Quotes, Sacred Feminine, totems

Thoughts on starting again.

May 8, 2011

“Because we know ourselves to be made from this earth.” – Susan Griffin 

 

white feather webWell hello there. Yes, I am here. It’s been awhile. Since I last posted I haven’t written a single word. Not one. Not even in my journal.  I am not certain what happened, but it all went inside into a strange quiet and stayed there until just this minute.

Instead of writing, I have been listening.  I’ve been listening to Debbie Rosas talk about how women can been afraid of the sensation of life flowing through them. I’ve been reading. I’ve been reading books with various explanations of the sacred; the most recent one also addressing the flow of life, but in an entirely different way.

There has been a lot going on in my head and I haven’t been feeling able to put it all together. Sacred – Feminine – Peltthis woman says it much better than I can right now (thanks to Terri Fischer for reminding me to open this book again):

…now we stand at the edge of this marsh and do not go closer, allow them their distance, penetrate them only with our minds, only with our hearts, because though we can advance upon the blackbird, though we may cage her, though we may torture her with our will, with the boundaries we imagine, this bird will never be ours, she may die, this minute heart stop beating, the body go cold and hard, we may tear the wings apart and cut open the body and remove what we want to see, but still this blackbird will not be ours and we will have nothing. And even if we keep her alive. Train her to stay indoors. Clip her wings. Train her to sit on our fingers. Though we feed her, and give her water, still this is not the blackbird we have captured, for the blackbird, which flies now over our heads, whose song reminds us of a flute, who migrates with the stars, who lives among reeds and rushes, threading a nest like a hammock, who lives in flocks, chattering in the grasses, this creature is free of our hands, we cannot control her, and for the creature we have tamed, the creature we keep in our house, we must make a new word. For we did not invent the blackbird, we say, we only invented her name. And we never invented ourselves, we admit…” -Susan Griffin (more here)

I feel a story brewing.

xo

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  • Lisa May 8, 2011 at 3:46 pm

    Reading “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World” by David Abram right now. Highly recommend it, and can’t wait to check out “Becoming Animal.”

  • Liz May 8, 2011 at 6:52 pm

    I love Susan Griffin, thanks so much for reminding me of her: I just pulled off my shelf, to re-read, A Chorus of Stones… and thoughts on starting again… someone somewhere sometime wrote that we start anew everyday, every hour, every minute… oh and what will the story be…
    x