RIVER OF AWE
When they ask where you have been, say you have been swimming
in the River of Awe again—dropping skins to arrive here,
to be bathed and reborn in this starlit current.
*
Some of the most difficult work we will do in our lives—
is to retrieve joy from the clutches of bitterness.
*
There is a choice along the path—the many crossroads.
Will the crucible of living soften you, or simply thicken the armor?
*
In a recurring childhood dream—I stand at the edge of the sea—
watching a mountain of a wave surging towards me. In that moment,
I know just how to turn my body inside out to create an opalescent shell.
So that when the wave crashes, I tumble unharmed in the wild foam.
*
A teacher says to me, perhaps it is time to let go of that dream—
for now you know you are the sea itself.
*
When the fierce visitor of dis-ease has come to reside in your own body,
in your own mind-heart—you must learn how to receive
the teachings and let the teacher go. It is only the raft
to the other side of midnight. To the other side of the wounded self.
*
A revelation—to see that your story is not as personal as it all seems.
That the gods are not out to get you. Nor are they here to save you.
*
It’s more elemental than that—this body a landscape where storms
wash away entire canyons before the sun rises again over green shoots.
Yes, this map of you is rewritten over and over by these elements
that shape you, as they shape the mountain.
*
Go to the River of Awe and let the waters clear the pain
of the small self. You may feel the disorientation of this—of unhooking
from the familiar habit of you. And yet there you are emerging—
the light streaming off your skin.
*
You were given this Oracle long ago.
There is an Intimacy with life you are offered.
It requires everything of you.
Even the surrender of the story of the life
you thought was yours to live.
WILD PLUMS
It’s erotic—my hands sifting through
plum flesh for pits—the purple skins,
the golden juice like a fine wine—
this bowl overflowing.
*
But wait, there is more to that story.
There is the moment when we stood
in the September dusk in the storm light—
four women laughing in awe at the miraculous
choreography of this evening—harvest moon,
late summer wind blowing through
branches so laden with plums they fall
off by the dozens into our open palms.
*
Gathering to harvest the way peoples
have always gathered when the year
spins around to equinox again. Each
to make our own version of plum jam—
the alchemy of this particular summer,
where grief and beauty have been lovers.
*
This season where we have all lost someone
where we have sung river songs
by the river and laid our bare bodies
on warm rocks in the sun, finding the places
where our mythologies weave,
where we dream not only for ourselves
but for each other.
*
Yes, this is the taste of a summer
that will be remembered in mid-winter—
carried in the essence of these plums—
this memory of bright stars and purple asters
and the bears rumbling around
gorging before they sleep. This moment
of equal day and night, just before the sun
sun slants south to the honey of fall
and then the crystalline thin light of winter.
*
But wait, I am here, standing in the kitchen
my hands plunged into a bowl of pulp,
plums boiling on the stove with cardamom
and cinnamon –thinking of
all the ways we make love with life,
all the exquisite ways we are offered
to commune with the fruits of the world—
so freely given. So freely given.
HARVEST
Standing in a trembling grove of aspen
tasting the fire in their release—
I see all the moments in my life
as shimmering leaves
on the Tree of Life.
*
And I see how all of these moments—
even the ones I have prayed
could stay—will turn to gold,
speak their story, and fall
back into this black earth.
*
How I never could have never imagined
this face of mine after five decades—
the unique shape of this life of mine,
the particular harvest baskets I carry
full of the seeded grasses of childhood,
the plums of love, the late summer
blackberries of longing, the boughs
of elderhood that beckon to me now.
*
We are travelers through a life
that re-writes itself again and again,
season after season, so we become
unrecognizable even to ourselves.
And as time passes, we become
more intimate with all that is transitory—
resting in to the unknowable,
all the urgent questions falling away,
become chaff for the next growing season.
*
So now there is only the bliss that arises
from this particular quality of light—
the scent of these leaves, the silver crescent
of moon in violet sky, the imprint
of all we love, of all that loves us.
