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Jazz Vespers
Many have asked for a recording of the spoken word piece I delivered at Jazz for the Holidays on December 18. The service was unrecorded but the text is available below in this longer than usual blog post:
Life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words.
When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.
Thus wrote Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran.
What I know for sure is that when
Life
deigns to be embodied
in the becoming
and becoming
and becoming
of each one of us,
it is only then that she is truly something to behold.
The awesome beauty and magnificent terror,
the fierce strength and tender fragility of
Life
embodied as human being human
in all its glorious and terrible forms:
each one of us
bursting
into being out of the DNA of stars
now cells and sinews and bone and blood and flesh.
Life
now speaking in the high pitched wail
of we newly arrived and baby born
into human consciousness and
whatever
Life
wants to offer us
into
whatever
we choose to offer it.
And so the Seasons begin.
But about that baby:
the greatest story ever told me about a
newborn babe was ….
no, not that one --
but this one --
by a spiritual teacher
in full awareness of her manifestation
as Divine Feminine
in the flesh,
who said the greatest gift she had ever been given
was by her mother – yes, her
real
live
earth mother --
who was never deluded by the pudgy cuteness
and smallness of her child
but always treated her as
a Being
in
full
conscious
awareness
of Herself.
The only allowance her mother made
was that her daughter was yet
small
and had not yet grown into the full stature
of her human body,
and also she could not yet speak
in a language her mother
understood – but she knew that would come –
because
express herself
her daughter could,
and her mother knew that if
she as mother truly listened,
“time bending stretching…
listened for maybe hours or minutes”
her daughter would be understood and,
if given the space
to consciously co-create her world
her daughter would,
and so she did.
and so she does.
The extraordinariness of this story for me
is that it is made of
Black
Girl
Magic
a little Black girl
being made aware that
she
IS
over three quarters of a century ago
when an unconscious world
told her day after day after day,
season after season
that she
is
not.
I am awed by the great gift given by this mother,
the great gift in this
for any of us,
and have often wondered what it
might mean to treat a child,
any child,
in that very first season of life
as one
whose greater self
lies not
hidden and veiled,
but is recognized and revealed
to Oneself:
The great
I AM That I AM
Self
as Spirit of Life in the physical
fat body thin body
small body giant body
black body brown body
pink body white body
he body she body
they body them body
WE bodies
EARTH bodies
fully aware
that
we have all come.
Now what shall we consciously co-create
together
with All That Is
in All This Awesomeness?
Note that I did not say accomplish,
but co-create,
out of conscious awareness
of that which lies hidden and veiled
undeluded
by the illusion
of all the things we are not,
do not have,
or deeply don’t even want to be,
no matter how good it might look on the outside,
because this is no ego trip
when we deeply understand
we are not those things out there.
Once we catch glimpse of the hidden and veiled
space in which resides our
Greater Essential Self.
And so what might we co-create in full embrace of
this knowing that
we are possibility
from a sudden burst of light?
That we are a light?
So what might we co-create in the
love power and wisdom of the
I AM Spirit
that is life?
And even more so
with the knowing that we are in the physical,
that we are in a time space limitation
with bodies that eventually stop working
as we believe they should
and often far sooner than most of us would like,
freak accidents mutated genes,
chemical imbalances
cells and hormones that go rogue and betray us,
and there but for the grace of….
If so favored we might also come to appreciate
the resilience of our
body forms
how they can withstand the onslaught of the harshest toxins
in the name of healing
at least for a while.
And all the little parts that actually do work,
especially the parts
we didn’t even know we had
but come to understand we need
and so we stand in gratitude
and with appreciation
for these incredible bodies.
Because here’s the thing:
even in this
eventuality
of not working
we are nonetheless
the possibility
that Is
each one of us
bursting
into being out of the DNA of stars
now cells and sinews and bone and blood and flesh.
Life
now living season upon season upon season
hopefully
become awake and aware
in human consciousness and
into
whatever
life wants to offer us
into
whatever
we choose to offer it.
And such is the way of the Seasons
and our
Selves.
Behold
with wonder and awe.
Ashe.
Palms together,
Rev. Jacqueline Brett
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