This poem was just published in qarrtsiluni,on online literary journal. It is an experiment in online literary and artistic collaboration. The title comes from an Iñupiaq word that means "sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst."
Yes, that would be my experience of most all of the last 54 years. Getting it on down to the marrow.
Sojourn
3 06 2009
Saint Alphonsus instructed his followers:
“Take only what you need.” Retreating into
the desert, he lived for three weeks eating
volcanic ash, waiting on Uriel’s command.
After twenty days he was flame, his mind,
the arc of sky. He no longer felt his toes
scraping hot sands. He walked unharmed
past rattlesnakes, blended into copper hillsides,
drank from arid sage plants. The ascetic turned
into wind, moving effortlessly over mountains,
branches of tall cypress. Years later, clerics
found his rotted sandals, placed them as a relic
amid hair and purported bones of local saints.
Believers still come to place their hands
on the worn insteps where Alphonsus stood
looking into the archangel’s eyes. Supplicants
touch desert dust to tongues, reverently bow,
attempt to cast off everything but their marrow.
by Gerard Wozek
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About Beth Patterson
The Virtual Tea House website became 'word-ripe' when, over a cup of jasmine green, I realized that the web has an expanding part to play in the communal aspects of spiritual growth.
With a master's degree in religion, my career spans 30 years in end of life care and child abuse intervention and advocacy.
Here in beautiful Central Oregon, my spiritual homes of the high desert and the mountains are both in proximity. And for good measure, four hours away is Grandmother Ocean and the stunning Oregon Coast.
I'm making decent progress on the goal set by my mother early on: she taught us that the goal of humanity should be to become ever-more eccentric, i.e. more fully human.
Entering the 'forest-dweller' phase of life, I am honored to host the Virtual Tea House for all who wish to explore how our lives are enriched and made new a thousand times each day by the spirituality we embody. Exploring this engagement together is the purpose of the Virtual Tea House.
Welcome! Let's have a cup of virtual tea together and share what brings us joy, what we are being taught by life, how we are leaning into the Big Questions posed to us each day in sometimes 'distressing disguises'.
Follow me on Twitter, if you must
http://twitter.com/MyraB