August 5, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Unity of All

Deepok Chopra’s wisdom

Each of us has a story. Some of them are happy, some are about rising above tragedy, some are so sad that the heart is torn open and bleeding. I love history and still read a lot of history and biographies. I seek to know the world better. To understand more and how to avoid some of the toxic situations.

Mysticism is a way to rise about all that has hurt, scarred or tortured us in our pasts. Mystics from various traditions have in common the experience of feeling at one with all that exists. Spirit prevails if we look for it. Mystic writers acknowledge the oneness of everyone, the absolute lack of separation of the mystic religions. The mystics show us that when we see others as being “them” instead of part of us, hatred and violence are the results.

I am going to share excerpts from Marge Piercy’s poem with you. It is called

The Sabbath of Mutual Respect

“Habondia, the real abundance, is the power
to say yes and to say no, to open
and to close, to take or to leave
and not to be taken by force or law
or fear or poverty or hunger.
To bear children or not to bear by choice
is holy. To bear children unwanted is to be used like a public sewer. To be sterilized unchosen is to have
your heart cut out. To love women
is holy and holy is the free love of men
and precious to live taking whichever comes
and precious to live unmated as a peachtree.

Praise the lives you did not choose.

They will heal you, tell your story, fight

for you. You eat the bread of their labor

You drink the wine of their joy. I tell you

after I went under the surgeon’s knife

for the laparoscopy I felt like a trumpet

an Amazon was blowing sonorous charges on

Then my womb learned to open on the full

moon without pain and my pleasure deepened

till my body shuddered like troubled water.

When my friend gave birth I held her in joy

as the child’s head thrust from her vagina

like the sun rising as dawn wet and red.

Praise our choices, sisters, for each doorway

open to us was taken by squads of fighting

women who paid years of trouble and struggle,

who paid their wombs, their sleep, their lives

that we might walk through these gates upright.

Doorways are sacred to women for we

are the doorways of life and we must choose

what comes in and what goes out. Freedom

is our real abundance.

——–Marge Piercy, feminist writer and poet

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors.”

—-Czeslaw Milosz

Some sculpture is so beautiful it opens the heart and the heart breathes the beauty as if it were oxygen. Photo and copyright by Barbara Mattio

July 24, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Poems to Soothe the Heart

Praying hands that mean so much to God

Many scholars feel that Rumi is the greatest poet the world has every known. I think they are quite possibly right. But I do love the poems of many gifted poets. I would like to share a couple of them with you today.

We Point to the New Moon

“This time when you and I sit here, two figures
with one soul, we’re a garden,
with plants and birdsong moving through us like rain.

The stars come out. We’re out
of ourselves, but collected. We point
to the new moon, its discipline and slender joy.

We don’t listen to stories
full of frustrated anger. We feed
on laughter and a tenderness
we hear around us.
when we’re together.

And even more incredible, sitting here in Konya,
we’er this moment in Khorasan and Iraq.
We have these forms in time.
and another in the elsewhere
that’s made of this closeness.”
—-Rumi

Midnight Question

“Near midnight, in disarray, you come asking,
“is it still like this, my love,
when your‘re old?”

Who would refuse to answer?
The same was heard
before the creation of the universe,
“Am I not your Lord?”

Whatever’s poured then must be drunk.
It may be pure soul, merely grape-wine,
or some combination, but say Yes,

as I have many times,
as we all once did in unison
outside time and space.

