Stranded

Uprooted yet stranded.

Patti Smith is a writer, poet — and musician. Her book The Coral Sea is an ‘imagination’ in response to her friend M, who died as a result of the AIDS pandemic. (To date 36 million people have died as a result of what the WHO calls a ‘global epidemic,’ literally the definition of a pandemic. In 2018 alone over three-quarters of a million people died. Most cases are in sub-Saharan Africa.) It tells the story of his solitary ocean pilgrimage to see the southern cross, Crux, and take upon himself the wings of the Herculean moth. Patti Smith finds her voice to speak to her sense of grief and loss. She is stranded and uprooted. Our tradition is to find words of comfort to share with someone when they have experienced grief or loss. The collective voices of comfort tend toward healing. Ironically, the words and voices we seek are not the ones of the living but we seek to regain the unique voice of the departed - the missing voice, the voice grieved.

Have you ever been uprooted, stranded, lost, and needing a voice to call to you?

Our nomadic pathways have begun to converge. If we look ahead we plan to hear from Madame Guyon, a French mystic from the 17th century. She was jailed for her beliefs. She said, turn inward, turn to hear the inner voice.

To the missing voice, grieved, we add our ancestors’ voice, our inner voice of the Beloved, our musical voice - soundwork as soulwork, and the waiting voice in the darkness. The coral seas converge.