poems

Woodspriestess: Change

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Molly

Little sculpture made by my six-year-old (“Cutest Goddess in the World,” he titled it) and a rue anemone)

Change
bright, clear,
clean, hot
messy, wild,
wonderful, scary
change

the wheel of life
keeps turning
the thread of our heartbeats
keeps weaving
the tapestry of creation
keeps unfurling
the heart of the planet
keeps praying
strength
grace
indwelling joy

hope on our lips
a song in our hearts
a prayer in our hands

the hum of blood in our veins
the only rapture we need…

Another goddess hiding in the rocks!

Memorial tree getting closer and closer to a full flower!

Categories: blessings, nature, poems, prayers, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Tiny Flowers

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Molly

Little world
springing up
right before my eyes

Gracious
mysterious
present
observed or not

Carrying out
a small, colorful
glorious function
in the tapestry of life.

Tiny flowers know
that hope blooms eternal
pushing the way
through cracked stone
reclaiming
repopulating
rebirthing the Earth

What is a seed
but a miracle
right in front of me

What am I
but a miracle
to be seeing this right now…

(4/9/13)

I am in love with the tiny flowers of springtime. Every year there is such a thrill of discovery and a sense of tiny, basic miracles when I see the new surprising that the land has to offer. They’re often so small as to be overlooked unless you’re paying attention. I love that they’re already there. I don’t have to plant or water them or worry about them, I just get to see them. There is such diversity in the types that bloom and it seems like each month has a new gift to offer and something new to discover. At my parents’ house and at my own, I love watching the spontaneous unfolding of new colors in the field and grasslands, unimpressed with whether they have human observers or not, just doing their tiny flower thing.

: I like seeing the small, “original” version of later domesicated and “improved” upon flowers.

: My favorite!

: See how tiny, but how marvelous?

: I spied these tiny, tiny, tiny blue flowers as I left my parents’ house today. I haven’t noticed these at my own house…yet…

: The first springtime heralds!

Categories: nature, poems, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Nourishment

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Molly

I seek nourishment

Physical and emotional

Womb-deep hunger

Relentless
Hot, fiery breath

Feeding me

(4/8/2013)

Categories: poems, prayers, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 5 Comments

Woodspriestess: Grandmother

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Molly

She trails pink fingers across the sky
scoops up her stories
and offers them with smiles

She plans lunch and words
and a graceful exit
She has been an example
of living
the stardust of generations
has been knitted by her cells

She who has traveled far
She who has loved in her own way
She who has left her mark
on people, places, and things

She holds herself close now
feeling small and tired

Life’s sunset.

Quilted in bright colors
Sinking over hills of gold
and long dry valleys.

(3/31/13)

Several days ago I went to the woods at sunset, finally observing this time of day from my woodspace. As I began to speak into my little recorder, I was talking about the sunset, but somehow, it turned into a poem about my grandmother. As I’ve alluded to before, my grandmother is very sick. It has struck the family as a sudden surprise. To me, she has always seemed invincible. Small and mighty. Strong and determined. I’ve always been proud of her. If there is anything I learned from her, it is to do stuff. Don’t wait or wonder or wish, try it out anyway. She is a world traveler, my grandma. Traveling to new destinations including shortly after her recent diagnosis. When ziplining in Peru a few years ago, her children questioned her:

“I thought you weren’t supposed to do something like that with a medical condition?”

“What?” she replied, “I don’t have a medical condition.”

“What about your pacemaker?” they said

“Oh that, that’s no big deal. I just didn’t mention it to them.”

My mom is sad and consumed with this impending loss. I am peppered with distraction and overwhelmed with the swirl of life, home, work, and children, but beneath the surface of every day, I hear the ticking clock and I sense the poignancy of time. Life decisions seem more potent and urgent now. Approaching endings always seem to bring new perspective. My husband wants to quit his job after spending eight years doing the same thing and becoming less and less enriched by the experience. We have fears about leaping into something unknown, but we also know that it is more scary not to try…

Categories: family, nature, poems, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Sabbath Prayer

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Molly

Prayer
sweet wind carry it
stone hold it
earth receive it.

