An opening invocation I gave at the “Love On” Event on November 11, 2018

“LOVE ON,” dreamed into being by Kelsey Kreider Starrs and friends, was a space to experience the healing presence of love in a variety of ways.

 

---

When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.  – Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic

To love (eros) One’s Self

To the place of loving ones’ self that is birthed somewhere in the darkness of what Audre Lorde has named the erotic.

The space of gestational mess that is our power.

The inner knowing.

The silences within.

The room which is one’s own, as invoked Virginia Wolf.

 

I was taught to fear this place, to fear her, to fear her knowing.

I was taught that this place was sin, was flesh…was dangerous

 

And I suppose- no, I know now, that the danger is real.

The danger is that when I – when we- know this place of truth and power in our bones, in our bodies, in our souls, there is the space where we cannot and will not be contained.

Here is the laughter and joy released by women dancing round together in circles.

Here is the naming of the agony of suffering and violence we have known as we rage and mourn.

 

Here–here is US–here we are. And this is our power: To love, to truly love and breathe in the/this truth: we are loved; we are love itself.

 

So enter into the silence.

Move tenderly toward the darkness.

And listen closely to what she will tell/tells you.

 

You are.

You are loved.

You are welcome.

You are seen.

You are believed.

You are held.

 

You, oh darling one, are a survivor and light-bearer.

So shine on.

And you, my sister, are power and fortitude, courage itself in the face of all that sought and seeks to destroy you.

 

Feel this silence,

Hold yourself in tenderness.

May this gestational earthiness

Hold and surround you

And birth you anew in power and in fierce fire of course and surety.

 

To love one’s self.

Come into the darkness and find that love is you/yours.

 

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. – Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic