offered as thoughts for the day – these are some of the things I got from my boat trip/journaling.  I am in love with this poem which is one of a few  (mostly articles) in the book:  Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism, and Awakening, ed by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson:

The Angels

by Judith Roche

 

The Angels

are not like the Saints.

They do not discriminate

but come to everyone.

Their eyes burn green fire

but their kisses are icy.

They can play rough when we get caught

in the heavy crosswinds that swirl about their wings.

They are not above artifice

and sometimes appear in disguise:

a mask of smeared lipstick, gypsy

bangles, or an old man’s coat.

Now and again they carelessly give us gifts:

an unexpected hobbyhorse, a day’s free babysitting,

a poke in the eye with a stick,

or sudden slant of light on water.

And we are grateful, once we figure out how

to move within their state of complex blessings.

They work within great wheels and circles,

turning light to dark and back again.

They do not obey the laws of gravity

but laugh a lot and arise at will

to hover like vast hummingbirds

when we require attention.

What they want of us is the mysterious secret

we unravel and reweave 

down to dark and back again.

******

from my journal:  I'm sharing this because it's a new concept for me, but I find, as I work more on it, that it matches a writing I started and never finished while at Goddard (almost 10 years ago I graduated – time flies!).  The quote that started this off is from The Feminine Face of God:  The Unfolding of The Sacred in Women, Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins…this is one of my thesis books, and it came to me by way of all my best books, Gay Gay, my longest friend.

page 72:  "We enter our sacred garden through a variety of gates."

my notes:

This "feels" inward – but what if the gates are moving outward and it isn't gates but imaginary walls that we are tumbling down, not to "enter" because we are already there – but to see where we actually are?

If we exist inside the soul (an idea from Anam Cara:  A Book of Celtic Wisdom  – again from Gay Gay), instead of the soul "inside" the body, then"opening to ourselves" has a whole new connotation.  The visual (which is the way I think since I'm an artist) truely becomes of the rosebud opening into the flower; but don't stop there.  Open the flower fully – the petals fall away and the seed emerges – the "what next" – the possibility of being a full rose bush instead of a single bud.  But of course not all seeds make it to regeneration, much less a full blown bush.

Does the flower know of the bush?  Does the caterpillar know of the butterfly?  How do we negotiate the spaces between what we know and what is possible?  How do we purposefully move into the unknowing?

Name it Wylde and give yourself permission to be there.

***

some other interesting quotes, same book:

"If we have learned to trust the inner self when it sings, can we trust it when the singing goes flat or stops all together?  What is it that we trust anyway?"

"We want to know whether we're going through a 'dark night of the soul' or a depression.  If it's "a dark night,' we'll try to get through it.  If not, we want Elavil." [gotta love the humor].

 

What I take from this is that humor, and questions are good things when wandering thru the Wylde.  I may be the only person in the world who hasn't quite figured this out yet, but it was a great "aha" moment for me, so I thought I'd share.