Never regret that answer!
—Hafiz

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.” —Rumi

Radiating energy and light as you meditate or chant

May 12, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

A Mother’s Day Tribute to Mother’s Everywhere

Joan Papalia Eisert has a B.A. in English from Gannon University. Over the past thirty-six years she has had numerous poems published in small press magazines, newspaper articles, on the Internet, and in Daystar Productions. Two of her poems earned blue ribbons, and one was awarded the Editor’s Choice Award (Sulfur and Sawdust, Scars Publications). Joan’s poetry has also been used in English classes, prison ministry, and various outreach missions. Her first chapbook of poetry, Flat Days was published in 1996. She has read her work at several poetry venues including: Chautauqua Institution (Chautauqua, NY), Erie Book Store, Uncrowned Queens of Western New York’s poetry reading (Buffalo, NY), Mt. St. Benedict (Erie, PA), Maria House Projects’ Diocesan Lodge (West Spring Creek, PA), poetry reading venues in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, and Authors Books and Music (Warren, PA). Joan’s poetry will be published in the premier issue of Mending Reality, and she is currently working on her latest poetry collection, Fluency.
Joan taught a Poetry/Creative Writing class at the Maria House Projects’ Diocesan Lodge in West Spring Creek, PA for 10 years. The Maria House Projects provide homes for troubled men who are in need of community for healing. They include alcoholics, drug addicts, men deeply disturbed emotionally, and men suffering from the effects of homelessness and imprisonment. Joan uses creative writing to help the residents heal through artistic expression. She is publisher/editor of ten volumes of For Pete’s Sake, which are the class’ literary collections.
Joan is also an accomplished singer, performing professional since 1971 starting out as a soloist. She was taught voice by Mary Jane Gregan, and extraordinary vocalist herself, from Edinboro, PA. Joan is half of the duo, Fire and Ice (with her husband Paul), now in their 32nd year of performing together, and she sang in the band, Daystar, for seven years.

March 9th 2010 (for Mom)

Her richly variegated eyes of brown and struggle
dilating in graceful homage
to the rays of this tender
early, ubiquitous sun
on this day of fragile yielding
to the promise of coming warmth
soothing like the balm in Gilead

In this golden spectrum
of such a fleeting moment
our love glistens
dances
sings
amid the brilliant gushings of
everlasting
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Backyard Day

Reminiscent of my mother’s sheets
looking lonely on the line
when September was too warm
and we were gone
has my sweet caramel daughter
nibbling an apple in her wading pool
each look a book
while I’m clinging to the buzz and flutter
of this August afternoon

She’ll be gone before I know it
like my shadow
in this particular sun
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Warm Day in March

kissing the cat
curled beneath the breath
of tide laundered sheets
no noise today
conjures me returning to the upstairs
of her house
on one of those days
she’d gone to the market
with my mother
her bedroom first
to finger the jewelry and rosary beads
on the mirrored filigree tray
displayed on the dresser
across from the wall-wide closet
with drawers and drawers
full of leather purses
and shoes and shoes and shoes
rich syrupy savory leather shoes

look and touch
look and inhale
then pad to the bathroom
i’d already passed
at the top of the stairs
her aroma greets and lingers
staying awhile
in that small stuffed room
absorbing the tub tucked underneath
the glass block window
oscillating low afternoon rays
the trolley crowded with perfumes
atomizers soaps creams lipsticks
custom-blended foundations
and me me in the medicine chest mirror
melting into a delicious bouquet of the illusion
that I matter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Preparation

You gave me an aluminum pot
with a wooden grip in the
middle of its wooden handle
And there’s a small metal
grip on one side to hold onto
while pouring
And most clever of all
there’s a little section of the
pot’s lid that’s perforated for
straining or releasing steam
and even these efficient
clustered holes have their
own hinged cover
Jesus– all in one pot

You tell me you have two
of these pots
You got this one
a long time ago
For my pasta and my potatoes
you tell me

You tell me you never had
such a nice pot
“They no maka them lika
thees no more”

You tell me one day this summer
I can help you clean
Who knows what we’ll find
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good Friday (for Mom)

My mother
faithful mother
anointed, sensitive
mother

Encouraging mother
loving mother
taking me with her
mother

Shepherding mother
complicated mother
fearing no evil, no shadow of death
mother

Suffering mother
gifted mother
conflicted, compassionate
mother

Generous mother
Mary’s daughter
Christ’s sister
My mother

Joannie is a published peot and a very dear freind. I am honored to share her work. These poems are in loving memory of her Mother, Valda Papalia and Mary Ann Eisert, her mother in law. I thank you Joannie for sharing this day and your memories with my readers. May The Beloved bless all the Mothers and Grandmothers that are no longer with us in this life.

April 5, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

Thoughts on Twilight

Twilight at Holden Beach. One last romp with the waves. Photograply copywrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013

Twilight at Holden Beach. One last romp with the waves. Photography copyrighted by Barbara Mattio 2013

I find, that for me, there is a moment, one pure, crystalline moment when the day begins to fade and the night begins to wrap its arms around you, that brings the bitter sweetness pain and love. I don’t know why it happens. I have experienced it since I was a child. There are times that this moment brings tears to my eyes. Not sad or happy tears. I believe they are the tears of knowing that in those precious seconds, you live.

