Month: March 2023

Uncategorized

Holy Woman

ADOrduna

Who is the Holy Woman standing at the edge of society, hands over her heart, eyes cast down, taking up space with her presence, yet invisible to people walking by. Tattered, faded robes draped by dreaded graying hair, bundled in strength, hiding-nurturing secret medicines for humankind.

Oh Great Holy One, you who feel the pain of community with each inhale breath, how many times have you journeyed to earth? How many scars paint your body – souvenirs of your many transits – you who seeks beauty in discarded people and places? Your heart aches but it does not bleed.

Illuminated One, who hovers over the earthen lands, divinely connected to the greater mysteries of the One. Worldly translator of roseal wisdom from the Divine, receiving in modification to prevent your heart from burning out like a shooting star by the magnificence of the Word and devoted to sharing it across the land in common language of food, dance, poetry, and song.

Mystical One, primordial wisdom incarnated in feminine form. Loving, joyful, seductively attracting humankind with sashaying hips, golden breasts full of milk to nourish, accented steps with brass bells mined from the Motherland; cenote eyes drawing dear ones in; intoxicating voice with your humming tonal vibration.

Strange One who rests on the fiery desert floor of burning sand during the high-noon sun, basking in the pure oasis of waters at the base of the opulent palm tree garden; re-awakening at night to soar with your blackened gold wings, observing household transgressions thought to be hidden by the darken skies void of the moon.

Beloved One, the rounded womb sanctuary who is present at creation when the embryo transforms into life and shepherds its safe passage into world, should it decide to stay; and who too is present at death to direct the spirit into the worlds of its belief, while receiving the body back into the earth so it may compost to nourish crops and consumed, cannibalized, never forgotten through the metabolic connection.  

Strong One, who resists and devours man’s many attempts to concretize you back into the earth, forcing forgetting among your daughter through martyrs of death, submission of their sovereign bodies by rape and execution, and internalization of patriarchy that swindles mothers and fathers into selling their blood to street markets in exchange for cheap trinkets masked as wealth.

Devotional One, untouchable to mainstream society – cast aside for acts that happened to you in the shadowed allies of world, yet whose prayers are amplified by your innocence of heart and unwavering belief, an example that God’s loving grace illuminates from our own inner temples without judgement.

Oh Holy One, Wanderer, Chosen Woman, Soul of strength and purpose who knows your worth more than the enlightened ones dressed in fine clothes and who foolishly seek to regulate the freedoms of world and judge Divine law.

Incarnation of Love, sweetness dropping from your soiled garments perfuming the space we share with a floral breeze, Oh how I wish I could be like thee; humble, strong, courageous, devotional, and thoughtful.

Holy Woman Mystic, please open my eyes so I can see you when you are at the city’s edge. Open my womb so I can recreate you to multiply your efforts in bringing balance back to the world. Open my heart so I can feel your essence and believe again in love.  

a.d.orduna 03/20/23 

Homelessness, Race, Spirit of Place

Embodying Equity in a War Zone

ADOrduna

In the wide vast universe of being, someone Mothering is crying, grieving for a child missing from their imagined idea of home. By Mothering I mean anyone who has given birth, trying to conceive, adopted, miscarriage, is a teacher, a spiritual counselor, a father, an auntie, an environmentalist, anyone who tends to the soul of the world.

Yes, someone Mothering is missing a child from the imagined home, during this time of battle as we fight for autonomy of self and sovereignty of body against the backlash of the faltering colonial white dominant patriarchal hetero-normative ablest social paradigm crumbling into the depths of the rising waters of climate change.

Today, I hold those Mothering with loss in my heart, as I also learn to surrender to the primordial presence of Mother Earth, holding all those loss/lost in the roots of her soil, connecting us all to the soul of the world and the bloodstreams of our ancestors.

As we gather today to celebrate Women’s History Month and honor the essence of the Divine Feminine embodied in us all, I too hold the darkness of our times, for remembering makes us whole and inclusive, and belonging as we gather in our beingness together.

My name is Alisa. I identify as an aging Black mixed ancestry- a stamp of our history, wombmyn (womb of my own). I graduated from Pacifica in 2021 with a doctorate in depth-psychology with a concentration in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and eco-psychologies. I am a feminine soul supported by the Divine masculine, who is committed to fostering cultures of belonging in the advancement of bell hooks ideal of beloved communities, where we don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to be white, we don’t have to have a name for ourselves, we simply have to be.

I work in homelessness services and policy through a platform called Florence Aliese Advancement Network, LLC, named after my Grandmothers, where I work with members of the public sector to raise consciousness to alternative perspectives on homelessness, and am determined for all, especially Black and Indigenous people to safely live in earth as our home.

The recent visualization of the kidnapping and murder of Black youth just across the border in Mexico is heavy on my heart as the daily news of missing and murdered Black and Indigenous women and children continues to rise across urban and rural neighborhoods around this country and as we travel the world. What right does anyone have to take a sovereign being? A child of God? Who said humans were for sale? We have a long history, although in these times many are trying to suppress it, of forced family separation and receipt of horrific forms of violence that we must reconcile to end these tragedies.

So, while I am honored to be wherever Dianne Travis Teague asks me to go, and any opportunity to be in the same space as Dr. Lee, while also reconnecting to my Pacifica guiding angels –Dr. Nuria Ciofalo and Dr. Susan James, and fellow colleagues, while holding the presence of the unknown that connects us together – today I am also tuning into the connection to Pacifica’s campus, a portal to the world soul – to take an opportunity to ask what archetypal force is at play that continues the separation of Black and Indigenous families and turns our children into “missing”? Why are you here? Is it greed that continues to feed you? And what other archetypal forces must emerge to push you back into balance?

In the wide vast universe of being, someone Mothering is crying, grieving for a child missing from the imagined home. We give thanks for protection from Mother Earth who hears her cries, absorbs her tears, and connects to the loss/lost child, no matter where they are.

Thank you!

a.d.orduna

International Women’s Day, March 8, 2023

Pacifica Graduate Institute and Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association, Carpinteria, CA

“Embodying Equity” Celebration.