In the past weeks I have shared how some old friend of mine and I are planning a long distance ritual. I also shared the elemental invocations I wrote for the occasion. Well all of this planning has had me puttering around the web, peaking at other rituals and allowed me to stumble on something that resonated with me so strongly that I had to share it here.
Now, these are not my words. I claim no ownership of them, and intend no infringement on any copyright. Simply sharing a piece of it would rob this piece of its power and I hoped that some of you, our readers, might find it as moving as I did when I read it the other day.
Use this poem … a guided meditation of sorts … toc hange your focus from how long, how hard, how impossible the task(s) ahead may seem and instead think of it as giving birth.
When I think back on my own experiences with childbirth…..
I remember how long labor seemed, but in reality a day to bring forth a new life, in retrospect, seems a fair trade.
I remember how hard it was, and how proud of myself I was when it was over.
I remember how impossible it seemed, during those moments in transition when I stopped being able to ride the contractions and I lost my center, but how quickly the memories of the pain began to fade once a squirming child was placed on my chest.
Those who have given birth can probably agree that, in the end, it was all worth it.
Is not the birth of our true selves … the creation of the reality we want to live in just as important .. just as meaningful … just as sacred?
Yes, the following poem is long, but it is worth reading.
As you do so consider the parts of yourself that you have yet to bring forth, dreams yet brought to fruition.
As you do so consider the ways in which you stall your own labor and poison yourself.
As you do so remember your strengths, accept your fears, and know that it is never too late to transform.
Blessings
Mama Kelly
“A Story of Beginnings”
by Starhawk, from her book Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery
and found on the Moonpath CUUPS website as part of a larger ritual honoring the Goddess Diana.
Out of the point, the swelling
Out of the swelling, the egg
Out of the egg, the fire
Out of the fire, the stars
Out of the rain of stars
the congealing, molten world
The fire remains, see it burn in the center of the circle
Watch the flames, filled with points of light that
spark and dance
Watch the fire, as in and out of your lungs flows breath
the most ancient river
The air you breathe passed through the lungs of dinosaurs
and chittering, big-eyed lemurs, ancestors
Feel yourself rocking
cradled in the night sky womb arching around you
alive with a billion billion dancing points of light
Breathe
Watch the flame
Listen to the voice of the story, the first story
whispered in the secret heart of your encoded memories
Hear the story woman
She says
the labor is hard, the night is long
we are midwives, and men who tend the birth
and bond with the child
we are birthing, and being born
we are trying to perform an act of magic-
to pull a living child out of a near-corpse
of the mother we are simultaneously poisoning,
who is also ourselves
She is alive in you as you in her
Warm your human hands at the watchfire
See the stains on the cloak
Feel the wounds too deep for healing
There are times, sisters and brothers
when we are afraid that we will die
and take the whole great humming dance of life with us
Something must change, we know that
But are we strong enough?
And will we be given time?
This is the story we like to tell ourselves
in the night
when the fire seems nothing but dying embers winking out
and the labor is too hard and goes on too long
when we can’t believe that we can make it
We like to tell ourselves
that we remember the First Mother
She is alive in you as you in her
A power keener than the weapon’s edge, a healing deeper
than the wound
Feel her in your belly, at the bottom of breath
Her power is life; it is stronger
She is a being who is spinning, fire covered with a
sweet crust shell
Feel her pulse, remember in your nerves winks
the spark of the first fire
You are alive in her as she in you
You are her
Your misty breath great clouds of gasses set in motion
by your spinning dance
swirl and cool and rain
for thousands and thousands of years
while you build up, tear down, and rearrange
the ridges and valleys of your skin
carve and smooth your wrinkles
And the water
softens every sharp edge into soil
fills the basin of your oceans
In your veins flows ocean water
Remember the lightning, sparks striking into being
something new
Life, teeming, greedy life
That grows, cell by swelling cell, divides, devours, unites
and changes, filling your ocean belly, flinging a green
cloak over the land, learning to swim, crawl, run,
stalk, fly, caress, and stand erect, made of
earth air water fire
and what goes beyond these and unites these
the mystery
She is alive in us: we are alive in her as in each other
as all that is alive is alive in us
and all is alive
When we are afraid, when it hurts too much
We like to tell ourselves
stories of power
how we lost it
how we can reclaim it
We tell ourselves
the cries we hear may be those of labor
the pain we feel may yet be that of birth
Written by Mama KellyTags:pagan, poetry, ritual
, April, 24, 1991
