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What is this land of green to you, Neb Deshret,
Father who walked alone through the dangerous red land?
Father who walked alone through the dangerous red land?
Guardian of those who wander far from the river’s edge,
You know each hardship, bearing strength enough to endure.
Did you claim our waters that rose and fell not with seasons
but instead at the terrible fury of your storms?
Lord who walks the spaces of transition,
I have seen you transform the very passage of time.
Where once the boundaries of your hand were defined by flood and recession
You have now fiercely taken hold of the cycles of my home.
I sense you when the trees grow bare, when the ice hangs heavy on their limbs.
The color of autumn shifts to grayscale, and you are present in its sudden absence
As sharp as the snow that lands heavy on my bare, outstretched palm,
As hot as the air that burns deep within my lungs as I speak to you
of that once spoken by the great king who sought your protection,
recognizing your command over the cold winds of distant lands.
Set, you have claimed the winter’s edge,
Your grip rests upon the bladed peaks of our mountains.
You recognize the power of extremes
and balance them in your palm as a well crafted knife.
Father, you are not gone from me when this land’s cycles renew.
As the people of Dakleh sang your name in the oases
So shall I drum your heartbeat in gratitude for life returned,
Appreciating your power in the verdant leaf that rises from treasured water
Acknowledging the bounty we are gifted with the constant flow of rivers three.
Sa Nut, as light falls in winter or summer,
I fall to my knees and kiss the ground,
then rise with fist to chest and another aloft to the sky.
My eyes turn North to seek you amidst your mother’s expanse,
And I find you striding forth in constellations,
Until clouds obscure you from view, and I know that battle has begun.
Yet with the coming of the storm, your voice rattles the earth beneath my feet.
Your victorious shout against the Uncreated that assures me another day will dawn.
I will be there to greet you as the mandjet carries you back to Appalachia,
Your name on my lips,
Your voice in my heart.
I am your child of strange lands,
Who finds you at times in the knife of ice
and even the gift of living things.
But always, forever, shall I seek you amongst the stars.
In 2011 I wrote the following excerpt --
Jul. 13th, 2021 04:00 pm"The best way I've found to connect with/to Netjer is simply to stop thinking, open my eyes, and just be.
The leaves changing colour, the scent of rain on grass, the feeling of safety within a warm home on a chilly evening, the changing patterns of lines formed near eyes and lips as skin is used and worn away, music... gods but how can music be anything but part of this unknowable, unfathomable Thing that is holy simply by virtue of the fact that we are alive and can experience what it is to live.
That, I cherish. That, I worship. That, I thank each morning for another chance to be for one more day."
This journal begins as an effort to return to that joy, that experience, that connection with being alive, through the gods, through the land, through the world that exists through my senses. A decade later, and I recognize the need to find what I knew when this journey first began, but have since lost: the profound power of the Divine in the world that exists around me.
The leaves changing colour, the scent of rain on grass, the feeling of safety within a warm home on a chilly evening, the changing patterns of lines formed near eyes and lips as skin is used and worn away, music... gods but how can music be anything but part of this unknowable, unfathomable Thing that is holy simply by virtue of the fact that we are alive and can experience what it is to live.
That, I cherish. That, I worship. That, I thank each morning for another chance to be for one more day."
This journal begins as an effort to return to that joy, that experience, that connection with being alive, through the gods, through the land, through the world that exists through my senses. A decade later, and I recognize the need to find what I knew when this journey first began, but have since lost: the profound power of the Divine in the world that exists around me.
