Author: heartlandsoul

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How Was Ozark Sufi Camp, You Ask?

You know, it’s funny:
All I have to do is go to the place
Where oaks cluster in thickly,
Shaking their rattles over my head
Like shaman trees;
Where sunlight sparkles on the surface of the lake,
And the water is a warm and welcome baptism,
Even as the wind carries the chill of fall;

Where the energetic imprint
Of thousands of prayers spoken, sung, breathed,
Danced, cooked into meals,
Stacked into piles of kindling
And braided into the long hair of grandchildren
Never quite fades, even through
The slow months between reunions;

Where our hundreds and thousands of prayers
Rise up in a swirling vortex,
Touch the outer atmosphere,
Kiss God’s cheek lightly
And fall down again on us,
A mist of blessings
Cooling the furnaces in the deepest
Pits of our being
Where crumbled, heavy, black ore is forged
Into useful steel;

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All I have to do is go to the place
Where leaves are turning, seasons, planets, galaxies,
People and their hearts are all turning together
In one majestic, timeless spiral,

All I have to do is go there
With my cargo of problems that feel
So real and big and stuck
Tied tightly in this skin bag
That I carry everywhere

And throw myself
On the bosom of friendship

And throw my skin bag
On the wooden floor

And throw my heart
Into the boiling pot

And some alchemy happens
Something is cooked away
Something new appears in its place

Something that was raw
Is covered with love
And begins to heal

Something that was confused
Finds a stairway before it
And a whispered instruction:

Just climb
One step
At a time
And you will
Find the way
Opening before you.

Just go there.
Just
Go.

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What Is Possible

In the silence of night,
God asked me: What is it that you want?
An encounter with you, I said.
Said God – But here I am,
And yet you don’t fall down,
You hear without hearing, see without seeing me.
I said, Then what I want is a vision
For my life.
Said God, But you have a vision
And lack only to follow it
For your every happiness to fly to you.
Perhaps, said I, what I need is a healing.
God said to me, You are already healed and whole.
I asked God then, What is possible?
And God said, You may finally receive the blow
That shatters you irrevocably
Into such wide-scattered pieces
You can never be closed again.

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No/Yes

I have this super clear memory of sitting with my family in a pew near the front of the Catholic church in my grandma’s town, attending Christmas Eve mass. The church was so tiny and narrow that my mom, dad, brother and I filled a row.

The memory is of looking down at my hands, with which I’d recently started to feel the flow of energy, and thinking, “No. That’s crazy. You’re being arrogant. You don’t have anything to say about God or religion or the soul. And if you did, no one would want to hear it. So make like an organ and pipe down.”

Ok, I was a little liberal with the recreation of the inner monologue here. But the key word rang out so clearly in my head that its echoes are still quietly reverberating today. “No.”

The funny thing is, I DON’T remember what insight I’d thought I had, and had wanted to share, before that voice shut me down so tidily. What I remember is how the No had the weight of certainty on its side.

I also remember that it was dark outside the stained glass windows. And I remember how I used to feel, standing outside at night in the winter when it hadn’t yet snowed, standing on a hillside in the heart of a Pennsylvania town that was so small, the glow from porch and street lamps stayed in pools on the ground and the sky remained untinted with light pollution – truly black.

  
I could feel the soles of my feet connecting with the earth, right through my socks and shoes. My scalp tingled and my skin sparkled and I could almost see energy arcing between my palms when I held them apart.

I interpreted this within the cosmology I was making up for myself, a sort of pagan-inspired universalism. I called the period between the fall equinox and the end of the year “the Gathering Together of Power.” I imagined magic condensing out of the cooling air like fog appearing on a window. I pictured the earth drawing its energy back into itself, down from the grass stems and tree trunks it had animated through the last season. The nights felt crisp and full.

I felt solitary but connected.

Now it’s that season again — it’s the beginning of the time when static electricity zings through the air and composting leaves release their pungent mystic gases and the stars sharpen their points. And again I’m thinking of things I want to say, and again a malignant voice, a voice that is part of my own mind, whispers, Put it away. Close the drawer. You’ve got nothing to add here. Go do something else.

But this time there is another voice, one that’s been slowly awakening over the course of this year of exploring self love. And she doesn’t say no.

