Womb Opener Quotes

You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.

Existence is beyond the power of words To define: Terms may be used But are none of them absolute. In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words, Words came out of the womb of matter; And whether a man dispassionately Sees to the core of life Or passionately Sees the surface, The core and the surface Are essentially the same, Words making them seem different Only to express appearance. If name be needed, wonder names them both: From wonder into wonder Existence opens.

The drug of love was no escape, for in its coils lie latent dreams of greatness which awaken when men and women fecundate each other deeply. Something is always born of man and woman lying together and exchanging the essences of their lives. Some seed is always carried and opened in the soil of passion. The fumes of desire are the womb of man's birth and often in the drunkeness of caresses history is made, and science, and philosophy. For a woman, as she sews, cooks, embraces, covers, warms, also dreams that the man taking her will be more than a man, will be the mythological figure of her dreams, the hero, the discoverer, the builder....Unless she is the anonymous whore, no man enters woman with impunity, for where the seed of man and woman mingle, within the drops of blood exchanged, the changes that take place are the same as those of great flowing rivers of inheritance, which carry traits of character from father to son to grandson, traits of character as well as physical traits. Memories of experience are transmitted by the same cells which repeated the design of a nose, a hand, the tone of a voice, the color of an eye. These great flowing rivers of inheritance transmitted traits and carried dreams from port to port until fulfillment, and gave birth to selves never born before....No man and woman know what will be born in the darkness of their intermingling; so much besides children, so many invisible births, exchanges of soul and character, blossoming of unknown selves, liberation of hidden treasures, buried fantasies...

Sometimes, Soraya Sleeping next to me, I lay in bed and listened to the screen door swinging open and shut with the breeze, to the crickets chirping in the yard. And I could almost feel the emptiness in Soraya's womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our love-making. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from Soraya and setting between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child.

But his kind will always lose in the end. I know this, and now I know why. Whether it's wife or nation they occupy, their mistake is the same: they stand still, and their stake moves underneath them.... Chains rattle, rivers roll, animals startle and bolt, forests inspire and expand, babies stretch open-mouthed from the womb, new seedlings arch their necks and creep forward into the light. Even a language won't stand still. A territory is only possessed for a moment in time. They stake everything on that moment, posing for photographs while planting the flag, casting themselves in bronze.... Even before the flagpole begins to peel and splinter, the ground underneath arches and slides forward into its own new destiny. It may bear the marks of boots on its back, but those marks become the possessions of the land.

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

From her thighs, she gives you life And how you treat she who gives you life Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator. And from seed to dust There is ONE soul above all others -- That you must always show patience, respect, and trust And this woman is your mother. And when your soul departs your body And your deeds are weighed against the feather There is only one soul who can save yours And this woman is your mother. And when the heart of the universe Asks her hair and mind, Whether you were gentle and kind to her Her heart will be forced to remain silent And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity, Very much like the seaweed in the sea -- It will reveal all that it has heard and seen. This woman whose heart has seen yours, First before anybody else in the world, And whose womb had opened the door For your eyes to experience light and more -- Is your very own MOTHER. So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel, Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish How you treat her is the ultimate test. If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. And always remember, That the queen in the Creator's kingdom, Who sits on the throne of all existence, Is exactly the same as in yours. And her name is, THE DIVINE MOTHER.

His body was urgent against her, and she didn't have the heart anymore to fight...She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up...she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal, while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with haunted eyes...He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit and she felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea anenome under the tide, clamouring for him to come in again and make fulfillment for her. She clung to him unconscious in passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling til it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, til she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cries.

I could have done even better, miss, and I'd know a lot more, if it wasn't for my destiny ever since childhood. I'd have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow. It spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: 'You opened her matrix,' he says. I don't know about her matrix, but I'd have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss.

If I had been asked in my early youth whether I preferred to have dealings only with men or only with books, my answer would certainly have been in favor of books. In later years this has become less and less the case. Not that I have had so much better experiences with men than with books; on the contrary, purely delightful books even now come my way more often than purely delightful men. But the many bad experiences with men have nourished the meadow of my life as the noblest book could not do, and the good experiences have made the earth into a garden for me. […:] Here is an infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude, but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth, even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me.

Thousands of girls have climbed up stairs and knocked on a door answered by a woman who is a complete stranger, to whom they are about to entrust their stomach and womb. And that woman, the only person who can rid them of their misfortune, would open the door, in an apron and patterned slippers, clutching a dish towel, and inquire, “yes, miss, can i help you?

The mint from your breath, the milk from your breast, the best of your mind, now in its worst state of condition. From the womb to the tomb, as a mild flower, you break your petals upon blossom, and seize death openly. Leaving your fragrance to spin and dance, one last time before being blown away.

On Portents If strange things happen where she is, So that men say that graves open And the dead walk, or that futurity Becomes a womb and the unborn are shed, Such portents are not to be wondered at, Being tourbillions in Time made By the strong pulling of her bladed mind Through that ever-reluctant element.

With Hélène Cixous you must close your eyes and open your mouth. Wider. So open your throat opens. Your esophagus. Your lungs. Wider. So open your spine unclatters. Your hips swim loose. Your womb worlds itself. Wider. Open the well of your sex. Now speak your body from your other mouth. Yell corporeal prayer. This is writing.

This was the Mecca of the American Dream, the world that everyone wanted. A world of sleek young women (allied with Slenderella to be so) in shorts and halters, driving 400-horsepower station wagons to air-conditioned, music-serenaded supermarkets of baby-sitter corporations and culture condensed into Great Books discussion groups. A life of barbecues by the swimming pool and drive in movies open all year. It did't appeal to me. Fuck health insurance plans and life insurance. They wanted to live without leaving the womb. It made me more alive to play a game without rules against society, and I was prepared to play it to the end. A tremor almost sexual passed through me as I anticipated the comming robbery.

I shared a womb with someone... does that mean we shared a soul? Maybe half my soul is buried, deep under the ground, and I'll never get it back. I'm cold when it isn't. I hear storms that aren't there. There's space in me I can't fill. Empty. Cold. Storms. And then I smell the carpet, hear deep breaths that aren't mine. When I open my eyes, she's still gone.

I fail to understand why men think violence will intimidate women. Women, who bleed all over themselves every month, who rub blood clots between their fingers and burst them like insects, and sometimes can't because they're not blood clots, they're tongue-coloured strings of meat from the womb. Women who burst open in childbirth, vagina splitting and anus sagging, tiny, hardening fingernails clawing inside of them, placentas like thick filet mignon.

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. "Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet.More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize." Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened heir mouths and gave her the music.

Today I awoke from a sound sleep with curses of joy on my lips, with gibberish on my tongue, repeating to myself like a litany – "Fay ce que vouldras!… fay ce que vouldras!"; Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy. So much crowds into my head when I say this to myself: images, gay ones, terrible ones, maddening ones, the wolf and the goat, the spider, the crab, syphilis with her wings outstretched and the door of the womb always on the latch, always open, ready like the tomb. Lust, crime, holiness: the lives of my adored ones, the failures of my adored ones, the words they left behind them, the words they left unfinished; the good they dragged after them and the evil, the sorrow, the discord, the rancor, the strife they created. But above all, the ecstasy!

Your frequent claim that we must understand religious belief as a “social construct,” produced by “societal causes,” dependent upon “social and cultural institutions,” admitting of “sociological questions,” and the like, while it will warm the hearts of most anthropologists, is either trivially true or obscurantist. It is part and parcel of the double standard that so worries me—the demolition of which is the explicit aim of The Reason Project. Epidemiology is also a “social construct” with “societal causes,” etc.—but this doesn’t mean that the germ theory of disease isn’t true or that any rival “construct”—like one suggesting that child rape will cure AIDS—isn’t a dangerous, deplorable, and unnecessary eruption of primeval stupidity. We either have good reasons or bad reasons for what we believe; we can be open to evidence and argument, or we can be closed; we can tolerate (and even seek) criticism of our most cherished views, or we can hide behind authority, sanctity, and dogma. The main reason why children are still raised to think that the universe is 6,000 years old is not because religion as a “social institution” hasn’t been appropriately coddled and cajoled, but because polite people (and scientists terrified of losing their funding) haven’t laughed this belief off the face of the earth. We did not lose a decade of progress on stem-cell research in the United States because of religion as a “social construct”; we lost it because of the behavioural and emotional consequences of a specific belief. If there were a line in the book of Genesis that read – “The soul enters the womb on the hundredth day (you idiots)” – we wouldn’t have lost a step on stem-cell research, and there would not be a Christian or Jew anywhere who would worry about souls in Petri dishes suffering the torments of the damned. The beliefs currently rattling around in the heads of human beings are some of the most potent forces on earth; some of the craziest and most divisive of these are “religious,” and so-dubbed they are treated with absurd deference, even in the halls of science; this is a very bad combination—that is my point.

Something about a record store has always felt like the womb to me. Flipping through the racks, the feel of cellophane wrap opened with your fingernail. The smell of the inner sleeve packaging and fresh wax.

