Diving Deeper

New Year Blessing

The Cherokee New Year

[From "A Cherokee Feast of Days: Daily Meditations" by Joyce Sequichie Hifler.  Found on the website for Newati Herbals*.]

"If, like a Cherokee warrior, I can look at the new year as an opportunity to stand on new ground, then strength and courage are on my side. If I have waited a long time for everything to be perfect - and there have been moments, brief as they were, that filled my expectations - then I can face the challenges. I will remember that things do work out, bodies do heal, relationships mend - not because I said it, but because I believe it. But it is time to make things right, to stay on the Path. As water runs fresh and free from the woodland spring, so new life and meaning will bubble up from my own inner source. I will be still and steady because there is nothing to be gained by showing fear in a chaotic world. I can turn from ignorance and prejudice toward a light that never goes out."

* Early in December while in Eureka Springs, AR, for my partner Joe's birthday, we came across Nuwati's herbs in a native american shop there.  I'm always interested in local ventures like this - see my series of blogs posts on Vision Spa Retreat about the role of spa products in sustainable spa culture. We've been using their Bath Bags in our woodfired hot tub and I've just finished a retreat week using some of their teas as support.  I can recommend them!

For a story about a Cherokee visionary see White Eagle frees the waters on this blog.

Saturn-Sun: poem by Sulis

The beautiful image shown here is 'Ancient Raven Reborn' painted by craniosacral therapist and visual artist Robin Landsong.  Raven has in recent years shown up for me as a transformer of grief (see also Viriditas). 

This poem continues an exploration of Saturn's influence in my life, linked here with Raven (see Saturn's gifts) and inspired by encounters with two very different women.  The idea of creative power strengthened by preceding darkness, versus an artifially lit version.

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Saturn-Sun

Black-winged bird with folded face
and all the earth-born kindness
of suffering beyond measure
I warmed to you.

Incomparable, that flickering golden
bowed and beaked canyon canary
caged in last resort luxury
pitched high and slight.

She disappeared into the shadows
when you rose over the ridge.

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This poem about Neptune also gives reference to Saturn.

For more on craniosacral therapy see Inspiration: Oceanic craniosacral arts.

Don't think it will ever run out

Three poems of encouragement as the year begins ...

The Real work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~Wendell Berry

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Everything you see
has its roots in the unseen world.
The forms may change but the essence
remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish
every sweet word shall fade.
But do not be disheartened.
The Source they come from
is eternal, growing, branching out
bringing new life
and new joy.

Why do you weep?
That Source is within you
and this whole world
is springing up from it.

The Source is full
its waters are ever flowing.
Do not grieve; drink your fill.
Don't think it will ever run out.
This is the endless ocean

~ Rumi
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One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Soul-seeking with Astropoetics

The change in my life from which this blog arose was a grand tumble, the one to which I, like most of us, in one form or another, was inexorably headed.  It had a fateful quality that alerted me to something more, something behind the drama that I needed to attend to, and very seriously.

Just as I began to fall into my Abyss,  a new friend and astrologer, Joe Landwehr, knowing my plight, threw down a 'bag of runes' called Astropoetics which contained some important clues.  I've been following these clues like the proverbial breadcrumbs through the darkness for over two years now.

Sharing a forest haven with Joe, I've had first-hand access to his wisdom and his love. In the past year, astrological references have slowly but surely appeared in writing related to the themes of all my blogs, but especially in the poetry on this one.  You'll find some examples below.