Assumption Eve Medicine: a meditation poem

Assumption Eve Medicine:

For two months turning 

the old women, 

they who have the knowing, 

have watched their charges carefully.

Picked at the height of their power

on the short night, after the long day;

the feast of fire, 

that vigils the Baptist’s coming,

when lads and ladies leap 

like hares over flames 

and look with longing for love, 

as children sing the old songs

filled with mystic meaning;

that night they were gathered 

as grace and gift 

beneath the light of sister Moon, 

the Lady’s lamp and plucked

from garden and from forest glade,

by woman’s hands alone.

Now, they, the herbs for healing, 

hang in blessed bunches 

over the hearth of home,

or kept in kitchens 

above the range, 

or bound in byres

where the warming breath 

of the queen kine keeps them

charmed and waiting 

to release their medicine,

the healing pulse 

of sister Mother Earth 

and Brother Sun’s distilled light

mixed, and married, and greened,

in root, and shoot, 

and leaf, and flower.

So they, the healing herbs, 

have rested until tonight

when as dusk comes on 

and begins to breathe her

autumnal quickening, 

these wise ones take them down

and bring them now 

to the old places of prayer

to the abbeys and chapels, 

to the candled shrines 

of the sainted ones,

who themselves bore 

the fruit of blessing 

and were heaven’s healing, 

the salve of souls,

upon the earth.

There they find 

the Lady’s chapel,

and lay their leafy burdens 

beneath the linen cloths

upon the Altar, there to await

Assumption’s dawn,

and as the Mass bells ring

to have the holy words

said over them that render

them thrice blessed again,

and ready to release their

gentle healing gifts,

blessed once in very being 

from first beginning’s breathing,

blessed twice in the burning 

touch of Love’s own resurrection light

when all was made anew,

blessed thrice by the Lady’s prayers,

she who is the stock from which

all healing blooms, 

and in her gathering home raised all

that grows green upon this good earth

to become heaven’s healing help again;

Eden’s elixir restored in her 

and birthed anew as grace,

just as these sainted herbs

ground upon the mortar’s stone 

will give their essence up,

and become the holy way 

by which their medicine 

blesses bodies and anoints 

our souls to ready us 

in our own time,

for Heaven’s

homing.

Vigil of the Assumption 14th August 2019

In many places it was the ancient custom for women to gather herbs around the feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer) and then bring them to the Churches for blessing on the feast of the Assumption before they were made into medicine for the Winter ahead. The herbs were placed beneath the Altar Cloths and around the Sanctuary before the dawn Mass there to be offered to the Lord, through Mary’s hands, she who is the “first fruits” of His saving love, so as to receive her special prayers of healing and be blessed in their medicinal use in the year ahead.

The Ritual of the Church still provides for such blessings should they be requested.

 

(Pics in this post found as random uncredited images on the web)

Forest Faith

 Forest Faith

When the edges of my mind fray,

and the golden sacred thread 

seems pulled, gathered, caught 

upon the briar of my broken being,

and my hearthome holds too much

behind its ancient doors 

so there is no breathing space at all,

I take myself to the woods.

For there I become not young,

but small again and feel the rising 

ocean tides of sap lull me at last

into the deep greening rest of soul 

only the old tall ones know 

the sky touchers, earth drinkers 

we call in our dull infant speech, so simply, Trees.

So I place my foot upon the winding path

and dew the way with tears 

and sometimes even blood,

until their windleaf song sounds soul deep, and slows and halts me long enough 

to feel their verdant canopy of calm,

and I greet them then,

as the keepers of the way they are;

the blessed Beech and noble Holly,

the Oak and Ash and Thorn, 

grey brown brothers and sisters 

of the branching dance of being. 

Their familiar oldness a reminder 

of my passing place 

in all this; they leaflean down 

to teach me once again 

the way of prayer as being 

and being as prayer,

allowing the holy breath to play along my spine as within their trunked tallness

while standing through the shifting seasons

they grow slowly, imperceptibly, always,

until flower and fruiting follow in their turn,

then the seeming fall, 

asleep asunder for awhile,

as my life now flutters, cast upon the winds

lost in wildness, a wintered leaf, 

dry and brittle, 

but here in their stately shadows

daring to read the scripture of their state, 

and hear their prophecy proclaimed in stillness; that old roots dig deep 

and deeper still, 

that branches bend so not to break and 

that there is a joy in storms when yielded to.

So for a while I breathe the sylvan air 

and greet the great and green,

these guardians of natural grace,

and then when I have walked long enough to become reminded, rewilded and 

rehomed in heart, I bow in thanks 

and leave the woods to plant their sainted seeds throughout my world and life;

to feel a forest grow within

and make the faith feathered one

a home.

The Inner Mysteries of the Visitation

 

The Inner Mysteries of the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth...

A Contemplative Breathing...