KINGDOM OF THE WOMB From her thighs, she gives you life And how you treat she who gives you life Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator. And from seed to dust There is ONE soul above all others -- That you must always show patience, respect, and trust And this woman is your mother. And when your soul departs your body And your deeds are weighed against the feather There is only one soul who can save yours And this woman is your mother. And when the heart of the universe Asks her hair and mind, Whether you were gentle and kind to her Her heart will be forced to remain silent And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity, Very much like the seaweed in the sea -- It will reveal all that it has heard and seen. This woman whose heart has seen yours, First before anybody else in the world, And whose womb had opened the door For your eyes to experience light and more -- Is your very own MOTHER. So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel, Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish How you treat her is the ultimate test. If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. And always remember, That the queen in the Creator's kingdom, Who sits on the throne of all existence, Is exactly the same as in yours. And her name is, THE DIVINE MOTHER.

...because slave life had "busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue," she had nothing left to make a living with but her heart--which she put to work at once. Accepting no title of honor before her name, but allowing a small caress after it, she became an unchurched preacher, one who visited pulpits and opened her great heart to those who could use it.

The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rainforest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do - the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, by some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered fro the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flied into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to the ground, but unless she breaks her back or neck or is eaten by one of a thousand things, she staggers to her legs and looks for a stone to rub on, cracking and shedding the wings she will never need again. Then she begins her journey searching for a suitable place to build her kingdom. She crawls into the hollow of a tree, examines its walls and corners. She seals herself off from all society and eats her own wing muscles until she bears her eggs. When the first larvae appear, there is nothing to feed them, so she gives them their unhatched sisters until they are old enough and strong enough to hunt and bring their prey back to the kingdom. That is all. Bearing, hunting, eating, fighting, burying. No time for dreaming, although sometimes, late in life, somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth generation she might get wind of a summer storm one day. The scent of it will invade her palace and she will recall the rush of wind on her belly - the stretch of fresh wings, the blinding anticipation and herself, there, airborne, suspended, open, trusting, frightened, determined, vulnerable - girlish, even, for and entire second and then another and another. She may lift her head then, and point her wands toward the place where the summer storm is entering her palace and in the weariness that ruling queens alone know, she may wonder whether his death was sudden. Or did he languish? And if so, if there was a bit of time left, did he think how mean the world was, or did he fill that space of time thinking of her? But soldier ants do not have time for dreaming. They are women and have much to do. Still it would be hard. So very hard to forget the man who fucked like a star.

Death was the Earth. Having sprung from her, the budding forms of life attempted to liberate themselves from her embrace. They set their sights on the free and open spaces. Death let them do as they wished, because she was very partial to the idea of life. She contented herself with keeping a watchful eye on her flock, and when she felt that they were fully ripe she devoured them up as if they were so many morsels of sugar. The she lay back and slowly digested the nourishment that would replenish her womb, happy and satiated as a pampered cat.

He saw clearly now why he so loved this species of war. On the field of battle, his every act was open to the scrutiny of others. Here, however, he stood outside scrutiny, enacted destiny from a place that transcended judgement or recrimination. He lay hidden in the womb of events. Like a God.

It is understandable you would want to come back as yourself into a wonderland with the sharpness of color of the Queen of Hearts in a newly opened pack of cards. But coming back as yourself is resurrection. It is uncommon. It may even be greater than the scope of mathematics. We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose. Some dust of our bodies may end up in a horse, wasp, cockerel, frog, flower, or leaf, but for every one of these sensational assemblies there are a quintillion microorganisms. It is far likelier that the greater part of us will become protists than a skyscraping dormouse. What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate. You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead. You will be drowned in oblivion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory. It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead. Sometimes this will be an electric feeling, sometimes a sensation of the acid you eat, or the furnace under you. You will burgle and rape other cells in the dark for a seeming eternity, but nothing will come of it. Hades is evolved to the highest state of simplicity. It is stable. Whereas you are a tottering tower, so young in evolutionary terms, and addicted to consciousness.

Something about the gaping hole in the fabric of the cosmos gave him the chills. He leaned over the edge of the opening, expecting to find birds, or similar avian creations of the night’s sky. Instead, he was met with a swarm of unspeakable horrors; winged, pitiful and grotesquely malformed, and to his great stupor, he noticed they had human faces and that they suffered. And as they poured out of the Well of Making, like children from the womb of the eternal feminine, these luciferin creatures spilled onto the world, shrieking in existential agony, for they knew the pain of their mortality.

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow...

I’d just participated in a death. A death. Not a medical procedure. Not a surgical solution to a life problem. Not the valiant step of a woman exercising her right to make medical choices about her own body. The death of a helpless baby, a baby violently ripped away from the safety of the womb, sucked away to be discarded as biohazard waste.

Then he opened the Bible Queen Alexandra had given them and ripped out the flyleaf and the page containing the Twenty-third Psalm. He also tore out the page from the Book of Job with this verse on it: Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone. And the face of the deep is frozen. The he laid the Bible in the snow and walked away. It was a dramatic gesture, but that was the way Shackleton wanted it. From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed.

You cut me open and took the child from my womb. You let me bleed to death as I pleaded for help.

That wouldn’t explain my womb’s failure to open its doors at that very loud and persistent knock. My strange, rebellious womb, that doesn’t want guests.

Thousands of girls have climbed up stairs and knocked on a door answered by a woman who is a complete stranger, to whom they are about to entrust their stomach and their womb. And that woman, the only person who can rid them of their misfortune, would open the door, in an apron and patterned slippers, clutching a dish towel, and inquire, “Yes, Miss, can I help you?

Adopted children are self invented because we have to be. There's an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently. Like a bomb in the womb, the baby explodes into an unknown world and it's only knowable through some kind of story. Of course, that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after its started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after a curtain up, the feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you, and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something is missing. That isn't of its nature negative, the missing part, the missing past can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record. The imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life your fingers trace the space where it might have been and your fingers learn a kind of braille. There are markings here, raised like welts.

May you, son, daughter, image of the very Creator God, fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in your mother’s womb, fully seen, fully known, and fully loved, see with eyes that are open wide. Hear the Voice that speaks from inside of you with ears attuned and mind unshackled. Taste and see the goodness of the One who shall be all and in all. May your heart be opened to the love that formed you and everything else, the love that holds all things together and shall make all things new in the end, and may that love that was broken and poured out for you impel you into the world to break your own self open to be poured out for the world that God so loves. Poured out in acts of justice and mercy, poured out in good and hard work that brings order rather than disorder. Poured out in songs and liturgies, business plans and water colors, child-rearing and policy-making. May your life be a brush in the very hand of God—painting new creation into every nook and cranny of reality that your shadow graces. Be courageous. Be free. Prune that which needs pruning, and water that which thirsts for righteousness. You are the body of Christ, the light of the world. Pick up your hammer. Your brush. Your trumpet. Your skillet. Your pen. Lift up your head. And walk. Run. Dance. Fly. The great Artist, the future God, calls you into being. So go into your world, your valley, your garden, and create with His grace and in His peace. Amen. ________________________

If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man's doing, something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and the light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night, so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself.

Let us be women who Love. Let us be women willing to lay down our sword words, our sharp looks, our ignorant silence and towering stance and fill the earth now with extravagant Love. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who make room. Let us be women who open our arms and invite others into an honest, spacious, glorious embrace. Let us be women who carry each other. Let us be women who give from what we have. Let us be women who leap to do the difficult things, the unexpected things and the necessary things. Let us be women who live for Peace. Let us be women who breathe Hope. Let us be women who create beauty. Let us be women who Love. Let us be a sanctuary where God may dwell. Let us be a garden for tender souls. Let us be a table where others may feast on the goodness of God. Let us be a womb for Life to grow. Let us be women who Love. Let us rise to the questions of our time. Let us speak to the injustices in our world. Let us move the mountains of fear and intimidation Let us shout down the walls that separate and divide. Let us fill the earth with the fragrance of Love. Let us be women who Love. Let us listen for those who have been silenced. Let us honor those who have been devalued. Let us say, Enough! with abuse, abandonment, diminishing and hiding. Let us not rest until every person is free and equal. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who are savvy, smart and wise. Let us be women who shine with the light of God in us. Let us be women who take courage and sing the song in our hearts. Let us be women who say, Yes, to the beautiful, unique purpose seeded in our souls. Let us be women who call out the song in another’s heart. Let us be women who teach our children to do the same. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who Love, in spite of fear. Let us be women who Love, in spite of our stories. Let us be women who Love loudly, beautifully, Divinely. Let us be women who Love.

I am alone as the pearl is alone in its shell. I have withdrawn into myself, but the sea – life hits me and forces me to open. It opens my womb, takes out my round pearl – soul, and strings it on a necklace. I cannot breathe under its weight. It holds all my dear, lost pearls...

By the time we were knit in our mothers' wombs, our lives were like open books before Him--every sentence read, every paragraph indented, every chapter titled, every page numbered. He knew it all in advance--all the sin, all the selfishness, every weakness. Yet He chose to love us--lavishly.

I communicate wordlessly with the burblings in my womb. I don’t want to bring you into a world where silence is a cover for the worst crimes, I tell him. Not if I can’t protect you from it. I won’t keep quiet forever, baby, I promise. One day I will open my mouth and I will never shut it again.

