Thursday, December 31, 2020

Preserving The Blue Planet


  “The Sacredness of Water”

By Toni Truesdale

 

We inhabit the Blue Planet;

Waters ebbing and flowing,

Necessary for all life.

The Ancestors knew the

Sacredness of the waters.

They drank water every day

And, made soothing herbal teas,

Using the traditional knowledge

Of the natural world

Passed down through generations.

The ancestors remembered to give thanks

To all the elements, medicinal and food plants

That nurture and heal.

Today, we can honor

Those that came before us;

By remembering the Earth,

Our Mother,

The Blue Planet

Full of beautiful waters.

 

Truesdale copyright 2010

ToniTruesdale.com

 

 

 

 

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Mary of the Americas


 

“Mary of the Americas:

Mary, Erzulie, Corn Maiden and Coatlicue”

by Toni Truesdale

 

All things are born,

and all things return to the

Mother of the Americas.

Her aspects are both purity and fecundity.

The promise of life and the inevitability of death.

She is compassion and she is justice.

She can nurture and she can destroy.

She wears many faces,

For she is all humanity;

And is as multi-cultural as this continent has become

over the last four hundred years.

She is Mother to the new millennium.

T.Truesdale copyright 2000

Friday, December 11, 2020

The Mother, all Mothers


 

“The Madonna”

by Toni Truesdale

 

The beautiful dark Madonna comes down to us

from the our beginnings.

She has many names: Ana, Tiamat, Isis, Cybele,

Demeter, Sheba, Mary Magdalene,

Mary, mother of Christ,

Maya,  mother of Buddha,

Fatima’ daughter of Mohammed,

Nana Bakula, Spider Woman, First Woman,

Parvati, Oxum, Corn Maiden, Eurzuli,

Oya, Morrigan, Ishtar,Tara, Gaia, Saule, Amaterasu,

Coatlicue, Nerthus...

She is of the earth and the sky;

She is our mother and our mother’s mother, and so on

to the very first spark of life,

She is always,The Great Mother.

She is us. We are she.

 

Copyright 1976

Toni Truesdale.com

Friday, December 4, 2020

The Darkest Night


 

Darkest Night

 

That moment of blindness,

Just before

We turn into radiance.

It is the point of transition;

From fear into hope,

And Despair into faith.

And when helplessness evolves into courage,

Inaction into resolve…

We heal from old wounds,

And become whole again…

We light the candles on the Tree of Life

As we turn from the darkest night;

To help illuminate the world.



“Cycles and Seasons”

By Toni Truesdale

 

The recurrence of the seasons continue to encircle our lives,

Just as it gave celebrations to our ancestors.

Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice,

Fall Equinox, and Winter Solstice

Mark those passages in a yearly cycle all over the world.

We have learned to plant food and medicines

According to the agricultural calendar.

We dance in a circle to celebrate the planting,

Harvesting, and the storing of food.

Buildings, monuments, and spiritual spaces have been built

To align with the celestial movements that determine

The four seasons at the point of each transition.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Little Blessings


 

Little Blessings

 

Little blessings

Every daybreak;

For spirits to watch over us

As we go about a busy day.

For our children to be well,

Healthy and thrive;

And our loved ones, sometimes

Far away, to be protected

And angels to smile upon us..

 

Let us use our small prayers

To show respect and understanding

That we are part of the universal family

That dwells in thanksgiving

On this beautiful World,

Together

Every time we say our;

Little blessings...

 

copyright 2010

 

Saturday, November 14, 2020

For our new world being born


 

 

Prayer

On this day., I am here

Asking for help and guidance;

In overturning racism, injustice, greed,

Theft of Resources,

Trafficking of the vulnerable,

Hunger and poverty,

Open our hearts, please

Help us all heal,

Help us balance;

Through the unification of all races,

Tolerance of all religions,

Connection to every living creature,

To preserve our increasingly fragile world.

 

Toni Truesdale copyright 2016

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Just who are we? I challenge you to think deeply


 Throughout History 
Western cultures celebrate the righteous conquests over nature, 
women and Indigenous peoples; calling it Manifest Destiny
The rightful position of racist authority.
The people who have struggled to take back their sovereignty and identity 
only to find it distilled by the historic arguments of western power: guns, religion and education.
 For the onslaught this convincingly presented superiority of ideals is hard to extricate. 
? Is originality important or the continuing embrace of the ethics and aesthetics in academics because is so rewarded still.
Today we see this persistent legacy in systemic eurocentric concepts that when we want to discard this role to become a better country, more inclusive and just;
 it is found to have a great degree of difficulty.
.
We have to own the lies;
We have to retell history;
and deconstruct our academics and arts.
and redefine power.

That is how we begin to break free
and become who we need to be.

May the ancestors and those before in their suffering help guide into this better world.
Prayer for the Dead,
Prayer for the living,
Prayer for future generations
to live in a just and equal society
within the beauty of this world 
in harmony with its creatures.

Nov 4th 2020
   
    

Monday, October 26, 2020

Prayers for the Dead, Prayers for the Living, Prayers for a Becoming a New World of Justice




 

Historical grief slips secretly generation into generation…

Unseen yet visible emotionality

In sterile familiar poverty;

Pain, sacrifice still poisons unresolved time.

Victims caught in moments of past and present tragedy

That left a legacy of tears, haunting children presently.

Adults respond to medicate away impersonal pain 

Leading to destruction, cycle; again.

From senses understanding incomplete.

And, the land murmurs in despair, as well as in

The very air 

Filters atmosphere, in pathos steeped ...

