TO HAVE AND TO HOLD by Stamatina Daniilidis
I had a dream I had a baby girl
Completely at the mercy of the universe
I couldn’t believe she was in my arms
As I thought her existence wasn’t possible.
I dreaded her arrival
She appeared on a mysterious cue
I looked at her with terror
Even though I knew she must be as fearful as I am.
I wish I could have aborted her
And halted this outcome
But I can’t undo her existence now
She is here - she is me.
So I contemplate my two options
Give her away
And leave her out in the cold
Or strap on my boots and guide her destiny.
I fumble as I try to hold her
And make sure she doesn’t suffocate in the fabric she is swaddled in
She showed up as a harbinger of my fate
And I worry about what my life is going to look like.
But I carry her
Even though she carries my grief
And I carry her because she is new
And has never been before.
And even though her presence signals what is now gone
She was conceived nine months ago through a union of love
And born through something that lived
Something that mattered.
She left the warmth of a womb that cradled her for the first time in her life
And now meets this terrifying new world
But she is not a blank canvas with no compass
She is the product of something that lived, that held her, that grew her, that mattered.
Her presence means I must let my current dreams die
Mourn the life I can’t keep living, the plans I can no longer honour
But she has no conception of the future, no agenda, nor any requests but to be tended to
Right here, right now.
She is the most vulnerable thing in the universe
But somehow knows how to feel, to see, to hear, to reach, to hope
She has no choice but to trust her new gestation of the unknown
And that is her bravery.
All she wants is to be given a chance in this new world
So a chance I will give her.
GOD IS GRACIOUS by Stamatina Daniilidis
When I find myself in the pigsty
God meets me and says
Do not you see the throne I carry for you high?
When I find myself a wayfaring stranger
God points to me and says
Do not you see what awaits you in My manger?
When I find myself wanting none of the day’s roles
God kisses my feet and says
What need have you for escape
When salvation is right beneath your soles?
When I find myself slipping on the peels
God humours me and says
And remember not that you have wings on your heels?
When I find myself denying peace
God humbles me and asks
Child, who is it denying peace?
Indistinguishably
Who is it that seeks peace
When My Garden lies outside your idle dreams
Of should and shouldn’t
Where grievances cease?
Know not you already My Will is the only will?
Know not you already that it matters not
If you find yourself in the pigsty or the manger
As a ravenous king or wayfaring stranger
As John the beloved or Thomas the doubter*
If you venture far and outer
When the waitress always brings you the check?*
When I have sent a sparrow to sing on your shoulder
At the base of your neck?
Whether your days are calm or full of wreck
When what you can see of all My creation
Is but only a speck
Whether you are delighted or dismayed
When the dues have already been paid
When every crevice scavenged and stone unturned
Was My face all along quietly discerned.
When you marvel at even the petal of a flower
I am there in the details expanded
Indistinguishably
When you throw the towel in
There I am in the basket which it landed.
In the malaise, the dullness, the void
Ask yourself, child
Who is it that asks the void be filled
When the void cares not
If it is gaping or employed?
*Inspired by quote from Brennan Manning
THE REALITY OF THE PARALLEL by Stamatina Daniilidis
And God said, ‘The first shall be last and the last shall be first’
In the name of the rejected in a world cursed
Lest Kingdom Come before their time
To know what it would feel like to inherit ten Earths.
“The knowing of which would change everything”*
Hanging above their heads like forbidden fruit
The chosen ones, locked in purgatory
Among the fainthearted, who reap all the glory.
The silence of the facaded, deafening
Who dance centre-stage on the graves of the sorry
But for the Grace of God would the actors ever know
What it would feel like to have been born as the ones who go.
*Quote by Neale Donald Walsch