My first Love has a thousand and one faces and shows me all but the one to keep my heart’s longing in a serenade to Truth’s gaze.
My first marriage can never be undone as that knot has been tied in a pattern of ancient code that only the fingers of the oldest star can unwind.
My path was carved by the first Salmon calling the rivers to carry The Vision home to the cradle of sacred reciprocity.
My prayer carries the language of smoke and wind, signaling to Heaven my faith in continual change and therefore continual guidance.
My first devotion is to the call of the Stone people embedded in all of the lands encoded into my bones so I too become chiseled with the memory of every tide turned.
My song contains the sound of the first rose perfuming the Lover’s path back to the temple to again take their place, hand in hand, in the rightful order of things.
My torch bears the First Light and turns on in the night by a true cry from the heart for the shepherding staff of grace and mercy.
My womb now opens to reveal the lost gospel of Mary Magdalen buried in the body of woman upon being planted by Mother God for the ripe time to rise upon Gaia.
My beloved one- yes you- your first breath was all it took to receive your gift and the bosom that feeds your dream. But you forget how to suckle as you have silenced your sacred hunger for Life.
My dear beloved- yes you- your deepest ache for Her milk keeps the celestial waters flowing into the incorruptible Well in your heart where you tossed your golden wish before you came.
My beloved - yes you- my hand holds the golden thread for you to grab and learn again how to weave yourself back into belonging upon Her altar. And all you have to do is extend your own to the sky in praise for being here upon such sacred land.
~For many years I have traveled to specific places that called to the deep ache of loneliness in my heart. I have suffered severe loneliness since I was a child. In the beginning of my wandering I sought from a place of crisis and desperation, which is the impetus of any heroine’s journey until she heals, and then it becomes a path of devotion, which is how it has now evolved.
Mazunte, along the south coast of Oaxaca where I have spent winter for 4 years, is such a place that called to me through my suffering. I can hear them now- the forces that call forth- “how else could we get you down here back then Shira?”
Every time I set out anywhere, and down here, I would secretly hope, but try to ignore, that I would meet someone. That this journey would be the journey the man, the love of my life, the husband would show up to take my hand.
That never happened before. It confused me. Until I came into a deeper relationship with the call and therefore true Love. This is not to say that sacred union with another human isn’t also a path of Love- we are made for each other and I am here for holy matrimony in the physical form. And yet, there is a first Love in order for any other type of union to be called Love. (More on that later)
When I came down the first time it was to immerse myself in silence at the Hridaya Yoga and Meditation school, which was a blessed painful experience. I said a lot of prayers on this land, met the right people, and was pulled back here by forces answering those prayers. I have since lived along the grail line that runs through the sacred site of Punta Cometa and Playa Mermejita and I have come to know that I was called here by the land- by Gaia’s lay line to inherit the old codes of this place, weave them into my DNA and to walk with a greater tapestry of truth everywhere else I roam.
In other words, this land, its ancestor wisdom and sacred energies have become part of my medicine basket. The gifts I have received here are immeasurable.
Each year I came down I had all of these ideas of this being “the winter” to create “the thing”, write “the thing”, offer “the thing” in a community that seems to offer literally everything. And each year I was told to sit and do nothing but be with the land, watch the tides turn and observe the people. My ego threw fits. (P.S winter is not for creating, it is for dreaming)
Mazunte is a vortex. It is a place where dualities are amplified and the mirrors of life are illuminated. You can’t escape yourself here unless you are on the other end of the spiritual seeker spectrum and unconsciously gobbling up the land for consumerism and tourism or partying your life away, and therefore numbing the intense and gorgeous healing energies of this land. (Just this morning I blocked a man in his fancy new Jeep from driving onto Playa Mermejita) Either way, everyone who sets foot here is affected in one way or another even if it is just by way of a stare down from a small blonde woman protecting what she loves.
People would ask me what I am doing here expecting the usual answer e.g- digital nomad of some sort. I began saying that I am a writer and they would look at me like “you make a living from writing?” Well, that depends on your idea of making a living. And, again, winter is for dreaming so that is me naming part of my dream.
