Goldfinch in the creek
water and feathers dance
this quiet nook has found us both
Leaves the color of the heart Sun
alder or elm I do not know
beauty finds me deep within
Ruffles of white
spill like lace over small stones
takes me with it
This tree
that so longs to live
inspires
Sunol Regional Wilderness
I did not know that an alive person's soul could leave. That it could disappear without so much as a puff of smoke while we, innocently, go on living. We go on living in Oblivion, we pick ourselves up from the shag carpet where we have been slammed, we cook dinner, go to work, take vacations. We make babies. We carry these little ones inside us, we push them heartlessly into a world we do not know is forsaken, we mother them from the shell of what is left of us. We do the best we can but the truth is that we were shattered, we were hollowed-out buildings where we waded through heaping piles of toxic sludge just to make it through the day, then we tuck them in with all the tenderness we can muster before we collapse onto the bed. There we lie worrying, long into the dark night we are plagued because also, and this is the thing, we love them so much that it rips us apart, we love them so thoroughly there's nothing to do but live submerged in terror, and later, years later, in regret which morphs to a stunning heart ache that is as severing as when the soul, our soul, my soul, their souls, flee. And later still, we wonder incredulously that we did the best we could might ever act as a balm, a panacea, some kind of magic bullet, when all that can be found is the greatest sorrow, the deepest yearning to have been better, to have been there intact, our hearts and bodies whole, filling the days with joyous singing, with gentle cradling, with the fiercest love, passing on to their beings, and then the beings that come from their beings, all of the sweet, precious, sacred souls, the safety, the solidity, the sanctuary, the love, that we never knew.
I am the goddess Vesta, known to the Greeks as Hestia, and I am truly honored to have this time with you this morning. Very simply, I represent the Center, or better put, the Heart: I am the Heart of the Temple, the Heart of the Hearth, the Heart of the Self. I am a Virgin Goddess, meaning that I am whole-unto-myself, my own person, needing no other person to complete me. I not only tend to the Eternal Flame, I am that; the vital life spark and spirit which burns at the Heart of all that is. I reflect the light of all that is sacred, and so brightly do I burn that the largest asteroid in our sky is named for me. My totem is the circle, symbol of infinity and wholeness. Focus, commitment, devotion, discernment, and sacred sexuality are my divinity.
I am the essence of Being, for I simply Am. There are no statues attesting to my life because how do you create form from the formless? In this, I am the essential and divine feminine, for I love and honor being over doing. I am the least known and visible of all of my sister goddesses for my way of being is foreign to those who now run the world. As with my sisters, my story has been twisted based on fear, misunderstanding, and the pursuit of ownership and power. They have taken my sacred sexuality and made it a sin punishable by death. They have taken my devotion and manipulated and used it for their own gain. But I tell you this, my temple priestesses were among the very last to capitulate to the conquering Roman church. They fear me because they cannot control me. They despise me because they cannot understand me with their minds for I am a felt sense, and I do not need to do in order to be. I find the sacred in the everyday, in the mundane, in the ordinary. I find the holy in each moment. In truth, I am the sacred; I am the holy; I am the moment.
I am your indwelling spirit, your inner-most being, your aliveness; your own sacred, your own holy. Though I am veiled and a mystery, you know me innately and intimately, and I am here with you always. I cannot not be for this is who you are, what gives you life itself. I am not your story, your past, what you believe in, nor am I the labels you wear nor the clothes that cover your precious body. I come before these and am beyond these. For I am that which nothing can touch, the flame that cannot be extinguished, the aliveness that is your birthright; though the world we inhabit does everything in its power to snuff it out of existence.
Finding me again is simple but rarely easy. You may glimpse me in a rare moment of stillness. In the newborn's cry, the bird's wing or song, the wave folding in on itself before returning to its source. You may cry out for me in loss that feels too great to bear, in the river cascading from the near vertical mountainside, its spray sparkling like diamonds in the sun; in your despair and your anguished longings. You will touch me in pleasure, and in the rare experience of bliss. But time and again you will take yourself from me⁓from yourself, really, for we are not separate⁓for the dance of waking to who you truly are, to this warmth, this vitality, this fire, is fraught with rule breaking, with haunting themes of safety, even of survival. Though it is also true that once touched you will not be able ever to completely forget, try as you may, and you do. For the truth is also that nothing that is touched by fire is ever the same again. The paths home are as many and as varied as you. It matters not which you take, it matters only that you do, that you find those moments, for you can exist without me but you cannot truly live. You need me, yes. But I also need you. I need you, your loved ones need you, you need you, the world and all that is needs you.
Sometimes change happens so fast I feel as though I am on an earth suddenly devoid of gravity, a globe that wobbles at her poles where I hang in the rip between worlds like an unhinged door, not quite recognizing or inhabiting myself.
Between the old and the new, past and future, hope and despair, one me and another, the caterpillar not quite yet the butterfly; the newly skinless snake. And Pluto, god of tear-it-all-down transformation crawls into the Ninth House, where the very meaning of life itself sits in wait.
A stone becomes a great white egret. Together we lift off from the clear creek and fly between the canopy of green that line its edges into the great bowl of blue~ free at last. I both watch her and am her; wings beating in tandem; grace in motion. In the primordial ocean I am a drop of water, a wave, the deep dark abyss, the foam like lace etched in the virgin sand. Suddenly a sea cliff appears and on its edge a massive golden eagle. Full circle, yang to the egret's yin. Later, dolphins surface to the heartbeat of the drum, welcome back the prodigal daughter, salt water and bliss massaging the lines on her face, the sagging skin, the wrinkles, sets her silvery hair afloat.
The writer grieves. The lover, the mother, the grandmother grieves. The beloved of nature grieves. The child grieves. The mystic~dare I say it~grieves. The dry creek bed grieves, the tree, the earth, the very soul of the world all grieve.
It turns out it doesn't have to be something. It doesn't need a beginning and an end, not a middle, or a thesis statement. Here, right here, is a start. Get in and then get out, my watercolor teacher counsels. No fiddling, she says in her musical Australian accent, just simple brush strokes pushing water and pigment and then wash the brush and go make tea. A single crack, words gush like water, now close the computer, turn out the light, and hope for sleep.
Goldfinch in the creek water and feathers dance this quiet nook has found us both Leaves the color of the heart Sun alder or elm I do not...