Root it
in my flesh
where the fire of my spirit
may ignite it.

Hopeful
graceful
patient
purposeful

Prayer.
Of love
of service
of indwelling joy.

(4/1/2013)

This weekend I went out-of-town for a faculty conference and so I missed making a woodsvisit for the first time this year! Unavoidable, but it still felt disappointing to have to let go of my record. I have several other overnight engagements coming up during the year, so this is the first of several woods absences. I collected some items for a little travel altar and on Thursday I took it to the woods with me to kind of set up a “link.”

My Statement of Faith sculpture is made from a rock from the woods, so in a sense I brought the woods/rocks with me and then “visited” them in the hotel room on Friday morning before heading out to my conference 🙂

I have more I’d like to say, but I’m really overwhelmed with work to catch up on and I just can’t spend the time on writing right now. So, I offer what I have to offer. May I recognize that I’m enough.

Categories: nature, poems, prayers, sabbath, sculpture, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Nature’s Blessings

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Molly

Blessed by wind
and blessed by rain
blessed by love
and blessed by pain.

Blessed by tree
and blessed by land
open heart
and open hand.

Hopeful spirit
drawing near
Goddess presence
is felt here.

Open up
open wide
rest with courage
peace inside.

Breathe in deep
feel heart beat
blessed stone
beneath feet.

Listen, watch
learn and more
today, tomorrow,
from the core.

Blessings of the earth
and soul
Nature’s blessings
keep us whole.

I’m not usually a rhyming type (at least in the woods. I have a tendency to annoy my kids by singing a little ditty at home that includes the phrase, “and it was rhyming time!”), but sometimes things surprise me and rhymes emerge after all! I’ve been missing my daily writing practice a lot. I hadn’t realized in full what it had added to my daily woodspractice. I’m writing more about this for my post for tomorrow. Today, I’m taking a day off from class work and I’m doing the other things that I want to do. I read to my kids, I played with my toddler, I packed for a trip, and got dinner started. I planned a gazillion blog post ideas. I made a baked sweet potato for my lunch. I haven’t checked in with my classes once and I think that is okay. Surely I deserve a day off from classwork, right?!

I also walked my labyrinth…

Visited my baby’s memorial tree:

Noticed the tulips’ progress:

And, I’ve been working on a little travel altar to take on my trip. (no picture yet)

Categories: blessings, chants, nature, poems, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: Stoneflower

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Molly

Like flower growing from rock
the world is full of tiny, perfect mysteries.
Secrets of heart and soul and landscape
guarded tenderly
taking root in hard crevices
stretching forth
in impossible silence.

Sleeping
resting
waiting
watching
knowing
that all one needs
is a crack in stone
and a seed of possibility…

On Friday evening, when I went for an unexpected walk through the woods with my husband and daughter, we discovered something that delighted and thrilled me and seemed like a perfect symbol of what I’ve learned from my time in the woods this March. It was rock with a small, perfect flower growing out of it. Difficult to take a picture of there in the leaves, I was so stunned by its beauty that I could hardly leave it…

The rock also had this cool swirly pattern that looked like a galaxy or universe, but in the picture looks more like a face!

Over the last 31 days, I entered this woodspace in many different ways. Angry, disappointed, sad, joyful, satisfied, tired, hopeful, prayerful, celebratory, creative, grieving. And, I left each day with a sense of inner peace and stillness, of quieted mind, restful body, and connected soul, if only for a few moments. While I’ve been maintaining my daily practice since January, what I’ve learned from the last 31 days of this blogging-every-day-project—the commitment I made to write each day about the changing tapestry of the woods each and every day of March—is deeper and broader than when I was going to the woods without the accountability of writing. While at times I’ve felt like I needed a break from feeling “forced” to write and laughed at myself over the self-imposed to-dos I too often layer upon myself, I’ve learned a lot. During this month I’ve learned that it is okay to be spiky, that it is okay to have a lot to write about and not a lot to write about. I’ve learned to do it anyway. I have learned about the value of this woodspriestess time as a spiritual practice. I’ve learned to move it forward in my day, to spend longer at it, and to make it a top priority. I have learned to pay attention and that I can always see something new. I have challenged myself to always see something new, to learn something new. I have learned that lessons come from sometimes the most surprising and unwelcome of experiences. I have noticed what shares the earth with me, the things that fly, the things that crawl, the things that walk. I’ve bonded with the trees. I’ve recalled that rocks sit around developing powers and wisdom. I’ve composed words I’ve gone on to use more publicly and in ritual.

