Tea with the Muse

Making a Case for the Muse

Well, it’s a silly thing to have to explain,

making a case for the Muse,

because anybody who’s

navigating an insurance claim

for a fallen tree or received a speeding ticket

because the Rolling Stones came on

and you just couldn’t help but dance

and you pressed so hard on the pedal.

I just can’t get no, no, no, no... satisfaction.

I mean anyone who forgot to renew

their driver’s license and got turned

away at the airport

understands the need for amusement!

Come on, just look at the text thread.

You are perusing through right now.

Almost every other text is

asking you for something.

How about the people

who got a hold of your phone number

and won’t stop inviting you to apply

for that job or apply for a loan

that you already qualified for or better yet

tell you that your mother lost her phone

and she’s trying to reach you.

And she died three years ago. Rest her soul.

Can you see how much the muse is needed?

Can you see?

If we don’t start laughing more...and soon

This whole thing

will try to convince us

that this is reality. Imagine that!

And still you wonder, what if it is Mother,

reaching from the other side?

You light a candle for her just in case

There is definitely a need for the Muse

when suddenly you have more

doctor’s appointments than

long lunch dates with girlfriends

who call you darlink’ and batt

their eyelashes at you, like Marlena Dietrich.

It’s just rough these days.

When you finally got

into a routine of happy hour and

found a beverage that tastes just right

and makes you chill out immediately

and then your doctor tells you

it’s going to turn to sugar

and you just can’t have sugar anymore.

WTF is going on here, people!

And then there’s all the paperwork

and the whispers of divorce

and diagnosis all around you

and the password hell? Don’t get me started.

Right now, there’s more than one friend

who’s having delusions

and the dementia articles

won’t stop showing themselves.

You can’t help but click

on that one tip that will keep you

from forgetting your dog’s name.

Do I need to convince you

there’s a need for the Muse,

for goodness sakes?

How about this? The reality that

a woman can grow a mustache in her 50s?

Uh huh. Overnight!

And suddenly

there’s more hair

on your inner thighs. Ew.

And you’re just so grateful

if you happen to have a lover

who appreciates you getting

more furry because

there’s more fur coming, you know?

The hair in your eyebrows

migrated to your chin, and

that is just no good!

Then there’s that innocuous mole

that you like to call a beauty mark

that has one black hair and

one white hair growing out of it and

they seem to appear overnight and

you don’t have white hair or black hair.

I mean, what the actual flying F!

If you keep them there for amusement,

they will eventually curl at your chin!

Sometimes I wish

I could talk to God and

ask Them about certain things.

Do you have a list like this?

God, do you have a moment? Please.

Couldn’t you have made it so that

we don’t have violence built into us

as a possibility and we could

still have free will?

Couldn’t you have made

the instructions for healing

a wound a little more

readable?

Why would you allow

bizarre things like

extractive capitalism to even

enter our minds?

I mean, the list goes on and on, y’all.

What’s on your list?

Yet more than a list of complaints,

I have a list of

gratitudes that runs all day long.

Dozens upon dozens of anemonies

in my garden, soft magenta, yellow centers.

The regal Valley Oak and the

large Band-Tailed pigeons from California,

and that the sun is shining

through my window, even though

one of the trees had to be taken down,

the neighbor asked me, and I did,

and it’s sad, but now I can see

the mountain and the sun.

The gift that when my heart is hurting,

my kitty will come and sit

right on top of my heart

and purr without being petted.

It’s far longer, the list of gratitudes

than the list of complaints.

There’s definitely a need for the Muse

because amusement is medicine

that everybody needs. The muse always

prefers leopard over beige.

She definitely has a preference for

rhinestones over buttons.

She really likes

fried chicken and mashed potatoes

instead of broccoli and fish without butter.

The Muse cannot conceive of a world

that does not have butter,

I mean, can you?

Or chocolate? That’s a whole food group

for the Muse, y’all.

But here’s the thing.

If you invite the muse in,

she can be extremely disruptive

to whatever invented balance you pretend

you’ve created in your household.

She wants to disrupt your life. She used some giant golden scissors to

cut you out of your box, the one you made!

