Litchfield Integrative Healing Arts Lisa Avnet LMT

For the Artist at the Start of the Day

Looking ahead to the New Year and bringing more creative expression into your life,  this is a lovely blessing from Celtic philosopher, poet, and writer John O'Donoghue's book  "To Bless the Space Between Us".     Thanks to Christine  Valters Paintner from her blog at www.abbeyofthearts.com.

For the Artist at the Start of the Day

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurt and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners,

A Morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to a different shape.

May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.

-John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

This morning, take some time to sit with the lines from this blessing and see what stirs in your thoughts:

"May morning be astir with the harvest of night" , and his ringing line: 

"a morning when you become a pure vessel of all that wants to ascend from silence".  

Lisa

Joyous Body Series # 7

For Christmas Dreaming!

Last Night As I Was Sleeping -------------------Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I said: Along which secret aqueduct, Oh water, are you coming to me, water of a new life that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that it was God I had here inside my heart.
AND HERE IS THE SPANISH ORIGINAL:
Anoche cuando dormía soñé ¡bendita ilusión! que una fontana fluía dentro de mi corazón. Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida, agua, vienes hasta mí, manantial de nueva vida en donde nunca bebí?
Anoche cuando dormía soñé ¡bendita ilusión! que una colmena tenía dentro de mi corazón; y las doradas abejas iban fabricando en él, con las amarguras viejas, blanca cera y dulce miel.
Anoche cuando dormía soñé ¡bendita ilusión! que un ardiente sol lucía dentro de mi corazón. Era ardiente porque daba calores de rojo hogar, y era sol porque alumbraba y porque hacía llorar.
Anoche cuando dormía soñé ¡bendita ilusión! que era Dios lo que tenía dentro de mi corazón

Joyous Body Series Poem #6 "The Fountain"

It's still the darkest time of the year, and so easy to get discouraged or to become distanced from ourselves in the holiday rush which is so counter to the rhythm of the land.     This poem came to me at a conference I attended some years ago, the National Association of Poetry Therapy's annual event.  Silvine Farrell was leading a breakout session called "Embodying Poetry" and this was one of the poems she chose for us.  Imagine 10 lovely women bringing this poem to life! 

                   The Fountain

Don't say, don't say there is no water
   to solace the dryness at our hearts.
                       I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
    and you drinking there.  And I too 
                       before your eyes

               found footholds and climbed
                    to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
    frowned as she watched-but not because
                     she grudged the water, 

     only because she was waiting
   to see we drank our fill and were
                      refreshed.

 Don't say, don't say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
                green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
                to spring in us,

      up and out through the rock. 

~ Denise Levertov ~

Joyous Body Series #5 - Prayer for a Ten Speed Heart

Happy Solstice!     This poem is another favorite...I have so many!

Prayer for a Tenspeed Heart by Barbara Hendykson

Let the fire of my body
propel and warm me
and let each darkness
reveal its plenitude.

Let the hills
flatten under my wheels
and let the eloquent curves
yield up their good surprise.

 Let my heart be obstinate
when I need to climb
and let my lowliest gears
restrain my spinning down.

Let there be flatland, to,
and into that glittering place
let me stretch with the heart of a lover,
at full speed, blind and intent.

Joyous Body Series #4 - Stephen Spender's "The Express"

Today is the Winter Solstice, when the Sun first stands still, and then days begin to grow longer.   We're headed into the darkest, coldest time of year here in the Northeast.  I first ran across this poem in college and just loved the rhythm and the momentum of it.  It's a fittingly bold poem for this longest night.  Enjoy!

THE EXPRESS

After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.
Without bowing and with restrained unconcern
She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gasworks and at last the heavy page
Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery.
Beyond the town there lies the open country
Where, gathering speed, she acquires mystery,
The luminous self-possession of ships on ocean.
It is now she begins to sing-at first quite low
Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness-
The song of her whistle screaming at curves,
Of deafening tunnels, brakes, innumerable bolts.
And always light, aerial, underneath,
Goes the elate metre of her wheels.
Steaming through metal landscape on her lines
She plunges new eras of wild happiness
Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves
And parallels clean like the steel of guns.
At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,
Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night
Where only a low streamline brightness
Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is white.
Ah, like a comet through flame, she moves entranced
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds. shall ever equal.

Stephen Spender.

The Joyous Body Series # 3 - Mary Oliver's The House

THE HOUSE 

It grows larger,
wall after wall
sliding
on some miraculous arrangement
of panels,
blond and weightless
as balsa, making space
for windows, alcoves,
more rooms, stairways
and passages, all
bathed
in light, with here
and there the green
flower of a tree,
vines, streams,
casually
breaking though-
what a change
from the cramped
room at the center
where I began, where I crouched
and was safe, but could hardly
breathe! Day after day
I labor at it;
night after night
I keep going
I'm clearing new ground,
I'm lugging boards,
I'm measuring
I'm hanging sheets of glass,
I'm nailing down the hardwoods, the thresholds -
I'm hinging the doors -
once they are up they will lift
their easy latches, they will open
like wings.

                                              from Dream Work by Mary Oliver

The Joyous Body Series #2

One of my perennial favorite poems - I have it memorized!  Harp people image a reproduction of a sculpture by Augusta Savage made for the 1939 New York World's Fair.

I LIVE IN MUSIC  - NTOZAKE SHANGE

 i live in music
is this where you live?
i live on B Flat Street
you live on C #  Avenue
Do you live here in music?

 Saxophones wet my face,
cold as winter in St. Louis
Hot like peppers i rub on my lips,
thinking they was lilies

 i got fifteen trumpets where other women got hips
And a upright bass for both sides of my heart
i walk round in a piano
like somebody else be walkin on the earth

 i live in music.
Live in it,
Wash in it.
i cd even smell it
Hold a river where my arm is
and hold myself, hold myself
in a music.