 

Spirits all around

Some Native to this land, others brought to serve and slave

Still overlapping the sequence

Beyond dying, outside the living

Imprints of sorrow nestled in the soil

Discerned by the unconscious living mind perceiving

The footprints of historic grief.... 

Monday, October 12, 2020

Indigenous Peoples Day 2020


 

Prayer for the Dead

by Toni Truesdale

 

To all those conquered bones,

With the painful solitude of lone closed eyes.

It’s not just the victim that dies.

Did gold, silver and slaves

Make this destiny just?

Or did fate rape those women in lust?

Can they ‘save’ the souls

To make it just?

Or did Manifest greed burn the cross in the night?

 

Would it not be right,

To look back at 500 years;

And say to those dead

That we finally see their tears?

And to each that has suffered

Say a prayer for peace;

For the sake of the future

And the hope of release;

From that continuing cycle

Of servant of master...

 

copyright 2000

ToniTruesdale.com

 

Thursday, September 3, 2020

WE MUST VOTE! We must caucus. We must defeat the evil poisoning us all. And never give up our power. The Fate of our country, the fate of our world depends on our unity across race class and culture.


 

Women Breaking Through

 

Women are breaking through the bitter darkness,

After centuries of the patriarchy that stole

the Mother Right;

Millennia of misogynist and cultural struggles,

Against poverty, persecution, inquisition, rape,

Genocide, slavery.

Destruction of indigenous cultures,

Spirituality, languages continue;

As does the extinction of species, and the poisoning of the planet.

Women need to come forward

to rebalance the forces of life with the children of the world

 

May we speak in one unified multicultural voice of peace,

Preservation and protection…

 we will break through…

 

Women Breaking Through © Toni Truesdale 1998

Toni Truesdale.com

 

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Deep Woods


There was a place, and is there still;

Overgrown with tangled webs, wildflowers amid spiraling vines.

Ancient mythic images stand in solitary shadows,

Crumbling and cooling in the deepest shades cast by the sun.

 

The path runs through caverns and ruins

Travelled by foolish children,

For the garden invites them into a magic game.

An invitation few adults would venture to accept

Into this abandoned and dangerous solitude.

 

I followed this strange path,

As a child I followed the path.

Skipping into sanctuary

Lured by the magnet of abandoned trees with green apples

Left to rot under unpruned trees.

And the scent of honeysuckle.

 

Moss grew on staid, standing water of reflecting pools

Dimly redirecting the obstructed sky.

Hardly mirroring my face as I searched for little fish, tadpoles and lilies.

 

Perseus stood for eternity holding the head of Medusa endlessly squirming stone snakes,

I was awed and avoided him gingerly.

Athena minus a limb or two presided with authority.

 

Pan guarded the entrance of a tiny tunnel,

That one small child could enter fearfully.

Yet, spirits seemed to hover indulgently,

Keeping safe the wandering children attracted into the sweet solitude.

 

My favorite entrance was to sneak around the big stone gatehouses;

To dance by the bluebells

Into a cavern, dark and scary;

Once brick oven set with steps that led up into

Arches flanked by benches

Surrounded by the stories of ancient statuary.

I always went that way.

 

A small white temple by the Brandywine

Was perched on the river’s edge;

On the falls that connected to the millrun.

For there was an island on our side of the river

That had its own path to that point.

I would dangle my toes into the water on either side

Watching the patterns form from

My slightest movement;

Rippling, swirling endlessly around the rocks molded by the waters.

 

 

I would play for solitary hours,

Singing to myself

Perhaps those ghosts of those that died before

Heard my childish voice.

 

I wondered as a girl

If the river would know me later.

So intimate were we.

For time was insignificant here.

 

So, when I dreamed of the iron bridge many times;

I had to cross back, as a woman

And return to the garden of secrets.

 

I stole into it again and again

To find the same path as my girl child;

To put again my feet on familiar trails,

That years made more tangled than before.

 

Travelling the road backwards,

I reclaimed the child;

So pure in spirit,

Yet aware with all senses

Of what was before;

In this special timeless space;

This secret place

Now wandering paths inside.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

We will dance a circle around our Earth

Earth Dance

by Toni Truesdale

 

In celebration, many folk people,

Still dance in ceremonial thanksgiving, passages;

Spring welcome to the earth for sustaining life.

For traditional cultures still follow

The paths set by ancestors;

 Back to the ways of original instructions,

Brought by intermediaries between the Creator and humans.

Dancers are seen in the first art on stones;

For reverence is shown the rhythm of prayer, ritual and dance

All over the world.

 

Copyright 2013

Tonitruesdale.com

  

Saturday, August 1, 2020

I bear witness



I Bear Witness

I bear witness

To the new holocaust.

I mark the passing death; each day, every minute.

I bear witness to the innocents,

Humans of the Americas

I bear witness to

The global grief of the missing ones loved.

So many tears, a miasma of silent suffering.

 

I bear witness

To the indifference of the powerful

The vindictiveness of willful neglect

The turning away, blindly, deafly; so not to see.

And, those that bear the dangerous task of saving some lives from

Refrigerated trucks for corpses awaiting

150,00 burial plots and counting.

 

I bear witness

To the many afraid to look

Into the eyes of the city

Into the tears of the plains…

Those forced to work in poisonous places,

Immediate hunger and homelessness. hopelessness

There are those that refuse see the fear in each protective parent.

 

I bear witness to those demanding human sacrifice, again

For an impotent, greedy false god.

 

I bear witness as do you.

 

 

.