I am sitting quietly, feeling the intensity of the past week. All I can think of is the massive disaster that unfolded in Nepal. My heart goes out to everyone who experienced this devastating ordeal.

Far away from the Tibetan plateau and ice-capped mountains, I, too, have been witnessing the weather patterns changing in my little village. I live in southwestern Türkiye, on the Aegean coast.

I don’t spend much time worrying about climate change because we are going to live through what we are going to live through. I am not in denial though; sometimes when I imagine what is likely to occur (and already occurring) even in our lifetimes, my chest tightens with fear. I think the sheer immensity of destruction in Nepal made it existentially clear: we are at the edge of a steep learning curve—the razor sharp edge of evolution.

The terror of so violently and abruptly losing everything puts life in perspective. Such impact would make you either cynical, bitter and controlling, or deeply spiritual, communal and wise.

It is about our relationship with nature, death and mystery.

After the plagues swept through medieval Europe and nearly one third of the population perished, the Western mind turned to science and technology to fix the problem. There was no more room for mystery. This has been a hero’s quest on steroids to wrestle with and control nature. We are boldly reminded that this is not possible.

Now there is the idea to “fix” climate change. It’s not fixable unless we are willing to go through the crucible of change ourselves. And I know a lot of us are welcoming these challenges to do self-work, community-work, culture-work— and thank you for doing that! I remember when Hurricane Helene ravaged large areas across the Southeastern United States in late September 2024—including Asheville and surroundings, all I heard from Debra was how people rose to the occasion and acted in solidarity with one another.

Nepalis have a strong communal and ceremonial culture; they tend to their dead, they honor the elements, they make their prayers. They will recover from this tragedy.

But what of us?

The wind is still howling mightily, swallowing my words.
I am going to keep quiet.

May we be safe and may we keep our hearts open to life, death, and mystery.

In early 2018 I unexpectedly found myself in Nepal and spent two months in Kathmandu, walking its streets, breathing in the dusty air, smelling the incense, visiting shrines and monasteries. I loved every bit of it.
May all blessings be upon this sacred land.

This month’s question is from our dear friend Berna in Türkiye:

How can we keep hope alive in these times?

From Debra …

Dearest Berna, I so appreciate your question. It is one I often hear in the soundscape around me and also echoed within me. How to answer that in a genuine, rooted and embodied way? The great philosopher poet John O’Donohue reflected: As we speak, there are individuals on the frontlines, holding the delicate fabric of humanity together in places of unspeakable barbarity, witnessing things no human should ever see. And they are able to sustain it because there is in them some sense of beauty that knows the horizons we are all called to.1 I am reminded that we are all on the frontlines of something (if we are paying attention) and we are all called to engage, contribute and be creative there. And to nurture a sense of beauty somehow someway.

I am 74 years into this life and while fear is not holding me hostage, I understand what it is to experience the depth of despair when faced with some of what is going on in these times. How do we not give up despite every invitation to do so? The best key I know to the prison of fear is curiosity and the most generous form of curiosity I know is poetry. I agree with Maria Popova.2 I am an intensely curious person and find myself at the shores of poetry every single day. Reading (mostly) and sometimes writing. I also resonate with Ursula Le Guin that anything can be resisted and changed by humans, including the most hopeless of situations; we can challenge what even the great majority of people feel is inevitable. Ursula writes: Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often … in the art of words.3 Even the smallest cluster of words or turn of phrase, can un-fog my head, freshen my horizon, and add some kindling to the fire I came into this life to tend … like these two poems that are some of my go-tos if I am needing to re-invigorate hope in my day:

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be softer with you.
you are a breathing thing.
a memory to someone.
a home to a life.

nayyirah waheed

This month’s Mystery Week welcomes you to paréa1 with three Holy Mischievians: this week, we—Debra and Filiz—talked to Vanessa Reid who is one of our beloveds in the wide world. We began our conversation with this tiny and mighty poem and then had a deep dive into the power of language, our shared love of poetry, hospicing cycles, relationships and worlds, bewilderment of grief and loss, and menopause as an initiatory journey into an unfettered life. This conversation felt like galloping on wild horses across an uncharted terrain. We loved it so much that we decided to offer this Mystery Week post to not only our paid subscribers, but to the whole community.
We truly hope that it will inspire and delight you.

During our conversation we mentioned a place called Axladitsa more than a few times. In case it peaks your interest, explore this beautiful land initiative in southern Pelion of Greece.

And, this was the poem that sealed our words:

Yes

Burden and blessing--
two blossoms
on the same branch.

To be so lost
in this radiant wilderness.

Gregory Orr

OUR GUEST: VANESSA REID

Vanessa Reid is a process architect and poet who designs at the luminous edge where systems and soul meet. A global soul who came of age between policy makers and poets, her work has been shaped by decades of cross-cultural practice in places of crisis and beauty — India, Guatemala, Jerusalem, Greece — drawn always to the thresholds where the visible and invisible press together and something new is trying to emerge. She holds Master's degrees in Architecture and Process-oriented Psychology, published ascent magazine which she led through its full lifecycle to a conscious close - but considers herself to be primarily a student of the wild, the invisible, and the stubborn intelligence of living systems. Her systems artistry weaves the practical and the poetic, depth pedagogy and rites of passage, and she aspires to be fierce and tender company for anyone navigating the cycles of living and dying - particularly those called to create cultures of transformation amidst complexity, collapse, and the urgent, gorgeous mess of our times.

To find out more about Vanessa, please visit www.vanessareid.ca and thewritinghouse.ca. Also her TED talk titled “Conscious Closure: the wild life of dying” is pretty inspiring.

It is the height of summer and I am sitting on our deck watching the hummingbirds plunder the bright orange blooms of the trumpet creeper vine. The wild turkeys are roosting on a wooden fence beside the front field. And the male cicadas are singing their hearts out in the hopes that a female will lean their way (and engage). I am also thinking about what Filiz wrote in her last post, “The Fire of Living”: Poems are energetic arrows that transmit the inner fire of the poet across space and time. I feel those arrows can be shot in any direction, including back in time where they can bless those who lacked a voice and whose lives were purposefully and tragically silenced. Poetry has the capacity to kindle the life force that still exists, even after years of concerted human effort to annihilate people who happen to look, pray, speak, think or live differently. There is a power in poetry that rises from the depths of grief and memory … that creates a sanctuary, a calm space where wandering sorrow can rest and homeless grief can find comfort when the weight of the world feels too much to bear. 2

I feel much more susceptible these days to absorbing grief from the daily onslaught of world events. Not from following the news in the usual way, but because I get the news by being alive. My body feels it, my feelings are stirred (sometimes to roaring) and the field of me is tenderized. And sometimes bruised. And more. While I was rooting around in my desktop files looking for something, I stumbled on a poem I wrote called “The Leap” that has never seen the full light of day publicly. It has been really challenging to write, but I am a grief walker and poetry is one of the ways that I tend my grief. The poem was conceived in Türkiye and has taken me over five years to complete. I just finished it this week because it was determined to be my offering for Holy Mischief. Poetry helps restore balance within me and is often the mother of inspired action. And so I take the hand of this poem and follow it from Dersim, Türkiye to the mountains of Western North Carolina … to you.

“The Leap” is inspired by a story that Metin Kahraman told in the spring of 2021. He is a renowned and highly revered Kurdish musician and culture bearer who hosted Filiz and I and two other Turkish friends. We were in the Dersim province in the Eastern Anatolian region of Türkiye, part of the larger ancestral home of the Kurdish people.3 One of the first places Metin brought us to was beside a road in the Dersim countryside, where we looked out on a breathtaking view of the Munzur River and the cliffs below. I thought we were there to see the astonishing landscape. We were. And then Metin began to share a story about an incident that happened in 1938 during the Kurdish purges at a place called 38 Kayalıkları, meaning 38 Rocks … a cliff where a mass suicide of women and children occurred. The cliff we could see from where we stood.

