Already Given

Already Given

We tend a world of smoke and mirrors 

that hold us back from the real.

So tenaciously we attend to personas through which

we will never meet the true self.

What parades as culture is a torture,

keeping us from sleep, 

prodding us with tools of pain,

and unattainable ideals,

twisting our minds,

deceiving our bodies.

We are relentless in our chasing 

of the bells and the whistles,

our heart beats pounding,

faltering, breaking,

as we keep the wheels turning, 

grinding away at the soul,

the soul of the self,

the soul of the world,

the soul of the earth.

Bewildered,

in pain,

afraid.

All of us slaves in our way,

to a false and deceitful master.

Beneath it all the earth breathes, 

deep and slow.

She unfurls the dawn mist 

as the intricate design of a moth's wings,

flutter on my night dress, 

to the serenade of water 

falling through the sky,

collecting to slake our thirst 

and draw up life.

She gives her gifts for free

and they actually nourish, 

they are all we could ever need.

We must remember ourselves as her, 

we must let her be enough again.

We must come to remember anew 

the miracle that each of us are,

as we quake and tremble in our cells 

at this miracle called life,

thrumming, resplendent

in the mere mundanity of our existing.

What might it mean to be generous,

with our breath, 

our love,

our care, 

our pleasure, 

our embodied attendance,

our attuned listening. 

Just to breathe and to hold, 

to sing and to sustain,

to dance our barefooted rhythms 

on the sacred ground.

To listen at the threshold

of Earth's eternal chorus of becoming. 

To know ourselves inside

and to share that with each other. 

Enough.

More, in fact,

than we could ever dream of wanting. 

As though it is the eyes through which we see

that must evolve and eclipse,

so that they are able to behold

what has already been given.

May we break from the trance.

May we grow the eyes to see Her.

May we tend the heartgarden that can know

what it is we truly are.

Already given.

Turn from the smoke screen and slow.

Rip the shackles and fall deep,

deep, deep down,

into the arms

of our true mother.

Words and Image  Copyright  2021

Liminal Becoming

Belonging by Lucy Pierce

I am really struggling to know myself right now. Struggling to locate myself in the world, to meet its insatiable ask. I feel like I want to curl inside a cocoon and wait until I know who I really am, what I really have to give, how it matters that I give that, how to be known for who I am, how to ever be enough. I want to sleep and dream and become something truer, but the asks of mothering and working and of having a personhood, feel daunting and relentless. I am struggling to meet the upside, outside world.

It is not a broken place I find myself in, though I've known my share of those. The felt sense is one of gloaming, where the sensing of what is lost and past is still more pregnant, than that of what is yet to come. There is a tension sometimes, in holding to the unknown spaces, the in between places, that speak of mystery and disintegration and rebirth, in a culture that can so often cling to the known and the certain. It is a practice, to keep letting ourselves die, when it is death that is being asked.

I want to remember a slower, more expressive self, that felt she had something to offer, of image to the void, of word to the silence, of heartfullness to the darkness. But I cannot turn back to her, I must move forward into the unknown of me, however uncomfortable the ask. Right now I feel empty and lost, and unable to belong to a world that is oblivious to the nuances of our time and in that oblivion, feels dangerous, but I remain unknowing of what it might mean to belong in a way that feels true and nourishing to something greater, something that is more fitting and embodied and sustainable and real. 

Sometimes it'
s hard to trust what we thought was growth, when it is in the deathing stage and all the trees have been stripped of their fertile leaves. Hard to trust the journey when it leads us into the brittle, frozen lands of the psyche, trusting that the enlivening thaw will happen, however painful the cold, however slow the turning of that wheel, watching for the drip of the melting ice, trusting that spring will return, that dawn will come again for us, one day. I have lost a layer of false protection and am yet to grow a reciprocal response to the new aliveness that feels almost unbearable, raw and newborn and laid bare to the elements. 

With you as my witness, I invite breath and stillness and courage and deep succour to this inbetween self, that knows not what it means to matter to this world as it stands, what it looks like to live a life that can make a difference, that is a fitting response to the real experience of this life at this time. Not knowing whether to rise or to fall, to fight or to surrender, to cling or to let go, I poise here, softly listening, heartbeat as timekeeper, in breath and out breath as wayshower.

Text and Image Copyright Lucy Pierce 2021