Upcoming Events with MUSEA Curator, Shiloh Sophia
Painting: I Have Always Been With You, 2014
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A Student of Suffering, A Lover of Joy
I arise from an ancient battle
Carried forward since the day
I catapulted headlong into the womb
I have known of it with every part
of my cellular enclosure
My stardust is stretched across
a frame of hope my mothers set before me
and an awareness of imminent threat
In my hands
weapons of war become tools of peace
I am fighting not just for my own life,
also yours, ours, theirs, earth, all
I know many stand beside me
eyes open to what needs healing
The war broke out
while I gestated in the
dark red of the scarlet womb
I heard it all, and saw it too
from within the red veil
I beheld the goings ons
the safety fear safety fear paradox
every mother and
child learn together
Mothers do not think
your babies do not hear
of the battles that you speak aloud
My mothers identified
what wasn’t working
about the world about love
about life about family
The cave wall of illusion
of patriarchy gone so wrong
for so long
crumbled before their eyes
I saw it too
Though they did not know
I could hear them
though they did not know
I could see
how this ancient battle
Had made me fit for war
Enforced scarcity, false frameworks
myths of superiority, the toxic root
of misogyny springing up
all over the world
I see it as clearly
as my soul will allow
As my mother knitted over her belly
she made a weave over me, a matrix
this awareness was knit into me
and I was born on a full moon in June
knowing something, something important
they wanted me to know
something I would spend my life revealing
My presence in the womb
was the catalyst for their discovery
A girl child gave them something
worth learning for
I was bathing and growing
in the origins of quickening
I became a student of suffering then
and a lover of joy
For my two mothers did not speak
of just power-over systems,
they also spoke of power-within
making art, singing songs, seeing beauty,
gathering food from the far edge of the sea
they made altars of feather, bone and stone
and told stories by firelight
under quilts stitched by my grandmothers
making new images and
new languages safe enough
for girl children
You could say it was too much too soon
Yet my bones were honed in the knowing
I know too much to sleep now
Becoming a student of suffering
does not mean I spend all my days
in terror or grief or anger
Yet do not try to take my anger from me
by painting a picture of a world
we have not yet lived
I see it, yet work from where I am
My fierceness does not undermine
my passion for peace
The quantum intelligence
recognizes intention over all energies
Becoming a student of suffering means
I carry the potency of unstoppable hope
and impossible happiness
There should be no reason
to be so happy
even amidst so much pain,
but I choose again
through art, through love,
through circling with women
the way my mothers did
There is a joy in my soul
running so deep
a dark mother river of resilience
This infinite river that bubbles up
brings fierce wisdom
The energy of fight has been translated
through me into creation,
potent intentional creation in form
I share these forms with you
Artifacts of potential
Yet there is this urgency
that courses through the coldest
parts of the river stones
it wakes me, shakes me,
writes me down, calls me up
and moves through my creations
“Find your mother tongue child!”
A voice calls to me
“Tell the children the truth”
The voice yells across the canyon
Speaking to an urgency
of how to tell the people
“We must return to ourselves
in order not to harm ourselves
To do the work at hand,
we must work with our hands”
Wholeness is a return to ourselves first
and then a sharing of the whole
with those in our circles
speaking of suffering and joy
as sisters holding hands
We are remembering this slowly
as if waking from a great sleep
Remembering is happening
With this remembering
there is also
a futuring of consciousness
advancing in the direction
of what we know is possible.
The opposite of fire is not water,
it is respect
The opposite of war is not peace
it is respect
The opposite of evil is not good,
it is honoring the sacred in all life
all people, all clan, all kin
I am a student of suffering
because I know joy
I wish this joy for all beings
I am a student of suffering
because I know truth from lies
I know that how we are living now
is an invention,
an old story in a death shudder
While we shake off this old skin,
we dance, we pray, we create
we celebrate every victory
we pause for tea with the Muse
we speak with angels
we make altars for ancestors
cast circles for the possible
and move
at the speed of light
crossing the equal sign
to become human
The price of the ancient battle has been paid
The price has been intimacy with the universe
intimacy with ourselves
intimacy with our lovers
and earth
I will be separate from you no more
We will have to learn new ways of being
Are we up for the journey?
I don’t know, let’s try,
I am afraid, let’s try
Soul and body coming together
Land and tribe coming together
Divine and human coming together
We are this happening,
happening now
I am a student of suffering
and a lover of joy
I am the one who comes to you
bringing colors and light
I am the one who comes to you
bringing depth and shadows
I am the one who comes to you
from an ancient battle
bringing news of joy
I am the one who gathers the women
wrapping them in red thread,
the way my mother wove me
I shall weave with love,
with the awareness of what is broken
and a desire for mending
all that can be mended
~ Shiloh Sophia
As Joan of Arc said in the 1400’s
‘I am not afraid I was born for this’
Red Thread Letter #818
You Matter. Take Up Your Space.
Dear Ones,
Blessings upon your day. This writing is a work in progress for Artifact, where I am inviting women to consider and write about their stories, and begin treating themselves and their stories as absolutely relevant.
I started it in November, and it just keeps going. Women often don’t treat themselves as absolutely relevant, and so we don’t take up our space, which means we don’t inhabit our fullness. If you treated yourself as essential, literally NEEDED for earth and her people, what would be different about how you approach your life? How would your choices reflect an awareness of your greatness instead of your woundedness?
I rarely meet women who are filled with ego and self inflated. A lot of my work has been to lift women up – inviting us to take up more space, not less. I encourage women painting and writing from the fullest cup of themselves they can find. As they fill up and heal, compassion is a natural response to that healing.
When women are awake, we begin to care. We cannot be awake and keep treating ourselves as if we don’t matter. You matter. You are matter. The root of Matter is Mater, Mother. You matter.
Will you take up space today by sharing something that matters to you in the Red Thread Cafe? We love seeing your creative projects which can be anything from making art, to dancing, to creating a beautiful meal. Whatever you create from your unique life force and self-expression is welcome in our community to be witnessed and celebrated.
I’m send prayers for all impacted by the fires, the pandemic and all forms of suffering…
Bless you, each of you,.
Because you just gotta keep dancing. Alice Walker says – Hard times require furious dancing – and so let us dance!
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