Out! (a response to Things To Do In the Belly)

by Iole Damaskinos

Large open longing
Wide
Like the mouth of the whale
Who swallowed me
No matter how Miraculous
It still feels like a cage
“No man could survive being stuck in a whale
anymore than they could survive being held underwater”
Except, this Woman can.
The necessary destruction of cutting open
Are they demons or angels, the spirits wielding knives?
The rearranging of organic matters
That once worked to constitute
A life
“No man could survive being stuck in a whale
anymore than they could survive being held underwater”
So yes,
The rearranging must
As I hold my breath
Curled in a ball
Praying for the demonic angels
To complete their work
Of birthing me
A second crashing
Out of matter into Light
Tipping the scales
Weightily
Because at night
Choosing
Is all there is.

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

By Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1925)

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth–
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

Instructions For A Young Warrior-Priestess (draft)

Summon with fists unto yourself
Hope
Steadiness
Fierce kindness
And clear sight
STAND!
Back towards the fear
Not facing off
Though it may prickle on your neck
And do not turn around!
Waste not with open palm
Your own inheritance
Keep portions of your harvest
For yourself
To open-give
At every turn
Is just another carelessness
Honor your own respose
With time
Like yeast that
Makes dough rise
Like starter bread
Keep some for your self
Learn to keep some
For your self

Traveling Beyond

Somewhere beyond composure
Gladly without
Your eyes glow-beckon
Like sunlight on a still sea

Somewhere beyond composure
At the black edges of light
I wait
For She told me
I should find you
At the meeting point

Somewhere beyond composure
My whale song will sound
Drawing you to me
To the deep.

Creating Sacred Space: Birthing

When I was about to birth my daughter, I asked my son for one of the many rocks he collects and hoards. I wanted something to hold onto during the labour. I told my son, simply, that his rock would help Mama to bring Anastasia. And he, simply, accepted it.

Months later, my son found the rock again, sitting now on the window ledge beside the Mary altar. “Mama, is this the rock that helped you to bring Anastasia?” he asked. Puzzled, I found that I was not sure I recognized it. He handed it to me, and I examined it closely, taking in its details as though I were seeing it for the first time. “I think so…” I replied, hesitatingly, a little taken aback at my own uncertainty. Surely, a rock I had clung to with all my soul while birthing my daughter, should be more familiar to me?!

Later, I understood this lack of recognition as normal. In truth, the “rock” I had clung to, to bring about my daughter was so many things–it was so vast–I couldn’t possibly take in all its details during one event. What I had really clung to, throughout the whole process, from the moment of her conception to her birth, was Goddess. The rock was merely a symbol, a material representation, of all that I unknowingly reached for and held onto with all my might: faith, hope, and love, in alternating doses.

A Judaeo Christian metaphor comes to mind, of God as a fortress or a rock to stand on. These words conjure up for me an image of a person standing defiantly, chest puffed out in a somewhat Napoleonic posture, on a jutting, inhospitable looking rock. I offer here a different image of the divine rock, perhaps a more feminine image. When Goddess comes, bringing destruction in her wake, breaking down our worlds in order to make space in us for something new, there is no standing around, there is no defiance, there is no sense of imminent victory or rescue. When Goddess comes, we feel as though we are in freefall, though we are actually whirling around in Her womb waters. We are safe but we do not feel safe, at times. All we experience is being in the clutches of a tremendous power, like a mouse being carried up high into the sky by a giant bird of prey. And all we can grasp onto is the rock–the relatively tiny rock– of our own faith, hope, and love. At times like this we feel keenly the smallness of our rocks, because we are experiencing them juxtaposed with Goddess’ great all encompassing compassion, passion, and divinity: “The fear of… Goddess…is the beginning…”

Afterwards, slightly dazed and set gently on firm ground once more, not a hair on our heads harmed, we realize we somehow survived an amazing ride, and were enlarged, though we don’t know ourselves exactly how. We realize we really don’t know the landscape of our own, our very own, our most intimate small rocks, of faith, hope, and love.

Perhaps this, at times, is our only and consecrated calling: to travel beyond composure bearing witness to the interior landscape, of our own faith, hope, and love.

Creating Sacred Space: The Mary Altar

Excerpt from One Sure Thing: Creating Sacred Space–DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT

After my divorce, I moved into a tiny attic apartment which I loved. It was surrounded by tall trees and had tons of windows and skylights. When I first moved in the apartment appealed to me because of its light and airy quality and the green hue the leaves on the summer trees cast around.

