Gathering and Offering

I've been meaning to share this particular work from the MASKS OF THE GODDESS workshop in April at Kripalu - while I always am moved and astounded by the work others do, I found this work especially moving. Ilana has graciously allowed me to share photos of the masks she made, and sent me the poem she wrote in the workshop. I found it so profound......a message intimately hers, but a deeply transformative image for me as well, and others in the group.

Ilana is a well known Midwife and Birth Coach  from New York City.  She is a slight woman with intense eyes, and her hair was gone sparse because she's been undergoing  chemotherapy, which she shared as began our introductory Circle. 

We begin our four day process with a "shamanic journey" to the Underworld, to encounter the Goddess, in whatever form she may care to appear, as we prepared to create our masks for Her. Often I ask participants to see if she gives them a gift of some kind, and almost always something meaningful is presented.

Returning to the "above world", after our trance, Ilana told us she had met a Goddess all in white. She emerged from the darkness to dance before her. Her dance was like a figure 8, the "eternity symbol" - gestures of gathering on one side, and giving forth on the other, a flowing gesture of taking in and giving forth.

It happened that another of the participants was a professional dancer (a ballerina, actually).....in the course of the workshop she gave Ilana a white dress she had brought with her - it was Ilana's size!



One of the masks she made was "scarred", but contained a bright red, open heart.  Above is the white mask she made, a basket on one side, and flowing forms on the other. She decided to put flowers on it after completing the mask. And here is the poem she wrote - I feel privileged to share it.

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8/12/08 Postscript:   I am sad to have to add that Ilana passed away 4 months after this workshop.  But when I think of that, I think the  Goddess who came to her, and the poem she wrote, were all about leading the Way.

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GATHER AND OFFER
Ilana Stein

Gather towards the West
Gather towards the North
Gather towards the South
Gather towards the East
Gather Above, gather below and gather the great Mystery
Gather what you’ve studied
Gather what you’ve learned
Gather how you’ve lived, and gather what you’ve earned.

Gather what you’ve loved and gather what you’ve lost.
Gather what you’ve soiled and gather what it’s cost
Gather what you’ve wasted and gather what you’ve saved
Gather what you’ve shopped for and gather what you’ve tasted

Gather who your friends are and gather how they’ve cared
Gather your relations and gather how you’ve fared
Then Gather birth and celebrate, gather death and cry
Gather hope, regret and longing and gather up the why

Gather up the waiting, gather struggles, gather challenges.
Gather all the goals you’ve met and gather up the bravery
Gather faceless fear and all the broken promises.
Gather yesterday today, and gather time tomorrow

Gather what you’ve ruined and gather when you’ve failed.
Gather up the personal and gather up the frail
Gather up the culture and gather up the myths
Gather all the songs you’ve sung, and all expressive art
Gather dances gather dreams and gather up your heart

Gather in the garden and gather at the beach.
Gather on the mountain and gather what’s in reach
Gather in the workplace, and gather on the roads
Gather in the home you’ve made and gather all you kin
Gather your impatience, your frustration and your greed.
Gather up the words you’ve said and gather what you need.

Gather up your journey and all the time you’ve spent
Gather up your courage and walk inside your tent.
Gather up your secrets and and gather up your wisdom
Gather what you’ve forgotten
Gather what you’ve meant.
Gather faith and Reverence

Gather truth and and gather lies,
Gather secrets great and small
Gather wisdom of the ages and wrap them in your shawl
Gather sickness, Gather health gather tenderness and rage
Gather all your stories and gather on the stage

Gather up your gatherings, and stir the basket’s bounty
Gather all remaining threads and search across the county
Look out among the human beings, look out among relations

Then offer up your gatherings to all nations and creations

Offer to your children and offer to your kin
Offer to the hungry, to the needy and the grim
Offer to the blessed and offer to the prim
Offer to the kings and queens the princess and princesses
Offer to the beggars, paupers, jesters and priestesses

Offer to the little birds the chipmunks and the deer
Offer to the badger, mole, the frogs, and yes the bear
Offer to the green spring shoots, the white and yellow crocus
Offer to the budding trees the bushes and the rushes

