A Blessing by John O'Donohue

Ten years ago I passed this poem/Blessing on to a friend on the occasion of her birthday.  My own birthday passed just a few days ago, and this poem by the Irish poet and visionary came again to mind.  This time I would like to pass it on to everyone.  

**************************

 I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day.

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath.

The tent of thought where I shelter.

Waves of desire I am shore to,

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love.

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for.

And waste my heart on fear no more.

….John O'Donohue


"Beauty isn’t just nice loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming.  I think beauty is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life."  ......John O'Donohue

 interview with John O'Donohue 
on the Landscape of Inner Beauty with Krista Tippett of On Being

************************

Beauty is before me

Beauty is behind me

Beauty is below me

Beauty is above me

Beauty is all around me

Beauty comes from within me

In beauty, I walk

It has become beauty again

Navajo (Diné) prayer, often referred to as the

"Beauty Way" prayer (Hózhóogo naasháa doo)

the Night Blooming Cereus

The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens

 

Once again, it was my pleasure and privilege to visit the MENDOCINO COAST BOTANICAL GARDEN in Northern California, and to see the Dalia Garden in full bloom!  This profusion of flowers are absolutely amazing, each bloom a work of nature's art.  I wish I had time to paint even a few of them, to explore that brilliant color and divine symmetry that each offers to life.  Here are a few of them..........

  

 

 

 

   

Well worth a visit if you are on the Northern California Coast!

Quon Yin and Spirit

     

"Kuan Yin, Goddess of  Mercy for all suffering beings, please come to me here and now. You Who hear the cries of the World and do not turn away,  hear also me in my need.  Pour out upon me,  and upon the world, the healing waters of your love.  Flood us with its Light.  In you, I seek refuge, in Your example, I seek the same within me.  Show us Your ters of your love and goodness, and flood us with its light. In you I seek refuge, show us your Great Compassion."

I recently met a lovely young woman who came to see my work.  I showed her several works I've done dedicated to Quon Yin, the Chinese Goddess of compassion, and asked if she would let me take a photo of her for a possible future painting of Quon Yin.  She held vase to symbolize the healing waters Quon Yin is usually portrayed with, and these are the three photos I took.

I was amazed when I looked at them later.  The second photo shows violet and rainbow bands around her hands and forehead.  The third photo............amazing.  It shows a beautiful "halo" around her head! There are also light bands around her hands or the jar she is holding, as well as a blue shape in the lower right of the photograph.  

I did nothing to manipulate this photograph.  I've had other such phenomena in the past when working with sacred archetypes or theatre - and when it happens, I feel it's an Blessing of some kind, and an indication that we are not alone.  Here I share this because I believe it's to let any who see it know that the compassion and healing energy of Quon Yin, of the Goddess, the Divine Feminine is active in the world, and with us. 

In Mahayana Buddhism Quon Yin is revered as a Bodhisattva, an Enlightened One, who refused to enter the divine realms and vowed instead  to remain until all living beings could also attain enlightenment.  Not unlike the Blessed Mother Mary of Christianity, it is Quon Yin Who "Hears the cries of the world", Quan Yin who is prayed to for healing, for aid at times of fear or suffering. She is often shown carrying a rosary of pearls, known as the "Pearls of Illumination"  and shown carrying healing water, the Water of Life.  Just as the Virgin Mary is virtually everywhere throughout the art and iconography of the Christian world, the Mother - so is Quan Yin's image  - sometimes She is shown as the "Goddess with a thousand arms", each hand  bearing wisdom tools, aid and healing to those in distress and need.  

"A Webbed Vision": A Paradigm of Inter-dependence

 

"What might we see, how might we act, if we saw with a webbed vision? 

The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk, 

 yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.” 

Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation,Sexism and Self  1

I seem to have writer's block these days, and so I find myself revisiting earlier posts. Here is one I'm proud of, inspired by Grandmother Spider Woman.  I come back to it again and again especially now, as it seems, with global warming and the  corruption and authoritarianism that has overtaken the U.S., it is more than ever timely and timeless.  I think it gives me hope.

I've begun using the term "Inter-dependence" instead of  the tamer, perhaps more polite "inter-connectedness"..... because, frankly, unless we as a common humanity create civilizations, economies, and religions based on a very real mutual dependency with virtually every other living being and phenomena on this magnificent living planet we have been given the privilege to be a part of...... pretty soon at that........ we're going to, as they say, go the way of the dinosaurs.  More appropriately, the Dodo, which was an early statistic in the 6th Extinction.  

Sorry, a moment of despair there.  

