RAVEN & SANDSTONE

“A raven is circling overhead.  I am sitting in the surround of a windblown cypress tree.”  Reading old journal notes reminds me of red desert land.  My mind still chants the spirit of this sacred place. 

            It was a weekday afternoon in April.  We drove all day to see Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in Utah.   As far as we could see and hear, we were alone.

            We followed the call of the land and bumped down a rutted dirt road toward the sinking sun.  A campsite with pine trees and cypress trees for shelter beckoned us.  We set up camp on the bluff with a panoramic view.  Wide, natural steps led down into our own private mini-canyon.

            The first night was disturbing, for the wind was relentless, vicious, all night long. It seemed to want to blow us off the red land.  There was a moment's rest, as if the wind took a deep, deep breath.  I woke abruptly.  It felt like a test, a night for conjuring up my fears.  Windblown night sounds blew spirits of the unknown, and my inner knowing of safety was sorely challenged.  The next days came calm and clear, the nights mild, soft and still. 

            The sculptured rock formations of Arches National Park inspire and move me.  There are majestic human figures and faces and animal spirit forms molded from that incredible soft red sandstone.  Wind and storm and time wear it away daily.

            In ancient times, a sea covered this part of Utah.  It eventually evaporated, leaving a salt bed thousands of feet deep in some places.  Over eons, the salt became a layer beneath a thick covering of residue from floods and winds and oceans.  Unstable under pressure, the salt layer could not support the weight of the debris above, which had compressed into rock.  Resulting subsurfaces shifted.  Further surface erosion of winds and water, freezing, thawing and breaking away, formed the famous arches of the national park.  This is geological deduction from circumstantial evidence.  Yet, to me, spirit artists have long been at work on all this sculpture.

            The land is so fragile, so beautiful.  Plant life is sparse and precious.  We humans are treacherous and brutal to their fragile existence.  There is fungi or algae that grows on the desert soil.  It is soft puffed pillows topped with blankets of fibers, invisible when young, and black when mature.  It was named Cryptobiotic Crust.  This crusty, sugary-like fungi holds the sand together, resisting erosion, absorbing moisture, providing nutrients and plant life to support the animals and insects that still miraculously survive here.  We tourists trample decades of growth so indiscriminately.  How can this land survive us?

            “It is Spring and young plants bravely bloom,” I read from the journal.   “Perennials are almost halfway grown into their last season's skeletons.  Soft green growth swells up into straw-colored, vase-shaped stalks topped with empty flower hulls.

            “The raven circles.  I hear his wings whooshing the air as he passes overhead.

            “I moved to a rock ledge overlooking the small canyon behind our camp.  Again, I have been welcomed into the arms of a cypress tree.  I offer prayerful thanks and tobacco gifts.  The slow cool power of the rock supports, cradles and cools me in the desert sun, sheltered in the shade of this cypress tree.

            “A woodpecker jackhammers a hollow tree that drowned in the draw below.  He munches his insect prey between echoes.   The canyon bottom is still moist from Spring rain.  A large cat's paw prints mark prowling designs in the sand.  The raven’s wing sounds are like taut strings plucked quickly, with resonant sproings between beats.  Ants scurry, patient, industrious.  Flies buzz.  Soft red sandstone crumbles at my touch.  The wind blows it into the canyon.”

JMLZ  © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

 THE UNION IS SACRED

This moment...wind dances through the trees, pushing softer leaves farther.  Pines move more slowly, using more of their limbs in the dance.  The sky is bluing from an earlier gray.  The day sings.  I am lulled, gaining motion from the wind.  Searching skyward, reaching in, looking for the void, the calm eye, I lie listening. 

I wander effortlessly through the corridors.  Water dribbles down dark rock walls.  Breezes push through holes above, cracks of the sky peep through, light trickles in, seeping down wet walls, reflecting in crystal water drops running down the rock.  The wall is reaching for me.  I splay my body against wet rock, streaming with warm drops, soaking through, quenching me, enticing me to melt, meld into the stone.

What say you, Ancient Teacher?  What wisdom will you whisper if I become one with you?

