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Video reading of A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Video reading of A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Jan 18, 2024

A video reading of
A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

I am trying a little something different in this blog post. Usually, I would just post a copy of the poem I am enjoying right now; in this case, A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark, by Jan Richardson. People can enjoy it at their own pace, use it however they want to, pass it by or maybe even note it for another time. And I will still copy the poem below so that you can do all of that as desired. However, I am also going to post a short video of myself reading the poem for a different kind of experience. In the video below, I lead you through a short grounding exercise, simply to take a moment to orient to the here and now, and then I read the poem twice, inviting listeners to take it in while also noticing what happens in the experience of listening to the poem. It’s a different way to enjoy the poem, rather than just reading it on the page, and also a way to offer a little taste of what happens in the workshops I hold.

Special audio appearance by my dog, Levon, during the first reading of the poem. You can hear his little collar jingle as he shakes. Consider it an added sensory experience!

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

By Jan Richardson

Go slow if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.

Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.

I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.

But this is what
I can ask for you:

That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That, in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

Dec 31, 2023

Up with the dog at the dawn of New Year’s Eve

The turning of the calendar – the man-made calendar, the calendar that was superimposed on the earth.

The new year in the celtic world, from which my ancestors come, would be Samhain, the end of October. The year begins with the last harvest and the descent into darkness.

It’s only a couple of months difference, but ideologically much farther away from our modern calendar which seems to indicate an end in the darkness.

It says something, to me anyway, about the relationship my ancestors had with the natural world and the acknowledgment or maybe reverence of the wisdom and potency of the darkness.

The darkness is the beginning, it is that from which everything comes.

Seeds in the dark ground.
Babies in the darkness of the womb.
Revelations arriving out of difficulty and tumultuous times.
Creation out of the primordial darkness soup.
Something emerging from a seeming nothing.
But we know, the dark is not nothing
Alchemy is happening in the dark.
Sparks of creative elements exist in readiness in the dark.

And this isn’t to glorify or paint a pretty picture of the dark.

There’s darkness that people don’t return from. We know that all too well.
There’s darkness that doesn’t reveal light in the way that transforms it.

There’s dark shit that no amount of creativity and light can undo or make not have happened.
There’s darkness that doesn’t need to be filtered or burdened by an expectation of a healing to come.

Darkness happens. It exists.
And sometimes it is part of a cycle of emergence. And sometimes it’s unbearable.
And sometimes we find ways to bear the unbearable anyway.
And sometimes in the bearing, something else comes forth.

Whenever we sense our beginning, our personal turn of the year, may we be held by something or someone or somewhere that helps us bear the unbearable. And may we be mirrored and uplifted in our joy and radiance.

Turning Towards the Dark

Turning Towards the Dark

Oct 31, 2023

Turning Towards the Dark

I am a self-proclaimed lover of fall and winter.

I enjoy the move into darkness and colder weather. Part of me longs for the hibernation of winter, a deep sigh of relief even at the thought of it. At this time of year, on the threshold between fall and winter, the talk of ancestors being close and the veil “between the worlds” being thin, offers even more to explore within ourselves and in our ancestral lineages about the growing darkness.

In my own ancestral lineages, mainly the gaelic and celtic world, it appears (as far as we can know from archeological and historical information gathered) this was a time of year to prepare for the dark and cold months and to honor the ancestors. Would there be enough harvest to keep everyone fed, enough wood for fires and warmth, enough shelter that everyone including the animals could make it until spring?

The honoring of ancestors and gods often involved offerings of some kind, gathering as a community, fires and food, perhaps in the hopes that if it pleased those on the other side, there would be more guarantee of survival.

It was a time of threshold between the harvest and the long barren winter, and between those inhabiting the land and those who had gone beyond. Death was close during the dark cold winter.

When I consider myself, I wonder what I feel closer to at this time of year? What am I longing for in the cold dark winter for myself? The line between life and death is not as imminent for me as my ancestors given the comforts of home and food, electricity and running water.

I don’t live on the edge in the same way. And yet, if I were to honor whatever edge might be present for me in this modern age, it might be one between light and dark, between activity and stillness, and a turning from outward orientation to inward orientation. Can I follow the guidance of the land and its cycles, lean into the fallow ground, the quiet and the dark to listen for a different kind of connection?

We’ve only been living in our current home for a year now, but I distinctly remember how quiet it was walking on one particular street last winter. When the snow was on the ground, early morning, cocooned by trees, evergreens and bare branches both, it was the silence that I noticed and enjoyed. I felt alive in a different way than when the spring birds are singing. It felt like the environment, the air, the land was right up close to my skin, and that I was right up against it, willingly intimate, no place to hide.

I am getting ahead of myself a bit here; we are still another month or two away from that kind of winter, but it’s coming. And likely if we pay attention enough to ourselves, we will notice some kind of response to the shift, whether we are longing for it, anticipating it, resisting it or even ignoring it.

Can we make a conscious noticing, even honoring, of whatever our experience is of this time of year? Even though the answer may not always be comfortable or pleasant, can we ask ourselves what the darkness makes us feel closer to in our lives? And what nourishes us as we head into the dark still cold night?

