I have just begun working on my timeline, one of our first assignments in my new E-Course with Christina Baldwin on Restorying Your Life. I think I have a lot of work to do because so far I’ve only made it UP TO the event of my birth on January 2, 1943. It seems like I’ve reflected upon and traced my timeline back to Infinity, itself. The first four sections of “little Sue’s” timeline are Infinity, Big Bang, Evolution to Homo Sapiens, and Ancestors. Then my Human Timeline begins as conception in April of 1942.
Talk about “reframing and restorying”. This is going to be exciting.
The major reframe of my story has already emerged (and I have 29 days to go) as: I came from God and Infinity. My birth mother gave me expression as human on Earth, bringing me forth from Infinity and God, where she, herself, returned shortly after my birth. Her expression of this event (being pregnant with me) was given to me by her best friend so many years later. She had told her friend, upon knowing she was pregnant with me, “Now I know the purpose of my life.”
This is not the first time I have worked with this story. My spiritual and writing mentors and guides tell me, and I think correctly, the first story that needs to be written is the mother story. I have many facets of this story down in words, for there are truly many facets and secret silences around my birth and heritage. I am going to welcome the tools I will be given in this course to open up this story more than ever before and let its graces fall upon my life today.
Now I share Joyce Rupp’s poem of birth with you — Every word is a word of truth for me; I have asked permission from her before to reprint her in my work and received a surprising personal note back from her that it is ok to do so for my writing purposes. And I will share her website with you. I see she has a book, published in 2002 Cosmic Dance, where she knows what I am just discovering, that we are truly made of the stuff of stars, and we date back that far, so I feel very comfortable and confirmed in the timeline for me that appeared on my paper this morning.
http://www.joycerupp.com/
In her book (one of her many, many books), Joyce Rupp, in the tradition of the Wisdom Writers, opens the path to the inward journey to a deep awareness of Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom. She is a member of the Servants of Mary, a free-lance writer and retreat director. And a most prolific writer, to which she remains true.
The words in bold text in this poem speak to me and of me deeply; the truth of these words resonates warmly deep, deep in my heart of all knowing; all the words wrap around me and flow through my soul, but the words in bold text are places in the poem to which I will return in silent meditation.
This poem expresses so joyfully for me the true magnificence of the nature of all of our births. This is what I want to remember in my dying hours.
Gathered together am I
from a history-held mystery,
a bundle of memories am I.
Caught from smiles and heartaches
of faces and places past cherished,
given in love from the heart of life.
From kisses and lovemaking,
from caring and growing,
from vibrancy and vitality,
the gathered memories of my own named person
have been gifted into existence.
Surprises from seeds and secrets,
gifts from unknown voices and events;
here am I, so ordinary, so unique.
here am I, so simple, so complex.
knowing that the seed of myself
has the touch of gathered memories;
gleaned from the ages of another time,
seed and sperm seeking, making known.
a birthed bundle surprised into life
light filling the center of a new spirit;
the blessing of eternity passed on:
urgency always to seek the face of God,
first gatherer of all good memories.
(c) Joyce Rupp
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