I’ve realized that the spoken poetry of the forest is its own gift, its own language, its own way of exploring the world around me and that sitting on a rock with a recorder instead of at a computer or with a notebook, unlocks something creative in me in a unique way. I have meditated on the crone, the maiden, and the mother. I have asked questions about hopelessness and despair. I have listened. I have received answers. I have discovered questions. I have come to a more full understanding of my own place in the tapestry of life. I have had clarity and much as everything changes, I have yet to leave the woods with less clarity than that with which I entered. I’ve discovered ways in which my children can come with me and I’ve discovered ways in which children scatter my attention. I have blessed many sculptures. I have prayed for strength, safety, and guidance. I’ve asked for blessings on my work, tasks, and rituals. I have been ragged and I have danced. I have been forlorn. I have been buoyant and exuberant. And, I have watched it all. I have seen winter drift towards spring and then back towards winter and then back towards spring again. I have planned. I have actively witnessed and engaged in that invisible web of incarnation; consciously touched my thread in Her weaving. I have listened to my breath, felt my pulse, watched my thoughts, and gazed at the sky. I have held space. I have held hopefulness. I have held children. I have created art. I have been moved to tears. I have laughed. In this microcosm of the planet, I have touched eternity. I have tasted truth. I’ve discovered a means of touching my soul. I’ve cultivated an authentic and rich spiritual home and identity. I have been sheltered. I have listened and been listened to. I have heard and been heard. I have seen and been seen. I have known and been known. I have been witnessed into being and I have witnessed so carefully. I am a woodspriestess.

Thank you for the many blessings of this time and space. Thank you for witnessing me, thank you for hearing me, thank you for seeing me, thank you for helping me.

“As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.” ~ Alice Walker

“This little patch of earth and this little pile of stones; I can wash the dust off my face and skin, but this earth is in my bones” – Ralph McTell

“…A big rock is a good place to sit and worship, looking out at the world. That feeling you feel, when you see the woods, the ocean, a flower, is the first-fruits offering of worship. The natural world, not the [human]-made world, provides us the right proportions, the right perspective. By naming that for your children, you claim worship as a common human experience…” –Gina Bria (The Art of Family: Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality, p. 73)

“The essence of the spiritual path lies only in the beauty of the ordinariness, in the mundane, and in the freedom of separation between the spiritual and the ordinary.” –Dr. Thynn Thynn

As I was speak-writing the above, I was suddenly jolted by seeing my dog chewing on one of my precious sculptures. I must have left her behind after taking pictures one day and not noticed. Luckily, she’s still okay!

I also paid special attention to the maple that grows there out of the priestess rocks, thinking of how it too was once a tiny seed that eventually split rock, strongly and intimately entwined with its landscape.

And, connecting multiple experiences, today we found the tiniest and most delicate of small green plants growing in one of the drain pipes in our not-yet-fully-set-up aquaponics greenhouse.

Felt like a sign that things will definitely grow here, whether we try or not!

Tender green shoot in unlikely place
Tenacious tapestry of life
This weaving unfolding before my eyes
This is my religion.

Categories: nature, poems, quotes, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 7 Comments

Woodspriestess: Spring

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Molly

Spring
what are we leaping towards
what wants to push up from cold ground
what wants to open to the sun
what is it that we need to know

What quiet, steady pulse beats
below the surface
what hope watches from the wings
what light grows broad
upon a patch of ground

Shedding
releasing
changing
renewing
growing
healing
springing

Letting go
leaving behind
casting off
sloughing
opening…

What expectations need we shed? What old thoughts need to leave our minds? What habitual patterns of behavior, relationship, and communication need to change? It is easy to be centered when you sit in the woods alone. The challenge is to carry that core into the unrelenting murmur of everyday life. The challenge is to reach for that place of inner stillness, even when it feels as if chaos reigns. Perhaps the challenge is to return to the place that heals my soul every single day even when the to-do list gets longer, the have-tos, the should-dos, the want-tos. Those things can be shut up for a minute and I can step forward onto dry leaves, solid earth, and steady rock. I can rest for a moment in the calm stillness that sings through these woods in harmony with the call of my own heart and the center of my own being. Find it here, find it now. Know that the potential is always within me and the place remains for me to return and return and return….

