A Voice Worth Following
"Divine Authority" + the longing to be
We’re walking through June with ‘The Journey’ by Mary Oliver.
I’ve met this poem before. In fact, it was one of my very first encounters with poetry. This was long after my underwhelming introduction to it in school.
And though I knew I ‘liked’ poetry, it would be another couple of decades at least until I would learn to recognise the divine assistance that poetry had to offer me.
Revisiting this month’s poem for me is like revisiting an old therapist. One who knew me as my most wounded, most terrified, most defiant self and who accompanied me through some of the gnarliest dark nights of my young soul.
I only decided on this poem literally as I clicked ‘start’ on the zoom dashboard.
She had been calling at me all day - “pick me! Let me do June” but I kept resisting; apparently the culture snob in me thinks she [and by ‘she’, I mean this particular poem] is ‘too basic. too common. too obvious.’
As if she - as in, this particular poem - didn’t literally shine a god damn torch with one hand & steady me with the other, as I clumsily did the very thing she had prescribed…
I. BEGAN.
As if I don’t still need her to remind me to KEEP GOING. TO LET THE CLOUDS BURN. TO WALK DEEPER AND DEEPER INTO THE WORLD WITH THIS ‘NEW’ VOICE AT THE HELM.
A Voice That Guides
I’ve been thinking about the voices that guide us. Not any one voice in particular, but the voice; something I’ve learned to call ‘Divine Authority’.
I’ve been musing on its genius for speaking through whatever host it needs to, in any given moment; just so we may hear it.
When I was a teenager, my Divine Authority [whom I will refer to as ‘Dorothy’ from now on] came through the beautiful watercolour hallmark cards written by an entity daring to call themselves ‘Oriah Mountain Dreamer’.
In my early twenties, Dorothy reached me through the distorted frequencies of grunge music & a few odd encounters with random elders who each offered a kindness to me.
Once, Dorothy spoke to me through an angel named Cherie, a black female airport police officer who whispered ‘stay calm & you’ll be ok’ into my ear just as I was about to be dragged quite violently through Virginia airport by two meathead state troopers for being drunk on a plane.
Later, my guiding voice began speaking through artists, philosophers, nature and poets.
My own artist self, who has never NOT existed by the way, was only truly liberated after an encounter with Dorothy in the form of a ceramic angel-like figure that insisted on coming home with me.
This led me to discover a mixed media artist I’d never heard of before. Entering her world was like discovering NARIA was real and it broke my heart into a million pieces that I wasn’t living there too; that I felt so locked out of the creative, joyful existence of my dreams.
It was then that I became simply unwilling to live my life knowing that that was possible and not at least give it my best shot.
When I tell you, it hasn’t been easy, I’m not lying. And when I tell you it hasn’t always proved wise either, well.. the jury is still out on that.
It would seem that sometimes the voice simply must guide us through the kind of scrub that will strip the metaphorical skin off your bones. And that this particular form of brutality appears to be in service of growing our capacity for infinite joy, love, wonder & awe.
I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to live for? Or is that just what makes life - let’s face it - bearable?
There’s A Pattern To It
These voices, they know where to find us. They know how to beckon. And if you’re anyway curious, they become irresistible.
You can’t really help but follow where they lead.
Our two most recent poet laureates - Mary Oliver & Andrea Gibson - they each had to break something in themselves to get to the places from where they packaged their discoveries & offered them as poems to those of us who were bound to be following on behind.
Because how could we not?
Hope is this: just as the patriarchal, capitalist bullshit is never silenced, either is the voice of Divine Authority.
She knows what it means to survive the call to assimilate. To comply. To become small, skinny, beautiful, or whatever market trends demands of us, enough to fit.
But. But. But.
We were never made to fit.
We were made to belong.
Your Divine Authority is the voice that wants you to choose your soul over the life you are “supposed to” live.
She is the voice of liberation and will always find a way.
This month, as I revisit a poem Dorothy once laid at my feet, I do so in awe, because in some ways “I’ve made it”. The journey, that is.
Yay - I am so happy for me!
And yet, I must not linger too long in celebration at the cost of completion.
There are things still left to do and a life still yet to be saved, after all.
How would I even know this, if it weren’t for poetry?
This Months Invitation
Is not only to contemplate The Journey as a poem, but to also locate yourself within it, as a process.
Where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you faltering? What feels complete? What’s ahead?
That’s what our weekly journaling calls are for; to walk with the kinds of questions that help us build the capacity to hear & act upon our divine knowing.
June Journaling Sessions
We’re gonna try for twice a week this month - Wednesdays & Sundays (there’s a Thursday in there too). These calls will be for paying subscribers.
If that’s you, simply scroll down to see the details and last night’s replay.
Thanks for being here. See you soon!
Amanda xx
p.s… Here’a a better photo of my hair because wtf was I thinking with that last one?
