RUIN AND BEAUTY

DEENA METZGER'S BLOG

RIFT VALLEY

10 Comments Posted by on August 12, 2011

RIFT VALLEY

Between one world and another,
Lies the rift and the increasing separation,
As the plates of one mind slip away
From the plates of another mind.
I do not question which way I am to go,
But call to my heart to act on the decision made
To follow the soul
Or I will be split apart too,
As so many are,
Between violence
And Beauty.
The violent demands of our everyday life
And the strange beauty of Spirit afar.
I must choose Beauty
No matter the cost in this life.
I must choose and leap
Across the widening valley;
We cannot rest between.
Leap!
Ah Beauty! Receive me in your open arms.

POEMS, RESTORATION , , ,

10 responses to “RIFT VALLEY”

  1. Eileen Shute August 12, 2011 at 5:33 pm

    I so relate, this gives me comfort today. Torn apart my whole life by this rift. Now working for a defense contractor, my Spirit ablaze, while also feeling the fear of falling into homelessness and poverty. I would leap, if I but knew where to Leap. I do not. I try to make it through each day, letting the Spirit Flower through me anywhere, deep down knowing I am but a high class slave whose spirit is in torment so any sweetness of spirit becomes engulfed by the torment of what i do to earn a living and the box it puts me in, my wild and free Celtic soulo in a box, as I watch the whole world shimmer into obvious destruction, as a bone marrow illness grows in my bones. Is it any wonder. When did earth become hell? What if you are a loner and a mystic and you need the Silence to Listen, and there is no community for you, what if the community is ill, or what if I do not succeed at healing my early trauma. People with plastic smiles and plastic talk acting like all is okay. It is not okay. It hurts so much it is unbearable at times. The birds make me smile. Love Eileen, Anchorage Alaska

  2. Deena Metzger August 12, 2011 at 5:42 pm

    Dear Eileen: Your words break my heart. Thank you for writing them. Thank you for your courage. This can’t be your dilemma alone. I wish you lived in Los Angeles because I believe our community would fold you in so you could heal. And also, you are not alone re the economic dilemma. This is also a community dilemma. How will we meet it? Politics do not solve it. Something else, larger and wilder we have not yet imagined together. I wish you flocks of birds. Deena

  3. Bella Mahaya Carter August 12, 2011 at 6:29 pm

    This is lovely, Deena. Thanks for posting.

  4. Eileen August 13, 2011 at 6:34 am

    After reading Deena’s response, I stepped outdoors to look at the sky and green things growing. There in the tall shrub, not five feet from me, was a tiny yellow breasted song bird. It arched it’s chest and neck upward. Reaching and stretching, it’s neck formed in a graceful yet formidable arch, efforting to put that bug or a seed into it’s beak. I had never seen a bird reach and arch before.

    The ancient magic that exists between nature and human is ours to Receive if we are Open and Respectful. Our answers are all around us, even in the tiny simplicity of tiny arching Songbird. I too can keep reaching for my seeds and bugs. The Magic whispered to me through my yellow friend, “do not give up”.

    The Journey begins with the smallest step. It does not have to be a perfect step. Even if that step has pieces of fear and brokenness abounding within it, still it is a Holy Step that honors what is Sacred within us. To live without this is the Rift that leads to Madness.

    Perhaps I can make it to a Dare. Perhaps I can talk my employer into letting me be a telecommuter from anywhere there is a computer line. There are answers. The question is do we have a community to support us as we step across that line. Even if that community is the wide open sky with it’s flocks of birds, or the spark of ever abiding Spirit within, the answer is Yes. This can be done, must be done.

  5. Jean Mahoney August 13, 2011 at 8:03 am

    Leap!

    And in the joy of it
    breathe in the air
    as you cross over
    breathe
    your life home

  6. Carolyn Brigit Flynn August 13, 2011 at 9:28 am

    Sweet dear Deena — All blessings upon your poet’s tongue to name this moment. Grace and blessings and gratitude upon you– in grief and hope — Thank you, my beloved, for your homage to Beauty. She is You. — Carolyn

  8. Lynda Skeen August 13, 2011 at 4:13 pm

    This is beautiful Deena. Thank you.

  9. Michelle Gubbay August 16, 2011 at 10:39 am

    Wondrous, Deena, your poem, and all the comments. “The ancient magic that exists between nature and human is ours to Receive if we are Open and Respectful.” Thank you Eileen. “The answer is Yes.” Yes. Deena: “Politics do not solve it. Something else, larger and wilder we have not yet imagined together.” Yes … and I do believe that here, in your community, and in others, in this country and globally, there is a reaching and imagining happening now, a healing and transmuting of energies, our relationship to our living Mother, the Earth, and to Light, and each other. Beauty does receive us, and Spirit is not so afar.

  10. rivadanzig August 19, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    A deep in breath and out breath, allowing the words to take me in the leap, to fall into the arms of Beauty. As always, thank you Deena.

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