*
As evening comes, starlings murmurate –
spectacular oracles speaking
in the language of wings and wind—
and I feel the autumn weaving
its magic again on the loom of my being
for another round of seasons—
*
And this blessed weight
of my harvest baskets
filling and emptying
and filling once again.
BROKEN OPEN
Some days we fall to our knees
and pray for a new heart
that is free from the scars of this life.
*
For this ancient heart of ours
has been dragged around the wheel of time
behind the horse cart of suffering
for a few miles— or perhaps thousands!
*
There is our childhood of course—
this perfect wounding
that is passed between generations—
the pain we thought we should take on—
this pain that is not even ours.
*
Maybe there is even an existential
exhaustion we only notice
in the moments between sleep and waking—
an obsession with hand wringing
we can’t seem to turn away from.
It all seems so personal!
*
Just remember— We were warned!
Our hearts were made to break open~
It was in the contract we signed just before
we tumbled down the spirit ladder.
It was in the fine print we don’t ever read.
*
It said:
You will encounter the tumultuous winds
of your unfathomable fears
and the blooming
of your own exquisite light.
*
You will feel abandoned, disappointed, betrayed.
You will be asked to forgive everything—
and most of all –your own luminous self.
*
Your heart will break open—
and spill its mysterious treasures—
This is good news!
Don’t try to stop it!
*
You may feel like you are on fire
with all that is awakening.
You may feel you won’t make it
to the other side.
*
But this is your heart—
and your heart was made
to break open.
*
And as you pray at this altar
of your broken open heart—
you will find the handwritten note
you left yourself on the mirror
of eternity so long ago.
*
Note to Self:
You will have the chance
to be healed by Love.
Take it!
God is the Crack
Between the towering red sandstone—
is the deep cut of the crack. And here,
the tree of life blooms –this wise juniper
with gnarled trunk and serpentine roots.
She is older than memory –
and the wings of her branches drop
blue-green berries into high desert soils—
an act of divine faith to put seeds down here.
*
Yes, god is the crack—god is the place
life emerges—disruptive and outrageous.
Not the ordered heavens where all hums along
in a temperature controlled starry glory.
But this storm—this rumble that trembles
our bones, announcing its arrival—
this lightning that blazes through sky,
this precious rain on our upturned faces,
leaving pools of water in hollows
of lichen-streaked rock.
*
God is the crack. The way the down of the milkweed
splits the husk, the way the egg shatters
into furry body and untried wings.
God is the way the rainbow of mushrooms
explodes out of earth after storm—
these fruits of the underworld
that can you kill you or sustain you—
this living neural web that nourishes
and transforms the forest.
*
This life depends on rupture—
thrives in places where edges meet.
And yet so often, we want to curl into the comfort
of the static—as if this would save us
from being part of everything—
as if this would save us from the torrent
of time carving us into new shapes
we have never seen before.
*
God is the crack. It is the place where the gold
lettering of your soul speaks its truth.
The places where the bent and curvy dance,
where the dandelion defies the concrete,
where the mustard seed turns
a fallow field into a parable
that would feed the world.
SANCTUARY
Because sometimes you are down and in
the cauldron of transformation—
deep in the fertile darkness
where the underground waters flow—
and you feel you’ve been
here for an eternity.
*
You’ve met your demons and angels.
You’ve unspun spells and curses—
and unraveled the beliefs
that kept you wedded to the past.
You’ve spit out
the bitter poison
of your own resentments.
*
The holy waters
of forgiveness have flowed through
and soothed the raw places
in your soul. You’ve let your love
out of all of the boxes—
and untethered your spirit
from the anchors of safety.
*
You have even seen
the great shining sea
where your ancestors rode in
on their galloping horses
bringing gifts.
And now, you say, now
you are ready
for the next chapter—
*
you are ready to arrive back
in the outer world
back into the upper world
to return with the gifts
from the fertile darkness.
*
You come to the gates, eager—
And yet still, the beloved turns you back.
No darling, it’s not yet time—
there is more here.
Stay in this alchemical vessel,
the good part is just beginning!
