Tornados of Fire

This is an essay I wrote just before I started this blog, in June of 2015. I just found the handwritten draft among my things, and although I think I have told you about this dream before, and this piece looks back more critically and perhaps negatively than I would today, I still feel that it is worth sharing, slightly edited:

Very few dreams have stayed with me through the years, but one vividly symbolic one is never far from my mind.

I was about four when I had this dream. In it, I was taking a walk up our road, a country-suburban "lane" near Schenectady. I looked to my right, and realized with horror that an enormous tornado of fire was burning its way through the field adjacent to our property and heading straight for our little white house. I turned around and, as fast as my little legs would carry me, I raced to the house to warn my family. I ran up the steps, opened the door, and wanted to shout out a warning, only nothing came out. I was so afraid that my voice had stopped working. So I ran all over the house looking for my mom, dad, and two brothers, but no one was there. It was only when I returned to the dining room -- the center of the house -- that I realized that all the furniture had been removed, and I had been abandoned. I stood frozen in place, waiting for the tornado to hit, when I awoke.

I was never actually abandoned as a child, of course. In their own way, my parents did a courageous job of trying to "do" the 50's American suburban model, given the highly dysfunctional Depression-era families they had come from themselves. My World War II veteran father worked for General Electric, and came home each night to sip a succession of cocktails. My uncomfortable-in-the-domestic-skin mother chain-smoked and sipped coffee at 5 AM each morning to carve out some time to herself. The tiny white kitchen was classic 50's, books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring lined the living room bookshelf, and a shoebox-sized and shaped black-and-white television (with probably an 8x8 inch screen) was our window to everything from the local "Freddy Freihofer" show to the nightly news. Our house was surrounded by fields and had a blue wading pool and swing set in the yard. 

Yet clearly that dream reflected the emotional landscape I felt I was living in. For whatever reason, I felt utterly alone in the world, left, yes, to face even the most dire threats on my own. When I looked at my parents, I evidently did not see love, concern, or recognition mirrored back to me.

So it's interesting that it must be around this time that I was first taken with Mom and Dad to church, one of the services at our historic Episcopal church that featured its then-thriving men and boys' choir. The minute I heard the sound of this choir, I was enthralled. Utterly enthralled. The clear boys' voices and the men's voice combined to create magic. I wanted to sing in the choir. Period. This music was me. At the age of four, I knew this, and I was ready to start singing. However, my mother returned a few days later from a chat with the choirmaster with the news that I would have to wait a full two years before I could join the choir. Two years! I couldn't bear to wait, and nearly counted the days!

So it was, that sometime after my sixth birthday in 1962, my mother drove me down to my first choir rehearsal. I was almost beside myself in eager anticipation. Yet when we arrived at the choir room and walked in, I went into shock. This was the wrong choir! Around me, several young girls, several teenage girls, and some older women were collecting music and hymnals, and preparing for the rehearsal. I was introduced around, and I dutifully sat down and joined in the warm-up and rehearsal. No one could see that, for all intents and purposes, I had just died. 

It wasn't a case of gender confusion. I didn't want to be a boy. It's just that I had fallen in love with a sound, and a repertoire of music, that I would never experience in the St. Cecilia Choir ("the girls' choir"). If I didn't know by that first rehearsal, I would soon learn the full extent of the inequalities between our choir and the men and boys'. First and foremost is the fact that the men and boys' choir was respected. Almost every Sunday, the rector would find a way (in his hearty, faux-English accent) to praise the other choir. If we received the odd mention, it was with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. The men and boys' choir members were paid and considered professional. They worked hard, there is no doubt about it, and so did the mothers. My mom eventually ferried my brothers back and forth to three rehearsals a week, in addition to a Sunday service. My brothers came home once a month with a small pay envelope, and early on learned about the link between effort and financial reward. We girls knew without having to be told that we were inferior, that we were not worth training more comprehensively, and that females were simply not part of this grand, glorious English men and boys' choir tradition. And like virtually all women in the church in that era, we were volunteers to boot.

