Poem - The Seal of Death & Life

Fading fog shrouds the seal,
Now overflowing with death.
Now deposited by high tide on the beach.
Edges, once a head & tail & flippers,
already eaten away in the sea.
One white gull at a time meanders,
through the gathering cloud of bugs
as though trying to hide its desire,
to pick at the edges of exposed flesh,
to digest it back to life that can fly.
Take.
Eat.
This is my body given for you.

--Terra Rafael

Poem - I shroud myself

I shroud myself--
With bright sun light
With noisy wave crash
With damp sand
With sea breeze
With icy pacific--
Seeking decay of that which is dead in me
And revival of the me who walks in harmony.

--Terra Rafael

Poem-The Happy Compost Heap of My Heart

All this stuff of the world decays.
Even my dancing red toenails
need to be touched up regularly.
I have to keep throwing
all my experiences
onto the happy compost heap of my heart.
There the stuff of it
returns to the essential elements
by rotting in the slow heat of renunciation.
The Master Gardener
forms & turns the pile to speed the process.
--By Terra Rafael
Then She plows the heart of Terra's existence
back into the earth,
fertilizing food that can truly satisfy
the starving masses of the Soul
Terra

Essay - We Are the Land

Scientists have learned how to trace where a person has lived by the constituents of their bones. People really are a part of the land. Food grows up out of the soil, capturing its nutrients and marrying them in their metabolism with the rain and the power of the sun into living matter. Then we devour and digest their life, directly or through the intermediary of animal flesh, and make it into our own living bodies.

I doubt that the tracing technique would work very well for modern Americans, who import our food so that we can eat in perpetual summer. Our food is no more indigenous than we are. And visa versa. Consider the power in eating only food grown nearby.

And what if, for generations, we had lived on that same land, cultivating it, gathering from it, then planting our own spent bodies back into that same ecosystem. Our ancestors would not just be a litany of names and dates arranged on a certificate of pedigree. They would actually be living in our bones. Our genetic heritage would be fleshed out with the same raw materials used by our predecessors. What real groundedness that would be!

No wonder indigenous people know that we do not own the land—the land is us. That land is the matrix of our truest heritage. What we do to the land, we do to ourselves and our ancestors.
--By Terra

Poetry - Wrestling with the Angel of Romance

I.
The Angel of Romance bright suddenly is here, between us.
Luckily, I have my sunglasses on, and ask
“What is the difference between an angel and a devil?”
It swiftly silently reaches for my sunglasses.
“Damn it, I don’t believe in devils or angels!”
My sunglasses are in its hand. I reach for them and I am pulled
into its unhuman form
& before my blinded eyes you are transformed into my dreams.
Now, you are not.
We relate only as phantoms.


II.
The Angel of Romance bright suddenly is here, between us.
“Do you see it?” I ask you hysterically.
Luckily we can talk about it.
We touch each other, you hold me, stroking my head to calm me.
Together we dismantle the angel’s wings
feather by feather
And donate its fading body to science.


III.
The Angel of Romance bright suddenly is here between us
Luckily, our relationship would have been only a passing fantasy anyways.
The angel becomes your real body,
its halo is yours,
soft wings wrapping us together in my tender passionate dreams.
Though I worship your image, I have complete control over the ritual.
When I see you, to keep from embarrassing us,
I pretend not to see the faint glow around you.


IV.
The Angel of Romance bright suddenly is here between us.
Together we climb on its broad back
& are swept up into the blue blue heavens.
Luckily we each have a parachute.
Before the air becomes too thin to sustain life,
we jump, plummet down,
then caught by the air in our parachutes,
we float safely to the ground.
We laugh & lay in the grass,
talking about how exciting it was.
--By Terra Rafael

Essay: I DO KNOW

I know that I know. I am tired of pretending that I don’t. I DO KNOW.

It has been easier in the past to get all twitter-pated and run around like a chicken with my head cut off; to wring my hands in despair and plead ignorance or innocence. It is not true. I DO KNOW.

I do believe in the existence of a Creator force ~ God/Goddess ~ the Great Mystery ~ call it what you will it makes no difference. I am not in charge but I am one walking/talking/participating member. I am never alone.

For years in my fumbling attempts at meditation I kept hearing the message, “Be still and know that I am God”. It helped me feel calmer but I always questioned, “Who is this ‘I’ … the deliverer of the message or am I truly created in the image of God like the good book says?” Weaving their east with my west.