In 1938, the Turkish government informed the elders of a cluster of villages, which were home to Kurdish Alevis, that they were being relocated and moved to a better land. It was not a choice. The people gathered on a particular day and waited for the army to come and escort them. When the military arrived, they began killing the men. The women fled to 38 Kayalıkları and jumped en masse into the great Munzur. Kurdish writer Nuri Dersimi4 recounted that in the purges of 1938, “Thousands of women and girls threw themselves into the Munzur River.” I burst into tears and Metin’s story has never left my side even after all these years. It has taken up residence in my heart and midwifed a poem.

The next day, our friend Buğra (one of the four of us) found a way to access that cliff. We parked below it and walked up a trail that had no historic signage marking the event. No sign of remembrance at all. We followed the trees, bushes, stones, and wildflowers to the top and stood together, looking out over the Munzur. I had brought strips of cloth that I cut from a dress of Grandmother Red Leaf’s, one I inherited when she passed. For years I have shared small strips of this blue cloth with people for ceremonial purposes and on that day, the four of us tied them on the trees and bushes along the cliff … each of us making prayers for the spirits of the women and children who had plunged from that edge and for their men who had died on the land behind us.

I wonder about the very last conversation a mother might have had with her daughter, just before they leapt … before choosing death over probable rape or murder or a life without any sovereignty, including over their bodies. How might the love of a mother be expressed as she stands with her young daughter in such a moment?

A few things to know before reading “The Leap” …

Canım is a Turkish term of endearment that can be used to express affection or closeness. It is similar to saying my dear, darling or sweetheart.

The Munzur River, whose headwaters are in the Dersim area, is highly sacred to the local Kurdish Alevi community. They consider the river and its valley to be a living, holy entity.

Nene is an affectionate name for grandma in Turkish.

Soft crossing is an expression our elder Grandmother Red Leaf used when making prayers for someone’s passing.

Mashallah is a beautiful Arabic word that has made its way into many languages including Turkish and Kurdish. It means what God has willed and is used to express praise, joy or thankfulness.

And so, the poem …

THE LEAP

To a Kurdish Alevi mother and her young daughter in the last few moments of their lives (Dersim, Anatolia, 1938)

Come my daughter
look this way
towards the wild and holy water
the beckoning river
My husband, your papa,
your brothers, my sons
they are clouds now
and they have gone ahead

A dark swarm is coming
a madness of men
hard-handed, closed-hearted
mother forgetters
forsakers of kin
may the stone-cold fruit of their hearts
ripen.

Look up canım, see the sun
We are the freeborn
the soon-to-be newborn
the radiant airborne
unbowed and unbound
we are strong women songs
that sing longer than time

Hear our lament
Our thundering hearts
Fatima, ancestors
Bless us, come closer

You my daughter
have had so few years
but we shall flower
this moment together

You are the sweetheart
of birches and olives,
old oaks and hazelnuts,
hovering kestrels

You are the bride
of the high mountain caverns,
candlelit shrines
and the great rolling Munzur

You are the mother
of sweet yellow buttercups
here at our feet
beside small ochre stones

You are the nene
of this sovereign nation
of brave human people …
soothe us and hold us and bless us please bless us

Sisters stand ready
Mountains stand ready
River stand ready
We offer ourselves
to the field of remembering
all that we have and all that we are
We pray for soft crossing
to some gentler shore

Put your hand in my hand
and we the un-feathered
our hearts in bright flight
will plummet like winged ones
who know their way home

Mashallah! It’s a good day to fly
Come little bird
It is time

This poem is dedicated to …

Metin and Kemal Kahraman, Mavis Güneşer and all the people who touched our hearts in 2021. May you continue to sing the life of this world into abundant beauty through remembrance.

And to the victims of the 1938 purges … men, women and children I will never meet, but will never forget.

May peace be upon us all.

❤️ Debra

When I read these lines written by Yu Xuanji2—a Chinese female poet, courtesan, and Daoist nun during the late Tang dynasty—nearly twelve centuries ago, I could feel the sap rising in my body. Xuanji’s transmission is so complete that her words kindle the fire burning in my chest—a longing that comes alive with the breath of poetry, no matter how far from the past it arrives. I am right there alongside her, riding the boat, reading poems in the moonlight, and being carried by the wind to some place that feels like home …

Home is everywhere fires are burning these days—hungry fires devouring forests, mountains, villages. Strangely, I find myself praying to the fire, “May you be full, may you be fed”. It started ten days ago when the upper-neighborhood of my village caught fire. As the helicopters and airplanes flew over the village frantically, I lay down on the cool tiles of my living room, breathing and listening.

What does the fire want to be fed with?

It used to be fed with rituals, prayers, stories, songs, poems, reverence and gratitude. Because it was so essential to our survival as a species, fire has always been at the center of human imagination and culture-making. There was reciprocity and sacred relationship—as there was with all elements in nature; we acknowledged, honored, and fed what fed and kept us alive.

Perhaps we were also better at tending our inner fires—what burns at the center of our bodies and imagination, what calls us to fall more deeply in love with life, our relentless longing for beauty, communion and harmony.
For peace, for love. For meaning and truth …

When this inner fire finds creative expression in the world, one’s inner light grows brighter; one is illuminated from within, and thus illuminates the world.

Like Yu Xiuhua3. I found her poetry through a synchronicity and initially thought she was Yu Xuanji because their names appeared almost identical to my eyes. But I soon realized Xiuhua is a contemporary female poet from rural China. When I read the poem that made her famous worldwide, I was fascinated to discover that both women—though twelve centuries apart—found a way to express their inner fire through poetry:

Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You4

To sleep with you or to be slept, what’s the difference if there’s any?
Two bodies collide – the force, the flower pushed open by
the force,
the virtual spring in the flowering – nothing more than this
and this we mistake as life restarting. In half of China
things are happening: volcanoes
erupting, rivers running dry,
political prisoners and displaced workers abandoned,
elk deer and red-crowned cranes shot.
I cross the hail of bullets to sleep with you.
I press many nights into one morning to sleep with you.
I run across many of me and many of me run into one to sleep
with you.
Yet I can be misled by butterflies of course
and mistake praise as spring,
a village like Hengdian as home. But all these,
all of these are absolutely indispensable
reasons that I sleep with you.

I was curious and intrigued. When I dug a little deeper—reading more of her poems and articles written about her, and watching some interviews—my fascination transformed into deep awe and appreciation for this poet. Beyond the striking appearances—the fact that Xiuhua lives in a disabled body in rural China and writes about love and desire—she emanates an unwavering clarity that comes with fully owning one’s life, with all of its heartbreaks, challenges, longings, and absences.

In the documentary Still Tomorrow, we see the poet walking against a bleak landscape with a spring in her step, not merely caused by her disability, but I imagine, comes from a certain spiritedness of having crossed to the other side of the destitute—the freedom of living in the fire of one’s dharma, in accordance to the laws of nature and destiny.

In this video of a poetry event organized by the British Library in London in 2024, Xiuhua clearly demonstrates her sense of humor and her appetite for living through creative expression. This event was also the premiere of a dance-theater project inspired by her poetry. As I watch her move and dance to the music of her own poems with a serene smile on her face, I am emboldened by her presence, and my inner fire flickers. My flames dance with her as she sincerely shows up for her calling in life.

Both Yu Xuanji and Yu Xiuhua had their own share of troubles and heartbreaks in their lives. Yet instead of succumbing to victimhood they found a profound way to liberate themselves within their respective situations. How do I know that without knowing them personally? Because of how my body responds to their poems. Because poetry is not just a bunch of fancy words thrown together. Poetry is a great vehicle, and poems are energetic arrows that transmit the inner fire of the poet across space and time. They feed our inner fires.

