Grief is hungry It lives in our gut Begging to be fed We try to appease it By feeding it old songs and prayers and memories We try to fill it up With food that the memories bring But grief will not be satiated It greedily hounds us for all manner of things Tears and blood and bones From the depths of our being Soon we are boneless, bloodless ghosts Living on departed hopes and dreams
Grief ebbs and flows, but never really leaves us. No matter how much time has passed, all manner of sensory input can bring it rushing to the surface as raw and fresh as the day our loved one left this mortal coil. Grief is not finite or linear. It’s a process of coping with the aching void that was once filled by a physical being. My heart goes out to all my friends living with the gnawing hunger of grief along with me. ❤️
I rewrote this odyssey. Sometimes I must rewrite things until it is a (somewhat) better reflection of the vision in my head. Thank you for your presence and bearing with me through the adventures of my mind. 🧡
Asherah exhaled. In her eternity of existence as the Queen of Heaven and Holy Consort of El, She had never felt as invisible as She does now. Sighing, she remembered when the people found succor in Them as the cosmic Mother and Father, Bride and Groom, Husband and Wife.
Before there was one god, there was Oneness with Her Yahweh, as She stood side by side with Him in their parallel Universe. He was the Sky, the Unseen Universe and the Celestial Bodies. She was the Trees, the Water, the Roots, Mother Nature and Fertility.
Asherah dreamed. There was a time when She walked with the lion and the ibex and danced in fields with mountain goats, waving golden sheaves of wheat. Laughing, zaftig, abundant, skin of bronze shimmering in the sun.
Asherah cried. Her Sisters needed Her. For She was Love, Nourishment, the Nurturer, the Great Mother of All Living Things. Now She was defiled and ground to powder, her dust scattered over the common graves. She remembered when Her sisters baked and blessed loaves in Her Honor and sang Her name as Athirau-Yammi — She Who Walked Upon The Sea.
Asherah mourned. The balance was gone and the distress of the people was palpable. She watched as the priests destroyed Her peaceful shrines where the women went to spin wool and weave. Her Son, Bright Morning Star harkened to Her side, reminiscing about learning Hokhma from Her by the shores of the Galilee. She recalled when the Women poured out wine to Her and and shared the Asherah bread they blessed with family and community.
The people grieved. After She was forced from their lives, the men pillaged and destroyed, slaughtering women and children, gloating over the spoils of war. The priests had no Feminine guidance, no Sacred Feminine, no priestesses to temper their flames.
The people were bereaved. They no longer burned sweet incense for Her or went to commune with Her on the hilltops of Canaan in fragrant groves of sycamore trees. The women were forced to hide their small, hand-smoothed wooden images of Her, while their husbands brought animal sacrifices to the Temple for the priests. She was torn from them, yet they had revered Her harmlessly and in peace. Without priestesses to guide them, they found comfort in Her imagery, but the priests wanted the King without the Queen, the Father without the Mother, the Groom without the Bride.
Asherah was weary. When the rain fell upon the hills of Canaan, She could hear Her celestial soulmate Yahweh weeping, lamenting Her condemnation and shame. Her beloved El was besot with loneliness, for She was the Wholeness that formed Elohim. El yearned for the people to hold fast to Her Tree of Life once again.
Asherah was hopeful. She saw hidden incarnations of Herself in the Shekhinah, Wisdom, Sophia, the Sabbath Bride and small wooden prayer beads warmed by loving hands. The Queen of Heaven lived on under different names. Her unseen graces were forming a ripple effect, weaving threads of Light between the gaps. Perhaps all was not lost, She thought, as the wind began to whisper through Her branches and pray with the leaves.
Little jagged fragments of awareness keep dropping in Like lost puzzle pieces that keep turning up In the liminal spaces where they were lost In my sleep letters are falling from my mouth Releasing all that is not truth Someone painted a word portrait of me Covered with self-betrayal and doubt The imagery is fading over time I can only see the faintest outlines now
In the Beginning there was God, but not the biblical God of rules forged into steely displays of power, control and might. Before the human ego trip, Divinity was the Sacred Veil of Darkness and the dance of Constellatory Light.
Before there were separations, there was a primordial matrix of Interbeing on the Cosmic Tree of Life. Before there was the God created in the image of man, there was a sentient Nothingness as ancient as eternity, interstellar dust and crystalline meteorites.
Before there was biblical canon, there was a Synergy beyond all constructs of time and birthrights. It was not demanding of Worship, it was an undying Interconnection that had no gender, no features and no end in sight.
