(Poem 1) Creation Story by Dr. Mary Ann Ghaffurian

PART I

In the very beginning was the Serpent

She wept

For where were Her children?

The sky was bare and starless

And nothing else was there except
the Breathing

The serpent was fully awake.

She called upon her husband

‘Where are you?’ she called.

‘I am here’, he replied

And she knew she was not alone.

Her aloneness was the first illusion.

They begat many children.

And the skies were filled with stars.

‘Husband’, she said, ‘from the womb of my heart

We must beget children alike to ourselves.

For though the stars sing

It still isn’t sufficient for the Heart.

He looked into her eyes and was consumed with desire.

‘Mother’, he said to her.

‘Let us begin’.

And they covered heaven

With their bliss.

A giant fountain

Arose in the mountains, cascading to heaven,

Covering the sky.

‘Aha’, said the two, ‘It begins’.

(Art) Yeowa by Lydia Ruyle

Yeowa is a Goguryeo tomb painting of a winged celestial spirit holding the moon with a frog in it for rebirth. Her serpent dragon body with claws and feet connects Yeowa to the neolithic bird goddesses of old Europe. The three legged crow in the sun below her is Samjoko, a symbol of power and the Goguryeo Dynasty. In East Asian mythologies, the three-legged crow is a symbol of the sun and is said to live there.
Source: Wall painting. c. 1st BCE-7th century CE.
Complex of Goguryeo Tombs. North Korea

(Essay 1) The Body – Essential or Not? by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an evolved version of an excerpt from Chapter 2 of her book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. 

All knowledge is an experience of body – what else can it be? Mind is body, body is mind. Humans know enough these days – including empirically – to end the dualistic notions of bodymind, to enter or perhaps re-enter in a new way, an integral comprehension of the bodymind we each are. In his book The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram affirms that

Without this body … [could there be] … anything to speak about, or even to reflect on, or to think, since without any contact, any encounter, without any glimmer of sensory experience, there could be nothing to question or to know.[1]

I ask then: what difference if this body menstruates, lactates, births – if these body processes were/are considered and sensed as the norm, that is, not as “different/other” as they so often have been in recent times of the human story? The “modern” woman – she of recent centuries – was held down by this difference, by the fact of her organic processes. The postmodern woman, convinced that the body can be “erased”, that its substantive presence can be dismissed,[2] may be expected to deny that it matters, that it affects her experience in any way.

The organic processes of the female body, her “elemental capabilities”,[3] are not cultural inventions, though much cultural invention about woman’s physicality has occurred (for example, the cultural idea that she was unsuited for education). And cultural invention continues to occur – across the full spectrum of thinking (for example, the persistent cultural notion that menstruation is a disability, or that physically strong women are “masculine”). And whilst it is true “that everything in human experience, including nature and human physicality, … [is already an] …  entity shaped into cultural perceptions”,[4] it is an error to deny any foundational experience. We are in deep relationship with our environment before we enter it – we are already shaped by environment as we form in the womb: “to be is to be related”.[5] We, like our primal forebears, breathe, drink water, excrete, feel. We do have a genetic code within each cell, that is a physical memory of origins … we are seeded with memory. This is especially true of the female body, whose ovum transmits the cytoplasm from one generation to the next.[6] The inability or unwillingness of a philosophical position to deal with a reciprocity between the being and environment – that the being itself has some innate foundational integrity, is a trait of the patriarchal mind in that it does not allow the materia any agency, sentience or autopoiesis. Scientific research is rampant with such minds. An example and typical of such a mind is that of Nobel award winning scientist Francis Crick,[7] who claimed that human joys and sorrows, memories and ambitions, sense of personality and free will “are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”,[8] as if to assert that this “vast assembly of nerve cells and associated molecules” has no sentience.

