Woodspriestess: Exploring the intersection between Nature, the Goddess, art, and poetry.
Listening to the woods, to the stones, to Gaia, and to women...
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.”
Poem: Commit
Sometimes you may feel dull
and worn,
muted and faded,
stale and depleted.
Remember that nothing blooms
without also stopping to replenish.
Nothing flowers without also
needing roots.
No stream flows
without a bubbling source
of renewal.
Nothing is birthed without time
spent waiting in the dark.
Call your attention back
from all its roaming and wandering.
Let it land in your center.
Notice your breath moving in and out.
Notice what you can hear.
Listen.
Notice what you can see.
Watch.
Notice how your body is held
wherever you are.
Feel the earth beneath you,
the warmth of your blood,
the air in your lungs.
Reach out your right hand
and receive some love.
Reach out your left hand
and receive some energy.
Bring both hands to your heart
and pause to let it in.
Whisper: I am here.
Commit to this,
right now.
Comments
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Tuesday, 22 June 2021
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
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Molly,
Thanks for sharing! It succeeds both as poetry and self-help literature.
The imagery is beautiful and worth pondering.