This is my  mother and I .  I have this photo up in my studio as a reference point of my beginnings  but this morning with the ornate frost pattern above our heads I can  see that we are  the holy mother and child Madonna.

Rumi wrote,

Before these possessions you love

slip away, say what Mary said

when she was surprised by Gabriel .” I’ll hide inside God”

Naked in her room

she saw a form of beauty

that could give her new life.

Like the sun coming up

or a rose as it opens

she leaped, as her habit  was,

out of herself into presence.

There was a fire in the channel of her breath

Light and majesty came.

I am smoke  from that fire

and proof of its existence

more then any external form.

love Sally Dec 2016