Spring
cast off
lay down
renew
release.

Emerge
perhaps cautiously
perhaps tenderly
but pushing forth
into full blossom

Know that stillness
in the midst of swirl
is possible
movement is constant
and so is quiet

She places her hands on both
and on her own heart…

Today began as another crappy day in what has been a string of crappy days. I awoke with a headache…again…the last time I remember NOT having a headache was in January. Lots of phone calls, lots of things not working out right, kids out of sorts, etc., etc. In the late afternoon, my kids went to visit my parents (who were having their own crappy day, so bless them for still helping me out!). After spending a half an hour on the phone, again, making a doctor’s appointment for my daughter as a prelude to her oral surgery appointment next month, I lit out for the woods. When I came back, I made tea. And, I decided that rather than immediately jump into preparing for my classes that begin next week, that I would take 15 minutes to listen to a shamanic journeying track. My best tips about “successful” journeying are to first look for a hole of some kind and actively go into it and that actively starting the journey off is okay. I used to think I shouldn’t try to “make” anything happen, just wait and see what happens, but then I read that journeying is 80% spontaneous and 20% created and that is okay. People will say, “how do I know if I’m really just making the whole thing up?” The answer is, so what if you are? It still means something. It is fascinating to watch my own brain work though once it gets going and to see how hard it becomes to continue to actively “control” the journey once it finds its own direction.

I went into a hole in a tree and ended up walking down a tree-lined road. In the past, I’ve always descended into caves, it is usually night, and it is in the woods with a bonfire and people dancing/drumming. This time, regardless of how I tried to pull my brain back to the familiar dark cave, start to the journey, I was on a road, headed to a city instead. It was a bright, sunny day and in a Central Park type area of bright green grass surrounded by a white city skyline, a woman is dancing with a tambourine. There is a white tent-like temple structure with a big gold ball on top and red carpet spilling out onto the green grass. I try to make the tent red like a Red Tent, but it stays white. I go into the temple and am greeted by a priestess who tells me it is okay to rest and that I am taken care of. She moves her hood back and she is me. I lie down and other women come in and massage my back and feet. I then saw—ack for the Whovians among us—a stone angel and she started crying. I think I dozed off for a minute then and when I woke up, the drums were done and my headache was also gone…

On Facebook today the following caught my eye:

This is how we DARE to have a grassroots movement. Come on women. Let’s raise these temples up. 30 states and 6 countries! If there is not one near you, it is waiting for you to start it! Let’s work together.

What is at risk for you to be the creative, alive force of love that you were born to be? What holds you back? What every day lies coerce you not to fly high and even stay lowly in a place that betrays everything your soul is beckoning you to be? This is the moment. This is the life. This is the breath. No one can take the action you are waiting and waiting and waiting to take but you, even when others have told you “yes you can” and “no you cannot.” You decide. A thousand years from now will anyone remember you? Likely not even in a hundred. So why not? Be the daring unrecorded history that mattered because you lived. (emphasis mine)

—ALisa Starkweather Red Tent Temple Movement

—

This is my 100th blog post on this blog! (I’m pushing 800 on my other blog) Last night when I published the 99th post, I noticed I also had 99 comments (and it was 11:59 on the 19th. And, I have 91 followers [not very impressive, but this is still a new blog. And, I appreciate every one of them!]). So, it would feel fun to get my 100th comment on my 100th post…who wants the honor? 🙂

Categories: nature, poems, retreat, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: She is Crone

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Molly

Crone
Wise woman
Sage woman
Grandmother

Her cloak of many colors
Is woven from the threads
Of a million stories
Part of the fiber of her being

