Song 35
The ultimate religion
Is
Full
Moon
Immersion
In
The
Thousand
Moon
Eyes
Winking
From the ink black bull kelp
Where
The
Blue
Grey
Starfish
Feels her cautious way
Tendril
By
Tendril
Across
The
Shimmering
Rock
Pool
&
My scissors pause
Open
Mouthed
In the sudden realisation
I
Am
Drawn
Ever
Deeper
Into the Way once lost
Now
Clear
Now
O
p
e
n
i
n
g
Beneath
My
Ever
Curious
Feet
22/11/12
Whakapapa: written out of my experience of collecting karengo, a New Zealand seaweed, at low tide, under a full moon in Kaikoura. Scissors are used to snip karengo from the rocks. It was one of those stunningly beautiful nights, with the light from a full moon winking on & off bull kelp as the tide turned. My friend & I paused in our food gathering to spend time watching a starfish inch her way across a rock pool. When I returned to Christchurch the Self spoke; ‘The ultimate religion is the religion of karengo.’ A month later I woke in the night with the words ‘karengo is the lost way, suddenly clear beneath our feet.’ It seems to me that the practice of gathering karengo symbolises the act of gathering food from the vast ocean of the unconscious. The food being those dreams, visions, intuitions & sayings of the Self, that rise to consciousness to feed us & draw us ever deeper into our ‘lost way.’ The lost way being that unique path that is ours & ours alone to walk.