Praises for the World: Jennifer Berezon and Drew Dellinger

 

my religion is rain
my religion is stone
my religion reveals itself to me
in sweaty epiphanies

every leaf, every river,
every animal,
your body

(drew dellinger)

I first heard this poem spoken on  Jennifer Berezon's  2005 DVD PRAISES F"OR THE WORLD,  which I bought after seeing her perform it in 2008 at the Kripalu Institute in Massachusetts, where I was privileged to teach a workshop.  Dellinger read as part of an amazing  ritual performance in Oakland, California that featured  Jennifer Berezon, Drew Delinger, Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem, Joanna Macy, and many others, all within the container of Jennifer's exquisite  devotional song.  At the end, all voices rose to join her in its praise.    

Mr. Dellinger's poem, recited at the performance,  has haunted me ever since, especially after I wore the DVD out by playing it, and Ms. Berezon's music,  over and over again. So here is a link to a UTube video in which he recites it live, and I invite anyone reading this to as well to the music of Jennifer Berezon as well. For my own pleasure, I copy the poem below, and I also have copied the only video I could find on UTube of that extraordinary gathering in Oakland.

hymn to the sacred body of the universe

Drew Dellinger

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

for one instant
to dwell in the presence of the galaxies
for one instant
to live in the truth of the heart
the poet says this entire traveling cosmos is
“the secret One slowly growing a body”

two eagles are mating—
clasping each other’s claws
and turning cartwheels in the sky
grasses are blooming
grandfathers dying
consciousness blinking on and off
all of this is happening at once
all of this, vibrating into existence
out of nothingness

every particle
foaming into existence
transcribing the ineffable

arising and passing away
arising and passing away
23 trillion times per second—
when Buddha saw that,
he smiled

16 million tons of rain are falling every second
on the planet
an ocean
perpetually falling
and every drop
is your body
every motion, every feather, every thought
is your body
time
is your body,
and the infinite
curled inside like
invisible rainbows folded into light

every word of every tongue is love
telling a story to her own ears

let our lives be incense
burning
like a hymn to the sacred
body of the universe
my religion is rain
my religion is stone
my religion reveals itself to me in
sweaty epiphanies

every leaf, every river,
every animal,
your body
every creature trapped in the gears
of corporate nightmares
every species made extinct
was once
your body

10 million people are dreaming
that they’re flying
junipers and violets are blossoming
stars exploding and being born
god
is having
déjà vu
I am one
elaborate
crush
we cry petals
as the void
is singing

you are the dark
that holds the stars
in intimate
distance

that spun the whirling,
whirling,
world
into existence

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

 

All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

A Dog in Dürer’s Etching

 A Dog in Dürer’s Etching
“The Knight, Death and the Devil”

by Marco Denevi (1966), translated by Alberto Manguel

A brilliant, haunting response to the famous etching by Albrecht Durer.  I first heard it read back in 1988, and was pleased to remember it, and to actually find at least one reading on UTube. 

What is so extraordinary about this short story is that it is composed as one long sentence, that runs, like the stream of the writer's mind, as if he himself was riding along in the  procession of the knight and his horse.  And a dog.  As if the thoughts of the observing writer clip clop along, imagining and intersecting with the thoughts of the knight himself, who is  returning weary and changed to what was once his home, his youth, and his dreams from many years of war.  

 "THE KNIGHT (AS WE all know) is back from the war, the  Seven Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the War of the Roses, the War of the Three Henrys, a dynastic or religious war, or a gallant war, in the Palatinate, in the Netherlands, in Bohemia, no matter where, no matter when, all wars are fragments of a single war, all wars make up the nameless war, simply the war, the War, so that although the knight returns from travelling through a fragment of the war, it is as if he had journeyed through all wars and all the war, because all wars, even if they seem different when seen from close to, seen from a distance 

only repeat ....."

 https://youtu.be/RlxcS4G0-W4?si=zoMPGGf4rSnjnOvA

 

To read:  https://www.101bananas.com/library2/dogdurer.html

The Tucson Sculpture Festival March 16 and 17, 2024

 

I will be there!  This year in addition to clay sculpture I decided to bring some masks which also can be presented as sculptures in their own rights.......... Masks are also wearable, and thus endlessly open for collaboration and story!  

                                              

                                                A Mask for the Shattering of Old Paradigms

Green Man

 

Butterfly Woman

 

Monarch

Persephone

                           All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

Persephone - A New Bas Relief

 

Persephone is so much about the Turning of the Year, the Goddess of Equinoxes, the Balance point at which the regeneration of spring begins, and the diminishment and going in to the Dark of winter begins as well.  I think that's where this sculpture arose from, feeling the incipient life beneath the Earth, the stirring of spring.