So, dear reader, as the wildfires sweep across our larger body, the earth, I wonder …

What does the fire in you want to be fed with? How does it want to be expressed?

If we feed the fire in the right way, perhaps it wouldn’t need to devour our earth beyond its function of regeneration.

Filiz ❤️

This month’s question is from an anonymous subscriber:

Beloved mistresses of Holy Mischief,

There is a question—a very alive inquiry—in my bosom which I would like to send down the rabbit hole with you:

• Where does healing begin: In the mind or the body?

• Mind over body or body over mind?

• I want to trust my body but what if my body is manipulated by my mind?

• What may initiate, trigger and sustain true healing?

I would so appreciate your insights, dear rabbit hole travelers.

Self-healing Enthusiast

From Filiz …

I remember sitting at the edge of the ridge early morning, as the sun made its way high up in the sky. It was December and the air was crisp. I sat there wrapped in a woolen shawl, with coffee in my hand, happy as a clam. I repeated this ritual for four consecutive mornings on the same spot, precisely as the land instructed me to do as a year-end transition. The serenity of those mornings are etched in my being forever.

In the following months that very spot became inaccessible to me—a huge natural gas pipeline construction began in the area, destroying big patches of forest, rummaging through the land like a giant sandworm from the planet of Arrakis1. I’ve had knots in my stomach every time I passed by the construction/destruction area over these past six months.

And then, a few days ago, during a heat wave, a ravaging fire broke out in the same part of our village. Thankfully there was no natural gas in the pipes yet. Due to hot winds, the flames quickly devoured two-hundred hectares (about five-hundred acres) of land in the span of eight hours.

This is an ecosystem that I intimately know, having walked the ridge and through the forest, again and again for eleven years. I cried, I prayed, I dreamt, I sang during my walks in the presence of these pine trees, olive trees, oak trees, rocks, birds, turtles, and bees that inhabited this land long before I called it home. They have been part of my well-being, my steady companions, my source of healing over the years. Now many of them turned to ashes.

I want to say that dis-ease or healing starts in a field. A field in this context is a physical and energetic entanglement of life forms—a visible and invisible web of relations. Whether there is dis-ease or well-being in a field depends on the quality and aliveness of the relationships.

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A year and a half ago I was about to board a plane to Japan and for reasons I still don’t understand, I didn’t. Some invisible force had me stay put and I did not journey to the land I had, and still have, a deep and visceral longing for. The ten-thousand-kilometer distance between my location and Japan—the absence of physical proximity—transmuted into a strong relational presence in my life. It is one of the most intriguing relationships I’ve had with a place. I don’t have, yet, the right words to explain it.

間 / Ma in Japanese culture means space, interval, gap between things—absences that bring forth presence. It is not an undefined, limitless void but an intentional emptiness—the right amount of space between and around things—that serve relationship, meaning, and aesthetics.

For July’s Mystery Week we would like to contemplate on ma in a creative way and invite you to do the same. How can this concept inspire us to create meaning and beauty in our everyday lives?

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Bees do have a smell, you know … for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.
— Ray Bradbury1

July has arrived with her Southern sultry self. The wineberries are plump, the mullein is blooming, the evening primroses are doing their bright yellow thing, the bottle brush bush is beginning to burst, and the turkeys come a’calling for seed (including a mama who brought her half dozen chirruping babies to the door). A large black bear visits our compost and leaves his big, beautiful, musky scent all over the nighttime air. The bucks huff in the woods and two mother deer have three gamboling fawns between them (pure joy medicine). The blue-tailed skinks skitter around the deck and a fat raccoon can be seen ambling in the distance from time to time. Early morning birdsong is joined by the voices of millions of pollinators … the soundscape is one big Hallelujah! as far as the ear can hear.

The summer honey flow2 is full on and the honeybees are up early, seeking the abundant nectar from the Sourwood trees with their drooping clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers (like fistfuls of lilies of the valley, upside down). I stand under these singing trees that are thick with bees for about a month, immersed in sacred bee time and the divinity of plants, the land, the bees, and every living thing. It is a holy-rolling moment and I am bedazzled.

I started writing a poem about four years ago, celebrating this luscious bee-ish season, and was inspired to finish it today, to share with you. Some things to know before I do …

The daily pilgrimage of a honeybee from home to bloom (to bloom) is responsible for two of the most divine substances on earth … honey and wax. The sacred alchemy of flower nectar become honey become wax begins when a honeybee lands on a flower. To harvest the nectar, a bee extends her long, hairy, retractable tongue which unfurls from her head and acts as a straw. How she has space in her head for such a thing, astonishes me. The honeybee sucks up the nectar into her stomach and then retracts her tongue when she is done. Honeybees have two stomachs: one for the food which meets their own body’s needs and another expandable pouch called a honey stomach which is used to carry nectar (and sometimes water) back to the hive. A bee visits flower after flower until her honey stomach is full and then she returns home.

During this odyssey, the holy transmutation of nectar into honey has already begun. As the bee moves amongst the flowers, the nectar stored in her honey stomach moves around, mixing with enzymes which start to change and break down the sugars. Upon her return to the hive, a transfer takes place between the foraging bees and the house bees. The forager (or field bee) extends her tongue and moves the nectar from her honey stomach into the mouth of a receiving bee. Eventually the nectar ends up in a cell of honeycomb where it is “dried” by house bees flapping their wings 200 – 300 times a second to bring the moisture content down. It is then capped (with wax) and stored as food for the colony, both for the present and the coming-along winter. The scientific word for this nectar exchange is called trophallaxis. But the bee-enchanted … the poets … call this a Honey Kiss.

This sacred cooperation is such a reflection of rightness and all-is-wellness in their world. The precious intimacy of this exchange, this holy bee communion, is a visible sign of grace that stirs a very tender and devotional place in me.

One of the other bee-consecrated substances is wax, whose aroma is one of my most favorite (right up there with the scent of fresh bread, mock orange flowers and barnyards). I have sometimes slept with fresh wax wrapped in fabric and tucked under my pillow. Its fragrance is Medicine and stirs a sense of belonging with an ancestral bee lineage that for me is as strong as with my biological family And everywhere in this story, the divine feminine is strongly at play. Right now, the bees are surging toward their mid-summer peak of 60,000-ish beings per colony. The queen is the only fertile female. She lays the eggs and can beget as many as nineteen generations of bees in the warm-weathered months in our region. Worker bees, who comprise most of her companions and the majority of the hive, are also female but infertile. Their life’s work is another sort of miraculous.

Historically, young worker bees are often called virgins … but the wonderful Jacqueline Freeman calls them maidens, which I think is lovely. Between twelve to eighteen days old, the maidens have special wax producing glands on the underside of their abdomens. In order for their bodies to do this, they need to gorge on honey. Doing the bee math, a group of maidens needs to consume about six to eight pounds of honey to produce one pound of beeswax. Serious holy business. As they consume it, the wax scales they extrude from their glands is collected by bees, chewed, and applied to create honeycomb … the brilliantly efficient, hexagonal cells which store honey and pollen and also host generations of new bees.

