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.”
Summer's Surrender
Tiny flowers of summer 
Waving colorful flags
of the season’s surrender
against a backdrop of dry leaves
Lifting tender, hopeful
tenacious faces
parched but promising
a last hurrah
a final fling
a tiny majesty
Spots of glorious color
on dry ground
Proof of life’s own love affair with itself.
Speaking of love affairs, I had one with the tiny flowers of spring and I had another with the tiny flowers of summer. It is like a religious experience to me to discover the ever-changing tableau of what Nature has planted for us all season long. I love that these tiny flowers bloom whether I notice them or not. I love that they grow without me watering them or tending them. I love how they emerge in unlikely, unsuspecting places, such as the floor of the greenhouse or between cracks in stone or from piles of gravel. I love that they’re here, doing their own tiny thing, even as the leaves begin to fall from the trees and the winds shift towards autumn. They’re going to keep being beautiful, dang it, as long as they can. I don’t know the proper names for many of them and I also know that several of them turn into nuisance things like burs, but I see them anyway. I’ve noticed and paid attention and this visual experience is my sweet reward.
The final roses of October, while not wild, also make my heart pound with gratitude.
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Adapted from a prior post.
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