.

And now autumn calls, with her soup pots bubbling and long walks with falling leaves. With quiet evenings at home, hot tea in my favorite mug, dreams of art supplies littering my little table, and driving home in the dark again. It seems to me that each year I get older the seasons grow sweeter, and I feel the changes more acutely, both in the earth around me and inside of my own body. The earth within me. It feels good to let things change, it feels good to surrender to the cycle of the year, the wheel of time, and the ever changing present. As if we had any choice! And yet, to see the pleasure of this seasonal arc, and feel held within it, is somehow so tender for me.

I think part of that is because there’s a way that I’m able to pay attention to life that is exquisite to me, and it hasn’t always been this way. So many years were spent in anxious survival. Being a young mother, and then in an absolute disaster of a marriage, never really making enough money, throw a little bit of addiction into the mix, and you can imagine from there…  It hasn’t been an easy ride. which makes me all the more grateful for the simple beauty in which I sit in my days now.

I can’t claim luxury, I have such a simple life. But it’s beautiful, and it’s handmade and crafted by me to suit my needs and my desires. I get to be present in my life, to be free of the chronic and painful tensions I lived with for so long. I get to craft my days so that I have time to be with the earth and the sky, time for writing, time to notice the changing seasons, to grow food and eat good food, to gather herbs and make medicine, to spend hours in the evening reading poetry, or lying on the floor of my beautiful little home with my cat purring at my side. It’s all so simple, and I’m simply so grateful.

In this time of seasons changing, this time of surrender, of looking within as the autumn calls us to do, I’m thinking about what skins need to shed. About what I’m ready to set down. About what I’m releasing and who I’m becoming. It doesn’t all feel clear yet, and that’s completely OK with me. Answers come when answers come, and the inquiry is really the interesting part of the journey anyway.

Over the summer months, there’s been a lot of inner work happening around some wounds that I have carried and the ways they manifest in the world. I’ve become aware of this cloak of fear that I’ve lived with throughout all of my conscious life. The fear of somehow not being enough, not belonging, being too much, being exiled. This undercurrent of fear has caused me to shape-shift and morph myself into a way of being that I perceive to be more pleasant to others. This is one of the big endings that I’ve been undertaking. The ending of the story that I need to be anything different than I am.

I’ve been growing braver, I’ve been speaking my mind more, expressing how I truly feel, even when it scares the shit out of me, I’ve been asking for more money, learning not to say yes when I want to say no, and figuring out how to truly listen to the signals of my body so that I can make choices that are in alignment with my true needs. It’s been subtle, my life looks much the same as it did in May, but my experience of being in it is really quite different. There’s a fierceness in me that I didn’t know before. There’s a resoluteness, something inside of me isn’t standing up. Broad-shouldered, strong-eyed, Free of the giggling simpering of girlhood. I think I’m truly becoming a woman. Which, at 42, you may think about time… But I would argue that many adults never really leave the stage of late adolescence. So I’ll take it. I’ll take this broad-shouldered, broad-smiled, strong spine, soft-bellied, wide open-hearted woman, I’m becoming.

So the seasons turn, and we turn with them. And as autumn arrives I take this opportunity to turn inside. I take this opportunity to close the hatches a bit, to lay off the throttle, to sit back into the sweetness of my life, and the unknown unfolding of my becoming. Before long rain will start to drip down my windows, and the tawny grasses will grow green again. And then, I’ll be dreaming of planting seeds in the soil and pea shoots and early blooms. But for now, just for now, I’m going to get still. I’m going to sit in the beauty of the simple life that I have created. I’m going to look into my own heart and see what’s ready to be set down. Emptying out the oil to make space for the new. Some interior sorting I suppose you could say. Sounds like a good thing to do as the days grow shorter.  I’m going to leave you with some beautiful words from David Whyte, this line hums in my heart so often…autumn blessings to you all.