*
You put your ear to the ground.
press your belly against the earth’s belly—
you, who are the cocoon whose
butterfly cannot be rushed.
And you realize it’s the very resistance
to being down and in,
the very attachment to the one of you
who lives in the shiny world
that you are being asked to release.
*
And you recognize the one of you
who would come up and out
of the belly of earth before
you are fully cooked
in these divine juices.
*
For no, it is not theold one of you
who rises, Oh Lazarus. It is the one
of you who is so much older than that.
It is the one who remembers
the first instructions written
in your own bones. It is the one
who knows the codes~
*
It is the one who can turn
all the lights on in the house—
not because you are afraid of the dark,
but because you have finally
learned that this is not a waiting place
not a place to eternally endure—
but the sanctuary
of the Holy One
with 10,000 names.
GOLDEN FEATHER
I saw you in the sky yesterday—your wings
spread out to the edges of eternity.
It was as if you had forgotten
your worn out ways--and the waves of joy
shimmered in the late light on your feathers.
*
But then, as I watched, you seemed to reach
the edge of an invisible horizon-
the boundary of familiar territory.
Some tether pulled you back—as if some great
distraction caught all of your attention.
*
You wobbled in your flight—looked down,
and in that looking, plummeted to the ground
where you began to peck at the same square
of terrain you’ve pecked at for centuries—
pecking at all those places that hurt. There are
a thousand holes in that well-trodden ground.
Don’t you think it’s gotten a bit obsessive?
*
Perhaps there comes a time to leave it all alone,
to unhook from those tethers of the mind,
and send the mad logician home.
No more need to try so hard to relieve ourselves
of the ache of being a single dancing body
in a World Soul- or the body of the world
dancing in a singular soul.
*
I saw you in the sky yesterday—your wings
spread out to the edges of eternity. And now, I will bring you
the golden feather that dropped from your wing.
I will remind you not to look back.
KING TIDE
Every year the king tides come
long and strong against the coastlines—
the full spring moon pushing behind
towering swells and sheets of spray.
*
Something in me is drawn close—
closer than is safe. Something in me
wants to take that wave inside me
like a gong and let it wash away
all the debris—to be filled with the sheer
open roar of white noise.
*
I think there are angels
who line the arcs of these waves—
there is a taste of heaven in this tide—
some lust for the shoreline
some promise of the mortal press,
the union of water and land—
the hard and soft, this holy third thing
that is created here—
a breath we long to breathe.
*
Something in the sheer pounding force
shows me there are powers far greater
than my small mind that seems to find
so many threads in the weave to pick at.
For now the waters rush up the riverbeds
that usually flow down to the sea—here,
there is an insistence on the fluid forces
that reshape us, either little by little
or in a flood, in widening gyres.
*
Yes, how the life we lived
a decade ago is now a distant song—
a set of waves we catch glimpses of
in dreams— poems from old lovers,
fireflies through windows, cedar and lilac
on summer wind, fresh honey on the tongue—
all these notes that plummet us
into the cave of memory.
But this is not us anymore.
*
We are like crustaceans who must leave
one home for another or die—
and we are so vulnerable in between.
And yet, this is what is here—
these moving shifting currents of time,
the blossoming faces of loved ones,
the strange unexpected mysteries
that arrive at our doorsteps
when we least expect them.
*
And so I turn to the King Tides
and say yes, take all the old versions
of me back to the sea— for I am ready
for this new shape of myself—
the one who is riding in on this full moon,
while the calla lilies bloom on river banks
and owls cry the night open
and the angels ride on the backs
of the King Tide to re-make us again.
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
TEMENOS
Come to the dream temples
where the gods of healing live—
Where the snakes of our primal knowing
flow up from the center of the earth
where our own lungs are filled
with the breath of Dreams
that show us the way
our center is connected
to the navel of the world.
*
Incubate a dream ~
call it to you with your attention
let your body become the vessel
for the Great Dreamer
who casts a net into the stars
to catch the one golden fish
that will speak the language
of our soul, our own particular myth.
