I Arise Today

     When I went to Burning Man for the first time in 2012, my pappi told me to bring something of my mother's to burn at the temple.  I didn't really know what the temple was or it's significance to Burning Man the only thing I knew about it really was that two of my friends had worked on it the year before.  I decided to go to Burning Man about one and a half hours before my ride came to pick me up.  So as hastily as I packed everything, I also hastily grabbed a couple things that I inherited from my mother.  One of which was a blue glass heart in a heart shaped box and a tiny book (my mom had a tiny book collection) of poetry on nature.  My mother and I got along best when we were in nature whether it be hiking, swimming or beach combing.  It was when in fact we didn't argue and we argued a lot.

     I ended up going to the temple every chance I could get.  It was religious.  If you stand facing the entrance I spent all my time laying on a bench in the far front left corner.  I would take the blue glass heart out and place it in-between my breasts and lay there and meditate.  I thought about a recent art collaborator who had passed away that year, I worked on releasing all the pain I had built up surrounding my mothers death, I wrote a letter to my mother, which I then tucked away in-between the temples wall and the bench before it burned and I read form the tiny book of poetry.  I forgot that I left the book there to burn as well.  Before leaving it behind I ripped out one page.  This one page sits, when facing buddha and myself, in the far left corner of one of my altars.  I thought it would be a nice thing to share today.

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire.
Speed of Lightning,
Switness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of Rock.

-Saint Patrick.

As I embark on a special journey healing a part of my past, I can not help but think of the phoenix that my lovely cousin gave me in one of here recent little mailed gifts to me.  She stuck a pink post-it note on the phoenix "bookmark?" "A phoenix for you as you rise out of the ashes".  As I write this now I think of the synchronicity of my journey to Burning Man in 2012, the poem that I keep on one altar and the phoenix that I keep on the other altar.

Today! I rise Again!