“You must learn one thing.
The world was meant to be free in. “

Sweet Darkness
by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Seed Heart

6 Comments

Every day this world breaks me open, a sliver of delight pierces through the veil, a chasm of sorrow consumes me, and I fall, down, down, down. The glint of light on the throat of a Hummingbird, part fuchsia part crimson all glorious. A hungry feral cat cowers near the trash compactor at my daughter’s apartment complex, their green eyes haunt me, and I am filled with longing.

I often wonder if my capacity for feeling, so visceral, so rich in texture and form, is the same experience of being in the world that others have. In truth, I wonder if perhaps I hurt more than I should, feel more than I should, yet even as I write those words deep inside there is a knowing, that I am how I am and who I am not by accident, that even if the intensity of life unfolding around me can be hard to bear at times, it is my unfolding, it is my life.

Sometimes I want to hide, to crawl down deep somewhere that I cannot be disturbed, somewhere safe and dark and devoid of feeling. A bottle used to work so well, the safest place I’ve ever been, but also the most lonely. So I don’t pick it up. Today I sit in the grey cave of my heart, under a startling blue sky. Can you feel the contrast? The is and is not of the thing? How can life be simultaneously so beautiful and so heartbreaking?

I come home from work, the frantic pace of the day, the large tears of the old woman in the hallway, they seem to be always running down her face these days, and I never have enough grace to reach her, the hungry eyes of lonely people, the traffic accident I witnessed, all of this living in my body. I kneel down at my altar, light a candle, and beg for strength. I place my forehead on the sharp wooden edge, the pressure digging into my skin feels like  relief, and I weep. I weep for all the hurts I cannot heal, the suffering that exists despite all of the love, my own broken family, my own broken heart.

And then I remember what I have known all along. Words spoken to me, words that found a home inside my flesh and now reside there- a human heart, shaped like a seed and meant to break- let it break- break open….recalling this, a poem comes back to me, my own words filling the cracks and broken places inside, my own words a balm, a poultice for this wound of life, this wild sacred dance that is more than I can bear. Perhaps these words will enter you, and ease your pain, or bring to your doorstep an appropriate portion of suffering, whatever it is you need, may you find it. I leave this here, an offering for all those who know the taste of sorrow, and the taste of joy.

Seed Heart

I know the bottom well
the dark place where the tendrils grow from
nothing is birthed only from the light after all
I have curled my body in the shape of a seed and been fallow
no movement- no song – no seeing
spent winter there in that formless torpor
waiting for the urge to root down
and to rise up

I am woman, but I have a heart
shaped like I seed and meant to break
I seek refuge in the smell of humus
the leaflitter, the dappled almost day
slowly warming, slowly warming
set the tap root
 deep- deep
then the branch roots
wide – wide

The only way to know rising is to wait
hold patience like a wand in your hands- until
called forth by forces beyond words
A shoot emerges from the fertile dark
and you breathe air once again.

When people ask me if I believe in god- I always say yes
god is the power that calls the flowers up to bloom
but maybe I have been wrong
maybe god is the seed or the darkness or the waiting
maybe god is the patience
or maybe the breaking
or maybe, my own seed shaped heart.



Being Human

4 Comments

Sometimes revelations of great importance come seemingly out of the blue. Or, out of the gray fog of dawn light, driving down the road with the windshield wipers on my truck swishing side to side, in an attempt to keep those tiny droplets of water from gathering to obstruct my view. It seemed like nothing at first, just a thought, that echoed around inside my body as thoughts sometimes do. “ there is nothing wrong with you Marianna.”

It is strange when thought is delivered into my consciousness from elsewhere and I receive, rather than create it. Strange that a belief this deep can kind of skirt around the edges. If you were to ask me if I thought I was fundamentally broken just by my humanness, I think I would say no. the concept of original sin makes me gag, I mean have you ever seen a baby? There is NO sin there, of this, I am quite certain. Yet under my conscious knowing, there is a deep shame and guilt associated with being human at this time, and in this way.

