One of my all time favourite women C P Estes,  who seems to write from a place that touches my soul, posted  this poem on facebook this morning,  it sure resonates with me.  It is a  poem about choosing a new life, letting the wild wolf lead you on a new journey…………..

So many of us get stuck with the demons, as we get older we allow the demons to keep us small, never straying from the known.  But there is a time in our lives when the wolves and the demons can beckon us, let the wolves win, let them steel you away, take you to that place of wildness where life looms large, where uncertainty makes us grow and rise to any challenges that comes our way.  We may get tipped off the path, fall now and again, but our wildness and the keen senses of the wolf will keep us alert, alive and full of passion.

The call came to me in my 40′s, thankfully for me I chose the wolf, life turned on its head, I grew beyond measure.  It take scourage to run with the wolves, try it, you will never look back.

STOLEN BY WOLVES

My children grown, the old folks safe in the TV room.

I climb onto the sled made of my chest bones, sinew from my guts,

bundles of food and water wrapped in my own scarred belly skin.

All is fastened down with rope made from years

of my long hair taken from my brush.

My wolves bite the air. It is snowing like a dunja slashed.

My wolves nudge, nudge; they know we are going at last.

O my children, look out the window and see

your mother riding over the edge of the world.

O my Mother, O my Father, raise up out of your bandages

and bottles. See me vanish straight into the stinging sun.

But no, my parents rattle and creak in their sleep;

my offspring are busy with where to place noses while kissing. . .

My family so sleeping, they do not hear the traces as they pull

from out the frost, snapping taut, flipping snow shatters.

My lead males rise in their shaggy frocks;

their paws make mice sounds in the snow.

and we are off in a silver spray,

over the edge of the globe,

my mighty ocean of fur and steam,

stealing me for a future time and place.

The plumes of my wolves tails fly us forward

and we ride, we ride, through ponds of stars

that sashay back and forth on their sky ribbons

as my sledge runners divide them.

Now begins a storm of paper sheet—

barrels and barrels of scrip,

reams and reams of white page,

brown bag, envelopes, all these

dropped by mill hands with muscled arms

and rolled-up sleeves

who smile down on us and cry,

“Go on! Go on!”

All the paper I never had.

All the time I never had.

All the flesh and guts of my life

stored here on this sled,

and I have been lucky enough

to be stolen by wolves

for a future time and place.

As one gathers more years, the mind

can be carried off by demons

or stolen by wolves…

and both will inevitably show up.

Choose the wolves.

—————

and, I would say to you too dear souls:

Leaping wolves will ever make life bigger

even though the sledge might veer and tremble as it flies…

whereas squatting demons will ever keep life small…

otherwise they wouldn’t be called demons,

for they do not rise in harness for your ends, but instead

want to force you into harness for their ends.

I know you know the difference.

The way to maintain one’s connection
to the wild
is to ask yourself
what is it that you want.

One of the most important discriminations
we can make in this matter
is the difference between things that beckon to us
and things that call from our souls.

We choose a thing because
it just happened to be beneath
our noses at that moment in time.
It is not necessarily what we want,
but it is interesting,
and the longer we gaze at it,
the more compelling it becomes.

When we are connected
to the instinctual self,
to the soul of the feminine
which is natural and wild,
then instead of looking over
whatever happens to be on display,
we say to ourselves,

“What am I hungry for?”
Without looking at anything outwardly,
we venture inward and ask,
“What do I long for?
What do I wish for now?
What do I crave?
What do I desire?
For what do I yearn?”

It takes spirit,
will,
and soulfulness
and it often means……….
holding out for what one wants.– Dr. Estes

Written by Judith Duerk

Woman, seeking sense of who she is, of how she wishes to live her daily life, letting its patterns and rhythms express her deepest values.  Woman, today under pressure, faced with the temptation today to live out her life in the realm of the masculine, denying her own needs, mistrusting her fatigue, ignoring the anguish of her own struggle

Her task will be to gain the help and support of her inner masculine side, and to return to the values of the Archetypal feminine as she ground her life in and order and clarity that nurture her.

A woman in this book, gifted with abundant creativity, never certain whether she possesses it, or it possesses her, wrote the following, this just leapt of the page to  me………

“For me the balance between doing and just being is the most important and dangerous question.  IF I am guilted or lured into achieving too much and lose the stillness in my centre, then it takes me a long time to regain it and I do violence to myself or those I love because of fatigue and pressure.

I have had to give up “winning big” because I love my life when I am connected to it.  I hate it when it and I get caught up in competition and deadlines. Then I have an overriding sense of impatience, my foot taps…….. I gulp down my food whole……… I spill coffee when I am pouring and burn myself on the stove…… I rip, and wrench and tear.  There is a violence that takes over every act and shrieks orders at me.

I am finding it takes a lot of time to be a woman, to have an inner feeling of space and breath, a chance to sink into myself……  as long as I take time to light a candle to my life, it remains my life.  But if I hurry into work without that small moment of quiet then I have already lost myself for the rest of the day.  The task for me is to care, daily, for myself and  my life….. to love and to nurture, within myself, moment by moment, the quality of quiet presence, quietly being present in my life, which sanctifies it,  to live as if the candle is alight

The Joyous Body: Part Three of “The Dangerous Old Woman”

live broadcasts by CPE on Sounds True

“It is the nature of the saplings to quake in the winds; hesitant, learning to hold their own places. But, the older trees, with their years of testing and being tested, they are the ones who, whether in the long stern winds or misty gales, sway the most. Less a bouquet of tentative trembling first-time buds, now much more the leaf-perfumed hips of a hundred wide women dancing—these old ones, regardless of form, sway, by heart, to the music that thunders through them.”
—Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD

The Joyous Body – Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

Who is the protector of this Precious Being who is my body?