Twilight reminds us of our invisible and silken thread which connects us to the Universe. The air smells pure. You take a breath and know that all that matters is the fact you are alive and you are in every living thing on this planet and they are all in you. You might be sitting on a porch, walking along a beach, standing breathing the mountain air or driving along a highway, but this moment will flutter your heart. You are alive.

Shakespeare was the English bard and controversy not withstanding, he moves us as few others ever have . He was an expert in the craft of words. He crafted them for the common people and for Kings and Queens. For me there is an American bard. It Is Walt Whitman. While I don’t write poetry I love to read it and Whitman is my default poet when my heart and soul truly needs comfort.
I hope you will enjoy these selections as much as I do.

A Twilight Song

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak flame,
Musing on long-pass’d war-scenes–of the countless buried unknown soldiers,
Of the vacant names, as unindented air’s and sea’s–the unreturn’d,
The brief truce after battle, with grim burial-squads, and the deep-fill’d trenches
Of gather‘d dead from all America, North, South East, West, whence they came up,
From wooded Maine, New England’s farms, from fertile Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio,
From the measureless West, Virginia, the South, the Carolinas, Texas,
(even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames,
Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising—–
I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies;)
You million unwrit names all, all-you dark bequest from all the war,
A special verse for you–a flash of duty long neglected–
your mystic roll strangely gather‘d here,
Each name recall‘d by me from out the darkness and death’s ashes,
Henceforth to, deep,deep within my heart recording, for many a future year,
Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,
Embalm’d with love in this twilight song.:

—Walt Whitman

“Come, said my Soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write (for we are one)
That should I after death invisibly return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres, There to some group of mates the chanting resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, and tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning–as, first, I here and now,
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name.
Walt Whitman

The beach at twilight. Photgraph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio

Blue Ridge Mountain twilight. Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio

Seven Sisters Mountain twilight, Black Mountain.
Photograph copyrighted by Barbara Mattio

March 5, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

For You, O Democracy

Sketch of Walt Whitman in his younger days

Come, I will make the continent indisoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of Comrades,
By the manly love of Comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

—–From Leaves of Greas; Deathbed Edition by Walt Whitman

Volumes of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

February 8, 2013 by IdealisticRebel

A Basket of Poetry

South Beach Florida
Photo by Barbara Mattio

“Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements; while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while some
where a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does.”
—–Susan Griffin

“Anger shines through me.
Anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush
My rage is a cloud of flame.
My rage is a cloud of flame.
in which I walk
seeking justice
like a precipice.” —Marge Piercy

Photo by Barbara Mattio

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked the wind
roaring and whinpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm. —-Marge Piercy

June Rose
Photo by Barbara Mattio

“Neighbors, the old woman who knows you
turns over in me
and I wake up
another country. There’s no more
north and south
Asleep, we pass through one another
like blowing snow,
all of us
all. —Native American,Linda Hogan

The Miracle of the one single flower. Photo by Barbara Mattio

“So you’re God
Tell me I’m straw, chaff, mist.

Tell me the sea has springs
deep and cold as dreams
that make me wake exhausted.

Enough thunder
What have you done
with my children?” ——Betsy Sholl

Greenhouse at Niagara Falls, Canada; Photo by Barbara Mattio

“God is fed up
All the oceans she gave us
All the fields
All the acres of steep seedful forests
and we did what
Invented the Great Chain of Being and the chain saw
Invented sin.” —-George Ella Lyon

“Gerber Daisy” – Acrylic Paint on Stretched Canvas
Painting by Barbara Mattio

September 16, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

The Passing of an Icon

My heart is heavy as I heard of the passing of one of the great feminist leaders of our time. Adrienne Rich was a feminist and a poet. She authored the book ” Of Woman Born ” and many books of poetry.

Adrienne was born in 1929. In the 1960’s her poetry took a turn from the more traditional style to a radical feminist format. She wrote about how poetry can break isolation,she reminded us of creating beauty where there is no beauty and reminded us of our Sisterhood.

From a Survivor

The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men and women in those days
I don’t know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn’t know the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
Your body is as vivid to me as it ever was;
even more since my feeling for it is clearer;
I know what it could do and could not do
it is no longer the body of a god or anything
with power over my life
Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have make the leap we talked,
too late, of making which I live now not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing
movements each one making possible the next.”

