What would Sarah do?
From last Friday to this--what a difference a week makes. Today we return to the beginning to find the roots of a better story.
Last Friday (Oct. 6) I co-led a ceremony and celebration of joy and belonging, in which my friend and colleague Lisa Moriah and I created a virtual shelter of peace, blessing, and gratitude.
We called forth the archetypes of the Hebrew Matriarchs and Sarah’s sanctuary in the ancient Grove of Mamre, where she resided in a tent of reeds that was topped with greenery.
We created our ephemeral tent with drumming, sacred chant, poetry, and dreamwork as we called upon the spirits and gifts of our foremothers.
We left the tent ritual feeling drenched in magic, healing, and empowerment.
That was Friday.
Saturday, we woke to the blaring pain of news reports from Israel, where unspeakable horrors were taking place in real time.
“What would the Matriarchs think about what is happening now?” my friend texted me that morning.
Maybe this:
That their stories need to be told and understood now, more than ever.
That as poets and dreamers we need to usher in new stories to revise or replace the ones that are no longer working and that will ruin us if we keep clinging to them, unquestioned.
That we need to revive the voices of our ancestors who spoke with reverence on behalf of the land.
That we need to remember the stories of the Matriarchs, whose primary concern was passing along a spiritual (rather than material) inheritance.
That we need to revive traditions that honor women and stop interpreting the stories as justification for controlling women.
Replanting the seeds of the story
It has been difficult for me to show up here today. Because I know that some will say the seeds of the conflict in the Mideast are implanted in the stories of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar—the stories that I have come here to tell.
Yes, in Abraham and Sarah’s story, land was promised along with a line of succession and ownership of that land.
But this story has also been, amended, revised, and literally, weaponized.
I’m here to remind myself, and you, that the conventional interpretation of this story, as it’s been handed down, isn’t the only one.
I have been sharing my reading of the story publicly here, in part as an act of personal healing, and in part to share what I’ve been learning. Because knowing the full story can help us restore women’s voices and perspectives and so we can rebalance and restore our understanding of ourselves within a more sustaining tradition. Then we can ground ourselves in stories that help us blossom into wholeness and access our spiritual inheritances.
Perhaps now is the perfect time to do this.
This week on the Hebrew Calendar, the annual cycle of reading the Torah, section by section throughout the year, begins again.
This week we read, “In the beginning …”
In the beginning God created light and dark, earth and the sky, sun and moon, plants and animals, man and woman. God blessed it all and “found it very good.”
A handful of chapters later, we meet Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar.
In the beginning, these ancestors honored the land and held reverence for it.
In the beginning,they made altars beneath trees, and they made altars of trees.
In the beginning, they made sanctuaries on mountaintops, and they honored the feminine divine along with the masculine divine.
In the beginning, their stories lived and breathed with people for centuries before they were written down and codified.
In the beginning, before the stories were edited to justify systems of power and ownership and beliefs of a specific time and place—the seed-stories honored women, men, and the earth.
As writers and dreamers, we can reconnect with the original wisdom and write stories that will bring us forward into a future that we can look at and say:
It is good. And it is blessed.
Today’s poem, written last Friday
This is the poem-chant I wrote spontaneously just last Friday during the Sarah’s Tent online ceremony. It was sparked by a chant shared by Lisa Moriah, of The Temple of Divine Radiance, and which is available as part of the Sarah’s Tent Ceremony, which continues to be available as an e-course.
I offer this poem to you as it is, and also as an invitation:
This week, let a poem write itself spontaneously through you.
In This Grove
a chant-poem
by Tzivia Gover
“Sarah lived in elonei mamre a grove of sacred terebinths at Mamre ...” Savina J. Teubal
In this grove of leaves and reeds.
In this grove, a shelter of green.
In this grove, a well of light.
In this grove that sighs and breathes.
In this grove that dissolves like a dream.
In this grove that awakens in me
Forgotten tears of grief.
In this grove, I feel my skin grow soft
In this grove, as my hips flow full
in the dance of my long-gone Mothers.
In this grove
Where the promise is joy.
In this grove, we are the daughters still
And we are the heirs
Who carry the dream
The gifts and the prayers
Of our Mothers.
If you’d like to enter Sarah’s Tent and create your own poems and chants, incubate dreams for new stories that serve women, men, and the Earth, CLICK HERE.
If the price ($25) is too high for you just now, don’t hesitate to contact me for more options including a free pass or pay-what-you-can option.
Learn about me, my books, 1:1 dreamwork and writing sessions at www.thirdhousemoon.com.
Once again you have soothed my rattled spirit with your comments and poem (and photo of that tree!), Tzivia. Thanks for “showing up” in spite of your (shared) angst.