a pilgrim
walks her prayers

she walks the answer

somewhere within the despair
and sweet longing
of being human

the meaning of life
is a rhetorical question

—we answer
with every step.

and we only know life,
if we’re willing
to know

death.

***

If we live with curiosity and courage we die over and over within one life. Versions of ourselves morph and shape shift. Bodies buried in the yard of us.

Sometimes we shed skin easily, but so often there’s a wrestle. We don’t want to lose things or people, roles, jobs, places, ideas, shields. And yet if we don’t die to what we WERE, we can’t ever know the fullness of what we ARE.

Like a cicada walking out of an old shell, our emergence depends on letting go. As some Native American tribes were known for saying “today is a good day to die”

Whatever is happening in our lives now, is the calculus of our becoming. Nature teaches this evolution and renewal, if we have eyes to see.

If we want to hold even deeper love, we must first hold death.
This is sacred mess.
Profound process.

Still, we often subtly wrong-make ourselves or overtly despise ourselves when we’re not feeling pleasant or homed, or certain – always.

As if the sky should always be blue.

As if rain isn’t a baptism.

What if all this – the fear, the longing, the sweet sadness, the broken parts – are nothing more than perfect bounty?

What if we remember to
bless
this breaking?

Not as fancy words, but quietly, truly.

If there’s an “I”

she is the breath
of the divine,

moving as it’s chest
it’s limbs, it’s heart.

What else could I be?

The body of God
is everything.

I am drunk on this love.

Let empires
towns
the price of gold

fall

God is here, in the dust.

Once

we were warriors.

We mined
all the parts
of our lives

we deemed inadequate
for excavating

cutting and pasting
ourselves.

Perfecting.
Levelling.
Proving.

Master-minding.

Now
we know differently.

Now we KNOW,
we are poetry dancing

and poetry contains everything.

we are Grace,
shapeshifting.

NOW
we anoint
everything,

we know
all of us is holy.

We are light AND
the shadow cast by it

We are sacred mess.

Sublime, perfect
process.

*

I am.
this body.

and I am
your body

I am cosmic
I am human

I am individual
and I am union.

the end of suffering
is not benign perfection

the end of suffering
is forgiveness – laughter –

at my own
fumbling humanity

there is such
exquisite beauty

in all of me.

*

don’t you see?

You were never
an apology.

*

Galaxies
alight

in your eyes
no matter

the wars you wage

the places you stay
stuck

the angles of you

the plain exhaustion
at your own imperfection

the ways you misattune
to those you love

the way no one seems to hold you
in quite the way you want

you
have never been
an apology.

your heart is vast enough
to dance

with asteroids
and stars.

you are full
weightless-gravity

cosmic, yes

but that
has never been
separate, higher medicine

than the magnificence
of your beautiful
bumbling

humanity.

Great Spirit

move me

return me, to the borders
of my body

that you may take me,
where you want me.

work
through me,

use my hands,
these feet, this tongue

the sweat from this brow

take any humble skill
I may have

for your work

colonise my heart
with your love

that I may bring heaven to earth
through these cells
—NOW-

that I may fill the world
with understanding, kindness, compassion

not wait for some other body
to do it.

infuse me
– let me lead with love

even within the tyranny
of my own humanity

let me BE
your humility,
walking.

imbue me

I am wholly
completely
devastatingly

yours.

 

Love poem (for infinite intelligence, God, source – whatever you wanna call it)

The lines of a lifetime
gather like water

In you, I saw a billion lives
merging, melting

tumbling
together.

the current of us lapping
our jagged angles
to sea-glass

smooth and brightly
sun-drunk,

you were always so
unsober

a whirling pool
of eddys and

saltwater

and we went under,
for each other.

Breath-tides mined
in the moonlit ocean bed
of my heart and mind.

Besides, we all
have to start
and end
somewhere

-or nowhere –

depending on
whose looking

and how

whose praying (and how)
whose touching…and how.

And oh, the rocks in us

the before
and the after of us,

our edges smoothing
along the way

blunt instruments
taking their toll

but I know you so well

your heart is a carnival carved
of river-mud and spells.

kingfishers sing
brightly and deeply

from inside the well
of you

and for so long
we ghosted the banks
of each other

until we didn’t.

until tidal waves
couldn’t stop us

until memories
and mergings

and all we are

couldn’t be contained
by banks
or damns
or natures plans

we are
that

so we let ourselves
spill the banks

because what else is there?
but this

one.
precious.
life.

no king-tide
no water-tight
plan

can undo what is.

what we are.

and your salt-skin
is no longer a wound-rub
but a salve

that homes itself here
in a current of bone marrow
and breath

and I will love you
as fiercely
as the river runs to the sea

as deeply
as you have always loved me.

for just as nature
finds rest in being
exactly what it is,

so too have we

so too,
have

we.

*

Come, sit.

Let me feed you sugar.

Let me wash your aching feet.

For we are,

we.

River
and sea.

Everything.
Nothing.

You, me.

And God is here
in your beautiful
broken heals

this is worship.

Let me kiss the mud of you
– it is simply the mud of me

Perfectly
Precisely
Infinitely
wisely

we.

There is no synagogue

no cathedral
no temple
no church

but my own heart.

Wherever I go,
I carry that.

Heaven is here
in hip-sway,

it’s a state

it’s the realm of light
and vibration

around us
within us

above us
below us.

My breath
is my sacred text

bellying me
home.

