The Beguine thing

Just now, I did a quick internet search for the word "beguine". It reminded me that perhaps I am a modern-day beguine. In the Middle Ages, some women who had previously been married, or lived secular lives, made the choice to commit to their spiritual journeys, and wandered from place to place speaking of their beliefs. Because they were not formally committed to holy orders or sponsored by the Church, and because they were single and declined to lead a conventional life, they were often feared. Ultimately, most of these women joined others like them to live and work in small communities.

A friend of mine recently called me a "gypsy mystic", a variation on the same theme. As you saw in my previous post, in my heart I am really not a "gypsy" or a "wanderer" at all. In my heart I am firmly anchored, and if in this lifetime I ever return to an English cathedral milieu, I hope all the pieces will finally be in place to allow permanent rooting. 

Having said that, I also have to hope that my lifetime of rootlessness has benefitted the Goddess, drawing attention to Her "homelessness" in the world, and to the precarious lives of many single women. It is one of the few things keeping me going as I sort my belongings yet again, getting them ready to store or move. Today, too, I think of the extreme, sudden uprootedness and deaths of the people in the Florida apartment building, people seeking shelter in West Coast cooling shelters, and the plight of refugees all over the world. This may be a time to embody the brave spirit of the beguines, however rooted or uprooted we happen to be right this second.

Independence Week

I'm back, both to the blog and Duluth, but for the latter, only temporarily. I went to The Cities (Minnesota-speak for Minneapolis-St. Paul) for two days, and will return there by the end of the week for further discernment about a living situation that has the potential for enormous growth. For some reason, the days leading up to the Fourth of July are often catalytic.

Although I have been a city girl (DC, New York City, London), city energy is now actually a bit challenging after nearly a year-and-a-half of COVID restrictions. Small amounts of crowd stimulation tire me. Ultimately, I'm not returning to a city for the sake of the usual qualities of excitement and opportunity. It is to live more intentionally in a small community, to find a higher independence/cooperation balance.

A few weeks ago, I articulated for myself the "perfect" living situation. I am an anchoress living in a small apartment attached to one of the English cathedrals. It would not be sealed up; there would be a door into the cathedral so that I could attend choral evensong every single afternoon. The balance of the day, I would explore in writing and art the path from our current world and the religious/musical construct I grew up in (Episcopalianism/Church of England) to the future. I would often sit outside in the cathedral close, and welcome the opportunity to chat with visitors about their spiritual questions and concerns. It's hard to imagine church officials saying yes to this American goddess-centered anchoress, but in a time so completely fluid and surprising, perhaps it is not completely out of the question...(!)

In any event, my potential new home reminds me qualitatively of this model, which is why it draws me. What also draws me is remaining independent, while feeling less alone. Human independence is really such a mirage, isn't it? In coming months, may I become more appreciative of the intricate interconnected web of life that I am a part of. May I never close the doors and hide behind them.

Leaping Lizzards

Yes, I spelled that intentionally. 

Back when I was at Smith, my nickname of "Liz" morphed into "Lizzard", "Blizzard" and "Gizzard". My housemates used these names endearingly, and indeed I was greeted that way at two or three class reunions. I wasn't too fond of the variants, but I was nowhere near as distressed by them as was my mom. She couldn't believe that she and my dad had named me such a magnificent name, Elizabeth, only to have it left in the dust. I actually like "Lizzie" best of all, but "Liz" is fine too.

So, today this Lizzard is taking a leap, an exploratory leap, to see whether a potential next step is really a go. In the wake of COVID year, it seems absolutely crucial that I do my best to really live, not tread water slowly into old age, especially given continuing overseas travel uncertainties. In a few days, I should know whether the option in front of me is the best way to do that. I am not bringing my computer with me, so, once again, a short break in the blog action. Three or four days, not, I trust, another fifteen months! Have a lovely weekend, all.

Grrr...

There will be times when it takes two days to create a blog...my goal of a post a day every day except Sunday may occasionally not be met...

OK, so yesterday I heard the tail end of a radio ad for an association or company whose goal is a reduction in plastic waste, solving the "problem" of plastic waste, or words to that effect. Please understand, whoever they are (I didn't hear the full ad), I'm not critical of them. Heck, I am glad that someone understands that this is an issue.

But, grrr....anyway.

Several years ago, I wrote that I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during the early corporate meetings where plastic was discussed, no doubt as the miracle of the twentieth century. Someone, even a mere secretary or low-echelon executive, must have coughed politely and said, "Excuse me, but how will this material be disposed of? Given that it is not compostable, it will soon fill our landfills and bodies of water." No doubt this naysayer was quickly silenced, and industry went full steam ahead, thrilled with the millions of uses for plastic and the potential for profit. Fast forward sixty years or so, and it is literally everywhere, clogging land and sea, cramming our homes and stores. It is even inside the bodies of people who have had knee replacements and other medical intervention, and to some extent, in all of us through our drinking water and consumption of food that has been wrapped in plastic.

