This is a multicultural anthology of spiritual writings by women. In rediscovering spirituality in a female context, this is ideal source material. By ‘source’ I mean personal soul food to feed my own yearnings, ground water for the wellspring of my daily life. Storming Heaven’s Gate skillfully bridges the everyday with the divine, featuring the writing of Pat Mora, Lucille Clifton, and Audre Lorde. I would like to comment specifically on the work of these women and its impact on my creative life.
Pat Mora’s contribution is a list poem, in which she invokes the Goddess through her many Aztec names. In a cry for wholeness and renewal she calls on Coatlicue, Tlaliyolo, and the Virgin de Tepayac/Guadalupe. Coatlicue is the serpent mother, representing all and nothingness from whence all emerges. Tlaliyolo is the creator/destroyer of worlds, and the Virgin of Tepeyac/Guadalupe is the eternal maiden, ever able to renew herself across the ages. The world springs forth, eats itself, springs forth again, dissolves itself in velvet blackness, and rises again, as one, as many, divine and common. These facets of the divine reflect exactly the kind of sensual, radiant cycle of spirituality that are the hallmark of Storming Heaven’s Gate.
Creatively and personally, I needed to engage the Goddess in a Latin context. In doing so, I found freedom from restrictive ideas of female identity that have been Catholicism's and colonialism's legacy. It is precisely the idea of sin, of the inherent pollution of women’s bodies, that had to be broken through for me to fully claim my creative energy and direct it.
As I continue to delve deep for inspiration for new work, I have to reach out for spiritual connection in an ever-deepening way. Whatever spiritual force is central to my life is being plumbed for imagery for language. Ironically, and in a way I can only begin to comprehend, this spiritual force is plumbing me as well. What I mean here is that I can't forget that writing is spiritual work for me, my tether to something divine. Personal success, critical or audience acceptance needs to remain a secondary consideration, as much as care about those things. ‘What is being worked though me?’ is the question that I have to ask myself, the question that demands an answer at the end of the day.
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