Resist Not the Gravity of the Moment

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” ~Theodore Roethke

My motto is: never waste a good Full Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse.

I try to practice not dominating Mystery with too much pre-packaged agenda or meaning making. I didn’t carry any specific plan or intention other than to be with the subtly shapeshifting energy of this solar system dance. We are in the clouds where I am, so no visible blood glow. But it did go dark. The only sound was a choir of frogs in the dense fog lending their ribbit riot to the cosmic cabaret.

I chose to climb inside the eclipse.

What I touched in on was a voluptuous sacred shining wound of severance. That wound that’s festering and fueling so much of what we are experiencing, so much of the poverty of imagination we have been living inside of for far too long. The thing that built Empire.

While the earth’s shadow is what we perceive as eclipse, it was like a floodlight was shining on our (mostly unconscious) collective shadow. Some of its textures were a child’s fear and an unbearable pain. Acting out. Fear of exile, fear of not being ok, fear of cosmic orphaning.

And longing: holy deepest of sweet (be)longings.

My only impulse was simply to sit be with it. Despite Roethke’s insight that the eye begins to see in a dark time and my eclipse spell’s invitation “to resist not the wondrous gravity of the moment” (see below) I became very aware of all the ways I in fact resist. Resist the dark. Resist seeing. Resist feeling.

I didn’t have the capacity to be inside that energy for too long. But I did manage to run some loving tendrils, to lend a caress or two over that collective sacred shining wound of severance. I was surprised by the emergence of an unbidden blessing bubbled up from the cauldron in the sky/heart (at this point there is not separation. It was a prayer for the Hungry Ghost Parasite to find and feel its Deepest Belonging, so it might release its fear and finally rest.

Then I read a couple poems, spoke some blessings, and took a good shit (release?) during the totality. But mostly I simply tried to sit, and be open to the incredible intimacy of night.

While that line from Roethke’s poem is often quoted, less so is the rest of the poem. which is as intricate as it is mysterious, like an eclipse. This line from the final stanza provides a fuller image of what the dark invites: A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. / The mind enters itself, and God the mind, l And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

See the Eclipse Poem Spell below. To hold in one hand staying with The Trouble of the moment and in the other, the vision of upstream healing, tending the sacred wound, and collective liberation. May we all stir the cauldron with our gifts and transmute fear and grow a pregnant shaping of some image towards unfurled freedom.

In addition to our cosmic siblings putting on their evening performances, I’m hosting two playshops this week: Write Against/Through/Beyond Empire is Wednesday evening and Earth Intimacies: Writing Into the Animate Web is Saturday morning. Saturday is also this month’s Re-enchantment and Gratitude Day, with our love going to our Feathered Friends, so look out for that. Two longer programs, Deep Belonging in the Great Composting and Earth Intimacies: Apprenticing to Life, start later in the month.

.With lunatic illumination and shadow stalking, wishing you an embodied, emboldened, empassioned, and emergent week!
~Ryan

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Resist Not the Wondrous Gravity of the Moment

In your uncanny orb of night, join these
Gathered ingredients of earth and sky,

You bold eremite of a new season.
Blushing argent cheeks with ancient red wine

In the darkling hour of your silent
Transfiguration: Let the pot boil.

Hue with bodies heaving spells, the spicy
Concatenation of your churning dish.

Accept the earthly shadow and resist not
The wondrous gravity of the moment.

With light and dark your destined orbit’s marked—
Wax gibbous and grow a pregnant shaping
Of some image towards unfurled freedom

From that uncooked root called fear, a toxin
Spreading through the whole like soured liquid

And festering, sinks a sumptuous stew—
The more ingested, the more hunger too.

Now the lunatic transmutation’s made
Not by magic, nor with wand of wizard
But by channeled heat and moves cathartic.

Stir with patience the hearty blend within
Until all poison into sweetness changed.

Behold a new fruit, orb oracular!
Transliberating itself down the West
By and through and with that which holds it all.

A Peach, vigorous belly earthbound bent
And bruised. — Merely emblem of its ripeness.

Pluck it from the sky! Break your holy fast
With holy hunger and greet the dawn with
A wild and boisterous jubilance:

Sun in one hand, the moon in the other
With nectar dripping down your canny face.

(Included in Moon Has a Long Memory)