Sunday Sabbath: Rest

Surprise milkweed bloomed and looks gorgeous! (and yes, is almost never without a butterfly atop)

Clear your mind
rest your body
still your chatter
become fluid…

Opening to breeze
birdsong
to the richness
of solitude

the messages
from butterfly wings

shadows making patterns
across rock.

Hold your place
hold steady
and watch the swirling change
around you
unfold
in hopeful majesty
and exuberant life.

Be still
let everything else fall away
let your body melt into rock
held by the arms of the earth
and spin through distant galaxies
with invisible
silent
magical
grace.

I’ve been out of town this weekend and with no opportunities to blog, though the thoughts of things to blog about continue to arise and I have a backlog of both pictures and recordings to get to, “someday.” Rest has been on my mind though as I gave a presentation about Moontime and honoring our menstrual cycles at the conference today, even though I’m actually at the most energetic and productive point in my own cycle. The “rest” poem above arrived as I was preparing for my presentation and packing for this trip, so it feels appropriate to post today.

As I shared during my presentation:

“…Could it be that women who get wild with rage do so because they are deeply deprived of quiet and alone time, in which to recharge and renew themselves?

Isn’t PMS a wise mechanism designed to remind us of the deep need to withdraw from everyday demands to the serenity of our inner wilderness? Wouldn’t it follow, then, that in the absence of quiet, sacred spaces to withdraw to while we bleed — women express their deprivation with wild or raging behaviors?…” –DeAnna L’am via Occupy Menstruation

The essay I finished writing while at Pismo Beach was up on Feminism and Religion earlier in the week. I struggled in the writing of it because I was in a different head space, not to mention literally in a different space, while trying to work on it. I felt distant, distracted, scattered, and unfocused while I was writing it and worried that that was what would come through. Instead, it became a cohesive piece that “flows really well,” according to the editor. Reading it now, it feels like someone else wrote it—I guess I did manage to get into the writing-zone after all, even with my mind being preoccupied with a different place, different subjects and different people…

In the aftermath of giving birth, particularly without medication, many women describe a sense of expansive oneness—with other women, with the earth, with the cycles and rhythms of life. People who become shamans, usually do so after events involving challenge and stress in which the shaman must navigate tough obstacles and confront fears. What is a laboring woman, but the original shaman—a “shemama” as Leslene della Madre would say —as she works through her fears and passes through them, emerging with strength.

[Monica Sjoo describes] the homebirth of her second son was her, “first initiation into the Goddess…even though at that time I didn’t consciously know of Her…”

via Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly Remer | Feminism and Religion.

This week I also put up a post on Pagan Families that was modified from my introductory post on this blog and I’m pleased to welcome new subscribers who found me in this way:

In late December 2012, I decided to begin a year-long spiritual practice of “checking in” every day at the priestess rocks in my woods. I committed to spending at least a few minutes there every day, rain or sleet or shine, with children or without, and whether day or night throughout 2013. I also decided to take a daily picture. My idea was to really, really get to know this space deeply. To notice that which changes and evolves on a daily basis, to see what shares the space with me, to watch and listen and learn from and interact with the same patch of ground every day and see what I learn about it and about myself. I want to really come into a relationship with the land I live on, rather than remain caught up in my head and my ideas and also the sometimes-frantic feeling hum of every day life as a parent and teacher. When I went down to the woods to “listen” to this idea, I spoke a poem that included the word “woodspriestess,” and I thought…hmm. Maybe this is what I’m doing. As I planned, I started this practice on January first and have not yet missed a day, except while traveling (and, then I bring a small rock from the woods with me so that I can still “check in” with them). In March 2013, I decided to do a thirty-day experiment in which I made a daily post/picture about my “woodspriestess” experiences. It was a rich experience in many ways. (The daily practice will continue through 2013, even though I have not continued writing on a daily basis after the March experiment)…

via Small Sacred Places.

This daily time in the woods provides a regular, daily opportunity for me to rest, if only for a few moments, and it is so nourishing and feels vital to my very being. I’m not sure how I was getting along without it before!

At the river on Thursday.

Eyes open
ears open
heart open
mind open
spirit open

to miraculous possibilities
of being…