Slow and Steady

01/10/2022

How horrifyingly beautiful Rhea!

🌅🔥

When your journey forces you through the fires of hell,
and you,
so impossibly,
and so beautifully
burning your way back to that sacred re-membering,
arriving scorched and scarred,
barren and broken,
there is no other choice,
but to dive on in

there is nothing left to fear,
and nothing left to lose,
and nothing left to do

so you jump,
and you fall,
and you land in a smoldering heap,
stangely so alive in the knowing
that this is the alchemy of
laying claim to your crown.

So
rise Queen,
and rise King,
find your faith in the flames
that were lit for you on purpose.

- musings from a survivor, and a Queen by her own right. She is I. I am She.

01/05/2022

I am so lucky to have a sister like Susan Hammond. A poet herself, she finds the most perfect timing when she unveils a new poem. Enjoy this one.

“The Thing Is"
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
-Ellen Bass-

01/02/2022

Thank you to Kristin Flyntz !!

New Day’s Lyric
by Amanda Gorman

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

01/01/2022

When the World as We Knew It Ended
BY JOY HARJO

We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge
of a trembling nation when it went down.

Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.

It was coming.

We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their
long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.

We saw it
from the kitchen window over the sink
as we made coffee, cooked rice and
potatoes, enough for an army.

We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed
the babies. We saw it,
through the branches
of the knowledgeable tree
through the snags of stars, through
the sun and storms from our knees
as we bathed and washed
the floors.

The conference of the birds warned us, as they flew over
destroyers in the harbor, parked there since the first takeover.
It was by their song and talk we knew when to rise
when to look out the window
to the commotion going on—
the magnetic field thrown off by grief.

We heard it.
The racket in every corner of the world. As
the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president
to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything
else that moved about the earth, inside the earth
and above it.

We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence
from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea
and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe
floating in the skies of infinite
being.

And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.

But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter
the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us

a warm animal
a song being born between the legs of her;
a poem.

12/30/2021

I got this beautiful poem from my sister Susan Rodgers Hammond

A Blessing for 2022

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

by John O’Donohue

12/30/2021

I can’t wait to swim with you guys again!

12/30/2021

10 months out off hell!!! 🐢♥️

Podcast guest 328 is Mary Rodgers. During Mary’s NDE experience she encountered Jesus and he washed and tended to her feet. Mary is a certified and licensed...

10/18/2021

Once again Susan Rodgers Hammond you put the most profound writings. I LOVE!!

"Sometimes the world's sages come from abusive homes, our gurus from poverty, our teachers from AA, our poets from prison, our prophets from the outskirts.

Sometimes our saints don't wake up privileged with the intention of making the future better, but focused on how they're going to get through the day. Because the Universe works in mysterious ways.

Sometimes freedom is going to come from betrayal, courage from regret, hope from loss, love from disbelief, vitality from horror, motivation from rage, nurturing and beauty from suffering, and something right is going to come from all that's wrong. Because the Universe works in mysterious ways." —Tanya Markul

artwork by instagram.com/esquivestudio

10/17/2021

Part 2 of Mary Rodgers Interview reveals the face of Jesus and the gift and miracles after near death experience. Part 1: 👉 https://youtu.be/tw3fQe2uArMPar...

10/15/2021

Things are shifting. 🐢♥️

It was painful emotionally, and physically being cut off from those you are helping. I don't think I have seen the success of my business yet.

10/14/2021

For nothing is fixed,
forever and forever and forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

-from Nothing Personal by James Baldwin

What does it make you feel? Is there anything about this piece that stirs in you?