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.”
Spring
Spring
what are we leaping towards
what wants to push up from cold ground
what wants to open to the sun
what is it that we need to know
What quiet, steady pulse beats
below the surface
what hope watches from the wings
what light grows broad
upon a patch of ground
Shedding
releasing
changing
renewing
growing
healing
springing
Letting go
leaving behind
casting off
sloughing
opening…
What expectations need we shed? What old thoughts need to leave our minds? What habitual patterns of behavior, relationship, and communication need to change? It is easy for me to be centered when I sit in the woods alone. The challenge is to carry that core into the unrelenting murmur of everyday life. The challenge is to reach for that place of inner stillness, even when it feels as if chaos reigns. Perhaps the challenge is to return to the place that heals my soul every single day even when the to-do list gets longer, the have-tos, the should-dos, the want-tos. Those things can be shut up for a minute and I can step forward onto dry leaves, solid earth, and steady rock. I can rest for a moment in the calm stillness that sings through the woods of my homeplace in harmony with the call of my own heart and the center of my own being.
Spring
cast off 
lay down
renew
release.
Emerge
perhaps cautiously
perhaps tenderly
but pushing forth
into full blossom
Know that stillness
in the midst of swirl
is possible
movement is constant
and so is quiet.
She places her hands on both
and on her own heart…
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