Child of the Earth, hear our prayer.  You are as the sand blown into the canyon.  You are the wind that moves the mountains, that pushes the river, that rides the waves into the sea.  You are me and I am you and we are the wind that speaks these words to your fingers.  Lie quietly in the wind and let us begin a journey to the sea.  Sink below the waves with me.  We will ride warm currents, pressing outward, searching inward, opening wholly to the sound of wind singing in the water.  Deep, a deeper blue calls you; sing deeper.  Sing beyond the outside.  Lose the words.  Become the sound.  Dive.  Call God.  Remember nothing.

The bone ripens.  The hole deepens.  The toe dances.  The heart sings.  These are the things the ear must hear before the sky opens.  Light ripens into dawn.  Birds sing, for movement is their joy.  The sky opens as you look inward and see no walls.  The night dreams the stars and one by one they appear.  The moon illumines crystal star cities.   Clusters shatter as fire strides by, burning torches tossed into dark recesses of deep sky.  Whale song echoes from below.  Deep spaces merge, ocean and sky.  It is the same.  The Earth breathes and smiles.  The union is sacred.

JMLZ 5-18-94   © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

MID-WINTER

Mid-Winter, usually January 31st, February 1st or 2nd in the Northern hemisphere, is the mid-point between the longest night at Winter Solstice and the equal dark night and light days at Spring Equinox or the Full Moon nearest this point.  Mid-Winter has many names for different cultures: Imbolc (Gaelic), Candlemas (Christian), New Year (Tibetan, Chinese, Iroquois), Tu Bi-Shevat (Jewish), and even Groundhog Day (North American).  Goddess Festivals honor Brighid, known for healing, creativity and poetry, as well as fertility, health and increasing light and warmth.  It has been suggested that a pagan festival associated with the goddess Brighid was Christianized as a festival of Saint Brighid, who herself is thought to be a Christianization of the goddess.  In fact, Christian Candelmas is the feast of purification of the Virgin.  by Jewish law, it took forty days after a birth for a woman to be cleansed following the birth of a son.  Forty days after Christmas - the birth of Jesus - is February 2nd. The festival celebrations involve fire and purification, hearth fires, bonfires, or lighting of candles and the fire represents the return of warmth and increasing power of the Sun in the coming months.  Imbolc was also a time of weather divination, a forerunner of our North American Groundhog Day - predicting either that winter is almost over by a day of foul weather - or that winter will last a good while longer if the day dawns bright and sunny.  The legend has it that the divine hag of Gaelic tradition gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter on Imbolc and if the day is sunny, she can gather plenty of firewood for the extended winter coming.  If the hag remains sleeping and the weather is dark and cloudy, she has no need to gather more firewood as spring is near.

MID-WINTER/IMBOLC

UTAH AT IMBOLC 02-02-02  

Round mounds rise up from soft Earth breathing.
Bluffs are rivulet-made
wrinkles on knuckles kneading sand.
Long shadows of burnt sienna hills
smooth the sloping tail of Dragon dreaming,
cradled in ancient sea bed,
rhythm-breathing
with the rise and fall of the Mother. 

Blond grass with rust caps
sweep red floor ‘neath Pinyon & Sage,
night forest green and blurred dusty blue.
Cedar and Snakeweed scent Air’s dry breath.
Snow-dusted mountains welcome
this day mid-way
‘tween Solstice and Equinox
when She becomes Brighid,
Goddess of poets, midwives and healers. 

Mother’s breasts heave to the light.
Dragon’s hackles rise one by one -
to pierce the air, poke blue sky.
Saw-toothed spine ridges rise.
Fire tongues lick Her land to desert thirst.
Red Earth bleeds and feeds Her children.
Feather fingers of clouds fan the breeze.
Whispering dewdrops soothe Mother mounding,
soft Earth breathing, birthing light.

Joan Zinn 02-02-02 © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

Australia Journal Notes October 1999

It is Western Australia’s October Springtime.  We’ve journeyed across leagues of ocean and landmass.  Bill drove south from Perth for three more hours.  We are settled deep in the southwestern countryside of tall ancient grasslands and virgin old growth forest.

Sheets of rain waft through exotic roadside wildflowers.  Kangaroos bound through the backyard of our secluded cottage at dawn and dusk.  Vibrantly colored Parrots and birds of bursting, orchestrated song serenade us. 

