a courageous heart

once upon tonight...

fox slowly found her way to coyote's den...the moonlight gave her easy passage...she brought her beloved a basket of cranberries, acorns and rose hips still holding up even in this chilly winter's start...

fox smiled as she neared coyote's warm home...the little opening had coyote's soft earthy scent lifting up on the cold night air...she stopped and took in a deep breath...this love was still forming its edges and sharpening its aim..her heart was wounded before by a broken arrow's promise...she found it a challenge to let another arrow aim for her heart yet she was a brave one when it came to love...

here fox stood...a gift of food for this odd coyote...this vegetarian moon caller...this dancer of streams and polisher of star stones...spinner of stories...weaver of poetry...

the tender heart of the fox began to feel crowded with all the love she holds for this wise coyote who stumbled across her path a moon ago...

with shy steps she breached the cave opening...walking in to her happiness...leaving fear outside in the cold...

in the cave..day 2

journeyed into the cave this morning...and in the journey i meditated with tibetian monks who chanted in the most deeply moving way...the sounds of which filled the cave and vibrated in my chest...what an amazing place to be in non-ordinary reality...

as i was coming back from the journey my heart didnt sink to be back in my apartment as it has recently...but instead i was reminded of a very happy memory from childhood...

when i was very young i heard a word...it was a word which instantly meant something majickal to me...when i would whisper the word i felt my heart glow...power filled...i can still conjure up the awe my young self felt in saying and knowing the word bioluminescence...

now i still giggle over the excitement of it...i was so fascinated by this occurrence in nature...i saw a field of glow worms as a field of stars and dancing fireflies as otherworldly...i got the gist of the chemical reaction at play to make all of this happen but i felt so excited by the idea of it even existing...on their own accord creatures were lighting themselves up...creatures in caves and under the sea were finding ways to do this as well...

it made me think of the image of christ i saw in a religious tract...his heart shining...and i wondered if all our human hearts glowed...they must i thought...they seem like they should....and so when i was afraid of a nighttime walk or the woods when it got too still or adults fighting...i thought of my heart...how it was glowing...it was making more love i thought...it was helping me...keeping me safe...and i took it even further when some well meaning adult told me i had a guardian angel who would light my path in life when things felt the darkest...well then i thought my heart was where my guardian angel must live or at least travel through...

for an entire summer around my eight or ninth year of this life i was mesmerized and enchanted with bioluminescence...and still when i whisper this word my heart feels as if it is pulsing with light and i am safe and have my path well lit...

~*~

2nd journey back into the cave...realizing this cave dwelling day is about reconnecting me to childhood memories i havent thought of in years...i am so incredibly moved by this...to see in such detail my young self and all "her" goodness...my gosh she was such a good-hearted kid...

one memory which just came up in the cave was from 4th grade...there was this very shy boy who's dad owned a country store...often he brought big boxes of treats to school...packs of gum or suckers or even a big box of candy bars...i remember those times as very uncomfortable for me...all the kids would push and shove and snatch at the treats he held out to them...but i would stay back or sit in my seat...i could never take anything...it felt so uncomfortable...yet even then i couldnt understand why...all i knew was it made me sad for him...but now looking back i see more...i see the kids pushing him as well...fighting over it all...like crazy seagulls fighting over a bit of food...yet each time he held the box out and for a brief moment there was some attention directed towards him...he was the kid who gave out candy treats...and then the kids came to expect it and came to him and he would hold the box out if he had anything...otherwise they would look at him and walk away in disgust it seemed...

i remember his eyes...they were happy as the kids took his offerings...

he always sat alone at lunch...or at the end of the bench and would get bumped off when another kid squeezed in...i was with the popular kids and yet there was one time i felt especially uncomfortable with how my friends treated him...it was around christmas and he brought in big candy cane sticks...but i think the kids didnt like them or thought they were to ordinary too offer up...so they took them and broke them at his feet...they smashed them against the walls...they poked him with them and did fake sword battle with them close to his face...

he ever so slightly flinched...i got up and stood close to him...i think it was my quiet way of saying enough...then i helped him clean it all up and we went to the drinking fountain to wash our hands...i remember wiping my hands dry on my pants and he copied me...

he had soft eyes...brown like the brown of buckeyes...he was small and smelled like old spice...