And you’re standing there questioning

if you should step out or not because you

don’t know what you’re going to find out there

and you’re not sure you can make it back

from wherever you end up

by Monday morning at 9 o’clock.

Sometimes you just don’t care and

you walk out of that box anyway,

and you find the blue sky, you always knew

was right there.

Do you think about quitting

your job 10 times a day?

I mean, just admit it. I do.

I may not be employable, however.

Do you wonder why

that person you love so much

has a sticker on their bumper for the

opposite side of the party you decided

is the most right choice?

When you see someone smiling

in the grocery store for no apparent reason,

while they’re gazing at the crackers,

gluten-free or wheat?

Why don’t you just walk up to them and ask

them their secret

and tell them how glad you are

to see them?

What have you got to lose anyway?

Nuthin’ Make their day. What if each day you could

just smile as often as you think about it,

just break into a full scale, non-beautiful,

unapologetic, toothy grin.

That’s just one of the ways

to let the Muse in.

I’ve got lots of other tips and tricks,

for the seduction of the Muse

when you’ve been having a dry spell.

Lubrication definitely helps to get things going.

And let me tell you, you better get things going.

Don’t wait too long and let your body

go to sleep on you!

If you invite the Muse to come into your life,

she’s going to request more action

between the sheets

if you know what I mean.

Whether you are having

a lover now or not,

she still has demands for

getting the juices flowing.

Just for today.

I know exactly how

I will court my muse.

It helps to start

with the leopard underwear

and the push-up bra

and the rose oil on my nipples,

the sparkling lip gloss that

makes huge lip prints on my pink cup

in the pink cowgirl boots that stomp

with abandon, all that helps out!

Your Muse has a different kink than mine,

of course, what is it then,

that your Muse requests of you?

There is definitely a case for the Muse,

because the news is just bringing us

to one dumpster fire after another,

and I’m not saying we don’t have to

keep taking out the trash.

I’m saying we need

to adjust our schedule and our priorities

to create spaciousness

so the Muse can take up residence

in this house you call “my life”.

Give her chocolate and striped it socks,

red ones, and purple butterfly barrettes

and play her songs by the purple man, Prince.

Make her a cup of tea for you and me,

and let’s hang out in the imaginal land

where everybody’s already free.

And of course,

there are flying unicorns and fairy cake.

I’m headed to the giant canvas now,

where a circle of women is gathering

in colorful clothing, the Council.

They arrive with baskets and crock pots

full of the yummiest food to Stardust Ranch.

I made my famous lentil soup and hummus

from dried chickpeas in preparation for the party!

And the Phoenix woman, yeah,

the one who rose again

is appearing on my canvas.

She has lots to say to me

and the Muse is the gateway

for hearing her voice,

and I am listening.

The truth is, today I’m walking with a limp.

Like Jacob, I’ve been wrestling with an angel,

and I won’t let go until the angel blesses me.

But in the meantime, I’m walking softly and

carrying a big lipstick and a walking stick.

Honey, I just know deep down

in my stardust bones,

that we all need to invite the Muse to tea

and offer her a giant paintbrush.

I just know these things.

Like Dolly Parton says:

Decide who you’re going to be

and do it on purpose.”Join me on October 3

Ancestor Ceremony - 24X48 if you are interested, it is available at 40% off. Please let me know!

All upcoming events including in person circles, and free classes and book launches are available at www.musea.org Join us for the Elements of Grace book launch - with Bethany Zare - I illustrated the cover and the inside art.

No Time to Turn Back

This is no time to give up on what matters to you. This is not a time to surrender into despair. The signs of the times are not a sign to stop. We are weary and it is good and normal to admit it. These times are also not a sign to use all of your energy in fight mode.

We need to reserve our strength. To choose ever so wisely how we will steward our life force and where we will put our resources and how we can live our lives not in constant reaction. The power over structures and constructs want us to be caught up in their power struggles. Women’s voices shouting into their deafening silences.

