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.”
Poem: Comfort
Today, I sought the pines
and stones
once more.
Descending into the steep gully
to look for sweet water
easing its way
from the depths to trickle
across ancient stones.
I found both comfort and delight
in sitting by a tiny pool,
looking into the water,
allowing myself to be held
and restored.
I anointed my forehead,
face,
and shoulders with cool drops
from this smallest
of possible waterways,
both unnamed and essential,
and then opened my palms
to the sky
to invite the rain.
I sat with swaying
sycamore, elm, and ash trees
listening to the music they made
with leaf and wind.
I found a turkey feather
in the leaves
beside the water,
soft and fluffy and tipped
with an iridescent greenish shine
I listened to my heart.
I offered up both hope
and dreams
upon this altar of stone and sky.
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