i sat with him at lunch that day...i remember the noise around us...my friends puzzled looks...santa came through the lunchroom and tossed penny candy at us...the lunch ladies each got a card and some flowers...i remember the boy looking up and smiling as he retrieved a piece of candy which had landed in his soup...i watched as he dried off the wrapped candy on his paper napkin before sticking it in his pocket...he leaned over to me...it was the first words he ever spoke to me, "it must come all the way from the north pole....it must have majickal powers if you eat it"...this was a kid i could relate to...this was a kid i understood more than my friends who snatched at candy and made fun of a little boy with soulful eyes...

for the remainder of the year i got to know him in quiet moments...never taking candy from him...but feeling more comfortable with him than anyone else around me...his name was stevie...he slowly came out of his shell...he grew to be a handsome teenager...we grew apart...after we graduated from high school and i moved away he committed suicide...for some reason i thought it was because a girl broke his heart...but i am not sure...and i dont think i want to know the why of what finally broke him so completely...

today i remember his hands...his little hands clutching a box of goodies...i remember his soft chuckle at some silly string of words he would feed me to get me to smile on a bad day..i think at home he was going through things i was going through as well...and when we started understanding this about each other we grew apart...it was too much to see in each other perhaps...

and today i understand i didnt take the candy because i wasnt like the other kids...i couldnt take it...somehow i knew it was offered out of loneliness and longing...it was the same loneliness and longing i had...to be loved and cared about just as i was...and often wasnt...i think that is why somehow i keep surviving this world and he didnt...because i knew and still know i am good enough...even if it is just good enough for myself...just as i am...and those kids...some of them my best friends...they saw his need for acceptance as a weakness and they rejected him...the most gentle soul among them and they rejected him...i hope somehow he always knew i never rejected him and i always knew he was special...

i am grateful to remember him more today...to remember the tenderness of him and i...the friendship...the trust...i always trusted him to be kind to me...what a good boy he was...

the cave

when i journey and end up in a cave it is always for a great teaching...

 

the cave is the center of everything...the black hole which is in us...and in the earth...and in the universe...

 

in darkness dwells the lessons we hide from ourselves...it is where our creation and re-creation dwells...it is why we are taught to fear the dark by those who are weak and input their weakness into us...our alcoholic father perhaps...or an abused mother afraid of her own power...a crazy mother who put her crazy thoughts in your head...a father who saw his own children as competition for love from his wife?....so many ways you were made afraid of the dark...yet it is the darkness where we begin each great lesson...the lesson is life after all...

 

i embrace the darkness...

 

so often when i feel a great teaching calling me it is into the cave of darkness...where a fire is built and a lesson unfolds from the flapping and twisting flames...from the walls the shadowy figures leap and lunge...the shaman lifts herself from the deepest part of the darkness to come sit with me and guide me to my knowing...

 

last night i dreamed of the cave...it has been edging up in me for days...and now i know it is to be where i will live for many days and nights to come...creating new life from the nothing i have right now...unlearning patterns...as new patterns are formed on the cave walls...

 

at last i see i stayed too long in places i never should have been...where rejection was programmed into the environment of the situation...yet i stayed there as a catalyst or to stir the pot for others to get a chance to see their patterns...i understand this now...yet it was a waste of my time...people are unwilling to change and let go of ego...they are often so full of fear nothing short of a near death experience could shake them free...and often not even that will get them to let go...my mother will never "get it" for example...she dips even lower into her dysfunctions...no strength left in her to lift herself up from her own suffering...

 

all of it has left me empty...tired and undone...i sold my own life short so others might get their true selves aligned...and now i go to my cave and seek alignment for the life i am ready to create...i have given up enough and taken on enough and been attacked and attacked myself enough...now i am in there...in that comforting darkness...unafraid to look...for what is there to be afraid of but what is past...

 

i look and see...i understand and move into new ways which fit me now...this is all...to see into the darkness and watch for signs and listen to my guide...

 

i write out my dreams but here is what i wrote last night...not exactly what happened in the dream...for there was too much...this is what i wrote instead...

 

i dwell in the hidden realm of hollow boned earth...the cave...a place to sit or pass through...for travellers who move from time to no time and back again...prayers echo here...answering back to the sender like rolling thunder...what you give out is what is given back...sorrow matching sorrow...praise amplified as well...you build a fire to push back the darkness just enough to see the truth in it...and in the fire are the answers to unspoken questions...images leap up from flames and dance on the cave walls...messages from spirit...

