undiluted: not reduced in strength or concentration or quality or purity

Days before a man I loved passed from this life he blessed me with a label that spoke straight to my soul.  Weighing his words with his graveled accent he said definitively,  “You’re undiluted.”  It was a curious statement.  For a moment I considered the possible translations the word had undergone from his native Italian to the Queen’s English.  The word itself stubbornly refused to be transmuted into any other adjective.

And so I sat there allowing it to set up camp inside my head.  I pondered which element he must believe I represented in such rarefied concentration.  I reveled in his unqualified flattery.  For his part he spoke no more on it, allowing me my moment as he often did.  Moments such as this one would prove precious, for they would be all we would ever have between us.  We would have a life time from October through to November and no more.  This man, my anachronistic Knight Templar, would slip from me silently the following Thursday.  He would die alone in a crowd of strangers.  The flesh would indeed fail and the frenetic beatings of his heart would undo us both in dramatic fashion.  I was not there, though I can imagine.

I would like to tell you that I felt him go, that some intangible part of him was able to form our goodbyes.  I did not.  What I felt was his struggle, his fight to stay.  I closed my eyes and felt his arms around me Thursday evening and they have never let go.  I am left with the burden of unpacking our experience, examining the contents left behind and finding their proper place in my life.  I sit here and breathe the life that never quite was so I can exhale and live again.

Love bears all things.

It is the promise of the vacant cross lit by the rising sun,

and the sacred fire tended within the temples of the gods.

It is the burning forge of the illuminated soul.

Our impassioned witness,

our silent confessor,

and our merciful salvation.

The permeable yet unyielding light that wraps itself around the many faces made in His image.

Those images…

reminding us that we are all capable of so much more.

I am your Mother &  your Father.

I am your Daughter & your Lover.

I am life, death & time eternal.

I am the cup & the sword.

I am the right and the left hand path.

 

You have no power but what comes from me.

The DC40 spiritual warfare event planned by members of the New Apostolic Reformation would be easy to dismiss if it did not have such significant political traction.  Their websites are brimming with violent inspirational imagery and their rhetoric is a “call to arms”.  That they present themselves so, while having the public support of viable candidates such as Rick Perry and the silent consent of many other Evangelical Christian groups, requires a response.

Jason Pitzl-Waters over at The Wild Hunt sums up their agenda:

The change DC40 wants to make is electing leaders who fear the Christian God and “find that compromise is not the way” as it is impossible to “compromise with unrighteousness.” The “uncompromising light” refers to a statement released by Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, which says God’s word should be the legal authority in the United States and Christians should acknowledge no other,  “no power to purpose or accept any compromise of the promises of God, and we declare illegal in the earth any action or any people, Nation or nations that undertake what is contradictory to the Word of God.”

The DC40 event is a platform for hate speech.  A focused assault on our native goddess Columbia and the virtues of governance the Founding Fathers chose her to represent.  It is a direct action to end religious pluralism in American government.  It is an act of spiritual violence that has the real possibility of inciting physical violence towards pagans and followers of minority faiths.  A couple weeks ago the DC40 newsletter issued this prayer as part of their response to the outcry and debate their event has sparked with members of the pagan community.

Here is our prayer for you:
“Father, through the faith of Your Son and through the power of His Blood, we come on behalf of those who would curse us. Because of their actions toward us, we have legal spiritual access and we take it!

We release perfect Blood-covered love into the core of your being!
May eternal light flood your hearts this day with the revelation of who you really are, and, more importantly, who God really is! We also pray that this revelation will dismantle and refute all arguments, theories, reasonings, and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the true knowledge of God. Your ladder has been placed on the wrong wall. We call you to your right mind through the finished work of the cross.

You see, there is no DC40 Prayer War. It is finished, you just haven’t come to the truth of it yet. However, if you are reading this, it is too late – we release the arrow of blood-covered truth and convicting power of Holy Spirit into the core of your being, and release grace for you to SEE in Jesus’ Mighty Name!”

My counter working, if you will, is below:

They pilfer the blood of the Lamb,

the stain of the crucifixion,

to imbue the tips of their arrows and cast them wide at the hearts and souls of Her children. 

May they instead fall at our feet, the blood of the sacrifice returned to nourish fertile ground. 

For I am of this land born. 

The blood and spirit of Her first people, our Founding Fathers, and revolutionaries courses through my veins.

My heartbeat is the drum resounding across a land that broke the back of tyranny. 

