Fragile Shoots in the Detritus

No matter how staunch my faith is that everything is happening exactly as it needs to, that the World knows what She's doing, the sheer magnitude of the crumbling is still heavy to bear. It’s getting ironic now, how I seem to need to write down my advice in order to remember it, to remind myself.

Ground. Find Stillness. Spend time Being.

I’m surrounded by enormous decay at the moment. Two family members dying slowly from cancer, a grandma and a grandpa slowly dying from old age. Relationships crashing like hailstones—even abstract brambles like the Stock Market and Mortgage Establishment choking in the smog of their own industry.

Ground. Find Stillness. Spend time Being.

‘Find solace in the love you share with others’ are the words that murmur in my inner ear.
‘There are always others. There are always children.’

More than ever I see the absolute necessity of nurturing the small things, like our young ones, our gardens and our wells. It’s in those things, smaller than our dogmas and egos, in those things that our wisdom grows, close to our Love.

And more than ever we need Wisdom. If for nothing else than to speak out against the thoughtless blows of despair’s short vision. To shine into the Darkness.

I say to YOU—whomever the Mystery guided to this page right now—please, nurture the small things. The wells. The gardens. The children.

There are fragile shoots sprouting in the detritus.

Teaching Peace like Herpes

So I have this crazy idea: I think that teaching young people how to take powerful responsibility for their own choices, learn how to communicate without blaming or dominating, listen deeply, and resolve their conflicts without using violence-- I think those are good things. Isn't that insane? Isn't it radical? If I were Socrates they might make me drink hemlock!

It always amazes me when I tell people that I teach peace and they get defensive; I've actually been accused of indoctrinating the youth. The underlying reason for this (it usually comes out in the ensuing conversation) is that many people automatically assume that "peace" is inherently "liberal," politically speaking, if not outright leftist. Allow me to clear my throat before I rant...

When, I ask you, did the notion of trying to avoid war and violence, if at all possible, become a defining political affiliation? And if it truly is one, what does that make the alternative political stance? Pro-War? The Death Party? I would think that the desire for peace (and consequently the effort to learn concrete skills in peacemaking and reasoned negotiation) would be universal. In fact, that's a question I often begin my classes with: "Who wants to walk through flying bullets and falling bombs on the way to school, raise your hand?" Am I missing something here? Shouldn't the effort to teach our young people tangible skills in managing conflict without the use of violent force transcend political lines? Am I naive in saying yes? Can we not rescue the word "peace" from the annals of tween-targeted commercialism and vacuous hippie-speak? (Nothing against the hippies, don't get me wrong, it's just another unfortunate stereotype that gets too often attached to the notion of peace.) Can we not make teaching peaceful negotiation as nonpartisan as teaching health or PE? After all, we teach teenagers how to avoid STI's in Health class, how to choose good nutrition and avoid unhealthy choices. Isn't War essentially a politically transmitted disease? How is teaching nonviolent conflict resolution any different? Anyone?

Mater Sancti

Imagine Darkness.
Utter, tangible, swaddling Darkness.
Perhaps there was an Otherplace before (I think so); perhaps there was not.
Perhaps that darkness is salted with memories that
out-bubbled Cerridwen’s Cauldron, outswam the currents of Lethe.
But even so at best those images lost their light and
swim now in the Darkness that rushes on ears not yet formed but
listening, always listening.
And out of that Darkness, the first sound of a lifetime,
a sound not heard but felt…
Thum-thump. Thum-thump. Thum-thump.
It’s a cadence that you’ll match your deepest rhythms to,
the master metronome for the symphony that is to be a Life.
Sacred Texts have told us much about the Father, about hands that shaped clay
and into it breathed life, about a bearded mouth that smiled for It Was Good.
And blessed be the Fathers, for their gritty hands have hewn out homes
from solid rock and chiseled language on Eternity.
But slowly, surely, as trembling and determined as a foal’s first steps,
we’re remembering the Sacred Space that circles Holy Mother,
Mater Sancti.
For when we look for clay, we find it not in books but in the Earth,
and not so deep that our spades raise blisters on
hands that seek the stuff of life.
And while the sperm may offer sparks, the stem-cell clay that forms our Form
is fashioned by maternal hands.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Shapers of the Future.
Imagine Darkness.
Warm, inviting darkness— not the darkness of oblivion,
for that is cold and empty as Terror.
Imagine the darkness of becoming, the darkness that fills a kettle
before the water spills in to brim it.
The darkness of a cave where bears and groundhogs sleep.
The darkness of the Womb.
And in that darkness drums a drum, thum-thumping a rhythm of comfort and love, making promises whispered and sung.
In that darkness hums a Voice. A voice that explains,
from the earliest inklings of Knowing, in the sturdiest depths of Foundation, that
You. (-thump)
Are not. (thum-thump)
Alone. (thum-thump)
Before the world is round, or gravity found,
before hot is ouch or milk is yum, there is
You. Are not. Alone.
And that is Everything.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Hummers of the Sacred Truth.
Blessed be the mothers, for they are the Voice in the Darkness of Becoming.
Blessed be the mothers.


copyright 2004, Darren C. Reiley

“Love” (as if i knew)

So many half-people, scouring the earth,
searching for finger-quoted Love,
for a Better Half to make them whole.
For Band-aid Love to staunch the bleeding,
Prozac Love to offer blindfolds against the dark, rather
than barking shins on the coffee table Tableaus of wounded
youth as we stumble toward the light switch.
The secret is this, i don’t mind telling you:
a wounded heart cannot love freely,
and the best better half we can find out there
Is in here, the better half of our Selves.
Only when you are healed and whole can you love truly.
There is love that seems to make you whole
And then there is Love that proves you already were.
Seal them up, those cracks, those rends, those broken places—
Self-forgiveness makes good glue,
And solitude,
And courage.
And hurry please:
I’m tired of finger-quoting Love.

Darren Reiley
August, 2010