 

this is what i wrote late last night...as the wind howled outside this cold new winter season night...as i wrapped myself up in a cocoon of blankets...

 

i realize i am in the cave today as well and will be for many days and nights to come...creating art...answering the darkness with courage and solitude...loving myself through it all...listening to my shaman guide as she shows me parts of my own dark cave i push away from but know i must face...and i am relieved...i know when i emerge i will be full of more knowing...understanding more...and stronger...i wont walk into places of dysfunction again...i will allow myself to be around those who are kind and good instead....

 

my old patterns are falling away even as i enter the cave...for to know is the first moment of deconstructing old useless patterns...

 

to know...to find the root cause...to let go of it...to see myself as i go to reach for old behaviors again...stop them...to get in the habit of healthier behaviors...this is how it is done...it may feel uncomfortable and even miserable at first...but if i get beyond those first bits of discomfort then i get to the easier path...

 

for now i am in this directionless place...it is not depression or sorrow...simply transition...for so much has fallen away or rotted to pieces...the hope of a loving relationship...any form of family...a belonging to something...it is all gone...the last embers of it passing away in the deep darkness of this cave...and yet there is in this emptiness a new form ready to be created...another me...one i will recognize...i didnt know this other one...she always felt foreign to me...willing to be punished and harmed to receive little bits of love and acceptance...it never felt like me even as i was experiencing the hurt...and soon i hope to understand in the darkness of this cave of creation...where are the roots of this and then i will remove it all and be re-created...

 

so i give myself these cave dwelling times...in this cave of creation...by the fire of my own hopes...as winters icy fingers strum along the window glass...as sirens snatch at the air...as cars rev and roar along the roads...as street lights stand like cyclopes in the primal nights...all of it blurs as the cave takes me in...i am the eager student once again...ready to understand...ready to learn more...

 

the happy seagull

 

another sunny day...feeling the cold in my bones but it is good to challenge your body with a walk in nature when cold comes calling upon us...ice beginning to form along the shoreline...i am eager to use this ice for art but not yet...the time will come soon enough...so i play with rocks and watch the seagulls sail along on water and sky...if i could be a seagull today i would...i love the way they glide along and the way they drop quahogs from the sky onto the rocks...smacking the shells open for the edible treasures inside...

~*~

 

sitting in the car now...warming up...i just let myself shapeshift and play with the seagulls...i was free of the cold...i was in the moment...fly...snatch up food from the water...feast...repeat...sit on a rock...wait............fly....glide...snatch up a quahog...hover...drop my prize...feast...give up half for the brown gull pushing its way in...back to the rock...i see a wave lift...small fish schooling...here comes more food...

 

and so it is...this day unfolding...finding my footing in this winter season after a year of searching for something which was in me all along...the light of my own sacredness...

 

i kept myself from the light...and i understand why...but i dont now...it is me...the real me...not this invented self pieced together from the hurt my mother and father gave me to carry early on in life...or the heavy judgement of others at times or the burdens i placed on myself from the weight of fear and self punishment...this is all done with...the light of the unseen took it all away...i am like the seagull today...finding my feast...gliding along the current of hours...i am the happy seagull...warmed by my full heart... 

 

still still morning

i love this swan...it lives alone now on a pond of ducks and the occasional visiting canadian geese...it came as my guide this morning in a journey...it is my solitude guide...to help me navigate my solitude...what a perfect and peaceful guide to stay with me...i feel blessed to have her always with me...

 

 

 

~~*~~

 

in this still still morning...as the sun shines wildly in a cloudless sky...as the cold hugs the land...and ice shimmers on the surface of calm waters...in the strong company of the trees...i let in all of nature's healing presence...

 

i have meditated with clear light flowing through me this morning...i have prayed with loving intent...i have journeyed for guidance...i am experiencing this beginning of winter season with my new heart growing in the place where an old one gave out under the crush of disappointment and sorrow...

 

this new heart being formed is full of simple yet great love...it isnt cradled in a nest of hurt and rejection...it is held in divine light...it is created with such loving kindness from all the good which ever was, which is and ever will be...it is created by the grace of the unseen...

 

what a year...what a year of breaking and breaking and breaking until i sat under a tree today and cried it all out of me...all the homophobia and unkindness of the year...all the rejection and hurt...all the ways i set myself up for suffering...all the ways others attempted to transfer their dysfunctions onto me...

