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.”

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Earth Day

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

How can you write with  b2ap3_thumbnail_94262205_2630042767207929_6051266018465021952_o.jpg
flowered praise
of shining skies and magic days?
Don’t you know
there are bones in the grass
and fear in the air
and things that lurk on every stem
to suck your blood?
Snakes are eating baby birds
and a bobcat is even now
crushing through the skulls
of a nest of soft baby rabbits.
How dare you claim there
is beauty, that the world
is woven from love?
I claim it
because I see it.
Yes, I’ve dripped blood
on stones as thorns drag
across tender flesh,
uncovered worn femurs and ragged hip bones in fallen leaves,
scratched my own ankles bloody
after being fed upon as I walk.
I have faced unnamed skulls on mossy beds,
small jaws cracked in two,
a pelvis resting nearby
catching the rays of the setting sun.
I’ve wept over shattered eggs
and the blue jay’s screaming.
I have also borne witness to
endless
joy.
The mother deer nestling
twin fawns by her side,
the riotous blooms
blanketing the thorns,
the courtship dance of red-shouldered hawks
as they spin across the sky,
vultures skating gracefully
on thin air,
violets blooming in
the center of stones,
blue butterflies and singing bees
across the plum blossoms.
I know there are phoebes who return
year after year
to the nest they’ve built
sheltered under our eaves,
and hummingbirds that traverse endless miles
to alight on our windchimes
and to live in the mulberry trees
all summer,
our feeders their ancestral lands.
I have spotted rich mushrooms nestled impossibly
in curving roots of elm and ash,
I’ve plunged my arms into
ancient water
fresh born from between
the earth’s bones.
I’ve come eye to eye
with crows, black eyes alert,
wings shining,
with a coyote,
both of our heads lifting
to sniff the air.
I’ve eaten redbud flowers
straight from the branch
and watched the swift and patient passage of time
across the faces of those I love.
If there is one thing I know
to be true,
it is that great currents of
love and beauty
co-exist right beside great
stripes of pain,
and I still choose to celebrate this now:
the flowers in the trees,
the bones in the grass,
the blood on my knuckles,
the curving leaves,
the sweet berries,
the joy that bubbles up
right where I am.

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Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min, is a priestess, teacher, mystic, and poet facilitating sacred circles, seasonal rituals, and family ceremonies in central Missouri. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses at Brigid’s Grove (brigidsgrove.etsy.com). Molly is the author of ten books, including Walking with Persephone, Whole and Holy, Womanrunes, the Goddess Devotional, and 365 Days of Goddess. She is the creator of the devotional experience #30DaysofGoddess and she loves savoring small magic and everyday enchantment.

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