Friday Dispatch: Take a Peek

A message from the mirror

Friday greetings,

Every fourth Tuesday, the Ebb and Flow writers come to our Zoom with blank pages, ready (or not!) to write. I offer us a quote – some weeks, a poem, others, an exercise. Then I set a timer for 15 minutes, and we practice.

This week, I read a passage from the introduction of one of the books I just started, Mirrors in the Earth, by herbalist Asia Suler:

Everywhere on earth there are mirrors, clear as mica, that will show you your goodness once more. No matter where you are – in the midst of your intricate self-doubt, your spiraling path of self-recognition – there will be welcome reflections, bringing you home like lighthouse beacons. Take a peek into your backyard – stories are there to hold you, comfort you, bring you back into the fold. Go looking for yourself, and eventually you will find mica. Common, spectacular, radiant, and familiar. Something many layered and made to translate the light. A being who is able to withstand the heat of these times and conduct the gifts you have been given into this life. You are so much more brilliant than you realize.

I started my freewrite without writing at all. Nothing was coming, and I didn’t want to force it. Sometimes it’s like that. As I had told my group just a moment earlier: “Follow your energy.”

Instead, I looked in the mirror and sketched for a few minutes, revealing a woman whose expression I couldn’t fully read.

I asked her what she wanted to tell me. Here is her message.

*

I.
Take a peek
into your own soul.
Take a peek
in the earth mirror.
Take a peek in the sky mirror
the moon, sun, and star mirror,
the soup pot of your life,
rich and frothy and complex.
Welcome each reflection.
Sit with it a while.
Let darkness and light
tumble through your being,
forging fragile new formations
only you could produce.

II.
Let it be incomplete.
Let it be a layer.
Let it flick and peel
and build and crumble
See what remains.
See what fades.

III.
None of this lasts
but the love.

*

Sometimes, our brilliance is so familiar that we walk right past it.

What if you took a peek in the mirror(s) instead, taking the time to receive the message of your “common, spectacular, radiant, and familiar” self?

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

---