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: October Breathing
This morning I sat
with the black cat on my lap
and breathed the first breaths
of October.
The sky is gray-white and sunless,
filled with crowcall
and the sharp cries of hawk.
If I squint,
I can almost see steam lifting
from a cauldron in the forest
and smell change drifting
through the air.
I am looking at the shards
of the year,
some new-broken,
some re-collected,
some shining with possibility,
and I feel the call,
the urge,
the promise,
to tip them all into that bubbling vat
and see what She will
steep me into next.
We are invited each day
into newness,
into breathing the very breath
of the World Spirit herself.
We are invited into presence,
into the commonplace magic
that keeps the world turning
and our hearts beating.
Here we are in the temple
of the ordinary,
watching the sky.
May we settle into our bones
and feel our pulse in our wrists.
May we accept the invitation
to sit with joy
and create our lives.
Comments
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Monday, 10 October 2022
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Molly,
That poem is magical in its own right, and awesome. Thanks for sharing!