The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

sometimes S is for shame

There is a still a part of me creaky with rust, not quite decomposed that clenches onto the inherited shame stories of sickness.

I have fallen sick 3 x since the Solstice, I feel the shame unleashed.

Confusion. Hypocrisy?. Why the healthy lifestyle, if health isn't the result?

What old religious debris hangs on whispering, "I am bad- this a punishment."?

Ruby drives solo to Austin TX. Our road trip left up to her. Healing my body left up to me.

There are other voices soothing, singing, and chanting truths to remind me and bring in presence.

My head keeps asking, what should I do? I hear, "just be" my body resonates.

One of my NSA practioners, Brian Lumb, once explained to me, every time we build another floor on the tower of our being, we immediately return to the basement. The foundations need checking. Are there any cracks?

I've been doing a lot of Self building, expanding and I found some cracks...

I am grateful for the opportunity to be. Just be. To rest, dream, soak in the bath, cocoon at home, and heal.

Ruby Dee, I'm gonna make that road trip to Austin with you one day! Just you wait and see...

The Force of Life

Just received these powerful words from Karen Blum, one of the amazing women on my Circle.

But you can suppress it, and like water, like the feminine, like emotion, it will rise up again, appear, make itself known, seep through, humanifest, womanifest, find its level, and suddenly what was only hinted at, longed for , deeply hidden, becomes splendid and on display, in the midst of a streaming white light dripping with blood of menses, of murder, of childbirth, of ripped hymens, of bleeding hearts, of ecstasy lost and wisdom comes pouring forth again as women reuse and refind their voices, their byways and scarcely trodden highways, their footpaths, their natures, their longings, their strongings, their weakness, their meekness, their pouring forth into abundance, gratitude and heat, their surrender of pain and rebirth into the privilege of speaking, laughing, storytelling, moaning, giggling. Celebrating, ululating, until the secret pathways and shrotas and incense trails and lacy fingers on the backs and behind and gaping pussy holes become mouths and voices, all of them ululating in the ancient cries of woman’s voice. Woman’s voice. Women’s voices raised in singing, crying, lullabying, joking, laughing, bubbling, giggling, whispering, praising, raising, phrasing, all good, all loving, all flowing in the ceremonial space that is woman. She is crafted for ceremony, naturally spiritual, connected, needing no form. We are the form. Built for loving, being loved; cradling, being cradled: there is no life without woman. We are life. We are drive. We are power. We are desire.

Celebrate yourself. Wake up to the music that is you.
Lift your head to whiff the smouldering incense that you are.

Shield your eyes as your gaze is brightened by the radiant white light of your being.

Feel the textures of silk and saliva, velvet and blood, satin and hair that drapes and adorns the fiber you are made of.

Taste the salty you, the sweet you, now the pungent and acrid you; the smoky burning paradise of you, the pickled you, the honeyed you, the candied you, the peppermint and rose hips of you.

You are the embodiment of all of life.

You are a celebration.

Your are the feast and the feasting, the dinner and the diner, the sup and the superb, the breakfast and the break slow, the snack and the morsel, the taste and the treat, a neverending changing and delicious banquet of woman.

Celebrate! Allow the bells to ring, the drums to beat. Entice the hips to move and the pubic bone to find its own rhythm. Allow the lovers to emerge into the light. Hide yourself no more. Be free. Warm your wings in the sunlight. You are nascent. You are alive Your many voices poised to shout as one, in birth:

Confessions of Self Censorship and Spray Tan...

Enough already! I can't take another second of this self imposed strangulation!

I've been mulling over the possibilities, start a new blog? Throw myself head first into a bag of something fried and salty? I have grossed mySelf out with this Self censoring. In the shackles of supposed professionalism, I have edited out my unique quirky authenticity. For that I am sorry.

From this day forward. while blogging or otherwise...

I will be honestly irreverent!

I am giving mySelf full permission to be the goofball mystic of my soul's choosing!

I will no longer edit my snarky humor, or creative mumblings....

AAAHHH that feels better.

This permission, reminds me of the day I finally came to terms with being a white girl.

Some of my earliest memories are of deep Caucasian denial.

1) In the horse field with a friend rubbing our limbs down with dark earth and admiring our amazing tans!

2) In preschool using marker (the cinnamon scented kind) to color my skin. I was interrupted by the call to snack before I turned into the bronze Goddess I was creating- I did however lose marker privileges for the remainder of the week.

3) In the bath staring at my oh so mundane pale skin, practicing my illusive super powers, while chanting my first mantra "I am tan, I am tan, I am tan, I am tan, I am tan ( No you are NOT-doh!)

4) Imagining I was the Coppertone girl with her little puppy (remember her?)

The list is longer, and more detailed as I began imagining I was all sorts of exotic beauties. Every race except mine! Remember the first fake tanning lotions? Q2? Nothing says junior high like orange streaky skin!

Or the slippery summers spent slathered in baby oil...brown for a season.

Just a few years ago I fell prey to my siren fantasy again (no really)- this time in the form of a spray tan. Someone tell me why these places are still in business? Never have I scrubbed my elbows, feet, ankles, and wrists sooo long and hard. SCARY! Then as it wore off I just looked dirty, not a glowing woman of color? no not even a tan whitey!

And so, after over 3 decades of racial self struggle. I buckled. I just gave in to what was, what is.

AAAHHhhhhhh that feels better! Accepting me, just as I am.

Let's remind each other: it's perfectly ok to be me...to be you... just as we are!

Joy quest

"Don't ask what the world needs.

Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
– Howard Thurman

I learned something this morning about Gandhi. He was inspired by Tolstoy. It was after reading Tolstoy's ideas on passive resistance that he envisioned a Way.

That thread of inspired love is woven through out our history. Over the centuries, how many average human beings awoke to it? Outgrowing "average", swelling with the confidence of peace to invoke the masses and alter the world as we know it.

Blasting away the age old lie of "That's just the way it is"!

"Reasonable people adapt to the world, unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress is left up to the unreasonable people!"

-George Bernard Shaw