Did Mother ever stop to think that those ‘’shadows’’ fell on me while I was still in her womb? That it was I who had chosen to leave them behind? Did she understand that I put off opening my eyes as an act of courage, so as not to mix up the world I was coming from with the one I was to live in?

I rip open a packet of buffalo mozzarella, ivory spheres floating in a milky womb. I drain the liquid and cut a thick, creamy slice. Placing one of my runaway tomatoes on top, I stand at the kitchen counter and eat, the yellow oil running down my chin. It was rich and full. Like summer and sunshine.

A theology for our time should help us to know that Being is indeed the theater of God's glory, and that, within it, we have a terrible privilege, a capacity for profound error and grave harm. We might venture an answer to God's question, Where were you when I created—? We were there, potential and implicit and by the grace of God inevitable, more unstoppable than the sea, impervious than Leviathan, in that deep womb of time almost hearing the sons of God when they shouted for joy. And we are here, your still-forming child, still opening our eyes on a reality whose astonishments we can never exhaust.

First you have to know the emptiness of your womb, of your arms, of your heart. That can hurt. You have to have the courage to look at yourself and know the loss that you feel. Then you have to change your life to make a space for the child who will not come. You have to open your heart, you have to make a safe place for the baby. And then you have to sit with your longing and your desire and that can be the most painful. You have to sit with your longing and know that you may not get what you want; you have to encounter the danger of longing for something without the expectation of getting your desire.

Surprisingly, grief opens into a story of hope, and life for nothing you love is ever washed away. The memories you hold, then take a new shape, as a new orb shines from the womb of tears opening into life beyond loss. While one life goes, another shows its face... as from the womb of night is born the light of dawn...

Why then I do but dream on sovereignty, Like one that stands upon a promontory And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, And chides the sea that sunders him from thence, Saying, he'll lade it dry to have his way: So do I wish the crown, being so far off, And so I chide the means that keeps me from it, And so, I say, I'll cut the causes off, Flattering me with impossibilities, My eye's too quick, my hear o'erweens too much, Unless my hand and strength could equal them. Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard; What other pleasure can the world afford? I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap, And deck my body in gay ornaments, And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks. O miserable thought! and more unlikely Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns! Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb; And for I should not deal in her soft laws, She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe, To shrink mine arm up like a wither'd shrub, To make an envious mountain on my back, Where sits deformity to mock my body; To shape my legs of an unequal size, To disproportion me in every part, Like to a chaos, or an unlick'd bear-whelp That carries no impression like the dam. And am I then a man to be belov'd? O monstrous fault, to harbor such a thought! Then since this earth affords no joy to me But to command, to check, to o'erbear such As are of better person than myself, I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown, And whiles I live, t' account this world but hell, Until my misshap'd trunk that bears this head Be round impaled with a glorious crown. And yet I know not how to get the crown, For many lives stand between me and home; And I - like one lost in a thorny wood, That rents the thorns, and is rent with the thorns, Seeking a way, and straying from the way, Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out - Torment myself to catch the English crown; And from that torment I will free myself, Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. Why, I can smile, and murther whiles I smile, And cry "Content" to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions. I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall, I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk, I'll play the orator as well as Nestor, Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, And like a Simon, take another Troy. I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, And set the murtherous Machevil to school. Can I do this, and cannot get a crown? Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.

I’m not looking for love. I’m looking for consolation. Comfort for all these countries we have lost since we left our mother’s womb, which we replace with stories, like greedy children, our eyes wide open to the storyteller. The truth is that there is nothing but suffering: we try to forget, in the arms of strangers, that we will soon vanish.

Every midwife knows that not until a mother's womb softens from the pain of labour will a way unfold and the infant find that opening to be born. Oh friend! There is treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child. Listen. All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives are saying, 'welcome this pain.' It opens the dark passage of Grace.

Community, a place of healing and growth . . . The wound in all of us, and which we are all trying to flee, can become the place of meeting with God and with brothers and sisters; it can become the place of ecstasy and of the eternal wedding feast. The loneliness and feelings of inferiority which we are running away from become the place of liberation and salvation. There is always warfare in our hearts; there is always a struggle between pride and humility, hatred and love, forgiveness and the refusal to forgive, truth and the concealment of truth, openness and closedness. Each one of us is walking in that passage towards liberation, growing on the journey towards wholeness and healing. . . . We must not fear this vulnerable heart, with its closeness to sexuality and its capacity to hate and be jealous. We must not run from it into power and knowledge, seeking self-glory and independence. Instead, we must let God take his place there, purify it and enlighten it. As the stone is gradually removed from our inner tomb and the dirt is revealed, we discover that we are loved and forgiven; then under the power of love and of the Spirit, the tomb becomes a womb. A miracle seems to happen. . . . It is a liberation as the child in us is reborn and the selfish adult dies. Jesus said that if we do not change and become like little children, we cannot enter into the Kingdom. The revelation of love is for children, and not for wise and clever people.

My Wild Woman welcomed me with open arms into the womb of my cave. She grasped me by the hand and, one by one, introduced me to my shadow creatures. I roamed, I raged, I roared, I explored and when I thought I was done, that I couldn’t possibly go any further, my Wild Woman drew me into her lap. She comforted me in the circle of her fierce embrace and affectionally whispered tendernesses to me. She firmly sent me back out to play until the creatures became my friends. She revealed to me the place where the soft glow of my inner hearth resided and there, we were joined by my Wise Woman, Together, they showed me how to ignite the fire with the parts of myself which no longer served the woman I was becoming and they held me while I grieved.

This work opens the eyes of the world blinded by ignorance. As the sun dispels darkness, so does Bharata by its exposition of religion, duty, action, contemplation, and so forth. As the full moon by shedding soft light helps the buds of the lotus to open, so this Purana by its exposition expands the human intellect. The lamp of history illumines the ‘whole mansion of the womb of Nature.’ —Vyasa

Do you know anything about hearts, Jona? The Senta know hearts. Hearts are not one organ. Inside a mother's womb, two pulsing bags of blood seek their eternal mate." Her hand reached out to his. She opened his palm, and traced a finger down his lifeline, then his loveline. She lifted it up to her own face. She placed it on her cheek. "Lungs are fine apart," she said, "Hands do not need another but to clap. Brains gnarl like roots in the nothing of soul, and guts spin in knots around the nothing of hunger. But hearts are made by two complete parts merging together. Once the two pieces sense each other in the blood flow, they cross every bloody cliff inside of us. The arteries bind the halves close. The veins make love to each other in the life pulse that makes all life from love entwined.

Now I suddenly think that Sarkar, Tracy Anne, and I are most likely the only ones present who can tell exactly what has happened: Katra Kovac, nine months pregnant, has been slit open. Her baby has been taken. The procedure—it’s a disgusting lie to confuse this butchery with the term C-section—has left the mother barely clinging to life. And the baby? Who in hell knows what has become of the baby, this baby who was literally ripped from its mother’s womb.

I love everything that flows,” said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with its painful gallstones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul; I love the great rivers like the Amazon and the Orinoco, where crazy men like Moravagine float on through dream and legend in an open boat and drown in the blind mouths of the river. I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund. I love scripts that flow, be they hieratic, esoteric, perverse, polymorph, or unilateral. I love everything that flows, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the beginning where there is never end: the violence of the prophets, the obscenity that is ecstasy, the wisdom of the fanatic, the priest with his rubber litany, the foul words of the whore, the spittle that floats away in the gutter, the milk of the breast and the bitter honey that pours from the womb, all that is fluid, melting, dissolute and dissolvent, all the pus and dirt that in flowing is purified, that loses its sense of origin, that makes the great circuit toward death and dissolution. The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.

Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying that “the game belongs to the people.” So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The “greatest good for the greatest number” applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT, A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open (1916)

A throbbing ache started to grow in her womb. She wanted more, wanted something... "Rothbury, please," she begged. "Please." And then his fingers were there, delving inside, spreading her moisture up and down and around her opening. Her hips circled and dipped along with his movements. She moaned, saying his name. He groaned, panting along with her. Expertly, he handled her. Rhythmically, sweetly, he tortured her. "Open my trousers," he breathed. She complied. Soon he was freed, his hardness jutting upward, seeking her heat. "Look at me," he bit out through his teeth. As if through a haze, she met his heated, intense gaze. "This is the only time in my life I will ever hurt you." Her brow scrunched and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask him just what exactly he meant, when the tip of his manhood pulsed at the opening of her center. "Hold on," he said, his voice strained. Charlotte gripped his shoulders. Rothbury gripped her hips. Lifting her, he hesitated for a moment. "Do you want it?" She nodded and made some sort of noise, half whimper and half the word "yes." He bent his head to suckle one of her breasts again. For long moments, he held her poised above him as he toyed with her nipples, flicking, lapping, and gently running the bottom row of his teeth against them. When she started to wriggle, he impaled her in one smooth, swift motion. She cried out, nearly surging off of him. "Shh. Shh." He kissed her eyelids, the apples of her cheeks. "Only this time, my angel. Only this time it hurts." He kept very still, waiting for some sort of response from her, she imagined. Where there was once only pleasure, she now felt a stabbing pain. It seemed to radiate around his arousal. Her breathing slowed. This couldn't be it. There had to be more... And then she felt a sort of tickling. She looked down at their joined bodies to find Rothbury using his thumb to flick quickly against a tiny nubbin of flesh hidden in her folds. It felt... wonderful. Like magic, her hips began to move of their own accord. Her breathing increased and the throbbing, damp pleasure returned. She rocked against him. "There you are, Charlotte," he murmured against her throat. "Better?" She nodded shakily, tiny shivers shimmering down her upper body as he nipped at her earlobe. His large hands held her backside tightly against him, controlling, rolling her with him in a primal rhythm.

when a woman herself becomes pregnant, it is as if she links directly back into an intact matrilineal network where all the mothers, all the wombs, all the foetuses and infants are connected. This does something peculiar to maternal temporality: it has the ability to stretch time out in linear directions to the distant past and future, and equally to concertina in upon itself to a point that is always in the present. Folding out, folding in, the past and the future, hinged together like delicate butterfly wings. In the way that matryoshka dolls can be opened out and displayed in a long line from smallest to biggest, or packed one inside the other, becoming one body, one space, one time.

