My talk from #2021PoWR. The video of the talk is here. On the panel with me were Dr. Alka Arora, Kimberly J. Davis, and Kris Malone Grossman.

​In 1893, Swami Vivekananda started his opening speech at the 1st Parliament of World Religions thanking the sisters and brothers of America. And, I was thinking, how amazing it is that this interfaith convening has been happening since then, recognizing that the solutions to the problems that the world faces will not come from any single entity or tradition, but from the space of dialogue and collaboration.
 
In the face of what we are facing globally today, there is often a tremendous pressure to act.
 
And, what’s needed right now is being able to act from our inner guidance—that our actions be vitalized by knowing rooted in embodied, holistic modes of cognition. Women’s spirituality emphasizes multiple ways of knowing. For too long, the dominant, often androcentric verbal/intellectual/analytical modes have been seen as having all the answers.
 
We can see that these give only incomplete answers. Acknowledging this, we need to practice and get comfortable moving differently, from a place of embodied, depth-based intuition. Instead of letting ourselves be pressured by external codifiers that signal we behave in certain expected ways, it time we find, grow, trust our inner authority.
 
The old pacts that divided our world into camps of right and wrong—us and them—have proven to be inadequate. Insofar as they are affiliated with models of justice that are often rooted in a colonial/western metaphysics, they have divisive aftereffects. We need to break these pacts, and realign ourselves with a different way of moving in the world, seeing me/us/them not as right or wrong, but holding the recognition of our deep interconnectedness—that we are part of the same becoming--stream—that the same energy that created every other form of the world made us, and vice versa.
 
Any real influence we can have on each other’s thinking and actions must also come from this place—this confluence—of interconnectedness. Such a notion of activism sees us as braided—not only with other humans, collectives, tribes—but also with the nonhuman and more-than-human elements embedded in our pluriverses. The remembering of our interconnectedness is a remembering of who we are. When we know who we are, we can draw on the power to create change from a story that stretches back and forward across generations, across cultural/geopolitical formations, across the membrane of memory, across species.
 
It is time, also, to look at all the ways in which we have been socialized to see ourselves as powerless; to ask ourselves, who is invested in keeping us powerless, who benefits from our experiencing powerlessness? Which systems? It’s time to divest from those systems, and to create new systems that come together not as linearities—as blocks—but as movements. Borders of movements are continually shifting—making possible crossovers into heretofore unknown/unborn freedoms.  
 
It’s time to revision dualistic philosophies—every ecological node where the imperative of perceiving phenomena through an either/or lens created splits in our own being.
 
In Saktic Tantric philosophy, it is the dance of the still and the active principle—Shiva and Shakti—continuing since time immemorial—that gives birth to life as process. This dance is the mystery at the core of All-That-Is, it is the story of wholeness—the incipient, in potentia, unformed, as well as the potentiated, the formed, at different stages of dissolution. Shakti—as the primordial cosmogenetic energy—forms the ground of the Absolute. Every wave or vibration emanating from the ground re-creates the pluriverses. The Absolute is eternal, and changing.
 
Every activation—creative action—mirrors the inexhaustible stores of possibility and energy in the Void, the dark face/phase of the Mother. Every ripple of energy arises from the desire-body of Shakti, aspecting three forms of the Goddess: sthula (material), sukshma (subtle), para (supreme).
 
In the tremendous need of the world, it is not the size of the action that matters—it is how we open our hearts to the world, embodying the mutability—the seasonality—that is an intrinsic part of our arising from the Source.

Sibyls on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michaelangelo (photographed today at the Sistine Chapel Exhibition). 

​The first Sibyls—the "Black Doves"—came from a long lineage of African prophetesses. A decolonial perspective on art history would talk about the bodies in Renaissance art. Decolonizing herstory would mean bringing the story back of women whose prophecies were appropriated by the Church. ​

I have a poem up today as part of Dusie Collective's Tuesday Poem series. My thanks to Rob McLennan for the invitation.

A recording of my poem "Ordinary Annals" for the reading series hosted by periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. (You can read the poem in my chapbook Ordinary Annals.

I am donating three copies of my poetry chapbook from above/ground press, Ordinary Annals, to the Asian American Women Artists Association's first online auction, as part of their end-of-year fundraising campaign (November 5-15). With a limited print run and personal inscriptions by me, these are collectibles. If you would like to bid on this gift set, you can register here. Ordinary Annals is one of forty artworks and art experiences featured—in case you are looking for gift ideas for the holiday season—and of course this is a wonderful way to support AAPI women in the arts. 

Whether your bid contributes $50 or $500, your bid will go a long way in supporting AAPI women artists and art professionals lead the narratives of their own stories and legacies. Register and start bidding now.

I am on Episode 223 of Jazz Ready, reading my poem "Homing Instinct." Thank you to poet and playwright Magdalena Gómez for having me, and for the love and warmth with which she made this episode.
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Or listen on Spotify.

Listen below to my talk presented at the "Women’s Ancestral Wisdom, Witches, and Spiritual Connections to Nature" panel during the Women Rising! New Visions for a Post-Patriarchal World Conference (San Francisco, CA, October 12-14, 2018).

Remantling Serpent Energies for the Healing of Post-Patriarchal Possibilities for the Body, Intimacy, and Futurities

Abstract:

Many feminist and women’s spirituality scholars have been asking how we may make ourselves more available to an imagination that orients us better to becoming post-patriarchal subjects of post-patriarchal moments.

Centuries of living within societies of domination has left our bodies, nervous systems, wills, and histories with accumulated trauma which, we have found, acts as a limitation upon—or wars upon—the arc of the possible. This trauma must not only be discharged to make us more available to ourselves, our promise, and each other: it must be transformed in a way that the energy released contributes to the liberation of all life. Engaging primarily the traces of serpent reverence found in South Asian religious, folk, and nondominant traditions, my paper suggests that the medicine of snakes holds keys for our safer embodied being, relationships, and resilience. Being in this moving condition of safety orients us to ways of relating that center instead of othering, include instead of excluding, vision and become instead of fearing.

I argue that a partnership with ancient serpent energies can assist with individual, collective, and intergenerational healing. I will be examining oracular traditions as well as findings and claims from complexity theory, neurobiology, and epigenetics to propose a multi-pronged framework of remantling serpent energies to work with us. Which snake practices found in tradition may be reclaimed in keeping with an ethic of care and reciprocity, and which of them need to be decolonized? I explore how to call on and reconnect with serpent energies in a way that rebuilds our ancient solidarity with the Earth, as well as bridges across the borders of coloniality and modernity/rationality.

​My thanks to the marvelous Lantern Review for including Ordinary Annals in their September Asian American Poetry Companion, among some beautiful poetry picks—and, for scoping so well the textual ligaments connecting these poems.