Star of the sea

I know that you apologized for this piece to me numerous times. No apologies needed, for under whatever name, She is Our Lady. Once I asked Her what shall we call You? She answered:

Call me anything you wish, for <I AM ALL that IS> It is unimaginable, the unfathomable and incomprehensible,  for you to understand who I really  AM.. 

 

Though, I think that she is much more compassionate to her children than you feel at times. Yes, she is all this and much, much more. She is all that is positive and negative, whatever that may be. Few have seen Her in Her entirety, you have. Why? Because then we would fear Her. But She is pure Love.

 We shall call her M, for mother, all that IS, was and ever will be. Hail Mary, our Blessed Mother! Behold the mother of God, the most Holy Theotokos. Behold the eternal , the one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit... Behold Kali..  

God eternal, the holy One, to whom all glory ever be! To whom all gratitude ever be! To whom all blessedness ever be! 

 

  M is for Lovely, Star of the sea.....K

There is Kali. She never met a head she didn’t like. If you pray to Her, she might take yours. When I gaze at the picture of Kali that I have on my altar I become breathless with joy. Still, I know that a person unfamiliar with Her iconography might find my awe and veneration of Her a bit strange, if not utterly misplaced. Kali does look a bit like your worst nightmare come to vibrant life—which is perhaps one reason I find her so utterly charming. I could look at Her in rapt attention for hours and never tire. The power of Her radiantly beautiful spirit has, objectively, nothing whatever to do with how She actually looks, or does it? As far as Mahakali is concerned, heads were meant for bowling. One responds to Her in a decidedly visceral way, in other words, and if you are shy of atavisms and like to have your religion clean, abstract, cerebral, neatly packaged and without the vitality and complexity and messiness of life…well then, bless you, and Kali take you!

She will take you anyway…in the end. She is called the Destroyer—Goddess Mother of the Universe, and it is from Her swollen breasts that the milk which sustains all life in all universes and in all realities flows unceasingly. She is the web and the weaving, the beginning and the end of all things, and the very Void from which all has come and to which all returns. So what does a Goddess like Kali have to do with peace? Well might you ask. But just as well could you ask—what does life have to do with you? What is the passage of time, and what is your highest and deepest freedom, and what your relation to fate, the inexorable? Kali is liminal, and everything liminal is profoundly sacred to Her.

She is your darkest secret, and the power of your deepest shame and woundedness. She is your highest dream and your profoundest passion. She is your desire. She is illusion, enlightenment, and utter screaming madness. She glories in all that is forbidden, feared, and repressed. She is death. She is outcast. She is the unclean and the feared. She is the elemental. She is orgasm and menses and food, and She is all that delights in the sensual celebration of animal existence. She is all that lies within the human breast—the highest and the lowest and everything in between. She is your most outlandish fantasy. She is your propensity for violence, for bloodlust, for cruelty and for kindness and compassion. She is at once the most holy and the most debased. She is the untamable undomesticated eternal wildness and freedom of your spirit heart. 

It is Kali in you that can scream in ecstasy and in anguish; that would tear the throat of the lamb so as to taste of the salt and the warmth of the blood—She who is the impenetrable silence of Samadhi and the sky-clad dancing beneath the stars. She is the primal glory of our being, the infinite Night of Pan, the freedom and the joy we have sacrificed upon the altars of civilization. She is the deathless and indestructible force which prevails unto the end which She alone is, and before which no creed, no doctrine, no ideology, no simpering moralism, no religion will stand—for all that which is of the mind is Her food.

Kali is Maya and Kali is Brahman, and nothing there is, or is not, which is not Her in fullness, unconditionally…for She is that which builds up and breaks down. And as a Shakta, I personally believe that woman was made in Her image and is an avatar of Her ineffable glory. And so then…what of peace? It is not the cessation of war or of suffering. Peace is Kali—the eye of the hurricane, the ineffable center and still point of the turning world. True peace is the heart of the conflict called life. It is the crown of the mighty. It is an awakening into faith. It is the unconditional yes, that with Prometheus would gladly say, “I would sooner rule in Hell than serve in Heaven” (for it is in ruling that I learn to truly serve...and may Zeus take my liver!) 

As a care-giver for the terminally ill I see this awakening into faith almost daily. What people struggle with in those final days and hours is too rich and too powerful and too beautiful to put into words, but to be allowed to be a witness to it is a truly priceless gift. People are given then an opportunity to surrender fully and with perfect trust to life itself. Refusing to do so…is a tremendous struggle. Surrender is grace is ineffable peace. In hospice we have a saying, "Dying can change your life so why put it off until tomorrow?" It could be called metanoia, and there isn’t any need to wait. We can surrender at any time. 

It is called prayer, and in dying, as in many other life experience it’s usually not done by the books, according to faith. We die as children in the arms of God, as human beings, not as creeds. It can be profoundly beautiful to be there when that happens. And if you really live your faith you will know what I mean when I say that no-one who really lets go and lets God dies but into life. You can live with tremendous intensity then. Everything superfluous in your faith convictions is stripped from you and the rest just falls away as irrelevant and what you are left with is the stillness and emptiness at the core of your faith from which all fullness comes. That something is Kali. 

Naturally then, my position regarding religion is rather ambiguous. As a product of human vitality and creativity (which again is Kali) it must be affirmed. On the other hand, I regard it as the very wellspring of all ignorance and suffering. So, to the extent that I am a Shakta, I blaspheme. This is Kali’s play, not mine—for mine is merely the joy and the challenge of holding in tension the fact that so long as I love Her I have missed Her altogether. 

My only religious guideline is that if it isn’t so damn paradoxical as to be incomprehensible it likely has nothing whatever to do with reality anyway, but everything to do with the necessary lies without which no social system could at all function. Peace then comes about when we become transparent to our own creations. It is what we ourselves become when we stand naked and alone and without the consolation of religious sentiment, philosophical certitudes or hope in things beyond this world, in the very face of absolute annihilation and can grin back at it screaming yes. That is Kali, for Kali is the question with which life presents us, namely the question of meaning. Our lives are the answer to that question. And that too is Kali. Aum.