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.”
Saying Goodbye to My Grandmother
Part 1: The Question
It is October,
the veil is thin
the year is waning
the leaves are turning
I am trying to say goodbye
to my grandmother
she is dying.
I do not know what to say.
The leaves are red
the sky is blue
I saw a crow in the tree
behind the house.
The threads of this year
are becoming thinner.
The threads of her life too
are becoming thinner
What do I say to the one
who breathed life into my father
who wove his cells into being
who cradled him as a baby
who wept into his hair.
Carrying the cells
of the generations
The chain of life
continuing to spiral
through time, and place,
and distance
and falling leaves.
What do I say as life thins,
as breath fades
What do I say
when all that remains
is the space between us
What do I say
when I catch a glimpse
of the swift unraveling of time
the wrinkles in eternity
What do I say
as time folds in on itself
and now it is me in the bed
and my son, gray-haired, blue-eyed
is reading to me in a quiet voice
as the chapter comes to a close.
Part 2: The Answer
That night,
I dreamed of my grandmother
she shrank to the size of a small child
I picked her up and held her against my body
We looked in the mirror cheek to cheek
and smiled together
I kissed her face and told her:
“You are wonderful.”
Then we danced around the room together
her head against my shoulder
I kissed her again on her white hair
and no more words were needed.
—
(Postscript: I did go back to see her one more time, the same day she died, and I used my dream to guide me in what to say that time)
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If I were a dying grandmother, if true, I would love to hear you hope, if souls are reborn she will come back to be your grand.other again, she is leaving you with so many wonderful memories, and she could not have been a better grandmother. You could tell her you hope her journey to ________ heaven will be memorable and peaceful and how the ancestors are waiting for her. Dianne Luark Ross