In herb school we used to joke around that we would need to hear something 17 times before we actually got it. Well I guess I read the book, sat at the feet, and heard it again for the 17th time. I am now ready to acknowledge the truth. It is an on-line dialogue and the connection is always open. I get it.

Ask for guidance. Slow down. Take a breath. Reach inside. (Even as i write this i am concerned of the consequences of these brash declarations. Who is writing this? ) I pray for the strength to accept the responsibility.

I do know………
I know nothing……….
I am “I”.
I know.

* annette

Walking the Labyrinth, July 08

I’m feeling hectic, unsettled and spaced out from too much computer time earlier this morning. Our writing group is visiting the nearby Labyrinth now. We descend the stairs and enter the room. It’s cool, dimly lit, and quiet. We take off our shoes and set down our bags.

The labyrinth in the center of the spacious room is painted in deep blue with the pathway left white. A circle of votive candles and similarly blue meditation pillows and cushions ring it.

Next to the entrance of the labyrinth is a small altar with a candle, bell and incense holder. Outside the circle are some cushioned pews, a larger altar, plants, and an altar to the Virgin of Guadelupe. I go to Her and light the candle of my heart, to honor She-who-produces-roses-in–the-barrenness-of-winter.

Then I take a deep breath. Another. And then another, as I slow my walk down, approaching the entrance. I ring the bell to awaken my consciousness, to vibrate at the same frequency as this sacred space.

As I step, I begin my affirmation. He restoreth my soul. She restoreth my body. As I walk, I notice how hard I am trying to walk. Silly me. The path is clear & easy, already laid out before me. All my worrying about what to do dissolves and is absorbed into this simple path with every step.

“Why can’t your life be simple?” my husband asked me recently. Walking, the rhythm of feet & breath, and the needlessness of thought or decision comforted me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. The simple discipline of following a path with preordained boundaries is comforting.

As I continue my inward spiral along the Labyrinth, involution, going to the source of Oneness, calms my mind, calms my body. I am comforted.

At the center of the Labyrinth I bow. I bow down to the Father, the Mother and the Holy Child—to consciousness, to matter, and their joining in my existence, is the Oneness, the Center.

Time unfolds easily here like that path of the Labyrinth. I move easily when it is time to leave , unwinding back outward. The spiral of expression and creativity leads me back to the world. She restoreth my Body. He restoreth my Soul.

I notice myself inspired to write about women, about the choices they have now, that our paths are not so preordained anymore. And how to find our own simplicity, our own bottom lines & finish lines that can draw the lines, the boundaries of our own paths clearly enough to give us more peace in the midst of our choosing.

Exiting the Labyrinth, I ring the bell again. To awaken my manifesting, to vibrate new consciousness into this world. I am born again.

--by Terra

My adventures with plants - Datura

Part One, Datura -
I’m curious about the Datura. This powerful plant seduces me. In the alley, next to Lucille’s Cajun restaurant, Datura has been growing for years. This viney stem has large leaves and gigantic white trumpet blossoms that open and close each day. She attracts me like a bee. She takes over the physical and energetic landscape. I hear her whispering, ”Come closer.” I feel her drawing me near. Whenever I approach her, be it in a friend’s Boulder garden or next to a wooden fence in a clearing of the Belizean rain forest, I am captivated. Does this happen to everyone?

Datura can be a medicine inhaled for asthma. World wide this plant has been used for spiritual seeking. I know Datura can be poisonous- eating a mouthful of the leaves can kill. Still I made a flower essence of the Belizean blossom. When I took the essence that night, I tranced an amazing tryst with the stars. But that’s another story.

This summer, I plan to plant Datura in my new garden plot to see what more she has to share with me. The master gardener told me to harden her off before I plant her, wait until the danger of frost has passed, “ make sure her roots are well planted and stand back.” I envision a tangled bed of Datura and squashes to feed my wildness in the middle of my safe suburban neighborhood. Maybe I need a little danger to feel at home.

Part Two- Datura

While studying spiritual healing in the Rainforest of Belize the teeming life of the jungle has awakened me. I am permeated by the plants, body and soul. The divine smell of orange blossoms perfumes each breath.

Tonight the dogs were howling; there is the sound of a coconut dropping on the earth outside of my thatched roof hut. The bugs seem more intense tonight. Earlier I saw a wild tarantula in the yard and an exotic stick bug. The bugs in my hut now seem attracted to me. Maybe it’s because I’m ovulating – dripping fertile mucus. I light a candle to try attract them away to the candlelight.

