In the old healing practices of many Latinos, we say that wounds are not pointless lacerations. We say that a sacred light emanates from the worst of the wounds... that nations can have wounds; environs can be wounded, that creatures and humans and gifts and ideas can be wounded. |
Since the time I first told my grandmother that e.e. cummings had written: "I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten-thousand stars how not to dance..." my grandmother ever after called him Saint E-E, and said he was just the kind of leader of the soul the world was longing for.
There is no dearth of mystics in our time. There are only fewer eyes filled with the love of beholding them, less talk, less teaching about mystery and mystical matters and outcomes, more blinders so that fewer can easily recognize, straight from the soul, the roar of the wind we call the sensory presence of the Holy Ghost ... the Creative Fire.
Old men carrying wicker baskets lined with purple velvet came rushing toward me as I entered the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Donations for completing the cathedral. I had three dollars, three subway tokens and a button. The old basket-holder returned the button. "Your change Ma'am," he smiled.
What do women truly want? To be truly seen. To stand in the blessings of those who love the God of Love, and not the Sadducean God of Crabbed Views.
Let us pray ....
HYMNS OF GRATITUDE
-- FOR WE ARE PLEASED
BY DANGEROUS WOMEN AND THEIR WISE AND
WILD DAUGHTERS --
The first line of the prayer attributed to St. Francis of the birds and creatures is “Lord, Make me an instrument of Thy Peace.” I stop right at the phrase, “Make me an instrument...” and I wonder, what if, instead of the word “instrument” meaning appliance or tool, it meant literally, Make me into the musical instrument of your choosing?
| El Rio Debajo El Rio: The river beneath the river, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés | |
| Vol. 1, No. 14 June 10, 2008 | Signup for Weekly E-mail |
THE LEAF SCAR
The leaf forms
slowly unfolds
feeding off the sugar it makes,
cooking in the kiln of the sun,
sending this sun-sugar through
the tiny venous system of its body.
The life of the leaf burgeons, lilts,
colors it green, red, yellow, then brown.
...The leaf falls,
leaving a scar on the branch,
etching the wood, so you can see
something has broken away.
End of life? No.
When I was a young mother, I used to make up stories for the children about the Whiny-whelmer. The Whiney-whelmer was always speaking in Whinese, lived on Whiner’s Boulevard, and had graduated with a B.S. in Whinology.
In between stories, I’d explain that whining was a tone of voice, but more so, a dead giveaway that we had been taken over by an idea that was “beneath the dignity of the soul” to believe, a way of thinking that had already decided we would not get/ be granted/ be able to bring about whatever beautiful thing we dreamed, deserved or worked toward.
You know how sometimes we don’t know what to say to people who’ve been terribly hurt, shocked or injured by an ongoing trauma? We don’t want to, in any way, accidentally distress them further. So, we might say nothing, and just hope they know our good intentions, that our prayers are with them.
The trajectory of evil is not particularly creative; it is most often banal and predictable. Evil respects no economic, social or intellectual differences. It can colonize and live well in one who has little or nothing, as well as those who have everything. Being in one profession or another, even in the consecrated ones, is no inoculation against evil. One of the strongest markers that evil is present occurs when the suffering of humanity is completely ignored.... and it was and is within one’s power to make it cease... but the one in charge chooses otherwise.
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