Stalking dusk and the Kangaroo’s romptime, I sip regional wine - deep red forest Shiraz.  Birdsong, raucous and melodious, syncopated beats and evening frog-song pulse, echoing a nearby river’s watertones.  Passion Flower vines, laden heavy with blossoms, cover a four foot fence on the driveway.  Wisteria, dripping lavender flowers, hang all along the covered porch.

Red hardwood Jarrah trees, cleared for grapevine orchards, died here.  Smooth-trunked Karri trees, shredded bark fringe sheltering their roots, stood side by side, dying with them, pale straight-backed soldiers.

Immigrant White Man cleared both sides of the main roads.  Tree borders were left, only a few meters wide.  Wildlife that thrived in habitats of hollowed-out hundred-and-fifty-year-old tree homes cry for lost old growth forest …gone now.  Gone to the timber takers, who ship their wood chips, leaving scarred stumps smooth, flat, round, spaced like checkers on a gameboard, rooted there.  No longer able to wave in the wind; no longer protectorates of great forest understory, thrumming life, throbbing birdsong, dense bush impenetrable to some, home to others.  Gone now.

I drove on the left side of the narrow dirt road that threads past our country cottage.  Our property’s keeper told me to visit the Tinderbox, a log cabin herb shop in the tiny town of Balingup.  The crèmes, remedies, teas, and oils are made there by the owner.  Each item had a tester and a description of its uses and ingredients on hand-painted, polished wood plaques.  There were remedies for every ailment, plus love potions, aphrodisiacs, first aid kits, massage oils, sleep potions, antifungal crèmes, powders, teas, and so much more.  I read all of the descriptions and found it comprehensive, professional, fully expressed. 

There was literature soliciting support to save remaining areas of virgin old growth forests in their neighborhood and their country.  I bought a card with a beautiful poem.

JMLZ 10-99   © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

The card’s poem was an unsigned gift:

RAIN DANCE

Noon quiet settles into

an older silence

through percussion of cicadas.

 Among the soughing of trees

a red-tailed black cockatoo

rasps like a branch.

Gathered in groups

even young Jarrahs

hold slow conversations.

Sun textures a softness

of grey and green

in contrasting verticals.

Unlike some forests

Jarrah does not reach for the sky –

would rather ask sky down.

Let these trees be left

to invite rain –

They are creators of cloud.

Dance then, leaves and ferns;

swing fronds and spines in the wind,

call down showers;

Call down pourings;

prevent for a week, or a day,

the men with their saws –

Their scheme to

chop your song,

fall your dance

cut your patient

falling of rain

our salt-free creeks.

DANCE FOR US ALL.

-Author unknown

CHILD WENT THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD

2-26-06

I feel stone beneath my bare feet and I hold the hand of one bigger than me.  I am small, a child perhaps of five.  Trailing my hand along the stone wall, I stop a moment to gaze into an arched opening washed in brilliant light and tug the hand of my old Grandfather to go with me inside.  He does not hesitate and turns almost without missing a beat, as if it was our destination anyway.  I am blinded by the light and look down at my tiny toes that sink into soft dirt and sand which comes slowly into focus as the land takes form and I raise my head to see Grandfather waving to someone ahead of us in the light.  I look out to see a small form in the near distance waving back and hear the gentle, tinkling sound of a flowing creek.  A boy, older than me, runs out of the mist of the light to greet us and Grandfather kneels to give him a hug, and then introduces us.  This is Ramón, Chianaji.  I thought I saw another boy standing off in the mist, but he kept fading in and out of my vision and I squinted, but wasn’t sure.  Ramón was dark skinned and beautiful, I thought.  His eyes were dark and dancing and he seemed full of life and energy and fun.  We walked a ways toward the waving form by the creek and I was delighted to find myself embraced in the warm soft form of Grandmother.

Besotted from the first glimpse

I added to the thought

thinking hence

Blathering, bothering, blustery,

Crying in the next breath of dying

to the old becoming

new, blue, born again

Screaming in pain

Lame in the arms of unknown origin

ripped from the watery womb of

safe secure and sane

This is my life over and over again

to what end?

to endless beginnings

framing indeed the pastoral picture

of perfection in dream, dreamy soft edged

green, buzzing with velvety life, rustling leaves,

sauntering breeze through tall grass

my fingers thread thru blades of green

belly pressed to cool earth, scent full of summer warmth lazy greens

A hand reaches from the sky and rips me through branches to the clouds.

