Just came across this June 2013 piece I’d never shared. Now seems the time to share it, though I don't know why.

Amidst distractions—fears making my thoughts scurry in multiple directions, people attacking in hopes of distracting themselves with turmoil, forms promising to be essence, delusions masquerading as passions—I light a single candle. Simple altar. The Friend adds a stone.

I want the real. So first admit the real within that keeps me from all other real. This frees me to do the following:

I search inside for the simple, the essential, the real. And feel a touch stone: lyric and visual art. 

Lyric and visual art are two of my touch stones, two of my worry stones. A bard and also someone who channels visual symbols, I make the real tangible so that I don't instead get lost in my fear or worried intellect. 

 I close my eyes to discover I'm a mandala. Myself—lyric woven with painting.

Beautiful, authentic, freeing . . . but something even more important is missing, more essential than my essence. I forgot the Goddess.

I make Her the ground of my being, remember that She is the ultimate real. Now the mandala-me is on and woven into rug-Goddess: Peace, reality tangible, simple. Self, cosmos, and Divinity. I can do the Divine's work better now.

As long as I obey Her. Which means, in part, always serving.

To guide accurately as a shaman, I channel poetry. To sell my shamanic services in alignment with the love, ethics, and self-care inherent in each atom, I channel poetry. When I have no listener, I paint. Goddess, help me do all this without forgetting moment-to-moment obedience.