I write as a tentative orange-pinkish sun is breaking through clouds and smoky haze. We sure are living in "interesting times".
The COVID year-plus solidified my path to the Goddess, and the only challenge is to try to explain how. On the surface, my experience of March '20-May '21 was easier than that of so many people, for which I will always be grateful. I was with friends, and we largely self-quarantined due to their health issues. Outside forces dictated a way of life which, I soon learned, was actually right for me. I didn't miss shopping, or dining out, or movies, or work or volunteer activities. I walked the dog multiple times a day, read, knitted little blankets for friends, read some more, and -- every other night -- made dinner. Not having a working computer and the library being closed, I hand-wrote my journal and letters, but that was it. I was glad to be with other people, but I didn't seem to need social events or a lot of TV or extraneous external "noise".
For about an hour each evening, the exception to this was nightly local and national news on TV. The news seemed to get worse by the day, but what was most disheartening to me (having effectively moved to a spiritual "place" beyond conflict) was the war-related lingo. Everything was "the fight against COVID" and "heroes on the front lines" and "beating the disease"...well, you know. You heard and lived it too. I just couldn't see the growing pandemic in these terms, but the "battle lines had been drawn" and little old me with no computer or smart phone basically had only two choices -- watch the news, or not.
One day in late June last year, I think right after having watched the latest broadcast, I went back to my room and suddenly felt I had to write something. I grabbed a sheet of lined paper and a pen, and what came out was the first of several dozen "channelled" what? Messages? Letters? The experience reminded me of back when I was at Pendle Hill. It had been explained to me that if someone speaks out of the silence in a meeting for worship, the best case scenario is when they are doing it spontaneously, when they have literally felt Spirit "quaking" within them (thus the term Quakers!) and they just must stand up and speak. I actually had that experience a few times in that spring of 1990, and you could always tell when someone at the worship service was speaking from this deep place and not from their ego. Well, grabbing my pen and starting to write a year ago was very similar. What came out of my pen wasn't as smooth or polished as my normal writing, and it was energetically attention-getting and insistent. I mean, much of it was actually similar to things I had already been thinking, in some cases for years, but the pandemic was lending urgency to the messages and they came to me in the third person. It felt as if the Goddess was dictating to me. Needless to say, I can never prove that, and in true Liz style, the whole thing was all too easy to try to sweep under the carpet.
However, as the summer progressed, and more of this material was coming through me, I started to consider getting back online somehow. I wasn't in a position to buy a new computer yet (that would come after the stimulus checks!) and I wasn't even sure but that I wouldn't rather write a short book or e-book. I hemmed and hawed. Considering how our activities were limited, the days flew by; the build-up to the election, the truncated, cheerless holidays, the events in Washington in January, and, of course, the arrival of the vaccine and the process of making appointments for them all took their toll. I knew I had (and was receiving) an alternative vision of all these events that should be seen and heard, but like most people, I was also exhausted and traumatized. On my 65th birthday, I felt a little like I was turning 85.
In early May, as things were starting to open up again, I realized that I needed to make some decisions about housing/staying in Duluth/life moving forward in a changed world. I spent several nights at one of the hotels that looks straight out at the lake, and as the dawn broke at about 5:45 on May 7th, I faced that familiar horizon and basically just told myself (and all the spiritual powers-that-be) that from this point forward, I am working for the Goddess. My "employer" is the feminine face of the divine, however She needs to use me. I was in tears, tired, feeling both relieved that I could never again squash the source of my spiritual energy, but terrified and still feeling vulnerable and uncertain. Within several weeks, I had bought a computer and returned to this blog, but I realize I haven't effectively used it yet to express some of the material waiting just under the surface. With no stable home and chronic "homesickness" for England, just getting from Day A to Day B is such a challenge, never mind breaking new spiritual ground in public. (Or at least my version of new spiritual ground.) Yikes.
But it's time. I'm doing the best I can, dear readers, and in the next few posts I'll communicate some of the material that has been coming to me.