Her righteous anger is carried
In the soles of her feet
No longer apologetic
She walks with purpose

Like water upon rock
Time has made its mark
Left its patterns on her body
Carved her away
To her most essential self

Around her waist she gathers
Her girdle of power
She holds her wise blood
Her cells imprinted
With the memories and potential
Of a thousand generations
Children have written upon her body
And she carries it well

These breasts have fed
The world
These shoulders have borne
Heavy burdens
These hips have cradled infants
Have carried children
And danced with friends and lovers

She who changes
She cannot be pinned down
Her multicolored cloak
Shifts its pattern in the breeze
Carrying the voices
And the wisdom of the years

She wraps her cloak of stories around her
Scoops up dreams with wide arms
Tilts her face to the sky
Whispers a blessing on the wind

She picks up her staff of memory
She sings the song of experience
And she takes another step
In the river of time…

I hoped to have more time to write tonight and to expand my thoughts on the Crone. I’ve been wanting to make a new sculpture ever since a reader posted and asked if I’ve ever made a Crone sculpture for someone going back to school. I’m also on the Crone lesson in my Triple Goddess class at OSC, a class that encourages explorations of the triple goddess archetypes through creative expression rather than more academic discourse (the academic discourse came in the Introduction to Thealogy class—the hardest class I’ve had so far!). Late last night after I had such a sucky day, I picked up a rock off the bookshelf and went to toss it outside because it didn’t belong there. It had been colored on by children and had a little face on it and scales. As I held it though and realized it could be stood on edge, I found one remaining scrap of clay in my almost empty box and I made my Crone. Her cloak is supposed to be a bit like butterfly wings, thinking of the menopause metamorphosis described in Women’s Rites of Passage. I purposely left the child-drawn monster face on the bottom exposed, because, she has been written upon by children, was the first line to come to mind when I saw that. And, it makes me smile, because it is like her little secret.

As I worked on her I kept singing…

Old and strong

She goes on and on and on…

Then, tonight I got some bad news about my own grandmother and it made me think that perhaps I’d actually been writing and sculpting for her without knowing it yet.

And, finally, in the not-too-understood augurs from the woods, I found these stones lined up just like this went I went down to the woods to take photos of my Crone. Kind of a Triple Goddess right there, right?!

Categories: art, nature, poems, readings, sculpture, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Woodspriestess: Permission

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Molly

Release
let go
open
flow

be present
be still
be centered

retreat
withdraw
pull back
draw in
turn away
fold up
close

cocoon
center

become quiet
become still

Rest in the sensation
that soaring on this breath
is enough.

Today was a long day and a hard day. I had to let go of things I’d expected to have time to do. I had to release expectations. And, I had to accept information that I didn’t want. I went to the woods twice today, the first time before taking my toddler to the dentist and the second after we returned. I had a powerful sense that I just wanted permission. Permission to not do anything else today.

Heartbreak of tooth decay sculpture from fall of last year–mama covers head, not wanting to know and yet holding both baby and the extracted teeth. At her heart is a jewel, because she acts with deep love.

no obligations

rest
just rest
lay on the couch with a book
read
think
imagine

permission to quit for a minute
permission to stop
permission to get off the spinning wheel
permission to say no thanks
permission to say no
permission to say I changed my mind
permission to say I don’t want to
permission not to finish
permission not to do
permission to take a break

draw in
quiet down
listen deep
fold up

My little sculpture helper!

right now is a time to be still
to rest and self-nurture
to snuggle with cuddly babies
sniff heads
lay on a husband’s shoulder
be needy
be nurtured
and receive

draw in
draw closed
retreat
recollect
call your spirit back
and emerge once more
with strength

On the first woods visit in an effort to distract myself from the later appointment, I took some new sculptures down to the rocks to photograph and bless before shipping.

Cesarean and VBAC mamas.

On my second visit to the woods I watched two hawks flying. They swung back and forth through the sky for a period of time and then flew away.

Permission not to write any more tonight.

Permission granted!