My individual suffering has its own flavor, I will not say it is a unique, Rather I would imagine that it is similar in taste and texture to the suffering of many other human beings. Wondering about our place in the world and society, fear of somehow trespassing or being wrong, shame about the unhealed darkness, the bruises, and imperfections we perceive in our character. I could go on and on, but you get the point, you may even be shaking your head to say yes, yes, this is my suffering too.

The thought that came to me this morning as I drove, was not related to this particular pathology, the swirling critical mind that seeks flaws in order to find a pattern and get to some semblance of safety. This part of the mind that seems to want to tear me apart, so that others don’t have the chance to do it first. No, this wrongness that my inner self spoke of was the unseen belief that by simply being in a human body I am wrong. How could I be right, how could I be ok, when my entire species has run amuck in a crazy carnival of destruction, hubris, and greed? This wrongness I feel in so many of my days is not personal, it is collective. It is the sense brought on by disavowing the original instructions, it is the poverty of power unchecked and forgotten promises that wreak havoc beyond our ability to comprehend. All of this is true, it is not subjective, it’s not a story, it’s a fact.

And yet, we individual humans, born into this wild mess, this end-stage capitalist nightmare of sorts, are actually not responsible for this entire system we were born into. Responsible, yes. Each one of us is responsible for the choices that we make, for navigating this world with intention and heart, to the best of our ability. For paying attention, and giving thanks, and being humble. We are responsible for these things. But so much harm has happened that is not in our individual ability to control. And it’s important to differentiate between the mess we were born into and our personal actions. For we are also responsible for stewarding our one precious life, we are also responsible for joy, and for choosing a life that gives us a chance to flourish.

Sometimes I think I have learned to believe that as a member of the human race, we the lost sons and daughters of creation, we the ones who have made themselves separate and so desperately alone, that I deserve a certain amount of suffering. That we deserve a certain amount of suffering. And perhaps that is true. Perhaps some of us have already received that suffering, and many of us, all of us, will most likely receive much more. And yet, the voice that told me, there is nothing wrong with you Marianna, did not lie. I am one human, consuming food and fossil fuels, the same as all the rest. American, we are the worst when it comes to consumption. I participate in a system and a lifestyle that I actually find utterly abhorrent, but I did not create this. And I am not inherently broken by my humanness.

There is a grief that lives in me that is so large. I frequently don’t know how to live in the presence of it. It is not only mine. For sure some of it is my personal bundle of sorrow and loss, but honestly, that seems small compared to the devastation I see all around me. It’s easy to slip into darkness. It’s easy to look at the carnage we humans create in our wake and feel my heart drop, waves of pain pass through my body… forgive us… we know not what we do. Or do we? If we know, truly know, it makes all of this a fuck of a lot worse.

And here is where it seems to get complicated. Human and beautiful, complex and aware, collectively and individually choosing a path of destruction, up against forces and systems so entrenched in extraction that we don’t know how to extract ourselves from their greedy clutching claws. All this is true, and still, I am not wrong. I am an animal. Born to love and play and fuck and eat as much good food as I can find. Born to mate and birth and howl and dance. I am the living body of the earth, the very earth I poison with the fumes coming out of my truck as I drive to work. Isn’t that a total mind fuck?

I also know myself well enough to know that if I let the despair grab onto my skirt hem and pull me under I will be of absolutely no use to anyone, least of all myself. And I believe to the very marrow of my bones that a profound piece of my work in loving the world is to find and experience joy. If I am lost in the waves of sorrow and guilt, joy is not close at hand. I believe that my ancestors, all of my people back and back, through deep time, to the very beginning have sacrificed, and paved the way for me to be here in my life. It is my duty to feel joy and pleasure, to share the incredible depth of wonder, passion, and excitement that I carry in my being with me into the world. How can I live in this paradox? How can I feel the true weight of my presence in the world, and the lightness and beauty of my body and spirit?