I came close to dying that year, psychically at least. As the months progressed the rest of that school year -- first grade -- I responded to the shock by developing nearsightedness and a habit of pulling out my hair that alarmed my teachers and parents. I went from being a vivacious, pink-cheeked, blonde-haired Shirley Temple to a serious, dark-haired, glasses-wearing little girl, almost overnight. Once I managed to accept the choir status quo, I determined to become the best girl chorister of the bunch, and started to rack up gold bars on my red "Royal School of Church Music" medallion ribbon with almost savage pride. I began to collect recordings of the great English choirs (King's College, Cambridge; St. John's College, Cambridge; Westminster Abbey...) and taught myself to sing Anglican chant and many classics of the English cathedral repertoire, not at choir rehearsal, but holed up in my room listening to my record player. By the time I was 12 or 13, I determined that my life's goal was to be the first woman conductor of the choir of King's College, Cambridge. To say that this set me apart from my contemporaries is an understatement! None of my friends, classmates, or teachers had a clue what I was talking about. By the time I got to college, however, this dream had devolved into wanting to move to England, get married and have boys who would sing at King's. I would live vicariously through men.

There were apparently a few other American women on a similar path. Honor Moore's memoir, The Bishop's Daughter, speaks of trying to train herself to sing with the pure sound of a boy soprano, as I did. Yet for almost fifty years I felt alone, and carried with me the toxic weight of rage and blame. What was wrong with my family that I should be so invisible in their midst? What was wrong with men, the church, even God, that they should exclude women, rendering them invisible? Inaudible? Voiceless? I had (and continue to have) a feminist fire in my belly, an almost insatiable desire to burst out of this involuntary "solitary confinement" and sing with the choir, be out there, singing and speaking and being respected for my skills. They had ripped my heart out in the early '60's, and I wouldn't rest until I could find it again and place it back in my chest.

It is only since the singular events of the last few years that I have finally come to fully accept an important truth. I think the Goddess and I sat down before this incarnation, and She said, "I have a great assignment for you. How would you like to be one of the first women to try to break into the English men and boys' choir tradition?" (In that context, it makes perfect sense that I chose my parents, and the girls' choir at a high church "Church of England-style" American place of worship. It also makes sense that my dad's mother had been a pioneering Canadian woman lawyer, giving me that feisty piece.) In this scenario, I was perhaps less likely to accept the rejection than young British girls of the period.

And with the early disappointment came a singularly strong "rocket of desire", to use a term coined by Abraham Hicks. This passion has stayed with me through thick and thin -- mostly thin. And what I for so long interpreted as my "lost years" were basically me biding my time until other girls and women began to enter the field, and there was a critical mass.

In this light, I can find an intriguing new interpretation of the dream. What if the tornado of fire represents not terror, but passion? What if, alone in my family and musical tradition, I was the only one with the courage to stand up and face -- even embrace -- my passion in life? That tornado of fire has, at times, sent me and my life flying through the air, and yet from my current vantage point, I am proud to have weathered the storm.

There are many interesting things about this essay, but for the most part I'll leave it alone, except to say that, of course, I did have about nine months of singing daily services at Royal Holloway College in 1980-81, and the same time period singing weekly services at New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine fifteen years ago. I'm not sure why I didn't mention this when I wrote this, but I do so now. Even now, when I watch choral evensong services streamed online, I do so with kind of a bittersweetness that hasn't completely gone away. If my tornado of fire could take me today to the perfect situation, it would be as an "anchoress of the Goddess", home near an English cathedral or college choir, where the services would be available for me to attend every day.

The Spiral

The process of going through my boxes yet again has been painful but absolutely necessary. Whether I go forward with eight or nine boxes of belongings or three or four isn't really the issue. The issue, in these extraordinary times, is my intention to carry forward only the materials that support my life on behalf of the Goddess. Even now, I'm stunned to find a handful of negative things I held onto to prove what kinds of roadblocks I experienced in my life...such as a few pages of medical records from when I fell and fractured my elbow, and the hospital wouldn't operate because they insisted I had broken it previously (I had not. I assume this was because I had no insurance. My elbow eventually healed, but I'm sorry to say that I think I have held onto an inner desire to shame the people involved.) On the other side of the coin, I have saved (and still will for the moment) mementos of higher moments (a piece of my personalized Time Magazine stationery, flyers from organ recitals and art shows). Yeah, my inner historian/biographer is slowly exiting stage left. I'm sure she wanted documented proof of a life almost too strange to have been true, but as of the last few months, I feel less and less inclined to go back over old ground in that way. We're leaving that paradigm. If I end up being anyone's heroine, I hope it won't be because I survived the old paradigm, but because I take a welcoming and teaching role in the new one.

