Last Night as I Lay Sleeping and the Black Madonna

I am sorry to be a week late with this blog post, but we have just returned from a Florida spring break with six (count them, six) 18yo boys, two 15yo girls, my friend Judi and me....what were we thinking???  We had a lovely time, but I would not say it was exactly relaxing....until the boys returned for lacrosse practice and the husbands came down.  Then, we could put up our feet and feel the sunshine.

While in Florida,  I re-read The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.  I did this because while I was in Mexico, we had begun to talk about the Black Madonna (or Our Lady of Chains, the Virgin of Guadalupe and many other names).  The image of a dark-skinned Mary who stands for all of us who are enchained is an age old story.  I am no expert here, but the images are everywhere, and her lore is deep all over the world.  I love the imagery in the book.  Here, the Black Madonna is a masthead taken from an old ship that sits in the beekeeper sisters' house.  Worshipers touch her painted heart, and her story is that she was chained and moved to other locations, but always escaped her chains and ended up back where she was being worshiped.  In the book, she is coated with honey to worship her, and then washed reverently.  I am really drawn to this figure of the divine feminine; she is described as both fierce and infinitely compassionate. As Clarissa Picola Estes said, she was strong; "she had calluses on her hands." She cannot unchain us, but she can provide us love and safety as we begin our own processes of removing our chains, whatever they are.  Love it , and I am in the market for a fabulous masthead, if anyone knows where such a thing might be found!  Enjoy these few poems that touch on this topic.

Last Night As I Lay Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a spring breaking out in my heart.

 I said, "Along what secret aqueduct are you coming to me

Oh water, water of a new life that I have never drunk."

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a beehive here in my heart.

And the golden bees were making white combs

and sweet honey from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was a fiery sun here in my heart.

It was fiery because it gave warmth as if from a hearth

And it was sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvelous illusion

that there was God here in my heart.

God, is my soul asleep?

Have those beehives who labor by night stopped, and

the water wheel of thought, is it dry?

The cup's empty, wheeling out carrying only shadows?

No! My soul is not asleep! My soul is not asleep!

It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches, its clear eyes open,

far off things, and listens, and listens

at the shores of the great silence.

It listens at the shores of the great silence. ~

 Antonio Machado ~(translations by Robert Bly)

Mary as Dark Godess

I am the first and the last.

 I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter.

I am she whose wedding is great,

And I have not taken a husband. . .

I am shameless;

I am ashamed. . . .

I am godless, And I am one whose God is great

Thunder, Perfect Mind

Gnostic Poem

Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(I have only included the last few lines, as it is quite long)

  Guadalupe is a girl gang leader in heaven.
I know for a fact that she is Pachuca
and wears the sign of la Loca on her hand,
drives a four on the floor with a bonnet
and blue dot tail lights.
And, I pray to her, mio Dio, Dio mio,
because she is the strongest woman I know.

a  

aand finally,

For Elizabeth Bishop

BY SANDRA MCPHERSON

The child I left your class to have

Later had a habit of sleeping

With her arms around a globe

She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.

I always felt she could possess it,

The pink countries and the mauve

And the ocean which got to keep its blue.

Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,

Which you had never had to do, you took

A bare-walled room, alone, its northern

Windowscapes as gray as walls.

To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna.

I thought you must have skipped summer that year,

Southern winter, southern spring, then north

For winter over again. Still, it pleased you

To take credit for introducing us,

And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook

Of partners dancing, and a ring

With a secret whistle. —All are

Broken now like her globe, but she remembers

Them as I recall the black madonna

Facing you across the room so that

In a way you had the dark fertile life

You were always giving gifts to.

Your smaller admirer off to school,

I take the globe and roll it away: where

On it now is someone like you?