She says YES. Yes. Let it out. Say whatever you want. Nobody has to care. This spring arising needs to flow.  This time say yes. Say yes. Say yes.  

Shrine to the Blessed Mother down the hill in my mom’s backyard

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Membership Sunday 

Last weekend I took time out from a women’s retreat I was attending in the mountains to be at Althea Center for Engaged Spirituality for Membership Sunday. Then I stopped at a picnic at the Gender Identity Center to do a set with a newly forming choir before driving back into the mountains to help make dinner, participate in a badass equinox ritual and MC the camp talent show. I got up early and went to bed late and it was just an intense day, full of action interspersed with long solitary car rides. And in the midst of all that, I became a member of the Althea Center.

My relationship with that place has been evolving since the beginning of the year, when a weekly Sufi study circle I belong to started meeting there. My group had been seeking a “home” in Denver for a while, and the people at Althea had told our search committee that they had all this space that they wished would be used by diverse spiritual communities. Multiple organizations with different perspectives but common purposes – supporting people in their journeys of spiritual growth – sharing a large old building that looked like a Greek temple and had been built in 1906 by the metaphysical Church of Divine Science – well, that sounded good!

The hardwood floor of the room we’d contracted to meet in, a library-slash-classroom, ended up needing major repairs, and the church, or rather the congregation, had to raise money to pay for it as they went. So for the next several months we bounced around from room to room (of which there were many). Once a month as part of our regular cycle of classes, I lead a chant night, and each month it was a mystery as to where we would sing.

Sometimes we were in an area at the back of the sanctuary with blue carpet, big armchairs, and vast accordion doors that stretched across the whole back of the large hall, but never quite clicked closed.

My favorite, though, was when we met to sing in a little alcove with a rickety table at the end of a hallway of tiny meeting rooms. There was a square window with no curtain or blind that could with effort be opened onto a city alley below. The walls were yellow and there were not really any decorations. It felt old and worn.

This is a quality I love so much in buildings, perhaps especially in churches. It takes me back to St. Joseph’s basement where I performed in a children’s Christmas pageant in a quilted bathrobe, and to my dad’s UU fellowship that had its sanctuary and office-slash-library in the rooms above a rural community theater – where I hung out while my dad was in board meetings, where I took an early stab at novel writing, where I first encountered Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

The Althea Center IS old. It was the “mother” church of the Divine Science movement and has been a place where mystical and progressive and metaphysical spiritual perspectives have found a welcome since 1898. It’s fascinating to me to think of the teachers who have spoken there over these years, perhaps some of the people whose ideas influenced people like Sam Lewis, who originated the Dances of Universal Peace, my encounter with which has transformed my life in every possible way.


I’ve been thinking about these connections since I started attending the eclectic Sunday morning services at Althea, which happened when out of the blue I got an email asking me if I might be interested in sharing some interfaith songs and chants there. Seemed their previous song leader had left and someone (a member of the aforementioned study group who helped organize our rental of the space) had mentioned to them that I might be able to help out. I was utterly thrilled at the invitation. I led a couple of chants one Sunday in May and it seemed to be mutually agreeable so I’ve been going back ever since.

It makes me nervous, getting up there with what I consider not the best guitar talent, and I feel very conscious of my imperfect playing, especially with such incredible musicians as play there. The church website advertises the Sunday service as having “world class music” and they are not kidding – though I read that and think, “Everyone but me, of course.” It’s an extra bonus and source of inspiration for me that I get to hear these awesome classical (and sometimes New Age) musicians play each week. And somehow I, with my little acoustic guitar chant singalong, am part of that.

It’s a lesson in getting over myself, all right. If I succumbed to shame and hid away whenever I felt embarrassed about my playing, it would all be over. But it is such a dream come true to be able to actually share the type of music that I do, which is so quirky (and, I often feel, dorky, though I nonetheless am compelled to do it almost without ceasing) with people who seem to find it helpful in some way. It’s shocking to me that I could ever find myself having this opportunity, and I keep thinking that they’ll soon be tired of me and my mistakes and that will be that, but I am so grateful for each and every chance to share this music in this space with this community.

That’s part of why I chose to become a member of the Althea Center for Engaged Spirituality last weekend. There’s also the way the church supports and encourages the arts, especially artists and groups from marginalized communities; the way it opens its space for all kinds of conferences and real, in-depth conversations about the critical issues facing our nation and world today; the way it puts the guiding principle of oneness into action, the kind of action that makes things better.