The quote above, from theologian Catherine Keller, has been deeply important to me.   I first read her book "From a Broken Web" in 2008, when I was pursuing my "Hands of the Spider Woman" Community Arts Projects.  The first project  was at the Midland Center for the Arts (with the Alden B. Dow Creativity Center) in Michigan, then at the Creative Spirit Center, also  in Midland (with Kathy Space),  and last when I was a Resident Artist at the Henry Luce Center for the Arts and Religion in Washington D.C.  To some extent, that quote informs the origins of this Blog. 

So, once again I look back to this article, repeating its message again (written in 2008 originally).  Repeating the vision the Great Weaver gave me back then........... 

"Spider Woman" from "Restoring the Balance" 2004

A WEBBED VISION (2008)

Perhaps because I live in the Southwest,  the "legends of the Spider Woman" have always fascinated me as I encountered Her in native American art.  Spider Woman is an ubiquitous Creatrix found throughout the Americas, with her earliest known  origins among the Maya of South America.  Spider Woman manifests among the Navajo and the Pueblo Peoples of the Southwest as the "great Weaver".    Among the people of the Keresan Pueblo she is also called  Tse Che Nako,  the "Thought Woman" who weaves the worlds into being with the stories She tells.  Within this metaphor of the "great weaver",  Spider Woman waits at the center of the Web of life, within which we are all connected,  interwoven and co-creating.

Ts' its' tsi' nako, Thought-Woman, the Spider is sitting in her room thinking of a story now:   I'm telling you the story   She is thinking.

Keresan Pueblo Proverb from Carol Patterson-Rudolph 2

My path on the trail of  Spider Woman has been fraught with synchronicities, which I have come to think of as  touchstones along the way.  Synchonicities, to me, are a mystical part of the overlay (and the foundational "under")  of  the metaphor Dr. Keller writes  of.  As I write about   "A Webbed Vision" , for example, I note that for the past weeks a spider has made its home on the ceiling directly above the keyboard where I write.  I have come to think of that spider as my muse - perhaps, fancifully, she is Spider Woman's envoy,  weaving its patient web just  above my head, reminding me each day of a vision I want to hold.

In her 1989 book  Dr. Keller does not speak of the Native American Goddess Spider Woman, but she often  references  the Greek myth of  "Penelope".  Penelope is a name with  ancient origins that derive from an archaic  Greek word  meaning  "with a web on her face".   It is likely that Penelope was originally a Fate or Oracular Goddess before she was later demoted in patriarchal Greek mythology to the faithful wife of Odysseus, weaving and un-weaving a shroud to avoid her suitors (it's always  interesting the way myths are transformed to suit the evolving mythos and power base of different cultures).   Yet within the earlier context of a more egalitarian society, "Penelope" would be one who could "see" and "weave" the beginnings and the ends of a life.  She might have been personified with a loom before her, or spinning a thread.  Taking the metaphor further, such a Goddess  would "see" the inter-dependencies between all things, the Great Web spreading out across the landscapes of life.   

Pueblo mythology tells that when each of the previous worlds ended in catastrophe, it was Spider Woman who led the people through the sipapu, the kiva (or birth canal) into the next world.  As such Spider Woman is the divine midwife for the birth of  each new age.

 According to Hopi cosmology,  we have now entered the "Fifth World".  It is interesting that, in contemporary  Neo-Pagan practices,  there are 5 Elements that symbolize the "great Circle".   The Fifth Element is called "Center", and is represented with the color white, the union of all colors.  It is the last Element, and symbolizes the universal force or Aether that unites all the other Elements.  

I cannot resist imagining that the World Wide Web might just be  is Spider Woman's latest appearance!  

“In Hopi cosmology Spider Woman was the first to weave. Her techniques and patterns have stood the test of time, or more properly, the test of timelessness.…..…..Weaving is not an act in which one creates something oneself – it is an act in which one uncovers a pattern that was already there.” 

John Loftin 3

As we confront the universal catastrophe of climate change,  it seems to me that this is a significant and appropriate metaphor.  Indeed, a significant Prophecy:  for what we now confront concerns  not just a tribe or nation, but all beings upon planet Earth.  We must evolve a new, global paradigm  for this Fifth Age if we are to survive.   Spider Woman, bringing a vision of the Great Web of life, once again must be the midwife as She makes visible the connections, the strands of the Web,  whether we speak of  ecology,  economy, quantum physics, or integral psychology.   In our essence, as Jungian psychologist Ann Baring has said, "we are one".

 " The new myth manifests through the triple influence of quantum physics, depth psychology and the ecological movement suggests that we are participants in a great web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field.  It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."

