Beneath the poetry

The most sacred of tool we need to live an extraordinary life

This week’s poem is taken from Healing HER, Page no. 26 (unabridged version) by Sez Kristiansen

THE MOST SACRED OF TOOLS 

known to woman

is her ability to mold,

to knead,

to peel off

and to flesh out

all that keeps her life 

enclosed in the glass cabinet.

Saving her best for service and Sundays,

for tomorrows and one-days, 

for laters and maybes,

for after-motherhoods

but before-end days.

Women were made to live

by their own passion-driven hands 

and in that primal creation,

hold palms up

and knuckles down

for our foremothers past

who were unable

to heal themselves.

Their hands were unwittingly shackled 

and bereft of care, or worse,

free but unscathed

by life’s cuts and grazes 

that make for strong grips 

and robust self-mendings.

To begin to heal is to plant, 

deep into nourished earth, a future

to which all daughters

carry the inheritance

of the silver scalloped bones

of self-creation.

Which engraved, 

like moon markings, 

hold the verse:

“I sway to the rhythm,

my palms on this waste, 

hand-creation to birth-creation, 

I move at my own pace”

---

Why I wrote this poem

My Polish grandmother used to have a corner cabinet in her house in Zimbabwe. It displayed her silverware, china teacups, and delicately painted plates which were saved for special occasions. 

As a child, I used to wonder if these items minded being kept behind the thick, tapered glass. It was a shame to see them looking out at the world from inside those dark, oak frames.

To me, they were like beautifully trapped butterflies waiting to be set free.

“When was a special occasion?” I asked her, “What classed an occasion as china-tea-cup-worthy?” I continued to pester her with annoying existential questions until she threw me out of the house and told me to go feed the chickens…

Perhaps one day, I thought to myself while untying the wire that held the coop door shut…when my grandmother had a midday nap, I would open that corner cabinet and help the chinaware escape. I imagined delicate teacups waving their painted rose handles at me as they flew out of the open window, and scalloped plates doing summersaults in the air, while silver spoons embraced each other before dancing off into the night.

We never did use them - that cabinet became their tomb, and not because they weren’t special enough but because they were too special for what must have seemed like an unextraordinary life, which was not true at all.

My grandmother had a remarkable life. She fled the war from Poland to find shelter in a refugee camp in Iran before boarding an unnamed boat, destined for India. The boat was rerouted last minute to Southern Africa due to India’s independence from the British, and she made a life for herself in Zimbabwe. It must have felt like another planet compared to the Baltic forests where she was born and raised. She married a man from Holland, raised 4 kids, lost both a son and a husband at a young age, and stayed in Zimbabwe for the rest of her life - throughout Robert Mugabe’s rule.

But she survived. Every day should have been a special occasion for her. Every day should have been classed as a china-tea-cup-worthy occasion.

When I inherited a few pieces from her many years later, I made it my mission to use them - for morning tea, for afternoon herbs, to dig up soft soil, to let my daughter have tea parties with...her life is honored through the recognition that every day is a miracle and nothing should be left on the shelf for a day that may never come.

Lessons we may like to take away with us

We all have things that keep us enclosed in glass cabinets. These are ideas that some days are more worthy than others - and usually, because something special is happening to us, not from us.

It is an age-old concept that makes us feel like we need to wait until we are truly ready/worthy/beautiful/successful enough to receive special things. A damaged society - like the undisciplined mind - doesn’t recognize our intrinsic worthiness but makes worthiness an achievement to be pursued outside of ourselves.

It’s like trying to fill a well by tipping pails of water from above - when all we need to do is dig down into our own groundwater where we will find an abundant supply of fresh water to nourish us for a lifetime.

The idea that we are lacking is a great taming of the modern world and of the narrow mind. It is one that keeps us from living every day as if it was the most extraordinary.

A truly sacred tool for us all to learn is the ability to open the door today on what we are waiting for tomorrow, trusting in our worthiness to receive it.

Waiting for perfection (until we are perfect or our conditions are perfect) is self-sabotage at its finest. And we do it to protect ourselves from disappointment because we’ve all been through heartbreak. But perfection doesn’t exist in nature, in the universe, and therefore in non of us.

We are all just one big mass of extraordinary chaos, making our way through imperfect lives. In fact, it is the embracing of imperfections that gets us as close to perfect as we ever will.

You are here, dear One, because others before you survived. This is remarkable. You are also here because you survived. This is remarkable. You are worthy, without improvement. This is remarkable. And you can choose to wait for your life to begin tomorrow, or you can help it slowly, intentionally, and lovingly begin anew today. This is truly remarkable.

And by the way, you don’t need to honor the past by carrying it all forward. You can take pieces that resonate and leave what doesn’t.

Questions for you to answer

• What is keeping you in your ‘glass cabinet’? 

• What are you waiting for in order to be happy? 

• And where does joy lie in this very moment, without conditions?

Until next week!

Love Sez

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