I hold this complexity in the palm of my hand. I rub it with my thumb, I turn it over and blow on it, I hold it under my tongue, I suck on it, and spit it out again, and still, I don’t know what to make of it. I know that I am not wrong, and I know that I have done wrong. I know that I love the earth and that I abuse the earth. I know that I love my sacred body and that I abuse my sacred body. Perhaps there are not supposed to be answers, perhaps my whole lifelong all I will do is find more and more questions. And weave joy into the sorrow. Weave song into the weeping. Weave human kindness into the harsh reality of human greed. To be awake to our own consequence in this life is a demanding undertaking. To understand the is and is not-ness requires my heart to grow large enough to encompass it all. Can I do it? I don’t know. But I am willing to try. To be broken open and gathered in again and again and again. My spirit is strong and for that I am grateful. My love is strong too, and I need that to survive. I need that to give away, I need that to make it another year, feeling with my fingers and my heart through the bleakness of these times. My spirit says take heart, my love. Look to the mountain, the moon, the sky. Don’t forget who you are and where you came from. You are the daughter of thousands, you are needed and you are not wrong.

She of the Snake

Leave a comment
We are one in this spiral dance ….image from a sight at Mesa Verde

This is a poem that birthed itself. The words beginning to spill from me, catching me off guard, without pen in hand. i’m beginning to be able to recognize this sensation more quickly, and quite literally run to get a writing instrument if there is not one in reach. Mary Oliver said that a writer should never be without a small pad of paper and a pen, I haven’t quite learned this lesson yet.

Snake has been growing in me for sometime now. I have never been afraid of snakes, in fact I’m enchanted by them, The cool smoothness of their bellies, their direct eye contact, the flick of a forked tongue tasting air, so beautiful to me. Yet this thing snake and I have going on, is really tied to the divine mother. Since I began in earnest last year reclaiming my relationship with Mary, now in a garment untied to any religion, and since finding a deep love of praying the rosary, snake has decided to show up in a big way.

Mary is often pictured with her foot upon the snake, some folks have said that she was squashing out evil, casting out the serpent, the temptress, the snake in the garden. I don’t believe this to be true. Yes, Mary has her foot resting on the snakes back, but perhaps more as a sign, A signature mark of her affiliation with the wild and wise serpent ones. Back and back through Time the snake has been a symbol of the goddess. And Mary is, with no doubt in my mind, a manifestation of the goddess. Not only is she the mother of God, she is God the mother. The fruit of her womb is life, and life is sacred. She rests her foot upon the snake with tenderness, and kind regard, a shared lineage of women and serpent, an ancient contract, steeped in magic and mystery.

When I was recently in the desert I was hoping so much to be visited by snake, I spoke aloud calling her, I drew her, as pictured here, courting her with my pen and my tongue. But she did not appear in her corporeal form, only in this poem, dropped into my heart whole and complete. Notice, I did not say that she did not arrive. Indeed she did arrive, hearing my calls and coming to me, gifting me with her presence through my own words. Sly like a snake she is…

What could it be that I have to learn from a snake? There is something about waiting, about not being too hot blooded, about taking the moment of opportunity when it arrives, without hesitation. Snap! Her jaws clamp shut, she does not wait for the perfect, precious moment, she needs to eat now. And all of life is death too. As I fall deeper into the practice of seeing nature as a mirror for my inner world, there is so much to be contemplated, and the thoughts that come into my mind and heart, the creatures I see with my eyes, the way I move through the wind and the rain, all become gifts meant entirely for me. I know how much I do not know, and how much I am willing to unlearn to be open to learning anew.

Blessed are we, creatures living on this earth and under the sun to be gifted teachers, teachers that come in all forms. Today I am giving thanks for snake, and all of her relations, and the gentle wisdom I am learning through contemplation of their ways.

