Since time immemorial, during today’s Celebration[1] – near- co-inciding with the Winter-Solstice, and made even more powerful by the full moon! – our ancestors rejoiced in the Birth of the Light from deepest darkness. The festivals of light of some of the great religions, Divali, Hanukka and Christmas, are an echo this.
I am offering my poem ‘Frauenkirche’ – ‘Ladies’ Church’: originally a Baroque dome erected on the site of a much older sanctuary, in Dresden, Germany. In early 1945, it was literally turned into a pile of rubble in the course of an air-raid. – Some 50 years later, it was rebuilt with donations from all over the world, using as many of the original stones as possible – they are the dark ones – the topmost symbol having been created by a descendant of one of the pilots of the bomber-squad. –
For the Rebirth of Light – may this occasion become a turning point for all of us in the New Year 2022, so that we can change the world from the current pandemic into a ‘pandemic of love’[2]!
[1] The Psychreative Festive Poetry Season Finale, online, 19 December 2021.
[2] Shelly Tygielski and Lee Harris, 2021: Radical Self-Care with Love – a mutual aid movement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_81KcMc8_bs (the term ‘mutual aid’ was coined at the turn of the previous century by the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin; G.M.H.).
The Frauenkirche –
Ladies’ Church
Profound cthonic powers
have congregated here:
"Our Mother,
Who art the earth,
hallowed be thy name."
On this sacred ground,
and in Her celebration,
a church stood here
for more than 1000 years.
"Thy queendom come,
Thy will be done,
in earth,
as it is in heaven."
Throughout the centuries,
from small beginnings,
this church
grew to become
‘die Frauenkirche’ –
Ladies’ Church –
Who"gives us this day
our daily bread."
Until,
one night,
FIRE
RAINED from the sky,
the flames of hell on earth:
world's end,
ALL consuming!
"And She forgives us
our trespasses
as we forgive them
that trespass against us."
The buildings all around the church,
the whole city
burned.
When dawn rose
all
was in ruins,
blackened, smoking,
smouldering, glowing,
and thousands upon many thousands
dead.
A miracle
amidst the horror:
the Frauenkirche,
was still standing ―
it had survived
the unimaginably firy inferno! ―
But ― ―
like someone, who,
in horror
falls to her knees,
just overwhelmed by utter sorrow,
the huge edifice of stone
first groaned,
then roared,
then rumbled,
swayed,
and crumbled,
then, with deafening thunder,
crashed,
shattered,
to the ground. ― ―
When the smoke and dust
had cleared,
there just remained
a pile of rubble. Yet ―
"She
leads us not
into temptation
but delivers us
from evil":
Half a century later,
then,
stone by stone,
over more than ten years
the Frauenkirche
was rebuilt –
from both those old,
and blackened stones
as well as new ones, radiating,
in soft skin-coloured hues.
Now
she stands tall and proud again:
"For thine is the queendom
and the power."
Hand in hand,
next to each other,
we – my Beloved and I –
sit
right underneath
the resurrected dome.
My face turns heavenwards,
as organ music
embraces and envelopes us,
pours down abundantly
to flow
right into us:
we drink the sounds ―
grace never ending:
"And the glory,
for ever and ever,
Amen." ―
I hold this dome
inside me now,
so, when in need,
I can sit underneath
this waterfall of grace
that never ever ends,
remembering
the Frauenkirche,
that died
and rose again,
reminding me
that any wound
can heal,
be healed,
and, really,
that the dome of heaven
in our Lady's blue,
is always sheltering me
as I
live right inside
Her sweet, angelic breast
in the land of milk
and honey ―
paradise regained!
Dr. Gottfried M. Heuer, Jungian Training-psychoanalyst and -supervisor, Neo-Reichian body-psychotherapist and –trainer; some 40 years of clinical practice in London – including work in many European countries, including Russia, North, Central and South America, Africa and Australia; independent scholar with some 70 papers published in 7 languages. His books include 10 Otto Gross Congress–proceedings (LiteraturWissenschaft.de); Sacral Revolution (Routledge 2010); Sexual Revolutions: Psychoanalysis, History and the Father (Routledge 2011; Russian edition 2017); and Freud’s ‘Outstanding’ Colleague/Jung’s ‘Twin Brother’: The Suppressed Psychoanalytic and Political Significance of Otto Gross (Routledge 2017); and he is also a published graphic artist, photographer, sculptor and poet. Interviews @ https://vimeo.com/196609212and https://youtu.be/zxEkj9SsAKw
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