Compared with many people, I am already almost off the map. I don't own a house or car, don't have small children (thus I rarely buy toys), and don't use anything but a few over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and toiletries. I don't produce plastic, or work for a company distributing plastic products or products sold in plastic. I use just about as little of the substance as is humanly possible, much of it making it into appropriate recycling. Yet that is still too much, too much, too much. There are so many unrecyclable little plastic doohickeys; the little square things that close plastic bread bags, many dental floss containers, old toothbrushes and ballpoint pens...

The point has come where I become so anxious looking at store shelves, I can barely get out of the place without tears. The amount of plastic in one store alone can be seen as an affront to Mother Nature, and is a "problem" with no solution. As I walk through the aisles, my mind then multiplies one store by millions of others around the globe, and the countless plastic bags, containers, and objects going out the door and into our natural environment in some form or another. It is completely overwhelming.

The "solution" to the problem of plastic waste would probably have had to come at the birth of the plastic era. Wiser heads would have chosen to proceed cautiously, knowing that disposal issues needed to be dealt with at the outset. A truly wise system doesn't deliberately create problems that then must be solved in future years with great save-the-day fanfare. 

Talk about not being able to breathe...earth, increasingly, cannot breathe. I genuinely hope for the miracle of a brilliant manmade "solution". But I also hope those pursuing the goal are being honest with themselves about the scope and urgency of the task. I hope they are being honest with themselves that our plastic-fueled "normal" is not sustainable. (Plastic, of course, is not the only pollutant...)

In a future post, I'll talk about this more from the standpoint of all of us, the consumers. There will be an excruciatingly hard moment when most people will recognize the imperative of making different purchasing/investment/usage choices; there will be a moment where we make the choice between facing our individual responsibility, and burying our discomfort yet again. Life as we know it will change regardless. And in the midst of it all, no matter how much or little we have depended on plastic and how small or large a muck-up we have made of it all, Mother Nature loves us unconditionally. That, I know.

 

Rain, Rain

Yesterday's summer solstice/day of rain synchronicity got me thinking about rainy summer days on Lake Champlain in the late1960's. A complete day of rain seems so rare now (indeed, some parts of our country would give anything for such an event), but my memory is that it was not uncommon to experience three or four days of rain in a row. In our little summer community, rambunctious young children would go from camp (cabin) to camp, getting under parents' feet, playing endless games of cards and Monopoly in front of the fireplace, snacking, and eventually moving on to the next dry home. On day two of rain, my mom would put my brothers and me into the station wagon along with loads of laundry, and we'd go to Keeseville, Elizabethtown, or Westport to go to the laundromat. Ugh. Boring. This was usually coupled with a foray into an IGA supermarket, which was marginally more interesting, and I am sure we tortured my Mom with requests for candy bars or potato chips, even though selections of junk food were much more limited in those days.

If we awoke to a third day of rain on the roof of the camp, then a real treat was in store. We'd leave the wilderness of upstate New York and head, by ferry or bridge, across the lake to more civilized Vermont. In Burlington, we might get an ice cream cone at the original site of Ben and Jerry's, or walk up and down Church Street, not yet a pedestrian mall. If we headed to Middlebury, we'd shop in their wonderful five and dime store, and then perhaps have lunch at the hamburger place where your food was brought out to the car. Either way, Mom would buy herself a treat -- something small for the kitchen, or some clothing for herself. I think she needed to reward herself for putting up with three small children, camp or car, rain or shine.

After a stretch of hot, sunny weather, afternoon thunderstorms were common, which inevitably seemed to come from the north. We would be swimming down at the dock, when ominous black clouds would advance down the lake from Quebec. Mothers started to flutter as thunder started to rumble, and they gathered up children, picnic baskets and beach towels, trying to shepherd everyone up the long flight of cement stairs before the storm struck. But inevitably some of us would stay on the dock, playing chicken with the breathtaking storm. When we finally raced up and away from the water, and huddled in the covered deck near the road, we were protected from the storm's fury, which inevitably lasted only a few minutes. Peeks of sun would start to show in the northwest, and we'd run back down the stairs and into the water as soon as thunder was no longer audible.

In those days, the wind (and thus the waves) seemed to come only from the north or the south, down the lake or up it. Sailboat race courses were set up based on whether it was a north wind or a south wind. In recent years, however, when I have visited and crewed on a boat, winds could come from north, south, east, or west, or all of them at the same time, a small but noticeable indication of climate change.

What a privilege to experience such summers! In 1973, the bottom fell out of our family's financial situation, and my parents would eventually live year-round in the camp, lending a rather hard and desperate edge to the place and the lake experience. And as an adult, there has been no "normal" in my life. Summers have seen me in places as varied as DC and Manhattan, the outer fringes of London and the outer fringes of the Rockies. Yes, both Lake Superior and Lake Champlain have figured prominently. There is no doubt that in 1990, I was drawn to Duluth for a reason. The early, positive, imprint of "summers on the lake" is still with me; yesterday's daylong rain brought back sounds, smells, and memories.