Journal sketch to honor snake

The Fertile Dark

10 Comments

The wheel of time turns on. Autumn Faded to winter, which here in Portland really means grey skies, rain, and squishy ground, rather than the picture of snowdrifts that the word “winter” evokes in our minds. And now we find ourselves again Holding on to times wheel as she turns us from winter solstice to Imbolc. The halfway point between the longest night and the spring equinox.

Each year I age I feel the wheel more solidly, I feel my place in time and feel it spinning all around me, or maybe it’s me spinning with it. It seems so long ago, the days when I cared not what season we were in, unless it meant that I could be next to the river with the summer sun shining on my skin. Now I pace my days, my work, and my energy in relationship to where we are in the wheel of the year. This time, this gestational time “the in the belly” time,  when traditionally  livestock would be carrying their babes in the belly, feels of such great importance. I too, in my own way am gestating, not a baby, but a whole new life.

Here on our little farmlette, as my momma likes to call it , we too had hopes of young ones being in the belly this winter, but the small goat who was sent for breeding did not receive the seed and so we wait for spring to try again. This time is still fertile, I feel myself putting down a taproot. Learning to be of this land. Not quite a year yet under my belt in my tiny home in the Doug fir trees, yet it’s beginning to feel like my place in the world. And I know my tall standing friends, are growing used to me as well.

Just tonight as I came out of my parents’ house after a nice shower in the hot wate, making my way across the dark yard, my footsteps know the way, I don’t need a light anymore. Out of the darkness came a sound, a large, low hoot of an owl. An owl who must be very grand to see with your eyes indeed because their voice was so resonant, I could feel it in my belly. I stopped and called a greeting. “Hello owl, hello!” and gave a hoot of my own. The owl responded, as they tend to do. I never stop delighting in this fact, that I can converse with an owl. So I stood there for a moment with the wind blowing and a few raindrops coming down around me, and my wet hair streaming down my back, and I sang, just a small song for that owl. Thinking maybe if I try to speak owl, he will think I’m a bit Daft, but if I speak human and offer a song with a certain lilt and cadence perhaps it will be well received. Owl didn’t seem to mind, but hooted again, as I said goodnight.

It’s been a quarter of a year since I was in New Mexico tending to  my beloved  uncle John through his death. Only three moon since then… a quarter of a year more of this pandemic, a quarter of a year more of learning how to be a woman on my own without a husband, a quarter of a year more of living in my little home with my cat under these tall trees. It seems such a short burst of time, and yet also so drawn out. Another sign from the gods that time truly does not exist even though we dance with it.

We’ve been looking at seed catalogs, dreaming about little ones to plant in the ground and raise up and grow come spring and then summer. And I’ve been looking inside the catalogues of my heart wondering what pieces of myself I would like to attend to and grow up into something flourishing and bright as the sun again returns to the land.

I take such comfort in this quiet dark, such comfort in not having to know anything, rather just feeling my way through my life, just like the baby plants feel their roots sinking down through layers of soil and when they hit a pebble they don’t freak out, they just gently go around it and keep on rooting. We humans, we are much like baby plants. And we are also much like tall trees.

Each morning when I say my prayers, I finish by smudging my body, my brow, my heart, my belly, and then drawing the smoke down each leg and grounding my hands to the floor, and through the floor to the earth. I often refer to this as smudging myself in. Smudging myself into my body and into my life, into my commitment to my ancestors and my descendants.  I use Cedar for my smudge bundle right now, Cedar gathered from the land here on which I live. And I send up a prayer every day for Cedar to help me be a little more like them, a little more regal and tall in my stature, a little more rooted deep to the earth, a little more sweet smelling when the rain of life falls on me.

There’s nothing left to do this evening, except for make some tea and pour it in my cup. Give my cat a little bit of a snuggle and settle into bed with my book. I’m grateful to be aware of the pause this time of year. I’m grateful for the silent darkness, this potent present, the pregnant fullness that lives in the dark.  

Cartography 

I have lost my map.
The whole, well structured cartography of my life
slips and shifts before my very eyes.
North now points, gods know where
South spins on some unknown axis,
and I am spun as well.

All I knew to be true now in question,
One thousand planned futures
collapse around me,
the unknown looms like a sneaker wave
not yet seen, but growing.

How do I step forward when there is no ground?
Beneath my feet is only shift and play,
no solid earth to hold me.
where do I step when I cannot see?
only darkness, fog and shadow.

Perhaps stepping is not the issue at hand
As a wise man says –
“The times are urgent, we must slowdown.”

Maybe I plant my feet here
like the roots of a mighty tree
maybe my roots will, in good time
hold the earth solid,
and me along with her.

My roots snaking and growing once again
to create a new cartography of my life.

In darkness I was born
and will be born again.
now I wait,
spreading roots, spreading roots.

On Ravens Wing

12 Comments

It is Samhain and the moon is full. Samhain and the moon is full and the thinness of the veil is present all around me. This is the beginning of the darkness, the Celtic new year, the time of connection to those gone before, to our old ones and to the fertile, sacred stillness. A magic time to turn within and sense into meaning and rhythm, to ask the questions of our deep selves that have been perhaps hidden in plain sight, the ones we are afraid to ask.

 For me this is a time of dying. My old life and ways composting before my eyes. My ability to force myself into the rigor of the do, do, do of this culture falling away. I am no longer able to coerce  myself, to occupy the roles I have held, thinking they were my own and now seeing as constructs inherited from an unwell society and the unhealed parts of my family lineage and a traumatized ancestry.

And I am tending the dying this Samhain. My Auntie and Cousin and myself have been deep in it. 7 days now at the bedside of my dearest Uncle, who is walking the liminal line, the space between life and death. He has been without food nine days and without water for seven, and still he breaths, and his heart beats and we sit vigil, we sing, we eat, we talk and cry and laugh. Three women together tending this edge time, we are midwives, weavers, spell makers. The working is thick and deep, alive with potent power and grace.

There is a perfectness to it, a gentleness as well and I am blown open by the love that is present in these walls. These walls made of the clay of this land, thick and strong. Strong enough to hold us up and hold us in as we dance in this space of timeless beauty, of great grief, of tender tending.

There is nothing required, nothing to be done. We are called simply to love and be true and be in presence with each other. Three of us living and one of us living, but also dying. The knowing of his ending is thick around us, it hangs like a cloak on our shoulders. His still breathing body shines with the brightness of the eternal and it seems impossible that soon, he will breath his last. Soon he will leave us in this form, soon it will be three, not four under the shelter of this strong roof and walls.

I find that when I am in the heart of life, as I am now. In the heart of life as I do this dance with death, my words come easily. Poems flow forth, and I have spent some of each day with pen to paper, making sense of life and death through the rhythm and feeling of the pen on the page, and the words the tumble out, I a scribe for whatever it is that moves through me.

I received and image the other morning as I was sitting by my Uncle, of his body thinning out, becoming many, rather than one. As if he was layered somehow, growing more expansive and ethereal, more a galaxy than a star. As I witnessed this I saw also a Raven come, resting on the back of his body, his spine alight with life force energy, connected to the cosmos. The raven bent her head and began to pick at his spine, the base of the spine, somehow unbuttoning or unbraiding him from the corporeal realm, one by one releasing the tethers to his body and his life. This poem arose from that image.

You do not look like I remembered
though we have met before – you and I
oh walker of the edge place – you one we call death.

Your wings are black- not back of night
but black of dawn
Black of ebony raven plume
black of your beloveds pupil – shrinking and growing
with the closeness of your love.

You dark bird who hovers
unseen until the end and then appearing  
vast on the horizon – vast above the bed frame
unstitching the woven spine of life
with your great black beak.

