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

M

My neighbor raises lamb and when I purchased some

the frozen headless rattlesnake in my freezer had to go.

We had thought we would do the noble thing with this trouble maker

and eat it but we never did

So it was with reverence that I placed its coiled self beneath the apple tree

And added spoiled apples from my pantry to it(s resting place

to call in the bear, no use in wasting good meat this time of year.

Holy food is mysterious

What truly feeds us

Might be shit.

They are selling capsules of pure shit to heal our innards

But this metaphor runs deeper still

It is the most rejected aspect of the other that I want to ingest

I am that.

The bear ate her food at the base of the apple tree,

I will follow all the rugged way and rest in winter too

Well feed.  ( There is plenty of shit)

The Dali Lama said that our contentment is of utmost importance

We can do this.

HER, She is coming tonight

Wearing rubber boots for walking through the muck

Weary but strong, SHE comes

With a jingle and a bang

SHE comes

And we have just begun the great unraveling

unbraided seaweed in the evening tide.

Bless us tonight, womb mother of us all

As we light our individual lamps

braving the mystery of forgiveness

Through  You.

Your steady coming is our in breath

Choosing life tonight.

Lessons from our Dog

In this painting you will see an image of our dog, Mr. Banks, bravely heading over a waterfall, head up ears in the wind. He’d been so ill and we didn’t know if he would pull through. One morning when I was driving him into the animal hospital, I looked over at him and found myself saying” I release you into the wild. The wild is where you began and it’s where you are free to go, now.
I release you into the wild, Mr. Banks.
As it turns out, with these words, I was the one who got released from the enormous fear I’d been feeling but who knows, maybe it was a turning point for him too. It is all very mysterious.
Our pets introduce us to the valley of death. They educate us and offer much needed experience in the land of the heart. We are grateful that he is on the mend but also painfully aware, that one of our own had been in his small boat, journeying towards the edge of the known world.
Love you little dog, Thanks for sticking around.

100 naked women stood tall in Cleveland’s morning light.

I would say that it was a lady Godiva moment as they bravely risked

using their sacred feminine form as a statement of wholeness and  a message to the world.

Way to go Ladies!

It was  almost 100 years ago that women won the right to vote.

It took our foremothers 60 years to win us the vote

And now for the first time we have a woman running for President.

This is a major historical event in my lifetime

considering that when my mother was born in 1918

The vote hadn’t been won for us yet.

I love you Hillary, you are very brave!

So let’s elect a GRANDMOTHER FOR PRES.

It’s wild times, sisters!   xxooooo Sally

Now that my mother has passed, I find myself not eating sugar
(Perhaps this not eating sugar is her doing)
They say that all addiction is ego
( that lovely part of ourselves that says
It will deliver our happiness but never does)
So here I am, without my mother and without sugar,
Two forms of sweetness-gone
But both needed to go and both were ready.

I find myself without context, without habit
No shoring up, no boost of sudden energy
I’m boring and more tired
But more reliably true, becoming daily
A big barefooted Grandmother.

How do geese know when to fly to the sun?

Who tells them the seasons?

How do we humans, know when it is time to move on?

As with migrant birds, there is a voice within,

If only we would listen to it,

That tells us so certainly when to go forth into the unknown.

Art by Betty White,  Words by  Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Fertile  May  is here,

(you are most fertile  within one year of giving birth)

Let’s give birth, it’s the mad month of May when everything goes a stay !