Offer to the sand and mud the concrete and the buildings
Offer to the cook and maid the seamstress and the butler
Offer to the farmers - offer to the farm
Offer to the doctors and offer for no harm

Offer to the visionaries offer to the artists
Offer to the frightened, offer to the scared
Offer to the endangered and to the unprepared
Offer to the hurting, offer to be healed,
Offer to your neighbor and offer to the field

Offer grace and offer peace offer possibility
Offer privilege trust and faith
Offer gratitude amazement wonderment and awe
Offer loving kindness, compassion, joy and love

Offer up your story, offer honor and integrity
Offer for community Offer your vulnerability

Offer what you’ve learned and offer what you have
offer what you know
Offer what you’ve shared
Offer both your ears, your shoulders and your tears
Offer all you’ve gathered, offer all your cares

You’ve gathered through the springtime,
the summer and the fall.
And you’ve offered season’s greetings without going to the mall.

Now rest and build your strength up. Cycle with the moon. Cycle through the mystery time. Close your eyes and sleep. Dream the dreams of where you’ve been.
Dream of where you’re going – dream the dream that dreamers dream.

Then gather. 

Leaving and Arriving

Sometimes with the bones
of the black sticks left
when the fire has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

....David Whyte

Yesterday, while waiting in the heat of Tucson's eternal traffic (which becomes more painful now that it's 100 degrees and above and I don't have an air conditioner in my car), I found myself fancifully saying out loud: "Well, why don't you just give me a sign or something? For heaven's sake, I'm one confused cookie here.........".

The truth is, I've felt the need to go somewhere else, and do something else, for a very long time. I've been feeling isolated and stagnant in Tucson for far too long, isolated and unsure of what to do next. Like many people who find themselves at a major crossroads in their lives, I know I have to make a change, and I'm scared. All the "what if's" of a lifetime come to the surface.

Then I drove a bit farther, and my thoughts turned to an email I recently received from Marc Gold, one of my personal "heroes". Marc is the founder of the 100 Friends Project, a small non-profit that benefits many desperately poor people - and Marc travels extensively in pursuit of his work. I was thinking about what an inspiration he is, and the thought crossed my mind - "well, if he can do something like that, why can't I do something in my own small way?"

Suddenly, stalled in heavy traffic, I saw a magnificent monarch butterfly flutter over cars, cross my windshield, and fly across the street to disappear. A sign indeed! And, I might add, be careful what you ask for..........when I got home, I picked up a book of poems I've been studying by David Whyte. The above poem is the page I opened to at random.

I recount this little bit of grace from the Universe..........another story for my "Book of Common Miracles".

Now, to get off of my timid butt, and just begin.

Community Clay at the Creative Spirit Center

I woke up this morning determined to see if I could pack up my old car and just hit the road to points East ASAP. Actually, I would very much like to see Community Clay, at the Creative Spirit Center in Midland, Michigan, where some of my own work is being exhibited as part of the show. Their castings of community members is a continuation and new exploration of the interconnectedness motif begun with my project, sponsored by the Alden Dow Creativity Center, last summer. I'm so grateful they are doing this, and if I can't make the opening, I'm hoping that soon I'll at least be able to see the show, and see again my collaborator from last year Kathy Space, and Sarah Gorman, of the Creative Spirit Center.

I've applied to numerous places for residencies to continue this project, in new permutations, this winter - among them, the Henry Luce Center at Wesley Seminary in Washington, DC, the Irish Museum, and Raumars in Finland. The Irish Museum, I have to admit, I'm crossing my fingers on. I would dearly love a chance to explore this mythological theme with theological students as well. And Finland in January, well, I guess the project would tend to take on a slightly more "internal" motif. Although who knows. Maybe it's time I learn how to ice skate.

I've recently learned about a way to publish very small editions of art books, ie, highly illustrated with color photos. I'm excited - this would give me a chance to publish a limited edition version of MASKS OF THE GODDESS, as well as the Spider Woman Project.

At any rate, travel is what I need now - this will be the year of my "pilgrimage". Who am I now, and where am I headed? It seems strange, as I touch the fringes of the last year of my '50's, to say that I really don't know. I've spent years now wanting, no not just wanting but needing, to do something wholly new. I've been lingering at a crossroads for so long that even my bags are threadbare - time to go.