Let them come.

Let them exhaust themselves with their efforts.

Let their’s be as futile an assault on Liberty as a young child’s tiny fists.

Let it be the fitful struggle of a child that would beat upon the breast of his mother all while Her arms encircled him. 

Nothing more.

Hail Columbia, and cry Liberty!

Hail Columbia, and cry Liberty!

Hail Columbia, and cry Liberty!

So mote it be brothers and sisters.

The dying Son cast on amber leaves turns to Shadow.

A gentle breeze made of the thinnest air and rising veil runs through my fingers.

The fleeting twilight harkens him to the darkened cradle,

and the promise of Her uneasy lullaby to the haggard babe.

We have our own way of Drawing Down the Moon,

You and I.

With lips and fingertips,

evoking a savage tenderness.

An embrace becomes a lifetime.

And in it we dance,

we die,

and are reborn a thousand times.

When you spend the weekend with the mountain as your temple, “plugged in” solely to the stars, the gods, and the handful or so of vibrant souls sharing your surroundings your re-entry into the day to day can be abrasive.  Monday morning arrived as a clean slate for me, devoid of any familiar patterns.   My eyes opened to the warm sun on the back of my neck through my bedroom window, already too high in the sky for it to be my normal waking hour.  The house was empty and quiet. No children to dress or send to school.  No clocks professing loudly the omnipresence of time.  In fact, as I stumbled into the kitchen to brew a cup of coffee I noticed that not a single appliance would turn on.  The power was off.  The Burrow had in fact unplugged itself.

Robbed of even that vestige of routine I ventured out to procure a more indulgent than usual cup of joe (read Starbucks), and take a long drive to no where in particular.  After all, sometimes the best thing to do is to embrace the discord.  I let the CD play through the deeper cuts on the album, the ones I had until that moment skipped past.  I got lost.  Lost high above the city on a very quiet one lane road.  Lost back atop a mountain.  The voice within repeating two words over and over.  Be still.  And finally I was.

Silence.  The palpable energy that can not convey false hoods, excuses, analysis or interpretation.  The space between words that holds only will and meaning.

A vow of silence was my next step along the Path, from that moment until I know it no longer serves me.  To live connected without audible language, so that only kisses leave my lips.  An adventure!

So, friends and loved ones, forgive me if I do not pick up the phone.  Indulge me if our interactions require more face time than usual.  I will return your texts as needed, and your emails if required.  I’m still here, listening. 

Earth Day.  As I take stock of the ways in which my household could improve our use of resources both personal and natural I can’t help but take in the symbolic feminine imagery of a “Mother Earth”.  Few relics of the Divine Feminine have survived this modern age, particularly in the main stream culture.  But it is rarely argued that the planet which bears our existence, weathers our destructive impulses, and shelters us even from our own consequences is archetypally feminine.  The symbolism for me is personal.

We have a culturally self destructive relationship with the feminine.  As our “Mother Earth” she is at once revered and ravaged.  A mother one moment, and a whore the next.  This duality frames much of our relationship to the feminine.  There appears to be a haunting impulse among ourselves to destroy that which we can not own or bend to our desire.  We force ourselves upon the Earth and she yields what bounty she has to offer.

But, not even a whore lies down forever.  Repairing the relationship with our planet requires repairing the feminine identity within ourselves.

Painting from Denver Canopy Airport

“I think God was a beautiful dreamer…” ~ my 5 year old daughter, The Alchemistress

As Matriarch of The Burrow I am received with certain deference(s).  For example, when the daughters converge in our dressing room the Boomer gets first chair at the vanity table, then Gen X and Gen Next daughters.  Like position “chairs” of an orchestra, under conduction of legacy, we move in order despite protests of “But I’m almost finished!” or “I have an order to what I need to do and you  just ruined it!”  Their concert of rolling chairs yields to my entry.

I get the green chair closest to the hairdryer, the curling iron, the flat iron, and the clock named Moshi.  Flashing colors and replying “Good Morning” to my greeting, Moshi reminds us that we are all once again, late.  We step up the tempo, exchanging shoes and jeans and last minute approvals of what is presentable to the outside world.

One last peer into the mirrors we stand, three generations staring back at us before we move in and out of various exits.  Like meercats we bob in and out of the burrow: retrieving the forgotten phone, bluetooth or homework page, before the dust settles and the dogs can no longer hear our cars down the road.