Samhain
Day of the Dead
All Soul’s Day
Our prayer:
Bring us to the edge of the known
Allow us access to what we swim in
but don’t usually breathe.
These thin days shift us
like turned pages
like the enter key
like sleep.
We enter the darkness of the year
with more friends than we can shake a stick at.
Ancestors abound in our dreams
And guide our hands and hearts in so-called
waking life.
As we become the ancestors we dream of
these days bring us to awareness
healing moves backwards and forward along the time continuum:
we heal as we are healed.
These ancestors of ours need us as much as we need them.
Freedom lies here.
Waking to a shift in time can save us
years of searching and suffering
for the ties that bind.
This post is for One Single Impression’s prompt for the week: shift in time. Thanks to Nathalie of Spaced Law for this week's prompt! Please visit for an always-astounding smorgasbord of offerings on the week’s topic!
This poem was also submitted to Abbey of the Arts Invitation to poetry: Honoring the Ancestors.
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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 20 years in end of life care and I currently work in the field of 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