Even one slip of unnecessary paper has become "too much", too weighty. Here's an example. I've held onto a few things from the Smith College Chamber Singers tour of Spain in 1976, one of which I had assumed was a small itinerary. Upon actually opening it up, it turned out to be a menu from a meal we ate there. Fascinating, something to celebrate as part of a rich and unique life, but not worth taking forward from here. More recycling!

However, one thing stopped me dead in my tracks yesterday, and it initially brought up some of the feelings of shame, fury, hate, and helplessness that I spoke of last time, leading me to realize that I still have active healing work to do! It is a notebook that I bought in 2015, on the short trip I took to the UK to audition for the choir of Gloucester Cathedral, and then extended for a few months. I had happened upon a workshop about connecting with your true calling, and took it (and found kindred spirits there) and kept a journal of the class.

What made me tearful was a drawing (2-page spread) which I guess you could say was both illustrative of my inner landscape, plus where I literally was at that moment, plus the dream I have essentially had since childhood. In the foreground, I pictured myself on top of a rocky hill, overlooking the English countryside. There's a house in the middle distance, and a cathedral city in the background, and scattered around me are the tools of two of my creative gifts -- a journal and pen, and an easel and paints. In the center, a simple spiral. Overhead, an eagle soars in the sunny sky.

At that exact moment in the English west country, I initially felt hopeful that finally, I would physically live this dream. The spiral was like a grounding point, and it is a drawing full of light. Yet only a few pages later, I faced the hard truth that I couldn't believe my dream would ever permanently come true. I didn't feel I had the power within me. My entries in this notebook vacillated up and down for a few more weeks, before petering out as I got ready to return "home".

I'm thankful that I held onto this booklet through several purges -- how easy it would have been to deep-six it in frustration. How many sleepless nights over the intervening years have I questioned God and the Goddess over not being able to "figure out" getting back to England? Yes, I've returned for a few visits, but I haven't yet alchemized living a permanent calling there. I finally understand that the effort to figure out/find action steps etc. was the whole problem...since I am, at my core, a right-brained, creative Goddess. Perhaps I have felt stuck for a decade or more, but it took more years to spiral further up the dream, to spiral up into loving my own genuine self, to spiral up into self-acceptance, to spiral up in welcoming my life's strange paradoxes, and to spiral up in increasing love and compassion.

Today, I'm going to spend a long time gazing at this picture, because it is like a series of oracle cards. When I drew it, I probably resonated the most with the cathedral spires, perhaps the homey structure, but now it is the eagle. At my age, I have spiraled up through countless gusty air currents, metaphorically. Being the soaring eagle and looking down from above, as I spread out my wings like an embrace, I realize that the whole image is me, and has been for this whole lifetime, from the moment I first heard the men-and-boys' choir at our church, to the year of singing and studying at Royal Holloway College, and through all my various incarnations here in the States. My higher, floating self knows why things had to be the way they have been, and has kept the vision, and still does. There is no cause for sadness here.

As I continue to spiral upward, I intend to hold onto this notebook and the pivotal sketch, at least for a little longer. I think it serves the Goddess to continue to have it in my possession, and to reference it. Talk about getting to a really intense moment in one's discernment process. Literally, piece of paper by piece of paper.

The Great Misunderstanding

This moment is excruciating. I don't have to tell you that. I've largely powered my way through the madness by focusing on my own spiritual and physical health, but of course that's only serving to heighten the contrast with the in-sanity without. This might be the right time to reference the physical ailment I dealt with late in the fall/early winter. Let's face it, in our outer world, things were in full swing by then, and perhaps it was inevitable that my body would eventually succumb to dis-ease. I had to seek medical attention, and I am glad I did. And yet even from the first moment of using the prescription meant to fight the condition, I knew that my inner "non-violence" would be an issue, as it has been for years. And sure enough, medicine got the healing process started, but didn't seem to finish it.