                           All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

Life Between Life: the Work of Michael Newton

 

Recently I've been re-reading  "Journey of Souls"  by Michael Newton Ph.D.  The book has been around since the 90's, and there are several other books Dr. Newton wrote about his many years of research as well.  Dr. Newton began as a hypnotherapist, and as he recounts, stumbled on a patient who "re-membered", from a transpersonal state, being in the spirit realm, between lives on earth.  

He, and his colleagues  worked with hundreds of people to explore the subject of life between life and to help people understand the "soul purposes" of incarnation.  Although Dr. Newton  passed away in 2016,  his work is carried on by the Michael Newton Institute, which trains practitioners in between life therapy.

I have found his books enormously comforting as well as fascinating.  Over and over his subjects recount leaving their bodies at death to return "home" to their Soul Groups - groups of souls that chose the lives they will incarnate in,   together,  over and over.  It is as if a "soul group" is a kind of collective Soul, encompassing the individualities of its members,  and ever growing and learning together.  For those who are afraid of death, or are suffering the loss of a loved one, I urge you to read this book.  I also offer two interviews with Michael Newton that I found on UTube.   

https://youtu.be/Vk5bSG78pbQ

                           All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

Memoirs 2: Lithographs and Other from the 80's

"Gaia" (1985)

I wanted to finish sharing these "forgotten" Lithogrgaphs from the 80's.  This was the height of New Age.  Extraordinary people like Carolyn Myss Energy Healing, Gloria Orenstein with Ecofeminism, Psychologists such as Stephen Levine and Jack Kornfield bringing Vipassana meditation and Theravada Buddhism into contemporary psychology, Starhawk, M. Macha Nightmare, and their colleagues creating the Pagan religious path for Goddess spirituality and a return to Nature,  Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman bringing Shamanism into the modern world,  Joseph Campbell inspiring everyone with the Power of Myth, Shirley Maclain and Crystals................ so much, such a glorious international opening of spiritual re-discovery and re-invention.  Yes there were excesses, as always will happen, but I am always annoyed at the mindless censorship and cynicism with which people now scoff at "New Age", not realizing how many important ideas practices and institutions arose from the era of openness and re-discovery 

"Day of Radience" (1985)

I love this piece, which spontaneously gave a photo in my studio of the artist Catherine Nash a "halo".  She is a powerful artist whose work is highly spiritual:  I was not surprised then, nor am I now.

"A House of Doors" (1987)

"A House of Doors IV" (1988)

"The Daemon Lover" (1987)

A HOUSE OF DOORS  was the theme for my MFA show in 1987, and I produced a number of paintings and also a Spoken Word poem (in collaboration with Catherine Nash)  inspired by the amazing works of Laurie Anderson.  I am thinking I will make the next post about that particular show.  

"Skin Shedder" (1986)

By 1985 I had discovered the evolving Pagan community and ritual practice,  and also began to learn about the Goddess.  I was inspired reading Starhawk and The Spiral Dance deeply.  When I began to learn about the many, many manifestations of the Divine Feminine throughout the world, it felt like a vast sustenance and truth was entering me, to fill up the emptiness I had often felt in my lack of religion.  Here was, as Gloria Orenstein , one of the founders of EcoFeminism, wrote in her book THE REFLOWERING OF THE GODDESS the return  of the Great Mother to a world desperately in need of Her.  Here was the need for a new Iconography that I, as an artist, could entirely respond to and devote myself to. 

"The Summer Solstice" (1987_

"The Winter Solstice" (1987)

"Herne" 1988)

 

"Skin Shedder Mandala" (1987)

                           All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024

The Woman at the Roots

First came this strange painting, which I finished just before the New Year.  For years now I've been making sculptures that are "rooted", now I attempt to paint them, not so easy for me.  I think this calm face among the rooted earth is winter born, dormant and waiting.  Waiting, and not asleep, rather, awakened.  Waiting for what?  That will be revealed in time, for now, resting, dreaming, sustaining.  

But the Painting desired a poem, and I found the poem I needed  (below) by Sharon Blackie, author of one of my favorite books, IF WOMEN ROSE ROOTED. It's perfect for the advent of a New Year, my own, and as a collective Blessing as well. I excerpt from her poem Peregrina:

Only lend me a loom and I will

take up the threads of this unravelled life.

I will weave a braid from three strands of seaweed

I will wind it three times around my finger

I will dig my salt-encrusted hands into the soil

and wed myself to the thirsty

brown roots of a new beginning.

 

 

              All artwork and text unless otherwise specified is  COPYRIGHT Lauren Raine 2024