I thought this part of the membership ritual perfectly captured the essence that I love about Althea. People who were joining the church each lit a candle on a table at the front of the church. But the candles weren’t new candles that all looked the same. They were every different kind of candle in every condition of prior use and semi-meltedness, some practically straight and some bulbous or gnarled. They were all different heights and the long stove matches we were given to light them with didn’t reach down neatly to the burnt wicks but left black marks on the white wax sides.

To me it was like – Look at this motley crew, so quirky and so loved. Each member empowered to give their gifts in full acknowledgement of their imperfection – their uniqueness. It’s such a great vibe and I’m honored and delighted to be a part of it.

So I feel like when I completed that little ritual of joining the community, a door quietly opened somewhere in me. And I am very curious to see where it leads.

Looking up, looking out, looking beyond.

 

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Abyss

Empty yourself of that wrenching wail
that rises in your heart
and fills the abyss within you,
pour its screaming music
into your work, spill it
from your footsteps,
and, pressing your ribs together
squeeze its last rich drops
out into the art piece called your life.
Only then will peace
dark and still and ancient
whisper the cosmic secret of love
to your soul.

  

 

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These Guys

Earlier this summer I tried on a sundress with a pattern of roses intermixed with human skulls. It was SUCH a cute dress, with vibrant neon colors and white accents on a black background, and I thought it looked good on me too. But the pattern hung me up. I imagined myself wearing it and people asking me, Why are you wearing a dress of skulls? I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to respond. The skulls seemed too powerful and magical for me to just wear them as a fashion accessory. (I’m really not that punk.) So I left the dress on the rack, a little wistfully, wishing I COULD have found a reason to make it mine.

Well, I guess skulls must be trendy in some circles because after that day, I started noticing them hovering around me – a lot. And as with so many things to which I’ve responded at first with an emphatic no – I found myself beginning to whisper – Yes.

Finally, one day in the bead store when I was Shopping With A Mission for a specific project I was working on, These Guys – brightly colored skulls carved in magnesite – captured my attention, and I decided the, shall we say, skull archetype must have some medicine for me right now, because they caught my gaze and would not let go.

What’s different now from the beginning of the summer? I’m conscious now of doing shadow work. I’m going underground to struggle with those aspects of myself I don’t normally want to face. And I’m dragging back into the light the gifts that I’ve disowned out of fear of rejection.

When we strip away all the elements of our lives in an effort to discard those that no longer work and rearrange those that remain in a hopefully more functional way – my partner, who studies the shamanic traditions, calls that skeletalization. That’s the short code for what I’m doing these days.

Suddenly Mr. Skull seems like he might have a relevant place in my life after all.

So I bought the colorful string of skulls that felt so beautifully heavy in my cupped hand. Without even taking them off the nylon string they were displayed on, I tied them around my rear view mirror. Now everywhere I go they are nodding and grinning at me and looking out in every direction (some of them upside down) and I feel surrounded by a lovely skully energy that’s somehow so deeply loving. I feel a sense of protection on my journeys to the underworld of my own being.

I call them “These Guys” and I quickly came to think of them as my friends.

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Here’s what the book in the store had to say about the mineral they’re made of:

“Recognize non-beneficial thoughts/ideas, revolutionary ideas via imagery, passion, heart felt love, cell purification, disorders of convulsions, bones, teeth.”

Well.

I stand prescribed. Thanks, guys!

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Fish Heart

A bit of silliness perhaps, but sincere silliness:

Fish Heart

Oh Beloved, cast your line!
My heart is ready for your hook
to pierce the living red flesh
and spill through that ragged hole
my hot pain, into the cooling water
unknowably vast.

When you have caught me,
draw the line taut –
my heart struggles against what it wants
but yearns to be pulled hard
until, breaking the surface stillness
and flying through the wild open air,
this little silver fish
falls, flapping and panting
into your hand.

Everything is recycled.

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Heartlandsoul.org

Have you seen? Heartlandsoul.wordpress.com is now

Heartlandsoul.org!

Why? Two reasons:

1. THOSE FREAKING ADS ARE GONE!!! (Don’t get me wrong, I understand WordPress needs to make money, and I appreciate very much all the free services that the presence of ads has made possible over the years, but I did not get to choose what they were, and most of the time they were not things I would have supported.)