So I literally had to dig deep, and address everything within me that was at war with the outside world, every last iota of fury, fear, feminist cynicism, and resentment eating away at me. I had to address the ways that I have hated the world's violence and greed, hated myself, hated my body, hated the frustrations of my journey (and how I have constantly felt exiled), and hated feeling so alone and homeless. For a so-called peaceful person, I had an awful lot of hatred within me that I could no longer hide from. As I went through the process step-by-step, I knew perfectly well that this was all a well-timed metaphor, a final exam of sorts forcing me to do a complete detox heading into this all-important year of 2026. Until I completely healed myself of The Great Misunderstanding (a belief that unwanted conditions are caused by outer factors that can be "fought"), I would be powerless to operate effectively in the all-Love post-duality new paradigm that we have entered,

I think I have basically passed that exam, although this week's excessive congestion reminds me that being a physician and regularly healing myself will continue to be a daily necessity. Other processes may have worked a millennium ago, or a century ago, or a decade ago, or even a year ago, but not today. Full physical healing can only come from Love, not just medical intervention. Safety can only come from emanating inner Love into the outside world and being loved in return -- not from warfare, or scaring people, or amassing land, power, and wealth. Real nourishment can only come from loving the food we consume and the beautiful planet that provided it -- not from ever-more-complex processed food concoctions and addictions. And wisdom will only come from the journey within -- not from an outward accumulation of educational experiences, information, data, and facts.

The way forward is simple. Hard, but not complex. Do the inner work. Do the inner healing. Love yourself, your journey, and your body. Don't try to fix anyone or anything but yourself. This morning, it doesn't make our outward scenario any less painful, but I can finally be reasonably sure I am not adding to the world's suffering, even unwittingly. And I can step forward, at peace with "what is".

Trees

Well, this journey of mine keeps conforming to what I am hearing and reading about the astrological and energetic changes we are going through. This is what today feels like, unnervingly, as if I have taken one of those really fast elevators up about 50 floors, and have left everything I ever was down below. No, I'm not acting on the sensation, and dragging my remaining boxes to the dump, or buying a one-way ticket to "anywhere" (yet), but that's what it feels like. That's how different I feel today from the person I've been for nearly 70 years. It's as if the earlier person was the seed, and suddenly, lickety-split, the sun came out after a warm rain, and my seed has sprouted through the surface, and I don't recognize either my own spindly green body and its potential, or the landscape around me, but I'm glad to be alive.

In a related vein, I did a guided visualization yesterday. I've been fighting off a cold, and my head, neck and shoulders felt heavy and congested. In the visualization, my head became a tree. My hair was the branches and leaves, my skull and neck were the trunk, and my arteries and clavicles were the tree roots. (I almost tried to draw a picture of this to share with you, but decided it might limit you if you decided to envision the same thing.) The phrase that came to me in the course of the visualization was, "I've found the tree within." 

I have no real idea what all this means, except that it is interesting that these two sensations came within a day of each other. Something about breaking through the surface with sudden new growth, with powerful energy facing the sky and the warmth of the sun, yet still having powerful roots planted in Mother Earth. Being the vertical connection between all the layers of reality. Allowing oneself to truly break through the surface and sing.

Normally, I don't write in the afternoon and just "go for it", but today, here goes.

A) and B)

We seem to have reached the point where two things are true -- A) The news is leaving me absolutely speechless and B) I have a feeling that in 1,076 posts, I've basically said just about everything, spiritually, that I can think of that is relevant right now, and I don't want to bore you. We have entered a new energetic and astrological age, post-duality and Love-oriented, and those who cannot handle this are wigging out. That's it in a nutshell. This year will be a very wild ride. The hardest thing for me continues to be holding as high an energy as I can when others are, understandably, reacting. You can seem like you don't care, when in fact you care more than anyone knows, only caring takes the form of trying to model the new paradigm, not fight to fix the old one. This becomes particularly hard when the state of Minnesota, site of so much that was positive and growth-filled for me, is under siege. The mother in me wishes I could wrap my arms around it and protect it.

What is my job for today? Assessing whether my own thoughts or actions are consistent with an all-Love future, and assessing situations outside myself by the same yardstick. This pretty much guarantees that I am in a completely different ballpark than the powers-that-be -- but hey, I finally understand that this was always the case. The game in that other stadium will increasingly lose fans. Really, it will.

Goddess Words 55: Energy

When everything is going pear-shaped, it is time for another Goddess word. Another brick in the foundation. 

I had to go back and check my list twice, like Santa Claus, because I couldn't believe I hadn't already examined this word over the last four years, but it appears that I haven't.

There are so many nuances of meaning to this word...in essence, a life force or catalyst for change.

