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: Summer Walks
On our morning walk,
two hawks,
each sweeping low
over the gravel road,
brown wings quiet
as they slide
between the trees.
The wild petunias are in bloom,
as delicate as wet paper,
fluted and purple
in impossible places
and parched brown ground.
We watch the raccoons
and their babies
make their morning rounds,
checking each spot in turn
for where there might be food.
They are both annoying
and impressive
in their persistent ingenuity
and determination.
On our evening walk
I find a small, black feather,
a smooth and shining oval
with a hint of flight left in it.
And, in a bright circle
of setting sunlight
we see a buck standing
in the road,
graceful antlers silhouetted
against the sky.
He slips swiftly away
between the blackberries
and ironweed
and almost as soon as he goes
the patch of sunlight fades away
as if it were only a dream.
There are stories in the land
and poems in the weeds.
There are dreams to uncover
and hopes to birth.
There are visions to hold
and heartsongs to sing.
There are prayers
to live into being.
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