One more post with a little background. There are so many ways in which my life almost guaranteed that I would ultimately have an affinity to a Goddess construct of the divine. After about a month of drought, it just seems easier this morning to forego a proper narrative, and simply make a list...
Yes, my early wish to sing with the men and boys' choir, and heartbreak at the impossibility of that...perhaps taking issue with God from that point on (!)...questioning why God didn't have a daughter too...having one grandmother who taught me to create art and crafts, and another who had been a pioneering early woman lawyer...attending six years of all girls' college preparatory schools...four years at Smith College...an excellent education in critical thinking...why...why...why...
My University of London master's degree work focused on a saint who was killed by her Roman fiancé when she converted to Christianity...she went to heaven in a ball of flame...the process of recreating myself once I returned to America, and my studio art studies, where I was the creator...if I couldn't sing the music I loved, no one could stop me from creating art...being drawn to the metaphysical writings of Florence Scovel Shinn and, later, Esther Hicks ("Abraham-Hicks")...
At Pendle Hill, the Quaker study center, my Episcopal/Church of England roots were turned upside down...in the silence, once I stopped hearing hymns and organ preludes, I heard my own inner voice and started increasingly to trust it...following those inner leadings to Duluth, Minnesota, and living merely feet from the lake that felt like a living Goddess...immersing myself in that power...
I explored graduate programs in women's spirituality, but the only real possibilities I found at the time were in California, and my inner bungee cord still tying me to England just didn't stretch that far...I returned east to accompany my mom on the last eighteen months or so of her life...a moment I will never forget was when I told some missionaries at the front door that I was a post-Christian feminist, so I was sorry that I was unlikely to convert to their religion. When I told Mom what I had said, she said, "I think if I was going to be around a little longer, I'd be a post-Christian feminist too"...
Most recently, the decade of allowing English church music back into my life, trying to re-connect with that world and make sense of the paradox of a non-believing passion for the music. If you have time, go back to my blog post of November 6, 2017 ("Finally"), where I finally articulated what this is all about...a tumultuous decade, a rich/poor decade, a homeless decade, a decade where I finally accepted that the core of me is uniquely unsuited for the world as it is at this time, and that the closer I get to aligning with the divine feminine, the further I get from traditional security of any kind...utterly terrifying, day in and day out...
So whether some of the things I write about in upcoming months come from some deep Goddess source or from just the constantly-uncertain constantly-questioning path of Liz in this lifetime, I'll leave you to assess. I'll just keep doing my best to express the ineffable. That, of course, is what we are not supposed to do, but I always do everything "wrong"!
