Savitri L. Bess

Spirittapestries.com has come to a close. I've transferred everything that was important on that site over to pathofthemother.com.

One thing dies and another is reborn.

Life is constantly changing.

Summer has finally arrived in Maine after a troubled start. Dense, cold fog yesterday. Today, warm. That means the veggie garden will be very happy.

A mother duck led her 7 or 8 ducklings into Norwood Cover waters. They all sort of spilled into the water, a bundle of downy feathers. The osprey was no longer cheeping and soaring overhead. Those brave ducklings followed their equally brave mother in one single file, down the center of the cove until they disappeared from sight (too small for my eyes to see).


"All night I could not sleep
because of the moonlight on my bed.
I kept on hearing a voice calling:
Out of Nowhere. Nothing answered 'yes.'"
---Zi Ye (From Jane Hirshfield's Women in Praise of the Sacred
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Riddle:

The beginning of eternity
the end of time and space.
The beginning of every end,
The end of every place.

--Anonymous

This Path of the Mother website experienced a renewal today, with me adding and subtracting many things. And it was a fine way to spend the first day of summer, while the rain was pouring down all day long. A lovely rain.

I imagine that tomorrow when I go downstairs to my raised garden beds (2 of them, 7' x 7' each) I'll find some very happy newly-planted flowers and veggies (some from seed and some from seedlings).

Meanwhile, at the moment, the light of day is fading. Rain has come to a stop. One lone bird sings an evening lullaby.


When the mind is pure and quiet it becomes one with the universal mind. That mind is like a mirror. The secrets of the Universe will be revealed there. --Amma Read More 

Spring Equonox has come and passed. On that day friends balanced eggs on their tips. Day after day, the people of Maine began seeking evidence of the coming of spring. It snowed and snowed some more. The sun came out and the temperatures rose to 50 degrees one day. Then came the rains, followed by snow, followed by hail. Rain. The snow is melting. The sun comes out more often. Birds sing. People are out walking again. Even smiling.

I give you a poem I wrote:


"Only One"


Only one lobster boat on Sunday morning.

Only One.

Only one chair.
Only one ladder.
Only one lobster.
Only one crack in the 78 record.
Only one song.

From the empty church,
with the roof collapsing over the altar,
only one host growing moldy.
Mold growing in his beard,
on his feet,

until the pond arrives
landing on the meadow,
yellow daisies and lavender asters
circling
dancing to the one bag pipe in the center of the pond.

The man stomps his feet to the drum of the jig
as the women arrive in a coracle
on the river flowing in a spiral around him.
He dances in the middle of the line of women
holding hands,
snaking their way in and out,
pulling him along with their song
from the broken record
filled in with silver scales from the fish
that now leap in profusion,
offering themselves on the banks of the river—
a feast of the host.

His feet grow pink in the twilight,
a baby’s feet,
his hair on his beard, the peach fur of a young boy.
The women touch him all over,
finger tips,
a tingling of energy—everything, everyone, every animal and tree,
tingling
with the energy that glows in the dark.  Read More 

It's nearly time to poke your head out of the hibernation cave. A few more snow storms, a little warmer outside. It's time to get into the spirit with another poem, this one by E.E. Cummings:

"i thank You God for most this amazing"

I thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
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During your long winter hibernation, many months you've hidden away, you read to the boy from this poem by William Wordsworth, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey


Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.--Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.


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The boy has returned with the supplies. You tell him about a dream you had last night in which you are riding down a river in a raft. The details of the dream are hazy, but it is apparent that you are to go on a rafting adventure. You have no idea why. You and the boy discuss your options. He will help you put the raft together.

While camping there by the river, on the other side of the hill, with goats grazing nearby, you and the boy construct the raft out of saplings growing in abundance there. You are careful to take down the little trees in a way that it is hardly noticeable, a thinning that is needed, no more. You use river reeds to bind the raft together.

The boy gives you a milking goat to take with you, along with some of the grains he has just brought with him from town. He gives you a couple of clay pots, and you know how to start a fire with flint. You’re not sure about a milking goat on a raft, but one young goat has been following you around everywhere. It’s her first milking season.

