I Cannot Go to Church Today

Brilliant post calling to the feminine to rise. I mean feminine in both genders.

Singing Over My Bones

At this point in my life, church has me jacked up——-The role that patriarchy has played in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and its dominion over the world is indignant and needs to be explored by not only women, but men. If you practice ANY of these religions and have not done the hardy work of understanding how patriarchy has helped in silencing, erasing, and controlling women- this is a call to do just that.

Women complicit in the pain and wounds that patriarchy subjugates on other women are abundant, especially those who participate in these religions (many religious women unintentionally support their own cages). Therefore, we must do this hard work alone, because sadly, folks are too comfortable to make changes that can benefit women.

So, let me speak some truth to the nature of the feminine wisdom. For far too long, women have been made to…

View original post 737 more words

Seven Years Later….

Writing from the heart makes other hearts beat.

true life hot mess mom

I still miss my mom. At 3:15 pm, on August 9th, 2011, my mom took her last breath.

I probably should have a better way to cope with this day, which trust me, I am doing great compared to the first few years. But I hate that this day looms over me. We celebrate her life on her birthday and on Mother’s Day, but on this day, I don’t know what to do really.

This is the time of year where we are all getting back to school. Today was our convocation for the district. Went to lunch with my bestie, then worked on my classroom for a few hours. Got home and continued my normal duties.

I didn’t really talk about it. I mentioned it a few times but I never got to share what was really on my heart. Like how I stare at her picture and look…

View original post 291 more words

letter to a friend lost in doubt

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com

We have all been there

In the fog

No judgement here

I watch you struggling for clarity

Arguing against solutions

Your mouth opens and shuts in concert with your mind

Your fabulous questing mind now steeped in confusion

Refusing the light you no longer trust

But I tell you, my friend

Everybody suffers

Everybody falls

You were not singled out for crucifixion

You believe because you are brilliant life should be easier

The path smooth

The benefactors lining up

But even the greatest minds struggle to convince the mob of the mountaintop

I tell you, dear friend

Disappointments are the chaff of life

The potholes on the exhausted common

The road less travelled is steep and hard and you will stumble and fall

If you are honest you will admit you chose the climb over the plane

When you were young and vigorous and full of energy

You donned your intellectual armour and charged your visionary steed

And off you rode

Alone

Full of optimism and certainty

Bravely charting unexplored psychological terrain

Now you feel betrayed and unsupported and rail against the gradient

I am sorry you are exhausted

I am sorry no-one sees what you do

But I am even sorrier that you cannot see how far you’ve come

This plateau where you catch your breath is shrouded in fog

And hiding in this miasma you tell yourself stories

Of deceit, betrayal, lies and liars

But these enemies, real or imagined, are cycling their small lives in the valley below

Collaring their neighbours with exaggerated tales of an imagined view

Do not populate the plateau with their ghosts

When the fog lifts the light will dissolve their phantoms

And you will rise again

Alone

The mountaintop is calling you

Heed her siren song

Ignore these doubts that circle your sanity like vultures

Think of the sun, my friend, still shining behind the fog

And reach for her

I know you are tired

I know failure creeps into your bones like ague

I know you have lost all hope

But this slow saturation will drown you in spiralling conversations that drag you down

You rail against the solitude of the climb, the lack of applause

But at the top you will see rising suns, waning moons, traversing stars and God

And when you return to the valley shining and star-dusted

You will bring the universe to the doubters

Who will creep from their burrows and ask you about the sun

Even your enemies will balm your singed wings, Icarus

And some may even make the climb themselves

Inspired by you

Stand now

The longer you sit here swathed in dragon’s breath 

The harder it will be to find the path

You will stiffen and grow moss

Fuse into stone and become footfall for someone else’s climb

Be brave

Facing the light is hard

The sudden blinding glare reveals both loss and hope

The mountains become molehills, the lions merely moles

These monsters looming large in the fog are phantoms

You say nobody understands the danger you are in

And to an extent you’re right

Nobody  sees your monsters but you

Reclaim your sanity, dear friend, and stand

Clarity of mind is fearful in its revelation

But dragon’s breath is death by another name

Rise, dear friend, and resume the path

There really is nowhere else to go but up.

 

 

While You’re Warm

Wonderful writing! Wonderful writer. Follow Follow Follow

🖤 Steph's Poetry and Such🖤

Hearts learning sparks
connected miles away.
Linked in time
Something fanned the flame.
Deepest secrets shared
without the blame.
In the night we
felt alive with nothing to gain.