Atsilvsgi is a Cherokee word Grandmother Red Leaf taught me which means flower or blossom. It also means: Where Creator lives. Isn’t that wonderful? Bees and blooms have been courting each other for millions of years. Theirs is one of the oldest love stories in creation and Creator is everywhere in evidence amongst them. Both their honey and wax have been the stuff of cherished ceremonies, rituals, blessings, libations, prayers and healing across many cultures and even more centuries. And so, this poem of celebration …

Epic and sacred
is nectar
become honey
become wax
become light
the holy journey
of fragrant ambrosia
from millions and millions
of generous flowers
ferried with care
in the tiny chalice
of a foraging bee
alchemically transmuted
kissed into the hive
gorged by young virgins
whose bodies extrude
the beeswaxy bones
for hive, hearth, and home
hallowed temple
for generations of bees
to flourish, to thrive
to bless and to dream
aromatic membrane
that carries vibrations
and cherished messages,
love letters, prayers
perfume of blossoms
perfume of pollen
perfume of honeycomb
revered Melissaes3
we take your sacrament
bowing down, reverent
knowing
that we
have been blessed.

blessed be
blessed bees

When I am in my bee sanctuary surrounded by the fragrant yeasty smells of pollen and new wax … the shivering vibration of millions of tiny-winged beings going about their business … and the many songs of the colonies … I always recalibrate and feel more present and alive. This experience inclines towards the divinatory; I sometimes feel a charged-up wisdom that courses through my veins and wants to express itself in my life in some sacred fashion. So many bee people I know, and especially women, feel a deep resonance with this pulsing field of unified consciousness and intelligence that naturally accompanies a colony of bees. When we are around them as appreciative witnesses, without any agenda, then the holy blueprint of us has the capacity to re-remember itself back into wholeness. This is no small thing. We ripen into honey and co-exist in a divine field of life where ultimately there is no bee and there is no human. Just loving presence … which the honeybees remind us is the only thing that is ever really going on. For that, and so much more, I give thanks.

Blessed be. Blessed bees. And blessed you, dear Holy Mischievians. Happy ripening.

❤️ Debra

Dilruba Ahmed starts her moving poem Phase One with these lines and continues with the same kind of fierce yet lighthearted compassion in the next fifty two lines that follow. I found this fine poem—certainly belonging to the life-saver category of poems—in a dark hour, and I can tell by the way it landed in my consciousness that it was a gift from the gods of poetry.

I was recently the recipient of a ceremony that called to me from the imaginal. I need to remind you that I use the word imaginal not as fantasy or daydreaming but as an ontological threshold through which we receive inspiration and invitations from an invisible field. calls it “The dreaming fabric of the world.”. This is where my listening ears are mostly pointed toward these days …

The intention of the ceremony was to make a big prayer to support a life transition. And even though the small community of women that gathered prayed for my life, the beauty and strength that were generated through the container of prayer suffused all of us. A ceremony is never for an individual but for the whole community; in fact, the wisdom of ancient ceremonies focuses on releasing the individual from the tight and suffocating boundaries of an illusory, separate self. The whole point is to re-member the initiate into the wide and wild web of life, and community surrounding her.

I was bound in a cocoon for a long time, you see, a woman-cave with white curtains.
I was forced to my knees, in agony over shedding every little bit of my precious achievements, attachments, and even relationships that I had accumulated over the years, facing the barebones of my life. Clearly an Inanna2-esque moment.

When the layers fall off and time slows down, sometimes the old monsters hidden between the crevices of a previously busy life—cozily anesthetized by female hormones during reproductive years—reappear: Long forgotten exiles, outcasts and ghosts of the psyche start crawling out of their dark holes and ask for a seat at your table. They need to be fed with proper “ritual” food, reconciled with and then returned to their cosmic home. But some are more persistent than others …

In the myths, the protagonist never survives an existential crisis during an archetypal journey on her own; there’s always some kind of divine help delivered at a crucial threshold, in the form of angels, animals, ancestors, wise elders, and other non-ordinary beings. Though going through transitions in our lives definitely requires our own painstaking labour, at some point a midwife is more than welcome.

So I called for help. I turned to the wisest and kindest women in my life, including my beloved Debra, and invited them to witness me as I petitioned to Great Spirit for a safe and sound return from the underworld. And so they did. We joined hands on the summer solstice, like our ancestors did for thousands of years, and prayed. I was elevated throughout the ceremony, and the following week flew by in a dreamlike, altered state. I was literally blasted—by fierce love and kindness— out of my old skin, and invited to step up to a new consciousness in the presence of the sheer beauty and power of sisterhood. It was transformative for all of us.

As the ceremony drew to a close, I felt—and still feel—utterly responsible for the gift I received and to the people—representing the larger community—from whom I received it. When one is bestowed with such goodness, there is a natural, almost unstoppable movement of reciprocity that rises within. I could sense a new, quiet and strong vow taking deep root in my psyche: to take loving care of this one wild and precious life. This insight did not emerge as a mental afterthought. It is an embodied commitment arising from the direct experience of my intimate entanglement with an infinite field of relationships. It was as if my capacity to do any kind of self-harm—in thought, talk or deed—were taken away from me by a flood of gratitude.

The Next Morning

After such deep and long experiences there is always the next morning.

I wondered who I would be following the ceremony, and the very end of ’s epic TED talk “Your elusive creative genius” kept playing in my mind: (Please watch this short clip from this talk as I will be making references to it in the rest of this writing)

I am keenly aware that though a ceremony can be powerful and transformative, it is merely a head start on the real task of living and embodying the prayer in everyday life.

The truth is I’ve been struggling to pull this experience into my body, and even more so in the absence of the village. Not the next morning, but the next week I found myself as an aging mortal with an aching body in the silence of my solitude, just like it was before the ceremony. And even though I knew this was going to happen, I let myself slip for a moment into my old habitual reactions—doubts, impatience, grievance (not the same as grief), and a self-bashing narrative.

Had I failed the ceremony, my community, myself?

When I realized what was happening, I turned the pages of the nearest poetry book and came across Phase One (please see the full poem in the footnotes). The poem sat me down quietly and curled up on my lap like a purring cat. I smiled through my tears. What better remedy than an exquisite poem to remind me to humor myself, to be patient and to trust, to trust it all, right this moment.

Phase One. Of course the poem is called that! I am telling you, this perfect symmetry, this kind of humor is only possible because the muses spare me, every time.

The thing is, the ceremony was largely to ensure my active participation—trust and surrender—in the imagination of life as well as petitioning and summoning invisible forces for help. I believe life imagines for us and with us, and each life carries a spark of the numinous creative fire, no matter our circumstances. The miracle is not that things change overnight, but it is to take the leap of trust and keep trusting. Every day, every moment, there is a choice to be made—to either succumb to infinite imperfections and grievances of our world, or to make peace with the human condition and find freedom within it to make a beautiful life.

The prayer is planted. Now, phase one begins. My heart is full.

“… I forgive you. For growing
a capacity for love that is great
but matched only, perhaps,
by your loneliness. For being unable

to forgive yourself first so you
could then forgive others and
at last find a way to become
the love that you want in this world.”3

From Reflections of Life YouTube Channel:

“ 'Do you see the beauty in life, or do you just exist? Be careful to just exist - that's dangerous'. - Elrieda Pillmann

Elrieda has know true heart sore, losing her only child. She shares her story of how she chose to rise above the pain and see the beauty in life.”

Dear Reader,

We normally offer our monthly Down The Rabbit Hole column exclusively to our paid subscribers. Each month, we contemplate a meaningful and heartfelt question to discover the gifts of that particular inquiry. This month, however, we would like to share our musings with all our subscribers as a gesture of reciprocity. May you find glimmers of possibility in and between our words … If you would like to keep journeying down the rabbit hole with us, you can become a paid subscriber. And if you too have a burning question, please submit to debra@holybeepress.com. Thank you.

This month’s question is from our dear friend Ayşe in Türkiye:

How do I liberate myself from feeling like I am the product I should be advertising each day and still exist in a system built mostly around money and power? What does genuine connection look like in an age of technology?1

From Filiz …

Dear Ayşe, thank you for your well-articulated questions which I am sure deeply resonate with and are shared by many. It is an inquiry that has been troubling me a great deal in the recent years.