—–Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich described her poetry as political and as personal. One of her poems, “Power ” speaks of how women find it very difficult to grab onto and to raise up their talents and successes and dreams. In “Power.” she speaks of Marie Curie, the scientist.

“She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source
as her power.”
This is from one of her books of poetry called, “The Dream of a Common Language; Poems 1974-1977.

So I say goodbye to a heroine and icon and I will end with this excerpt from her poem “Translations.”

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur; enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she’s a woman of my time.”

Thank you for your contributions to the cause of women’s rights and RIP.

September 3, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Mindful

Photo by Barbara Mattio

“Every day
I see or I hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It is what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations,
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself, how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?”
—Mary Oliver

This poem is taken from one of my favorite poetry books, “Dancing With Joy.” For me reading poetry is akin to meditation. It is slowly drawing up that long slow breath and holding it for those moments of balance, and then the slow gradual exhale. Then the energy begins to flow and you dance with the Divine.

Dancing With Joy; Photo by Barbara Mattio

August 25, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

The Magic of this Lifetime

Flowers and Photography by Barbara Mattio

” Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.
When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,
Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;
Be it as if I were with you. ( Be not too certain but I am now with you.)

—–Walt Whitman
Laws of Creation

Humanity under a magnifying glass, an experience of telescoping time, sensual and direct. These describe Whitman’s writings. His vision of people was democratic, nonjudgmental and filled with the width and breadth of human existence.
During Whitman’s lifetime, he looked at America as an idea and a nation.
He lived during great revolution, poverty and war.

Whitman was one of the American poets who saw the reality of the past and the allure of the future. He was a man capable of introspection and contemplation which fueled his poetry. His poetry has a flow and a music which starts slowly and builds to a crescendo of joy, ecstasy, and love.

Myrtle Beach, SC, Photo by Barbara Mattio

Whitman had an uncanny way to perceive the truth in life, our nation and the people he met in his many travels. His love and clear seeing and thinking led him to say: ” I sing the body electric.”

I think we could do much worse in 2012, than to read and/or meditate upon his words and what they could mean in our lives.

August 10, 2012 by IdealisticRebel

Still I Rise

Holden Beach, NC Photo by Barbara Mattio

Women are not born feminists. Some are born tom boys, some are girly, some are born strongly principled. Some girls have a deep spiritual longing.

So then, what makes a feminist? Life creates feminists. Lovers bring joy, happiness and relationship to life. Some of them not only break hearts, they break our trust. Some of them break an arm or a rib or perhaps,”just” tell us we are nothing.

Women grow up and most go to college and some find that some professors don’t like women students. Some women have to be subjected to sexual harassment . Some women are bullied because they aren’t pretty enough or they are smarter than many of the males in class.

Women sometimes get all dolled up and go out with the girls. Some men think this means they are prey and stalk until they can go in for the kill.

All women realize that today we make $.77 for every dollar a man makes. For the same work. In addition, some must work in a hostile workplace.

I became a feminist because of some of the above scenarios and because I read a lot of history. I became aware that women have always been treated as possessions. Women have “needed” to be owned and controlled. I began reading about the European witch trials and found out that millions of women and children were horribly murdered because their knowledge of herbs and knowing which ones to use for healing made them different. This was a very serious matter if the was no man around to keep her in check. You could be in trouble for being good with animals. Today, we call that being a dog whisperer. or a horse whisperer. It used to mean you were a witch.

When I wanted to have a tubal ligation to prevent further pregnancy I had to bring a paper home from the doctor. This was 1972. My husband had to sign it for me to have the surgery. It was my own body. It belonged to me. But society didn’t see it that way, it belonged to him.

Have you ever gone shopping and hid what you purchased in the trunk? Did then later on sneak it into the house and your closet? That is the sneakiness that develops when we don’t have our own money and are not allowed to make our own choices.

We have gotten past the part where women are not encouraged to go to college unless it was to find a husband. Many women today have advanced degrees and still make less than a man or the same work and same degree. Women continue to be the minority in math and the sciences yet millions are capable to earning degrees in math and science.

Young women today don’t understand that they are entitled to be an equal partner in their relationships. They have the right to make their own money, to practice contraception and to have sex only when they want it. They don’t have to cooperate with their partner unless they wish to.

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But, still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise.
I rise.
I rise.

——Maya Angelou

I dedicate this blog to all of the oppressed peoples in the world. I especially dedicate it to those who have died due to hatred and violence. We won’t give up or go back!