The Poet David Whyte

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you.
If you can look back with firm eyes
saying "this is where I stand."

I want to know if you know how to melt
into that fierce heat of living
falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live,
day by day,
with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.
I have been told, in that fierce embrace,
even the gods speak of God.
.............from "Fire in the Earth", by David Whyte

Another syncronicity that occured in our Kripalu Workshop was that one of the participants placed an audio cd by contemporary poet DAVID WHYTE on the altar we made.

I had been reading "The Winter of Listening" on the plane that brought me to Massachusetts. I feel moved to share here a few of his poems, because they've been with me over coffee this morning. Yes, especially now, as I sit looking out across the Berkshires, the trees bare still but the sun fragile and brilliant, the vitality of early spring a deep, deep hum within the earth, a rythem pulsing through my feet, an attunement I long to continue for more than this one last day.

David Whyte's poetry has always had a way of bringing me home.

From "The winter of Listening"

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.

Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

. . . . . . . . . .

by David Whyte

Workshop at the Kripalu Institute

Life can make you bitter, life can turn you cold
It seems I've spent most of my own just trying to crack the code
But if I die tomorrow may the last words that I know
Be praises, praises for the world

Some predict the rapture where we all will leave this place
The chosen ones will pack their bags for somewhere out in space
But the holiest words I've ever read or thought or sung or prayed
Were praises, praises for the world

"Praises for the World"by Jennifer Berezon

(www.edgeofwonder.com)"Spiderwoman Spins' in a 1999 performance

Just completed the three day workshop for women I taught at the Kripalu Institute here in the beautiful Berkshires - its second year, and the class this year was twice the size of the previous.

Challenging to organize a "guerrilla art studio" overnight in a hall that was built to practice yoga in, but somehow I always manage, if I don't mind patting myself on the back. Like the previous year, I leave feeling enormous gratitude to the Institute, to those who participated, and the Goddess, whose presence has been felt throughout the experience. Frankly, whenever I do this, I always leave awed by the collective vision that arises.

Speaking of little miracles - all the music I brought was by the Bay Area singer and composer JENNIFER BEREZON, whose “She Carries Me” I have used to open several ritual performance events. Last year I purchased “Returning” for the group, a collective piece that she created in the ancient Temple at Malta. When I arrived on Saturday, I learned that she was here, had been teaching a workshop, and was to give a concert!

It was beautiful, and so good to hear her in person after all these years. And the following day the class met in the room she and her group had just vacated! I was able to buy a dvd of “Praises for the World”, the concert/ritual she organized in Oakland that includes some 50 musicians, dancers, poets, spiritual leaders, and activists for the earth (including Joanna Macy and Alice Walker) It was an extra gift to be able to share it with my class.

I love to teach! I wait for some of the writings, and photos of masks, from the participants.

One of the participants in the workshop is going to Spain this summer, to spend a month walking the Camino. The Camino is the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, a 10th century Romanesque and Gothic cathedral that houses a black madonna, as well as (and most significant to most pilgrims I suppose) the supposed bones of St. James, a Christian martyr of the middle ages.

I'm fascinated with the Black Madonna, myself, and quote Jay Weidner's comments about the Great Dark Mother, and "composting". He writes:

"There was once a vast pilgrimage that took place in Europe. Pilgrims made their way towards the town of Compostella in Spain, where an ancient effigy of the BLACK MADONNA is housed. The word Compostella comes from the same root word as compost. COMPOST is the living, black material that is made from rotting fruits, grains and other organic matter. From this compost -- life and light will emerge. When the pilgrims came to the Cathedral at Compostella they were being 'composted' in a sense. After emergence from the dark confines of the cathedral and the spirit -- they were ready to flower, they were ready to return home with their spirits lightened."

Speaking with the woman who is on her way to this extraordinary adventure, the hair on my arm (actually, both of our arms) rose, and I thought of my own longing to make a pilgrimage. Maybe, I'll walk the Camino! Certainly I've been writing about Pilgrimage, and the "composting" process enough in the past 6 months........how strange, provident, and magical, to meet someone who is doing it literally. Back in November I wrote,

"I think the pace of our lives has taken away the time needed, the cyclical time reflected in all organic systems...........to "compost". To fall apart, re-turn into the dark, re-form, be re-formed by the organic, collective forces we are woven into in the cycles of the planet, and our souls."