A little more than a year ago I deactivated my personal Instagram account. I had been contemplating about it for some time, and finally the time came to make the leap, and I did it. Because, Ayşe, just like you I was feeling trapped and frustrated, and I was looking for a way out.

This move came at a time of a lot of letting go and retreating into my own chrysalis;
it was in alignment of an inner movement that demanded me to be slow, small and private. It was and is outrageously counterintuitive considering that the overculture continuously pressures us toward incessant growth.

However, there are times in our lives when all outward energy needs to be retrieved inward, toward the core—the inner being—so the necessary changes can take place. Within this context, it was not hard to sever my dependence on social media for self-promotion of work at large. It was, in fact, what I precisely needed. I was suddenly feeling fiercely protective about sharing my personal life stories with an anonymous audience. It was a visceral decision; I followed my body’s guidance over mental constructs and social pressure.

As someone who often lives with the paradox of “creative solitude” and “longing for human community”, I often wonder whether we are free in our choices, and whether we have agency over the invisible forces—karma, trauma, history, systems we are born in, the Unconscious, destiny—operating in our lives. It is indeed a hard labour to liberate ourselves—children and grandchildren of colonial, extractive modernity—from the habit of fixing/improving/grasping for personal gain. Vanessa Andreotti, the author of Hospicing Modernity, names it as the tendency “to turn relation into possession, encounter into experience, medicine into commodity, and mystery into a mirror for the human ego.”2

Perhaps it’s not about the social media itself—though it is a product of the same extractive, profit-over-anything mindset—but about our own conditioning and our own glorious struggle to evolve out of the maze of this dying dream with which we are so profoundly entangled that it feels like our complete and utter demise. We have been suffering from a disease called wetiko3 which has been consuming our world. Healing from it is a mythic undertaking of epic proportions.

The more we allow the shedding and composting of the old dream, the more connective tissue of the new dream will be revealed to us. And it is happening already. Our glorious struggle can be full of imagination, creativity and wonder along with our rites of passage to honor our grief, losses, transformation and death-rebirth cycles. I don’t wish for another pandemic but I believe there will be plenty of opportunities for us humans to change our ways in the near future.

Most importantly, we each are more than how this particular era defines us. One of our most sacred tasks is to remember that we are participants in co-creating a new story. The ruins we find ourselves in aren’t our only inheritance. We do know what genuine connection is, otherwise we would not have made it so far.

❤️ Filiz

From Debra …

My dear Ayşe, I have just this week returned from a month of travel in France and Turkey. I am very much heart-whole and head-mush as I write this. I was in five airports in a day and a half. Airports are one of my favorite places. The more I am around a lot of beings that don’t look like me and am surrounded by languages I don’t speak, the more relaxed and at home I feel. I can’t explain that but it has always been true.

I love watching people, connecting through smiles, appreciation, sometimes short (sometimes long) conversations, and mostly through presence. It is the best Human TV and for me, leaves Netflix in the dust. Yes there were a lot of individuals on their phones or computers but so much life was also happening. This trip home, I watched a father play hide and seek with his two young daughters, he managing to waddle like a four-year old which really made me laugh. Then he took three chairs from a café and lined them up one behind another, handed a brochure from a kiosk to each girl, put on his pretend inspector hat as he inspected each “ticket” closely, and then escorted them to their seats. He made sure their imaginary seatbelts were tightened then sat down in front of the bus and off they went, chattering to each other about what they could see from the air.

I also happened to look at a young man who was just about to take his first bite of a burger and we both smiled, recognizing the pleasure of that moment. A woman sitting across from me shared appreciation of two siblings deeply absorbed in their fantasy conversation. The girl had a dimple on her left cheek that was much higher up than I had ever seen one before, right in the middle of her face. It came and went as she talked with her brother and was fascinating. A small golden Cocker Spaniel was such an ambassador of goodwill that he left all of us around him wagging our tails. A Turkish man asked me if Americans were mad at the Turkish (I have no idea why). I told him I wasn’t and didn’t know anyone who was. Satisfied, he then told me about his engagement, wedding and coming move to Germany. I noticed a young man as I boarded a plane who looked on the verge of tears and very close to despair. His eyes were overwhelmingly sad and I made a prayer for his heart as I passed. I sat beside a woman who was visiting her grown children on different continents and ended up saying hello to one of her daughters in India who popped up on Facetime. I observed individuals, couples, colleagues, families, sports teams … all on the way to somewhere. I flowed through a stream of check-in agents, security and customs officials, airline stewards and pilots. I moved through thousands of people across a day and a half, folks I will probably never see again. It was very, very human. And made me very, very happy.

I felt like I was microdosing on humanity and how people actually are, which often has nothing to do with the news and what is supposed to be true (especially when someone doesn’t look or sound like us). No one gets to define what my world looks like. There is a lot going on in these times, including some very hard stuff that I don’t prefer, and I know you are feeling that too. I stay aware of what is mine to keep track of and I also don’t let it swallow the intense beauty that is also alive and well. I keep my grief and sorrow tended because otherwise it is hard to stay steady and rooted. I stay focused on the world I want to participate in and keep my gifts alive there. And for me that is so often in the sacred-in-the-(so-called)-ordinary moments where so much magic and love live and dwell.

I don’t think connection looks like something so much as feels like something. Where do you feel connection? Amongst people? Animals? The chickens you built a fence for and the dog, a hut for?5 Taking a walk? Visiting family? Spending time with friends? Trees? Writing? Around strangers in a cafe? Who and what replenishes you? This is precious nectar in your life.

I really appreciate your questions, Ayşe. There is a strong narrative about money and power. It just isn’t mine and at age 74 I don’t have the bandwidth to spend time with what doesn’t feel true to me, especially where the true nature and potential of our species is concerned. My experience is that most people are good humans. This is an age of technology. But what else is it? For me it is an age of emerging communities, good questions (thank you), a time of creative resourcing and solutions, courage, and a deeper commitment to love, creativity, and devotion to life. How else would you define this age? Both in respect to what you see and also what you envision? Who are you when everything is silent? … the question you so beautifully pose (in the footnote). However loud and full of bigness some systems seem right now, we were born for these times to create something else.

Liberate yourself from other people’s ideas of what is true. Make connections in your own way. Make this some of the core business of your life. You are in charge of where you put your attention. Stand beside your own vision because it will be beautiful and life-giving. It is holy business and divinely timed, as your presence in this life is also divinely timed.

I don’t think there is anything essentially wrong with social media and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon. But we can say yes and no to how often we use it, how much of our day it occupies, and to not let our world view and attention be hijacked or shaped by it.

I heard a new favorite song of Joe’s this morning that is also now mine by the wonderful British singer Jahnavi Harrison. It is called “Like A River”. She sings:

Now cell phones ring instead of bells
The sacred hill has almost disappeared.

But despite that, she knows her own heart and devotes herself to the river of grace that flows through:

My heart flows like a river to the sea
May it always be
A river of grace flows through me
May it always be, may it always be.

May you find the river of grace flowing through you, Ayşe. I look forward to meeting you there.

❤️ Debra

2

Quote from following essay:

Vanessa Andreotti, PhD

The Spell of the Pedestal and the Plan of the Mushrooms

Illustrated by Edie Pijpers, animated by Susanne Aichele and narrated by Tony Lai…

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2 months ago · 124 likes · Vanessa Andreotti, PhD

Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.
-- Wendell Berry 1

Hello Holy Mischievians, I am on the move in France. Along with my shoes, clothes and poetry books, I am accompanied by these North Stars (why not three?):

✶ If you deeply observe, everything is your teacher.
(Widely attributed to Gautama Buddha.)

✶ Attention is a prayer.2
(Terry Tempest Williams)

✶ Staying aware of the importance of creating and tending my glimmers, little micro-moments of joy that I believe are an essential human food group and are everywhere abundant … but so often part of the unreported news.