Perhaps the shortest and most powerful prayer in human language is help. —FATHER THOMAS KEATING A hardness we can't see, cold and rigid, begins to form between us and the world, the longer we stay silent about what we need. It is not even about getting what we need, but about admitting, mostly to ourselves, that we do have needs. Asking for help, whether we get it or not, breaks the hardness that builds in the world. Paradoxically, asking even for the things that no one can give, we are relieved and blessed for the asking. For admitting our humanness lets the soul break surface, the way a dolphin leaps for the sun. One of the most painful barriers we can experience is the sense of isolation the modern world fosters, which can only be broken by our willingness to be held, by the quiet courage to allow our vulnerabilities to be seen. For as water fills a hole and as light fills the dark, kindness wraps around what is soft, if what is soft can be seen. So admitting what we need, asking for help, letting our softness show—these are prayers without words that friends, strangers, wind, and time all wrap themselves around. Allowing ourselves to be held is like returning to the womb. As you breathe, try to relax and soften your guard for these brief moments. Breathe slowly, and feel your pores open more fully to the world. Inhale deeply, and let the air and silence get closer. Inhale cleanly, and allow yourself to be held by what is.

No, I’d open a refuge for mothers. A retreat. Concrete 1970s brutalism, an anti-domestic architecture without flounces. Something low with big windows and wide corridors, carpets to deaden sound. There will be five or six rooms off the corridor, each with a wall of glass and sliding doors looking on to a cold, grey beach. Each room has a single bed in the corner, a table and chair. You may bring your laptop but there is no internet access and no telephone. There are books with a body count of zero and no suffering for anyone under the age of eight. A cinema where everything you wanted to see in the last eight years is shown at a time that allows you to have an early night afterwards. And the food, the kind of food you’re pleased to have eaten as well as pleased to eat, is made by a chef, a childless male chef, and brought to your room. You may ask him for biscuits at any moment of the day or night, send your mug back because you dislike the shape of the handle, and change your mind after ordering dinner. And there is a swimming pool, lit from below in a warm, low-ceilinged room without windows, which may be used by one mummy at a time to swim herself into dream. Oh, fuck it, I am composing a business plan for a womb with a view. So what? I’ll call it Hôtel de la Mère and the only real problem is childcare. Absent, children cause guilt and anxiety incompatible with the mission of the Hôtel; present, they prevent thought or sleep, much more swimming and the consumption of biscuits. We need to turn them off for a few days, suspend them like computers. Make them hibernate. You can’t uninvent children any more than you can uninvent the bomb.

PROVERBS 31 The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him:     2 What are you doing, my son? [1] What are you doing,  f son of my womb?         What are you doing,  g son of my vows?     3 Do  h not give your strength to women,         your ways to those  i who destroy kings.     4  j It is not for kings, O Lemuel,         it is not for kings  k to drink wine,         or for rulers to take  l strong drink,     5 lest they drink and forget what has been decreed         and  m pervert the rights of all the afflicted.     6 Give strong drink to the one who  n is perishing,         and wine to  o those in bitter distress; [2]     7  p let them drink and forget their poverty         and remember their misery no more.     8  q Open your mouth for the mute,         for the rights of all who are destitute. [3]     9 Open your mouth,  r judge righteously,

Many people experience only the “theory of love” in this world, in which they “know” or “think” they are loved—but do not receive this love in a deeply embodied way. Often we look back on our “perfect” childhoods and cannot fathom where our deep emotional injuries have come from. Our parents love us, they say they love us and we know they love us; they fed and clothed us, worried about us, and took care of us to the best of their abilities. But often, at best, we have only been receiving the theory of love, and at worst we have been on the receiving end of emotional abuse or control, either subtle or overt. Primordial Love means original love, our first love—which extends from the Source of Creation deep into every cell of our being and every quality of our soul. In physical form it is given from a deeply loving heart presence; it is intimate, playful, sensual, sensitive, responsive, feeling, emotionally intelligent, kind, intuitive. When we have not received enough true primordial Love, we resist it and feel overwhelmed and out of control when we receive love—as if it is destroying the safe barrier we have erected around ourselves. Like a bud, we need to trust and open to deeply embodied love; to allow the “sunshine” in to nourish us and bring us back to life again. When we are touched by primordial Love we feel truly seen, felt, and received at a soul level. Our physical bioenergetic and spiritual pathways open to intimate connection with others, with earth, with animals, with All of existence. Primordial Love wires our physical, neural, and soulful pathways to become a living chalice for Love. We become wired to receive love from all sources, physical and nonphysical, and to trust in loving touch. From this embodied place we can truly give love to others and pass the gift of love on, rather than passing forward paradigms of lack, sacrifice, and suffering.

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees. After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and they ran from the trees toward her. "Let your mothers hear you laugh,"she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling. Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees. "Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet. Finally she called the women to her. “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the dead. Just cry.” And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart…“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it… No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it - you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed…What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give leavins instead. No they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it." "This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And oh my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet…More than your life-holding womb and your live-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize."" -Baby Suggs

I love the wild things, and the birds most of all. My education began, I am sure, the moment I was pushed free of the womb by Mother, born on Prade Ranch in the back bedroom on a late afternoon in early March-the seventh of March which is when the golden-cheeked warblers usually return to Prade Ranch after wintering down in Mexico. There would have been doves calling, as if to counter Mother's gasps and cries, and the flylike buzz of the hummingbirds (the aggressive black-chinned ones making most of the racket) at the nectar feeders just outside the open window. There would have been a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Father in the room with the doctor, and Grandfather and Chubb on the back porch, waiting for this next new part of the world to begin. Grandfather said he knew that was going to be the day, not just because of the golden-cheeked warblers' return, but because he'd heard a vermilion flycatcher buzzing-pit-zee,pit-zee-all the day before, and on into the night, well past midnight-the only time he's ever heard of that, before or since.

She squirmed with delight, making him groan. Her wriggling must test him. Some devil made her move again. "Jesus, Grace," he gritted out. "You try my limits." "I hope so," she purred. He felt so wonderful inside her. As if he supplied part of her that she only realized now she'd lacked. She bent her knees and tilted her hips so he went deeper. She ran her hands down the tense muscles of his back. He flexed under her touch. "That felt good," she said breathlessly. "Do it again." "If I start, I won't stop." his voice was rough. "Start." She shifted again and felt him shudder. "Grace," he grated out. He withdrew, then plunged into her. Her nails sank into his back and her womb clenched in welcome. With deliberate slowness, he set the familiar rhythm. Except none of this was familiar. Every time he settled in her body, he forged an emotional connection that nothing could sever. On and on he went. Possession. Release. Possession. Release. Every thrust another link in the chain that bound her to him. Eventually his inhuman control fractured and he drove into her faster, more wildly. With every thrust, her excitement built. It echoed how she'd felt when he kissed her between the legs. That had been wonderful, astounding.But this was more powerful. Because he was with her. He pounded into her as though he meant to crush her. She didn't care. She never wanted this spiraling feeling to end. The storm swirled her higher and higher. Ecstasy poised her on a knife edge. She cried out and rose to meet him. He changed the angle of his penetration and went even deeper. The pleasure edged close to pain. She tensed as he pressed hard inside her. Then her womb opened and she took all of him. Her inner muscles convulsed into spasms of delight and she screamed. Violent rapture flung her against the doors of heaven itself. She was lost in a hot, dark world where nothing existed except Matthew. All she could do was hold him and prayed she survived. Through the tempest that blasted her, he reached his climax. He groaned and convulsed in her arms. For this moment, he was unequivocally hers and she reveled in the possession.

Dawn and a high film; the sun burned it; But noon had a thick sheet, and the clouds coming, The low rain-bringers, trooping in from the north, From the far cold fog-breeding seas, the womb of storms. Dusk brought a wind and the sky opened: All down the west the broken strips lay snared in the light, Bellied and humped and heaped on the hills. The set sun threw the blaze up; The sky lived redly, banner on banner of far-burning flame, From south to north the furnace door wide and the smoke rolling. We in the fields, the watchers from the burnt slope, Facing the west, facing the bright sky, hopelessly longing to know the red beauty-- But the unable eyes, the too-small intelligence, The insufficient organs of reception Not a thousandth part enough to take and retain. We stared, and no speaking. and felt the deep loneness of incomprehension. The flesh must turn cloud, the spirit, air, Transformation to sky and the burning, Absolute oneness with the west and the down sun. But we, being earth-stuck, watched from the fields, Till the rising rim shut out the light; Till the sky changed, the long wounds healed; Till the rain fell.

