"Love is Day Labor...."

Audrey Streetman is an author, published poet and a "sharer" in the sacred journey. Here are some of her ponderings and a poem. Thank you Audrey.

"How special to be a guest on your blog. I was reflecting on our lunch last week: the energized conversation of two women who connected, not just at the heart, but at the level of the ear. We heard each other!

I came home and immediately pulled from the bookshelf Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter,” a book about one woman’s journey from the Christian tradition to the Sacred Feminine. I re-read the many underlined passages and felt energized all over again.

I asked myself (and not for the first time) the odd question: what does it mean to be spiritual as a woman? It’s an easy cliché to say...it’s the hard labor of giving birth.... but it’s the best metaphor I know.

Rainer Maria Rilke said “love is day labor, day labor” and giving birth to yourself IS an act of Love that comes with hard labor in the dark with only a book for a flashlight. And whatever book you are reading at the time, it’s almost certain it will not be the Bible, but a book written by a woman who is taking the journey. And I use the present tense – is taking – because the journey is never over. In our culture where the feminine is devalued, how easy it is to fall back, to want to “reupholster that old rut.”

So thank you for reminding me that my poetry reflects my journey to the Sacred Feminine, and to incorporate it into my memoir will affirm that I continue to labor with women everywhere as consciousness rises up from the well. "

DIVINE CHILD

In the fullness
of time

words woven
by the wind

caress the mouth
with a hot breath

and at the breast
the baby sleeps

lips slightly apart
wet and sticky

her tiny hand
extended palm up

outward into the world.