Before there was religious dogma, there was Divinity and earthlings made from mud, spirit and pure delight. They were the Yin-Yang rhythm of the Universe merging into a cycle of reap and sow, ebb and flow, dark and bright.
Within the empty spaces of your heart there is a Knowing that has lived for countless generations in the marrow of your bones. Within the void that weighs upon your spirit, there is a wordless melody that sings to the innermost recesses of your infinite soul.
For OLN at dVerse and our host Grace. My inspiration is Msjadeli’s Tao Talk prompt to “write a poem in any form in the vatic voice.”
Crystals reveal site of the 2.229 billion year old meteorite strike — The international team thinks that the grains were part of the interstellar dust that coalesced to form our solar system about 5 billion years ago. The meteorite hit when our planet was covered in ice, and researchers think a cloud of water vapour it threw into the atmosphere could have acted as a greenhouse gas to warm the entire planet.
Oldest material on Earth Discovered — They found dust grains within the space rock that are as much as 7.5 billion years old. The oldest of the dust grains were formed in stars that roared to life long before our Solar System was born.
Impulsive decisions can wreak havoc on your boundary setting and relationships. When you act without thinking, you can contradict the very limit you were attempting to set with someone. This leaves you appearing to negate what you previously said or did for others. Understandably, people will question whether you have integrity or if you can be trusted.
People in today’s world are more impulsive. Many of us react to whatever is seen or said, without pausing to think first. We expect and some of us demand, instant gratification. I see impulsive behaviors on social media, whether it is reactions to posts, posting without thinking and even expecting an instant answer or response through messages. Sometimes people get blocked, ghosted or impulsively cut out of others’ lives.
Impulsivity as a Symptom
Addictive behaviors thrive on impulsivity. This can include people pleasing, social media, along with any type of substance or alcohol…
We’re all familiar with the story of Adam and Eve and their choice to eat the only fruit in the Garden they were told not to eat. By eating the fruit, it is said that Adam and Eve chose to be awakened to dualism — the existence of good vs evil.
After one bite, they were instantly flooded with the awareness of evil, turning their world upside down and sending their sensory systems into shock.
In mainstream religion we are taught that Adam and Eve committed a sin of great consequence by eating the “forbidden fruit.”
I’m not going to reiterate the same old story you’ve heard a gazillion times before. Today I’m going to impart a twist in the storyline that gives us a whole new perspective.
In Kabbalistic interpretation eating the fruit was not the real transgression — eating the fruit in an unholy way, before it was a holy time to do so, was the real transgression they committed.
The Jewish mystics said if they had just waited a few more hours, they could have made a blessing over the fruit on the Sabbath and elevated an act of egotism into the realm of the sacred.
The mystical interpretation provides much food for thought (pun intended).
What is the takeaway we can gain from it? Three things immediately came to mind for me:
Gratitude — In the form of blessing the food we consume versus gulping it down with a sense of entitlement, as Adam and Eve did.
Mindfulness and Self-Control — Versus the impulsivity of instant gratification.
Timing — Is everything as the old saying goes. Adam and Eve were grasping and impatient. They didn’t respect their spirit guides and the sanctity of the process. The Sabbath represents peaceful and hallowed time set aside for spiritual growth and restoration of mind, body and spirit.
All belief systems have sacred times and sacred ceremonies to evoke the sanctity of the moment.
When Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were driven by greed, entitlement and arrogance. The “snake” was their own egos.
They wanted to possess the wisdom of The Divine, but were too immature and flippant to handle it. In the teachings of the Kabbalists, acquisition of spiritual knowledge is fraught with dangers for those who are ill-prepared or motivated by selfish reasons. It’s like mountain climbing, scuba diving or wilderness hiking without knowledge or respect for natural laws and your safety equipment.
The dualistic knowledge of good and evil is a weighty and life-altering understanding. Adam and Eve wanted to evoke a paradigm shift, but their motive was not aligned with the process.
A paradigm shift must be invoked with humility, blessings and reverence.
My Spirit Guides always remind me to approach deeper levels of spiritual knowledge with humbleness and reverence for the journey. We must hold safe and sacred space for the spiritual growth process to unfold when seeking to acquire knowledge from Light and Shadow.
Mother Mary (Maryam) is one of my Guides and Messengers.
