On Grace and Gratitude

I wanted to share  a wonderful reflection on gratitude by film maker Louie Schwartzberg.  He is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose career spans more than three decades.  I found the imagery here inspiring.....it's good to remember, every single day, what a gift the day is. 

 https://youtu.be/gXDMoiEkyuQ

Lammas Blessings to All!

from the Rainbow Bridge Oracle

Celebrating the FIRST HARVEST,  the BREAKING OF THE LOAVES,  contests of strength (such as log rolling, back in the day),  Country Faires,  and the Blessings of the Sun.  

Kali

" Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more". She's the voice of women whose voices aren't being heard, women who need to open their mouths and speak for the first time. It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and start cutting away the delusions that are destroying our world. This is the ferocious mother who says "get away from my children, or I'll kill you." Mothers today aren't saying that. They're giving their children away. Giving them away to war, giving them away by allowing our environment to be depleted, giving permission to the powers that be to destroy their future.  This time of change is the dance of Kali."

KALI

 

Once upon a time,

The world became populated by demons: 

They filled the world with their insatiable greed

and reproduced themselves endlessly

 

They ate the light of day,

They soiled the air

They consumed the trees,

They swallowed the waters

They devoured the lands

 

Eating, eating eating!  Fill me!  Fill me! 

Until there were no more things of beauty made

or new dreams dreamed

or children born. 

 

The Gods  called to Me,

The unborn ones called to Me.

The time had come

to say Enough.

And.....NO MORE!

 I, I am the Goddess of No More! 

I, I am the one who devours

I, I am the shadow, the flame, the dancing feet

 I....I am the Mother

of all those who are yet to come.

 

Jai Ma, Kali Ma!

(1999)  

INTERVIEW WITH A SACRED DANCER:  Drissana Devananda

When the Hindu Gods could not defeat a plague of demons, they called at last upon Kali.

 Severed heads adorn Her necklace, Her skin is black as night, and Her tongue protrudes from Her black face with the bloodlust of battle, and the immense laughter of Kali, destroyer of illusion, who sees beyond all appearances. Kali's dance is the destruction that must occur for each new beginning. Kali's love is tough love; yet the dancing feet and the flaming sword of Kali are among the most powerful expressions of Divine Love.

I wanted to create a performance for Kali. As I drove to the event, I brought a costume, and snake with me, thinking the snake represented the serpentine energy of the kundalini. But I didn't know what to do.

I went on stage, and read a paper, I just let the mundane despair come out. "I can't stand it!" I said, and then I turned my back to the audience, just breathing, and whispered, "When I meditate, sometimes I become a Goddess......." Then I put on the mask. And a hot, hot energy seemed to rip through me. I turned around, and words fell out of my mouth.

As I picked up the snake, I remember saying, "This is the Kundalini, this is the serpent." I spoke about how we channel that enormous energy into sexuality, but we don't understand that it can rise further into our hearts, our vision centers, infusing our entire being. All of this was spontaneous! I genuinely can't say it was I, Drissana, who did it. When I went into the dressing room later, I was shaking. It was as if Kali had left, and I was just this small, exhausted person, who for a moment had been inhabited by that ferocious intelligence.

Kali is the surgeon. She cuts away what has to go. I ask for that quality when I have to cut something out of my life; an addiction, or a relationship that no longer is about growth. And I ask it be done precisely, this cutting away of dis-ease, malignancy, the aspects that no longer serve. Kali was the last resort savior. When the Gods couldn't kill the demonic forces that ravaged the Earth, they called on a woman's wrath.

We all have the ability to call the Goddesses into ourselves. I can do this in my dance, but in everyday life it's more difficult. That's why I thrive on performance, because I can freely let those forces work through me. What I forget is that we can call on them at other times. We've forgotten that the Goddess dwells within us, all the time, and not just when we wear a mask, or are in workshop, or a ritual. We are, in Tantric terms, extensions or emanations of the Gods and Goddesses - we are their material aspects. We're not bodies that are seeking the spirit, we're spirits that are seeking bodily experiences.

