The Moon is Her Beauty Mark - A Writing By Shiloh

“The Moon is Her Beauty Mark “ A call to remember our Mother
By Reverend Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Have you seen our Mother? When she sees all her little children running to her she opens her gigantic arms and gathers us up like chicks. Back in her arms again, worlds appear, disappear, and reappear upon the rise and fall of her breasts. Her honey milk flows and flows and we are nourished. It tastes so sweet.

Trees spontaneously spring from her, for she is a tree of life to all those who embrace her. And those who embrace her are blessed indeed. Guardian oaks grow from her shoulders—pillars of strength for her children. Her breasts are orchards full of fruit for every single one of her little ones. Golden apples tumble from her armpits. Delicious fruits fall into our little pink mouths. The rust-red madrone of her calves is as smooth as silk for sliding down from volcano peaks through green and gold hillsides. She laughs brilliant, red, succulent pomegranates and you can see her bright teeth are flowering dogwood. Her womb, our warm red bed.

Can you hear our Mother singing? Birds are born upon her song. Redwing black birds, and opal-white doves, and red breasted robins, and purple-sapphire ravens fly right out of her songs! My favorite song is the redwing black bird symphony - all black with flashes of red winging a community of sound. I think seagulls are Mama’s favorite. Children in the midst of cities love their sound—it lets them smell the sea even while playing on a blacktop playground. Mama likes the vultures too—taught them their own sacred song of silence because they are ones willing to be death’s gardeners and fertilize garden earth. Mama much honors those who are willing to clean up after death. There is no where Mama is not.

Do you smell the scent of our Mother? That intoxicating scent of cinnamon and gardenia flying from her skirts as she moves upon her sandy shores, leaving footprints of frankincense and myrrh. Aloes spring up in the wake of her footsteps. When it is dark we can still find our way by smelling her trail. Smell the cedar? Smell the pine? Smell the redwood musk? Smell the sea? We are getting closer every second. There! See how her cypress hair blows to one side? And pink rose petals flutter from her ears lobes like shimmering pearl earrings.

Do you feel our Mother? She feels so comforting. Let us practice the wonder of living life in tune with the seasons and moons of our Mother’s body. Let us knit dresses of her cherry blossoms and dance again the dance of the unbroken circle. Let us rejoice, and sing again in circle the songs of liberation and freedom! You remember don’t you? How we sang the soil, the seed, the rain, the sun, the harvest? Remember how dragonflies circled our mother’s head in a multi-winged halo? The butterflies made crowns for our heads also, happy to rest there even while we played hide and seek between the worlds. Then we swam in rivers thick with salmon swimming against our thighs. Feeling so good is being a part of our Mother’s world. There is never a time when she is not with us, only seasons when we ourselves are either aware of her or not. But she is always there.
Let us celebrate our Mother’s body! And her skin that is every color she ever made. Amazing! Isn’t she? The rainbows and stardust of her skin make me want to cry. Like when her skin shines sky-blue, then new-leaf-green, then sun-yellow, all in the same day? My favorite days are the deep umber brown when her skin glows from the inside out. Most of the time she is as black as black can be. I heard we all used to be as black as she. Her ebony skin is the galaxy, the milky way scattered across the velvet blackness of her back; along her spine, infinite constellations, infinite pathways of wisdom; the moon is her beauty-mark.

Remember that time when we thought we were lost, but she gathered up our tribes in her ochre-red body and carried us safely across the abyss? Then came her days of glowing cobalt blue and poppy orange—those days of healing old wounds with her balm of new life. Her flaming heart transformed our fears. Then we praised her and touched her cheeks and hands, and rubbed the souls of all her feet with olive oil.

She has other kinds of days too - when we cannot recognize the colors at all - times when she is righting things that are wronged. We know our Mother is made up of love, and we also know she is fierce beyond all imagining. The sea is her medicine bag. Her fault lines her drawing board. Her skies are her tool box. She is the designer of everything. There is much suffering, and she is teaching us how to endure - how to create and sing our way through it. When we act without her guidance, we behave like motherless children. Remember when she got so mad, and told us how we misunderstood and misused her son’s medicine? How we take goodness and find ways to use it for harm? But that is a story for another day. (sigh)

Haven’t you felt her presence in the stars of your own bones? She lives in the marrow of the bone, as well as the granite of the stone. You can find her in the nectar of the hummingbird’s beak and in the pollen fuzz on the honey bees’ tiny feet, in the mist over the lake, in the purple of your favorite summer dress, and in the scale of the mermaid. She is in the spiral curl of the fern, the flower in the cracked city sidewalk.
She is the wind in our hair when we ride the wild horses of our dreams. She is Our Lady of Everything.

We find her image in honor of her everywhere. Those of us who know her, cannot help but make words and art as greetings cards for her. From her cosmic dressing room she emerges, in the colors and shapes and signs of her peoples and lands. Sometimes she has many arms and legs, sometimes she slays the demons, sometimes she beats the drum, sometimes she descends, sometimes she flies, always, she births. Always she loves. Always she forgives. She is the mother of all and of everywhere. She is the Mother of God. She is the Mother of us. Through her, all comes into being and in time we are taken back into her body. We may dream of what she does with us from there, but who really knows? We could say she is one, we could say she is many, we could call her by a hundred million names, or we could just cry out MAMA! She answers to all of her names.

When we surrender and let her love into our heart, it often comes in as a wave washing us awake! We can feel our hearts glow with golden sunbeams as our prayers take on form. Our wishes taste sweet in our mouths. She who knows everything there is to know gives us good ideas for our work. Her work. To work in her service is good, the very best. She makes us love folks we don’t even know. She creates in us an unreasonable desire to end all suffering. She teaches us how to set our boundaries by showing us how to honor hers. When she reaches out for us, we choose dancing instead of sleeping. We must acknowledge that it is, was, and ever shall be the milk from the breast of the divine that feeds our souls. And we cannot cease from telling the others about her ways.

Come with me, let us go together now to our Mother’s kitchen, her other children are gathering too— she wants to tell us something very important. Let us go! When we get to her casa, she will show us what we need to know for this time, this place. Like how to weave peace shawls out of our chaotic ideas. With her in our lives, we create medicine art. We sing creation songs, dance, paint, pot, bake, play, make love, write, pray and plant orchards. Her fruits become our fruits. Her Wisdom informs our hands and opens our hearts. Through Mother Wisdom’s pathways, we will transform. We are healing. Everything we need to do, is possible. Faith is our practice. There is hope!

Smell the smoke from her fire? We are here! Look, there, over the hill! There she is now, seated at her front door, shucking corn for supper. Tapping her brown toes to the blues. Isn’t she magnificent?

Reverend Shiloh Sophia McCloud
1-888-385-6866 shiloh@mcn.org
www.colorofwoman.com