Morrigan – lady of endings
mistress of raven
one day you shall feast on my flesh as well.

You circle low above us now
so close I can see your breast
so close I can see the underside of your beak
and the bottom of you scaly feet.

When will you land and sink your talons in
claiming this life as your own?
the breath keeps breathing -but softer now
fly low- fly low
we will not chase you away.



Grandmother

4 Comments

Last year, a poem I published in the We’moon datebook brought a handful of  new readers to my sight. I have been touched to receive a few, delightful, emails from readers who were moved by the poem and requesting to read the piece in its entirety, as an excerpt was used by We’moon. I am tender and humble in my heart as I think of others, unknown to me, reading my words and feeling moved to write me, what a gift this is. I have been too long in coming to this post, to share the poem. However, time moves as it does and I have been swept hard into the currents of change, time moving more quickly and more strangly than one could imagine. And now here I sit, nearly a year later than I planned, fingers typing away at these keys once again. 

So I shall share, here on this page the full version of the poem, but first it seems only right and necessary to share a wee bit of the story that it birthed from, the story of my grandmother, and of me and a little bit of magic that remains in the world and is concentrated in the forest…

I never met my maternal grandmother, Marjorie Helen Miles, to be Marjorie Helen McClelland, once she wed my grandfather, Roswell Dunlop McClelland. I have wondered if Marjorie McClelland ever really felt like her name to her, or if, in some secret chamber of her heart, my grandmother had always  remained- Marjorie Miles, as I had , even after 11 years of marriage always remained, Marianna Iverson. Now divorced and having legally reclaimed my name, I can say without doubt, that we shall never be seperated again. 

Having never met Grandma Marjorie, all I know of her life is constructed through the stories of others. Yet she stands strong in my mind, heart, and memories. The stories I carry are like treasures to me, little jewels of knowing. Her service for the American Friends(Quakers) in WWII, her skilled hands, eager mind, adventurous spirit, and also, her sorrow, loss and regret.

This woman that is my Mothers Mother, who gave me the greatest gift, my own Mother and my own life… all the stories she carried in her, so many we will never know. I seek to see her and know her through the way she lives on in my Mother, and my Auntie, I  feel a pull and a connection that is palpable, I have even in spaces of great expansiveness felt her behind me and heard her whisper in my ear…there is much in this life that we cannot explain. I myself have given up trying, better to live in the mystery.

I, being a bit of a seeker and one to delight in the occasional silent meeting with my God, am intrigued by my Quaker line, and long to know more about these relations. It has been fascinating to learn of my Quaker relatives connection to Oregon history, as pioneers in the late 1800’s to an area near where I now live, Scotts Mills, an incredibly beautiful place in the world, lush Willamette greenery, springs and streams, gentle pasture, this is where my people settled .

I wonder what that little place was like back then, and who was pushed out to make space for those white settlers. After all, we are living now on occupied territory…I can’t allow the amnesiac quality, the seductive dream of the bravery and strength of my kin “settling” the west to lay claim to me. There is so much more to this story, and there was consequence in my people arriving here, I may be some of that consequence.

I wonder at the forces at work that cause it to be that, this poem I will share here was written on land less than 80 miles from Scotts Mills, this poem written about the death of my grandmother whom I never knew, written on the sweet land of this Willamette Valley, land her father, my great grandfather, Walter Miles, lived and grew on, in his childhood all those long years ago…

There is so much to wonder, and so little to know. Knowing being so concrete, I have less and less of a desire to cling to its stability and form as I age. In the timeless words of dear Anne Shirley Cuthbert, it leaves too little “scope for the imagination.” I am willing to suspend knowing in favor of wonder, and surety in favor of possibilty. In this case it is highly possible that the words I type here on this page are able to travel to the ears of my Grandmother. In case this is so, I will take this small moment to say, “Grandma- you color all my days with your wake, and I am so grateful to be of you and your kin. All the days I live I will carry you with me, in the secret chambers of my heart. May this poem be pleasing to you, I am forever in your debt and glad to stay that way. The braid of beholdedness weaving us always together. I love you.”