Listening

It may be a measure of how much I have been aligning with (and channelling) my best understanding of the divine feminine, that I don't feel particularly freaked out by all the extreme environmental phenomena around us. It's like, I'm rooting Mother Nature on, wanting her to do what She needs to do to restore balance to this beautiful earth. I know She doesn't want people to suffer, or to lose homes or livelihoods. But I can almost literally hear her voice saying, "Please, people, are you listening? Can you hear me? Do you understand how close you are to losing your real home?"

I'm listening to some early morning birds. I agree with a friend of mine that if we humans all disappeared today, the birds would still sing tomorrow. Passionate life energy would continue, growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk and the parking lots, blowing through the trees, chirping to the sun.

I guess all I can do today is tell her, "I am listening". If you are listening too, let her know.

Wondrous

I guess the truth is that there may be the odd weekday when I don't write, after all. Yesterday, my writing focus was elsewhere...

This morning, I opened Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It, deciding to meditate on the first statement that passed in front of my eyes. It's one of those books that lends itself to this activity really well.

At the end of the chapter, "Casting the Burden", she says: "'In the twinkling of an eye,' man's release will come when he realizes there is no power in evil [her italics]. The material world will fade away, and the fourth-dimensional world, the 'World of the Wondrous', will swing into manifestation."

I agree with her that "there is no power in evil", that it is not a power or force in and of itself. If there is only one creative force in the universe, whatever you wish to call it, and it is made up of love, passion, truth, creativity, life and joy, it simply makes no sense that there would be an "opposing" -- second -- force. However, our belief in that opposing force has created much of the world as we know it. I don't know what would happen if every human released that belief tonight; would the material world fade away? Much of our human-created part might, but let's face it, it is unlikely to happen that fast.

But nearly one hundred years after Shinn wrote this, we may well be entering a time when nature itself is evolving upwards into a higher dimension, and we, as part of nature, are essentially being asked to make the same upward spiritual leap ourselves. These next few decades will probably be marked by unprecedented growing pains, but yes, what will gradually emerge is a world (and a human experience) more wondrous than we can imagine. Hang in there, folks.

Routines

In an unsettled life, routines are crucial. And nothing says "routine" quite like the presence of a dog. 

During my childhood, we never had a dog. Indeed, I was somewhat afraid of them. It wasn't until I was in my thirties and scrambling for extra income that I took up house-sitting and pet-sitting, and discovered that many dogs had a thing for me and vice versa. I developed loose attachments to most of them, but when the owners came back and the gig was over, I usually moved on quite easily.

COVID-year gave me time to create a solid routine and friendship with a 14-year-old cocker spaniel. Our daily schedule undoubtedly says more about his passion for food than his passion for me! He scratches on my door ridiculously early in the morning. If it is after 5 AM, I let him in, hug him, and give him a few tiny treats. Then he goes back to his dog bed for 45 minutes or an hour, returning again when it is time to eat. It truly seems like he has an inner alarm clock that announces 6 AM, breakfast time. I throw on some clothes, and walk out to the kitchen, doggie underfoot. He scarfs up breakfast and then, at this time of year, we go out immediately for his first walk. 

Over the course of the day, we take three to four modest walks, the equivalent of perhaps four to six city blocks. (This is the perfect dog for me. In dog years, he is approximately my age, and he's nearly completely blind and deaf. I could never manage a big, two-mile walker!)  His sense of smell remains strong, so he has to stop and sniff at absolutely everything en route, many more stops at this time of year than there were in frigid mid-winter! This dog and I have absolutely no sense of how to walk properly, and I often hope that no one is watching us. Forget "heel" or loose-leash walking. He zigs and zags right in front of me, following odors that I cannot smell. Increasingly, he's completely unaware of dogs being walked on the other side of the street, but he'll give a yelp when he senses an animal within about four feet of us, like the bunny "statues" in the neighborhood. (These rabbits, sensing that we are coming near, stiffen up, trying to go unnoticed.) 

I've come to recognize the moment when he is squatting down to do his business, even though he gives no real warning. I rip off the little bag and swoop in to grab whatever is there. He's probably the only dog in the neighborhood who is addressed in French. When we get to the trash bin, I say, "Attendez!", and even though I'm sure he can't hear me, he's learned to wait while I open up the top and toss the bag (or bags) in. Once we are back in the house, I give him another small treat, and he goes back to sleep. In-between walks, he sometimes lies down under my feet or at my door. When I make dinner, he remains inconveniently underfoot, hoping that a morsel of carrot or meat will make its way to the floor. When his real owners are away, he sticks to me like glue.

I have half-jokingly told friends that it took me 65 years, but I am finally in love. I try to convince myself that he's only in it for the food and walks, but I think, under the surface, there is at least a little residual dog love there too. He seeks me out. And for me, the rituals go far beyond food and exercise. (Obviously, I don't join in the dog food feast!) But I love the structure he brings. I love finding out that I am capable of love. I call him silly little names. I lose myself in his big limpid (although paradoxically, cataract-covered) eyes, and find his presence a comfort. Our shared routines will likely come to an end in a few weeks, and in earlier years, I would have been battening down my emotional hatches to try to prevent heartbreak. Today, sensitive to the power of words, I'll try hard not to see it as any kind of break. I'll keep "him" with me as I move forward, so thankful for how he has opened, not broken, my heart.