Who is the one charged with guarding and protecting the Life Spark in this Radiant Being’s eyes?

Who promised to watch over to the best of her ability?

Who promised to overcome the inertia taught by a large part of the over-culture…

that once you are struggling, you must remain so, and only so.

Who is the heroine of this mysterious, often perilous and sometimes triumphant mythical life of mine?

It is me…

and Creator,

and …any stalwart soul

who joins me in love,

who blesses down hard

for the strength and longevity

the very prosperity

of my body, of our bodies….

whomsoever and in whatever shape

or condition, those dear ‘blessing people’

–or I– may be.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I recited this very powerful poem, its roots are in Sappho, a small shard of a manucsript that remains, inspired Dr Clarissa Pinkole Estes to write the rest, it so powerful and oh so beautiful.

133

ALL THAT IS BURNING FOR LOVE IS HOLY

[The stars are little beauty] fires;

they [glow, but they are just tiny] babies

[next to the splendor of the moon.]

Anyone who is a lover

can see how the moon

in her long gown

shakes a [silver] powder

all around her body,

then sets it afire,

and then how then she [burns]

for her lover

with such a [silver] fire,

all night long,

all night long,

turning first this way

and that in the sky,

spinning ever so slowly

before the eyes that watch her,

loving the eyes that watch her,

turning slowly,

taking all night long

in order to show

– and slowly –

her every treasure.

Today annihilates yesterday.  The person who went to sleep last night no longer exists.  But we to cling to the idea that we have a personal history, a past, and this is our identity.  We can only ever be what we are in the moment.  When we cross a stream the water rushes past underneath us, when we cross that stream again, it’s not the same stream, it’s not the same water, that has long gone down stream on its journey to the sea.

Don Antonio

Whatever life brings up for us, know that its arisen because we have something to learn from it, learn to see the gifts in all and every situation.

The poem is by RUMI, the famous Sufi poet who died in 1273; he states very clearly just what I am trying to say, he says it far more eloquently than I ever could,

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

“The original abandonment, the original abuse, the original horror has some reason and meaning in it. It is not senseless. It is not like being run down like a dog on the highway. Its meaning most often is the development of tremendous strength, tremendous power, tremendous intuition. And I will tell you frankly that most of the people who are the greatest healers living on the face of this earth are unmothered children. One of the great gifts of the unmothered child – and also the healer, and the writer and the musician and all those in the arts who live so close with their ear against the heartbeat of the archetypal unconscious – one of their strongest aspects is intuition.”

“Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you’ve endured. They’re a treasure map to the deep self.”

Quotes and story from WARMING THE STONE CHILD by CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS AN OLD INUIT TALE – Told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes on Audio CD  Warming the Stone child.  I recommend this , you can find it here

There was an orphan that was so lonely and so hungry that no one wanted to be near him.  His mouth was open all the time and his teeth were always showing and tears were always running down from his eyes, and he was so wild with hunger that they had to tie him in the entrance to one of the skin houses so he’d not try to eat the hunters on their way to the seal hunt; that’s how hungry he was.

They would, on occasion, leave him some rancid reindeer meat or maybe some spoiled intestines to eat, but, as we know, it was more than hunger that was gnawing at him.  Those deep needs that not even the person themselves understands.  So everyday he stretched his chain a little bit and a little bit more, until he could get near a stone that was more or less the same size as himself.  You see, his mother and father had died one night, and their bodies had been dragged off by bears, and all that had been left behind by them was this one particular stone.  So he wrapped both his arms and his legs around that rock and he wouldn’t let go of it.  And, of course, his people thought he was crazier than ever, and on their way home from the hunt, with animal carcasses slung over their shoulders, they would jeer at him, and they would say, “Analuk has taken a stone for a wife, ha ha.  It’s good for you to have a wife who is a stone, for then you cannot use your hunger and eat her.”  And they went on their way.

But the boy was so lonely and so hungry that he really had reached the end of his feeling for life.  And even though he had that terrible loneliness and that gnawing hunger, he kept his body wrapped around that stone, and because the stone began to take the heat from his flesh, the boy began to die.  The stone took the heat from his hands, and then it took the heat from his thighs, and it even took the heat from his chin where he rested it on top of the stone.

And just as the boy was living his last breath, the hunters of his village came by again on their way home from the hunt, and again they called him down, and they said, “You crazy boy!  You are nesting with that stone like it is an egg.  We should call you Bird Boy, you good-for-nothing creature.”  And because the boy was near death, his feelings were hurt more than he could ever say, and great icy tears began to roll down his face and across his parka, and his cold, cold tears hit the hot, hot stone with a sizzle and a hiss and a crack, and it broke the stone right in two.

And inside was the most perfect little female the boy could ever want.  “Come,” she said, “I am here now, and you are an orphan no more.”  And she gave him a bow and arrows and a harpoon she had brought with her, and the boy and the girl made their house and had babies.  And, if they are not yet dead, they are in that land where the snow is violet and the night sky is black.  They are there, living still.