the first abode
what is Love?
Histories change in the hues of self-knowing, self-remembering. Though we sat next to a river in northern Thailand, I sensed only the shady quietude of the Nile, these flocks of water birds reigning eternal through the changing mists of time.
“Lean in”, he whispered, “lean into this emptiness.”
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I took a deep breath and blew on those pink coals in the wood stove. White ash poured out, all over my face, my chest, my nose. Stoking the fire, the quiet ceremony of sunrise, another day in the mountains; my young daughter, Amara, running back and forth between her mama and papa, squealing in the morning light. The clinking of the goats’ bells. Smoke rising.
Something about the way those hot coals emanate the mystery, bound terrestrially, white ash and summer sun - “What is Love?” he asked of me.
Love is the light of sun landing on water.
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( GAUTAMA in the coffee shop )
Shaking his head, “your circuitry…”
Hand to foot, tender in memory, the changing circuitry: he heaved my waves forth, ancient stories of bondage, histories stored in the flesh and bone, one incarnation after the next, he heaved with tender intention those waves right up to the surface of my big toe.
“Don’t hold,” he said, “to anything.”
Love is an abode in the liminal.
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Amara runs naked in the speckled shadows of morning. Her papa milks the goats. My dress is stained with white ash, forest floor and chicken soup. The sun rises.
Love is the echoing ether of a footstep.
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“Look,” he said.
Deeply embedded, embodied, these suppressed histories. Concentrating, I anchor in the breath. Watching, waiting. Stories unfurl like the opening of a wild rose.
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I hear speak of ancient alchemy, the ancient earth-bound mystery of transformation: from water to blood, from blood to milk. This, we have forgotten, is what makes the woman holy. This is the song-spiraling dance around ancient altars of frame drums and cow horns, this is the forgotten memory falling forever from the lips of the Divine Mother. This, is our truest and most primordial food.
And it was our forgetting that unearthed the thousands of thick hipped stone effigys from Crete, Greece, Ireland. Breasts overflowing, bellies full of moon and life and memory. This is what makes the woman holy. Water to blood, blood to milk.
Love is the listening of soil to her roots.
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My daughter gathers clumpy, clay-filled soil and pours it all over my legs. She rubs mud on her belly. She smiles and jumps, alive with the pure ecstacy of the morning songbird, she spins in circles for no reason at all.
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In the center of my being lives a stone tablet. Etched in languages and symbols I do not recognize in this lifetime, it anchors my belly in the flesh and reminds me of my dreaming.
In ceremonies these languages circle around me in the soft light of inner seeing. Familiar and foreign. I dream of stones and a long haired woman chanting down the moonlight into her chest.
Love is a reflection in the heart.
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The silent sentinel of Egypt stands rooted in Eternity. She plays music along her edges, in her temples, as she feeds the hungry. She looms then as she does now, dark, impenetrable, erasing stories and beheading the proud.
Histories change in the light of self knowledge.
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Sunrise smoke and ash, the master asks, What is love?
Love IS.
In the whiteness of ash, in the soil catching the falling branch, Love is the everlasting bond of Creation. Love is the round pink of a ripe plum, the sound of a stranger clearing her throat. Love lives in the light, and in the dark, and in the interaction and connection between all things.
Love is not an action but the essence.
Love fills the cracks of our perception. Love is the cracks. Love is the looking for love in the cracks. Love is the awareness of Love. Love is the subtle sound of a child discovering something new.
Love is.
“Don’t hold,” he whispered, “to anything.”
Love is impersonal. It is the uncatchable, undefinable. Love is the way milk pours into a cup, the way the sun refracts through smoke, the way a hoof sounds in the grassland. Love is the almost imperceptible auric luminosity of Creation, circling the edges of form and altars, around the dancing women and their drums; love reigns wild over that spot on your back you can’t reach with your own hands; Love is what wakes you and takes you back to the roots.
Love is the very process of it all, the signature of Creation. Limitlessly present in all things, at all times, everywhere. Love is the sounding board, the center point, the perfume. Love, is.
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