*
For though in these times
so much seems impossible—
the reach of the Dreamer
is infinite. And as day dreams
and night dreams weave their tapestry—
we see that all that is falling away,
all that is breaking down at the end
of empire is becoming
the fertile soil of the garden.
*
It is so easy to give up.
It is so easy to have blind hope.
But what is awakening
is some deeper medicine—
the way under the cities you can
feel the river of fire running.
The way underneath the structures
of modernity you can hear
the web of roots speaking.
The way you can see
the bonfires of the future lit
on the shores of this now.
*
Come to the Dream Temples.
Incubate a Dream for the great waves
of generations to come. See them
flowing out from this birthplace—
right here, from this pregnant moment.
©LauraWeaver
Meeting Eros
Because after the snow and the rain
the redwing blackbird trills in the cattails
and the song of the inner life is born again.
And from out of our dark caves
we stumble and call to each other
wondering what has been transformed
in the winter months and who will now emerge.
We are like bears bounding
out of the mountain, slightly bewildered
blinking in the bright new light,
ravenous for the world.
*
This is eros unleashed—
the seduction of apple blossoms –
petals raining on wet fertile earth,
hummingbirds unzipping the cerulean sky,
the glint of streamflow and bare skin.
How the full moon pours Maylight
upon our upturned faces,
and the breezes carry the scent of longing
and melancholy, lilac and the spice
of all that is greening.
*
We have died a thousand times
and been reborn for this.
To lie back, even for a moment,
into the arms of the world—
to meet eros in every turn –
to be courted by you who stirs
the inner waters and tears apart
the old husks. Yes, you
who makes us want to eat fire
and lay down in every meadow.
*
We have been waiting for your arrival
and now you are here,
no longer a Stranger, but a Storm--
you, who strikes the bell of awakening,
so the whole body rings out
with Delight.
©LauraWeaver
LauraWeaver.org
Down in the Roots
All of our life we are taught
to spread our wings like Icarus—
to fly as high as we can towards the sun.
Such is the way of a world
full of transcendent gods.
*
The other day I climbed a thousand-year-old
bristlecone pine, felt my small body nested
in her wise branches. For a long while
I sat amongst her coiling roots
pushing up from hard earth,
a labyrinth within the mountainside.
*
We yearn endlessly for the infinite above us
when we are tapdancing on the cathedral
of the infinite just beneath our feet.
How the underland teems with conversations
we forget to listen to. The electric network
of mycelium, the rivers of magma, the tangle
of rootlets, the flowing dark aquifers.
All of these voices speaking.
*
What is it that your heart wants?
This is the question that sings from beneath.
Beyond the bright lights of the upper world.
Beyond the habit of endless activity.
What is it that your heart really wants?
*
And what is it to grow the tree of our souls
with equal attention to the roots as to the branches?
©Laura Weaver
from the upcoming book The Pearl Sutras
Sing Back the Light
Because you have gone diving
into the darkness, explored the cracks
deep in the earth and swam
in the underground rivers of your soul….
*
Because you have traversed
the tunnels between worlds
to find your own heart’s pulse and longing….
*
Because you have written story after story
for lifetime after lifetime
and arrive here, now–quaking
in your naked truth.
*
Because you have walked through
fierce fires and watched parts
of yourself turn to ash—
*
Because you have alchemized your wounds,
metabolized your grief, and danced your love,
against all odds, in the midst of ferocious storms.
*
Because you have planted seeds
in the still heart of winter
and believed in the harvest
when you could see no signs of life.
*
Because you are a divine lover of the fertile dark,
and the Beloved mystery–and know the way
she teaches us to see with the inner eye—
and trust our inner compass.
*
Because you have the courage
of the first morning star….
*
Sing back the light.