Ordinary things like throwing a ball or looking at clouds (David Baker)

Today is cool and wet and gray here...such an ordinary Cleveland March day.  I've been struggling with a nasty cold all week, and I am faced today with so many ordinary tasks, like weeks worth of teenagers' laundry, both rotting food and nothing to eat, TVs that have somehow not been fixed since I discovered their problems, the rug upon which the dog did things she shouldn't have is still a mess, I haven't mailed a few things, there are so many bills--you get the picture.  This is an ordinary woe on an ordinary, bleak day; I am feeling a bit bleak about the whole scenario.  Now the good news, of course, is that there is nothing awful happening.  Kids are in Columbus at a State hockey championship, the dog is no longer ill, the sick relative is much improved, my mother is embracing life at 86, and I still have that Mexico blue water in my mind.  Maybe ordinary isn't so bad, but I do wonder during March why we live here (Ok, I wonder this same thing during December, January, and February too).  So how about a few really interesting poems about ordinary things.  I really like this guy, David Baker.  I stumbled on him from Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry series.  he teaches English at Denison (ok, why didn't my son go there??) and he is the poetry editor of the Kenyon Review.  See what you think.


Old Man Throwing a Ball 

He is tight at first, stiff, stands there atilt

tossing the green fluff tennis ball down

the side alley, but soon he’s limber,

he’s letting it fly and the black lab

 

lops back each time. These are the true lovers,

this dog, this man, and when the dog stops

to pee, the old guy hurries him back, then

hurls the ball farther away.  Now his mother

 

dodders out, she’s old as the sky, wheeling

her green tank with its sweet vein, breath.

She tips down the path he’s made for her,

grass rippling but trim, soft underfoot,

 

to survey the yard, every inch of it

in fine blossom, set-stone, pruned miniature,

split rails docked along the front walk,

antique watering cans down-spread—up

 

huffs the dog again with his mouthy ball—

so flowers seem to spill out, red geraniums,

grand blue asters, and something I have

no name for, wild elsewhere in our world

 

but here a thing to tend. To call for, and it comes.

Never-Ending Birds (David Baker)

That’s us pointing to the clouds. Those are clouds

of birds, now we see, one whole cloud of birds.

 

There we are, pointing out the car windows.

October. Gray-blue-white olio of birds.

 

Never-ending birds, you called the first time—

years we say it, the three of us, any

 

two of us, one of those just endearments.

Apt clarities. Kiss on the lips of hope.

 

I have another house. Now you have two.

That’s us pointing with our delible whorls

 

into the faraway, the true-born blue-

white unfeathering cloud of another year.

 

Another sheet of their never ending.

There’s your mother wetting back your wild curl.

 

I’m your father. That’s us three, pointing up.

Dear girl. They will not—it’s we who do—end.

Resilience at 50 -- of Messengers and Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

I've just been to a special birthday celebration for a friend, and I was contemplating the large number of years she has lived.  We've lived quite a long time, I'll say out loud, and there are some significant things to celebrate here.  As I mentioned last week, I had a chance to think about limits as they pertain to yoga, and I've had several weeks to let that percolate into the gray matter a bit.  Everyone I know who is almost 50 or over has had to confront, at some time or another, a limit.  We've all had to deal with some issue or other that limits us in some way--a joint, a disease, an ending, a significant change....

As I thought about what I might say to my dear friend who has worked so hard and come head-on against her limits in many ways, I realized that her scars have taught her so much.  Perhaps this is the whole point. We all have issues we bang our heads against, or that flatten us for awhile, and we either learn to stand again and find some resilience, or we are in trouble.  What are these components of resilience, I wonder?  Clearly, it is easier to be resilient if we have each other, spouses, significant others, dear friends, hope.  But there is more to it, I think.  I don't know the answers, I just have some hunches.  I've seen incredible resilience in many survivors I work with, and I've seen the reverse.  For me, having poetry in my life has given me a new way of being resilient.  I can feel pain and hopelessness and worry for the future in so many poems, and I find new ways of understanding and dealing with these issues by submerging myself in the poems-- soaking up their pain, their way of seeing, their ability to feel gratitude, their ability to move forward.  And, thank goodness, I can try my hand at telling a story of resilience, and this is always illuminating for me.  I know my friend knows what I mean, as she begins to pick up her paintbrushes again.  She has become very wise.  For all of her struggles and recovery, I am very grateful; I know she is too.  Wisdom, resilience, gratitude....these are things I would really like to have in my life as I age. May all of us have them!  Try these two from Mary Oliver and don't forget to hear her speak in April here in Cleveland.

