"Durga"

 

"Durga"

Durga is the primal feminine goddess who was called into existence from the source when the battle between the gods and the demons was all but lost to the demons.  When suddenly, the gods said to themselves, "Oops, we need the manifest feminine, it is the only way if we are to have a chance and win this battle"... And so she came into existence from the source of all creation endowed with all the attributes and powers of the gods, but she came riding into existence on a tiger, with power and love unparalleled.  She defeated the demons with ease and grace, between each one she slew she rested more and more deeply into her love of the truth, into the essence of who she was and from she came.

She is a great teacher to us about demon-slaying, about the power of love, what we love most, for her it was Truth, no demons stood a chance.

She came into focus for me in a dream about a week or so ago, and knowing consciously nearly nothing, other than she was a powerful Hindu goddess, today I looked up, and I understood!  I understood, she is the power we, I need to sum up to battle in our depths, our most fearsome demons.

"Filling the chalice"

 

Smoozing: Quan Yin, Laxmi, Tara

"Guardian of the heart"

 

Even here

 

I am falling into the gravity at the center of my heart

having returned to the landscape 

crevices and gullies of old wounds.

Now I occupy

the abandoned shadows.

My shoulders drop

there is new space for air to flow inward

rib basket expanding

belly owning her round space

generating the impulse

for roots to delve more deeply into the earth.

Even here where she weeps

even here in old mining country

where the pain beneath my feet

is so palpable

where earth and women were violated

"las estacadas" left to bleed out

in the name of honor and religion.

Even here where nightly bomb blasts 

rattle windows and nerves

in the belief that they are blasting holes in the sky

through which the Virgen can descend.

The goddess of my heart 

the one who visits me in dreams

flies through the night sky of her own volition

blessing the land and its people 

with sacred water and amber.

So, even here, my feet touching the ground

enter into a conversation

a resonance with the disturbed mantle.

I know I have been called upon 

to drum to chant voice her pain

and do my best to weave gossamer threads

through the rifts, wounds, and scars

below our feet, here.

—Lorena

"Gathering acorns"

 

el cantar de nuestros cantares

En las ranuras de la tierra que somos 

resplandece el caracter que nos regalan los años

los amores, las decepciones

las vivencias y las tragedias que nos tocan inevitablemente.

La cara limpia, lavada, sin máscaras 

comparte al mundo los secretos que tanto necesita 

del vivir tocando los celajes más delicados y exquitos

y de caer al abismo sin aire

de sobrevivir y luego volver a caminar y cantar

el cantar de nuestros cantares.

—Lorena Wolfman 

I exist

 "I exist".  This image came from a very deeply felt painful and moving experience of holding my heart, listening to my heart with deep attention.  My heart spoke, she said "I exist" with all her soul intelligence, with all her life experience, so often doubted, so often ignored, so often made less of... but her voice, was very tender and clear, "I exist". 

This took me into a very dark place, as though the emotional weight of discounting and ignoring heart were pouring over me... Growing up my mother had such a guarded heart, my father had such a forgotten and shy heart, they could not model for me what it was to give heart her full-bodied acknowledgment.  Nor was it part of the culture. The particular intellectual culture that doubted spirit and soul, that had no words for speaking of it.  

Though I give my mother great credit for her search, as an anthropologist, looking far and wide, looking into the her-story of history, looking to the soul poetry of the Navajo, yet not fully able to own it, though it was what perhaps moved her most deeply, but not being able to own it, she could not let on that she knew my heart-soul existed.  I felt I could die so many times growing up.  Heart untouched, untended to in so many ways, pain ignored because it was too overwhelming and there were no words, no one knew how to hug. I learned how to years later and taught my mother to hug.

When I would break down on occasion, unable to put on a brave face any longer, it was my father's tender heart who came to me with a kind word summoned forth from his tender heart.  But mostly he was absent from the time I was 9 or 10 onwards (though his workaholism began sooner), when I had no idea where he was, in town, out of town, in the country, out of the country. 

After my father's death, there were people who worked closely with him that said they had no idea he had a daughter, though by then he did call me weekly.  From my mother's diaries, I know that my father did not want to have children.  I seem to remember he wanted her to abort.  But as a small child, he was my favorite parent, the one who carried me on his shoulders, the one who took me for A&W Hamburgers and shakes when I was hungry. It makes me very sad to remember how neglected I actually was.  There are pictures of me as a young child, hair unkempt, clothing unkempt... 

Though as a little baby before I learned how to walk, I was so bright.  Such a shining light. My mother said before she died how she wished so dearly she had spent more time brushing my hair, and caring for me. She cared for me in other ways, mostly of the mind, teaching me to write and to read, encouraging me to remember my dreams upon waking.  When I was 4 and 5 we often did yoga together.  So it was not as though there were no resources given, even in the midst of neglect of many material and emotional kinds. My mother struggled a lot with depression, and low self-esteem despite being one of the most articulate and brilliant people I have been graced to know. "They" say, most recently I heard it from Elizabeth Gilbert, that depression covers anger and rage, my mother could not tolerate my anger as she could not tolerate her own anger.  

So my soul heart says "I exist" and I realize that I still struggle to care for my heart emotionally, often over-ride or ignore, just as I was taught by example.  It is a life-long journey... As Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen says, "Life is a practice". And maybe somehow in all of the is the truth of what has been said "wounds are where the doorways are"... some of our greatest gifts are birthed of the wounds...

Reviving the wild heart

 

Homesickness