So, looking back almost twenty years, how did I think this word related to the Goddess? I consider Her the indispensable creative force, that the Great Mother is literally the energy that birthed the Universe -- yes, in active partnership with the male God energy worshipped for generations, but, unlike him, largely forgotten. Out of Her energetic body came all of it, stars, planets, galaxies, life of all kind, including on earth. This energy or life force is constantly renewing, never fully ebbing or ending, just transforming and transitioning into new forms.

In day-to-day usage, energy can be about what one does (or does not) have it in them to do. Do I have the energy (at nearly 70) to go out and shovel snow? To take a long road trip? To take the city bus half an hour to do errands? To go through my boxes and make decisions -- again?

Then there's the "energy" we notice about other people or situations, almost an aura. If we are sensitive, we can walk into a room and immediately pick up whether a person is angry, or scared, or elated, or "shut down". We can sense uncomfortable energies between people, or their hatred for (or conversely, their attraction to) one another. There are people's energies individually, and then how those energies interact with other energies. (I hope it goes without saying that I am taking a really unscientific look at energy. I couldn't do otherwise if my life depended on it!)

Lastly (and this is something I think I can say as a layperson), "energy" is the word we use in the context of the materials we use to power modern life. Many of these materials ("natural resources") are substances extracted from the earth. The extraction and refining of these resources are expensive and complex -- but the actual resources have been free to mankind, whether they be trees, wind, water, sun, coal, natural gas, or oil. Gaia has literally gifted us these energy sources all through history. We have taken this "free" material and alchemized it into power and money -- huge amounts of it, for some. What I find fascinating is that I think we are entering a time when aligning to Goddess/Love energy will allow humans to travel, communicate, and create outside our current human limitations. We won't always need these old-fashioned physical resources which cause so much conflict. 

Our processes have sapped Gaia's life energy in so many ways. If we were to listen to Her, we would probably hear Her begging us to honor Her energy, Her power, Her creativity. She can survive without our honor -- indeed, Earth will go on and eventually prosper even if we humans destroy ourselves. The energy of the Goddess is indestructible. But I also believe it would be Her preference that our human energies align with Her. She would love to co-create a better future with us!

More Epiphanies

Interesting that the last post which I titled "Epiphanies" came on this day in 2020! The current crop of them is coming thick and fast, isn't it?

I am thankful for having several online resources that keep me sane by reflecting back to me the reality I believe -- that earth, having entered the Age of Aquarius/Love/the Goddess, is seeing the dying throes of the energies that cannot tolerate Love.

In the midst of it all, what keeps surfacing is the nudging that I am called to a form of leadership. Yes, perhaps quiet leadership, leadership that hurts no one and acquires little, but leadership nonetheless. If nothing else, I can say, "I, too, never had a real home, never owned property, wasn't protected by family or health care or cronies. I've been out there trying to barely survive, just as you have -- perhaps in different ways and for different reasons, but with the same essential result." There are so many of us who can no sooner imagine "owning" a quarter acre of land, much less an entire foreign country!

I think of the Magnificat, with the humble and meek being exalted. Maybe one reason I have always loved that canticle is that I sensed this time coming, the complete flip-flop. I love that these words are recorded as being spoken by a woman, the mother of Jesus. What seems particularly apt today is the reference to the scattering of the proud "in the imagination of their hearts". But for years, in my heart, the text had a different emphasis, with the Goddess (or the inevitability of Nature's need to restore balance) as the catalyst for change, not an all-powerful bearded God in the sky.

Epiphany. The Magnificat. After all these years, and despite the gaping abyss between me and the religion of my heritage, Church of England rituals, holy days, texts and music remain my spiritual frame of reference. This truth just doesn't go away. Interesting.

This is a time where personal truths (and many others) must ultimately be accepted and embraced, no matter how strange, or painful, or paradoxical. I don't think the Goddess wants us fighting anything anymore, particularly our inner truths. Certainly not on Epiphany, when things are so clear.

A footnote: I'm feeling the need to prepare for this time by once again, going through my (ever fewer) boxes. Diplomas, scrapbooks, my grandmother's needIework -- all are strewn around me. I did such a good job last year, that I am truly down to the most important and meaningful belongings, the ones that it will literally break my heart to throw out. But if the moment comes, and I need to proceed to my work for the Goddess with next to nothing, they'll have to go. Not today, however. Keep breathing, Liz...