Wonder-full

I woke up this morning more filled with wonder and gratitude than I have in many months, perhaps since the pandemic started. 

In late April, I realized that I would need to move forward from my current living situation, and it seemed as if my two options were "death" (low-income senior housing, a commitment that would be spiritually devastating, making fulfilling any aspect of my preferred destiny nearly impossible) or "life" (some other option that kept a door open to greater beauty, spirituality, and forward movement). On May 7, in a sunrise vow, I made a commitment to go big in the service of the divine feminine, but I still didn't know what that might entail. All I could do was declare that by the middle of June, I would know what the best next housing step was, and that I would take that step before Independence Day weekend. To give Florence Scovel Shinn my own spin, my job was to "stand still" and watch greater wisdom than mine lead me in the most beneficial direction. 

Lo and behold, I made a contact this weekend that is either "signs of land" (Shinn-speak for something that shows you that you are on the right track) or the right step itself. It happened easily but also required me to phone up someone I don't know. So solutions do not literally fall into your lap. When the moment is right, some action has to be taken, whether buying a computer, or contacting total strangers, or entering a store at what turns out to be a fortuitous moment. Now that I'm older, I don't have the energy for a lot of wasted effort, so ease-of-movement makes me feel even more grateful than ever (!) 

In the past, Law of Attraction/metaphysical approaches haven't always fully worked in my life, much as I thought they should. To go back to the highway metaphor several blogs ago, when I was in the "duality" lane, I couldn't help but attract roadblocks and limitation. Let's face it, it is a world that thrives on conflict, and whose core values and assumptions don't seem to match mine. What I manifested, therefore, was a zig-saggy muddle, still rich in growth, but not easy or personally fulfilling. Having changed lanes, and having begun to openly "work" for the Goddess, life is beginning to have a really different energy, and I suspect that, as long as I continue to face in Her direction and listen closely to my intuition, this lane in the highway of life will indeed be clearer and more easily navigated. What is wonder-full is not so much positive outcomes, but the light-filled, spacious feeling inside.

The Narrow Band

Of course, the obverse of the notion that we humans are not meant to fight one another, nature, or anything else, is the understanding that Mother Nature is not fighting us. In the wake of hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, there are inevitably newspaper headlines and jokes about "Mother Nature's wrath". The idea that we are separate from nature, and that She would turn on us, comes from a grievous misunderstanding of our place in nature. This kind of reaction may be what we humans have gotten into the habit of doing; it is not the Goddess way.

This earth, our home, is a delicate creation, perfect for human life under a narrow set of environmental circumstances. Pushed too far -- abused, if you will -- it will become nearly uninhabitable to humans for generations to come. Earth, the planet, will survive. Ultimately, it will adapt to the changes it must make in order to recover balance, even if many humans do not. It will do whatever it needs to do to return to the narrow band of optimum conditions that allow it to harbor life and express the passion of creation. This love/joy/truth/passion energy is really, really not interested in our strip malls and skyscrapers and satellites and space trash. It is not interested in band width or unemployment figures or who is running for political office. Most of our "progress" was created without consideration for the health of the earth, so earth's efforts to retain balance may well happen without consideration for what we too thoughtlessly created. In a crisis, you just need to get things stabilized.

We have been the silly children, playing with matches, setting the house on fire. Mother Nature's absolute first priority is to save the family by dousing the fire. Once balance has been restored, once the threat is removed, She will lovingly put her arms around us and say, "OK, children, let's look at what happened here, and talk about how to make sure it doesn't happen again." We are Her family, so it will be an embrace, not a fight.

Fight, Fight, Fight

I spent time yesterday reading more Florence Scovel Shinn, and realized why I had put her books aside sometime in the 90's...her language is so traditional! Even back then, it caused too much of a disconnect. What is so fascinating is that her ideas are still forward-thinking; I'm so fond of re-writing things, and maybe this should be my next assignment!

There are many ways in which I was fine-tuned by the pandemic time, and one of them is that I became hyper-sensitive to conflict, both actual "fighting" and the vocabulary of conflict. I had started writing about this in my blog before the shutdown, but during this last year when my only source of information was nightly TV news, I got to the point where my physical body began to tense up, even just hearing about the "fight against COVID". (It was the language of fighting that did it, not thinking about the disease itself.) All the pandemic vocabulary was the vocabulary of war. Nurses and doctors were on the "front lines", battle lines were drawn (both in terms of how the disease would be dealt with, and politically, between those who were on board with public health recommendations and those who were not). Patients leaving the hospital sometimes wore tee shirts with sayings l like, "I beat COVID". 

