Celebration

Sugar

by Toni Truesdale

Celebrate overcoming the past

All People of Color

Is it freedom at last?

We begin each morning

Sweetening our cups of coffee and tea;

With sugar refined as

White as history;

Trying hard to distance itself

From the memory

Of genocide and slavery.

Now In the beautiful, warm vacation seas.

Shanty towns and the company store

Create the stillness of poverty;

The Eden now cleared of Native Peoples

And the terrorized Africans

Overworked and disposed before 30.

All to create fortunes for entitled families.

Money from death and misery, bleached

Pure by virtuous European banks;

In a society where income is so esteemed

It became the western hierarchy of ruling currency.

Celebrate overcoming the past,

Where all people are valued at last.

Celebrate the yet to come;

Where full freedom is finally won.

Dedicated to the late Reverand William Potter

Truesdale copyright 2011

Together woman can Protect the future generations: Circle Dance

“Circle Dance”

by Toni Truesdale

Many ceremonies all over the world are danced in a circle.

In the northern hemisphere people dance counterclockwise.

In the southern hemisphere people dance clockwise.

We all follow the rhythms of the earth

.

The drumbeat is the heart of the great mother, ancestress of all life.

All people have danced in this way at one time.

We all share a humanity and one inter-tribal world.

The races of women join together to preserve and protect the world as we know it

For our children and grandchildren into our shared future.

ToniTruesdale.com

Copyright T. Truesdale 2013

testimony of the stones

Standing Stones at Kinnell

For over 5000 years this stone circle

Stands sentry to the largest Loch in Scotland;

In turn feeds the Great River Tay to the east,

And the cascading River Dochart to the west.

Nestled between the mountains of

Gron a Clahan and Beinn Leabhamn

Standing still in an open prayer.

Copyright 2019 T. Truesdale

ToniTruesdale.com

Goddess of a Thousand names

Goddess of A Thousand Names:

The First Female Divinity, Our Common Mother, Earth

Toni Truesdale

 

(Migration: Creation story)

Our ancestors, all, tread through pristine wilderness, crossed deserts, glaciers, oceans and at each stop seeded future generations. Across Earth there is a clear connection from our genesis to the present manifestation of the divine female; The Great Mother,                   ((Tara with the Sun and the Moon)

whom produced all life on this Blue Planet. The passages continue today; but now it is time to reconnect the bonds that tie people to this World; to each other, to all life. May we begin to celebrate again the source, (art: The Source) her sacredness: Goddess of a Thousand Names

                                   

 (  Sanctuary).

Humans have always been in motion:

“Primordial people

Set forth on the longest journey;

To here, now as each individual breath descends;

We all exhale in the moment of still moving humanity”

We walked through centuries, created cultures, religions, shrines, art; developed languages that spoke a thousand feminine names for our sacred earth 

            ( In her Footsteps).

  

“Ancestors, all came through historical patterns of migrations

Moving through hunger, fear, curiosity

Diaspora, trans-Atlantic passages, immigration

Displacement, clearances, long walks and removals…”

                                                               ( Diaspora)

Some of her names we remember: Magna Dea, Tara, Callileach, Danu, Terra Mater, Tiamat, An, Demeter, PachaMama, Mawu, Nana Bakulu, Tiamat, Nut, Gaia, Tonantzin, Hon Tu, Bhumi Dea, Joro… For every step in the movement of humanity there was a name for beloved Mother Earth, the original Creatrix.

                                                              ( Tiamat). 


We need to rediscover these names, remember and create anew sacredness to our greatest commonality this world we share with all living things.  

Tracing back through our common female primordial past through the mitochondrial DNA human origins begin at the southern of Africa

                                                                 ( EVE). 

We are a people evolving, moving as are all species, with genetic knowledge inherited each generation to the next back to the beginning, where all things are connected.

“The circle of life is the

Center of the Earth,

Cycle of seasons,

Rhythm of the winds,

Timelessness of the elements

Spiral of the generations

Crossroads of visions,

Spirits of the Four Directions,

Medicine of healing,

Red, black, white and yellow of the races of humanity,

Roots of the Great Tree of LIfe,

All linking humanity, animals,

Plants, birds, insects

To the oneness of all things…”

The prophesies of many indigenous people speak to this time. We face a choice, to live in a more sacred way, of balance with all our relations… 

        

                                                            ( Migrations)

“Mothers of the Continents”

Grand(mothers) of the continents

Crossing into now deep waters...

Weren’t we all once one?

Ancestors evolve into descendants

To mix culturally

Contradicting with irony

The centuries of violence caused by the mode of current biases...

If we could perceive through generations

Past into what will be

It would transform pointless superiority

and embrace all the children yet to be

As our common family.

( Fates of the Earth)

All images and words are copyrighted.

 Please contact me for permissions for usage. Thanks

Peace and Compassion

Angel of Truth:

Spirit of Reconciliation

by Toni Truesdale

Peace cannot be absolute,

Until the Process is complete.

The courageous steps towards reconciliation are

Full of pain, tears, heartbreak...

The anguish needs recognition;

And responsibility accepted,

Before absolution.

For perception of historical grief

Must be believed, by all...

Sincere reparations,

May be inexact;

But told with unconditional truth,

To have an amnesty in equality;

And in forgiveness, peace.

T. Truesdale copyright 2009

ToniTruesdale.com

man's Inhumanity to men, women, children

We are taught to see Eurocentric patriarchal history as victorious.

Governments call people to war usually for conquest, resources, vanity in self serving justification.

Masses of soldiers come forward to fight, die or be wounded; families held hostage.

Those that have fallen, suffered due to the chess games of the powerful;

We remember.

But is continuous violence the answer?

Carnage:

There are imprints on the land;

Of grief and pain.

I see this, feel this, hear the tears, sometimes.

It overwhelms me.

It took me until my teens to realize everyone else didn’t feel the

Agony of others;

Past, Present, Future…

It’s in the cities.

I could not bear the frustration and anger

Imparted unknowingly.

I wore the pathos of children’s lives,

Unable to thrive in daily fear;

Too acutely in my heart.

Tears in my body, tears in my art.

Over the plains one day

I just started to cry for hours,

Fragments of feeling left on the land.

Filled me with mourning…

Ghosts of beautiful people, animals..

A land now devoid of life.

For even shrubs cannot grow in grief.

These silent emotions,

I know them as my own.

I can almost touch the transparent memories

That are so real to me.

How can others not perceive?

It is so loud, so clear;

This song of sorrow.

Because these imprints

Unfelt by many,

Still sleep in the unconscious

And filter into lives unknowingly,

To harm us all.

Just to verbalize, record

This is what went weeping

In despair…

Those unswift deaths;

Lives that were stolen,

By history celebrating conquest.

That caused such human suffering

Fresh and old;

Blood still lies on the land.

In the strokes of human gain,

People died and survived a terrible pain.

Now all over our suffering earth

Our Mother World grieves

As I do.

And anyone that can hear this carnage still;

Speaking so loudly in silence.

T.Truesdale copyright 1998

Sky Dance

Sky Dance

by Toni Truesdale

In this series that celebrates the four elements

Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

The sky dance is the most rapturous.

It evokes the essence of Candomble;

which is sacred transport into the world of spirit.

Communication with the divine is one of

our most elemental longings

and exists from our most archaic traditions.