Gradually the apartment began to work a deeper magic on me. I began to notice the season and the time of the day. In the morning I would wake up to a symphony of birds, rather than the radio station blaring bad news. I began to sit in a sunny corner of the living room and just take in the day, getting up early so I could sit and sip my tea undisturbed. And I would pray. Despite the peace of the morning in these early days my prayers tended most often to be what I would later come to think of as “begging" prayers. I would prostrate myself to the Divine and beg, “Please help me make it though the day” or I would petition piteously for various things to happen, for myself, my family, or my friends, urgently, as though the Divine may or may not be listening. It is not to say that these prayers were wrong; they were heartfelt and necessary at the time. But as time went on I realized that despite being directed towards the Divine, they were arising from a place of disentitlement. They came from a place of feeling small, unprotected, and unloved, in a giant indifferent universe. They came from a place of alienation, from a lack of recognition of my birthrights, as a human, as a woman, and as a child and friend of God/ess.

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Soon after I moved in I found the perfect spot for a small gaudy powder blue and gold statue of Mary that I had bought on a whim while on holiday in Argentina. I placed the statue in the middle of a small window alcove. On either side of it I carefully and symmetrically positioned two tea lights. I began to light them meditatively every evening to the sounds of Krishna Das, blowing them out and meticulously wiping the soot off the glass holders before I went to bed.

As time went on my little altar to Mary began to take on an unexpected and transformative role. It started with my son bringing in various objects he would gather on his two-year old expeditions around the neighborhood: a piece of gravel, a pinecone, a squashed bottle cap, a lost button. I would find these objects lying around the house, and not knowing what to do with them, I started placing them beside my statue of Mary, thinking to myself with an amused smile that they were “like” offerings.

As I would add daily to a steadily growing pile, I began to appreciate that these random objects around my gaudy statue, had an aesthetic appeal all their own. And then one day it struck me: these weren’t “like” offerings, they were in actual fact offerings! Over time they had somehow become so. This miniscule debris or flotsam, was a summary of my little son’s daily activity–as though he were a fisherman, they represented his catch for the day, his daily treasures. And no matter how insignificant or commonplace they looked to me or anyone else, I knew Mary appreciated them. That’s when I began to add my own offerings to the Mary statue; perhaps a bill waiting for a stamp, or a realtor’s card on one day, a rose petal on another day. I stopped trying to wait for something suitably “pretty” to come along, and just offered up anything I had that day; whatever that day had given me, whatever I had been able to harvest. This ritual act somehow enabled me to find moments of peace within myself, a peace that came from bridging the sacred and the mundane.

Each time I offered up a bill to Mary, I would be nudged –just a little– to believe that the bill would get paid on time, that the finances would be fine. As I offered up a realtor’s card, I would feel soothed at the fact that that might be the only thing that particular day had produced; I stopped judging myself for it because I sensed Mary Herself was not judging me. I may not have written a profound poem that day, or gotten around to making crème caramel; I may have handled a power struggle with my child poorly–all the day had aparantly yielded was this measly realtor’s card…but that was really truly OK. The Mother graciously accepted it and kept smiling; She loved me anyway, and tomorrow promised the blessing of a new day, with new opportunities to go harvesting.

What I was cultivating was a deeper faith that every little act of the day is meaningful, though I may not have the eyes to see it. What I was cultivating was a connection with the Holy Mother without and within me–the one who is able to do what women have naturally done for centuries: create sacred spaces out of the seemingly prosaic. And more than that: I was cultivating the recognition that I myself, that my very body, my daily life and struggles are a scared space, though seemingly prosaic. I was developing the “eyes to see and the ears to hear.” I was moving from “begging” prayers to “showing up” prayers; prayers that went simply: “Holy Mother, here I am. I am listening.”

For Tre

I think of you in the mornings
Sister-friend
Because I know you're out there
Wandering the empty hallways like I am
Running your finger
Over the dusty ledge
Counting cherry blossom petals
Offering your naked heartbeat
To the world

What I Need: From Big To Large, In The Sacred NOW

Peace
And to feel Loved
Fruit
A steady amount of work
But not too much
My son to be potty-trained
A cradle
And a safe place
To nurse my baby

Untitled

I want to sit
Like a pebble by the sea
And watch the light of god
Play on you
Watch you take on
An undiluted sheen
And somber darkness
All that lies in between
And all that lies beneath
That I will never fathom