Summons

Circle on her Shore photo by Susa

We come, the old women, ten they say for every expat man. We come to Ajijic, all the solo old women, to form an energy constellation. We come, each for her own healing, and each to synergize the lake matrix for planetary healing. We come to receive the lake’s infusion of grace and power, to magnify it for the earth’s healing. We come, forming an invisible base in the ether over the waters. We come to this healing place because  maybe in our dreams we heard La Diosa del Lago calling us. We come to this place, because just maybe, before we came to earth, we committed to join together here when we were finally wise enough to make a difference. We come to save ourselves, and, whether through morphic resonance or the critical mass effect, we come to save the planet.

I’m one of the women who came—for the usual reasons as well, of course— financial well-being, Mexican culture, and ideal climate. But I didn’t know the lake would ask me for something back. I was sitting at her edge meditating one early morning, and the waves whispered it into my ear.What, my crystal? The crystal I had my friend bring me from Abadiânia in Brazil, the one I have had for years, the one my son got a kick out of seeing perched on the crown of my head while I meditate? That’s the one. You have it in your lap today. Please toss it into mine, the lake conveyed. That way we’ll both know you’re serious about connecting. I sighed and stood up. Gazed fondly at the crystal, kissed it goodbye, closed my eyes, and threw like a girrl. As expected, it landed wa-a-a-ay out there.

Now I always know where it is, as Ruth Gordon said in Harold and Maud when she tossed his  ring into the water. Since that morning, there’s something else I know. Catching it in words is a whole other thing, but I can say that I feel my relationship with the lake deepening. Is it the lake that connects the crystal and me? The crystal that connects the lake and me? Sometimes I feel as if I’m the crystal, always inside her now.

But it also changes the poetic picture I conjured about all the old women forming a constellation. Receiving the lake’s grace and magnifying it for the world isn’t just an idea or an image anymore. It’s signifies a portal. I’m a participant moving through the passage now, not simply a scribe evoking it. I gave up something precious and entered into an extended dimension.

It doesn’t mean I’m not still living here for financial advantages, living here because I love the culture, and living here because the climate and culture and village size allow me to live a walking life that brings a visceral sense of healthy belonging. But beneath that, my healing here truly is part of world healing, and something about Lake Chapala actually does make it a matrix for that healing. (matrix: Latin,‘womb,’ from mater, ‘mother.’)

I feel myself, born under the windy sign of Gemini, turning in some way into water. I am perceiving newly, or sensing new energies. I can call on this relationship with the Mujer Sagrada del Agua, as I did in this poem written shortly before my crystal summons.

Tonantzin Has My Back

In the grotto at Tonaltonko1,
waist deep in her thermal waters,
I leaned against her form
on the wall of the ancient cave.
Resting my head between
her vast stone breasts,
to Tonantzin I surrendered
my weight and my heavy heart.

Her form on the wall was a poem,
and when I pressed my back against her,
it spoke its meaning within me.
Her hieroglyph in bas-relief
sent its message echoing
all along my bones.
Forgive the past.
Move forward, forward.

Great Mother Tonantzin2,
whose temple at Tepeyac
became the shrine of Guadalupe,
spoke in my bones at Tonaltonko.
There in the dark of her cave,
the Goddess of Light and Water
bathed me, forgave me, immersed me
in epiphanies and grace—
and propelled me out to share her love.

©Susa Silvermarie 2017

1 Aztec name for area presently known as Tolantongo: canyon resort and river in Hidalgo, Mexico
2 In classical Aztec mythology and among present-day Nahuas, Tonantzin means Our Lady or Great Mother. She was worshipped at her temple on Tepeyac Hill, Mexico City, and much later, in 1531, reappeared there as Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some of her honorific titles are Corn Mother and Sacred Woman of the Waters.

The final line of the poem, “propelled out to share” came to me only after the portal summons. My own healing couldn’t stand by itself without the matrix of planetary healing in which to embed itself. I don’t believe I’m the only woman who has been summoned to these shores by the Sacred Woman of the Waters. Whether my sisters here choose to call this energetic force by the name I call her, or by any name, matters not at all. What matters is showing up, fully, inviting the water and the sky to meet in our hearts. What matters is being willing to channel the goodness we find here— out into the world.