I grow tired of seeing the faces of people who are famous for forgetting themselves, losing their moral compass and who have sent their own North Stars packing. I would rather look at so-called everyday people … fellow humans whose beautifulness is just bursting out of them. As I wander around amongst strangers (aka new old friends), I have harvested some of their images to share with you, with their consent. It’s a sampling of some of the suns, moons and stars amongst us. Visual prayers to tuck into the pocket of your day. Each a soulful encounter, however minuscule, and a heart connection that lingers. It really doesn’t take much for that to happen in a human life.

These precious beings are each and all a miracle and a marvel. A wonder. The poet Matt Moberg says: Wonder is the oldest form of resurrection.3 We sure could use some resurrection right about now.

Good to visit with you, beautiful humans.

❤️ Debra

Almost nine years ago, I climbed the sacred mountain of Arunachala. Debra, Joe, and I set out early on a November morning while the streets of Tiruvannamalai were still quiet and sleepy. We made our way through Ramana Maharshi’s ashram and started our path uphill, hoping to reach the peak before the sun rose mightily in the Tamil Nadu sky.

Even though Indians call it a hill, Arunachala—at only about 800 meters high—rises like a majestic monument in the middle of this ancient town. In fact, according to legend1, it is the manifestation of Shiva himself, and every year thousands of pilgrims arrive here to be blessed by this holy presence.

It wasn’t a very steep climb; in certain places, we needed to crawl on our bottoms or hold on to the rocks to support ourselves, but otherwise, it was an uneventful, steady ascent. Unfortunately, I had decided to wear sandals that kept slipping off my feet, which made the journey more arduous for me. As I struggled to move upward in the heat, a chorus of complaints started singing in my head. Meanwhile, I did not hear a single huff or puff from Debra and Joe. I was a little embarrassed.

When we finally reached the peak, an unforgettable sight welcomed us: hundreds, if not thousands, of dragonflies. They were literally everywhere, going about their business, flying from rock to rock, and waltzing all around us. I had never seen so many winged creatures in one place; in my awe, I forgot about my tired feet. Debra explained that dragonflies represent transformation and that they are among her favorite kin. That immediately put me at ease, and I recognized at once that Arunachala was showering us with blessings.

We settled on one of the massive rocks where there was an altar to make prayers and offerings to Shiva. The mighty sun had risen, Debra and Joe had a yellow umbrella, and the dragonflies were dancing all around us. There were no other human beings to be seen. We placed the flowers and the fruit we had brought on the altar and said some prayers. Afterwards, we simply sat there basking in the joy of each other’s company, mesmerized by the winged messengers’ spectacle.

On that day, at the feet of Shiva, I learned something. In fact, our time in Tiruvannamalai—my whole pilgrimage in India, essentially—taught me the same lesson over and over again:

An open heart will get you far.

Further than the mind, further than the feet can take you. The mind gets confused and interested in its own agenda, and the feet grow tired. The human heart is a portal that casts out a safety net for the whole, its language, its song reaching beyond any boundaries or limitations. Having spent nearly a month with Debra in India, I witnessed very closely an open heart in action—how a relational field grows around that heart, how people and animals gravitate toward such presence of loving-kindness.

Both Debra and Joe have this skill of approaching anything or anyone with the utmost reverence and devotion; it’s their way of being in the world, also known as Love Show on the Road. I was both a recipient and an apprentice of it during our time in India. Perhaps it was the living transmission of Ramana who answered the question “How should we treat others?” with,

“There are no others.”.

India breaks open the rigid patterns and boundaries of the Western mind, if one allows it, shattering the ego-centric worldview into pieces. Marion Woodman—a Jungian psychoanalyst whose work with the feminine psyche and wisdom changed my life—shares her own transformative experience in India in an interview2:

“In India I had no control over anything. I was alone. People would say good evening in the morning and call me sir. Details like that, combined with the maelstrom of life in the streets, left me with this sense that everything was chaos. I either had to give up or die, because I was getting into one situation after another where I was constellating death. By trying to control I was making the situation worse. I was actually becoming more and more powerless. I couldn’t make any decisions, and if I did it was the wrong decision. Finally, I had to go with the flow of things and, for me, that felt like total giving up. Because I had been a very efficient and well-organized teacher. Everything had to go click-click-click. But in India that was broken in me, crushed in every possible way. Then I began to realize that there was another force, like riding on top of a wave.

I really didn’t have to do anything except stay on top of the wave, and the wave would take me where I needed to go. It was a most remarkable feeling! Instead of constellating death I began constellating love on all sides.”

A pilgrimage is not merely departing from a place in order to arrive at another place to acquire certain rewards. What it truly is, is stepping into the Unknown—learning to listen, learning to trust, learning to surrender. It is allowing life to forge a path open to and from the heart, so that no matter the climate, love may flow in all directions.

We sat on top of Arunachala that day—tired, hot, and our hearts smiling.

Thank you Debra. Thank you Joe.
Thank you Arunachala. Thank you Mother India.

Thank you, Heart.

This month’s question is from our dear friend Tuğba in Türkiye:

How is it possible to desire something intensely and yet remain within the state of seeing it unfold in slow motion? A person imagines what they want to attain. They imagine the end. But how do you imagine the path to get there? How do you follow that path? How do you remain still in that slowness, without thinking about the future, the path to attainment?

From Debra …

Dearest Tuğba, I so appreciate your questions and it is interesting … all of yours have been in the weave of conversations I have had this very week with friends. Your wonderings are in the air with other fine wonderers, so I want to first reflect that connectedness and resonance back to you. It is important to have a community of people, even if they are just a handful or an online platform of fellow journeyers like this one, to explore your questions out loud … so often we are not alone in what we are curious about, even if it feels that way. The shared perspective and the felt sense of the company of others is always an anchor for me. We have the ability to call in and create that community … and sometimes that comes from unlikely or surprising sources, including with other-than-human family.

The poet William Wordsworth wrote these lines in his autobiographical epic poem called “The Prelude”:

The earth is all before me. With a heart
Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
I look about; and should the chosen guide
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way. I breathe again! 1

We are always where we need to be, amongst the wandering clouds or other fellow family … two-legged, four-legged, wing-ed, rooted, finned, elemental, seen and unseen. Who are your guides? Mine are particular birds and animals that often appear as messengers of this or that or appear right after I wonder about something. Who consistently shows up in your day and what do they mean to you? With them, you cannot miss your way. When approached with respect, appreciation and a lack of entitlement, they are brilliant companions on the path.

Desiring something intensely and thinking about the past and future are very human. And I believe everything we need is right here. I’m pretty sure that how desires are realized is not even my business. When I am anchored in the present and get beyond my mind’s need for an outcome (or end as you call it) to look a certain way and happen in a certain time, then the concept of slowness disappears in favor of right timing. I can then recognize what is really unfolding and how are prayers are really being answered.

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Welcome to May’s Mystery Week and our continued exploration of creative spontaneous combustion. Our Holy Mischief monthly posts and also our Down the Rabbit Hole deep dives around a community question are always done separately. Filiz and I write first and share with each other afterwards … and are so curious about what on earth the other will get up to. Each of us is sovereign in our creativity, but in a resonant field that is revelatory. The process often feels like eavesdropping on our muses who already know what we are getting up to before we do.

This month’s experiment is an invitation to each pick two poems that beckon, to record ourselves speaking them on camera, then reveal them to each other … then to you. Like a poem treasure hunt exchange sort of thing. We are paying tribute to that quiet weave of creative connection that is ever-present in life, but does not always get acknowledged as A Something. The Great Mystery is more of a benevolent friend and resource than we know. We love her … and we know she loves us all. May this offering stir our remembering and celebration of that knowing.

