it’s one of those days, dear rumi, when the place i thought i was going to travel to turns into quite a different pilgrimage… i thought i was going to write about the peace movement and how it’s been so vibrant for a thousand years, metaphorically speaking, as a sparkling star reminds me… and then i keep hearing – and still we rise – which seems so right on this day of Venus rising as the morning star as she is in the final readying phase for the new eight year cycle and as George Floyd is celebrated with his final going home ceremony and around the globe we commit to dismantling the virus of racism and coming home to the knowing that we belong to each other living in a web of life amazingly interconnected and interdependent on each other…
three and a half years ago, i wrote the following words around the moment of women’s march following the inauguration in the usa and they seem even truer today… there’s a low tide of consciousness all over the globe seeping into our pores, but, when the tide is low, we leap high no matter what… it’s a curious happening, a paradoxical habit, this ability to bounce back in the face of a goliath like wave with the wherewithal to crush everything in its path… instead of succumbing, we are coming together, showing the strength of our numbers, standing together speaking truth to power from a place of love, alchemi-sing the call for justice with weaving a world that works for all… let us invoke the goddess maya for our movement poem…
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Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou
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may we rise, may we rise, may we rise, everyday may we rise gracefully to the occasion and weave a world of peace built on justice guided by love…