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Clarity, Place, Proximity, and Sisters Swimming

I have just returned from a glorious retreat in the Southern Yucatan, and I'm feeling incredible gratitude. Gratitude for the beautiful place, for the space to think and work, to write, to be in community, and to take time to feel and focus on the sacred space we were in.   Just look at the place!  Literally, we walked out of the cabana into a fresh water lake created by an underground cenote flowing into the clearest, most incredible womb of water I've ever seen or been immersed in....and the colors!  Even the yoga was special.  Lisa, the yoga teacher, gently reminded us about why we do yoga--how we work to our limits, how we need to pay attention here, right at our limits, and notice what we can and cannot do, understand it, feel it , accept it, and begin to learn from it.  Oh, is that what this is about?!  What a tool to use in our everyday lives.  Who knew?  I have been on retreat with these same leaders several times, but this time, I began to get it.  I'm a little slow, but this time I began to use my free time to explore where I am in my life, where my limits are, where I want to go, how the stories the leaders weaved for us help me begin to weave my own story and understand how it connects so beautifully to hers, and hers, and hers, and what we can do as women in community, and in the world.   What would it be like to live so simply and  nurture the world and each other so? Women are just so cool (sorry guys on this list, but you all have extra doses of the divine feminine in you; that's why we like you so much!).  I am so lucky, so lucky, so lucky to have had these experiences and to have such a set of sisters from all over the world.  There are three poems I'd like to share.  The first is about clarity and patience, the second is a wonderful poem about stars, and we saw more stars than I knew existed in the sky.  The third is one I wrote there that tries to capture the experience of swimming in this incredible place.

If each day falls

inside each night

there exists a well

where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience

                   Pablo Neruda

Place and Proximity (Patti Ann Rogers)

I’m surrounded by stars.  They cover me

Completely like an invisible silk veil

Full of sequins.  They touch me, one by one,

Everywhere – hands, shoulders, lips,

Ankle hollows, thigh reclusions.

Particular in their presence, like rain,

They come also in streams, in storms.

Careening, they define more precisely

Than wind.  They enter, cheekbone,

Breastbone, spine, skill, moving out

And in and out, through like threads,

Like weightless grains of beads

In their orbits and rotations,

Their ritual passages.

They are luminescence of blood

And circuit the body.  They are showers

Of fire filling the dark, myriad spaces

Of porous bone.  What can be nearer

To flesh than light?

And I swallow stars.  I eat stars.

I breathe stars.  I survive on stars.

They sound precisely, humming in my nose,

In my throat, on my tongue.  Stars, stars.

They are above me suspended, drifting,

Caught in the loom of the elm, similarly enmeshed

In my hair.  I am immersed in stars.  I swim

Through stars, their swells and currents.

I walk on stars.  They are less,

They are more, even than water,

Even than earth.

They come with immediacy.  The are as bound

To me as history.  No knife, no death

Can part us.

Sisters Swimming in Laguna Bacalar

Early morning half-light

as we step off cabana steps into cool,

transparent water the color of the

soft, sandy-brown bottom.

It is sunrise and hushed, the surface

 a plate of shimmering glass.

We wade out to our knees, hugging

our arms against the cold,

and the water changes from silver

sage to celadon.  At our hips,

mint encircles us.

As the sun begins to tip her face

to the sky, low clouds hug the water,

reluctant to let her go.

We dive, rippling the surface as mint

slides into teal tinged with light.

We are swimming in a liquid jewel.

As we move, I look down between

my legs into a translucent turquoise

vessel pulsing beneath us,

reaching up to touch us.

I roll onto my back and look up

as the moon becomes a ghost and

the sun pushes pink fingers across the sky.

Her spread hand blessing us from above.

We are held close here by liquid womb and sky.

The sun sends bands of light over our skin;

all at once, I realize that we are the jewels

cradled here in these colors of creation

being filled, transformed as we swim

into something ripening, expectant.

Ancient wisdoms wash through us,

rushing to teach us of innocence and descent,

of chains and limits, of growth,

of letting go, of abundance, of love.

Turquoise slips to teal, to mint

to celadon to silver, finally releasing us

to flash our jeweled bodies in the sun

as we climb out of these sacred waters

reborn.