Goddess Centered Practice
In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as "theapoetics"—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.”
Poem: Autumn Change
The mulberries are now bare
while the oaks are still cloaked
in shades of yellow, orange, 
and brown,
maples and dogwoods
still clad in scraps of red.
Puffs of woodsmoke
catch the morning light
and hang like mist
in the cedars,
my breath too,
a fine cloud
trailing away into the trees.
There is something in the air
that speaks of satisfaction,
of change,
of cycles complete and renewing.
There is an invitation
to pause and witness
and to mindfully choose
next steps and new directions.
Our lives can hold
what we want them to hold.
Be present,
stay open,
attend to what is.
Be in the world,
in your life.
Return to center
again and again.
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