Marigold Path Grid Blog: My ofrenda to the world

I’ve been overtaken by grief the past couple of days, grief over many things past and present and many kinds of death. I am just beginning to learn how to take care of myself, and I realized that I was exhausted from two jobs six days a week and from ignoring my very real limits and my soul. So I didn’t go to work yesterday and among other things, created an ofrenda, which seemed appropriate for El Dia de Los Muertos.

It helped me sort out this complicated space I’m in, where healing and grief and joy and pain all co-exist together. I have to create my own sacred spaces these days, so this ofrenda is my way of memorializing my own and others’ pain before God and all those mysterious ways She has, and of living with hope in one hand and the cruelties of the universe in the other.

I knew I wanted to do this grid blog, but I wasn’t sure how to do it without telling stories that are not mine to tell, so instead of a regular blog post, I’ll share my ofrenda and a poem instead. It is not entirely traditional, but then, I am entirely not Mexican, so maybe I get a pass.

Angel appears at the Jade Dragon, Friday, 11 pm,
Patron saint of those who die alone

She said, “I watch the line of Rahab, Tamar, Hagar, Magdalene –
the raped and whored and concubined,
vexed by seven demons, and bearing bastard sons of Abraham,
all of them called Ishmael, searching for whatever God is hearing in
the wild-eyed ways of the wide wide world.
They are the ones who know
that they are somewhat less than beautiful.

Now I am just a skinny, grinning painted crone,
but the great white whale found me, floating in the
deep and deadly drowning end of a pretty pretty sea.
He sent me spewed upon a rocky shore
Retching all the bile and bilge my aching lungs would hold,
With acid eaten skin thinned and stuck by all that’s in the air.

Now I am tattooed by everything that pierces me –
a skull and bones for all the dying I will do.
Rage is the cold cold blooded lizard crouching greenclawed
on my chest, fear the spindle-legged spider crawling on my skin.
I might run out of skin, but I won’t run out of pain.
I can only wear my hope upon my shoulder like this radiating sun
and pray that it would shine upon the footsteps of all
who don’t walk easy in this world, the powerless and the dispossessed,
plodding callused sad and numb, stuck upon the pictures of their misery,
drawn by the needle pain of living and etched forever on their hides.

I see them on the days this world is bleeding. Some days I bleed too,
and pray for something lasting longer than forever, the day when
all God’s bloody tattooed children will stammer out their spark within and
all God’s voiceless children give their untongued amen.”

To read the rest of the posts in the Marigold Path Grid Blog, go here.

Comments

[Heather]

Bendiciones. I am moved by your ofrenda.

[Sacred Art of Living]

This is so very lovely, a moving visual tribute to the great losses. I love how art helps us hold the tensions in our lives. Blessings to you, Christine

[Bro. Bartleby]

Thank you for introducing me to an 'art' that I knew not of. Or perhaps I saw, but did not understand.
Shalom,
Bro. Bartleby

[Christy]

Heather-
Thanks chica. Glad you liked it.

Sacred Art and Bro. Bartleby - You're new, I think, so welcome. Drop by anytime.