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: Meditation Class
In meditation class this morning,
I got lost behind my eyes,
mind slipping from place to place,
feeling jumpy, agitated,
and alone in the dark.
This is normal, I know.
Don't even try to meditate,
he says,
just sit.
My nose itches,
a classic distraction,
but I decide to lift my hand
to scratch it anyway.
Listening to our bodies
is one of the most radical
and revolutionary acts I know.
Then, even though it is meditation class,
I open my eyes.
I let them drift into the mulberry leaves,
to the gray phoebe skipping
from branch to branch.
I see a light-spangled spiderweb,
the bright rays of the sun,
and the shadow of a vulture’s wings
in flight.
Here, eyes open in meditation class,
I discover I am found.
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