Hag Stones

I have always loved walking on beaches and especially ones that have lots of stones.  I am drawn by the very smooth ones.  I have quite a collection over the years of stones that just felt good in my hand.

Then I went through a phase of looking for and collecting heart shaped stones.  They are surprisingly easy and rewarding to find.  And people seem to like receiving them as gifts. 

If you live near the Great Lakes, you will know of “Petoskey stones” which everyone there collects.  They are stones with fossil imprints of coral from when an ancient sea covered the center of the US. 

But, my latest interest has been in searching for and collecting “Hag stones”.  I think I first heard about them while reading Susan Blackies book “Hagitude” which I have mentioned here before.  The book was transformative for me.  It helped me to reclaim the word “Hag” as something to aspire to – to be proud of.  A Hag is not just an ugly old woman in folklore – but is an archetype of a strong woman elder with vision and a trust in mystery.   I want to claim that aspiration!

In the book Blackie talks about women’s propensity to collect natural objects and to display them in our homes.  She talked about being a collector  -- not of trinkets, but of clues.  The collections of stones, feathers, seashells etc. that I see in so many of my friend’s houses are so much more than “clutter”.  Blackie says these natural objects are “carefully collected objects that mirror my sense of myself as a shape-shifting, storied creature.”

So, I have lately been collecting these Hagstones.  Stones with naturally occurring holes that go all the way through the stone.  The holes are made by the action of water or the boring of aquatic animals and water.  They are not particularly rare – although they are mostly found on ocean beaches with a certain type of sediment.  They are said to be “magical”.  The lore holds that if you close one eye and look through the hole, you can see into the “netherworld”.  Also that if you have one on a chain around your neck, you will receive protection.  I don’t know about that.  But, I do know that they are fun to find and to wonder about.  And I love that having them on my windowsill is a way of displaying “clues” about what I love and value.  When I think of myself as a Hag Stone I like to think that the holes that have been formed in me are possible portals for magic, or at least for transformation!

Do you have displayed (or secretly hidden?) “clues” to what matters to you /to who you are in your home?  Do your friends?  Ask them about these natural objects they love!

"You Are Living in A Poem"

The poet Naomi Shihab Nye says that she often tells her elementary aged students that they are "living in a poem”. A poem is not something you read or write, but it’s a way of perceiving in the world.  Then she asks them to write about their life inside a poem.

This week, I happened upon a translation of a verse from the book of Ephesians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.  Ephesians 2:10 proclaims “We are the poems of God”.  I just love that idea!!  What would it mean in my life if I understood myself to be a “poem of God”.  --- or of the universe, or of the goddess, or of “Mystery” or the Universe…. What is the purpose of a poem?  What kind of poem do I want to be?  If I am a poem, are the trees and birds and ocean waves also poems?  Presumably so.  In any case, I like imagining that world!

And then, this month, my friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Kathy Hurt has a new book out;  “Psalms for All our Days and Ways”.  (See it by clicking HERE ).  The book is a collection of rewritten Psalms.  These Psalms are not directed to God, but rather to the reader.  Psalms about everyday life and experience.  I love the idea that we could envision our experience as a Psalm.  The word Psalm means a sacred song or hymn. 

What a juxtaposition of all of these ideas – we are a poem, we live inside a poem, we are a sacred song or hymn.  It does change the way I think of myself in the world!

Borrowing liberally from all these sources, I have written my own poem;

All around us,

a poem is being spoken,

a song is being sung –

in the way leaves rustle

against one another

and another wave arrives

on every shore on earth.

And the birds, oh the birds

are reciting poem-songs

every dawn, every dusk.

The rhyming of the

church bell, the clock tower,

the whispered poems of buds

becoming blossom,

the ode of every-changing light,

and, of course, the stars reciting

their tiny haikus all the time.

Your own untethered breath,

a steady ode to life,

a repeating pantoum.

The world offers us poems,

why not learn them by heart?

            ~Penny Hackett-Evans

Disclosing your own divinity

Jan Phillips, in her book, “Stop Seeking, Start Finding” talks about how it is not enough that we find “spirituality” for ourselves and keep it to ourselves.  But, that our most important task is to disclose the divinity we find within ourselves to the wider world.  We have an imperative she says to “dance it out with our lives” – to reveal our inner sense of holiness through our art, our words, our movement in the world. 

What does it mean to “disclose” our inner divinity?  Phillips says it means “To be most oneself.”   To live authentically in the world.  To not hoard our private sense of an inner holiness, but rather to live it loudly. 

I know I sometimes feel that I need to couch my interest in and experience of holiness in my life.  It’s a bit vulnerable to go around admitting that one is seeking “holiness” or a sense of divinity here in this life.  Mostly I imagine that others are busy paying bills, taking out the garbage and trying to remember their passwords… as I am much of the time.  If I experience “divine moments”,  is that Divinity?  Or, is it me?  Phillips says the answer to both those questions is YES.  If we do not share our own searching and finding, we continue to feel isolated in our experience.  I yearn for settings where it is permissible to seek for and to talk about one’s spiritual searching and finding. 

Phillips talks about the “hereafter” being right here, right now.  I love the title of her book,  “Stop Seeking and Start Finding”.  Click HERE to find out more about this book.

Here is a poem from the book – reprinted here by permission of the author.

DIVINE HERE, DIVINE NOW

~by Jan Phillips

Why all this talk

about the hereafter and Heavenly Father?

The flames of the cosmos

burn in our cells,

atoms from the First Fire

swirl and spin in our livers and lungs.

What do you think “the kingdom is within you”

was meant to convey?

You waltz with the Beloved

every second of the day

yet you speak like the Holy One

is light years away.

Put away the pictures from grammar school.

Disinherit voices that led you astray.

Drop your fears of blasphemy and say it:

I am one with the Father,

one with the mother, one with creation.

[and I, Penny, would add – one with the goddess”]

Look in the mirror to find what you lost.

The hereafter is in the kernel of NOW.

There is nothing to find, nothing to earn.

The entire banquet is spread out before you.