I am suspicious of texts that would “erase” the body, including “new age” spiritualities, as well as academia, and popular culture – texts that would deny physical sentience or difference, since in patriarchal cultures it is the female particularly that is associated with physical reality. Whose body is it then that is primarily being erased, that has been erased since the emergence of the patriarchal mind? (Yet artists have been obsessed with her body – as if trying to paint her back into the picture perhaps or at times to frame her there as object.) The early Greeks denied her inclusion in the “kosmos” because of her messy body.[9]  In other cultures where her body had been the lap upon which rulers sat and thus gained their right to rule,[10] her body was gradually stylised into furniture – a throne, and then forgotten: her body became “part of the furniture”, utilitarian. And so, it still often is … as is the Mother Earth Herself. Female sacrality – the sacrality of the female body – has been “unnamed non-data in secular culture; peripheral sub-data in the phenomenology of religions”, and considered essentially “pagan” or unclean in Western religious culture.[11]  All bodies exchange substances with the environment – the land – whether or not it is obvious to an etherealised and sanitised culture. Aboriginal cosmologies have never forgotten this exchange; as Heather McDonald describes in her book Blood, Bones and Spirit – a work on Aboriginal Christianity. The body of these cosmologies is

an organic body which is consubstantial with, and permeable to, the living environment. It is composed of flesh and blood, bones and spirit, and is subject to the organic processes of fecundity, growth and decay.[12]

And the exchange of bodily fluids with land is valued and significant – a participation in the very flow of life, and relationship with “the ancestors”.[13]  Australian writer David Tacey points out that the spirituality that arises from the land in Australia, carried in the themes of its poets, and known by its indigenous inhabitants, is one that is profoundly continuous with the body.[14]

Milky Way Goddess, Gangavati, India

It is likely that when humans really remember the body, all bodies – this relational dynamic, this materia, in which we are – they will remember the female body, and once again will have to deal with a foundational cyclical experience of life – which includes birth and death.[15] How we story that experience is really very open, but it will be a recognition of the web of life into which we are woven, as well as being weavers.

Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey

Life – birth and death – does not seem like much of a “foundational cyclical experience” to most people. It seems more like a one way trip – linear, birth to death. But that depends on your perspective … if you take it from within our own small life, our own small perspective, then it appears that way. From within the larger perspective of EarthGaia, in which we are, there is no “away” … all things appear to come around in the real world, in which we find ourselves.  An analogy may be drawn to Euclid’s parallel lines.[16] While his postulate that parallel straight lines will never meet, holds true within a limited space (or in a perfectly flat featureless space – limitless and three dimensional), it does not hold true in the actual world that we inhabit – a spherical Earth.[17] Within the context of Earth, the lines will meet. Over time, Euclid has been proved incorrect from within a larger perspective. So with our lifeline, viewed from a larger perspective, from the perspective of Gaia, there is re-emergence, rebirth, though it is not personal – because we participate in a larger picture: we are participants in a Cosmos and Earth wherein every bit of us is constantly in flux, never-endingly renewed. We are a small part of the parallel lines, which actually go around a much larger entity – Earthbody/Gaia. In that context it is good to remember the exquisite prose of Susan Griffin in her book Woman and Nature – an integral crafting of words with our sensorial reality of being:

… I know I am made from this earth, as my mother’s hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth[18] …

And some indigenous languages have never forgotten this intimacy of all flesh with earth and cosmos; and then there is no need to capitalise to indicate a sacred entity when all speech expresses this relatedness, and all bodies are integral to the web.

REFERENCES:

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. NY: Vintage Books,

Coates, Irene. The Seed Bearers – the Role of the Female in Biology  and Genetics.  Durham: Pentland Press, 1993.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. NY: Harper Colophon, 1980.

Guthrie, W. K. C. The Greek Philosophers. NY: Harper Torch Books, 1960.

Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2005.

McDonald, Heather. Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press,

Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Raphael, Melissa. Thealogy and Embodiment: the Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sexuality. Sheffield: Sheffield Press, 1996.

Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. SF: HarperCollins, 1993.

Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.

Tacey, David. “Spirit and Place”, EarthSong journal, issue 1, Spring 2004, pp.7-10 and pp.32-35.