Reminding me
of the wisdom of

silence and
echo

I drink Christ’s blood
from the chalice

in my own heart

offer myself up
on the alter

of “yes”

sacrament
is the tenderness

of this pain

stripping
everything away

burning me deeper
into trust.

Let me commune
with the trinity of

faith, fierce grace
and this chestful of

love.

Thank you

I walked
a thousand blocks

with bleeding feet

for you to teach me
how to unlearn everything.

And in all those moments
when I was a refugee
from myself,

despair
blinding,

you stood quietly
green eyes firing

willing me through.

I suppose
letting you rewire me
was never gonna be easy

but
in the unraveling

a
sacred
rebuilding

you:
braided into me.

And all the distraction
the numbing, the

ceaseless running
of before:

given over (willingly or
forced)

to the quiet
that you require.

the laser-beam-present-moment focus
of watching a snail
inch along a path
for an hour,

together.

The subtle strength
of holding myself

still-fast enough for you

each day anew.

*

They say
parenting
is the fastest route

to enlightenment

if we can transcend
all the frightened

parts
of ourselves

but I was never
logics daughter

could never muster
lust, for any idea of a saviour

have always preferred
giving over to water

when the maelstroms come.

*

We are all haunted, grace-filled
beings

I was just trying to live
with the hauntings.

Wasn’t seeking,
anything.

But you brought me
to my knees

You broke me bodily
(the heart
was just the half of it)

you opened me

white flagged
the wars in me

my three-foot guru
in gumboot feet

*

When the light comes,
it spares nothing.

*

Rose
you were sent
to improve me

and I thank God
for your love

I thank God
I had the sense

to let you
undo me.

(For my daughter, Rose, on her 6th birthday.)

Notes for being human

Unclench
your fisted heart
and let it break.

Just let it.

Open
every door of yourself

give over deeply,
grant entry to the pain

to seep or soar,
to drip
or wave

through every mistake

every longing,
every wish

to belong,
somewhere.

Let
your heart
break,

know deeply
every open artery

every breath
every broken capillary.

Because the real tragedy

is only ever
leaving yourself.

YES.

Life in its wisdom
wants to be felt.

So open

every
single
cell

every moment
wants to be deeply,
wholly allowed.

The greatest intimacy
is offering up your body

For life
to live, itself.

(Much harder, more nuanced
than it sounds)

Turn no visitor away
– whether joy or suffering –

Make deep love
to them all,

listen
to the whispers calling

“let it in,
let it ALL in”

a broken heart
is only ever-more

awakening.

*

When I speak here of a broken heart, I don’t mean the romantic kind (only).

Life has a billion ways to belly us.
And deep magic occurs, when we let ourselves be broken open.

The supple union,
of suffering, faith and wisdom.

When we think about all the bullets we catch, and bury, in this miraculous life. Tiny moments, subtle encounters, big knowings.

Healing, meeting, trying, not trying.

The question always seems to be the same:
are we opening, or closing? In this moment…this moment…

How intimate with every part of life can we stand to be?

The mediocrity. The mundanity. The hurt. The subtle – and overt – brutalities.

As well as the miraculous, the joyful,
the magical and the hopeful.

 

 

When I need sound healing

I bathe in cicada hum.

When I need ministry
I let the grass lavish
it’s deep devotion
upon me
and the dew
drip its sermons
right into my heart.

I anoint my feet
in puddles and I
praise mud.

I was never alone.
who am I fooling?

I was fathered by mountains,
mothered by ocean

I was taught by landslides,
and caught by the woman
I became, during them.

Stars serenade me
with their chorus of hallelujah’s,
offer themselves up
as pin-pricks
of wonder and guidance
in the darkness

Trees salute me, stand
guard and strengthen me
offer their wisdom
– if I’m listening.

I am.
all existence.

My friends are rocks and
praying mantises, I thread
their hearts through mine, like
an endless chain

Let the sky teach me loyalty
to warmth AND shadow
– the humility of hail
and the sanctity of

change.

*

And through it all

love.

Ablaze
from magma – up

through the soles
of me

I give the Mother
my body, for colonising

we are
ember and water,
– all at once

we are
so
deeply
loved

just like this
with our limping, broken
hearts – full of fear

We are
and are
and are

sacred mess.
perfect process.

For this and another
thousand reasons

we are
blessed.

Impact

I try to be
as unbusy

as I can be.

Business,
hurts me.

Leaves
no time
for receiving

no space
for a breeze

to waft through

and stoke
the embers
in me.

I need air around me.

Silence
to bow

before
crickets chorusing.

Stillness
to allow

wisdom to
root-in

deeply.

Why
we insist
on believing

that wholeness exists
in adding,

is beyond me.

Subtracting
is deep life
love-making.

Savouring.
Marinating.

Let culture
keep its busy

it’s not importance:
it’s impotence.

Everyone spread so thin
they forget the “I am”

the wisdom
of pleasure
and silence.

I’ll be outside
listening to trees
teaching

on the intelligence
of dew
and matter.

I’ll be
inhaling deeply

the gnosis of
butterfly wing flutter.

I’ll be opening
filling

RECEIVING
ether.

Before erupting
as Her fire.

*

Only then
will I burn
through town

ignite streets
disperse crowds,
take signage down.

move paper – reverently –
from one side of the
factory, to another.

DO.

Wholly.
Completely.

Before
unbecoming

fire.

Before returning
to

being
(ember)

 

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