Sacred dreams
In the Saturday mailbox . . .
Emily Dickinson was born 192 years ago on this day in Amherst, Massachusetts (1830)
. . . as we investigate, with compassion, the bias and societal conditioning we each carry from the dominant culture we live in [our] awareness grows toward creating safe and welcoming spaces for diverse others. . . [We seek to] build meaningful community, and realize the truth, joy, and freedom of our collective belonging. – after Tara Brach.
Tara's perspective is one which is the antithesis of many of our (even globally) politicians captured by and promoting an ideology rooted in fear and conflict.
Guess what? You’re a mystic . . . . . a mystic is someone who has a direct encounter with the sacred. That’s you. In your moments of watching the sky and watching TV, eating a delicious meal or changing a diaper, making tea and making love, the sacred and the ordinary are braided together.
. . . Without minimizing the grief, challenges, and fear that these difficult times are inviting into our lives, we can view the inevitable meltdowns unfolding in our personal and collective reality as opportunities to let go of outdated belief systems, reassess our spiritual lives and re-emerge, again and again. – Mirabai Starr
Wrapped in a Witch Dreaming
This long fall sings Halloween songs / to the witch of November who sleeps yet.
Dreaming of death, she wonders / at the sensation of awakening.
Hear her there breathe whispers of last leaves falling thru pine.
Enchantment by grey-green fog-breath:
Sop-wet, yellow-maple-high-tide-storm-tossed commuters
chatter, confused by the sudden rush of midday warmth.
The air, sticky with every conceivable thing, / enshrouds a still hopeful mother
peering into the crowd for the child / who has yet to discover she is missing.
Exactly one-half-mile away / island young spruce stand in a sacred circle
beneath a sentinel – like school children
wrapt in their listening to some sleepy-hollow legend.
— by James Allen Bethel, Poetry Quarterly, Fall 2021, Prolific Press (2022)