I feel shock, rage, rushing blood to my heart

ready to scream, mouth agape

I come full face to the face of God

pulled up by my shirt, legs dangling in the cloud

the scream sticks in my throat

I feel small light, weightless even

I’m awake, awake, alert, afraid, wide-eyed, panicked,

awaiting word from the billowy mouth of rage

that unceremoniously ripped me from my meadow dreams

What?  I mouth, wide-eyed, choking from the

hand holding me by the collar of my shirt.

What?  I say again, beginning to focus on the face of God, a billowy cloud holding me aloft; a soft cheek.

I raise my hand and touch, moving through it like an apparition of faith of reality of dream of cloud.

Kind eyes behold me.  I am not flailing but hanging limp, loose, my feet are numb.  I gaze into eyes with pupils like tunnels that take me traveling.  My body left hanging like the old shirt on a peg.

The tunnel is the pupil of the right eye and I’m moving gently, floating with purpose to the end where I see light and trees and soft green meadows.  There is a stream, a deer, a chipmunk chattering; birds fly and sing and seem busy with berries ripe in summertime sweetness.

A man dressed in white cotton lounges on a wide flat stone and motions me to him.  I walk now on soft woodsy mulched ground, through clumps of summer grasses and herbs covering ground in patches.  He motions me to a stone nearby and we breathe in the rich loamy smells of earth and oxygen rich cleansing coolness of the stream, flowing rapidly yet without haste, tumbling over large smooth river stones, splashing into pools of deep dark depths with finned ones lazily circling below.

I settled in the new woods environment feeling comfortable with the stranger.  “Hold this ball in your hand,” he said speaking gently, melodiously.  He extended his arm palm up, holding a soft violet colored ball that seemed to have a suede sheen and a bit of a shimmer to it.   It filled his whole palm.

I took the ball in both hands, gazed at its shimmering softness and it began to crack like a large round egg and split open, shocking me.  Afraid to drop it, afraid to continue holding it, I moved as it moved and balanced it as it split apart leaving in each palm a half of the ball.  Two bowls with jagged edges lay cradled in my palms.

I sat very still and stared at one and then the other and pulling my eyes away, glanced up to find the man who’d given me the ball, but he was gone.  I started balancing the precious bowls and looked around, but I was alone by the stream with bowls of infinite curiosity balanced carefully in the palms of my hands.

I breathe a deep, relaxing breath, and studied each one in its turn, resting my forearms on my thighs to support the precious gift. 

The shells of the bowls were soft, velvety and firm.  They felt warm and alive.  Inside each was teeming with life, like a miniature bustling city of light and energy and activity.

“Behold the life in the bowls, Daughter.”  I started again, almost dropping the bowls, balancing them carefully and gently, re-stabilizing my arms before looking for the source of the new voice, deeper this time, more authoritative.  I saw no one.   The nearby Grandfather Pine Tree rustled and I glanced up again, this time only with my eyes and watch it suspiciously.  “The bowls are molten from your daydreams, Child.”

Was it the tree who spoke?

“Your daydreams create the life you lead from words you form from emotions you create in your being by your thought.  These bowls are the pictures you are holding in your being at this time.  Change the words and thoughts and daydreams and watch the world inside the bowls change.”

I thought of expansive white sand and palm trees and cobalt ocean with lulling waves and one bowl changed to a deserted beach.  The other remained a bustling city.  I thought of a dark, wood paneled room lined with books and musty smells of old scrolls, richly bound hard back volumes, open across a wide oak desk in a semi-circle around me.  I saw myself scratching furiously on a pad.  The beach changed to this room of industrious concentration and learning, filling my heart with longing and a comfortable familiarity.  I briefly questioned my sanity.

The other bowl remained the same bustling city of lights and activity, of rushing and pressing movement barely contained within the bowl.

I gazed up at the gnarled pine tree again and felt its presence peaceful, patient and companionable.

“What…”?  I began, but couldn’t formulate what I wanted to ask.

