Summer Miscellany

There are days like this when I'm just going to throw a few thoughts out there.  I've used the title "Miscellany" a few times over this decade, but not with the word "summer", so I guess it's OK to re-use it.

Miscellany #1: The other day, after our brutal 3-day heat wave, I took several walks, and noticed a lot of dead earthworms on the sidewalks. It took a while for this to sink in, but once it did, this was my unscientific observation: that these poor worms were boiling hot, and somehow thought that if they crossed to the other side of the walk, it would be cooler, but instead they burnt to a crisp. Goddess bless them. Goddess bless us.

Miscellany #2: During the last few weeks, I have noticed a lot of synchronicities. OK, not the big ones, where you think, "wouldn't it be nice to have an extra thousand dollars" and you receive a check in the mail. More like small synchronicities. For instance, someone says something unusual to me then the same word or phrase shows up in a crossword clue. Or there is a surprise mention in a TV show of a place I once visited and hadn't thought of in years. Or I finally see some of the themes I've written about in this blog being talked about by other people. I think that in these times we are entering, where there may be less and less of a "normal" to rely on, it may be important to at least practice noticing synchronicities, serendipities, and gut feelings. And when we can, acting on them, or seeing them as guideposts.

Miscellany #3: While I haven't read too many details, I think it is fascinating how dozens of interesting and odd earth events are surprising even scientists -- a new emerging ocean in Africa, pulsing noises and sensations coming from Antarctica, and  extraordinary new information and images from outer space. New love energy is immersing all of creation, and I am not surprised, really, that the landscape and starscape are changing before our very eyes. Yes, it's a little freaky, a little scary, but I just keep reminding myself, if the earth's crust opens up under my feet and I disappear forever, I'll essentially be honored to have been part of the process. I will thank the Goddess that my earthly cells became part of the new picture.

Miscellany #4: This coming week will bring with it a mixture of the old and the new, loosening some old ties, and making some new connections. I'll check in when I can. Keep breathing, all! 

A Hot Day

This is a very hot day, in more ways than one. I don't have to tell most of you that. My cool image of a glass vase of water balancing on the middle seat of a rowboat on a placid lake is more than inner guidance right now, it's also inner refreshment.

In terms of all the other events happening right now, I keep trying to remind myself that virtually none of these things will exist once the Aquarian age takes hold. I mean, it's not just that they "won't" take place, but that it will be energetically impossible for them to take place. Does this mean that I am not concerned, or that I am paying no attention? No. I am heartbroken every time humans kill other humans for any reason, or cause the slightest bit of damage to the earth. I don't understand any of it.

But I guess what I am finally doing is not taking ownership of things I have never done or would never do, and not fighting things I would never do. I'm trying not to get hot under the collar, or add to the planet's heat. To the extent I can do it, I am keeping my focus on the world as it will exist in perhaps as little as a few decades, when planetary and human ascension will have taken hold, and there will be a world in front of us that, from present-day eyes, we will barely recognize. We now have the chance to go forward on a different sort of path, and hopefully, based on the experience of these times, we will do that!

A Vessel within a Vessel

A few weeks ago, I wrote about feeling like a vessel within a vessel, bobbing on the water. It seemed like I was in a fragile, but blessed, state of balance. This led to my using markers and colored pencils to "paint" a number of postcards to send to friends. The cards picture a glass vase filled with water, perched on the center seat of an old rowboat which is floating out on the middle of a lake. No people, no oars. To get through this upcoming time, this is the quality I think we will all need...almost superhuman balance, balance within balance within balance. The ability to hold still within and without no matter how much shaking is going on around us in the natural world and in society.

I would take a photo of one of these images to share with you, but my flip phone (which takes surprisingly good pictures) doesn't communicate with my computer, so you'll just have to imagine this in your mind's eye. Or feel it in your core.

Happy solstice!

Goddess Words 45: Cradle

It is interesting that this particular word would jump out at me this morning, from my original handwritten list. Interesting too that, like so many of my other Goddess words, it can be both a noun and a verb. 

As my readers know, in this lifetime I wasn't a mother. And I have a hunch that in many of my lifetimes I was a more solitary soul -- a nun, priest, shaman, queen, even a hermit. In most of these cases, my memories aren't clear, more like impressions. However, I do have pretty clear memories of one lifetime when I shared my life with an extraordinary man, and had two children. I remember the experience of holding the babies, protecting them, making sure they were well fed and clothed. I remember them sleeping peacefully in a handmade wooden cradle. I remember them at my breast, and then, in time, my anxious moments as they started to walk and become independent. I also remember with a great deal of fondness how their father cradled them in his arms, giving them a different solid experience of protection and love. 

When I expand this notion out, I find myself believing that earth was originally meant by the Goddess to be a cradle for humanity and all life. A place of nurturing, love, safety, and generous amounts of food and clean water. We were meant to rock gently on the landscape, to find comfort in protected spaces out of the wind, to nest at the base of trees and in caves and simple homes made of stone and wood. This was meant to be the framework for a life lived in constant awareness of the holiness of all creation. Despite experiences frequently being harsh or difficult, our connection with the Great Mother would have been a daily comfort, a constant embracing reminder of our oneness with every corner of the vast universe.