Last November, in my Goddess journal, this came through my pen: "I will never, ever ask you to fight for or against anything. Anything." This is pretty powerful stuff. The gist of it is, a fight response takes a person out of a place of love, and energetically pulls one down so that real "victory" is impossible. We may never know what would have happened if, societally, we had just said, "Ooh, interesting, a new virus" and gone on with our lives. And at this point, barring a huge spiritual and philosophical shift among humans, it may take many decades before we can approach a disease that fearlessly.

But perhaps this might be a good moment to consider, "What if the Divine One (however conceived) really wants us to stop fighting? -- each other, disease, nature, and animal life. What if we are being called to put aside all weapons, all wars, all disputes, all vocabulary of 'fight, fight, fight'? What if such pacifism was the only way to save the endangered Earth? Could we do it?"

Shinn addresses this in The Game of Life, sometimes using the word "resistance". "Resistance is Hell, for it places man in a 'state of torment'...so long as man resists a situation, he will have it with him. If he runs away from it, it will run after him." Basically, she says, face a situation calmly, call it "good", and it will dissolve. We have certainly gone through hell this last year or so. I tried to walk that fine line of honoring the medical field's recommendations while still, personally, practicing a mind frame of fearlessness. It is a challenging path, but not impossible.

Strange Segue

This morning, I start with apples and move on to oranges. 

Apples. I have had a dickens of a time memorizing my new mantra, "Dignified, Imposing, Grand, and Magnificent." I hope that this isn't age-related memory loss. Indeed, I don't think it is. I think the problem is that these words have not normally been part of my vocabulary at all. In my daily round of life, I have almost never described anything as "magnificent", which is too bad since it is such a great word. But to think of myself in any of these terms is even harder. I'll continue to practice it!

Oranges. In the late 1980's, I was very influenced by Florence Scovel Shinn. Her metaphysical teachings really resonated for me, even though the turn-of-the-twentieth century prose was a little dated. I've been looking through her The Game of Life and How to Play It for something I thought that she said, "There is no death in the Divine Mind", but cannot find it. (I did find, "Germs do not exist in the superconscious or Divine Mind..." in the chapter, "Casting the Burden".) But whoever said it, I agree that in any kind of unity consciousness, a life/death duality cannot exist. If there is only one force in the universe, it can only be life. This is, and will be, an enormously hard topic to delve into in the wake of the pandemic. I have followed all the public health guidelines and had my vaccinations, and urge everyone to do so. Our scientists and medical world have worked many wonders this last year. Yet I am struck by how these institutions, so based in duality, are really antiquated in their underlying thinking. More on all this as I get the courage!

Stately

Well, I did it. I watched the concluding episodes of Pride and Prejudice, then Sense and Sensibility, and late in the evening, Miss Austen Regrets. My senses were bathed the kind of beauty I love, a 19th c. pace of life, and, yes, romance, however fictional. My eyes were not assaulted by tacky ads, there was no gritty realism and there was virtually no violence. I saw no plastic, smelled no vile exhaust fumes, was sold nothing and paid for nothing. I saw no strip malls, big box stores, traffic jams. There was no one around to call me "unrealistic". No one was there to shame me into hiding my preferences.

I thought a few times over the course of the day about the Goddess, as in, what on earth does this have to do with Her? I associate beauty with the Goddess, so from that standpoint, the day had a Goddess quality. I also thought quite a bit about the word "sovereignty". Even today, we women have so little sovereignty over our lives, our days. So to inhabit a world that I choose, just for one day, to yell a huge "YES" up to the Universe, to say, "This is ME!" and not worry about someone pushing back...that freedom was divinely feminine.

Lastly, I do believe the Goddess wants women to know the truth of who they are, whatever that is. We are vibrational beings, and when we feel joyous and happy and in our element, we are vibrating on the same wavelength as what we are experiencing. Learning to trust that joy, the moment when we know we are exulting in "yes, yes, yes" rather than "no, no, no", takes years. In my case, it has taken over six decades, and over five hundred blog posts! 

I actually had to look up the word "stately". It means, dignified, imposing, grand, magnificent. Which means, I resonate with -- and perhaps am -- dignified, imposing, grand, and magnificent. Which explains, of course, why I am so miserable when I am in so many other kinds of settings. Other realities are not wrong, just wrong for me.

So whatever this next year brings, and however long it takes me to return to the UK, I've decided my first step will be a stay at one of those stately homes. And until then, may I start each day with the mantra, "dignified, imposing, grand and magnificent." May they be the four walls of my permanent home, and may I allow myself to fully embrace these qualities, lovingly.

Romance Novels

I wish I could promise my (one or two!) readers that my daily posts will segue seamlessly from one to the next, but I can already see that this will not be the case. I can promise, however, to "be bold", in the words of yesterday's post. I will try to have the courage to say the kinds of things I couldn't bring myself to come out directly and say several years ago. 

In the past, I may have mentioned my love of Mary Balogh romance novels. The topic seems frivolous compared to yesterday's post, but bear with me.