There are so many mysteries to be meditated upon in this most beautiful of feasts where the Divine Mysteries are revealed in the most earthly and earthy of moments and places. Two women, blood cousins, elder and younger meet across the generations in the wilderness of the hill country and in the common holding of the mysterious gift of new life, and so much is gifted to us in their meeting…

For the Visitation is the feast of Mary as the Apostle of love as Charity; 

Charity: the love that goes out, that actively seeks the other who is in need and feels the need of the other as its own need. In its ministering to the other in love becomes love even more so in itself… Mary, full of grace, full of the life of God, has only just heard her own call and yet responds immediately to the impulse to care for another… She leaves immediately and with great haste we are told, for love as charity brooks no delay. She will give the first three months of her own flowering to tending the garden of her cousin Elizabeth and helping her prepare for the birth of John… She thinks not of herself or even of the enormity of the miracle that has just been accomplished in her. In the need of her cousin for support she hears the call of God just as surely as she heard it in the words of the Archangel.

May Mary call us from our own self absorption to the Charity that generates life.

For the Visitation is the feast of the call to Spiritual Midwifery:

Mary as midwife to her Cousin… What a beautiful picture… The Archangel tells her that her cousin is six months into her journey towards birth and the scripture tells us that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months. Could we possibly believe that Mary left Elizabeth alone for the birth of John? Of course not…for in her midwifery of Eilzabeth she is midwifing the mystery of the birth of the Old Testament Covenant into its new life its fulfilment in the one, John, who holds in himself both the lineages of the prophets and the priesthood, and who on Jordan’s banks will lay them down in homage before the Lamb from whom they first came on Sinai’s height to Moses. 

May Mary midwife the birth in us of our own calling to birth Christ in our own life and in each moment.

For the Visitation is the feast of the mysteries of Woman…

In Mary coming to Elizabeth to care for her and serve her, God in Mary is coming to one who represents all of the mysteries of womanhood… Elizabeth had traversed all of the stages of life, she had been a girl, a young woman, a single young woman who held royal and priestly lineages in her descent and yet lived the life of a poor woman in a land oppressed by foreign occupation where it was dangerous to be a woman alone, where it was simply dangerous to be a woman at all… She had been shamed and excluded by her own people and even by other women for not fitting in, for not becoming what she was supposed to be. She had been labelled as barren, seen as cursed and as even carrying the possibility of cursing others. In Zechariah she knew the pain of loving someone but not being able to give them what they truly want… All of this pain she knew. Yet she never doubted the love of God for her or that His love would eventually bloom in her in a surprising way… Zechariah, the man and the priest doubts the Angel’s word and is struck dumb… Elizabeth, the woman, believes and bears the word of prophecy recognising in Mary the One who is blessed among women and then asks astonished “Who am I that the Mother of my Lord would come to visit me?” Who are you Elizabeth? You are Woman and God will always want to be with you and your heart that believes past man’s un-believing and He comes to you in His Mother, clothing Himself in Woman as His vestment, to reveal to you His love for you so that you may remember for ever His nearness to you in your very womanhood in every generation.

May Mary draw near to all Women and open their eyes to their intimate place in the Divine Mysteries.

For the Visitation is the feast of the mysteries of Motherhood:

In the holy encounter of Mary and Elizabeth we are reminded that all of the life that flows through the veins of humanity begins in the womb of women as they co-operate with God in the creation of life… so important is this lesson that the Divine Word Himself decrees He will incarnate only through a Mother’s yes. There is no apostle, no prophet, no saint, and we can even say in awe, no Christ, who did not come from Woman. Mary journeys through the wilderness of the high country, the hill country, the place of fear and wildness and in her Divine Motherhood she tames it. And mother Earth, long sundered from Man, finds that God walks in her garden again in Mary as mother. In her silent journeying there and back again she allows the silence of motherhood, the silent and intimate communion of Mother and child to prepare the way of the Word. She is with the Wild and the Wild receives its new Eve who carries the new Adam in awe and reverence and enfolds her contemplation in the silence of sunrises, sunsets, moonlight and star light as she travels. For everything that we will receive from Christ as a Man He received from Mary and everything that we receive from Christ as God we receive through Mary… For her mother’s yes will be just as present in the temple, in Cana, on the roads of Palestine, and on Golgotha’s height as it is in this silent journey…  

May Mary call us to reverence and respect for the mysteries of the Mother…

For the Visitation is the first feast of the Holy Eucharist:

Does this astonish you that this feast would hold in itself the echo of the greatest of God’s gifts to humanity? Mary is the first tabernacle of the Lord and she bears Christ within her in the most holy of communions as she travels. Elizabeth then becomes the first Eucharistic adorer as her wise faith beholds the inner mystery beyond the veils of sense and in her adoration receives the gift of not just her own hallowing but the hallowing of the new life that joyously jumps within her. So too when we dwell in communion with the Bread of Life is the new life of His grace quickened in us and the word of prophecy born, as contemplation begets the call to action and from silence psalm erupts in magnifying praise. And from praise we fall back into silence in the  heart-knowing know that every moment of Holy Communion begins from Mary's yes to the Divine Mystery of Love.