Anne Baring,  Awakening to the New Story   4

How indeed, as an evolving  global society, would we think and act, if we saw,  like  Penelope (or Grandmother Spider Woman)  "with a webbed vision"? Would we be able to change the catastrophic course of ecological destruction if  we had such a theology based upon Relationship instead of Domination?  If our reasoning, and our way of seeing,  was inclusive rather than dissectionist?  If instead of valuing  competition and the "alpha" winner,  we valued consensus? If instead of "fight and flight" in the face of danger, we instead pulled out the defense tactic found among female monkeys of "tend and befriend"?   If instead of renunciate, hierarchical religions that turn us away from nature and Earthly existence toward an abstract "heaven" or "nirvana", we saw ourselves as profoundly embedded in the sacred body and evolving soul of our living planet?

"The question is not so much "What do I learn from stories" as "What stories do I want to live?" 

David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories" 5

                      


If each of us could, like Penelope,  "see" ourselves holding  a thread that originates with all of those who came before us - and touches all of those who will come after us - how indeed might we see, and act?

"The New Story coming into being is that the whole universe is a unified field. The world we experience is like a minute excitation on the surface of an infinite cosmic sea which sustains not only our world, but the entire Cosmos. We live within a cosmic web of life which underlies and connects all life forms in the universe and on our planet. Through a vast network of electro-magnetic fields we are connected to the earth, the sun and the hundred billion galaxies. So we are not separate from any aspect of planetary or cosmic life. "

          Anne Baring, Awakening to the New Story 6

As I watch the ongoing corporate greed that is eroding not only democracy, but the very life of our planet,  and the unreasoned ideology of capitalism (as opposed to local free enterprise) that makes it  possible for this new monarchy of the 1% to arise, I wonder sometimes if there is any hope for the future at all.  If I am not my brother's and sister's keeper, and they mine - who is?  Monsanto?  Walmart?  A civilization, indeed the raising of a single child, is a grand collaboration among many,  and it might be said from that "webbed vision" of societies  that the exploiters and  warlords pounding their chests and sitting like dragons on their stolen gold....... are the parasites of a civilization, rather than any  appropriate leaders.

We urgently need pragmatic ways to create and envision expanding community, which can be simplified to a fundamental sense of belonging.   Beyond that, we need an ethos and mythos that supports the fundamental, and foundational, understanding of inter-dependency.    If America was not a culture that idealizes "rugged individualism" where "good fences make good neighbors"  what other kinds of values might enhance the quality of life for us (and perhaps the very survival of our species) along with an extended community of many other species we share our world with?

"The Rugged Individualist" cheers when needy people are deprived of food, battered women are deprived of protection from brutal husbands, children are deprived of education, because this is "getting government off our backs.”

Philip Slater,  The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture  6

"Alpha male" individualism fails in every way to communicate that we live within a  web of human and environmental inter-dependency, a web that is unimaginably vast and  also very intimate. This is the "Webbed Vision" that sees and recognizes the links that must be restored.   A successful adult is so because of  parents, siblings, friends,  teachers, community resources, the backdrop of nature and environment, global society.........and distant ancestors that enabled him or her to be born.  Without a sense of belonging and contributing to that continuum as it reaches into both the past and into  future generations, human beings end up feeling alienated, disposable,  and without a sense of purpose.   Which is what an unsustainable, insatiable consumer system, as a placebo for the pain of spiritual and communal isolation, feeds on.

"Spider Woman's Cross" motif found in Navajo art and weaving

In tribal societies, survival depended  on cooperation, as well as the collective ability to adapt continually to new environmental challenges, be it drought, invaders, or the exhaustion of resources.  The mythic foundation of any tribe (or civilization) is ultimately  the template upon which they stand; a culture with a rigid mythos that cannot adapt and change is doomed to collapse.   Without a significant mythos of co-dependency in the face of global ecological crisis, the coming collapse of our civilization is apparent.  

"The culture that is holistic is holistic because its reasoning structure is holistic.  The problem we have with holism is that our reasoning is fragmentary, dissectionist, it removes us from relating things, it structures things in separate compartments in order to "have control". 

 Rafael Montanez Ortiz  7

The Latin origin of the word "religion", religios, means to "link back".  To rejoin with the greater and divine  whole in some way.  In my opinion, many of today's religions, at least in their institutionalized forms, fail in communicating  this ultimate "webbed vision" - in fact, as tribal social control mechanisms with millenia of often mutually contradictory doctrines behind them, they do exactly the opposite.  They separate, create discord and fear, and damn those who do not share their cultural or philosophical constructs.  Religions are essentially concretized mythologies - concretized communal stories.  