So when and why did we, effectively, dump the baby out of the cradle? Why have we filled this precious little vessel with toxins, and used it as a backdrop for unspeakable horrors? Many of us must be so traumatized right now that we cannot possibly really imagine being cradled gently, lovingly, protectively. On this rainy day in June, such a notion seems particularly hard to visualize, doesn't it? And yet maybe if some of us take just one minute today to cradle something -- an animal, a loved one, a stuffed toy, a beloved blanket or item of clothing, a tree or boulder -- perhaps ancient memories will kick in. (Alternatively, cradle yourself in a hammock or blanket.) Let us allow ourselves to cradle or be cradled. Perhaps it will help us remember a mother instinct that is sorely needed right now. 

In Love

Over the last few days, I've been in the greater Boston area, seeing old friends, and enjoying several musical and artistic events. It was hot out, yes, but that wasn't why I was glowing. I was glowing because I was in love, not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of doing things "in love", from a place of love. I was reminded anew of how different that energy feels from other ones. 

At this extraordinary moment, even I need the reminder -- if I can do something from a place of love, great. "If in doubt, call it out," as we used to say playing tennis. But all of us need to follow our own hearts and consciences. 

At the very least, let's find love around the edges. Let's find beauty among the edges. Let's find community around the edges. It is real, and it is here in our midst. 

Snakes

The other morning, I interrupted a snake lying in the sun on the front steps. It slithered off and disappeared under the house, but I realized that it was the first snake I had seen in a very, very long time. Snakes (not surprisingly) represent the life cycle, birth, death, the shedding of skin, transmuting poisons, transformation -- even the process of writing. I suppose any animal's powers can be applicable everyday, but still, I find it helpful to notice the timing of encountering this "medicine". Without (I hope) misappropriating or misusing the terminology of indigenous cultures, in my own way I find these animal encounters as healing and as meaningful as what we in the West consider medicine. Having so infrequently had medical insurance, medical care or been prescribed (or used) modern medications, I'm open to a really, really broad definition of healing these days. And as a culture, we are shedding our limiting skins, aren't we? For the most part, I'll leave the analysis of it all to others, today, at least.

Two bits of news here -- I seem to have a renewed impulse to do artwork, and have been creating personal post cards to send to friends. Secondly, I'm having another small travel adventure in a few days. When I think of the much larger ones I had over the years, it's almost embarrassing how challenging it is to plan a mere four days or so away. But this is another era, I'm another gazillion years older, and it "is what it is". Perhaps I, too, will shed a little skin along the way.

Arrival -- my One Thousandth

Yes. Somewhere in the last few months, I arrived home. No, not necessarily physically (although clearly returning to upstate New York has been the right thing), but spiritually. I have finally arrived at a complete understanding and acceptance of my Goddess perspective on everything, and how it has been at the core of just about my whole life. This perspective is my "home", in the way that other people's religions are their homes, although I don't see it as a religion per se (with creeds, rituals, and holy books). I guess the best I can do is to say that the Goddess is my spiritual focus, my way of seeing, my truth, the core of my being. I see only through the lens of the Divine Feminine.

Could I have said this ten years ago, when I started this blog? Not yet. I still needed more time to make a sense of my passion for English church music, and England itself. Taking part in that tradition directed some of my spiritual energy to the beliefs and rituals I was brought up in (and have probably experienced for many lifetimes). It was an inherent duality within me, my primary reason for not committing sooner and more whole-heartedly to the Goddess. Mind you, I would still go back to England in a heartbeat -- not to sing choral evensong or make my mark in that world, but in a bigger role of representing Her there, if that is what I should feel called to do.

A few days ago, I heard a great expression -- "AFGO" (Another F* Growth Opportunity)! All of us have unique growth opportunities/challenges over the courses of our lives. My contemporaries who have been married for long stretches (or all) of their adulthoods, and/or had children and grandchildren, and/or had only one or two jobs or careers or homes, have experienced growth opportunities that I never did. Staying single, being called to move all over the map, I've kept adjusting and growing in a unique way, one that kept forcing me to learn that I wasn't going to find my true home outside of myself. I wasn't going to find my true home in the outer world's expectations. It took literally a lifetime, but I finally found my truth within. (And these extraordinary times seem like some kind of a bizarre final exam!)

If this blog serves as a record of how one random American woman reached her enlightenment, a measure of her mystic potential, then I will be happy. In fact, it has occurred to me that I could stop here, at one thousand. However, it is hard to see how I could do that. Writing is my breathing, my life. If we ever lose power permanently, I'll be scribbling daily in every notebook or legal pad that I can get my hands on. Writing is my personal thread through the forest to the future, the little path of light directing me forward within the Goddess to that "place" of all-Love. So I suspect that there will be a thousand-and-one-th post! I hold my dear readers in a warm embrace on this special day.