Remembering is a devotional practice. In the Hindu tradition, everyone has a deity they focus on as their personal deity. In the West, as we begin to reclaim the Goddess for spiritual practice, we each need to create a relationship with the Goddess form we have chosen, in order to manifest what we need for spiritual and emotional growth, to invoke the help we need. That practice is not just cerebral. We function out of our whole self, our bodies and spirits. The body-mind. That is where we re-member, we communicate with the Goddess within ourselves.

Women need to become angry. Now.   About the women of Afghanistan, the meaningless wars, the destruction of our environment. The demons of insatiable lust are devouring our planet. Those souls who await the future are being denied their birthright. 

Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more". She's the voice of women whose voices aren't being heard, women who need to open their mouths and speak for the first time. It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and start cutting away the delusions that are destroying our world. This is the ferocious mother who says "get away from my children, or I'll kill you." Mothers today aren't saying that. They're giving their children away. Giving them away to war, giving them away by allowing our environment to be depleted, giving permission to the powers that be to destroy their future. 

This time of change is the dance of Kali.

by Drissana Devananda (1999)

 

 

Another Lost Artwork..............

 

A large part of my art work over the years has been lost or destroyed. 

Like many artists, we envision, we create, and then............where does it go?  Where can we show it, talk about it, share it, hang it, who can we give it to?  Where can we store it in the hopes, someday, it can be exhibited?   Often the answer is "no where".  

So the pieces fall apart, they are destroyed, they get  lost.  I have my regrets about so many pieces I did not protect or respect,  as I look back now.  I see there were so many works that I did not appreciate, because there was no one who expressed any appreciation..... now I look at them, and see they were good.  It's taken me so many years to values myself, and the works of my hands.    

So here is another "lost" piece from about 2012,  one of the "weaver" Mandalas I made.  It hung outside and eventually just fell apart.  It was part of my "Spider Woman" ( Spider Woman ) series. As I recall, the  words on the "medallions" represented the words we use to construct, or "weave",  our ideas of what we and the world are.  Beyond words being "woven" into the New Story there are fragments  of symbols, petroglyphs, shards of other times and other languages, somehow also part of the mix, the descending "pentimento" of the words, and lives, of our ancestors. 

What stories, then, are we weaving? How far do the roots go?

 "Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman, Weaving The World Into Being" (2007)

"The Guest House"

I've turned my property, and my house,  into an "Enclave", now for 11 years.  I guess it could be said, economic benefits aside, that I've turned my home into an Art Project, one that continues to evolve.  It's even become a bit of a mini "eco system",  as the gardens have attracted birds, a bee hive, and a few abandoned cats as well, who have become permanent residents.  And I should mention Ambrose the desert turtle as well.

Mostly it's been rented through AIRBNB, although I have also hosted people who came for workshops, friends, students and teachers and nurses and "snow birds",  and soon, if approved, I will host also some Ukrainian refugees.**   I've built 4 tiny houses, created patios and gardens, renovated the old house, and had a lot of fun furnishing everything thanks to Goodwill, the Habistore, and a lot of paint and "elbow grease".  It's been challenging, and I've done my share of complaining, but also very rewarding. Being an empath, I have had to learn to create emotional boundaries.  And being an artist, which is fundamentally an introspective, introverted life, I have grown a great deal by having to learn to deal with many kinds of people.  Sometimes communities, however transient, have coalesced, which pleases me.  Certainly some remarkable friends have been made.  I am grateful, for all of it.  

Rumi is right.

The Guest-House

This being human is a guest-house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you

out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

 

 

** here is one of many FB groups dedicated to helping Ukrainians fleeing the invasion of Ukraine by Putin.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/usa.canada.help.shelter  Any reading this Blog who may wish to be a sponsor/host,  please visit.  

SUMMER SOLSTICE 2022

With gratitude and many good wishes to all on this High Holy Day!

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in and beside a world devoid

of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension—though affected,

certainly, by our actions.

 A world parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, 

wind conversing with rain, 

ocean with rock, stuttering of fire to coal

—then something tethered in us, 

hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we’ve been, 

when we’re caught up again 

into our own sphere 

(where we must return, indeed,

 to evolve our destinies)

—but we have changed, a little.