Vare, Ethlie Ann, and Ptacek, Greg. Mothers of Invention. NY: Quill, 1987.

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[1] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p.45.

[2] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: the Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, p.122.

[3] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: the Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, p.122.

[4] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: the Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age, p.122 referring to Derrida.

[5] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story , p.77, where they are describing  the Cosmogenetic dynamic of communion.

[6] See Irene Coates, The Seed Bearers, p.10.

[7] Francis Crick was credited with the co-discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA along with James Watson. Rosalind Franklin, whose work appears to have been crucial to the discovery, remained uncredited for decades and even discredited until recently – see Ethlie Anne Vare & Greg Ptacek, Mothers of Invention, p.214.

[8] Referred to by Cameron Forbes in an article “Thirst for Thought”, page 4 in The Weekend Australian February 3-4 2001.

[9] See W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosphers, pp.34-40.

[10] See Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, pp.98-100.

[11] Melissa Raphael, Thealogy and Embodiment, p.21.

[12] Heather McDonald, Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, p. 20.

[13] Heather McDonald, Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, p. 21.

[14] David Tacey, “Spirit and Place”, EarthSong journal, issue 1, pp.9-10.

[15] “Life” is not the opposite of “death” – “Life” contains both “birth” and “death”. I feel it is important to correct this in our language.

[16] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p.198, refers to Euclid’s postulate in a slightly different context.

[17] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p.198.

[18] Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature, p.227.

(Mago Essay 2) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

Part II Gynocentric Study of Mago’s Visual Representations

[The following sequels including this one are a modified version of my paper presented to Daoist Studies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2010.]

Mago [麻姑, also known as Magu or Mako] remains underrepresented if treated in modern scholarship. Little attention has been given to the topic of Magu in its own right. In the West a handful of scholars have mentioned Mago within the context of Daoism. Her transnational and trans-temporal manifestations in Korea, China, and Japan are largely unrecognized. That Magu is known as multiple identities throughout history in East Asia has gone unnoticed. In my study of Mago, that Mago’s supreme divinity as the Great Goddess has been rendered unintelligible over time under the rule of patriarchy offers a crucial insight leading to a befitting method.

First of all, the perception of Her as the Great Goddess enables one to recognize a large volume of primary sources, otherwise left unattended, from across national, regional, temporal, and typological boundaries. Secondly, the primary materials in turn allow one to assess the supreme nature of the Great Goddess, Mago, apart from the theological framework of the monotheistic male god. By being a non-Western and non-patriarchal tradition, Magoism warrants a distinctive thealogy characterized by self-equilibrium and interdependence of components, part of which was discussed in Part I. Thirdly, a trans-disciplinary method is corollary in processing a variety of multi-genre materials that would not be neatly categorized in a mono-disciplinary data-pool. To say the least, it liberates itself from the tyranny of monolithic methodology, which dissects to take only a portion of data from the whole and treat it as if it is a single independent entity. In short, methodology and thealogy, being mutually supportive, lead the researcher to a rather unexplored conceptual territory, which I call gynocentrism.

Gynocentrism takes the female principle as an operating system. Its system has been thwarted within the discourse of androcentric perspectives. Gynocentrism is a submerged mode of thinking in the patriarchically indoctrinated psyche. Made to be subliminal, the gynocentric mode of thinking elicits the Mago (Great Goddess) consciousness. Consequently, Mago consciousness upholds the infrastructures of gynocentric thinking. What distinguishes gynocentrism from feminism is that it redefines the male as a derivative of the Female. Gynocentrism reflects the principle of all mothers of living beings.

In that sense, my study of Mago is a gynocentric endeavor to chart an alternative paradigm of doing thealogy within the context of East Asian history, mythology, and culture. It is a misunderstanding that Magoist thealogy or Magology (the study of the Great Goddess) concerns the divine only. Gynocentric thealogy is not locked into a separate domain apart from humanity, nature, and the universe. Put differently, Magology is not a mere conceptual tool that explains the divine. It summons gynocentric histories, myths, and cultures that are to be restored and rewritten. It calls for rethinking everything in a fresh light.