With you I know myself,
I’ve found my way.
A loyalty to trust,
death couldn’t separate.
I’ll keep the scent of you even through the rain.
And while your body moves I’ll keep a hold tight.

Once broken hearts,
welded together,
Never the same.
The weight of time can’t touch the desire we’ve caged.
And we’ll dig our grave together,
In this life we reign.
King and Queen,
Our frontier… two entertain.

Most……… blow through the embers,
We ignite the blaze
Breaking grounds for years we’ve lived against the grain.
Breathing half a breath,
When you’re gone away.
And while your touch is coarse I’ll keep a hold tight.

You took my hand, linked footsteps and together we turned away.
Stirring…

View original post 141 more words

Like a River.

fabulous poet!

🖤 Steph's Poetry and Such🖤

She is searching for herself,
like a river for the ocean,
through the canyons of the
Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Twisting in the Lilies
of the Caledonian Forest.
In golden sways of countryside she pours.

She is searching for herself,
all the while creating meaning,
’round every bend and
down each avenue explored.

Rushing down the valley,
In rings and ripples,
Her hand-built galley,
she serenades through babbling brooks
she freely forms.

She is searching for herself,
for she hears, “Happiness you find.”
But what she didn’t realize yet is
they’re already intertwined.

Gently she curves,
with the movements of the meadows,
stirring earth with a
calming gentle touch.

Every sandbank, every riverbed,
is shaped by her settling sediment,
rocks smoothed flat as paper
in her clutch.

She is searching for herself,
so some parts she leave beyond.
But as a reminder she breaks pieces off,
Turns that water into ponds.

View original post 294 more words

Twelve Years a Slave

via Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Last night I watched Twelve Years a Slave. It has taken me until mid-morning to process my responses. Horror, certainly. Rage, of course. But most surprisingly – fear.

I’ll come back to that.

But first the inevitable questions. Had I been alive in the 1800s and privileged enough to be wealthy would I have treated people who worked for me with such disgraceful cruelty and indifference? Had I been a slave would I have turned a blind eye to the cruelty and evil of the white landowners? Would I have behaved any differently than Solomon when my freedom finally arrived and I took it and left my suffering friends behind? Could I have whipped a co-worker when ordered to by an insane master and his psychotic wife?

I hope not. But I don’t know. Mercifully I’m not morally compromised. Or am I?

Would I have harboured Jews in Nazi Germany? Would I now take in Syrian refugees if  they turned up on my doorstep? Do I really listen to the case for disenfranchised Palestinians? Do I penalise Alabama for taking away a woman’s right to determine what she is allowed to do with her own body? Do I publicly condemn Saudi Arabia for its mass public executions and its inhumane treatment of women? Do I speak up against racism and misogyny wherever I find them, including in my own back yard right next to the blue bird of escapism? Do I dare admit that our current crop of leaders in Australia are manipulating me with the usual fare – blame, misinformation and the threat of poverty? Yes to that. I voted Greens and proudly so.

But how many of us succumb to the convenience of societal blame and prejudice? It’s easier to go along with the mob. And let’s be honest, it’s tiring to be forever arguing with your friends.

On a broader scale who apart from Sir David Attenborough is consistently speaking up for the planet? Even those of us who agree are still using more plastic bags than we need, still driving when we could walk, still buying crap we don’t need, still ignoring the widening fiscal divide between rich and poor and still thinking someone else is going to fix everything for us. Please don’t think I’m discrediting the small and consistent efforts made by average people. It makes a huge and cumulative difference and kudos to everyone who takes their own bags to do the shopping and to the people who refuse plastic straws and cutlery and to the many small cafes who now only use recyclable flatware and cutlery.

But back to Twelve Years a Slave and my final concern – fear.

If the cruelty of the slave owners was pocketed to a few psychotic people I would say they were just lunatics like the Ted Bundys and Adrian Baileys of this world but this insanity and racism was endemic. People genuinely believed the slaves had no rights and were somehow inferior.  So my fear is that somewhere ingrained in the human psyche is a tendency to self-serve and ignore the needs and pain of others, including the earth, animals and nature. We are all so frustrated and unhappy with our lives that we blame with impunity. But what is it that we lack?

I believe we lack purpose.