2. Now I can host sound files! So, watch for chant recordings to show up here — as I complete them — which is right now a slow process. But as the old sages said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single URL. 🙂

Thanks for reading! Love to you!

AG

 

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Trance Dance

Last night I had the unusual and lovely experience of assisting Sam at a trance dance he was leading. It was totally spur of the moment — I had planned to go to another, earlier group meeting but didn’t get off work in time. So I’d just found myself uncommitted for the evening when he texted to say more people had RSVP’d for his event than he’d counted on and he was desperately seeking a helper. I’d done it before (and Sam had very generously taken my car waaaaay south for a free oil change just that very afternoon) so I said sure, I’d do it.

 

Sound and light

 
Sam’s ecstatic dance events blend shamanic breathwork with a type of blindfolded conscious movement practice that we first learned from Vic Day and the MidMOtion Collective when we lived in Missouri. Participants have an inner journeying experience in a group environment. My job: keep folks from slamming into walls or whapping each other on the head while dancing to world music with their eyes covered by a bandana. And, he said, I could slip out before everyone “came back” at the end of the dance, and still have some time to myself that evening.

It has been a couple of years since I’ve played the part of trance dance helper, and it was interesting to see how Sam’s style of maneuvering people away from collision has evolved. I found myself trying to gauge what was about to be a gentle physical interaction and what could be a painful smack — and get out of the way of the former while attempting to prevent the latter. I didn’t want to err on the side of caution, because I know that the negotiation of energetic boundaries can be an important aspect of the experience for the dancers. On the other hand, nobody wants a kick in the elbow while they’re peacefully doing a yoga headstand.

A few times I also caught myself thinking something like “No, it should be this way, not that way” — and I had to tell my “take charge” part to take a step back.

The dance space

Most of what I did was simply watching the dancers and feeling the energy and trying to create a container that was safe but not obtrusive. I wanted to be like the walls of the space, sturdy and reliable — so much so that you never have to think about the work the walls are doing. But unlike the walls, I moved among the dancers. In reflection I can see that this, too, was a dance.

A different kind of dance, though — one in which I had full access to my sight. And I’ll admit that the “I can see you but you can’t see me” thing made me a little uncomfortable. When I caught myself admiring the fluidity of one bearded, dreadlocked guy’s spiraling flow, I noticed myself feeling like I was somehow cheating by watching someone’s private dance.

And when I saw this other girl curled up on the floor with her hands covering her head — then watched her slowly, slowly start to move — and finally lift her face and raise her chest upward — so that I could practically see the light pouring from her clawed-open heart — and tears sprung to my eyes, I told myself — stop it now — you’re projecting.

Well, sure. A room full of blindfolded people expressing their souls’ primal movement is pretty much a blank canvas for projection. I’m looking at them and seeing aspects of myself. And I’m also appreciating the uniqueness of each person’s steps which, all together, including mine, make up the Dance.

Later it occurred to me that witnessing could itself be a valuable part of this ritual. Sam reflected that to me as well when he commented that I’d seemed to be trying to disappear into the woodwork all evening and I admitted my discomfort with what felt like a voyeuristic position. 

“No,” he told me, “People actually like knowing that you’re watching them — watching over them, really. It makes them feel safe, protected, free to explore the outer reaches of movement. ”

Hmm.

By the time the pounding drumbeats had smoothed out into oceanic tides of gentle sound, and the dancers were all lying on their backs, blissed out, it had become clear to me that I couldn’t exactly leave. It would feel too strange — like the closed container had sprung a leak before arriving at its destination. Although sitting in the sharing circle was the part of the ceremony I least looked forward to — feeling awkward as a watcher among the temporarily sight-deprived — I knew I had to join in. 

It’s funny how I always assume people are making negative judgments about me, and they’re only waiting for a lull in the conversation to spit them out. Does everyone do that? I certainly expected these cute young Boulderites to see me as a strange hulking ghost whose purpose was mainly to disrupt their shared intimacy with my weird silent vibes. 

What they actually told me:

“In my mind I think of you as Rainbow Lady … Holding the sacred space.”

“You had such a beautiful energy. You grounded the whole ritual.”

