This looked so fascinating I decided to post it this morning (coming to you from Yuma, AZ!).

This podcast is from my friend and Antioch cohort, Simon. Always good, but this time it looks particularly compelling and timely. Here’s his announcement:

In this Saturday’s episode, I will be talking about the Conundrum, which is a play by Paul Anthony Morris, which gives us a unique insight into the incredible mind of a man trapped in a society that has not yet evolved. Having resolved to conduct a personal life review to critique the inequality of society, our protagonist, Fidel, becomes alarmed by the prospect that he may also be responsible for
undermining his own well-being. Perplexed by this conundrum, Fidel embarks upon an epic journey to wrestle with some of life’s most fundamental questions; Who am I and why am I here?

Paul Anthony Morris and Anthony Ofoegbu will be joining me live on YouTube from the UK.

9:00pm PST.

AFIAPodcast #AfricanFatherInAmerica

On this day we honor the day that beloved Sufi Poet Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi left this plane for his marriage to the Divine. Urs Mubarak!

This beautiful graphic was created and sent by beloved Murshida Khadija:

And for those of us with failing eyesight:

THIS WAY: A sacrifice…
any thickets blocking your path;
any distraction or fear of shattering like glass. 

This road demands courage and stamina, but is full of footprints!
These companions? Rungs on your ladder. Use them! Company quickens your ascent. You may be happy enough traveling alone but you’ll move farther, faster together. 

One person ambling cheerfully
to the customs house to pay the traveler’s tax goes more lightheartedly with friends. 

Every prophet sought companions.
A wall standing alone is useless,
But three or four together support a roof to keep grain dry and safe. 

When ink joins pen, blank paper can speak. Rushes and reeds, woven, become a useful mat. Without interweaving,
the wind could blow them away. 

LIKE THAT, GOD LINKED CREATURES, GIVING THEM FRIENDSHIP.

 ~ MEVLANA JELALUDDIN RUMI ~

My daughter Nina recently sent me her amazing thesis and it includes the work of Gloria Anzaldúa a poet and American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory.

In her thesis about the sociological culture of the borderlands and its inhabitants, volunteers, law enforcement, etc. Nina speaks to the need to break down the borders within ourselves and notes, “The work of breaking down our internal and external borders is never finished. As Anzaldúa writes, it necessitates the strength to look within oneself and critically analyze one’s own conceptions of the world. It involves listening with openness to new ideas which challenge and complicate one’s already held beliefs. The journey towards a more mestiza-consciousness-like state where we are able to recognize the interconnectedness and interdependency of all things is not painless. As Anzaldúa’s poetry evokes, it is an unpleasant process during which “[y]ou must plunge your fingers into your navel, with your two hands split open”—a painful opening of yourself to scrutiny and change. And you cannot rely on others to do this labor, “[y]ou will have to do, do it yourself””

I found this so profound and beautiful and timely with all that we must do in our continual work on ourselves that I felt compelled to share one of Anzaldúa’s poems with all of you.

Letting Go

It’s not enough
deciding to open.

You must plunge your fingers
into your navel, with your two hands
split open,
spill out the lizards and horned toads
the orchids and the sunflowers,
turn the maze inside out.
Shake it.

Yet, you don’t quite empty.
Maybe a green phlegm
hides in your cough.
You may not even know
that it’s there until a knot
grows in your throat
and turns into a frog.

It tickles a secret smile
on your palate
full of tiny orgasms.

But sooner or later
it reveals itself.
The green frog indiscreetly croaks.
Everyone looks up.

It’s not enough
opening once.
Again you must plunge your fingers
into your navel, with your two hands
rip open,
drop out dead rats and cockroaches
spring rain, young ears of corn.
Turn the maze inside out.
Shake it.

This time you must let go.
Meet the dragon’s open face
and let the terror swallow you.
—You dissolve in its saliva
—no one recognizes you as a puddle
—no one misses you
—you aren’t even remembered
and the maze isn’t even
of your own making.

You’ve crossed over.
And all around you space.
Alone. With nothingness.

Nobody’s going to save you.
No one’s going to cut you down,
cut the thorns thick around you.
No one’s going to storm
the castle walls nor
kiss awake your birth,
climb down your hair,
nor mount you
on the white steed.

There is no one who
will feed the yearning.
Face it. You will have
to do, do it yourself.
And all around you a vast terrain.
Alone. With night.
Darkness you must befriend if
you want to sleep nights.

It’s not enough
letting go twice, three times,
a hundred. Soon everything is
dull, unsatisfactory.
Night’s open face
interests you no longer.
And soon, again, you return
to your element and
like a fish to the air
you come to the open
only between breathings.
But already gills
grow on your breasts.

~ Gloria Anzaldúa, 1999 ~

Friends, I will be traveling starting next week for about 3 weeks, so there may be a hiatus or at least fewer posts until mid-January.

I am sending all of you deep bows of gratitude for your presence in my life and for all the incredible and beautiful work you do. May your holidays be filled with love and light and your new year promise new beginnings. And may the inevitable challenges be faced with courage and grace through the companionship of our beloved community.

I was deeply moved by these words from Pir Zia Inayat Khan from his monthly Zephyr newsletter and wanted to share them:

14 December 2020

Dear Companions on the Path,

Here in the northern hemisphere we are nearing the darkest day of the year. It has not been an easy year. We have lost some dear friends—have lost, at least, their earthly forms—and the lives of many of us have been unsettled in numerous ways. The routines of travel and meeting that previously connected us have been unceremoniously interrupted. At the same time, we have found new means of being in touch.

Perhaps you find yourself, like so many, carrying an especially heavy load at present. This may be a timely moment to ask yourself what is really yours to lug through time and space. Are you bearing a heavier burden than is necessary? In addition to the ideals you have consciously chosen, are you carrying a load of inchoate worries and vague grievances?

Look how calmly the trees abandon their autumn leaves, scattering jewels on the ground, soon to become mulch. These serene beings are apt teachers for us. Just see how they send their life-essence down into their roots as the days shorten and darken.

There is a time for stillness and empty-handedness, a time for holding vigil in the darkness. Winter keeps a secret that is vital to our soul’s knowledge of itself. Before long, the days will lengthen again. But now is the time to be rooted in the silent, patient earth as the planet heaves through the ebon emptiness of space.

Yours ever,

Pir Zia

I’ve been reading and nearly finished the book they recommend at the end of this blog post by Matthew Fox. His Daily Meditations are always wonderful. This one struck me particularly because of the profound wisdom of Julian of Norwich who lived through a long series of pandemics and truly celebrated the fierce feminine essence of Christ and God.

Please enjoy this day’s meditation:

My dear friend Craig played this for me today. I loved it and wanted to share it with all of you.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Gaile on one of my FB groups for posting this today:

“I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times’
into something better.”

~ Mary Oliver ~

I have been reading, meditating, and listening to some of our evolutionary mystic prophetic voices lately. All are pointing to the deep realization and acceptance of this species-wide dark night as an opportunity to be fully present, fully alive, and fully open to allow our rebirth into a new species that is no longer separate, but integrated and fully connected to all vibrating beings on our planet and in our universe.

We watched Fabulous Fungi again last night and it reminded me to embrace the dark and as Rumi says, “be crumbled” because, in the end, we are a blessed, brilliant, and magnificent part of the mycelium that connects us all and is literally the “only being.”

“We can [and should… and must] trust the Mystery, it will not fail us.”
~ Vera de Chalambert ~

The following post was sent out on Facebook by one of those prophets, Mirabai Starr, sharing this profound and timely message from another prophet for our time – and I copy it here for all of your upliftment!

***************************
From the brilliant contemporary mystic & prophet, Vera de Chalambert. Hark!

From time immemorial our mystics and prophets have taught that to approach the Mystery, we must move through Holy Darkness. In fact, it is this capacity to enter the realm of divine unknowing, terrifying uncertainty, radical discontinuity with business as usual that is traditionally seen as a sign of spiritual leadership.

Moses must enter the “thick darkness” of the Cloud, Christ consent to the kenosis of the Cross, the tantric masters become intimate with the mandalas of loss in the messy, hopeless, initiatic darkness of the charnel grounds.

Today we all are called to step bravely into the darkness of our times. The uncertain, unsettled, un-mappable disruption of the poly-crisis. This is no cheap calamity, it is sacred collective initiation. Intuitively humans have always known that there is an aspect of Reality that emerges to mercifully guide and protect us through the Dark Night the moment we consent to our holy ordeal. And in every tradition we look, it is the Eternal Feminine, the Great Mother, the very ground of the Being, Herself Darker than night, that emerges to harness our spiritual crisis, assist our spiritual evolution, initiate and transfigure the soul.

The poet Rumi says:
“Be ground.
Be crumbled.
So wild flowers will come up
Where you are.”
​
Don’t rush in to fix it. Let life have you. Let the Mother have your bones for her holy Stew. She knows how to turn our hungry ghosts into allies. Our psychic lead into gold. Crumble and let Her transfigure. Invite the truth you have been keeping at bay. Feel what you don’t want to feel. Hold fast to your tenderness. Let your brokenness shine. How else will you know that Love has already swallowed you, even when you fail, even when you struggle, even as you cry out into the dark?

Darkness is Holy. Darkness is medicine. Do not discard this doorway into grace. Our wounds are holy passages. Our darkest, most desperate nights, ways to wholeness. The Poet Rilke said, “I have faith in Nights.”

We can trust the Mystery, it will not fail us.

In this beautiful essay, Joanna Macy reminds us that our healing must begin with gratitude.

Well worth reading all the way through (10-15 mins). She spends time reflecting on the important lessons from our Indigenous siblings and their wisdom gratitude practices. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

“We have received an inestimable gift. To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe—to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it—is a wonder beyond words.”

“There is so much to be done, and the time is so short. We can proceed, of course, out of grim and angry desperation. But the tasks proceed more easily and productively with a measure of thankfulness for life; it links us to our deeper powers and lets us rest in them. “

“The great open secret of gratitude is that it is not dependent on external circumstance. It’s like a setting or channel that we can switch to at any moment, no matter what’s going on around us. It helps us connect to our basic right to be here, like the breath does. “

“There are hard things to face in our world today, if we want to be of use. Gratitude, when it’s real, offers no blinders. on the contrary, in the face of devastation and tragedy it can ground us, especially when we’re scared. It can hold us steady for the work to be done.”

Dear friends,

Today, I bow deep in gratitude for all of you and in remembrance of the love of the earth that supports and sustains us. May your days be filled with love, light, health, and joy.

This post came today from the Inayatiyya and is a wonderful reminder that I wanted to share:

To Thee We Dedicate Our Feast

In chaos whirl the blasted leaves
And summer’s birds are no more seen.
The grain is bundled into sheaves
As ravens stop to squawk and glean.

Magenta glows the harvest moon
And yellow gleam the dimming days,
Abounding in the lavish boon
Of emerald squash and amber maize.

Praise in excelsis be to God,
Beneficent beyond compare!
Thou give us bread from seed and clod
And give us breath from swirling air.

To Thee we dedicate our feast
And humbly offer up our psalm
For all of autumn is Thy priest
And in Thee rests our golden calm.

~ Pir Zia Inayat Khan ~