TW - perhaps offensive to some. Apologies, none meant. Just my own personal brand of honesty...
Grace is the password..
I may have posted this before but I'm reminded of it again this evening... After a conversation with my children, which began with my youngest asking me, in all earnestness, if I ever felt bad having children with 2 different men... For number 1, great question, from an 8 year old, really perceptive, articulate and brave... and for number 2, where on earth does an 8 year old get that level of social insight and consciousness from??!! No, bad is not something I ever felt, but I'm obviously aware we (still) live in a deeply puritanical world that expects a certain level of purity, demurity and chaiste but never caught ness, from a woman. Even more interesting that she asked me this after we watched The Da Vinci Code this evening, which is obviously centred around the idea of the Divine Feminine versus the way women have been treated, under Christianity, through the ages. The film is a bit wanky, admittedly, but I like the idea... The questions it, doesn't necessarily pose (because they are questions posed by bigger, deeper thinkers than Dan Brown) but signposts. The glaring reality of what I (and many) see, as the oppression of women and womanhood, through the bible and the Christian faith. And why that might be... Makes it all the more interesting that my 8 year old daughter, who knows I went to a strict Catholic school, believed in God and Jesus until I was 14 and how that faith views women.
My answer to her was that no, how could I ever feel bad about making love and creating love from that? People who put their ideological beliefs before humanity and love are the ones I feel bad for, not myself, because I live close to my truth and they hide from theirs, which is sad. She liked that answer.
This is one of many poems I have written about my feelings, as a woman who lives close to her truth but who once loved and believed in God.
GRACE
Hail Mary, full of grace
(I was born on a Tuesday, so i waited in grace & patience for this temps de l'amour to open up a rift in time & space and allow heat to glow and lava to flow into rivenes and fissures, previously hidden from sight... I. Am. Alight. And have no desire to be put out.)
The Lord is with thee.
(With the correct amount of reverence I look up at you, towering above me like an inferno, I am Dante and Venus and Persephone...you are both my nemesis & my relief. I called to you in the depths of nights, so long, and now here you stand... above me, in all your glory. I am kneeling at the foot of your well. You offer your sacrament, you are dripping with need and pure unadulterated lust...the sinner in me wants to submit not repent...)
Blessed art thou amongst women
("...I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands upon me, who does not doubt my courage or toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman..." #AnaisNin)
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
(you do not wish to make a vessel of me, I am of no use to any vain or earthly desire in you to plant your seed in fertile soil... my womb is of little significance... all you desire is to touch the beauty that God intended as a hook in the action of co creating little baby Jesus's of the future... to harness that reverence and lose yourself in the pleasures of the flesh... I am more than simply a willing participant... I am awash...)
Holy Mary, Mother of God
( I want you to worship at the cup of this, my alter, drink deep of the river that flows betwixt my thighs... I am open... wanting...minus reserve...and as all the best night time flowers do, as the darkness of desire descends, i emit the scentual blooms of the incandescence your ardour brings... Waterfalls have nothing upon you or I..as we cascade down, drowning out all that came before...)
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
(If God had not intended procreation to be used for anything other than making babies, then she never would have made it feel so earth shatteringly good... a design flaw in what is supposed to be an image of perfection. Technically we are sinners... That old Catholic guilt pecking away like sharp rapture at our broken souls, entwined, we lie empty, spent and glowing, full to the brim with reverence. That design flaw deep within my sex pulses as the contractions course through my being... If this is sinning then I do not want your prayers...all I seek is loves sweet release, as worlds collide... petite mort)
Amen