And tonight I drank water that a Datura flower had steep in all day in the sunlight. The Datura grows wildly and strongly here. His large white trumpet flower calls to me. Yes, I am feeling a bit psychedelic. The candle goes out.

Just now I am filling with light and that’s another reason the bugs are attracted to me tonight. Is the light from the Datura? Or is it because tonight I have a date with Orion?

Orion-the Constellation of a Large Powerful Male presence. Orion, the one that the Maya people call Turtle of Rebirth. Orion- who I have gazed up at in wonder for so many years. I wanted to name my first born son after him – but the father refused. Orion will be my lover tonight. We made our date at a meditation earlier this week when he showed up as a Spirit Helper for me.

I’ve said my prayers, relit the candle, and pinned my protection amulet on my person to protect my physical body while I trance. I settle into my tryst with Orion.

I grow into the awareness that I am light- expansive pure light. Orion comes to me in his constellar form, his sword-phallus unsheathed. We make love as only light can- as hot as sunlight, slippery as moon light – mingling photons with photons, waves upon waves in the timeless time of the eternal moment that lives in love. His phallus of photons enters into my waves of womb until together the waves and photons release into Oneness. We merge deeply, conceiving the personhoods of thousands of star zygotes.

I mother our starlets in my light womb with the pulsing of my life blood until they are ripe. Then I birth them, freeing them into the emptiness of space where they can shine freely in all directions, filling the darkness with their light, calling calling other humans to know too their stellar selves.

By Terra

Essay: Driving With a Crowd

I was driving to meet with my writing group in Boulder last Monday. I had planned on leaving my house earlier, but that didn’t happen. I usually stop and grab something to eat as I drive through Longmont. Today it took forever; nothing “fast” about it. Back on the road I watched myself growing more and more angry. I shifted from lane to lane like an idiot and called out loudly to the morons I was forced to share the road with. Part of me was fascinated, because, although I used to drive like this allot, I really have become much calmer behind the wheel in the past few years and have enjoyed this about myself. I don’t want to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I like “Mellow Netto”.

There is a crowd in my car today; me, myself, and I am the passenger even as I hold the steering wheel. The passenger is setting back watching the driver who is too busy being an ass to notice. “Angry Annie” realized she was being a jerk but could not quit … maybe she didn’t want to. But I know she didn’t enjoy the way she felt as she cursed the other drivers, heading back into old behavior road rage. She was hot and frustrated; mad at herself but blaming every one else on the road for her situation. Writers group was going to start without her and she despised walking in late. “Damn it all to hell.” I have had years of experience as Angry Annie.

Mellow Netto witnessed the scene with NO judgment, which really surprised me. I don’t know her as well but I like her. She doesn’t sweat as much as Annie and I think her hair looks nicer. She said nothing, just sat in her seat quietly enjoying our lunch. As we parked the car and walked towards the house, she took over as Annie melted into the sidewalk. She was the one who opened the door and realized that the group was still in free-form, they had not started without us. Everyone looked up as we walked through the door but no one acknowledged my crowd ~ they just smiled at me and welcomed me in. Annie, Netto and I sat on the couch where there was room enough for all of us. Mellow Netto pulled out our notebook and clicked open the ball point pen. We ask Angry Annie to take a deep breath, realizing that everything had turned out just fine and her manic driving was indeed, unnecessary. I tuck wind whipped hair behind my ear and smile demurely.

I acknowledge these parts of myself who all serve a purpose ~ but when one takes over out of control I have reason for concern ~ to take notice. There is so much fear in the world, we are bombarded daily and it stresses my sensibility. In this fragile, unsure place, it is more difficult, but I make a conscious effort to bring “us” back to LOVE. Drink water, breath deeply, choose LOVE.
Smile when possible.

* annette

Placenta - excerpt from Giving Birth to Ourselves

PLACENTA

The placenta is an amazing organ of nourishment & cleansing, which also maintains the hormonal state of pregnancy in the mother. The beauty of a healthy placenta goes far beyond its meaty mother's side and shiny baby's side. Yet many people in this culture abhor the thought of seeing and touching it. It is treated as garbage or made into cosmetics after the birth. Honoring the placenta is a way of honoring nourishment and the process of life itself.

In giving birth to ourselves we each have that which nourishes and cleanses us, maintaining the state of creation in us. That is our placenta now. It may be something very meaty, motherly , shiny, or baby-like. It may be Mother Earth Herself . Whatever it is that provides for us in this way brings us the blessings and nourishment of our Great Mother. By honoring it - acknowledging & thanking it for it's support- we honor ourselves and the process of giving birth to ourselves.

