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?