*
Sing back the light
to the places that have forgotten—
sing back the light
to the places that are numb
*
Sing back the light
to all that has been desecrated
and abandoned
sing back the light
to the desperate and hungry ones
*
Sing back the light for the ancestors
who encircle us, whispering
instructions while we sleep
*
Sing back the light
to our children’s children’s children
who remind us –everything is at stake
*
Sing back the light
at this time of Holy Revelation
*
Sing back the light
that heals the wounds of separation
*
Sing back the light—because tonight
the whole world says—
I am tired,
will you stay with me
when the flame flickers
in the darkest moments of this passage?
*
Sing back the light–
because you are the medicine
the new world is thirsting for–
because you are a star traveling
at the speed of love–
because you wear the wings
of the Dove who takes flight now
in the darkest hour.
*
Sing back the light,
because we are a mighty forest
growing up through scorched ground—
Yes, we are the seeds
that open with just this kind of fire.
*
Sing back the light
because your song ignites my song
and the chorus is a swelling ocean of Awakening—
and we are just beginning
to hear our own roar.
*
Sing back the light
because this is how we remember—
this is how we remember ourselves
past this ending
into the beginning –
*
For in the beginning
there was the Word
there was the Song
and we are here now
to sing ourselves Home.
*
Sing back the light!
©Laura Weaver
Drinking Starlight
In December, starlight pours
through the body like wine.
Long nights wrap around us—
a few hours of daylight,
a blink of the sun’s eye on the body—
and then back to the down and in
hibernation time.
*
Here, there is an inner fire that burns—
a stoking that can only happen
when the blaze of summer gives way
to velvet darkness, to the breath
of silence, to the wings of the sky
dropping feathers over earth.
*
All that once flowed up and out
of the trunk into the leaves, now flows
down and into the roots. And all that
lives below in the underland is finally
filled and revitalized. The rivers
under the rivers. The seas under the seas.
The mountains under the mountains.
The heart beneath the heart.
*
This is where the wanderer goes now.
Here, is the wildest territory
we could ever discover. Trackless.
A place where no map can guide.
Here we find the ancient handprints
of our ancestors on cave walls
reaching through time, reaching.
Here we find the paintings of horses
running across stone in the glow
of our own inner light.
*
In this place, the sound of a single
tone is enough to feast on—for all
is spun back to its essence. In these days
we hum a song strung from the notes
between the notes. We write stories
that live between the lines of narrative.
We dream with dark matter.
We lean into. Listen into.
*
In winter, the starlight pours
into the body like wine. Drink deeply—
for our very lives depend on it.
~Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
All Soul's Day
Tonight the ancestors circle close
and candles flicker between worlds
where souls pass to and fro.
I have heard them coming and going
murmuring prayers, humming songs
that come from the center of the earth.
*
There are those who tend the portals
through time. There are those who dwell
in the canyons, caves, and lakes
who sing the whole world into being
again and again. There are those who
sit around the hearth fire at the center
of the universe and weave the next story.
There are those who hold the drumbeat
through the rise and fall of empire.
There are those who
know that death is a doorway
and life a continuum.
*
Tonight the ancestors circle close—
and we who have forgotten how
to tend the holy are being asked to remember.
To clear the patterns that have twisted
the essence of our lineage. To make amends.
To bring honey and balm to the places
in ourselves that have carried
wounds and atrocities.
To call down the blessings of the line
that reimagines itself through our living.
*
For in our bones we know how to listen
for the true names of things—
how to quicken the relationship between
our hearts and the heartbeat of the forest—
just by paying attention.
How to notice that when we truly see,
we are also being seen
by the eyes of the mountain.
In our bones, we know how
to awaken the sleeper within.
*
Some say all the pains of the world,
all the great imbalances of our time
come from the restlessness
of the unrecognized ancestors—
from the reckoning that will haunt us
until we look into the Great Mirror
and see ourselves as one in a long line
of beings spiraling through eternity.
Until we see ourselves as ancestors
who tend the generations we cannot yet know.
*
For we too will pass in and out of bodies—
through the hallways of time—
and be called upon by our grandchildren’s
grandchildren to light the way
for a little while with a lantern
the size of the moon. We will be asked
about the magic of old—that most exquisite
ordinary magic of seasons and light and seeds.
*
Tonight, the ancestors circle close
and the fires speak in their tongue.