Denise Levertov

I woke early, on this longest day:

the light rose among

 the green conversation 

of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,

  two grey squirrels 

performing their morning ritual

greeting the only God 

they know, 

the Sun

Lauren Raine

A "Spider Woman" Synchronicity and a Poem

Petroglyph in New Mexico

When I began this Blog I was on the "trail" of  Spider Woman as an artist, and more importantly,  as a spiritual quest.  I began recording synchronicities along the way, and I often  think of them as "Spider Woman's threads".   Because the farther I explored that liminal zone of wondering and wandering, the more synchronicities seemed to occur.  So many that I imagined I was occasionally getting a glimpse of  the bigger pattern.  Sometimes they seemed like touchstones, sometimes like road signs.  Synchronicities are very personal,  and if one pays attention, they can inform, guide, and often confuse on many levels. I believe this is because they exist on many levels or dimensions of being. ** 

So this beautiful Synchronicity.......

I have felt out of touch with my spirituality, out of touch certainly with Spider Woman and the work I used to do.  All the daily demands of our lives, the "temporal density" of contemporary life that leaves one grasping, between items on the laundry list, little crumbs of soul here and there.  I used to have a ritual I did every day that was dedicated to Spider Woman - I would watch the sun rise, and make offerings of my morning coffee to the 4 directions, East, South, West and North.  Then I would pour some coffee in the Center, to symbolize the underlying unity of all things,  the ineffable center of the wheel.  

I remembered that ritual, and remembering, greeted the rising sun with it once again.  Afterwards I reflected rather sadly that I had pehaps  lost contact with the faith, and sense of divine purpose, that I used to have when I was on the trail of Spider Woman.

I support myself with an AIRBNB, tiny houses and rooms.  A guest had just left and I went in to clean.  She had left a poem on the desk - one of those poems  from the ubiquitous "take a poem" piles found at coffee shops in Tucson.  It was perfect.   Here it is:

on the rock overlooking the huddled rock-gorge

on the rock planted on rock for a wall

on the rock rusted with a rosy haze on it

on the rock children scrawl with chalk

         as though that were a way of making it talk

you can see circling about with a crazy velocity

as if the grain of the rock were reassembling

         for some unforeseeable purpose

red specks that are the tiniest spiders

                       if you look real close

                                          --------Cid Corman 

                      

 **I began this Blog in 2007 as I prepared for a summer long Aldon B. Dow Fellowship at Northwood University in Midland, Michigan.  My intention was to pursue my Visions of the Spider Woman, and in particular, I wanted to create a Community Arts Project that engaged others in that Vision of the Great Web.  Spider Woman is an ubiquitous Native American Goddess/Creatrix found throughout the Americas,  in particular, She has profound meaning for me as I learned about Her in the myths of the Pueblo Peoples, and the Navajo (Dine`).  I was very influenced by a book by anthropologist Carol Patterson-Rudolph (1997) called On the Trail of Spider Woman: Petroglyphs, Pictographs, and Myths of the Southwest   

I have also come to believe (no, perhaps sense or "see" is a better way of putting it) that synchronicities are all ultimately related,  they are flashes of the hologram, the weaving.....Spider Woman's Web.  

***And who is Spider Woman to me?  She is a guide and mentor, with a great sense of humor, and a whole lot of patience.  She is also my name for the Divine.

Exhibit of "Spider Woman's Hands" at Midland Art Center 2007

I did complete a Community Arts Project that summer of 2007 called "Hands of Spider Woman" at the Midland Arts Center, and then in 2008 the Project was renewed by artist Kathy Space at the Creative Spirit Center, also in Midland.  And in 2009 I went to Henry Luce Center for Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., where I again continued my "Hands of the Spider Woman" theme with a community Project and sculpture I called "Weavers".

details from "Weavers" at Wesley Theological Seminary 2009

Other manifestations include a number of spoken word performances, a book called "Spider Woman's Hands", and a few other shared "web weavings".  

"Spider Woman" from "Restoring the Balance" 2004