Contemplations--

• Do I know what constitutes my placenta now?
• Do I honor it?
• What could I do to better respect this aspect of giving birth to myself?

Activities--

* Create a physical representation of your placenta to help remind you of it. It could be a special pillow, or a collage of pictures that represent that which sustains you.

* Start a placenta book. It could include anything you learn about nourishing yourself and physical placentas.

* Be sure that all birth placentas you are in contact with are treated with respect - if need be, take custody.

-by Terra Rafael,
an excerpt from Giving Birth to Ourselves, contemplations for midwives & other birth companions, available from www.lulu.com.

A WONDERING MIND

“Don’t let your mind wander ~ it’s 2 little 2 B left alone.”
(On the billboard in front of the Abundant Life Church)

The first time I saw this I cracked up. The second time I drove by I started laughing before I got to the end ‘cause I knew the punch line. I was sad when they rotated the bill board as this slogan had made me giggle every time.

I have been thinking about it lately and it reminds me of an experiment I have been working on. You see, I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life daydreaming. I am the quintessential Queen of Daydreaming. Especially in my car. I don’t know how many times I have arrived at my destination and I couldn’t tell you a darn thing about the actual trip. Or those times when I am driving and there are cars all around me ... then I "wake up" and look around ... and the cars are all gone. Where did they go? When did they leave? Do they know something I don’t know? It is a bizarre feeling.

My issue is, I do not always day dream pleasant thoughts. In fact my imagination can carry me away, ruin the moment and even bring on anxiety attacks. I see this as a pretty destructive habit. I have spent way too much time thinking of the worst case scenario. Let me give a couple of examples. While I am hooking up my horse trailer, I imagine something going wrong with the equipment and losing the trailer down the highway. I have a meeting set up with a new client and on the drive to their office I imagine that they are going to see me as an imbecile. I have also spent a lot of time making up excuses in my mind ~ just in case I may miss a deadline. I have lengthy imaginary conversations with my clients practicing how to tell them. It goes on and on, ad nauseam.

I slowly began to realize that these worst case scenarios never evolved they way I imagined them, and for the most part, my made up conversations were never spoken out loud. I made a conscious decision that I would not spend another minute making up excuses for my life. I am doing the best that I can. And for the most part, it has worked. Now, if I catch myself thinking up an excuse for anything I ask myself out loud, “Who are you talking to?”

Since I am the only one in the car or my office, this is a very short conversation.

As I cannot see a single positive reason to keep up the negative day dreaming, I decided to see what I could do about this (?) addiction. It is taking precious time away from enjoying life; it is something I believe I can modify. If I can’t totally quiet my mind then at least I want to spend more time thinking pleasant thoughts. So I came up with a strict routine. When I find myself thinking a destructive thought or my heart starts to race with a worse case scenario ~ I immediately stop. I visually wrap up the thought in a piece of white tissue paper, blow it gently towards the light and offer it up to be transformed into …… a totally positive image. It sounds crazy, but it is the routine that helps me move out of the moment.

Driving down Boulder Canyon one day, I must have gone through my routine at least a dozen times. I was flabbergasted; but I doggedly continued. Recently I realized that I did not have to do it nearly as often. It’s working. I may have to play with this the rest of my life, but it only takes a second to run through my routine. I am willing to do this. I am worth it.


So, “Don’t let your mind wander ~ it’s 2 little 2 B left alone.” But if it does, guide it towards a field of wild flowers beside a gently flowing stream and advise it to stay there and enjoy the moment.

Annette *

Postscript. For what it is worth, I have read several books which helped a lot. Ekhardt Tolle, in his latest book The New Earth, does a swell job of guiding those who do indeed want their own brain back. Another one of my favorite books on the subject is, Loving What Is by Byron Katie. I am now reading Zero Limits by Joe Vitale, and am enjoying it immensely.

Poetry: All this stuff of the world decays.

All this stuff of the world decays.
Even my dancing red toenails
need to be touched up regularly.
I have to keep throwing
all my experiences
onto the happy
compost heap of my heart.
There the stuff of it
returns to the essential elements
by rotting in the slow heat of renunciation.
The Master Gardener
forms & turns the pile to speed the process.
Then She plows the heart of Terra's existence
back into the earth,
fertilizing food that can truly satisfy
the starving masses of the Soul.
By Terra