Exploring the metaphor, to me, the beautiful idea of the "Camino", the "road to Compostela" embodies the pilgrimage to the Black Madonna, spiritually, perhaps a journey to ward the formless dark of the deep rich earth and the grace of re-birth as I enter my 6th decade.

Doris Lessing & my "Book of Common Miracles"

"Writers are often asked: "How do you write?" But the essential question is:

"Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?"

Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas - inspiration. If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn. When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. "Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?"

Doris Lessing,

Nobel Prize Speech, 2007

My friend Rose says that I should compile a little book about syncronicities. I think, if I did, I would call it the "Book of Common Miracles", or perhaps, "Grace". Because I've often felt there is a Conversation going on that, in a quantum sense, once we notice, becomes continually more animated. In other words, we're often "tapped on the shoulder" by angels, and pre-occupied with our daily concerns, fail to notice little miracles fluttering under our very noses.

Ecologist David Abram commented that perception is:  "a reciprocal phenomenon organized as much by the surrounding world as by oneself" and suggested that a two-way dynamic of intention, or energy exchange, may be going on. In contrast to our idea of a non-living world we simply observe, he went on to say that "the psyche is a property of the ecosystem as a whole", suggesting that we move beyond the notion that "one's mind is nothing other than the body itself".* 

A Conversant World. Or as writer Alice Walker has often said, "the Universe responds."

So the story I would like to tell today concerns one of my 5 favorite writers, a woman whose visionary books, most significantly SHIKASTA, has informed and inspired me since the mid '70's, Doris Lessing. The excerpt above is from her 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature speech, which she received at the age of 88. The visual is her personal note and autograph, found on the back cover of a paperback I found lying on the sidewalk at my feet, a pile of discarded books just a few blocks from where I live in downtown Tucson, Arizona. To me, it's a talisman - infused with energy from the living hand of this prolific and visionary writer, whose long and enduring gift she has never failed.

I've been very depressed this winter, which led me to go into therapy to tell and reveal to myself, some of the stories of my personal life, and hopefully untangle them so I can move through the bardo of transition I've been mired in. I do not like the cynicism and bitterness that post-menopausally "haunts" me.......the Habit of Loving is the discipline from which creativity arises, and without it's hopeful window, the river dries up. I've been blessed to find a wise counselor to listen to me. And in the "unmasking process" (as she puts it) I've often felt like a ghost within the "legend" of my former self.......therapy is rather a painful process! And I've had plenty of doubts as to whether being an artist matters anymore.

So when I found"The Habit of Loving" at my feet while strolling down a residential street near where I live I picked it up with pleasure. To find a personal autograph on the inside (dated 1982) by the author........is pure magic. Personal magic - because if it was by Stephen King, or any of the thousands of authors I don't know or don't care about, it wouldn't mean a thing to me. But this is a talisman, as if, in some wonderful way, a creative spark was passed on to me from someone I tremendously admire. And a reminder to not only respect, but CHERISH the gifts of creativity and expression we're given. It's too easy to forget - they are high privilege.

In her acceptance speech, Lessing remembers her life early life in Africa, in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, as well as her life in England. And she urges us to remember how precious knowledge, and the gifts of literacy, really are.

"We are a jaded lot, we in our world - our threatened world. We are good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some words that have lost their potency.

We have a treasure-house of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come up on it. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how empty we would be.

We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.

Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to fire and ice and the great winds that shaped us and our world.
The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill.

It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

The poor girl (in Zimbabwe) trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is - we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?

I think it is that girl and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.

© The Nobel Foundation 2007

*"The Perceptual Implications of Gaia", David Abram, THE ECOLOGIST (1985)

Kathleen Jenks MYTHING LINKS

I'd like to introduce Kathleen Jenks wonderful Mything Links site, and I'm touched that she chose to open her Spring Equinox page with one of my favorite poems, based upon the Celtic Goddess the Morrigan, bringer of Justice.

http://www.mythinglinks.org/springequinox2000~Sapling.html

True justice has to be circular and gestalt: founded on the empathy that arises from experiencing "both sides now".