I believe humanity has a flawed universal view. A new friend I met here recently commented that the universe is connected and that everything depends on everything else for balance. I agree and it disturbs me that humanity has this wall-building mentality and sense of segregated entitlement. This us and them belief system is antithetical to reality. In truth we are ONE in a grand and impactful sense and nations and religions claiming authority based on divine information or superior wealth are cutting their people off from the universal nourishing mainstream.

There is an old saying “One hundred and forty-four angels dancing on the head of a pin”. I used to puzzle at its meaning. Now I understand it to mean that energy and ideas take up no space and where there is an absence of fear and an absence of entitlement and an absence of segregation there is room for everyone to not only coexist but dance.

Collectively and individually we suffer from a feeling that we are not allowed to dance. We feel locked out of life and locked out of privilege. Our over-arching belief is that wealth will grant us the right to ‘dance” freely and without inhibitions. But first we must attain wealth and to do so we happily enslave others to increase productivity and gorge our bank accounts. But wealth leaves us feeling even more impoverished because our feet are not moving and our dance is dormant.

By DANCE I mean to express ourselves authentically, not in the brace of familial or national identity or hobbled by religion or buoyed up by insane wealth, but in direct connection with a flow of energy that informs our souls of a more enduring reality than our little span on earth.

My fear is that until people find authentic expression they will continue to abuse others in their desperation to feel good about themselves.

We ALL coexist on the head of a pin and we must all learn to dance. The pin is the earth.

We cannot continue to carve up the earth – into nations, races, religions and cultures. We cannot keep convincing ourselves that one race or another is superior to any other. We are ALL dancing on the same earth. We are all interconnected as our planet spins and spirals through a divinely organised network of energetic pathways so magnificently orchestrated that there is room for all to dance. If just one star or galaxy behaved in the destructive self-serving way humanity behaves all would collide and die.

I believe we have little time left to dissolve our differences and focus on saving our beautiful planet from extinction. By hording wealth we can never spend in a lifetime and depriving others of the most basic necessities like clean water, food, a roof over their heads and education, we are dancing dangerously close to the edge. By continuing to trash our planet we are risking extinction.

It is our relationship to money that must first be examined and deconstructed. Then we must look at our relationship with the universe. Look at the stars and know therein lies our ultimate destiny. The night sky shows us infinity abstracted into the physical. At the centre of every galaxy there is a black hole that will ultimately consume the temporary physical world. But the energic one will endure. The energetic world dances in and out of consumption and expression and does not miss a beat. Consider what you will take with you when you die. It won’t be your wealth. It will be your dance.

Twelve Years a Slave exemplified and magnified the worst characteristics of a society run by fear and sanctioned by a government that allowed greed. My fear is that we have not learned the lessons of the past and that prejudice and blame lie dormant beneath the patina of political correctness. We are reigned in only slightly by moderators who call us out when we blame certain races or cultures for our own lack of surefootedness and the issues inherent in the possession of two left feet.

And now a plea to the rich. To anyone in possession of more than $100million you are committing a crime against humanity. You have the opportunity, the means and the obligation to disseminate your excess wealth amongst the poor in a responsible and focused manner. To whit, you should build housing estates with vegetable gardens and clean water and enable the poorest of us to pursue dreams just as you have. They are slaves to the broader community and deprived of opportunities to express themselves as articulately and artfully as you and me and all of us who are not struggling just to survive.

But of course I am aware that anyone with more money than they know what to do with is unlikely to be reading my blog. For now. However, when my musicals take off worldwide and my books start to sell you will listen to me. And I will plead with you to make a difference.

And I caution myself in advance that if and when I too, have a sizeable bank account I must put my money where my heart is and make a difference to those who need it most.

In the meantime it’s back to the barre.

 

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

About

via About

Connected Universe -The possibilities of existence

Love this!

Simon's Space

This post is another one of my big thinking posts, a lot of it is about how my thinking around creation / religion and God had changed. Don’t get me wrong here, there are no answers to this and it’s likely I never will find the answers but generally I’m talking about observation of the universe and how this affects us.

Now you’re wondering what on Earth I’m on about… so let me explain. I guess it starts with my upbringing, it was kind of complex and let’s leave it at that but basically I had two parents from two different religious points of view telling me how the world was and God / Jesus and it and things like astrology and the belief in our connection with the natural world or the universe is complete trash.

I accepted and defended this view for many years because as a kid…

View original post 627 more words