Categories: family, nature, poems, prayers, retreat, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Sacrificial

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Molly

Sacrificial stone.
What do I wish to lie down
to cast off
to let go of
to be done with

What in my own life needs to be
pruned away
cut back
restructured
reshaped

This beautiful place in the woods
that holds me so deeply
that I love so well
could also kill me
these trees
tall and supple
can fall and crush
these rocks
firm, supportive and unyielding
can crack a skull
the air
blowing and caressing
can become tornadic
the sun
bright and beautiful
can scorch and obliterate

So many sacrifices
so much growth
so much change

It is never the same here
never boring
never stop paying attention
and the trees make patterns on blue sky
with thin, fingers of branches

Sacrificial stone.
What is left
when everything I don’t need
is cut away

It is beautifully warm today and I went down to the woods with an eye toward spotting signs of spring. I carried a book with me, imagining that I might lie out there for a while and read, but I set the book aside. It isn’t really a place for reading. It is place for paying attention. There is a rock that is particularly good for lying on and so I laid on my back and looked up at the skies and trees. While I like doing that, it always makes me think sacrificial stone and then I feel a little weird and “laid out.” So, today I ran with that phrase instead of hopping away to something else.

I also noticed high up in one of the trees, there appears to be growth or buds of some kind, almost like tiny flowers, and there were a lot of insects hovering around it. I though it was a sycamore tree because of the color and the bark, but squinting up at those high up, far away flowers, I think it is really a maple tree. There are a lot of very small maples in the woods, so it would be consistent. This year I plan to pay better attention to what kind of trees there are in this little grove.

On the small tulip poplar right before I enter the woods, I paused to take a photo of its scarred trunk. The first year we planted it strong winds split it down the middle. My husband taped it together with black electric tape, which I did not think would work, and yet it totally knitted back together and is totally fine. We are stronger in our broken places.

And, it finally feels like time to share my very best, favorite quote about rocks:

Rocks are very slow and have sat around from the beginning, developing powers…Rocks can show you what you are going to become. They show you lost and forgotten things.

–Agnes Whistling Elk to Lynn Andrews (quoted in Carol Christ’s essay in Reweaving the World, pg. 69)

In the same essay, Carol Christ then goes on to explain:

The Great Spirit of the Native Americans is linked to the spirits of all beings, including rocks… Susan Griffin writes, ‘Behind naming, beneath words, is something else. An existence named, unnamed, and unnameable.’ There is a human tendency to name this unnameable with personal language, to believe that it cares as we care. I imagine, but I do not know, that the universe has an intelligence, a Great Spirit, that it cares as we care. I imagine that all that is cares. Sometimes I feel that I hear the universe weeping or laughing, speaking to me. But I do not know. What I do know is that whether the universe has a center of consciousness or not, the sight of a field of flowers in the color purple, the rainbow, must be enough to stop us from destroying all that is and wants to be.

: Dog on the rocks

: Took a picture over my shoulder and behind behind my head

: Tiny sage vallantly coming up!

: Tree with little buds attracting insects.

: Rosebush needing pruning.

: More trees!

: Shadow self

: Scarred and sturdy

Categories: nature, poems, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Surrender?

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Molly

What a sweet, snuggly face.

Surrender…
open up
open wide
surrender
let go…

Is this just another word for
quitting
for giving up?
or is it the type of
intensely powerful surrender
that is required to give birth?
a surrender that is so mighty
and so potent
it is experienced only rarely

That surrender
is that which I can draw
strength from
that surrender
is the pinnacle of my own power
my own magnificence
my own embodied potency
of being
it is that surrender
that motherhood requires

and I have proven
I am up for the challenge.

This morning I struggled a lot with what my kids needed from me and with the other projects I was trying to finish. My boys had planned a party and overnight with a couple of friends for today and I knew when I got up that the clock was ticking in terms of me having any quiet time to work and think. I kept becoming blocked and frustrated and questions and needs were thick in the air. I was trying to pack up orders and bake brownies and do laundry and finish a DVD review and I hadn’t taken a shower yet, and, and, and… As I walked down to the woods carrying my youngest child with me, a word floated through my head…surrender. Part of me thought “oh, yeah! Good idea!” the other part of me thought, “that is just a sneaky way of saying, be a quitter.” So, that’s the concept I reflected on in the woods today. I took a couple more pictures and thought it was somehow appropriate that once in that space with a child, it is that child who dominates my “field of vision” so to speak. That is basically what kids do to your life!