We are rightfully dismayed and disgusted but we will not be stopped for our sacred work.What you love and care for and desire can still be at the center of all of your choices. Each day we choose again and again to serve the highest good while not exhausting ourselves. We can choose to find the beauty everywhere while not turning from the suffering.

We can cultivate the depth of community that we long for and not wait for someone else to do it. You do it and I do it and we do it. Call the circles or come to those of us who are calling them ourselves. These are hard times indeed. Our grandmothers warned of them.My grandmother called this “the end times”. These are times where goodness is alive because we are co-creating it. Move forward according to the power you have in your heart and body. Each day, whatever it is, is enough. Trust that power in connection with the sacred and the natural world.

Choosing always what is right and good for you before any other choices. Many of us, oh so many, are here beside you. Sound women with sound voices and sound medicine are gathering now. On the mountaintops, in the forests, in the valleys. We are always gathering. We’re gathering each other. Now.

BE HER NOW

The sun is setting over the soft magenta anemones

with golden centers where the bees drink.

And I can’t stop wondering

about where all of this began,

this narrative to be more,

do more,

become more,

achieve more,

more,

more than you are.

More.

More than you need to be.

More.

By someone else’s standards.

More.

To the degree that you lose

whoever you already were.

For a time, of course —

whoever you already were can never be lost,

because that’s all within you anyway.

But the narrative of strive and drive

and carry the burdens of the ancestors’ crimes

is too much to ask.

The band-tailed pigeons are fluttering in the valley oak,

both of them on the watch list right here.

I listen to the sound of their wings.

And when the ravens come and the squirrels run,

how they all communicate together.

I can’t help but wonder

where that whole narrative started.

Whose grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother

first had to step out of the matriarchal framework

into the dominant framework in order to survive,

and how this errant thought

that there was something better over there to become.

Something better over there to have.

Something better than what she had.

Something better to achieve,

to receive,

to compete for.

To even ask for,

but worst of all,

to want for.

To want for something other than what there is

in one’s own self and life and being.

Something better

stirring us to look outside of ourselves.

And I just can’t help but wonder

about those moments in each of our lineages

when we are striving towards something better,

which really makes whatever we have seem somehow less,

and us seem somehow less as a result of it.

The hummingbird is pausing at the rose,

red-trimmed white petals blooming

beside the golden sun-kissed tomatoes

and the mint,

the basil.

Everything wants to be enjoyed.

It doesn’t want to be compared.

It wants to be appreciated for what it is.

The tomato and the rose and the mint

do not have a story of needing more

or being better.

They become the fullest versions of themselves

in this sun,

in this full moon energy.

And I’ve been writing for days,

decades,

to articulate the unarticulatable.

To share that which I cannot find the words to share.

There’s a sacred urgency

humming in my stardust bones.

And it’s about this:

how everything we really need is already here and innate.

It’s with us.

We don’t have to earn it.

We don’t need more.

It doesn’t need to be better.

But the riddle is

that isn’t how we experience it,

and it’s not what we’ve been taught,

and it’s not how it feels

in the daily struggles of our lives.

And yet there’s this sacred unhooking that happens

when we realize,

or just to come from,

for a cycle

or an afternoon

or an hour

or the length of a poem walking through your heart,

that everything that is needed is innate.

That there’s no place else to get to,

nothing more to add,

and nothing better to become.

And that doesn’t mean we don’t wish

for a small patch of grass

to lay on our back and look at the moon.

That doesn’t mean we don’t wish

for sturdy, solid boots

that will last for more than one wet winter.

That doesn’t mean we don’t wish

for everything to be organic and sustainable,

and the salmon to not be farmed,

and the strawberries to not be GMO’d.

We do wish for these things,

but it’s how we internalize them,

how we make it mean somehow

that we’re something less.

Everything I’ve been moving toward

is toward this idea

of revealing ourselves to ourselves

as the ultimate act of sacred sovereignty:

to not need more,

not be better,

not need to be seen and acknowledged.

Not need to have a title or a designation

or an affirmation by others,

but to simply acknowledge

the innate majesty of who we are.

And the journey, really,

of recovery,

of making new promises to ourselves.

Not promises about more and better,

but promises about being.