Three poems in the elevenie form:

Inward
Always turns
Ripe with longing
Welcomed in ready arms
Communion

Stillness
Whispers promise
From someplace within
Truth revealed in waiting
Listen

Dark
Deepens knowing
In places ancestral
No need to fear
Transformation

The Sun

The Sun

Aug 1, 2023

The Sun

Being that we are in the height of summer here in the northern hemisphere, I thought I would share a poem that I have worked with recently that expresses “wild love” for the sun. I was born just after the summer solstice, and I love swimming in the summer ocean, but my body and temperament struggle with the hot humid heat of deep summer. It feels a bit more tolerable living outside of a city right now, but I still find myself counting down the days until I can enjoy a cool fall breeze. In light of that, I am working on expanding my capacity to appreciate the summer, and I share this poem by Mary Oliver with that inspiration in mind.

What would your poem to the Sun say?

The Sun

By Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance –
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love –
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Another example of a writing prompt/practice

Another example of a writing prompt/practice

Jun 12, 2023

Another example of a writing prompt/practice

The Glosa is a poetic form that usually has four ten-line stanzas, preceded by four lines quoted from another poem. The lines from the existing poem are used as the last lines in each stanza.

In essence, one is “writing toward the borrowed lines” of the poem you have chosen, almost as an epigraph or an honoring of the poet or poem. (paraphrased from In Fine Form, p. 88)

Here’s a sample of 15-minute Glosa that I worked on in a writing group, inspired by a David Whyte poem I love:

From David Whyte’s poem, “The Edge You Carry with You”

The lines and the glosa:
Your way home
Understood now
Not as an achievement
But as a giving up

Walking through the unknown
Up to the edge
The thrill and nausea of gazing over into the darkness
Is it annihilation or freedom?
Is it chaos or discovery?
Is there even a difference?
Standing at the edge, breathing, stomach beginning to settle
I look into the darkness and begin to fall
In the wind I hear the words
Your way home

It’s like waking to a new world
Transported in time – back, forward, across
I am really not sure
The air is crisp, the ground is soft yet sturdy
The darkness had dissipated into an easy clarity
As if in a blink of an eye, everything I look at has sharpened into wise focus
The fall landed me somewhere new, somewhere reassuring
Somewhere
Understood now

There is no rush here
No sense of urgency sounding itself through my nervous system
Keeping me on the edge of myself instead of right in the center
Here there is time
Here there is permission
To swim into the cleansing waters
And emerge renewed
Not for anyone else but me
Not as an achievement

It’s both familiar and strange, this new place of arrival
This world that exists over the edge, into the seeming darkness
There’s a language my bones understand
A rhythm in which my heart can rest,
An unknown that isn’t a threat, but rather an invitation
To enter into the mystery
Eyes open
The ancient and vast mystery
Not to grasp onto and figure out
But as a giving up

First Sharing

First Sharing

May 1, 2023

First Sharing

I’ve decided to share a glimpse of what I imagine will be the kinds of creations we are exploring together in this space and in upcoming workshops.

The first is a free-write poem that came from a collage workshop I participated in last year. I have included an image of the impromptu collage and the poem itself.

The second is a free-writing piece that came out of a guided visualization I participated in using the imagery of a lily pad.  The experience happened just after Imbolc, so my psyche was already in the space of seeds rooting down and beginning to make their turn up towards the surface come spring.

Embrace the Bardo
The in-between
Not here, not there
The crack
The fissure
The formless, yet to be formed 

At times quiet
At other times chaotic and wild
Untethered
Unanchored
Unmoored

The space of potential
of unknown
of yet to be and always has been

Let your wildness roam free
Unencumbered
Limitless
Without bounds

The roar of aliveness rippling out through the layers of Earth and the dimensionless Sky

Announcing
I am Here
I Matter

I can’t tell
If you grow up from the bottom
Or you reach down from the top.

It seems in some way you’ve always been both, suspended between the worlds of dark soil and sunlit blossom.

Holding the tension, while softly flowing with the water’s gentle current, like seaweed but rooted. The freedom to go wherever you want doesn’t exist as it does for seaweed, washing up on shore, drying out on sandy landings. For you, the freedom is held in the tension, the movement and unfolding can only happen between the earth and the sky, cradled in the nourishing water, forever growing both down and up.

Some might think it’s a shame that you don’t get to travel to other pockets of place, go on adventures or explorations; some may see your life as limitation, even in its beautiful blossom. You may not ever know the salt of the ocean or the heat of the baking sun on the earth. But what you do know is how living both rooted and sprouting allows for a different emergence, one of surprise, one of cycles, of birth and death, of dark and light.

It isn’t as limited or boring as the roaming seaweed might imagine. Instead, the world is continuously opening to new worlds, deeper worlds; the soil gets richer, darker, more alive, and the reach upward to blossom again in a different way each time brings renewal. The petals never take in the sun the same way twice.

And so, it is also, tethered to the places and the history of family, while also face-turned up to the sky, growing towards a new warmth, ready to unfurl uniquely and singularly.