Grandmother

My Grandmother said-
“Nature is my temple.”
And so I worship there as well.
Cathedrals of green canopy above me,
prayer rugs of Violet and Clover at me feet,
the blessings of life giving Holy Water.
These are my sword and shield,
my crown and chalice,
my strength.

When Grandma was dying,
we moved her bed out of doors.
To the garden,
under the edge of the green cathedrals boughs.
The place where she could see,
the face of God above her.
She lay still for a long time,
just looking up- and then,
almost silently whispered,
“Thank you.”

Green fills my spirit as I think of her,
My hands become hers, brown with soil,
rich with life and food.
I draw her from the Earth,
Root, Stone, and Bone.
All she left unfinished, now lies in my lap.
I release the mantle of her sorrow,
and we both are freed.
I have only one wish left-
May my last words be,
“thank you”

Grandma Marjorie – On an ancestor candle on my altar. She shines with me every day.

The Woman Who Weeps

4 Comments

I wake in the morning and pray for gratitude. In the darkness alone I feel only sorrow, even the birds songs, delicate and joyful, pierce me with their nearness, and the delicate nature of their singers, who hang now by a thread, species collapsing each day, the losses staggering. I can barely breath. I wake in the morning and the birds sing, and I weep.

Could my tears be a libation? An offering to the earth and her many children, an offering to my own broken heart, and to yours? I offer them as such, I of many tears, a woman who weeps, my lamentation pours forth in this time of trouble. I am witness and I will not look away. I hold a steady gaze through my tears.

How can a heart hold it all? This world we walk is so out of balance. Every which way lies a new disaster, a new ending, a new possible apocalypse. I try to remember the world never ends, she only begins again and again. I try to remember the transient nature of being, no-thing ever stays the same. I try to remember that the world has already ended for so many people, all across time. It ended for someone today, I am sure of it. How could it not? All over the world, individual and collective endings, sometimes it feels like it is all about to collapse. I try to remember to just take the next breath.

My name is Marianna. Mary from the Hebrew Miriam meaning something akin to, sea of sorrow, sea of bitterness. Or in some interpretations, longed for child. And Anna, from the Hebrew Hanna, meaning graceful one, of full of grace.  I am the bitter grace of the sea. I am the sea of sorrow. I cry salt tears for the whole world. As it all burns around me all I have left to offer is my mournful grace, my heart of sorrow.

Do not discount the power of weeping. It is said in some religions that the power of prayer is more potent when tears are shed. The sincerity of heart and the humbleness of weeping makes the Gods take notice, turn an ear to us.  The earth needs my tears, needs our tears, hell, you, reading this now may need my tears. I weep for you, wherever you are and whatever sorrow is lodged in your heart. In the words of the great Bob Dylan, “go on and give it me, I’ll keep it with mine.”  I will, I’ll keep it next to mine. Your sorrow nesting in my heart will cause no harm, the cult of happiness failed us long ago anyway and I walked away. Tears streaming down my face and my hair flying wild as a banshee.

I wake in the morning and the birds still sing, they seem to be saying “just do” – “just do”
And so I do, do. I climb out of bed and turn my face to the sky. I remember that I am a living emissary of my family line, and even if I can’t see the purpose, I have to show up for duty. I remember that my heart, broken as it may be is also broken open, and that means it is fertile ground for something beautiful to grow again. I wake in the morning and the birds sing, and I weep. And then I go to work. In the seeming impossibility of continuing this life as I know it, I go on, and the birds sing me to my car. I think ” I do not know if birds can cry, but am so grateful that I can.”
So the gratitude I prayed for in the dawn arrives, gratitude for the tears, my gift to life, my offering of one heart, broken open to the divine.

Mary_Magdalene_Crying_Statue