Homecoming

Homecoming
You have come this far...
keep moving...don't turn back.
No one holds the measure
of their own undoing....no one,
the meaning of their dying.
Hold what lives
behind the masks
of your own making...
the music of your wild name.
Know that every tumble,
every turn on your twisting path
is a dance within a living
church of elements...
a sanctuary of stars
wings, breath and bone
where the masks of your making
are undone.  ~ Ian McCallum

The Rising

 The Rising
One day your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
"Rise up!" it will say...
"Stand up inside your own skin."
Unmask your unlived life...feast on your animal heart.

Unfasten your fist...let loose the medicine in your own hand.
Show me the lines...I will show you the spoor of the ancestors.
Show me the creases...I will show you the way to water.
Show me the folds... I will show you the furrows for your healing.

"Look!" it will say...the line of life has four paths -
one with a mirror,
one with a mask,
one with a fist,
one with a heart.

One day, your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
Ian McCallum

Untamed

On our last day in Cape Town, before my journey half way around the world to my bed begins, I stumbled upon an amazing art exhibit at Kirstenbosch which encapsulated my entire experience on this trip. There are no accidents! I was blown away by the synchronicity of Ian McCallum's words and Dylan Lewis' bronze sculptures. Dylan sees a parallel between wild and pristine uninhabited areas and the original untamed human nature that resides within all of us. His evocative figures are a fluid combination of man and animal, nature and humanity.

Strictly speaking, there's no such thing as human nature, there's only nature and the very human expression of it. Nature then, is not something "out there". We are of it and in it.