The raft is finished. You’ve even designed a little shelter where you can rest or sleep in bad weather. You will use a long pole for guiding the raft. On most nights you plan to go ashore to make campfire, to hobble the goat so she can graze, and then to sleep under the stars. You know how to read them now.

Early one morning the boy pushes your raft off the shore onto the wide, lazy river. As you enter the current and begin to glide downriver, the goat has misgivings and begins to bray. Her friends and family answer back. You have a lump in your throat, as you’ll miss the boy and you aren’t sure how you will get back. But the boy says you will.

With tears in your eyes, you wave until your raft sails around the first bend and you can’t see the boy any more.


“As if dreaming, I return to the place
where the Highest lives,
and hear a voice from the heavens:
where am I going?”
—Li Qingzhao  Read More 

You’ve been taking care of the goats again, since your cave experience. The boy had to go for supplies.

You remember a drawing or painting that looked like a moon on the wall of the cave, but when you had looked again, it had vanished. Then you saw another moon with a fire around it. And another with dancers holding hands around it. Every time you saw these, the images disappeared.

Now while you watch the full Moon rise in the East and gaze at the brilliant sunset in the West, you dream up a Full Moon celebration.

First you light a small fire and you haul logs over, arranging them around the fire in case any guests come. You never know.

You put on the garland you’ve made with wildflowers and grasses, you highlight your eyes with charcoal liner, you hang vines around your ears and your neck. You wrap vines in crisscross patterns up your legs. You twine wildflowers in your hair. You rub your lips with berry juice.

You cook a stew using roots, forest greens, spices you collected, and rice from the dwindling supply. After a while it smells delicious.

The border collie trots over to check out the stew. You give him a few morsels. Then the goats, unable to sleep, meander over one by one, their bells tinkling. They collect near the logs you’d arranged for sitting on and look with cocked heads: “What’s up?”

You pull out the flute the boy had made for you and begin to play it as he showed you how. Even though you’ve not yet learned it perfectly well, it’s well enough to give spirit to a song.

The Moon is high in the sky, its light lending a silver cast and hazy shadows, all over the hills and meadows.

You and your friends dance around the fire, fire flies blinking in and out, sound of flute echoing across the land.


“The song of the flute, O sister, is madness,
I thought that nothing that was not God could hold me,
But hearing that sound, I lose mind and body,
My heart wholly caught in the net,
O flute, what were your vows, what is your practice?
What power sits by your side?”
—Mirabhai
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In the early morning, up on the mountain where you've been contemplating the stars and constellations, learning about the zodiac and how to know fortunes by reading the sky, you discover a cave hidden behind granite boulders.

You enter the cave.

Inside are smells of animal fur and wet earth and rock. You pull your emergency candle out of your day pack, light it, and head towards the sounds of dripping water, echoing in the far distance.

Crawling on your hands and knees, you squeeze yourself through a small tunnel and then, standing up, you wind through a narrow passageway. The dripping sound is getting louder.

Now you must slide on your stomach along the cave floor, pulling yourself along on your elbows, carefully keeping your candle upright. Soon you think you see a glow of light. Your heart begins to beat more quickly.

You reach the end of the narrow opening, and are overcome with awe at the sight of a large pond lit by an unearthly light from below, turquoise and pale blue.

You pinch out your candle and put it into your pack for the return trip.

Dipping your hand in the water, you feel a pleasant energy coursing through your fingertips to all parts of your body. You long to swim. You remove your clothes and slip into the water. Floating on your back, you feel yourself swirling with energy, your skin tingling, your whole being alive with light and color. Orchestral stringed music fills the cave. Sitars join. Then ancient drumming.

This must be the cave of your heart!


"O friend, understand: the body
is like the ocean,
rich with hidden treasures,
Open your inmost chamber and light its lamp."
--Mirabhai

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"The secret of what you are searching for lies hidden in the cave of your heart."

--the Old Woman in The Sophia Secrets