When my prince had fallen, the spirit ofthe depths opened my vision and let me become aware of the birth of the new God. The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly.129 I understood that the Godl3o whom we seek in the absolute was not to be found in absolute beauty, goodness, seriousness, elevation, humanity or even in godliness. Once the God was there. I understood that the new God would be in the relative. If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him?131 If we have risen near the heights of good and evil, then our badness and hatefulness lie in the most extreme torment. Man's torment is so great and the air of the heights so wealc that he can hardly live anymore. The good and the beautiful freeze to the ice of the absolute idea/32 and the bad and hateful become mud puddles full of crazy life. Therefore after his death Christ had to journey to Hell, otherwise the ascent to Heaven would have become impos- sible for him. Christ first had to become his Antichrist, his underworldly brother. No one knows what happened during the three days Christ was in Hell. I have experienced it.133 The men ofyore said that he had preached there to the deceased.134 What they say is true, but do you know how this happened? It was folly and monkey business, an atrocious Hell's masquerade of the holiest mysteries. How else could Christ have saved his Antichrist? Read the unknown books of the ancients, and you will learn much from them. Notice that Christ did not remain in Hell, but rose to the heights in the beyond.135 Our conviction of the value of the good and beautiful has become strong and unshakable, that is why life can extend beyond this and still fulfil everything that lay bound and yearning. But the bound and yearning is also the,hateful and bad. Are you again indignant about the hateful and the bad? Through this you can recognize h()w great are their force and value for life. Do you think that it is dead in you? But this dead can also change into serpents.136These serpents will extinguish the prince ofyour days.

Our freedom does not lie outside us, but within us. One can be bound outside, and yet one will still feel free since one has burst inner bonds. One can certainly gain outer freedom through powerful actions, but one creates inner freedom only through the symbol. The symbol is the word that goes out of the mouth, that one does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedly on the tongue. It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien to the conscious mind. If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know. But if one does not accept the symbol, it is as if one carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the streets again, exposed to everything external. But the soul suffers great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it. Salvation is a long road that leads through many gates. These gates are symbols. Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed, it seems at first that it must be created, for it exists only if one has dug up the spring’s root. To find the mandrake, one needs the black dog, since good and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. The symbol can be neither thought up nor found: it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then the symbol grows out of itself and is born from the mind, as befits a God. But in the same way a mother would like to throw herself on the child like a monster and devour it again. In the morning, when the new sun rises, the word steps out of my mouth, but is murdered lovelessly, since I did not know that it was the saviour. The newborn child grows quickly, if I accept it. And immediately it becomes my charioteer. The word is the guide, the middle way which easily oscillates like the needle on the scales. The word is the God that rises out of the waters each morning and proclaims the guiding law to the people. Outer laws and outer wisdom are eternally insufficient, since there is only one law and one wisdom, namely my daily law, my daily wisdom. The God renews himself each night.

The mythological figure of the Universal Mother imputes to the cosmos the feminine attributes of the first, nourishing and protecting presence. The fantasy is primarily spontaneous; for there exists a close and obvious correspondence between the attitude of the young child toward its mother and that of the adult toward the surrounding material world. But there has been also, in numerous religious traditions, a consciously controlled pedagogical utilization of this architypal image for the purpose of the purguing balacning, and initiation of the mind into the nature of the visible world..... The Universal Mother is also the death of everything that dies. The whole round of existence is accomplished within her sway, from birth, through adolescence, maturity, and senescence, to the grave. She is the womb and the tomb. Thus she unites the good and bad, exhibiting the two modes of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as universal. the devotee is expected to contemplate the two with equal equanimity. through this exercise, his spirit is purged of its infantile, inappropriate sentimentalities, and his mind opened to the inscrutable presence which exists, not as good and bad primarily with respect to his childlike human convenience, but as the law and image of the nature of being.

What did E.S. like about dreams? Their similarity to life and their dissimilarity; their salutary effect on body and soul; their unrestricted choice and arrangement of themes and contents; their bottomless depths and eerie heights; their eroticism; their freedom; their openness to guidance by will and suggestion (a perfumed handkerchief under one's pillow, soft music on the radio or gramophone, etc.); their resemblance to death and their power to confer intimations of eternity; their resemblance to madness without the consequences of madness; their cruelty and their gentleness; their power to pry the deepest secrets out of us; their blissful silence, to which cries are not unknown; their telepathic and spiritist faculty of communication with those dead or far away; their coded language, which we manage to understand and translate; their ability to condense the mythical figures of Icarus, Ahasuerus, Jonah, Noah, etc., into images; their monochrome and polychrome quality; their resemblance to the womb and to the jaws of a shark; their faculty of transforming unknown places, people, and landscapes into known ones, and vice versa; their power to diagnose certain ailments and traumas before it is too late; the difficulty of determining how long they last; the fact that they can be mistaken for reality; their power to preserve images and distant memories; their disrespect for chronology and the classical unities of time and action.

But there was more than dullness in the confessional; it was not that by itself that had sickened him or propelled him toward that always widening club, Associated Catholic Priests of the Bottle and Knights of the Cutty Sark. It was the steady, dead, onrushing engine of the church, bearing down all petty sins on its endless shuttle to heaven. It was the ritualistic acknowledgment of evil by a church now more concerned with social evils; atonement told in beads for elderly ladies whose parents had spoken European tongues. It was the actual presence of evil in the confessional, as real as the smell of old velvet. But it was a mindless, moronic evil from which there was no mercy or reprieve. The fist crashing into the baby’s face, the tire cut open with a jackknife, the barroom brawl, the insertion of razor blades into Halloween apples, the constant, vapid qualifiers which the human mind, in all its labyrinthine twists and turns, is able to spew forth. Gentlemen, better prisons will cure this. Better cops. Better social services agencies. Better birth control. Better sterilization techniques. Better abortions. Gentlemen, if we rip this fetus from the womb in a bloody tangle of unformed arms and legs, it will never grow up to beat an old lady to death with a hammer. Ladies, if we strap this man into a specially wired chair and fry him like a pork chop in a microwave oven, he will never have an opportunity to torture any more boys to death. Countrymen, if this eugenics bill is passed, I can guarantee you that never again— Shit

The Blessed I am in the darkness and alone. In front of me stands the door. When I open it, I am bathed in light. There are a father, a mother and sister, A dog, which, dumb, still barks in friendliness. How can I lie, and how can I say That I, hidden there in darkness, have not come to harm them? I drag myself over the threshold. Snow blossoms in my eyes. I saw him bowing to me courteously; How much that hurt me. How could my heart find peace, When round it raced the voice of the old man? I live in coldness. I dried my tears and went To where the man was eating with his family. It was so calm and loving a reception. I felt the violins sounding inside me At first, so sweetly, so gently. They will never sound again, when I have finished. Fear drenched my hands. Beneath me I could almost taste my womb. A sneer seemed to say: 'Have you no shame? What have you done with the wedding-ring on your finger? Terrible thief, where did you hide your courage? Does the nakedness of my right hand mean so little to me?' I felt so poor and naked. I wriggled in my chair And trembled to think what I must do. Pity clawed at my heart and shook my body Like a tree in a winter field blown by the wind Shedding leaves. I told myself it was time to go, Scolding my wan, faded self for my little worries. Pleased with myself again, I steeled myself for the torture. The joy of it! Oh, how I want to be Just like an animal and be happy again! I sharpen my claws with a knife. It is still night, and that thing called shame, I may not let it show itself. I know the train that tears through the woods. I go out to the unfeeling rails. Weary, I am glad to go to bed, Running across two flat sticks of iron.

Laura stands, in another photograph, wearing a two-piece gown, bodice and skirt, from centuries ago. The scarlet material is trimmed in gold brocade. From her waist the skirt billows outward, broad as a spinnaker, and grazes the floor in a huge circle. It fastens in front by a series of cobalt buttons, and she is about to start closing it, but for the moment it gapes open: a vertical window, eight or ten inches wide, runs from her waist to the floor. The gold brocade lines the opening like a ceremonial decoration, a veneration of what lies within. But nothing lies within. Inside the vast regal tent of the garment is darkness. Because of the lighting and pose, Laura’s body seems to end at the belly, to have no stumps at all. The opening exposes a pure emptiness. It is unclear how she is standing, what keeps her upright. The cavern beneath the skirt is illumined just enough to suggest that she isn’t wearing her prosthetics. She stands on no legs, suspended, magical. And that magic, along with her strong jawline turned in profile, endows her with omnipotence. The cavern is at once a universe and a womb. The vertical opening is a vaginal slit, and to slip through it, to slide the body inside the scarlet walls of the tent, to wait inside while she fastens the skirt and encloses you, swallows you, would be to live out the primal fantasy of entering the vagina not only with the penis but with everything from the skull to the toes: to be ensconced, to be consumed. The photograph’s viewer, not its subject, is at risk of disintegrating, coming apart, deliquescing in the lightless world he has longed for, turning to liquid in the womb. Laura, with her half-body, will remain more than intact, more than whole.

Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.

Creativity is alive And thriving in my body. The energy you bring out in me Is within me infinitely. My power is overflowing. My lips are soft and welcoming To the exhale, The new Braille, The silence that persists After our moans die away, I look at myself and say, "Root down so you can burn. Beautiful girl, it's your turn To create magic within yourself. This time, without his help. Find your roots and find your fire, Be mindful of what you desire, Persist in what you know is true, Stay focused on the endless route Toward your own potential. Allow the existential Void to swallow you whole. Take on your old role: The lone seeker. Become quieter. Become meeker. Become the beauty that you seek. Embody strength if you feel weak. Find love within the walls Of this sacred temple. Let yourself shake and tremble, But keep your eyes ever fixed On the horizon Where it's rising, No revising, Fears capsizing As you sail, sail, sail Toward the wail Of your siren spirit Beckoning you to bloom The flower in your womb, The seed of creativity, Your triumphant legacy." These words, I will carry Within me as I bury Grains of wisdom In the whispers of the wind. And when I arrive To the altar of our origin, I'll be dressed in white and black, And I'll cradle that exact Feeling left on our sheets. And you'll be on your knees, Ready to receive The wholeness of my broken mind, Pried open by The sparkle gleaming in your eyes. And your hands will be full Of supple fruit and you'll Smile at me, and I will see That you have fed your hunger. You'll ooze with courage and wonder. And then, we will know That we've already lost each other A thousand times before. And I have found you As clear water after mud settles. And you have found me As a bee deep in a flower's petals. We have danced before, Pulled art out of each other's spines. We have died and birthed and died. We've already kissed a million times. This wasn't our first five act play, And it will not be the last. So when I thirst for your hands, I will sit and chant. We will meet again. We will meet again.

9:36a    ἰδὼν δὲ τούς ὄχλους ἐσπλαγχνίσθη πεϱὶ αὐτῶν seeing the crowds, his insides were moved with pity for them THE JEWS AND THE GREEKS could not succeed in making pity and compassion into a purely mental act. It sounds archaic, hardly short of embarrassing, to say that “Jesus saw the crowds and felt pity for them in his bowels.” But, in fact, any translation that omits compassion’s element of viscerality (for σπλάγχνα, the root of the verb here, means “viscera”, “bowels”, “womb”) has already betrayed the depth of Jesus’ divine and human pity. We all know how the strongest emotions—whether sorrow, fear, joy, or desire—are all initially registered in the abdominal region, and this physiological reaction is one of the proofs of the authenticity of our emotions. The same teacher, herald, and healer who surpassed all others in these crafts finally reveals himself in utter silence and inactivity in his deepest nature: the Compassionate One who is affected by suffering more elementally than the sufferers he sees around him. If Mary’s womb was proclaimed blessed for having borne such a Child, we now see in the Son the Mother’s most precious quality: wide-wombed compassion. When we allow ourselves to be moved in this way, we are already hopelessly involved with the object of our pity: no possibility here of a distanced display of “charity” that refuses to become tainted by contact with the stench of human misery. Jesus looks at the crowds, then, and is viscerally moved. What power in the gaze of a Savior who pauses in the midst of his activity in order to take into himself the full, wounded reality about him! Jesus never protects himself against the claims of distress. He is not content with emanating the truth, joy, and healing power that are his: he must become a fellow sufferer. His loving gaze is like an open wound that filters out no sorrow. He has already done so much for them; but as long as he sees misery, nothing is enough; and so he wonders what else remains to be done. His contemplative sorrow becomes a stimulant to his creative imagination. He nestles all manner of plight within his person, and every human need becomes a churning in his inward parts. He interiorizes the chaos of the surrounding landscape, but, by entering him, it becomes contained, comprehended, embraced and saved.

This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has. I want to write to you like someone learning. I deepen the words as if I were painting, more than an object, its shadow. I don’t want to ask why, you can always ask why and always get no answer—could I manage to surrender to the expectant silence that follows a question without an answer? Though I sense that some place or time the great answer for me does exist. And then I shall know how to paint and write, after the strange but intimate answer. Listen to me, listen to the silence. What I say to you is never what I say to you but something else instead. It captures the thing that escapes me and yet I live from it and am above a shining darkness. One instant athematic theme unfurls without a plan but geometric like the successive shapes in a kaleidoscope. I slowly enter my gift to myself, splendor ripped open by the final song that seems to be the first. I enter the writing slowly as I once entered painting. It is a world tangled up in creepers, syllables, woodbine, colors and words—threshold of an ancestral cavern that is the womb of the world and from it I shall be born. And if I often paint caves that is because they are my plunge into the earth, dark but haloed with brightness, and I, blood of nature— extravagant and dangerous caves, talisman of the Earth, where stalactites, fossils and rocks come together, and where the animals mad by their own malign nature seek refuge. The caves are my hell. Forever dreaming cave with its fogs, memory or longing? eerie, eerie, esoteric greenish with the slime of time. All is weighted with sleep when I paint a cave or write to you about it—from outside it comes the clatter of dozens of wild horses stamping with dry hoofs the darkness, and from the friction of the hoofs the rejoicing is freed in sparks: here I am, I and the cave, in the very time that will rot us. I want to put into words but without description the existence of the cave that some time ago I painted—and I don’t know how. Only by repeating its sweet horror, cavern of terror and wonders, place of afflicted souls, winter and hell, unpredictable substratum of the evil that is inside an earth that is not fertile. I call the cave by its name and it begins to live with its miasma. I then fear myself who knows how to paint the horror, I, creature of echoing caverns that I am, and I suffocate because I am word and also its echo.

The history of the land is a history of blood. In this history, someone wins and someone loses. There are patriots and enemies. Folk heroes who save the day. Vanquished foes who had it coming. It’s all in the telling. The conquered have no voice. Ask the thirty-eight Santee Sioux singing the death song with the nooses around their necks, the treaty signed fair and square, then nullified with a snap of the rope. Ask the slave women forced to bear their masters’ children, to raise and love them and see them sold. Ask the miners slaughtered by the militia in Ludlow. Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness. Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.) The history is a hungry history. Its mouth opens wide to consume. It must be fed. Bring me what you would forget, it cries, and I will swallow it whole and pull out the bones bleached of truth upon which you will hang the myths of yourselves. Feed me your pain and I will give you dreams and denial, a balm in Gilead. The land remembers everything, though. It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting. The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood. Blood on the plains. In the rivers. On the trees where the ropes swing. Blood on the leaves. Blood under the flowers of Gettysburg, of Antioch. Blood on the auction blocks. Blood of the Lenape, the Cherokee, the Cheyenne. Blood of the Alamo. Blood of the Chinese railroad workers. Blood of the midwives hung for witchcraft, for the crime of being women who bleed. Blood of the immigrants fleeing the hopeless, running toward the open arms of the nation’s seductive hope, its greatest export. Blood of the first removed to make way for the cities, the factories, the people and their unbridled dreams: The chugging of the railways. The tapping of the telegram. The humming of industry. Sound burbling along telephone wires. Printing presses whirring with the day’s news. And the next day’s. And the day after that’s. Endless cycles of information. Cities brimming with ambitions used and discarded. The dead hold what the people throw away. The stories sink the tendrils of their hope and sorrow down into the graves and coil around the dead buried there, deep in its womb. All passes away, the dead whisper. Except for us. We, the eternal. Always here. Always listening. Always seeing. One nation, under the earth. E Pluribus unum mortuis. Oh, how we wish we could reach you! You dreamers and schemers! Oh, you children of optimism! You pioneers! You stars and stripes, forever! Sometimes, the dreamers wake as if they have heard. They take to the streets. They pick up the plow, the pen, the banner, the promise. They reach out to neighbors. They reach out to strangers. Backs stooped from a hard day’s labor, two men, one black, one white, share water from a well. They are thirsty and, in this one moment, thirst and work make them brothers. They drink of shared trust, that all men are created equal. They wipe their brows and smile up at a faithful sun.