Eventually I just began to say “I am taking care of my feet”. Which is true literally and metaphorically. I would deflect any assumptions that I was a truster from Cali and just got to wander free on Daddy’s old dime- which is someone’s life and that’s cool, but it’s not mine.
Anyhow, I wanted to sit down and write a love song to this land, and yet there is a lot to say about what this place is and how living in the global south, and outside of the USA, is a gift for deeply understanding the collective web and our (meaning the global north) impact upon it. And vice versa because we are all truly one. I will resort to sharing this picture and save my words around party and mindless vacation culture, the American Dream and its impact on the Earth and all of its beings and speak to the magic that is still more alive and more powerful than any of the separation and devastation.
~This land, and everywhere I have been called, has taught me true belonging. There is no separation between my voice and the voice of the Ocean and Stone. The day I understood what was guiding and calling me, I fell to my knees in praise for every moment of my life. There isn’t a feeling greater than being called home by your creator. When this feeling is reawakened there is no other way to live other than in reciprocity with Life, Earth and all of its beings. There is no other desire other than to serve the gift of Life given.
The call I have been hearing, and continue to hear in my heart, is Love’s call- it is me calling me home. It is my ancestor’s dreams and prayers laid with beauty into the land to help me remember. Everywhere I have planted my feet with prayer I have risen with a greater memory of what I am truly made of and my true purpose, my true gift. The hand of the beloved I seek is my own path. I am my ancestor still chanting on the cliff to the Dragon in the Ocean. Only from this reunion inside my own body soul, gifted from the Earth body that holds every single memory, life story and code of creation, including my own and everything I have been, and I have been everything, including a shining grain of sand, can I then symbolically reflect that externally through sacred union with another and materialize the gifts that carry the transmission of this wholeness, this Love story.
I know every stone upon my barefoot path to the morning shoreline for my daily prayer, the sound and synchronicity of the sting rays as though they have been called to an “all Ocean’s belly flop contest” to fly out of the water, at times 15 of them all together, and flop back to the surface with a resounding joy for life, the migration formation of the Pelican, when the ants will emerge to clean an old butterfly wing and specks of human debris, if the stone has been slightly smoothed by another storm, the people who root down in a good way here and hold a vision of keeping the land sacred.
And it all knows me. I was called here for holy work. The land needed my prayer. And in return it helped me reclaim my life, grow new skin, it taught me how to let go, listen and stand the test of time like old stone. So, yes, I have been working each winter in Mazunte Mexico and my contract here is done. They have wrapped my bones in black sand blessings for where I will wander next and have said “granddaughter if there is ever a storm you can’t weather you are always welcome back here.” My heart is wild with gratitude and grief at saying goodbye to say HELLO to a whole new chapter in my life.
I LOVE YOU MAZUNTE, OAXACA MEXICO!!! Blessed be.
A little poetic homage to when I roamed these lands long ago…
Where there is a seaside cliff
there is a woman standing
Watching and praying
Crying and drumming
Commanding wind and tide
Face carved by sunrise blaze
Nest of moon beam upon her head
For the Whale’s first song
she stands
Calling Butterfly
from across the waves
Sending Butterfly
across the waves
Holding vigil at the portal
spinning and weaving the golden threads
of morphic resonance
Wailing and singing
for the holy souls
shedding crucible of Caterpillar,
to now let go of the ledge
that once held protection from Wind
The most tender of wing,
mosaic of Earth and Heaven,
when unfurled by sacred longing
withstands every torrent of Storm
Embodied transformation flies
inside the veil between Sea and Sky
No fear of the drowning deep
and fire of firmament
when guided
by the cliff song hymns of a safe landing
spoken in her whispering and chanting,
praising and raising the First Name until—
all of Her children fly
the Ocean’s trail of tears
back home
Relevant posts you may enjoy:
The Tao of Fly | My Father’s Feet Meet Clarissa Pinkola Estes | A Woman To Know
Your writing is so beautiful. Keep going. 💖💖💖