Jaqi Medaris

Tears of the Phoenix: Essense Essays Jaqi Medaris

Jesse Graye's Tears of the Phoenix illuminates an entire healing process, from a wounding past, over treacherous roads of despair and indignation, through gardens of hope and affirmation, and into visions of glory, as she reclaims her rightful inheritance as a child of the universe, with humility, bravado, honesty, humor, and high regard for Spirit. Her poems and essays often take the reader around an unforeseen corner ("treat regret like the thief it is"), offer a fresh look at well-worn images (the loose-fitting robes of the Christare "one-size-fits-all"), and match the mundane to the sacred with wryoriginality ("I am the brains in this relationship, [God] is the muscle and the laughs"). She expresses emotions familiar to us all, rage, loneliness, fear, joy and love, but through her personal alchemy they become "diamonds in the dust at [her] feet" and hold us "captive by silken restraints." We are reminded, in phrases that might well be magnetized to the refrigerator, that phantoms of the past "have only the power we give them" and that the light of truth can shine through nature, silence, gratitude, patience, and the remembrance of who we are. (From Preface by Lesta Bertoia)