Gifts of Invisibility

Dreams of my youth; of being back at F.E. Osborne Junior High, only this time I am me now around the children that were so important to me then. I am fascinated by the ease in which they relate to the teachers, the ease in themselves. I sit alone among them, there but not, certainly not seen.

I remember my teachers; one in particular, Mrs. Rose, the most beautiful woman in the world, or so I thought at the time. Her earrings always matched her outfit; a black dress with pink polka dots called for pink earrings with black polka dots. Her name fit her perfectly for she always smelled like flowers; I breathed deeply when she leaned over me, pointing out something in my Language Arts text, her breasts looking soft and inviting. She floated on her high heels and exuded an aloofness to all of us youth, even the popular ones, as though she didn’t really belong here with us, was misplaced and simply tolerating the classroom until she found her way to the place she really belonged – a grand and magnificent place. Aloof with all except for one, Kim Kowalski, who was much like her. Kim dressed older than she was but classy, coordinated. She, too, was distant, very much alone but seemingly comfortable with that, in her own skin. You could tell Mrs. Rose looked fondly upon her. I envied that look.

When Mrs. Rose looked at me I shrank, aware of my ugliness and my inability to please her. I desperately wanted to please her and it was her class I did the best in – the best meaning I didn’t fail. It was as though her delicate nature pulled at something in me. I didn’t want to hurt the softness that she was. I wanted the cool aloofness to gather me up and see in me what she saw in Kim.

Those days, the days of the sinking stomach when the sound of the buzzer told me it was time to go to class. Those days of dread knowing my homework wasn’t done. I didn’t understand the words of my teachers – they may well have been speaking Chinese. I couldn’t manage concepts and theories and keep these organized in my head. I sat apart from everything and everyone – my inadequacies like a vacuum threatening to suck me into darkness.

Teachers stopped asking for my homework after a while, made little jokes about it that had the other students snickering, rolled their eyes at my feeble excuses.

Oddly enough these memories don’t pain me, as I sit sipping coffee in my warm bed. These memories are like the colourful patches on an old quilt. It was these times that opened a new sight in me – that sharpened the vision of a girl looking through windows at the lives unfolding on the other side. The isolation driving me to become my own best friend; a relationship that 35 years later has become the gentle place I can fall, the smell of roses on my own soft breasts.

Eagle Spirit

I saw a bald eagle perched high in a tree,
surrounded by tiny boisterous birds
making quite a fuss;
chirping and squeaking, darting and diving,
madly flapping their wings.

Appearing amused by all the kerfuffle,
the eagle calmly sat;
simply tilting his head
this way and that.

I thought to myself,
This must be how Spirit sits among us
as we run around,
tweeting and twirling and flapping our wings...
as if we have something better to do
then to rest in the majesty of Spirit.

Spring is here

Awakening, the Maiden returns
Rising in splendor and awe.
At this time of year
She sprouts as She thaws
And we hear, we hear Her once more.

Blessings of Ostara - As you awaken from your slumber and the Sun burns long, may all seeds you plant grow strong and fruitful!

Blessings,
Deborah

Bring Back the Snakes

Today is St. Patrick’s day, a day that marks the triumph of St. Patrick over the Pagans of Ireland; a day of mourning, not celebration. Not for me. Today marks the day an Irish Saint crowned a man-god, suppressing our Mother, driving Her to dark places and silencing Her voice. Those who knew the truth of Her were made to suffer; to convert to a faith that forced them from the groves into brick and mortar and wood – the very wood they worshiped among for eons. They were forced from the truth and knowing of their instinct to the pages of a book they could not read. The snake that represented the sacred; transformation, our closeness to Earth, was put into a tree and made responsible for the ‘sin’ of seeking knowledge. And my Mother was silenced, her beauty supplanted with buildings that required her destruction. She was silenced by the Saints of this god who rules, not loves and by the currency and greed of the day.

But now She stirs as her children return
And she awakens in splendor and awe.
At this time of year
She sprouts as She thaws
And we hear, we hear Her once more.

The Descent

Looking out the kitchen window, waiting for the water to boil for my first coffee of the day, I watch the snow fall. And for some reason I see the snow, really see it, for the first time. I see the snow not as a collective force of cold and ice, but as individual flakes, crystal beauties descending like feathers from the sky. I watch one perfect flake make the last five feet of its long journey as it sways and circles among the many others. I watch two join together, finding each other, in the final inches of their lives.

I realize that the life span of a snow flake is measured in inches, not in minutes and I wonder if that would make a difference in how I experience life. That if instead of measuring my life span as one long horizon, I measured it as the vertical decline back to the yielding Earth that I come from. That if instead of dying, I descend and I do so as the snow flake; gently and gracefully returning to the body of my Mother; joining with others of my kind to blanket Her. What if “pure as the driven snow” referred to the manner in which I submit to the falling, the calling, for me to come home?

I imagine diving into life, arms wide open as I journey from the clouds, down into the vastness of mountains and rivers and rolling green hills, welcomed as I meet with a slumbering body that yearns for the silence I bring with me.

I visualize a perfect descent, swaying and circling among the many others, no two the same.

We are the altar.

The greatest threat to women these days is our continued and relentless obsession with external beauty and our lack of attention to inner spiritual peace. This affects women in that we have forgotten our sacredness; the beauty of our spirits and the amazing capacity we have to give life and love. Instead we obsess over the size of our thighs, our waist, our breasts and how all these fit into the latest fashion. We feed our one-sided notion of ourselves to the other half of the population and are bound to externalized and unattainable images of what a woman should be. The only way out of this maze of shallowness is to begin with loving our hearts, minds, spirits and bodies and claiming them as sacred, to turn our eyes inward and love who we are.

We are the altar.

Birth of a Star

I am not a star;
my teeth are crooked, my hair is grey,
I have a weak chin.
I am neither polished nor fine.

Yet I have been known
to dance in the rain,
in the early morning before sunrise.

Sheltered by darkness, under the cedars
I have spread wide my arms,
spun gently round, swaying to music
made by the wind.
I have danced with bare feet on wet grass,
mud oozing between my toes,
arched my spine, thrown back my head
savoured cool rain drops on my tongue.

I have heard the song of my soul
carried on the laughter
that has risen from my belly.

I have danced for Spirit in the rain,
jumped and leapt a vigorous jig,
waltzed with the cedars and my own heart,
bowed to the rising sun
and the applause of chickadees.

I have come to know beauty;
as the rain has soaked into my hair.
Despite rivulets trailing down my back,
I have glowed like enduring embers.

I have shone so bright that I have
touched the edge of darkness,
and bravely entered there,
igniting places never seen
warming spaces never loved.

I am a star
My teeth are crooked, my hair is grey,
I have a weak chin.
I am polished and fine.