Every ritual repetition of the cosmogony is preceded by a symbolic retrogression to Chaos. In order to be created anew, the old world must first be annihilated. The various rites performed in connection with the New Year can be put in two chief categories: (I) those that signify the return to Chaos (e.g., extinguishing fires, expelling 'evil' and sins, reversal of habitual behavior, orgies, return of the dead); (2) those that symbolize the cosmogony (e.g., lighting new fires, departure of the dead, repetition of the acts by which the Gods created the world, solemn prediction of the weather for the ensuing year). In the scenario of initiatory rites, 'death' corresponds to the temporary return to Chaos; hence it is the paradigmatic expression of the end of a mode of being the mode of ignorance and of the child's irresponsibility. Initiatory death provides the clean slate on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new man. We shall later describe the different modalities of birth to a new, spiritual life. But now we must note that this new life is conceived as the true human existence, for it is open to the values of spirit. What is understood by the generic term 'culture,' comprising all the values of spirit, is accessible only to those who have been initiated. Hence participation in spiritual life is made possible by virtue of the religious experiences released during initiation. All the rites of rebirth or resurrection, and the symbols that they imply, indicate that the novice has attained to another mode of existence, inaccessible to those who have not undergone the initiatory ordeals, who have not tasted death. We must note this characteristic of the archaic mentality: the belief that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated-in the present instance, without the child's dying to childhood. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this obsession with beginnings, which, in sum, is the obsession with the absolute beginning, the cosmogony. For a thing to be well done, it must be done as it was done the first time. But the first time, the thing-this class of objects, this animal, this particular behavior-did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, this animal, this institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing. Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in relation to what it prepares: birth to a higher mode of being. As we shall see farther on, initiatory death is often symbolized, for example, by darkness, by cosmic night, by the telluric womb, the hut, the belly of a monster. All these images express regression to a preformal state, to a latent mode of being (complementary to the precosmogonic Chaos), rather than total annihilation (in the sense in which, for example, a member of the modern societies conceives death). These images and symbols of ritual death are inextricably connected with germination, with embryology; they already indicate a new life in course of preparation. Obviously, as we shall show later, there are other valuations of initiatory death-for example, joining the company of the dead and the Ancestors. But here again we can discern the same symbolism of the beginning: the beginning of spiritual life, made possible in this case by a meeting with spirits. For archaic thought, then, man is made-he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. But these masters apply what was revealed to them at the beginning of Time by the Supernatural Beings. They are only the representatives of those Beings; indeed, in many cases they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary to resemble a mythical model.

It is a communion at once mystic & real, in the guise of metal. Money which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism, which knew & understood everything, opens to a shower of gold from on high the conquered thighs of Danae. That is what we should see on our coins, instead of a meaningless head, if we were capable of contemplating without embarrassment that religious tableau.

The book of Genesis is a window into what cultures were like before the revelation of the Bible. One thing we see early on is the widespread practice of primogeniture—the eldest son inherited all the wealth, which is how they ensured the family kept its status and place in society. So the second or third son got nothing, or very little. Yet all through the Bible, when God chooses someone to work through, he chooses the younger sibling. He chooses Abel over Cain. He chooses Isaac over Ishmael. He chooses Jacob over Esau. He chooses David over all eleven of his older brothers. Time after time he chooses not the oldest, not the one the world expects and rewards. Never the one from Jerusalem, as it were, but always the one from Nazareth. Another ancient cultural tradition revealed in Genesis is that in those societies, women who had lots of children were extolled as heroic. If you had many children, that meant economic success, it meant military success, and of course it meant the odds of carrying on the family name were secure. So women who could not have children were shamed and stigmatized. Yet throughout the Bible, when God shows us how he works through a woman, he chooses the ones who cannot have children, and opens their wombs. These are despised women, but God chooses them over ones who are loved and blessed in the eyes of the world. He chooses Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Rebecca, Isaac’s wife; Samuel’s mother, Hannah; and John’s mother, Elizabeth. God always works through the men or the boys nobody wanted, through the women or girls nobody wanted.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? 2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.[b] 3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises.[c] 4 In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. 8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.” 9 Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. 10 From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. 12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. 13 Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. 15 My mouth[d] is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce[e] my hands and my feet. 17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. 19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22 I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. 23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. 25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you[f] I will fulfill my vows. 26 The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the Lord will praise him— may your hearts live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, 28 for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. 29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive. 30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. 31 They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!

She could almost feel each woman's intention through the paper. Ellie Penhaligan, who was so in tune with the earth and the elements that she could disappear into them. Stella Darling, whose suitability was a real no-brainer, especially now that she had opened her own natural healing practice. Stella was the only other person in Avening with formal magic training, and once time had mellowed her, she would be a true mistress of the elements. Nina Bruno, one of the most powerful candidates on her list, a real Charm Sister whose hypnotic personal energy would turn anyone her way. Eve Pruitt, who had no particular powers to speak of, but whose loving and giving energy radiated from her, putting everyone at ease- people magic. Maggie Moreau, who passed so effortlessly between worlds, and she hadn't even hit puberty yet. Her mother Mave- who would have thought Mave would have been interested? But she'd applied all on her own, and sure enough, Autumn had been forced to recognize her great untapped potential. Ana Beckwith, whom Autumn loved like a daughter born of her own womb, and who, whether she realized it or not, had already begun to tap into her ability to move through time. Ginny Emmerling, the lonely warrior who wanted to fight for a new piece of herself. Dottie Davis, the only applicant to understand the Book as a vehicle of spirituality. Charlie Solomon, that budding psychic reporter whom Autumn had all but coerced into settling down in Avening. Sylvie Shigeru, who was only just eighteen and had already made peace with her magic, and done so much to harness it. And last, her sister, Siobhan, who would be a prophet the likes of whom Autumn hadn't seen in many generations. Age wasn't a concern; Maggie and Siobhan wouldn't initiate for another ten years at least, and as for the older women, Dottie and Eve, initiation would change them the way it had changed Autumn so many centuries ago.

A brief survey of Mere Christianity supplies the following list: becoming a Christian (passing over from life to death) is like joining a campaign of sabotage, like falling at someone’s feet or putting yourself in someone’s hands, like taking on board fuel or food, like laying down your rebel arms and surrendering, saying sorry, laying yourself open, turning full speed astern; it is like killing part of yourself, like learning to walk or to write, like buying God a present with his own money; it is like a drowning man clutching at a rescuer’s hand, like a tin soldier or a statue coming alive, like waking after a long sleep, like getting close to someone or becoming infected, like dressing up or pretending or playing; it is like emerging from the womb or hatching from an egg; it is like a compass needle swinging to north, or a cottage being made into a palace, or a field being plowed and resown, or a horse turning into a Pegasus, or a greenhouse roof becoming bright in the sunlight; it is like coming around from anesthetic, like coming in out of the wind, like going home.

And then the finale, its four modest notes. Do, re, fa, mi: half a jumbled scale. Too simple to be called invented. But the thing spills out into the world like one of those African antelopes that fall from the womb, still wet with afterbirth but already running. Young Peter props up on his elbows, ambushed by a memory from the future. The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens beneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room. […] All he wants to do forever is to take the magnificent timepiece apart and put its meshed gears back together again. To recover that feeling of being clear, present, here, various and vibrant, as huge and noble as an outer planet.

Recreation And when we had invented death, had severed every soul from life we made of these our bodies sepulchers. And as we wandered dying, dim among the dying multitudes, He acquiesced to be interred in us. So when He had ascended thus into our persons and the grave He broke the limits, opening the grip, He shaped of every sepulcher a womb.

Paul, too, says in like manner, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, that I might declare Him among the nations.” As, therefore, we are by the Word formed in the womb, this very same Word formed the visual power in him who had been blind from his birth; showing openly who it is that fashions us in secret, since the Word Himself had been made manifest to men: and declaring the original formation of Adam, and the manner in which he was created, and by what hand he was fashioned, indicating the whole from a part. For

The smooth undulating movements of Bellydance for birth aid a woman's ability to deal with her labour in an opening rather than restrictive fashion. The soothing rocking motions of the circular, figure 8 and spiral movements set the scene for a birthing woman to flow with the natural rhythms of her labouring body - to become connected not only to nature and the universe but deeply bonded to her baby within.

She breathed in slowly; this was what she had, the beauty of this awful night. She listened for small yips in the distance, something to put in her heart besides the lost phoebes and the dread of another full moon rising with no more small celebrations from her body ever again. She kept herself still and tried to think of coyote children emerging from the forest’s womb with their eyes wide open while the finite possibilities of her own children closed their eyes, finally, on this world.

DECLARATIONS FOR COMMANDING THE MORNING The heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). I too open my mouth and declare God’s glory. I volunteer “in the day of Your power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning” (Ps. 110:3). As I command the morning, You cause the dawn to know its place that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, and the wicked will be shaken out of it (Job 38:12–13). “To You I have cried out, O Lord, and in the morning my prayer comes before You” (Ps. 88:13). Note: Every time we rise, we enter into a day that the Lord has made, and we are commanded to rejoice and be glad in it. “This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24). I am Your child, and I shall spend my days in prosperity and my years in pleasures (Job 36:11). “Let the peoples praise You, O God; let all the peoples praise You. Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us” (Ps. 67:5–6). “The lines (inheritance or lot in life) have fallen to me in pleasant (sweet and agreeable) places; yes, I have a good (legitimate and conforming to the established rules that God has laid out for me in the heavens) inheritance” (Ps. 16:6, AMPC). The Lord has given me the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever I bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever I loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19).

July 20 The Opening Lines Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love. Psalm 107:19–21 NIV Some of you live in such road-weary bodies: knees ache, eyes dim, skin sags. Others exited the womb on an uphill ride. While I have no easy answers for your struggle, I implore you to see your challenge in the scope of God’s story. View these days on earth as but the opening lines of his sweeping saga. Let’s stand with Paul on the promise of eternity. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18 MSG) Your suffering isn’t the end of the story. It’s the opening scene of God’s saga. God’s Story, Your

Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.

