Invitation to Poetry: Guardians of the Threshold

Welcome to Poetry Party Number 35!

I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your poems or other reflections. If you have your own blog, please use the Mister Linky widget below to add a link back to your website.  If you don’t have your own blog (not required to participate) or if you just want to post your poem here, please skip Mister Linky and go straight to the comments section to add your poem.  Make sure to check the comments for new poems added and I encourage you to leave encouraging comments for each other either here or at the poet’s own blog.

Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog if you have one and encourage others to come join the party! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post)

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The Poetry Party Theme:

Lately I have been contemplating the sacred feminine and sacred masculine as integral elements of my spiritual path and practice.  One dimension of these is what Richard Rohr calls the “Sacred Yes” and the “Sacred No”.  The feminine with its archetype of welcoming, nurturing, enfolding energy is the Sacred Yes of our lives — all those things, people, and opportunities we embrace.  The masculine with its archetype of boundary setting and protection (think warrior) is the Sacred No of our lives — the healthy setting of limits and protectors of our gifts and energies so we don’t over-extend ourselves.

I have been very much in a season of yes lately, welcoming and embracing many amazing opportunities that have come my way.  Just in the last couple of weeks I am feeling more of a draw again to contemplate the places of no in my life.  The opportunities to which I am not being called right now or which take energy away from the yeses to which I have committed myself fully.  Accompanying my meditation on the Sacred No has been the image of the Guardian of the Threshold.  These allies and companions are much like the gargoyles and statuary placed at the entrances to European buildings to ward off evil spirits.  Our own internal guardians are those fierce aspects of ourselves that help us to clarify what is life-draining and what we need to release to live fully and help to maintain those boundaries.  The photo was taken in Riga, Latvia last summer on our ancestral pilgrimage.

What does your own Guardian of the Threshold look like? What is he or she helping you to say no to?  What is the yes that needs protecting these days?
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© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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