blessed

i am.

we

are. 

the blessed children 

of a mother love so vast

so profound,

 the mind cannot hold it

only the whole being can know it

by melting into it.

i rise this day in the home of one wisdom mother who has entrusted her sanctuary, her animal ally, her whole reality, to my keeping while she journeys in order to nourish the continued presence of all of those things, including me.  the bed is huge, warm and soft, and i think to myself all of the work and wonder that she poured into her reality so that this space could exist, and so that i could come and lay here to heal, to nourish, to appreciate and revel.  rising from this luscious cloud i wrap my body in a robe of black silk across which white birds fly.  then out to the open air, the enormous and brilliant blue sky, the gentle wind blowing across the hills and the sounds of the birds singing songs i've never heard before in the swaying boughs.  bend my knees and my hands rest into the earth, dry, solid and scented beneath me.  i breathe deep, swaying in my own senses, for this is the eminent mother, the skin upon which all kiss and touch rests, the ground from which all love or joy must leap for flight and to which it all returns.  the guide.  the wisdom.  the eternity of grace.  she is she who knows, and i go to her as a servant and a lover, worshiping her subtlety, her awesome brilliance, her ferocity and tenderness.  this morning i learn again of the softness of my feet as i wander the field and flinch, gasping, over goat heads (little tear drop shaped seed pods with two spikes poking from them like horns that will pierce ANYthing) passing the threshold of my skin.  it makes me laugh because she sits there still, her ascending presence that which pushes the thorn into my descending force, an elemental interlude between our relationship of gravity.  elements at play.  

by the nature of her being i learn what it actually means to be womyn, to be wild and free and soft and feral simultaneously.  i learn about presence, i learn about service, i learn about wisdom, intelligence, kinnexion, freedom and bondage.  all things i learn with this earth, and through the communion between her and the sky as it stretches around me.   we have always this opportunity to dive more deeply into the contemplation of creation and delineation as we journey this third dimension , exploring the archetypes that time and experience bring up for us.

what is mother?

what is womyn?

what is the feminine?

it is a difficult knowledge and wisdom to cultivate for ones self, living as we do in a society that has so profoundly cheapened the female that our true nature as incarnate beings is a discovery for us. we are also living in the massive shifting of that energetic, wherein the nature and identity of womyn is just naturally in a state of questioning.  bereft of our initiations, our rites of passage, our circles of ceremony, it is up to us to remember, through a catalyst or through ancestral resonancee, that we have the legacy of all the womyn who have ever passed through this world and the archetype of the divine feminine to rest into, draw strength from, and serve our world through.  and this is not only our heritage to enjoy, it is our responsibility to carry forward through time.  we are, now, in one of the most flexible and dynamic moments in the recorded story of the human experience on earth.  we, as western womyn, are existing in a freedom that has not been experienced by womyn for thousands of years.  even a hundred years ago our grandmothers were beaten and raped for their insistence on the right to vote - they were still wearing incapacitating skirts and collars up to their necks and not being allowed to work outside of the three professions of teacher, nurse, or librarian.  and the miraculous institution of motherhood was still not recognized as valid work in the world (wether or not it is now is a matter for debate, and depends on the parties involved and the setting).  we are living an extremely fresh liberation whose continuance rests on our expanding the field for it's growth.  the mothers that birthed my generation exploded the glass ceiling in the awesome social revolution of the 60's, creating a context for me to be as i am - tattooed, gypsy, independent, outspoken, sexually liberated and actualized, fully IN the world and completely on my terms.  if not for my mother and the women who have done that work, what would my experience be like in this time?  then i travel just barely south of my reality into latin america and i see womyn living a totally different paradigm, and to interact with them is to have both of us gently staring in awe at the other - they see my freedom, and i see either their uncertainty as they shift their status in their cultures, or the fixed trajectory of their experience. 

it's a strange thing, to notice that there is a distinct difference between culture and society (they have culture, we have society working to become culture) - cultures modalities are entrenched, societies modalities are maleable.  we have a society because we are young in our incarnation as a country.  we are the experimental, self-centered, rambunctious teenager of this world, working it all out at everyone else's expense, trying to get our shit figured out before we burn the fucking house down falling asleep with a joint in our hands.  got a good heart, but a frazzled brain and an untried spirit.  and yet, there is beauty in that place of boundlessness, lots of it.  in that awesome experience of creating a country (with all the appropriate amendments about the people who were here before all of us came) womyn had the opportunity to stand up and say "we want something else.  we want freedom.  we want to be who we are.  and that's what we're going to do".  we had the opportunity to fight for ourselves, and since the field wasn't set, the RULES were not set, it wasn't such a huge fight (all things being relative), and we were able to create a space, to create the meme, for ourselves to move out of slavery and subjugation, which is work that continues to this day.  

so i see womyn in these countries where their rolls are entrenched by their culture and while i marvel at the certainty that i see it brings, i recoil at the limitation.  can any of us imagine being an indigenous womon, dressed in the same shirt and skirt as every other womon, making the same kind of art and cooking the same food and creating the same family paradigm and teaching your daughters and sons to hold that line in place ad infinitum?  no travel, no education, no polyamory, no wild dancing all night, no...  whatever.  shorts.  none of what we just live as a matter of course.  no open, bombastic discussion about whatever comes to mind,  probably no choosing your own lover, not choosing your own work, not getting years at a time to explore yourself or opportunities to radically shift course in mid-flight when you decide that dance is more appealing to you than graphic design so you're going to go do that instead and then all the support in your world for that transition.  or whatever!  no piles of books to learn from and wonder over.  no education.  can you imagine?

in these countries i find it interesting as well that the urban reality has created a crucible wherein those rolls are challenged, for the people go from the village to the city to wonder and wander the lanes of possibility, and sometimes they find a way out of that paradigm into what is not certain for them.  they find their way into the body of transition and become the front lines that my mother was in my own country.  and it is an even more radical act because of the nature of culture, and how it holds gender rolls in place.

imagine the life of a womon in the middle east.  covered, silent, owned.  what revolutionaries they are, the creatures who break from that bondage in search of freedom, liberty, passion, life.  imagine the life of a womon in africa.

so let us not forget how miraculous and priviledged we are to be able to exist freely and on our own terms.  how miraculous it is that even though the rest of the world (and parts of this country as well) has different ideas about the place and the way of womyn, the nature of our existence is tolerated because in this society there is a context for us to live this way.  that is an awesome power and an awesome opportunity.  i say that in full acknowledgement of the fact that it should be that way for anyone, regardless of the designation of their bodies, and in full awareness that it has NOT been that way for long - that's what i mean by miraculous.  2 generations ago in this country a womon like me may very well have been dragged into the woods and shot for being a feral, soul-corrupting witch (and even now, in parts of these states, that could happen).  there are not a lot of places in the world where womyn can be who they are and do what they feel. 

how can we best live our freedom so that all of our sistars benefit from it, and it grows exponentially through us for our daughters to live in and for our mothers and grandmothers to celebrate?

let's make that a reality.

don't forget.

don't go back to sleep.

she changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes...

in honor of the potent women in my life, and the ones who have given their everything that i may live my own life.  may everything that i do serve this freedom.