A MAMA DAY BLESSING by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

What is love expressed? What is it to tend the language of the heart?...

 How do I share beauty? What is compassion in action? How do I touch suffering in myself, and in others? What is a life lived as art? 

These are the kinds of questions I ask myself every day. I am in a continual inquiry about who and what and how all this came to be and how we can participate in it with our very aliveness.

Painting for me is a devotional act, a spiritual practice, a prayer and a way to share my love. My creations are the bountiful harvest from a life lived in service to Beauty and the Divine. I feel like a tree whose branches offer fruits and flowers to the sky – that must be -because they do not belong to me. My creations are both my offerings and my overflow. I share some of them with you on this Mother's Day, along with a blessing.

'Passing the Wisdom'

A Mama Day Blessing

This day we honor and celebrate

the women who have given life to us, 

the women who give life to ideas, the women who died giving life,

the women who wanted to have a child,

but didn’t get to,

the women who right now

are tilling their fertile soil for new seed,

the women who choose

not to have a child but have many children,

the women who are in captivity,

the women who are free,

those who were mothered well,

and those who had crazy mamas,

because any mama that did not love you well,

was not well enough,

the women who are struggling

this moment to care for their babies,

and the women who right now

snuggle with little ones under feather comforters,

for those whose mamas have gone on,

and for those who are mamas to be,

for women who miscarried precious life,

and those who carried many,

for single mamas who want their mate,

and for married mamas who want to be seen and heard,

for those who never got to have a mama hold them,

and for those mamas whose children

will not speak to them,

for happy mamas and sad mamas

and the Great Mama of all,

and the Mama who gave birth to God

and most of all…

for all women and men

who are in need re-mothering.

We unite in our love for all of our

quests for wholeness, connection,

belonging, nurturing and home.

All women today, we honor.

All life today, we celebrate.

Blessed Mother of life, 
hear the prayers of your children this day.

Open our hearts to hear

that which you are speaking to us and through us.

Shiloh Sophia McCloud

©2013

(Originally published on Shiloh's blog here) 

'She is Finding Her Wings' by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Shiloh Sophia McCloud has dedicated the past seventeen years of her life to the study and practice of art as a spiritual discipline as well as to helping equip women with the tools and understanding to develop their own creative potential. Shiloh’s artwork is dedicated to providing healing images of women and family. As a leader in helping to build a transformational art movement, Shiloh lives and teaches a philosophy that all art forms are tools for individual, social and spiritual transformation. Thousands of women have deepened in their creative practice through Shiloh’s illustrated Color of Woman journals and her workshops. Shiloh is the founder of Cosmic Cowgirls Ink, LLC a woman and girl owned university publishing company, magazine and membership community that now produces five Color of Woman journals with dozens more on the way. Shiloh is also the founder of Palm of Her Hand, (501c3 pending) which collaborates with artists. poets, musicians to create events and products. Shiloh’s paintings are internationally collected and her product line is represented at galleries and fine shops throughout the Unites States. You may visit her website here, or contact her through Facebook here.

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~