ANNIE'S APHORISMS
To search for Truth is noble.
To know that Truth is already within,
and to patiently await its emergence
is wiser still.
The Truth is not something you must seek and find;
it is something that rises like the Sun from the depths of your own being.
Just as the earth is nourished by the sun and the rain,
so are you , my child,
suckled on the bittersweet nectar of pleasure and pain.
Let your thoughts be the ever-changing clouds
that drift overhead,
but let your mind find the peace of the still blue sky beyond.
It is out of the ignorant the Sage is born,
just as it is out of the caterpillar
the butterfly emerges.
To the one who is inwardly alert,
all things become messengers of Spirit.
To know of the inner mysteries of Life but to have no love
is as useless as a field full of grape-vines which bear no fruit.
There is no pain in life
save that which we choose to embrace.
As a leaf drops from a tree when its usefulness is spent,
so must you allow those experiences
which are of no further value
to drop from
you.
Follow your heart.
It will lead you a tortuous path
but it will lead you home.
Love comes in abundance to the one who offers it,
but avoids the one who, fearing the risk, awaits its arrival.
"If I do not shade my eyes but stare unafraid into the centre of the globe, the moon appears, round and white and full of silent watchings over the savannah. I hear moans from far away. Cries in the night. The hyena weeps. Her wilderness spirit so unseen, so misunderstood. She eats what others fear to touch. She is nourished on bones and blood. She knows that nothing of life is to be wasted. She feeds the future by growing strong on the death she encounters today. I am not afraid.
She has entered me, this Goddess of living and dying things, this Goddess of the African dust, of the long awaited rain, of the deep song of the night, this Goddess of ancestral longing and ancient breathings. She flows through me now, like the red soil of the Umfolozi Valley flows through me; like the red rich tide of all womankind, inevitable and cyclical, flows from between parted legs. Her blood, the eternal fertility, having the wisdom to leave unborn all that could have been but is not yet needed. I am not afraid. "
Ann Mortifee from When The Rains Come (The unpublished novel)
It
has
been
a
stifling
oppression,
a
magnificent
challenge,
a
heart
breaking
sorrow
and
an
extraordinary
opportunity
to
have
been
born
a
woman
in
these
times.
The
whole of history
must rearrange itself
to include our tactile intelligence,
our passionate heart, our primal power.
Deep in the female blood, we fear our own awakening
even more than do the men we love. For hidden there
is
the terror of the stake,
the horror of being the spoils,
the torturer's hand, the pain.
The relentless devastation wrecked upon Mother Earth,
is the same devastation that continues to be wrecked upon woman.
Is it any wonder we have hid so long in the shade?
But we are coming forward.
And we are being reborn.
We know who we are.
And we are setting forth for somewhere we cannot see.
The Great Mother clears her throat
as we rise to insist that kinship be rekindled,
that the darkness be released.
Out of the blackness of the long, long night,
we have seen the light of a full moon rising.
She has entered us. She is filling us with Her sight.
And though we know not where She leads.....
We follow.
Ann Mortifee
from When The Rains Come (The unpublished novel)