“Your name is Angie? Oh, like an angel, of course.”

“You really brought it, girl!”

This, accompanied by many hugs, without my asking for any feedback at all.

How striking that if I could have, I would have skipped that part entirely. And I never would have heard any of that — because of my fear of being dissed by the in crowd. 

Who says they’re in? And who says I’m out? 

Maybe in reality, I have more freedom AND more safety than I think. Maybe it’s me who chooses to move in and out of circles as they suit my needs in any given moment — or as I am called by a power greater than myself. Maybe my whole dance of life is like my dance last night — gliding from my place of watchfulness on the sidelines, to active intervention where I see I can help, to, when my courage is great enough, open and vulnerable relationships with other human beings. 

With my eyes open, I have more choice, and more responsibility. I have more opportunities to practice compassion for others and for myself. 

 
 In this sketch I tried to represent some hint of the presence of music as a physical force, sound waves that filled the room and wrapped our moving bodies like swaddling clothes. Out of this chaos, something was surely being born. 

Shiva altar

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Spirit Soothers

I am not someone who believes that my life was better before smartphones existed. I love my hand held digital devices. They make me feel like I’m on Star Trek. And for people like me who are not gifted with natural social ease, email and texting have opened far more possibilities for communication than they’ve closed. (That, of course, could be a whole other post.) I like the electronic word and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

But … There can be such a thing as too much. My job involves planting my face in front of a massive Mac screen for 8 (or – usually – more) hours each day. Then I go home and, for fun, put up websites. It gets to where I can feel my eyeballs vibrating from the continual barrage of photons. And even though the vast majority are “friendly fire,” when the range is point blank, the impact is significant.

And I think I feel the onslaught more acutely when I’m in a relatively more energetically open state. Earlier this summer I was lucky enough to attend a couple of camps that had an opening effect on me, even as they showed me where and how I could perhaps exercise a little healthy discrimination in terms of what I’m inviting in.

In the weeks following those camp experiences, I find that some things I’ve typically thought of as relaxing and pleasurable – don’t feel that way just now. For example, I’m having a hard time making myself sit down and watch a tv show – even one I ordinarily enjoy – even in a format with no commercials. Even if I actually WANT to catch up on a story I’m curious about.

What do I want to do instead?

Well, I’ve become more aware lately of activities that have what I perceive as a soothing effect on my spirit. The sensation is like Throat Coat tea for the soul. Or, as in this description I just encountered in The Arabian Nights: “coolth of my eyes,” suggesting, as the footnote to this curious phrase says, 

Arabic “Kurrat al-ayn”; coolness of eyes as opposed to a hot eye (‘sakhin’), I.e. one red with tears. The term is true and picturesque so I translate it literally. All coolness is pleasant to dwellers in burning lands …

— translator Sir Richard Francis Burton

I read that and thought, Dang. That describes it perfectly. 

I’m sure all of these things are pretty much “duh” in terms of what to do to energetically recover from digital overstimulation. But they have been refuge for my heart, medicine for my mind, and balm to my spirit.

1. Paper

Interacting with paper instead of a screen: reading books, writing letters, drawing pictures in my sketch pad with an old fashioned pencil.

2. Nature

Specifically – going to places where I can hear the wind, but not the sound of traffic.

3. Acoustic music

Lately I’ve found my way back to instrumental folk and classical music – and it’s like I’ve been wandering through neighborhoods I’ve never seen before, right in the middle of towns I thought I knew.

4. Water

(especially water that’s outside, and especially especially, water that I can be in without any clothes on)

5. Art

Since I already mentioned drawing, here I’ll note how satisfying it has felt to create art in public places – like this mural I was invited to help with, which is on the wall of the studio my housemate is turning our garage into.

   

I did the yellow. 🙂

And you know, it was past my bedtime when they invited me to this painting party, on an evening I had set aside for self care through physical, mental, and emotional rest. But as soon as I had a brush in my hand I knew on a visceral level that this WAS a type of rest that I was also deficient in: rest for my spirit.

Rest from interacting with human arguments and demands. Rest from mechanized processes. Rest from filtering all that which is poisonous and trying to make it clean. In a way, painting felt just like floating in a pool of liquid light.

Ok, I still needed sleep. But even before I went to bed that night, I felt like I’d already had a pretty sweet dream.