Not promises about needing to belong somewhere else.

Not promises about needing to heal some ancient wound

that happened before we were ever born

that we’re trying to heal this lifetime.

And not just to simply be here now either.

More like

be her now.

Like even for a couple of seconds.

Right now.

Right now.

As the butterfly bush dies

with the purple rain-colored flowers,

beckons for a kiss from the passing flutterby,

just looking for that connection

through the sun and the air.

A place to be met within one’s self.

A space and a place

where identity just rests in itself

through this expression of soul

that has always been here.

That is so easily forgotten,

not because we forget,

but because it is hidden from us.

Some gorgeous way to access the truest voice

which is held within us

and set it free from the constraints of silence.

Some way to curate this gorgeous consciousness that we are

so we can design our own minds

and liberate that self-expression

which is begging for form,

for matter,

for energy equals matter at the speed of light

to become matter at the speed of light.

Plus love.

Approximately equals the stardust bones that you already are

in this cooling sack of stars.

Where you can source your own presence enough

to embody your sensuality with more pleasure

than you could ever have imagined belong to you.

To manifest the prosperity

which is in alignment with the generosity of all of creation.

Because everything we need has been provided,

and it’s so hard to remember that

when scarcity is enforced.

When the morning light came on the pink lady apples

and there were enough apples to eat throughout the day.

What generosity,

what generosity.

Prosperity manifested,

to see it as such

and love it,

to be in love with the apple.

To be so in love with the apple

that you could spend an afternoon

or an hour

or five minutes

catalyzing your calling,

not to have or be more or better than,

but because it’s just innate and natural for you

to want to create beauty.

Not to save the world,

but just to create beauty

because your hands want to,

because your heart sees some potential.

Not to rescue,

but just because it’s f***ing beautiful to make beauty.

And it’s enough.

And you are enough,

and you know this.

You know this deep down in your cells.

That you are a sovereign initiate

of this cosmic unfolding.

That you, like me,

are part of an ancient futuristic Stardust Lineage.

That we don’t need to do anything to become it.

We just say yes to it.

And then the practice is the lifestyle.

A lifestyle of pleasure and beauty and self-expression

with intention

of continually arriving in the now.

Be her now.

No permission,

no apology,

no need to become.

Just being for the sake of being

is the beauty unfolding right now,

as this poem runs through my body

like a wild horse

looking for a view of the harvest moon.

Shiloh Sophia

Good morning everyone! I dreamed all night about the ranch. Here are my rambling thoughts about what Rose and an invitation for you to relate to where you live in a new way! Have a beautiful day!

Good morning! In today’s episode, I’m inviting you to design a point for yourself. To fall in love with the tedium. And to do five things today with With Me. Tune in to find out.

How is your relationship with pain dominating your life?

Do you create the space for pleasure?

Today's podcast recorded from the convertible today on the way to the "spa" aka gym is a dare to do this practice three times today. The Muse is asking - will you listen?

A poem about stepping outside of our comfort zones... and meeting the old woman of the forest.

This is a reading from my book, Tea with the Midnight Muse, Invocations and Inquiries for Awakening. This one’s called Medicine Woman, and it goes way, way, way, way back to when I was 30 years old. It was at one time published inside of the Mother Tongue Publishing We Moon Calendar.

And today I am painting with Havi Mandel, co-director of Red Madonna. And you are still invited to join us for a 13 moon journey in the sacred feminine where you activate your medicine woman. Okay, ready? Ready?

Medicine Woman

The wild one lives within all women.

She is known as Medicine Woman.

She holds the tools for healing in her magic basket.

She sings her prayers, you know.

Medicine Woman knows stars and sums.

She listens between worlds.

Medicine Woman cannot be domesticated at all, ever.

Even when we don’t recognize her, she is always here.

She has blue butterflies and red roses in her hair

and golden boots with wings.

She’s at the movies with teenage girls on Friday night.

She gets a tattoo of the Guadalupe

on her left bicep in San Francisco’s Mission District

and the Sacred Heart of Jesus on her right bicep.

You may catch a glimpse of her silver striped leggings

as she roller skates through New York’s Central Park.

