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Tag Archives: refuge
woman horizontal | indwelling
brave is in your spine. peace in your center. grace is in your heart.
— t.scott-miller
for + inspired by k.r
woman horizontal | done + been done
done and been done
still they appear in dreams
unsummoned
cords cut
but roots regrow
when memory whispers my name
new work to be done and done again
unhook and untether
call back my energy
reclaim my soul
i am not yours
to harbor in distorted reverie
no longer known to you
no longer held by you
no longer the light
by which you warm hands and heart
or take shelter from your own shadow
in my place, i seed
grace, gratitude
and the tenderness of mercy
then raze the tomb where you encased me
and seal the crack you slipped into.
15 sept 2017
woman horizontal | ich bin mary
Today I honor the memory of my great-great grandmother, Mary Roth Rhodes, who was born on this day in 1863 in Würtemberg, Germany, the daughter of Dora + Gottlieb Roth.
▪▪▪
14 years ago, in July 2003, she became a beacon, a catalyst and a guide for me on a pathway of reclamation, transformation and healing. Not only from the trauma of living in Brooklyn through 9/11 and numbing out in the aftermath. But for examining, understanding, compiling, and righting/re-writing a family’s history where men don’t survive and women carry on, in spite of profound loss and because of profound love for those left behind. For seeing clearly generational patterns that created heart aches and breaks, too many what-ifs and if-onlys. For parsing hope, bravery, fortitude and tenderness from this seemingly meager inheritance. For committing to build a new legacy upon her foundation of mother-wisdom.
With help from my sister Tamara, who followed the leads I’d dug up in NYC libraries and picked up those threads in the National Archives in D.C., we learned of her journey from her native country to NYC, with a friend, at the age of 17 and eventually on to Hamilton, Ontario where she would marry my great-great grandfather Wesley, a former slave and Civil War veteran.
Because of her, I decided to leave New York after 9 years. My only vision: to begin anew as she had the courage to do, to live simply and to be engaged in community. Because of her, I returned home. Because of her, I eventually decided to stay. (Not necessarily an easy or simple choice after living away from home since the age of 14.) Because of her, I recognized that the true gift and power of researching our past was in the opportunity to rebuild and nurture connections bolstered by this new understanding of all the stuff we were made of — in blood and spirit.
25 july 2017
on refuge + resistance | surviving to sustain skillful action
Revolution is not a one-time event.
It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity
to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses;
for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect.
We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation
from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.We know what it is to be lied to.
The 60s should [have taught] us how important it is not to lie to ourselves.
Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event,
or something that happens around us
rather than inside of us.
Not to believe that freedom can belong to any one group of us
without others also being free.
How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to ourselves,
or to define our sources of power to us…Each one of us must look clearly and closely
at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life
and decide where action and energy is needed
and where it can be effective.
~ Audre Lorde
Post-Women’s March Deep Refuge + Restoration Circle
yesterday, we marched.
today we rest, take deep refuge and restore ourselves in the full embrace of sangha
to rise up and take action again.
~t. scott-miller
sangha study schedule
Join us in February, as we complete our three-month journey along the Noble Eightfold Path with a study the faculties of Skillful Effort, Skillful Mindfulness, and Skillful Concentration. The following month, we’ll deepen our contemplation of Justice, Liberation, and Healing — the focus of our annual call-to-action, March Mindfulness — and close out our winter series with a special full-day workshop on the topic on 3/19. View: Upcoming Practice Dates.
special sangha event [1/22]: deep refuge + restoration circle
Harnessing the energy and light of the Women’s March in Washington as well our very own March on #LoveLansing, Sangha will draw closer together to shine our beacon of refuge, resistance, and restoration.
Living Into Community, Building Our Capacity with the Noble Eightfold Path.
11 am – 12:30 pm | Meditation + Dharma Discussion
12:30 – 2:00 pm | Feast + Fellowship Circle
We gather at Heartdance Studio – 1806 E. Michigan Avenue. Doors open just before 11 am. Centering begins at 11:10-ish.