           

What stories are so many people and institutions telling about the world we live in, the 21st Century world of global civilization? How do these sacred stories - most of them with their origins in ancient tribal societies existing in a very different kind of world - serve, or fail, the world of today?

Returning to "religios", the "linking back" to what is sacred, patriarchal  Renunciate religions that teach us to renounce the world, the body, and the demands of relationships of every kind, either in service of some abstract "better place" or teachings that degrade earthly life as "impure" or "unreality"..............will not help us.  More importantly, they certainly will not  help  those who must come after us to live in a diminished world.   In traditional theological  systems of patriarchal religions,  divinity is placed "elsewhere", be it the literally conceived  paradise that awaits the faithful,  heaven, or nirvana.  Equally, this renunciation of life can include more elegant abstractions that teach us that  "this is not real" but fail to describe what actually "is real" in a way that is tangible.  Renunciation of a false, dangerous, or corrupt world is a prime theme  to be found in patriarchal religions, religions that have their origins in violent  warrior ideology and warrior  lifestyles.  It might be said, for an example, that the  Old Testament God Yahweh, with all his punishments and rules,  is a classic  example of an authoritarian, merciless, warrior  "sky god".   

And more subtly, the  New Age message that "this experience  is not real" which drives devotees to seek "the real world"  found in  some divine, other-worldly, perfected  abstraction once we are "purified" or "surrender" in order to have one's consciousness raised sufficiently.  Which often must happen  through an authoritarian Guru or spiritual leader, with many of the attendant social abuses.  

To speak of "oneness",  to address creating a cohesive vision of holism that is appropriate to the world we live in today,  mythic systems that include  creative diversity within that "oneness" are needed.   Myths and symbols that can include many gods and goddesses, many voices and languages, and many ways to the truth instead of simply eliminating the competition.  Further, our world myth can no longer be simply a human world myth - it must include many evolutions, many other beings within the intimacy of ecosystems.  If we're to survive into sustainability.   

"We live in a world today in which the problems we face are all planetary" Philip Slater commented in his last book The Chrysalis Effect, “the polarization and chaos we see in the world are the effect of a global cultural metamorphosis".  Slater's view was ultimately hopeful - that we are witnessing the chaos of a new evolution.   That metamorphosis he spoke of, I personally  believe, is based on the realization of inter-dependency with all life.  In his view, this is humanity's childhood's end.  We are called now to the world, each other, and the miracle of life, with a "Webbed Vision". 

As the New Year approaches, I personally would like to call on artists, writers, musicians, storytellers,  and all  other "cultural creatives" to help to make a new mythology for the global tribe.   The writer Ursula Leguin called them "realists of a larger reality".  Among the Navajo (Dine`) infant girls still have a bit of spider web rubbed into their hands so they will "become good weavers".   May we all now rub a bit of spider web into our hands for the work ahead of us ..........and, like Penelope, may we all now see "with a web on our faces".

“Hope now lies in moving beyond our past in order to build together a sustainable future for all the interwoven and interdependent life on our planet, including the human element.  We will have to evolve now into a truly compassionate and tolerant world – because for the first time since the little tribes of humanity’s infancy, everyone’s well being is once again linked with cooperation for survival.  Our circle will have to include the entire world. 

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power 8

                   

1)   Keller, Catherine, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self, 
       1988, Beacon Press

2)    Patterson-Rudolph,  Carol,  On the Trail of Spider Woman, 1997, Ancient City Press.

3)    Loftin, John D., Religion and Hopi Life, 2003,  Indiana University  \
        Press (first published January 1st 1988)

4)   Baring, Anne, "Awakening to the New Story",  2013, from her  website: 
       https://www.annebaring.com/anbar14_comment.htm

5)   Loy, David R., The World is Made of Stories,  2010, Wisdom Publications

6)   Baring, Anne, "Awakening to the New Story",  2013, from her  website: 
       https://www.annebaring.com/anbar14_comment.htm

7)   Slater, Phillip, The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture,  2008, 
       Sussex Academic Press

8)   Ortiz, Rafael Montanez Ph.D., interview with Lauren Raine, unpublished manuscript 
     (1989)

9)  Alstead, Diana and Kramer, Joel, The Guru Papers:  Masks of Authoritarian Power, 
       1993, Frog Books    

Peter, Paul & Mary: Voices of a Generation

"one thing amazing about that time was the optimism we shared.  we were absolutely certain that the old order was fading and the new order was arising. "Then you'd better start sinking or you'll sink like a stone for the times they are a changing."