My name is Mother Maryam and although I have been depicted as a young maiden, I have existed since the beginning of time in every religion, culture and belief system. You may know me by a different name. I have been perceived as maidenly in outer appearances, but I have always been a Wise Woman Elder on earth and on the celestial plane.
My son is the child of the Divine just as you are.
His father was my beloved husband, Joseph, a wise and humble carpenter of great integrity.
I was a Jewish Prophetess and my son, Joshua, was born with my gift of prophecy. He was also a rabbi with a vision guided by Ruach HaKodesh (The Holy Spirit). He wanted his faith, his culture and the society he lived in to be equitable and progressive, but he never wanted to change who he was. He was Jewish in his identity from birth until death.
My son was a Jewish Mystic who believed in raising our state of consciousness, more than religious rules and dogma. He believed in the “Kingdom within” as the key to our salvation.
He came to deliver the Message that the secret to Salvation was internal (inside yourselves and within humankind), not external. He came to show you your potential and teach you how to save (heal) yourselves and your societies.
He spoke to multitudes, but designed his teachings to speak to people individually at different levels of consciousness.
He wanted people to have faith in their power as Creators and Co-Creators.
He was not a nationalist, he was an inclusionist.
Joseph, Joshua and I were refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants.
After the controversy surrounding my son’s birth, my husband and I fled with our infant son to Egypt. We had to leave our family, our possessions, our homeland and our culture behind. My husband, Joseph, had to leave his work as a carpenter and find work in a foreign land.
My son embraced diversity. His city of birth was in the Middle Eastern region of the Asian continent. We had skin of bronze and were of Middle-Eastern descent.
Due to his upbringing, he respected women as equals and valued their independent personage.
He was a dreamer, a humanitarian and a rebel who fought for the poor, the bullied, the shunned and the displaced people of his time.
I raised him to be who he was as a person. As a struggling family we were proud of our humble roots and our humanitarian beliefs.
He would be labeled a “socialist,” a “left-wing extremist” and a “bleeding heart liberal” today.
He was a Social Justice Advocate and Radical Progressive by all your definitions of those words.
My son’s defining values in the four Gospels were: helping the poor; healing the sick; clothe the naked; feed the hungry; uplift the downtrodden; care for the children; distribute wealth; be mindful of the immigrant and stranger in your land.
His values are eternal and his message remains the same:
“Do not honor me with your lips, when your hearts are far from me.”
Brittle, autumn leaves
Remind me of human hearts
So easily crushed
Chaiku by MW
A sacred space, a place to be, An escape from the summer heat Our souls sit among the clouds As leaves of orange, red and gold Drift down from branches That will soon be as stark As winter’s sleep Brightly they sparkle in the sunlight As we call upon the elements To grant us a season of wholeness After a year of broken things
In their dreams they sleep with the moon Recalling when they were once green Lifeless they fall Returning to the earth Decaying to nurture their mother tree Instead of wishing upon a star today I will wish upon a leaf 🍃🍁🍂
All Beings of the world I am the Great Mother and the Great Father Grandfather Sky and Grandmother Earth Balancing the thin line between the sacred and the profane The world has no borders All such separations are delusions Invoked by false prophets Bringing the Chaos Of the Underworld to The surface of the earth
Your Garden, your Shangri-la, your Nirvana Has been trampled by wicked men Casting salt upon all wounds Turning the fertile soil Into cracked and barren dirt The real prophets are beaten and broken Bleeding into the abyss
Be the Evolution they cry Be the Evolution!! Now is the season of Turning The season of Reclaiming What is Yours
I bow and bend at the knee To an invisible God An absentee God Who may or may not Be listening I bow and bend at the knee Waiting for the God Who will ease my suffering While emptiness fills the air Making it hard to breathe
I bow and bend at the knee Praying to the God Who was only an echo Of words recited so dutifully I bow and bend at the knee Into the absence of oxygen While the eternal silence Taunts me
My heart is a fragile paradise With a gate that is easily broken My soul is a wisp of mystical mist Hovering over rain puddles My spirit is a Blue Moon Wisteria Climbing the trellis to Elysium
I am a raven woman Balancing the veil between worlds Hovering in that liminal space Where the Wheel of the Year Is turning towards winter I stand at the window at night Listening to the otherworld whisper
I am frequently privy To colorful conversations Eavesdropping On snippets of luminance Dripping down From the stars
I am alone, but the room is spirited! Nothingness speaks to me In discordant melodies And speechless symbols Jangling like shiny gold coins In pockets of brilliance