What I recognized was that I needed to stop…just for a while…and focus on what those around me needed from the day. When I try to “do it all” anyway, I get frustrated and discouraged. If I can have the presence of mind to release for a while, we’re all happier. Part of what was hard for me was anticipating the expenditure of energy I knew today would require from me, having people in the house all day and the chaos and the mess. So, I snuggled with my baby and said…

Gathering strength
for the day

open hands
soft eyes
soft shoulders
smooth face
open hands
open heart
open home

I breathe deep
and let go

preparing to give
to be outward directed today
to put other work on hold
to enjoy my friends
to celebrate my children
to laugh with my company

knowing
that the deep, still
inner place
of rest and rejuvenation
with be there for renewal
when I need it.

I already wrote about this temporary surrender several years ago, so it isn’t a new insight, but it was a good one to revisit. I also spotted another forked stick “augur.” The rock has a nice spot of druzy quartz on it. It was cold today, but nice and sunny. Later when we walked in the evening, the moon was a bright, clear sliver and you could see the shadowy rest of the moon resting in its curve.

Categories: family, nature, poems, prayers, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Molly

The world needs you.
Sing your strengths
dance your passions
smile your successes
hug yourself with compassion
for your painful moments
take a second to drink it up
and to rest in powerful certainty
that you are enough

Breathe out
breathe in
soft shoulders
soft belly
strong legs
strong woman

A mother who is seen
who is heard
who is appreciated
who is valued.

In and out
Mama, you’re amazing

(3/8/2013)

Today, on International Women’s Day, when I went down to the woods I spoke (wrote?!) a Prayer for Mothers that I then published on my other blog. After a pause, I added the above words as well.

My children have a “thing” about losing their shoes. Every time we leave the house, it feels like mass chaos of shoe locating, even though we have a specific place where shoes are supposed to be kept. Recently, after scouring the house for ages, giving up, and finally digging out some different, older shoes for my toddler, we then eventually located her shoes in the cupboard with the bread machine. This week, one of those same favorite blue shoes went missing and we haven’t been able to find it anywhere, so she’s been wearing her pink shoes instead. Today, when I stepped out to go down to the woods, the missing shoe was waiting for me at the bottom of the deck stairs.

When I’d headed out to the woods today I’d been thinking, again, about the balance between mothering and “personing” and how difficult it feels a lot of the time to meet everyone in the house’s needs. I persist in thinking it is possible to actually live our family affirmation: our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs. However, last night and this morning it felt like anything but! So, finding the shoe seemed like a little message. I’d brought out a pendant that my husband made for me using several items of meaning to me. I think of it as one of my priestess necklaces. The moon goddess pendant in the middle is one of a set of matching pendants that I gave to my mom and my friend when we went to the Gaea Goddess Gathering together last fall (I’ve bought some more of them recently to give to the other members of our circle so eventually we can all have matching necklaces). While at the GGG, a lot of issues came up for me about family harmony and I bought matching stone “doughnut” pendants from one of the vendors for my husband, kids, and myself. We wear them during our family full moon rituals each month. My friend and my mom each gave me one of the stone points during a “mother” ceremony at the GGG and during that time I felt very acknowledged and “seen” by my friend in the priestess role I’m growing into with our women’s circle. So, today, it felt like an integrative experience to take a picture of the shoe and pendant together.

Then, when I went to pick my kids back up from my dad’s house, we couldn’t find my daughter’s pink shoes anywhere and had to come home without them!

—

For past International Women’s Day thoughts about birth activism and feminism see this post.