I will be 77 this summer.  Strange sometimes to realize I've even managed to live this long.  I'm glad, very glad, to have lived when I did.  And of course, being born in New York, my citizenship was American, and, for all the faults, I was glad to be an American, living in that hopeful, innovative time. I was fortunate, true:  I lived in California, where, in 1971 you could attend Berkeley for 150.00 a semester, thanks to Governor Brown Senior, who believed that higher education should be available to all young people.  He also believe the schools needed to be integrated, and he did just that.

We were the largest highly educated generation this nation had ever had; indeed, we were probably the largest educated generation the world had ever seen.  And look at the innovations of all kinds that flooded out of California!  

As an adolescent I learned about the newly formed Peace Corps, and dreamed of joining it.  As a teenager I saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon.  In my 20's I became part of the 2nd Wave of Feminism, and marched, and attended Consciousness Raising groups, and talked of Sisterhood, and saw the first Women's Shelters, and Rape Crisis Centers come to be.  I saw women demanding entry into professions from which they had been banned, and I saw them get credit cards as well.  I also saw the Civil Rights Movement change America,  and later the Gay Rights movement.  I saw the beginning of the Environmental Movement.  I saw Universities open Consciousness Studies departments, and I saw the evolution of the New Age movement as well, with its introduction to metaphysics and world religions.  We talked about, and practiced, Communalism, "living simply so others could simply live", and we became Vegetarians, demanding humane alternatives to factory farming of animals.  We practiced re-cycling, and many of us "went back to the land" to learn about creating communities and growing our own food.  Many of us returned to the cities eventually, but not all.

Yeah,  what an optimistic time, and generation!   Do I need to say how saddened I am by what I see has happened to my country now?   Well, I'm saying it.  Do I believe that even in the face of the corruption and disruption, there is still hope for change?  Yes, I think it's possible.  The country was created as a revolution against TYRANNY - an oppressive empire exploiting the people of its colony, and a mad, tyrannical King.  And ........ here we are again.  A tyrannical Oligarchy with utter disregard for the common good and the people, indeed, even for the planet.  And a mad "king" as their figurehead, corrupt and destructive as they come.  Maybe it has to get this bad before change can happen.

And there's a lot of joy I still feel, when I remember Peter, Paul and Mary.

 https://youtu.be/lZiHXKggD_c?si=0w_LMdoGQ_22ue9V

"For a Dry River"

 FOR A DRY RIVER

You walk out under an old cold moon

to call for vision.

You'd settle, on nights like this, for less.

You beat the drum, 

but there is no heart rhythm

to follow or find. Dry.

All you hear is the litany of your mind,

traffic, a dusty haze obscuring the distance.

Your time is eaten by lists

of little things to do.

 

The sounds of discord ring

where lucid air once whispered

among the stones, voices

voices where once a river ran.

 

Even here, a river, once.

Before too many cattle, too many cars,

too much thankless taking

in this age of blind entitlement.

As if the waters would always flow

to green the waiting desert, monsoon,

Chubasca coming…………

as if the breast would never run dry.

 

As if, as if there none

yet unborn

to hunger and to thirst.

The river is dry.

 

And you hold your hands to the mountain.

You ask, "Whose hands are these?"

Am I not also this land?

One small and moving piece of it? 

Are there any to remember?

 

Where have they gone, the friends of my youth?

Coyote moon celebrant, singing in the canyons,

Saguaro, the Fingers of God

pointing to the stars,

Loba, Puma, Roadrunner;

even Snake and Scorpion,

(who leave all stones best unturned.)

 

Gone to postcards,

kachina dolls made in China.

 

I sing to the ghosts now.

Spirals are written

among the holy rocks

mute remembrance even here

where once a river ran.

 

Lauren Raine  (2002)  

The Charge of the Goddess - for Summer Solstice 2026

Mana Youngbear in "Restoring the Balance"  2004

  

THE CHARGE OF THE GODDESS 

                                                        I who am the beauty of the green Earth 

and the white moon among the stars

and the mysteries of the waters,

I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me

For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.

From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices,

for behold-- all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

Let there be beauty and strength,

power and compassion,

honor and humility,

mirth and reverence within you.

And you who seek to know Me,

know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not,

unless you know the Mystery:

for if that which you seek,

you find not within yourself,

you will never find it without.

For behold, I have been with you from the beginning,

and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

 

 Voice of "The Charge of the Goddess": Olympia Dukakis

'Charge of the Goddess' adapted from Doreen Valiente by Star Hawk and Colleagues 1979 Music Courtesy: Jennifer Berezen 'She Carries Me' Source: http://www.EdgeofWonder.com

https://youtu.be/Fnf3nBPs8_o?si=YdyyB8Tvru6D0rD2