In the sequels to follow, I bring to light a series of Mago’s visual representations expressed in paintings, ceramics, embroideries, woodprints, sculptures, and topographies, and examine Her multivalent identities in light of the large corpus of Magoist written and oral texts. Mago’s visual icons are beyond one’s documentation. They, especially those from China, are still a favored item in modern day’s auction markets. Several hundred images that I have documented are simply incomplete. Some sample images are chosen to show an array of historical/cultural/social productions, once honored and valued highly by many. Through the economy of commodification, these images have carried the cultural memory of the Great Goddess.

While a number of her visual icons are undated, many are from the Yuan (1271 to 1368), Ming (1368 to 1644), and Qing (1644 to 1912) dynasties of China, the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) of Korea, and certain historical periods of Japan. Also, many are from modern times. In them, Mago/Magu/Mako is depicted as:

(1) An immortal/transcendant (仙 xian or seon, immortal or transcendant).

Magu seated on a deer, 18th C, Qing dynasty, China, Oriental Museum, Durham University, UK

(2) A mendicant.

Magu with two female companions, fan painting, Ming dynasty, China, Philadelphia Museum, USA

(3) A sea goddess.

Magu, Hsiang Kun, British Museum

(4) A mountain goddess.

Mago Halmi in Mt. Jiri, Korea

(5) A crone.

Mago Halmi, cover image in the Sukhyang-jeon (Story of Sukhyang), late Joseon dynasty, Korea

(6) The ancestor of shamans.

Gurang (Nine Maidens) also known as Gyeyang Halmi representing Mago and eight daughters

And (7) A non-anthropomorphic identity or giantess as the nature-shaper or cosmogonist of local topographies such as mountains, rocks, caves, and seas. The notion of a giantess is employed to describe Her transcendental nature. In this case, Mago-named topographies alongside folk stories describe Her feature/identity of immeasurability.

Rock of Mago, Donghae, Korea

Needless to say, these identities overlap and merge, making up an overall picture of Mago as the Great Goddess. That is, She is each and all. These visual icons, stylized with symbolic objects, respectively demonstrate specific Magoist cultural memes once prevailing and favored among East Asians. A throng of objects such as medicinal herbs, especially lingzhi mushrooms, flowers, hoes, baskets, vessels, and animals, forms the coded syntaxes of the arcane language. In particular, a troupe of animals including deer, crane, dog, and monkey highlights the drama. Also, colophons carry not only the cultural meme but also prestige and authority for its producers and possessors.

(To be continued in Part III. Read Part I here.)

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[i] I have discussed this in detail in Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess: A Mytho-Historic-Thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, an Archaically Originated Gynocentric Tradition of East Asia, Ph.D. dissertation (Claremont: Claremont Graduate University, 2005), 335-342; 353-361.

(Essay) Women, Power, and Religion in Ancient Athens by Harita Meenee

If there ever was an intimate connection between state and religion, we can see it quite clearly in ancient Athens. The very name of the city is attributed to a goddess—Athena, its protectress and guardian. There are different versions of how this came to be as she competed against Poseidon, the angry god of the sea and earthquakes. A fascinating story about this fight comes surprisingly from a Christian writer, St. Augustine:

At the time of Kekrops [legendary king of Athens] an olive tree suddenly sprung up on the hill of the Akropolis and a spring gushed out near that spot. Kekrops asked the oracle for advice and received the response that the spring suggested Poseidon, while the olive tree pointed to Athena. Kekrops called an assembly of all the citizens, male and female, to vote on the question; for at that time and in that place the custom was that women as well as men should take part in discussions about the affairs of state. When the matter was put before the people, the men voted for Neptune [Poseidon], the women for Minerva [Athena]; as it happened, the women outnumbered the men by one; thus, the victory was given to Minerva.