 

i was tested so intensely in so many different ways this year...to the brink of giving up on life itself...yet the spark of my own spirit would not stop shining through...the grace of which kept me going and finally filled me with hope once more...not a hope in something wonderful to happen...not even to be protected from suffering...but i have a hope which is simple and pure...a hope born of love...self love and love from the great unseen...with all my flaws and missteps i am still loved from the place of spirit...just as i am...i am enough as i am...

 

what a simple but perfect thing to know...even as my body fails and i am in an odd place of no clear direction in life...even as the winter begins in uncertainty...i still can smile and be happy today...

 

in this delicate weave of hours...in this beautiful landscape of me...with all my imperfections i feel loved...and this is enough...it is the one thing i trust in life...

 

this love has taught me of late how to see with my new eyes as well...i now see actions as truth and not the false words i trusted before...it is the wisdom which comes after great spiritual harm...i am grateful for this outcome...

 

i trust the great unseen which flows through everything including me and you...i trust it to guide me to do right...i trust it to hold me away from darkness...i trust it to be there at my end to bring me to my spirit home...i trust this beautiful purity to keep me in this simple hum of time as my new heart grows and strengthens...flowering with love as i meditate for more and more peace for the world...as i love myself through challenges...as i let love in...expanding and never living with a closed heart...

 

i hope this for everyone...to have peace in your mind and love in your heart...in your new heart...and to see with new eyes...past the miserable suffering left by those twisting away from spirit...i hope for you to see with eyes filled with the beauty of nature and the light of others who shine their love upon you in sacredness and respect...

 

in this season of peace many of us felt a deep wounding by the sufferings of others in places like conn., syria or in our own private losses...i hope we all keep peace in our hearts and stay hopeful...if we all keep to the bright path of love the darkness has so little space to grow...those in darkness will be pulled to the light they so desperately hunger for yet reject from their own loss of faith...i will have faith for them and i hope for you...let us amplify love so all may feel it...even when we struggle to feel it ourselves...keep reaching...keep holding on...keep being love...keep lighting the world...

 

 

dohiyi

the things you forget until you remember again...

 

came across this picture tonight

cut me to the bone tonight

leaping back in memories tonight

dohiyi...peace...tonight...

she must have looked the word up

tried to impress me with the message

written on her arm...dohiyi...peace

 

and i chant it to myself

as the hours crawl by

the pain in my belly exploding

dohiyi...peace...

dohiyi...peace...

 

and i will keep her in my head

a laugh...a smile...her sorrow

the cancer...the treatments...the surgery

 

the hard to swallow days...

the hair falling out as i combed it for her

tucking some in my pocket so she wouldnt see

 

the meals i made she couldnt eat

the walks we took to her favorite trees

a pair of hawks cirlcing the pond

 

the tears she hid from me

the tears i hid from her

the words we didnt say

never the word goodbye

 

and here i am

and she is everywhere

in the highest redwoods

the tallest mountain's peak

 

she missed out on climbing mount everest

or spot a moose posing on foggy maine morning

time was running out like fast hands on a clock face

 

but the word on her arm

stands out for me

to read and smile and give thanks

for the breath in my lungs

for my eyes to see the stars

for my hearts drumming

 

dohiyi...peace

dohiyi...peace

dohiyi

 

 

heart to heart....

last night i was so very ill i felt as if the pain was exploding like fireworks inside my body...as if i were a dark place of pain illuminated by shooting streaks of light...i let myself see the light of this pain...let myself travel to the origins of the pain...what was setting those explosions off...i journeyed deep...

and in this place a stranger stood...cloaked and unknown to me...i stood there and asked "are you my guide?"...but i knew the answer before it spoke...no...

i cant say this was even a person or entity or being...it seemed formless and yet fully itself...it was not an enemy or a friend...it was not me and yet it was...i believe it is the part of me which meets up with my own sorrow...and creates the actions i dictate...this creature in my journey...a witless servant of me...is simply the form of my suffering...

so my suffering took a form so i could dialogue with it...

the pain in my body is now manifested from years of self punishment and denial of my own worth...i pay the price for it now...it is here and may need medical attention...though i hope i can calm it and bring it back from that outcome...but i have to heal the last difficult parts...