The fact is that I have decided to dedicate this entire day to love, in any form I can find. Now, a case could be made that this is a decidedly stupid thing to do, given that I must move yet again by the end of the month, and I have no idea where to go. In theory, of course, I should be using this new computer of mine to go on a frenzied search for low-income housing. But no option that I can envision for anywhere in this country -- even if I had a fortune -- interests me or seems to be able to pull me out of what has become a case of chronic PTSD when it comes to moving. Wherever it may end up being, I'll be lucky if I have the energy to throw my few belongings willy-nilly into shopping bags. The days of my being the most organized and efficient mover on the planet seem to be over...

So. Love. Worse still, romantic love. I mean, as a mystic and someone who really hasn't experienced genuine romantic or partnership love, it seems strange even to me how much I love Balogh's books. And given that I'm envisioning the eventual collapse of the very systems that created the upper crust Regency world she describes, you'd think I would loathe such reading. You'd think I would loathe Jane Austen novels and the movies made from them. (Part of my list for today is the "only" Pride and Prejudice, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.) But no, I love them. 

The aristocratic homes these books are set in are, for whatever reason, more "home" to me than any of the dozens I have ever actually lived in. I've always just reveled in their beauty. The homes themselves are beautiful architecturally, filled with beauty, and surrounded by beauty. No matter how my logical mind delights in pointing out the seeming impossibility of my ever being able to afford such an abode and the fact that this social construct has already largely disappeared. I still feel that I could walk onto the grounds of an English stately home and finally, genuinely, be at home. It's a paradox, as is most of my life.

But in 2021, my heart is drawn primarily to the actual romances between the man and the woman in any given story. Oh, of course, the gimmick in all Balogh's books is that the two people are completely mis-matched, whether in terms of their personalities, their stations in life, or their families. Some consideration threatens, through most of the book, to derail an early attraction, but when all hope is lost, they come together. 

For me, I suppose most people would consider all hope lost. Even if I weren't literally as old as the hills, finding a man who could love a woman who's already got two passions (England/choral evensong and women's spirituality) seems improbable. And for me to relax enough of my feminism to deeply love a man seems improbable too, though it is what I have always wanted. I learned so little about love in my family; I struggle to imagine being cherished, and having anyone say, "I want you safe, and I want you with me for the rest of my life"...except for what I have read in Mary Balogh's books. Passionate people and loving families inhabit her world, and I read the books over and over to understand what that kind of love would feel like, to try to train my soul to recognize the real thing. These stories help me to understand that, even now, I am worthy of giving and receiving such undying love. I talk a lot about love as the only power in the world, but so much of my understanding is still awfully global, spiritual, and intellectual. I keep inching closer to feeling love in my heart.

So as soon as I hit "publish", I'll finish my Mary Balogh novel, watch the remaining episodes of Pride and Prejudice, eat foods that I love, watch the birds at the feeder, knit for a while, and perhaps take a walk. I am thankful for the freedom to spend an entire day "in love".

"Be Bold"

This morning, I heard the tiniest snippet of some news. A man said, "We need to be bold and create the jobs of the future," or words to that effect, before I cringed and turned the radio off.

It wasn't fair, and it was very uneducated of me, taking a quote so completely out of context. But all my life, phrases like "jobs of the future" have largely referred to high-tech, data-driven, fear-and-conflict-driven occupations that I, literally, could not do. Never mind the fact that my preference would have been creating beauty in an English cathedral and that perhaps I gave up too soon on that dream. The jobs I did do to survive were low-paying and, at times, humiliating. Not everyone will be able to do brilliant, exciting "jobs of the future" for a variety of reasons; to think that there won't be an ever-more-miserable group of us scrambling to barely survive is folly.

I don't know if I am "channeling" me, the Goddess, Mother Nature, or what, but I guess it is time for me to be bold and come right out and say something. 

The next decade or two is a transitional time to a different future than this expert is envisioning. Skipping over female wisdom and intelligence in the rush to create "artificial intelligence" was -- ahem -- unwise and premature. A civilization so utterly lacking in respect for nature, and for women's very different ways of knowing and working, has led to much that is impressive, flashy, even magical, and yet its arc of progress is completely unsustainable.

Waves of love and truth, long suppressed, are starting to flow around earth and through all of us. Aspects of our life based on impulses lower than love/beauty/truth/unity/joy will simply stop working. Competitive actions will stop working. "Wars" of all kinds will stop working. There will be a period of chaos; people will be infuriated that their old ways aren't working. I believe we will land in a much lower-tech reality, forced to start again, intentionally and wisely bringing both male and female intelligence to the "job" of re-creating civilization. How do you create societies based on love, acceptance, truth, unity, beauty, and genuine respect for the earth? Very carefully. Slowly. Inclusively. Sensitively.

The "jobs of the future"? Organic farming, old-fashioned building techniques, spinning, weaving...

Who is She?

Good morning from an already hot and sticky Duluth, Minnesota. A crow outside my window has just answered back; by later on, it will be too hot for me to think, and, perhaps, for him to fly. 

For the time being, I will be posting most mornings, except for Sunday, which I still consider my day apart from the others of the week. Earlier in my blog history, I tended to write every two or three days, but at the moment, it feels like it must be a daily spiritual practice. If I am "working for" the Goddess, this is my job and I need to do it early, before other considerations draw me off-track.