We invite you to weigh in on what you see weaving and stirring between our four poems in the conversation thread below. Your comments are a favorite weekly destination. Looking forward to seeing you there.

❤️ Debra and Filiz

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I was born at the confluence of two streams of mothering, Marge and Lula who I still feel held by in this eighth decade of my life. I recently revisited a poem I wrote as a tribute to them when I turned 68 in 2020. I had been teaching and traveling in the wider world but that year, the pandemic sent us all home and my journey turned inward … and mama-ward. And in my case, mamaS-ward.

My biological mother, Marge, was raised on a farm in Illinois, the eldest in a big family. She chose the big city as the soil for her adult blooming when she was accepted by the Art Institute of Chicago to study. It was a big deal. She never graduated because she found it frustrating to sketch models in fur coats all the time. She left and found a job at a small ad agency, spreading her artistic wings through magazine layouts, content editing and occasional modeling when a toaster or other product needed a human in the picture. Eventually my engineer father came along and snaffled her up. They married, got pregnant, miscarried, and were told by their doctor that my mother could never have children. I defied the odds and came along as their miracle child … and two other miracle siblings followed.

Though she was a stay-at-home mother most of my life, Marge returned to her job for a period of years after I was born. Both my parents had to work in those days and were only able to afford their apartment in Chicago because a generous aunt owned the building. Enter Lula, who took care of me during the weekdays. I still have a vivid, felt sense of her loving, safe, nurturing essence and how well all three adults got along together in an arrangement that benefited us all.

This is the only image I have of Lula. I was one year old. The photos of my earliest days mostly disappeared in a chapter of family dysfunction, so I treasure this one. On the back it says: Debbie … Nurse Lula. Nurse: I am touched by that language. Not nanny, which implied a wealth my parents did not have. And not babysitter, which felt too casual and insignificant for the regard my parents had for Lula.

As my father started to climb the Kraft Foods ladder (as a man of his generation who tended to stay with one job the whole of his life), my mother was able to stay home once my brother and sister came along. We were her happy place for many years (and whatever she hoped to find at the Art Institute, she created in our home with a house full of crayons, paints, brushes, paper, glue, scissors, glitter and endless arts and crafts projects, for which I still give thanks.) After my brother was born, we moved and my two mothers went their separate ways. I never saw Lula again but I still have this one photo in my study that lives beside one of Marge. Both women now treasured ancestors.

On Mother’s Day this week, I remembered the process of writing the poem for Marge and Lula in 2020. Goodness what a journey. Half of the poem emerged effortlessly (like so many do not), then utterly stalled … but still demanded completion. I never argue with a poem, so I obsessively followed all kinds of threads down all sorts of rabbit holes. George Floyd had just been murdered, the Black Lives Matter movement was a rising tide, and protests were (rightly) erupting around the world, including in our city. Lula’s blackness and Marge’s whiteness didn’t mean anything to me as a toddler. Certainly racial tension and oppression were alive and unwell in the city and country … just not in our apartment and not between my three caretakers who relied on each other. Nevertheless, I wondered if race was any kind of unexplored voice in the poem and I was also curious what was happening in 1953. So I rooted around …

I revisited Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights movement, and followed a tragic trail of genocide that took me around the world, across the centuries and back to the US. In 1953, Martin Luther King Jr. was still in graduate school at Boston University, completing his doctorate. It was still a few years until the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when Martin started to become very visible as a spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement. And it wasn’t until 1955 that Rosa Parks sat down where she chose to on that bus.

The poem was restless and I wrestled with it for months. However responsible and sensitive an adult I was trying to be, I could find nothing in my research that would nudge it towards completion. Because nothing changed the fact that in my young life, respect and friendship were alive in our home. I simply felt loved by three people who needed each other and were a bonded team of care. Sometimes in the midst of the Great Abiding Imperfection of Human Life, people get it right. I now appreciate what a precious, fortunate and rare thing that can be. The sun rose and set, the moon the same same, and Marge and Lula ebbed and flowed as part of one loving sea around me … seamless mothering in the field of my gentle father.

One night, after days (and days) of obsessing on the poem, I woke up and felt one of those whisper-of-the-muse moments: I was clearly told to explore the origin of Marge and Lula’s names, which I did the very first thing the next morning. And what an astonishing revelation! The poem opened up and finished itself within a few hours. I happily laid it at the feet of my sweet Matajis1 … and now yours:

DAUGHTER OF PEARLS
for Marge Graham and Lula Webster

48 East Elm Street, Chicago, Illinois
1953

MARGE
I’m standing in the kitchen
shorter than everything
except for my vision
of chocolate cake
Betty Crocker cake mix2
in my small hands
Determined to bake
before I could read
Mix became mud pie
in bottom of bowl
but still a triumph
in my curious mind
Marge is patient
tolerant of messes
and tiny girl plans
wherever they flowed.

LULA
I lean back into
her rounded arms
a continent of warmth
the earth of her lap
I remember the drapes
and where we both sit
and her deep-rooted stillness
in my flowering life
Too young to know
who she left at home
to come my way
all those days that we shared
But wise enough
as my toddler self
to recognize grace
whenever she did.

MARGE AND LULA
One left for work
One came to work
One came home
One went home
A benevolent tide
this Presence of mothers
immaculate-hearted
Madonnas of Elm Street.

Marge come from Marjorie
also from Margaret
this naming in Persian
for “Child of Light”
and from Latin
“margarita”
a word meaning
pearl.

Lula from Louise, Louisa, Luella
German and English
for “brave, renowned warrior”
and also, in Arabic
a word meaning
pearl.

In my 68^th year
I found you both
precious and patient
in the ocean below me
around me, within me
Never two people
just one seamless mothering
Mothers of Pearl
and I, a Daughter of Pearls

From this wild woman-child
to my marvelous mamas
Lula and Marge
who illumined my roots
my heart and my arts
May the dust of your feet
be forever on my head 3
May the love in my heart
forever bless your way.

Your loving daughter
Debra

At age 74, I remain deeply grateful to Lula and Marge from whom I inherited a certain wild luster. To the two radiant moons in my toddler sky … I love you, my beloved mothering mothers.

❤️ Debra

REMINDER HOLY WONDER-ERS and PONDER-ERS:
Please continue to send us your burning questions (about anything close to your heart) which we will explore in our monthly offering, DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE. Email us at debra@holybeepress.com and we will pick one to turn inside out with our curiosity and conversation. ❤️

I used to listen to R.E.M. a lot in my youth, and even without fully understanding its lyrics, “Losing My Religion” was one of those iconic songs we used to mindlessly dance to. You know, the essential classic of any party when the moment its first notes hit the airwaves, our bodies would automatically and uncontrollably respond by throwing arms in the air and swaying in fervor. That was in my early twenties, my head was in the clouds, and we definitely had no worries about the end of the world at that point. Now in my early fifties, the world looks quite a bit different.

I studied at one of the top business schools in Türkiye, which I worked really hard to get into. Mainly because this particular school had one of the nicest campuses I’ve ever seen, with a stunning view of the Bosphorus. Yet, as I soon found out — to my great disappointment — though its architecture was impressive, there was absolutely nothing that captured my imagination within those thick walls. And so, many hours of the next four years were spent looking at that great view, daydreaming.

I dreamt of faraway lands; I somehow knew the world was going to be my oyster. I was eager to leave finance, accounting, marketing and the like behind me. Business as usual that puts profit before all never made sense to me. Even then as a young person I knew in my gut that the capitalist ideology and doctrine — devised mostly by white European men — posed a grave threat to all life. In fact it is this vile system that is at the epicenter of the polycrisis we find ourselves in today.