Then Neptune was outraged and devastated the territory of Athens flooding it with sea-water (…). To appease his anger (…) the women suffered a threefold punishment: they were never to have the vote again; their children were never to take their mother’s name; and no one was ever to call them “Athenian women.”[1]

This amazing myth reveals a telling connection between religion and politics. Also, it states quite bluntly that there was a time when women had significant rights: they participated in the decision-making in a democratic way, they had the legal status of Athenian citizens, while the naming of children was likely to be matrilineal. The essential truth of this legend is confirmed by archeological and anthropological evidence, showing that egalitarian societies did exist in prehistoric times, while in some parts of the world they survived even until recent years.[2]

Furthermore, the matrilineal naming of children is attested among several ancient peoples, such as the Lykians of southwestern Anatolia, the Egyptians and the Etruscans. It is also evident in the Hellenic colony Lokri Epizephyrii in Southern Italy, as well as in the area of Western Lokris in Greece.[3] Even in modern Greece, where, as a rule, children take their fathers’ surnames, a number of surnames clearly originate in female names.

The tale preserved by St. Augustine also demonstrates that Athena was worshipped mainly by women—it was their vote who made her patron (or rather matron!) of the city. Yet at the same time this story shows how religion was used to justify women’s oppression: their subordination was presented as a kind of punishment inflicted through the wrath of a male deity, as plainly stated by St. Augustine. Far-fetched as this may sound, it is also reminiscent of another story used to marginalize the female sex in more recent times: the punishment of Eve, who is portrayed as angering God within both Judaism and Christianity…

Women were indeed deprived of many rights in class-divided, patriarchal Athens; yet the power of the goddess never failed. Athena remained strong and independent—unlike other goddesses, she was never defeated, raped or forced into marriage. The best-known monument of ancient Greece, a testimony to the glamour and wealth of classical Athens, is none other than her temple, the Parthenon. The word derives from Athena’s title Parthenos, “Virgin,” a term originally denoting a woman’s unmarried status rather than her physical virginity.[4] The goddess’s huge statue, made of gold and ivory, was the work of Pheidias, one of the most famous sculptors of antiquity.[5]

Many were her titles and attributes in ancient Athens: Polias, “Goddess of the City,” Promakhos, “Defender,” Boulaia, “Of the City Council,” Ergane, “Industrious” etc.[6] Splendid festivals, like the Panathenaia, were organized by the state in her honor. Women always retained a special place in her rituals, as her priestesses and worshippers. They took part in formal processions, wove herpeplos (mantle), carried her sacred objects and ceremonially washed her wooden statue. They also tended the fertility of the earth in festivals like the Skira and the Arrephoria, since women always maintained a mystical connection to the land and the magical energy of the goddess.[7]

Although, according to myth, they suffered the loss of many rights because of their devotion to her, they knew better than to hold that against her. Besides, oppression is usually rooted in political, social and economic conditions rather than in religious beliefs used to justify it. The wealth and power of ancient Athens was largely based on the exploitation of women and slaves—female as well as male ones.[8] Aristophanes, the greatest comedy writer of antiquity, pointed in his own way at women as the possible solution to the problems of social injustice and war.[9] It seems that memories of a more egalitarian and peaceful world, in which the female gender played a major role, were still alive in his time. Intertwined with these memories was old, wise Athena.[10] For the women of the city she was a mighty goddess of peace and freedom, dear to their hearts, rejoicing in their celebrations, or so grandpa Aristophanes tells us. Thus, the female chorus in hisThesmophoriazousai makes a touching invocation to her:

Athena Pallas, the dance-loving goddess,
it is custom to call to our dance,
the virgin, unmarried maiden,
holding our city,
she alone having evident power,
she, the keeper of its keys.
Appear, you who properly despises tyrants.