So on a random Saturday morning, it's pretty big to try to describe/define one's notion of the divine, but if the premise of my life from now on is that I work for Her, I need to at least try to do that!

In the end, I think that the passionate stream of life is more like a river than a person, a river of love, power, truth, joy, and all the highest qualities that humans can conceive of -- plus more that are beyond our grasp. It is something well beyond human dualities like "male" and "female." Yet we humans cannot help trying to describe this enormity through the lens of what we know and can see in front of us. Early in history, feminine notions of the Goddess were common, later nearly completely replaced by male notions. I won't try to revisit this history, except to say that clearly, at the moment I was born in the mid-1950's, a male concept of God was firmly in place.

It's that whole thing of not being able to conceive of what you cannot see. Girls of the mid-20th century had absolutely no model for the possibility of flying into outer space, being a priest or other leader in the dominant church denominations, running for president, making a million dollars, or, frankly, power of nearly any kind. These days, it stuns me to look at news footage from the 60's. In all the coverage of politics, business, religion, and diplomacy, white men in suits are omnipresent, the rest of us, invisible. Even though by the early 1970's, we girls were suddenly being told, "You can be whatever you want to be," the fact is that that boat had sailed. Our early years had formed us. If we couldn't see ourselves as powerful in most worldly arenas, it was going to be even harder to see ourselves in the divine one. 

And it was hard. Yes, as I may have written many blogs ago, as a little nine-or-ten-year-old choirgirl, I sat up in the church choir loft not understanding why God's only child was a boy. Yes, even then, I resonated with the music more than the religious construct, which I just couldn't fully appreciate. But it would take many decades, and finding myself powerless and incapable of thriving in earthly arenas, before I really started to grapple with the Goddess. It was in the '90's, in my first Duluth era (!), that I began to see it as an issue of balance. I knew (in my head) that civilization's almost complete focus on male values was unsustainable. Nothing like living next to the largest lake in the world! I mean, it helped that I could literally "see" Her, in the form of Lake Superior, every day. But even then, thirty years ago, I couldn't fully go down that lane of the highway, out of fear, and out of concern for men. Was it any fairer to label God as "female" rather than "male"? And I wasn't interested in worshiping the Goddess. As English church music began to re-enter my life, I put these kinds of questions on the back burner again. I didn't want to seem too nutty to my English academic and musical friends and colleagues.

Fast forward to the last few years. There's a point, when for all intents and purposes, nothing in your life has worked properly, in despair, your heart searches for the one thing you believe in. For me, that was realizing that a female aspect of divine power was simply invisible in the world; I couldn't clearly "see" myself in the world's religions or secular power centers, but I could see myself in something invisible that felt equally powerful.

Our Western art canon has nothing as powerful as Michelangelo's Creation of Adam (and the extraordinary image of God reaching out to touch fingers, and share the spark of life, with man) with which to "image" the divine feminine. For me, a modern woman, ancient statues don't do the trick. Neither does trying to re-vision the Sistine Chapel, or simply replacing male language with female in religious texts. She isn't a figure in the sky, or a being in a cave underground (although that image is a little more satisfactory...) She isn't limited to earth's environment, or to the sacredness of every woman, although those are facets of Her. I guess the best I can do today, with the heat already affecting my brain, is to say that She is the balancing energy filling out all the cracks and crevices of our human life and the natural world. Putting the focus on Her, at this crucial moment in Earth's history, gives some of us a chance to help restore the feminine side of life's equation.

I get the impression that She does not want to be worshipped, nor does She want to become all-powerful and throw the balance out in another direction. But balance will be restored, with or without human help, and the whole thing will go a lot more smoothly if our culture starts to honor the power of nature and of women.

This new lane

Aligning as best you can to Goddess energy is vibrationally a world away from constantly trying to navigate a conflict-and-fear-driven paradigm. The image came to me of a four-lane highway with two lanes heading in each direction. I've been in one lane all along (heading toward "true north"?!), and it was strewn with roadblocks and detours and trash, and almost impossible for me to drive in. I constantly zigged and zagged, each turn of the wheel an effort to protect myself from hurt and breakdown. I saw that there was a second (mostly empty!) lane going in the same direction, but figured no one was driving in it for some good reason. Having put on my turn signal and switched to that lane, it turns out that it is nearly empty simply because so few people are in it. Period. For someone of my skills and inclinations, this lane is clearer and it makes blissful sense. The hardest thing at the moment is simply getting used to a different "energy" and the notion of a straight, open, easy path.

I have decided, for the moment, that I'm going to leave my year's worth of actively "channeled" material apart, for possible future publication in another format. For the moment, it feels better to speak here in my own voice as I always did, in the present, observing what is happening from the perspective of what I have learned from all the lessons of the last year. Let's see how that goes, anyway.

That's all I'll say today, except to observe that "returning to normal" (life before the pandemic) may never be possible. It's a sign of something to know that this phrase is being used everywhere right now. Speaking for myself, if "normal" was the other lane of the highway, I don't plan to switch lanes again!