RSVP/UPDATES: 3 Jewels Yoga Sangha
Other Community Events:
14 January – National Day of Action for Flint | Capitol Building
17 January – Our Dream: Lansing United | Lansing Center
19 January – Ghostlight Project | Peppermint Creek Theatre
21 January – Children’s Social Justice Reading Group | East Lansing Public Library
21 January – Women Organize Michigan Summit
woman horizontal | the sound of him
he wakes whistling, thrilled by the zipping wind
he conjures and reshapes into sharps and flats
snaps a crisp unpatterned rhythm
with supple-skinned thumb and middle finger
(wiped dry between refrains)
flickering his wrist for triumphant emphasis
mutters a play-by-play commentary
to an imagined audience of rapt gamers
punctuated with shrieks, chides, wails and groans
jigs an exuberant popiscle-sugared dance
wagging his pineapple-cherry coated tongue
shuffling feet,
flexing knees,
scuttling erratically to a giggle-inflected beat
oh! mustn’t leave out the slapping bum finale and encore
drills up and down 14 stairs,
thunderous heel-stomping laps
and cushioned drop-and-rolls,
parkouring over and around the furniture
a streak of joy unleashed
bumps and bangs precede whimpers and squealed tears
beckoning empathetic triage,
strokes of comfort and mild caution to remember,
in all this play, that his body is growing and does not yet know
the new dimensions marking where it ends and external objects begin
hides, hushed and stockstill in a closet
awkwardly wedged behind the vacuum and laundry basket
clamping back unruly titters, lodged between throat and strained cheeks
crackling with anticipation to jumpscare an absent parent now returned
tucks into the curve of torso reserved
for bedtime storytelling and goodnight prayer songs
mommy-kissed lids and curled lashes
shelter sleep-craved eyes,
burning from the effort to see through
one minute more of the darkening day
a puff of minted air,
humming ‘love you too’
before sliding into blessed dreams
woman horizontal | unburdening
y’all finished or y’all done?
his guttery trill, gum-soled and sticky with wizened contempt
is instantly corroded by the viral ozone of tropospheric memes
earwormed into polyphonic cackles
relentlessly pursuing you — tubing through folded gray matter —
until the voice of God, remixed as a call for intercession,
beseeches:
is you finished or is you done?
you pitch a prayer for completion
petition mightily for all ordained wonders to be finished
from spark generated to diligence sustained
make a way out of no way,
leaving behind tattered limp-tired tropes
overused and out-of-season ideas
scratch-deep grooves committed to sameness, repeating the repeats
a good and proper farewell to stuck and fused people
prolapsed yet yanked back by histories tangled and cursed
But [then] the Lord says,
“Forget the things that happened in the past.
Do not keep on thinking about them.
I am about to do something new.
It is beginning to happen even now.
Don’t you see it coming?
I am going to make a way for you to go through the desert.
I will make streams of water in the dry and empty land.”*
in the etheric gap you become unapologetically i and make…
a (re)formation
fueled on and centered by love, the emboldened claim to lift up:
what i value
what i wish to protect
what i wish to lead with
this way ’round, loudly and assuredly
a discerning heart supple-strong, free, open and clear
*Isaiah 43:18-19 NIVR
woman horizontal | how naked the heart
how naked the heart
when anointed for communion
transparent as skeleton leaf
veins quaking sepia-tinged curiosity
flexed impulse relaxing between Whys and Whats and Who Do Yous
where it embraces all and becomes tethered by the long gaze,
unwavering and tender
held there, ambient love soaks through gossamer-laced capillaries
and this aesthete,
quickening with meaty delight,
is transmuted into a vaporous contagion
oxgenated, metabolized,
pumped outward then upward,
to be inhaled anew
now sipped in and seeping
stripping bare the armor
to the raw once more
infecting it with the blood wet
murmuring of the proud and unafraid
woman horizontal | exhuming the empath
inspired by the indigenous navajo creatix spiderwoman, woman horizontal is a close-to-the-heart project that has held different shapes over many years. still an emerging work-in-process, below is one piece from my “pilgrimage of verse, image, and sound.”
in sanctuary, in pulp woven + pressed then printed, i found her waiting for me
she sang me in to the fourth world,
skimming the spiraling thread
between timeless times, liminal horizons, + the veils of imagined realities
cradled to her heart, stretched out + spun, belly up
laid to rest upon a loamy bed of earth
i see
i hear
i smell
i taste
i touch
i know
no beginning to nature, no end to me
the boggy creak of a frog camouflaging its bilge water song
that scampering chitter of black squirrels and petite chipmunks scaling trees fallen + splintered
a trio of lithe deer silently lunching in the marsh
flickering tails catch my eye
fawny brown smattering against thickets of green
damsel flies + redwing blackbirds
fluttering things, buzzing beings
alighting, pausing, taking flight toward perches high and low
cumulonimbus clouds thick as riverbanks
yield to an estuary of marbled blue sky wending through the atmosphere
a waking dream
a revelation of the universe within
i am absorbed,
arms fold me in and in
to the womb-depths of fertile soil
(six feet, a mere starting point an underdwelling to pause before the long journey back)
deeper still
to seed, to cell, to atom, to spark, to notion, to curiosity
i am at rest
stretched out + spun, belly up
surrendering to legacy
inheriting death
the completion
a void, vacuum, vanishing point
a vortex of matter
(before) reanimating
no end to me, no beginning to nature
knowtouchtastesmellhearsee
curiosity begats notion begats spark begats atom begats cell begats seed
a bare kernel
rising layer by layer
upward trailing through horizons of bedrock, clay, silt, sand, soil, humus
musky with the life scent of burrowing things, many-legged crawl-creeping things
clawing and boring tunnels around and through
a littering of decay and dis(re)membered things
exoskeletons, crushed stone, deep-buried hollowed bones of those forgotten things
digging up, up, up toward surface
exhumed by faith-magic and love
tscottmiller 