Lay the table with marigold and pomegranate,
with scarlet leaves, seed pods and pumpkin.
For together we are already dreaming
the next year’s arc. Together
we are already dreaming
the world to come.
~Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
©Laura Weaver
Deep Time
Will you plant seeds
in the empty dirt lots
for the generations you will never see?
Will you reach through deep time
and touch the fingertips of cave dwellers
drawing horses on the walls in ochre?
Will you re-wild the desecrated spaces
that have forgotten the ways they were
once adorned with necklaces of praise?
Will you go to the sacred springs
to drink the wise waters
that run from glaciers to tongue?
Will you breathe the breath
of the original tides back into the oceans
that no longer know how to sing?
Will you put your ear to the voices
in the layers of canyon stone
that have been unheard for eons?
Will you lay naked by the high country lake
in the jewelbox of paintbrush
and make love to the ancient sun?
Will you recognize the quantum
entanglements that live between you
and Venus and the perseid showers?
Will you make kin with the bristlecone pine
and taste the blue sap of she who has stood
a thousand years guarding this valley?
Will you dream back the vast canopies
of the rain forest that once burned
when the world had forgotten its true name?
Will you plant seeds
that will remember you
when you are gone?
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
White Kites
with great love, for David who flew on on August 14, 2021
*Note: A kite is a raptor, similar to a hawk
We walk barefoot over warm earth—
you with a walking staff, leaning into me
for balance. Through the just plowed fields,
under the old fence, across the low sway
of stream trickling, because drought
has been on the land for years now.
What it is to love and pray in these times
that the ancient ones have sung about,
have prophesied, for centuries.
*
And now, these days are here, and we are here.
And as we stand in the burnished summer fields
of waist high golden grass and chicory,
as we speak of the presence of illness
in both of our bodies, of what it is to live
with the ally of death on our shoulders—
of how we feel the pulse of the divine life force
pumping through every cell of our beings –
first one white kite*, then another,
and then a third converge above us
in a holy trinity—like the triple spirals
in the Celtic lands of our ancestors.
*
They cry out, they swoop and dive and circle
in this dance of three—like you and me
and the holy spirit—and a doorway
between worlds opens. And their wings
catch the light in rainbows, carve the air,
and their cries seem to say to us—
there is no death, there is no death—
there is only this miraculous arrival
here in the center, here in the communion of Now,
here where two or more hearts gather
in my name— in the name of the Great Love
that weaves through our bodies and beyond.
*
And I know then that no matter
where our destinies take us,
no matter how long each of us has
in these mortal temples—
that this communion is eternal
and that we will always find each other
in the doorway where the three kites fly—
our feet in the soft dust,
our faces lifted in awe.
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
Diving for Pearls
The way, within us, the grit
forms the pearl. You know how this goes.
First the irritation. Something is not right!
And then the way we learn to soothe—
to grow something new from the seed
of what agitates.
*
The way the sting
can be a medicine. Or a toxin
an intoxicant that reveals
the God inside. Or the piercing
the entry place for a new song.
*
Dive into that sweet ocean within
and find the treasure boxes
spilling over with pearls!
Bless the grit
that brings forth
your own magic.
from the upcoming book “The Pearl Sutras”
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
The Kiss
God kissed me in the night
and I felt a quickening~
as if tulips burst through
the dark soils of me.
It was so simple, such a delight!
It brought sweet laughter for all
the pain I think I’ve endured.
***
The soul doesn’t see it this way!
It’s all about the quickening.
What will remind the seed
that it has other places to go!
What reminds the flower
In its time that it can fall back
to earth and rest, and this is no failure!
When did we invent death as a failure?
*
Perhaps all of our lifetimes
we have been seeking immortality
when we have been immortal all along.
This body, sweet mercy, this temple
that allows the soul to shapeshift
into a thousand forms of creation.
This is god’s delight.
We run from our own horizon
because we think it is the end of us!
And it is!