The Return

Well, as a friend of mine quipped, that was the longest Lent in history. I "gave up blogging for Lent" in 2020. By March 17, Duluth's library had closed, ostensibly for two weeks, but even as I wished the staff a cheery farewell, I think we all knew it would be a longer hiatus. Never could most of us (except for perhaps scientists and epidemiologists) have envisioned what was to come. 

With the library closed, I have been almost entirely off-line these fifteen months. I actually appreciated the excuse not to engage with the energy of the world. Watching the nightly news on TV was almost more than I could take. I am eternally thankful for the situation I have been living in, where I could be relatively safe and nearly entirely contemplative. I took one foray out a week, to the grocery store, pharmacy, or, once they reopened in limited ways, a local independent bookstore and a yarn shop.

Because I was spending relatively little money, even for me (!), I actually could have afforded a new computer by late last year. One of my very own. Friends said, "Gosh, Liz, what a terrible time to be without a computer!" My senior, retired acquaintances were on their phones and computers much of the day, checking social media, making video calls to family, grandkids and friends, or taking classes. And I nearly faint when I think about the millions of people worldwide whose jobs suddenly went virtual, the students working from home, and the increased use of computers everywhere. Maybe it was for that reason that -- as a mystic -- I just didn't feel led to join the fray. The only way I could stay calm, hopefully healthy, and learn this era's clearly important lessons was, for a stretch of time, to avoid electronic media. When I wrote, it was handwritten, Liz-from-the-70's snail mail letters, journals and channeling.

Yes, you read that right. Channeling. For a year I have been keeping an "alternative" journal on the side that came to me -- and still does -- from some deep source.

For decades, you could say that I had already been doing some channeling in my personal handwritten journals. It started, interestingly enough, when I first moved to Duluth in 1990. I had at that point given up on women ever entering the field of English cathedral music. I was determined to forget about England and its music, and find somewhere American to settle. When I first arrived, you could say that my resume was as out of place as I was. Needing employment, I quickly got Christmas season retail jobs and in quick succession frostbit my feet. Trying to make sense of this unusual series of events, I opened up to a new voice in my journal, a loving, calm, motherly voice. "She" dialogued with me, and "spoke" reassuringly with me when I was most down or confused.

Good Smith College graduate that I am (with second helpings from the University of London and Parsons School of Design), I have always been quite uncomfortable with the notion of channeling, even though some of the spiritual messages I've read over the years seem sound. Other people spoke with odd voices or claimed that they were Biblical or historical figures. Whatever it was that I was doing in my journal was something else entirely, just for my eyes. It was cheaper than therapy (important when you are suddenly making minimum wage!) and no one else need ever see it. It was "creative journaling." My surprise move to the upper Midwest had already started to make me an embarrassment to my social, intellectual, musical and spiritual roots, and in the thirty years since then I have tried hard to hide this apparent connection to higher spiritual planes, so as not to make matters even worse.

But it seems that my recent return to Duluth and the shock of COVID have conspired to push this channeling to another level. The kindly, embracing, motherly voice, reassuring to me personally, seems to have expanded to addressing the larger population, and She makes observations that are honest, surprising, visionary (although not precise or predictive), basically along the lines of, "This is what is going on in these times and why." Whether she is simply my higher self, or The Goddess/Mother Nature/The Feminine Face of the Divine, I may never quite know. But in recent months, I have come to understand that the only thing I truly believe in now is a loving female creator. If nothing else, the "voice" that writes through me is my interpretation of what she would say to us if she could.

In the fall, a good friend asked me if I had asked -- in my journaling or channeling -- "who" was speaking to me. No answer came. I walked over to the door and looked out, and there was a single, heart-shaped golden-yellow leaf hanging for dear life onto the tree closest to the door. In that, perhaps, I had my answer. I am expressing my heart's connection with the heart of the universe. (I actually think all creative and spiritual people do the same whenever they create or communicate.)

I finally broke down and bought a computer. The library still hasn't re-opened to pre-pandemic normalcy, and I realize I can wait no longer to share at least some of this material with you. I haven't yet figured out exactly how to proceed with this, especially as recently the alternative journal posts seem to be less in the form of a "dialogue" and more my own prose. Perhaps that makes sense. I am beginning to see that my whole life has been tuned to Her music, and perhaps my voice was always aligned with Hers. My lifelong yearning to sing choral evensong, starting well before I was ten, was at least in part about the impulse, as a female, to access the divine and fully express my gifts. I suspect all my life choices have made far more sense in the context of a Goddess paradigm than a God one. 

So the major change of this COVID time is formally embracing that the remainder of my life is dedicated to the Divine Feminine in creation and the world, coming out, if you will, as working for Her. Like many people who feel a spiritual calling, I would dearly prefer to hide under a pillow, or disappear into oblivion. I have come so close to the latter many times so it wouldn't be hard! But I have been putting this off for too long. Every other aspect of my life seems to be at a dead end yet again, and the only door creaking open is this one. Goddess help me, literally!