“Blessings on your search within, my daughter.  Blessings on your path of looking through the eye of God to see that within your own soul.  Keep watching as the bowls change.  Look at what you are creating.  See if you can make them both change at once.  Practice with the eye of looking deep within.  Practice with the eye of God.  Remember, you traveled down the tunnel of the pupil of only one eye.  Travel the other one, too.  Then find the third eye and you will know the way.  You will know the way.”

I started awake and felt as if I’d been suddenly dropped as unceremoniously as I’d been yanked up by my shirt into the sky.  I was lying on my belly on the sun-warmed earth, grass tickled my cheek and a ladybug balanced as it traveled to its tip which bent with its weight, ever so slowly curving down.  The ladybug lifted off in flight and the stalk lazily stood back up, swaying in the breeze.

I heard a faint calling of my name across the breeze from far across the pasture.  I am invisible, I think.  I am invisible and I shrink into the shape of a rock beneath the tree.  The chipmunk scurries across me – stops for a moment’s flick of its tail and rushes on.

“Got cha!”  I squealed with delight at my mother’s touch as she grabbed me from my invisible rock stance, gathered me in her arms and held me close against her belly.  She always finds me, even when I’m invisible.  She has special sight, I’d decided long ago and I love that about her.

PS  The two bowls may be fitted back together to carry as a ball again.  Hold it in your center as you would in the gathering of your chi.  It will draw the dreams of your belly.  Pull up the ball of chi and open it into the bowls when you are ready to review your creations of thoughts of your day.

JMLZ 2-26-06   © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

THE RING KEEPER OF HEAVEN

Recorded in meditation November 23, 2003 4-5 pm MST USA

Chianaji

Master

Greetings

Greetings

Yes, you are Scribe.  Your time will come for the recording of that which will be obvious to you.  Remain quiet, serene, faithful to listening inwardly.  Forsake not the world, nor the inner life.  One becomes the other.  One is the same as the other.  So in your heart, your center, your core, plant the landscape of your outer world as you would have it and hold on to that scene through all that is to come. 

There is a lake or a pond.  It is placid and fresh.  There is lush green and woods beyond, rich and deep and full of life of all kinds – things you know and things you cannot imagine.  There is a small home.  The roof looks almost like grass, long and reed-like.  There is an animal, perhaps a lamb.  White birds emerge from another building, a red barn.  The paint is worn, yet the hinges are tight and the doors are straight and slide freely.  The place is being taken care of. Your heart expands to hold the peace, the serenity, and the goodness of the scene. 

There are people inside the barn in a circle of Light.  More white birds fly up in a sudden gush, like a fountain turned on suddenly.  There is an old man outside the cottage doing the things that keep the cottage secure, sound and well-cared for.  There is a third rushing up of white birds from the upper window of the barn.  The glow of light has grown from a circle on the ground to a ball filling the barn. 

My heart is full, straining the cage of my chest and it is almost painful, the expansion as my body moves, pressurized from my chest to my throat and I release sound from the pond inside of me.  The pressure releases.  Birds fly out from my mouth, moving from the pond inside my heart.  I am a part of the Light.  Individual light cells float about in a collective ball of Light.  I cannot perceive what holds together the individual molecules of light into this ball.  I perceive myself as a collection of these light molecules within the ball where all the myriad of other light molecules appear exactly as my own.   There is no difference, yet I perceive a consciousness that recognizes my certain group of light molecules, organizes it, wills it forth individually from the others or has the capacity to do so.  Others, who at one moment organize their collection of light molecules into their individuality reach up and towards the center of the circle, inside the ball. 

There is a great crystal in the center of the circle on the ground pointing skyward and our hands reach that way, as well.  One is lifted on the Light column – one who carries the star in the center of his energy body.  The circle of people pull back their arms, first bending their elbows, yet their palms continue to point skywards, palms down, stretching fingertips that had sent beams of light to the same point skyward that the crystal points.  The people, elbows retracted and fingers pointing still, sit down in unison, still holding the positions of their arms.  The beams of light that carried the one with the star in his energy body upwards, have gradually, gently, slowly retracted back into the fingertips of those circled. The one carried up on the light slowly descends, his light molecules reform into a golden ring that circles the tall wand crystal.  The people each bring their hands together into a mudra, or prayer-like steepling of the fingers, palm touching palm, touching the third eye and moving in a smooth line down to the heart, sitting cross-legged and holding the pose in the circle.  The light of the ball recedes.  The crystal is glowing.  The golden ring rests upon it like the ring keeper of heaven. 

My heart vibrates with light energy.  The people disperse down a path in a quiet meditative fashion.  They are wearing simple robes of monks.  The grass is very lush and green.  Mountains are shades of blue, purple and gray in the background.  The kitties come to me like children when I emerge from the barn, as I nod my respect and gratitude, holding my mudra to each one who leaves the circle and follows the path down the hill. 

My heart grows lighter as I walk towards the cottage and the kitties follow.  My hair is long and braided and I wear a dress and an apron.  I carry a round crystal ball in my left palm and a writing tool in my right hand.  The old man brings me a rose, placing it tenderly under my nose and I breathe deeply its rich perfume.  He kisses me on the cheek.  We go to make dinner.  There is a fire glowing warmly in my heart.

JMLZ 11-23-03  © 2023 Joan ML Zinn

THE NEW DARKNESS

2-6-98

This can be the new darkness.  The opportunity to look the Void, the dark, square in your vision and mirror it into the depth of your soul.  This is a darkness so squarely in front of your face that only closing yourself to it would shut out its sight to you.  You, of course, have this choice, but you would have to pretend that what you see squarely in front of you is not there.  Of course, it clearly is there, for you see the void opening deeply before you.  You see it in all its blackness, and when you look most shallowly, a blankness.  But, this dark before you is not a blankness.  No.  It is rich with depth and we call you to come forth into the void with your tears, your fears, and your unknowing of all that awaits you here.  We welcome you.  Bring your voice, your unshielded throat channel that holds back the stories, the ceremony, the healings for yourself and others; bring forth the grief you have held so long;  bring forth the rage at the world that so long suppresses the pain so that it manifests only the flowers of unfelt pain; bring forth the dark cloaked spirit of death, of Monkshood, of Digitalis, of Poison Hemlock; bring forth the aborted spirit of death in fetal form so it may grow and ripen with the cycles of rotting life that must die within, that must return to dust, fertilize the seed that calls, and with the Spring burst forth in new life form.  Come now.  You are called.  You stand at the door.  Flow through.  Your own story is locked, blocked within you and to grow now, you must release that story into the world.  You have much work to do here.  You have the healing of yourself and others.  You have the illustrations and the words to come.  You have the learning, the presentations, the waiting, the flowering, nurturing, and the blooming of the flower which will spread its pollen in the wind touching many, ripening to seed that blows in the wind to land somewhere and begin again.  The darkness is only a part of the Light, and in wholeness, you must become all.  You must hold it all.  Be not afraid.  Trust in the support you know carries you in all things now and continue to be grateful for it all, for this announces your trust and trust rules all.

Rest……..You are the seed.  You are the egg.  Begin there in all healing.  Become first the egg and feel the circle breath of energy flow from the center core of you, up and out the pointed top, up in funnel form to reach and include the sacred breath of the heavens, flowing as a fountain out and down around the egg, reaching deep to the center core of Earth’s fiery coals and rich placenta of all organic matter within.  Draw this energy up from the Earth through the broad circle bottom of the egg into your center core and flow it up, out, up to gulp and include the sacred breath, down, back down into Earth’s belly, drawing it up through your center core over and over again.  Flow through the blocks and release obstacles as the energy flows through.  Become the egg, the golden glowing egg.  Be still and rest.  This is the healing.  You must do it every single day for at least one full moon cycle.

There will be herbal support as you heal.  Listen closely within.  When the Aspen begins opening and flowing in you, you will reconnect severed relationship within you.  This will be a healing of the communication channels.  Strengthen these channels with the circle breath.  Every day.  Continue to nurture your time with yourself.  This time is a working time to pull forth and put forth your story.  The illustrations must begin as well.  Unblock, release, come forth into the darkness of the Void.  There, the light will begin to grow, and as you come ‘round to it, your glow will shine into the world.  Begin then.  Begin.

JMLZ 2-6-98  © 2023 Joan ML Zinn