And then the horizon moves on.
from the upcoming book "The Pearl Sutras"
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
Hand Over Hand
*Dedicated with love to all of us in these transformational times of Covid and beyond....
Sometimes we need a hand up—
when we have fallen from the wagon, face first
in the mud—when we are down deep in the belly
of despair. When the dark night of the soul
has its grip and we cannot see our way
through an endless fog.
*
Sometimes we need a hand up
when we are quaking in the corner
of our worst fears realized, when death
and abandonment sit at our table,
when we are in the hold of an ache
that seems to have no end.
*
Sometimes we need a hand up
when the unmet children in us
are crying in the corner, running ransack
through the cupboards looking
for something to eat. Or when the adolescents
ones take the car and nearly drive
off the edge of a cliff. Or when the older ones of us
stand aloof in judgement, behind the stacks
of stories we have built around us.
*
Sometimes we need a hand up
when the storm clouds gather
and it rains for days and floods
all of our streets at once. When
we are tumbling in the heavy surf of confusion,
when we are caught in the riptides
of our own soul and can’t find the shoreline.
*
Sometimes we need a hand up
when we have convinced ourselves
that we don’t need each other,
when the Ace of Blame and the Queen
of Righteousness are passed
around the circle. When we cannot
stop and see we are each at the table
with our own set of cards.
*
Sometimes we need a hand up.
*
In heaven, which is here, which is now—
we feed one other. We see this muddy, tear-stained One
in front of us as a version of ourselves on another day.
We reach our hand out, cast no stones, no shame.
We come close enough to whisper, I am with you.
*
In heaven, there is no need for fixing of saving—
for all must find their way. And yet, together
we make the way, knowing we each fall
and stand, we each carry and are carried.
So when the darkest part of the night Howls,
when our own demons rattle our walls--
together we sing, together we find the songlines.
And in the dawn, when the sun washes us clean
with new sight, we share in this Feast of Grace.
*
And when it is our moment to Fall—
we know this Hand of God will reach to us,
and that there is no shame in reaching back.
For this God of Generosity --that looks out
from our human eyes--makes pathways
where there were only walls,
makes a caravan of beauty in boarded up towns
of old wounds, makes miracles in times of drought.
**
And in the light of this gaze, water springs
from the cold stone we had given up on—
and we simply fill our one sacred cup from the fount,
pass it around the circle and drink,
knowing there is more than enough for all.
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org
Bones of Belonging
You’ve been in this love affair for quite some time.
But still, you don’t trust god won’t walk out the back door
or trade you out for another lover when your shine wears off!
*
How many times do you need to hear I love you
before you believe it? How many times do you need to feel
the press of flesh against yours to know you are wanted?
*
How many times are you going to call god an unfaithful lout
when you are wandering along through the lonely moors
or trudging through thick mud in the jungle—feeling abandoned?
*
If the Beloved were here, if s/he really loved me—you mutter—
s/he’d save me from all of this. Oh no, the Beloved says—
you can’t get away with that kind of game any longer.
*
Listen, the Beloved says, I made a vow to you an eternity ago
and I’ve been shouting it from every mountain top ever since.
But you have put your hands over your ears—and cried out—
I can’t find you anywhere!
*
It is as if you have hidden the Beloved in your blindspot
and believed the myth of your own exile.
But now the Beloved sneaks up behind you
and pulls you into an embrace that is bigger than all that.
*
Now the Beloved says—breathe, my love,
and feel the bones of your true belonging.
Let the lodestones you thought you had to carry
to pay some ancient debt— simply fall away.
*
And you look up into the shining eyes of the one
who has always claimed you and say, I see now—
you made your vow and I’ve been hedging my bets.
*
You look up into the shining eyes of the Beloved
and realize you have tried to bargain for safety
when all along your heart has longed to ring out
with its unfettered devotion.
*
You look into the shining eyes of the Beloved and say,
Alright then. I am here. I’m all in. This is my vow.
And the keys in the lock turn—and the doors
to beauty open and the morning sings a ballad
for star-crossed lovers, finally found.
©Laura Weaver
LauraWeaver.org