Categories: blessings, family, friends, poems, prayers, priestess, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Spiky

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Molly

Spiky
flawed
imperfect
crabby
anxious
scattered
distracted

isn’t noticing this
Zen too?

overbooked
overdone
overdrawn
stretched thin
taut
tight
tense
snappy

I don’t go to the woods to write poetry. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know anything about poems. I’ve never actually written a poem and yet, here I am with all these poem-like posts, and a proportion of this blog’s followers seem to have become so for the “poetics” in my title, rather than for the Goddess (the “Thea” in theapoetics). I go to the woods for stillness. For quiet. To listen. While I end up speaking when I’m there, it is more like I’m receiving than anything. I think of it almost as a “channeled” poetry, or spontaneous poems that come to my mind and out of my mouth without conscious direction or effort. I record what I say on my iPhone and later I transcribe the recording and a “poem” is the result. I don’t do this with anything else or anywhere else, just there in the woods. Theapoetical experiences? Or, a quietness of being and mind that allows my own inner wisdom to surface or my subconscious mind to speak? Or is it hearing myself think? Hearing myself into speech? Usually, what comes to me in these experiences isn’t crabby or stressed, even if I just felt that way a minute before, because it is in that space that I find silence and peace and in that state of bodymind, I’m not stressed or crabby any longer. However, I do persist in this misconception that to be Zen is to be calm and if I’m not calm, I’ve blown my Zen for the day. Today I was reminded that the Zen is in the noticing. That’s all.

Today, I noticed my own spikiness…

At some level, I feel like I always have to be “nice” and never get angry. Since I’m human, I fail in this self-expectation multiple times every day. I feel hypocritical to be blogging about spiritual topics and musing about peace on earth, while also being snappy at my kids and family, feeling overcommitted and stretched thin and needing to say NO to expectations and shoulds. What right do I have to call myself a priestess, when I can barely juggle my life, family, energies, and others’ expectations? In the woods today I also said:

It feels hypocritical to call myself a priestess, to come commune in the cold winds of this hillside, but that is life too. It wouldn’t be real if I didn’t sometimes yell and what matters is that I’m willing to keep trying and trying and trying. I’m willing for tomorrow to be a better day. I’m willing to take risks and start things, even though I feel like a failure, I’m willing to offer the service I have to give, even though I’m not perfect.

Earlier in the year when I began my daily practice, I ended up down in the woods with one of my kids’ action figures that I’d brought home from my parents’ house in my coat pocket (I went down to the woods before going back in the house so he went along). It is a Signs of the Zodiac warrior, Cancer the Crab, and his plastic body has a lot of sharp spikes on it. I decided he would be my photo for the day, because that is real life too. It isn’t all Goddess sculptures in the sunshine, sometimes there are warrior crabs around. And, sometimes I, too, feel spiky and crabby, just like this dude:

When I took the pic I thought: he looks like I feel.

It takes a lot for me to keep posting when I people I know in real life are reading what I write, because there is a fear in me that they probably notice that which I also criticize in myself—“hey, what does she mean a peaceful home, I just heard her yell at her kids?!” There is a vulnerability and a courage, of sorts, in continuing to write anyway. And, it is strange really to feel more comfortable with strangers reading than people I actually know.

When I came inside today before leaving to teach, my friend and my mom were at my house and they said, “oh, were you out doing that woods thing?” and I kind of cringed to myself at that. But, in an interesting moment of synchronicity, my mom also said, “do you have wet hair?! It’s so cold out you will have frozen spikes.”

Yep, I’m spiky. And, guess what…

The woods are spiky too
Nature isn’t always nice
She has sharp teeth

The swirl of life’s energies
carries some decided unpleasantness
and very sharp edges

rocks are hard
ice is slippery
wind creates tornadoes
fire destroys

Mother Nature has an edge
a sharp, strong bite
is it really any wonder
that sometimes I bite too.

“The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life.”

-Starhawk

Categories: family, nature, poems, priestess, spirituality, theapoetics, women, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Behold

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Molly

Behold this circle of women
it is blessed
behold this joy
it is blessed
behold these messages of peace
understanding
and empowerment
it is blessed
behold this circle
behold the women
behold the power
it is blessed.

May these sculptures take flight. May they draw up the power of this sacred space. May they draw upon the energy of these woods and these stones. May they soak it up and may they carry it with them to their new homes. May they carry the message of love and intention with which they were birthed. May they carry that message into other waiting women’s hands. May they speak clearly, truly, and deeply to those who need to hear from them.

Behold this circle
it is blessed