Since “losing my religion” in the soul-starved halls of my alma mater, I have been teaching myself to track that which is wild and liminal within me and in the world.
As soon as I got out of the machinery of industrial schooling that suffocated the bejeebers out of me, my real education began in the Earth School. It’s been a long and meandering journey of unlearning; a pilgrimage to find my religion — my own spiritual path over the arch of a human life.

My daydreaming paid off; I found myself in the arms of this precious earth, and I did live in faraway and magical lands, guided by an inner compass of curiosity and love of adventure — all made possible by the generosity and kindness of friends and strangers alike. I ditched the trajectory of my upbringing, education, and familial expectations — which would have meant climbing the ladder of a financial institution — to set sail in uncharted waters towards a faint yet alluring call.

I thought that it was my destiny calling but I know now that it is also the dreaming of the Earth, as my destiny is intertwined with Hers. The Earth dreams —
in songs, colors, trees, sunshine, moonlight, flowers, and even in hurricanes, melting glaciers, species going extinct — and I am pretty sure that we humans are part of that dream too, because we have been given the gift of imagination.

This dream that I get to call my life unfolds like Mary’s story in Marie Howe’s poem Annunciation2:

Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it
I know it is—and that if once it hailed me
it ever does—

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t—I was blinded like that—and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

Last summer when I was navigating a particularly turbulent personal crisis, I learned this poem by heart. I held onto it tight, repeating it to myself over and over again every day. It embraced me like an ethereal presence — incorporeal yet astoundingly palpable — and became an alchemical container for my necessary dismemberment. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this poem shifted my reality.

This was me apprenticing to poetry and intuitively conjuring a healing remedy in collaboration with the imaginal realm. It involved my imagination turning towards the spirit embedded in the poem — but it was a tilting within myself — and literally taking it into my body by memorizing and reciting it repetitively. This then constituted a protective and healing shield from the inner and outer demons that were haunting me at the time.

Poems have agency. Images and metaphors have agency. Dreams have agency. According to Henry Corbin, the French philosopher, theologian, Iranologist, and a professor of Islamic studies, they all come from the imaginal realm where the act of creation begins. James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology, believes that the imaginal is not in the psyche, but the psyche is in the imaginal. It is not mere fantasy, it is real in its own right, with real implications.

So, what happens when we learn to collaborate and co-create with the imaginal?

When the imagination, language and art become a way of communicating with the invisible and powerful mystery of life, we come alive. And the world comes alive with us. We become agents of change rather than stifling the emergence of authentic voice and movement of life through us. We start hearing the subtle music behind the noise and let our bodies sway to it. We make that once-hard decision; we turn around and move forward; we take that brush in our hand; we say a prayer of gratitude; we make that phone call or write that email to make amends; we pack our bags and move to a new country; we pack our bags and move back to our homeland; we sing praises to the bee and the rose; we say, “No thank you, I will go this way instead”.

When we hold hands with that world and let it guide us, the ground we walk on shifts on its axis. When we give ourselves to it, it gives us back multitudes.

Mary Oliver reminds us that

Whether it’s in the form of the wild geese, an angel, a bee ravishing a rose, a poem, or a dream — the imaginal always delivers if we pay attention. There’s definitely more to this world than what is visible to the naked eye. Let’s figure out how we can attune our senses to this other reality where a new world is getting ready to be born.

***

In the circuitous flow of kairos time, I am dancing next to my twenty-year-old self while R.E.M sings, “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” I gently put my arm around her and whisper some solid William Blake wisdom in her ear:

“May God us keep from Single vision & Newton’s sleep!”4

This month’s question is from our dear friend Jessica in Canada:

A question is burningly alive this very moment as I am writing and drinking tea in the quietness of a slow morning:

I wonder where is home. No wait, what is home? A geographic location? An address where to receive mail? A warm room to gather family and friends? A place to sleep safely? Or drink tea peacefully? A place inside to rest? The belly? The forest? Is home where beauty lives or can be created? Is home the way we look at the world?1

From Debra …

Beloved Jessica, I have carried your beautiful questions like a sacred bundle ever since you sent them to us a few weeks ago. What is home? For me, one answer is the comfort of rituals where things stay in place: The cup is there. The grinder and coffee beans are there. The kettle is there. The moon is up there. The sun comes up over there. Joe is there and tends plants in a garden that is there. I feel anchored by these semblances of permanence in my life. And that can also change in a blink. Years ago, our house was claimed by the fire gods and later, a hurricane came close to blowing away the one we live in now. By grace, a felt sense of home remained intact within me throughout both adventures.

I also think of one of our most beloved elders, Uncle Bob Randall, who was a Yankunytjatjara Elder and a traditional owner of Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia. He was a great-hearted, inspirational man who worked tirelessly for Aboriginal land rights and the welfare of his community and culture. He and his wife Barbara were the very first guests to stay in our current home that had (eventually) risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the former house. Time with Uncle Bob was deeply magical and fostered a profound understanding of belonging, home and so much more.

When he was seven, Bob was forcibly removed from his family, one of many children who became known as the Stolen Generation. He was placed in a Methodist Mission for mixed-heritage children, thousands of miles from his home and people. He was given a new identity and date of birth. And he never saw his mother again. When he first arrived at the institution, he was beaten for speaking his own language and was left sobbing on the ground. As he tells it, there beside him at eye level was a small tuft of grass. It was what finally comforted him. He knew the earth as his mother and the grass was a relative … family that created home in an otherwise hostile environment. Miraculously, he never forgot his roots despite every effort to obliterate them.

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Welcome to the Mystery Week offering of April. This week we had the pleasure of diving into muhabbet with our guest . Muhabbet in Turkish means love, loving companionship, as well as deep and meaningful conversation.

Taksim is a melodic musical improvisation that usually precedes a performance in Turkish and Middle Eastern music. It’s a playful way of welcoming the listener and preparing the ear for the upcoming musical feast. And this is how our conversation with Berrak opened up: Following our curiosity, and a specific question from Debra about Berrak’s dance performance titled Taksim Taksim. What unfolded delighted and surprised even us.

Berrak, with her impressively diverse cultural background and dance formation, gave birth to Somatic Dialogue® and is committed to cultivating and sharing this gentle and playful teaching of “body and mind in movement” with the world. In our conversation, we explored how this embodiment practice — an invitation for an intimate dialogue with Self and the world around us — is also a holy mischief to break free from the incessant greed and noise of the overculture.

We hope you enjoy this muhabbet as much as we did ourselves.

Here’s the trailer for Berrak’s performance that inspired our conversation:

OUR GUEST: BERRAK YEDEK

Berrak Yedek was born in Istanbul in 1974. She started to dance and study music at the age of 5 in Germany, after which she lived in Saudi- Arabia, Türkiye, England and shortly in Russia, where she was able to extend her dance experience. In Türkiye she completed her university studies at Boğaziçi University in literature and translation and she founded a private dance company. With Kumpanya Bale Türk she produced and created 11 pieces, which were presented in various cities in Türkiye.

Since then she has been working as an artist on the close relationship of movement and music in traditional (Turkish) as well as contemporary forms.

During 1999-2005 she lived in Paris and worked with various companies in France as dancer, actress and choreographer, and she worked as a free-lance teacher; additionally she produced her own performances.

In 2005 she moved to Prague. She worked as a dance teacher and creative work consultant at the Duncan Centre Conservatory until the birth of her daughter in 2010.

She is also a co-founder of the Performing Arts Track of the Management of Performing Arts Department of Bilgi University in Istanbul in 2007, where she taught as a guest lecturer until 2018.

In 2018 she opened Limpid Works Studio in Prague, and has been dedicating herself to the method Somatic Dialogue®, which she has been developing since 2005. In 2020 she started a Somatic Dialogue Facilitator Training, and continues developing this method in various workshops and long term trainings.

For more information, please visit Berrak’s website and her Substack page — .

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