Once there was a woman who traveled to the sacred land of
Tuscania.
Along the highway from the bus she watched the hills roll
golden against pewter clouds and sky, then the Pouring of Rain down on the
windshield. She was sheltered and safe but newly landed, having hardly slept.
She was alone but had been greeted, met and taken under the wing, so to speak
of the small group of 3 women waiting at the meeting point, as instructed. One
British, one American and one with tattoos on her arm.
The pilgrimage was on, although she hadn’t called it such,
as yet. Every morning she walked down the road lined with small dark paving
stones on her way to the Tower where the SoulCollage(R) journeyers were, and every
evening she walked up the hill back into the town. In between, although she didn’t know it yet,
her pilgrim soul was waiting for her in-between the lines and the cover of her
golden notebook. Golden because she chose the yellow covered book over the red
or blue.
The first days were a flurry of collage, art making and meeting new
companions on the road and in the Tower, over tea or cafe latte and breakfast,
meals together, twilight suppers, fellow pilgrims and travelers who came to
dance, take photographs or write their way home with SoulCollage(R) facilitators.
She knew, one day near the end of the week that something
Big was calling her to Home. Homing in, and honing in, on the true nature of
her calling – she needed a new relationship with the Self – she had been held
hostage, too long, by the critic, naysayer and doubter. She had called on her
angels and guides for protection, but in a very ancient church she heard the
words (La Grande Madre) and it sat right
with her to pray in the middle of the night for a dream for a signal or a sign.
We are here in the sacred land of Tuscania, she thought, as she held her hand
to the ancient porous rocks of an Etruscan villa. We are here to hear the
memories of the ancestors, but she didn’t feel it yet.
She asked for a sign and received a dream, a solid bull, larger than life, standing in front of the gates of an ancient city; a white horse
harnessed, a line of men harnessed to it, pushing the mare into the bull, ramming it again and again and
raining sweat blood and tears as she cried. Why can’t you stop? The men were
also ramming their bodies and heads into the old walls.
So she sat with the question, in front of the old stone wall
the next day, sitting with her back to the verdant landscape. What does the
wall say? What does the horse say, what does the bull say, as Mariabruna
suggested she ask the dream.
Her pilgrim self had wandered into the waking dream, in
between ancient and new, in between past and present, in between her old self
who rammed right on through things and people and got things done, to the new,
softer around the edges intuitive person waking up, peeling off layers of Strong, Bold,
Leader, and Commander to strip away a certain layer of Ego protection and
rediscover underneath, the “authentica” or
ancient feminine mythical layer, deep in her bones, in her heart and
soul, the untethered, unharnessed, fluid, green as the grass bloodline that she
felt when she looked out over the valley to the cows grazing below – Oh how
soft the trees, Cypress, pine and oak, fig and corn, and vines, such fertile
fields and harvests.
This land, sacred land, somehow hers, though not through
any heritage or inherited lineage. Is it true to say, mythically connected to
the land of the goddesses who came Mare ad Mare – Holy Mary as the guide said,
before the Romans, before the Bull, before the conquering tribes and nomads who
built the Wall, Under the wall, always down, down in the earth, the voices of
the women singing, in long cool tunnels, in warehouses and storage rooms, where
oil, wine and grain and sacred objects for ceremony, the baths, clean water,
the Flow, in the midst of Stone Walls, a hollow space for the pilgrim to
wander, to hear the melody of stillness, embrace the sacred in the sanctuary.
Oh my Soul, pilgrim that thou art, I hear your voice, more clearly here than
anywhere. It is not the landscape, that holds it, but the sacred stone walls
have echoed my Name, announcing my place in the scheme of things, (as Mary
Oliver says), the animal body of my soul, speaks again and again.
So I am happy to be writing (again) and listening for the
Voice that speaks. I may forego the old story for a new one, as has been
suggested to me by teachers wiser and older than I. I have been very stubborn,
the Catholic child in me confesses, not a mea
culpa, but an Ave Maria.
Help me Sweet Feminine face of god. Help me listen
to my real Voice, my intuitive layer, the strata underneath the wall I have
built. Help me even tear down the wall (if this is recommended and necessary).
May I allow “not knowing”, and learn to lead by surrender. May I allow allowing and
receiving – it is my greatest wish that you write through me. And I will dance
to the strings, I will chant and dance and swirl to your musica - in the sacred
land of Tuscania, I heard this.
SoulCollage(R) card: Persephone in Tuscania, view from Tower