She teaches workshops on right brain, left brain,

the critic and her lover, the muse,

or the geometry of numbers or raw food

or revolution for breakfast.

She pays for everything with cash.

She paints glitter on her toenails, fire engine red.

Just don’t think you have her figured out.

She will always surprise you.

She shows up in a crimson dress

sewn with a white dogwood bodice and a bay leaf hem.

She is the sound of bells.

She may let her armpit hair grow.

She is the place within all of us

that wants it all and wants to give it all up.

She swims naked in the ocean.

She rides motorcycles up the coast.

She paints and writes and dances and dreams

and she has multiple income streams.

She is medicine woman. She heals the unexpressed in us.

She asks the question, who are you not being?

Her life is her own.

She is on her own and she likes it that way.

Don’t be surprised if she asks you to miracle tea

and you find yourself drunk with aliveness and honeycomb cake.

Shiloh Sophia

Today I wish to dedicate this to three incredible members of our team

who have shown up in extraordinary ways this week. And many weeks, but in

particular, right now. The one and only Curate Kelly House.

Co-leader of Sacred Echoes, Isabelle Guzman Stark.

And live streamer, Vicchi “V” Oleski Thank you.

You are all medicine women to me and to our community. And I love you.

Making ritual conscious.

First, there are three long spoons

laid upon a napkin from Hawaii,

handmade on top of a cutting board

made by a teenage daughter.

A cup from Monet’s garden

and the ingredients.

First, filtered water in a teapot from New York.

First, smelling roses from three beautiful godchildren.

Laying out the honey from where I grew up, Lover’s Lane.

Grinding coffee, mold free and you begin

the whole thing I learned from a Muse

by capitalizing the word Coffee

and organizing the ingredients in beauty.

Once the coffee has gone into the French press

and the water has boiled

The rest of the process begins.

The scoop of honey goes into the cup.

A scoop of coconut oil goes into the cup.

Cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla go into the cup

and stir the little mash into a ball.

When you put the water into the French press,

don’t forget to set your alarm for 5.33 minutes,

and only then do you froth the half and half. When the time feels right

after you’ve looked out the window and pet the cats

and pondered your attitude for the day, o

nly then do you add the half and half,

the milky foamy substance Into the mix in the cup.

And then you stir vigorously, making a slurry of yumminess.

(Resist the temptation to drink this elixir.)

Make sure everything is emulsified.

Look out the window again. T

ext that one person that you know needs to hear from you,

that they are loved.

Then stand around in fuzzy socks

and breathe deeply

as if you have all the time in the world. S

mell everything. Love everything.

And when the alarm goes off,

smile as you gently press down the coffee.

But then wait.

From here, as you ponder the deliciousness of coffee.

Coffee, or what we call Tea with the Muse.

You set your tone for the day one more time

to an outlook, not just of gratitude, like, hey,

I’m grateful for that,

but active appreciation, a

nticipation of bringing beauty and amusement. Call your Muse right then,

right before the coffee is ready to pour.

She is usually sitting with her group of friends

cackling on the dark side of the moon.

She loves this dark new moon solar eclipse energy.

When you are ready, invite her!

Don’t take your eyes off of her

as she comes because she may

slip through the cracks in the floorboards

if she doesn’t quite feel your presence.

The quality of your presence in this sacred

in this less than 10 minute ritual that will determine

whether or not the Muse actually appears.

When you call her you know

she’s a bit of a fickle one and a bit of a wild one.

She demands a quality of presence.

She demands ceremonial time.

Kairos instead of industrial time and Chronos.

The Muse doesn’t have any clocks but the moon.

And believe me, she wants to be with you.

But she will only appear and only stay if you slow down.

Then, pouring it into the cup and stirring again.

Then finding the perfect place for you

and the Muse to sit in fuzzy socks and fuzzy blankets

and recognize you began the day with making ritual conscious

and every single other action in this day

will be shifted as a result of the quality of your presence.

Life is good. As our art matriarch used to say,

being an artist is so romantic

With love, Shiloh Sophia

We start this weekend -