So let’s say you’re an AIS baby and your little undescended baby balls start making testosterone, right? A person with AIS would be, like, Nah, I’m good. Their body would not respond to the testosterone. Instead, it would say, Abracadabra, and—poof!—it would convert the testosterone into estrogen. And since an AIS person’s genitalia started in a sex-neutral state, like all embryos, and their body isn’t responding to androgens, instead converting them to estrogens, which it can respond to, an XY AIS infant is often born looking virtually indistinguishable from XX female infants. To make matters a bit more complicated, AIS is an umbrella category for two subdiagnoses: complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS) and partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS). PAIS is just like CAIS, except there is only a partial insensitivity to androgens, and thus, PAIS babies usually come out of the womb with genitalia that has more ambiguity than their CAIS counterparts. The PAIS embryo almost masculinizes but doesn’t quite do so completely, so the infant is often born with genitalia that is visibly neither completely feminine nor completely masculine in appearance. Genital sex traits like swollen labia, partially fused labia, bifurcated scrotums, enlarged clitorises, and/or different degrees of hypospadias—a term that describes when the urethra doesn’t open at the tip of a penis/phallus—can all be apparent in PAIS individuals. Because PAIS traits aren’t hidden from plain view like those of CAIS, which often goes undiagnosed for years, an individual with PAIS is usually diagnosed at birth or very soon after.

Dreams, Intuition and the Inner Life September is a pivotal month during which the outward-directed energy of summer begins to shift inward in preparation for the six months spent in the darkness of the Earth Mother’s womb. This month we will review our lives in the form of spiritual autobiography. We will open our sixth sense by noticing synchronicity, and we will enter the world of dreams.

(Battle with Maleger) As pale and wan as ashes was his looke, His bodie leane and meagre as a rake, And skin all withered like a dryed rooke, Thereto as cold and drery as a Snake, That seem’d to tremble euermore, and quake: All in a canuas thin he was bedight, And girded with a belt of twisted brake, Vpon his head he wore an Helmet light, Made of a dead mans skull, that seem’d a ghastly sight. Maleger was his name, and after him, There follow’d fast at hand two wicked Hags, With hoarie lockes all loose, and visage grim; Their feet vnshod, their bodies wrapt in rags, And both as swift on foot, as chased Stags; And yet the one her other legge had lame, Which with a staffe, all full of litle snags She did support, and Impotence her name: But th’other was Impatience, arm’d with raging flame. So braue returning, with his brandisht blade, He to the Carle himselfe againe addrest, And strooke at him so sternely, that he made An open passage through his riuen brest, That halfe the Steele behind his back did rest; Which drawing backe, he looked euermore When the hart bloud should gush out of his chest, Or his dead corse should fall vpon the flore; But his dead corse vpon the flore fell nathemore. Ne drop of bloud appeared shed to bee, All were the wounde so wide and wonderous, That through his carkasse one might plainely see: Halfe in a maze with horror hideous, And halfe in rage, to be deluded thus, Againe through both the sides he strooke him quight, That made his spright to grone full piteous: Yet nathemore forth fled his groning spright, But freshly as at first, prepard himselfe to fight. His wonder farre exceeded reasons reach, That he began to doubt his dazeled sight, And oft of error did himselfe appeach: Flesh without bloud, a person without spright, Wounds without hurt, a bodie without might, That could doe harme, yet could not harmed bee, That could not die, yet seem’d a mortall wight, That was most strong in most infirmitee; Like did he neuer heare, like did he neuer see. His owne good sword Mordure, that neuer fayld At need, till now, he lightly threw away, And his bright shield, that nought him now auayld, And with his naked hands him forcibly assayld. He then remembred well, that had bene sayd, How th’Earth his mother was, and first him bore; She eke so often, as his life decayd, Did life with vsury to him restore, And raysd him vp much stronger then before, So soone as he vnto her wombe did fall; Therefore to ground he would him cast no more, Ne him commit to graue terrestriall, But beare him farre from hope of succour vsuall. Vpon his shoulders carried him perforse Aboue three furlongs, taking his full course, Vntill he came vnto a standing lake; Him thereinto he threw without remorse, Ne stird, till hope of life did him forsake; So end of that Carles dayes, and his owne paines did make.

Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. Randomly again, I opened the book to this passage, which Majid and I had read the night we learned that our child grew in my womb. Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might that his arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.

Let us be women who Love. Let us be women willing to lay down our sword words, our sharp looks, our ignorant silence and towering stance and fill the earth now with extravagant Love. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who make room. Let us be women who open our arms and invite others into an honest, spacious, glorious embrace. Let us be women who carry each other. Let us be women who give from what we have. Let us be women who leap to do the difficult things, the unexpected things and the necessary things. Let us be women who live for Peace. Let us be women who breathe Hope. Let us be women who create beauty. Let us be women who Love. Let us be a sanctuary where God may dwell. Let us be a garden for tender souls. Let us be a table where others may feast on the goodness of God. Let us be a womb for Life to grow. Let us be women who Love. Let us rise to the questions of our time. Let us speak to the injustices in our world. Let us move the mountains of fear and intimidation. Let us shout down the walls that separate and divide. Let us fill the earth with the fragrance of Love. Let us be women who Love. Let us listen for those who have been silenced. Let us honour those who have been devalued. Let us say, Enough! with abuse, abandonment, diminishing and hiding. Let us not rest until every person is free and equal. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who are savvy, smart, and wise. Let us be women who shine with the light of God in us. Let us be women who take courage and sing the song in our hearts. Let us be women who say, Yes to the beautiful, unique purpose seeded in our souls. Let us be women who call out the song in another’s heart. Let us be women who teach our children to do the same. Let us be women who Love. Let us be women who Love, in spite of fear. Let us be women who Love, in spite of our stories. Let us be women who Love loudly, beautifully, Divinely. Let us be women who Love.

Instead he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there . . . Blessed be the Name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). That says it all. At birth we all arrived naked. At death we will all leave naked, as we’re prepared for burial. We have nothing as we are birthed; we have nothing as we depart. So everything we have in between is provided for us by the Giver of Life. Get that clearly in your mind. Get it, affluent Americans as we are. Get it when you stroll through your house and see all those wonderful belongings. Get it when you open the door and slip behind the steering wheel of your car. It’s all on loan, every bit of it. Get it when the business falls and fails. It, too, was on loan. When the stocks rise, all that profit is on loan. Face it squarely. You and I arrived in a tiny, naked body (and a not a great-looking one at that!). And what will we have when we depart? A naked body plus a lot of wrinkles. You take nothing because you brought nothing! You own nothing. What a grand revelation. Are you ready to accept it? You don’t even own your children. They’re God’s children, on loan for you to take care of, rear, nurture, love, discipline, encourage, affirm, and then release.

I rolled around and hit my face to wake myself up, but the pain proved that everything was real - because pain is another word for reality. The surfaces were hard, indeed. My eyes were wide open and lucid, but fear had deformed everything, it had driven me into the hallucination and delirium. I stood up, shook the industrial refuse from my clothes, and went back, my heart beating more strongly than it should have, to the door gaping open in the great building's wall. I knew full well that on the outside, the building was perfectly rectangular, that there was no way for the door to open into a room, and yet it led into a virtual depth, as inexplicable as the depth of a photograph, or the depths of perspective that create a third, and false, dimension in paintings on a wall. If you could go inside a trompe l'oeil mural, you wouldn't descend into its fraudulent depths, you would only get smaller as you moved along unseen lines of perspective. You wouldn't move through constantly changing spaces, with porphyry arches and columns and unintelligible Biblical images opening and closing behind you; rather, they would change their shapes constantly, rectangles would become parallelograms and trapezoids, the arcs of circles would change into hyperbolas, and circle into ellipses, becoming thinner and thinner as they tried to look deeper and farther away. I often thought that the world, along its three dimensions, is an equally deceiving trompe l'oeil for the infinitely more complex eye of our mind, with its two cerebral hemispheres taking in the world at slightly different angles, such that, by combining rational analysis and mystical sensibility, speech and song, happiness and depression, the abject and the sublime, it will make the amazing rosebud of the fourth dimension open before us, with its pearly petals, with its full depth, with its cubic surface, with its hypercubic volume. As though an embryo didn't grow in its mother's womb but arrived, from far away, and only the illusion of perspective made it seem to grow, like a wayfarer approaching along an empty road. A wayfarer who, after he passes through the iliac portal, continues his illusory rise, first an infant, then a child, then an adolescent, and in the end, when he is face-to-face with you and looks you in the eyes, he smiles at you like a friend from the other side of the mirror, having found you again, at last.

There is a history to art, I've learned. Religion. Philosophy. Myth. Photography. I am reading about them. But there are chapters, whole books, missing. I see the stories of women, but they are always stuck inside the stories of men. Why is that?... I pull down from the shelves a book of world mythology and my sadness grows. Artemis, why the paler sister of Apollo, whom she brought through blood into the world from her mother's womb with her own hands? I turn to the section about my part of the world, and in the mythology of my so-called people--the goddesses--what use are they? Why did I ever like these stories? What is Gabija, goddess of fire, who protects against unclean people? I do not need this protection. It is a trick to place fear there. What use is Laima, goddess of fate, luck, childbirth, marriage, and death, if she keeps women inside the house, away from the open space of the world? Saule--saint of orphans, symbol of the sun...who cannot teach me what the fire inside me is. Who would have me put it out, or give it to a man? Still, I have torn pictures of them all from books and pasted them next to my own paintings in the barn, hoping for company. Though I find it hard to trust them. I wonder about what they want.