The womenfolk are calling you;
come to us bringing Peace,
who loves festivities.[11]

Copyright by Harita Meenee

(This was originally published here: http://hmeenee.com/1794/8501.html)

(Poem) A Mother’s Day Proclamation by Mary Saracino

"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who 
have heart, whether our baptism be that of water or 
tears!”

--Mother's Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

She couldn’t anticipate that we’d sip champagne at fancy brunches,

turn her fervor into a hallmark holiday

In the name of womanhood and of humanity

Julia Ward Howe set her soul upon a nobler task

We will not have our great questions decided by irrelevant agencies

Set her courage upon loftier aims

Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause

She spoke of blood and bone

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience

She invoked the language of the womb

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs

She sounded a clarion call for unity

I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limits of nationality may be appointed

Against all adversity, she audaciously sought to abolish war

to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international question,

She meant for all of us to mother the world

the great and general interests of peace.

She meant for us to mend our rivalries,

go to our rooms until we cooled off,

kiss and make up, the way she knew we could

if we’d just listen to our mothers

“A Mother’s Day Proclamation” was originally published at www.newsversenews.com on May 11, 2008.

 

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir-writer who lives in Denver, CO. Her newest novel, Heretics, is forthcoming from Pearlsong Press in 2014. The anthology she co-edited, She Is Everywhere! Volume 3 (iUniverse 2012) earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature. Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. Her short story, “Vicky’s Secret” earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize.

(Poem) Creation Myths by Donna Snyder

I.  Woman smiles

Woman smiles,
her face starred, exotic birds tattooed around her mouth,
beneath her eyes, around her nose.
Delicate teeth exposed to heaven, confident that no one scorns.

Woman smiles at Okie brothers, Indian lovers.
Grandmas squatting over iron pots of lard & lye.
Good black river bottom, green with growth--
the kind that feeds, the kind that chokes,
the kind that covers graves.

Candles flicker.  Drums beyond the walls.
Fiddles call the jumping boys who chant & dance
& scare away the spirits.   Rain on a tin roof.
Honeysuckle raising Cain on the side porch.
Dogs under the floor boards, warm and waiting.

Woman smiles.
Calls, “China! Africa!”  Sings, “India, America!”
And the sweet dogs crowd around her knees
and make her dance.

Woman smiles--
a wedding vase, a water bird, a box of roots.
A rocking horse.  A basket facing east.
Out of the earth a mist floats
and fondles the turtle and the deer.

Stars on her face--Woman smiles.
Beads on her head--Woman smiles.
Bird at her chin--Woman smiles.
Stone in her pocket--Woman smiles.
Rainbows behind her--Woman smiles.

Behind the mask, we find Woman.
And once truly found, Woman smiles.

God giving birth by Monica Sjoo, 1965

II.  Creation

A fairy handed me beads and a string of tiny bells,
fairy bells, he called them, and wound them across my shoulders.
The beads hang down my chest, promise cool breezes,
grey clouds hiding the new blue sky.

I sleep late.
Bells tinkle and tell me a tale about a place where God smiles
and pulls the world from between her legs.

In my dream, a turtle escapes
a thoughtless lunch of wilted lettuce and white bread.
His home painted on his back, his jaws break twigs.
His scaly feet carry him over the roots of elms and sumac.
He traces his bottom and tail across rich, black earth.

God smiles,
her vast bottom turned up to the sky.
She bends to stroke the back of turtle.
Her vast bottom extends to infinity--quite a spread!
God smiles, and pulls the world from between her legs.

God smiles at the world--its blue oceans, persimmon clouds,
continents green & black.

God has dogs named China, India, Africa, America.
“China!” she calls, “India!”
And the sweet dogs crowd around her knees
and make her dance.

Gaia the great mother takes the body grass sculpture

by Lena Lervik, Lund Sweden, 1998

III.  Dream

I dream of God lying on the earth,
beneath a warm sun, beneath a cool breath of wind
that strokes the soft skin of her necks & thighs.

A fairy whispers in my ear that God is a woman
who is at all times being pleasured.
Out of that dream of pleasure
unfolds the world.