May Mary call us to the mystery that lies behind the veils of sense and into ever deeper communion with the One who is our Eucharistic Lord. 

Queen of the May

 For the First of May, Our Lady’s Month and 

Lá fheile Bealtaine

Queen of the May

O Lady of the White May Crown,

who brings the greening glory,

the sun sparkle upon the waters,

and the great sap surge of ancient trees,

enfold us in your blue mantle sewn of sky,

of Swift and Swallow jewelled,

embroidered with the Blackbird song 

of bright beckoning, 

that we might sing the song of Summer with you.

O Lady of the purple dawn and evening,

whose brow is crowned with starlight

and rainbows of sudden storms arising,

shine upon us now your thrice reflected light,

lowly, and lunar, and loved by the lost,

who find in you their path, their peace, their way home again.

O Lady of the Summer Lands,

whose passing step

now warms and wakes the seed,

the bloom, the berry upon the bough,

and brings to beast and bird

the burgeoning days of nest and den,

and sweet deep secret places

of nascent newness playing,

where eternity touches time

in the ancient song of making,

for of you life itself chose its bearing place.

Bless us too with birth, with life, with long sunlit days of joy, 

that in their serried passing draw us forward 'neath 

the Sun you bore within and then, 

onward into His wondrous light,

that past and childed summers shine with still within our memories, soul sprung from innocence that only you have kept,

then keep for us as greeting kiss bestowed 

upon our final homing into holiday.

Equinox: a meditation poem

Equinox: 

Now

the point of 

pause

is reached

at last;

our sacred place 

of celestial

rest,

when the balance 

turns

towards 

the light, 

and we

gather

in our 

Springtime

flowering

to

celebrate 

that

moment

when

battle's

scales

tipped for ever

to the

Light,

as eternity 

kissed

time

and 

womb woke 

it

from its

long

sleep

of

slumbering

sin

to a blessed 

beauty 

longed 

for

and found

only

in she 

who

is the

vernal

greening 

of

our human

story,

and

with her 

soul assent 

gained 

for us

our 

Easter

ever 

after.

It’s good to remember in these crazy times that we are still part of the deep rhythms of the cosmos; that we still rest secure in the eternal embrace of Divine Love.

The days of the Spring Equinox were traditionally a time of rejoicing for the coming of the light and in the Christian tradition we celebrate the Annunciation, the entry into our world of the Divine Light, incarnate through Mary, marked at the end of the festival. (March 25th) 

However worried and anxious or even ill you may be remember the Light is growing and the darkness can never overpower it.

Equinox blessings to one and all+

(Pic found unattributed online but I truly love how Our Lady seems to be smiling due to her new “crown”)

Wood Walking

 Feeling the call of the Woods today... 

Wood Walking

When you walk

the woods,

do so at their pace.

Not yours.

Pause before

you enter

their embrace,

and breathe deep.

Slow down to their

ancient pace

of root,

and

branch,

and

story.

Then,

with a bow,

enter;

and allow their

cathedral coolness

to enfold you,

and their greened light

to anoint you

with

sylvan sacrament

of stained glass

dappling;

and

your healing

will begin.

As over the craggy

bare nerves

of

your busyness,

and

sharp

exhaustion,

and

the rough edges

of your

broken heart,

a gentling of moss

will begin to

grow

as slowly as

blessing.

Feel their tallness

stretch you.

Their deep dark

womb you.

Their leaf,

and flower,

and nut,

circle you,

with knowing,

of a kind unknown to

fleeting minds and

restless hearted

humanity;

greening you to

wholeness again.

Passing into

their sanctuary,

stop;

and become

one

with them.

Let them teach you their

communion mystery;

their secret

homing of

rustling life that

feathered sings

and

furred shelters,

both

beneath,

and,

above.

Listen long

enough

and they will

teach you

their tongue:

words of wood,

and weather,

and water,

united in one

song of praise

that began

with the first

Divinely led

step

into

the dance of

inter-breathing

that you have

forgotten

how to sing

until now.

Sit your

tiredness

down

in the crook

of their

rooted gathering,

with your

back

trunked;

and let them be

your

spine,

just

for a while.

Your sap will

rise

with theirs

in the four-fold

benediction

of the

treed seasons

which

foreshadowed

their

glorious gifting

of their own element

to be

the rood throne

of

the Word

by whom

all is spoken.

Touching

their great slowness,

be reborn

of their wisdom

that promises,

for every Winter

a Spring,

and roots

deep enough

to outlast any

Summer drought

until Autumn’s coolness

comes.

When eventually

you rise from

their embrace,

stretch to the heavens

and breathe deep

of

their largesse,

while ground gripping

with toe tap-root.

Their knowing,

now with you

once again,

dusts you golden

like pollen falling

in the breeze.

Then bow deeply

to your elders

and fellow servants

and walk back

to your life

now luminous once again.

When you walk

the woods,

do so at their pace.

Not yours.