Keep on Keeping on

And so I keep on keeping on, as a friend of mine always says. Thankful not to be in Florida.  And holding in the light the thousands upon thousands of Floridians who have an extremely hard road ahead the next few weeks. But as usual, I feel even more sadness for Nature, whose oceans have gained untold quantities of oil, toxic chemicals, building supplies, old cars, toys, boats, and, as ever, plastics. We surely must soon go over some kind of tipping point, where all of us start to think about our toll on the environment before we buy or build or expand...

In preparation for some changes or a move that will probably happen in the next few months, I'm going through that process yet again of organizing my things/paring down/consolidating. It's hard to imagine anyone in the world who has done this as often as I have (although I'm sure I'm not completely alone...) And it gets harder as I get older, when even carrying grocery bags is exhausting. I used to not want to own more than I could fit in my car; now I don't have a car, and cannot carry much at all. At the same time, I am not ready to get rid of those heavy, heavy, heavy books and journals, which are literally a mirror of me. There's such a fine line between downsizing and throwing yourself away, and at times I have come too close to the latter. I still have some boxes back east, and there is something of "me" in them, so I cannot let go of them yet. Being more aware of who I am and having a greater sense of my validity than ever, I'm finding this consolidation process harder, more emotional. I want to own as little as possible and still "own" myself. And I need to "own" that I would dearly love a simple, beautiful permanent home in the place of my choosing, even though the low income of a wandering mystic has always made that seem like an impossible dream. I keep reminding myself that right now, even some of the most successful people are losing homes for a variety of environmental and other reasons. We are all on an edge.

During the height of the pandemic, I thought I had lost a number of earrings. I held onto their partners in a little plastic bag in case they showed up, and three of them did! Going through things with a fine tooth comb once in a while has its benefits!

Fall has come on suddenly, although strangely without quite the normal colors that you usually see in this part of the world. We've had a number of cold nights, but the trees remain generally green. Hmmm...

The rebirth of this moment is full of paradox. I'm energized and a little bored, but exhausted. I'm carrying America and England, and the past and the future, and wanting to lead but have no idea who wants my presence, much less my leadership. My blog is like breathing, absolutely necessary, and as I near 700 posts, I know that some of my richest gifts to the world are in here. Yet some days, I have no readers at all! Some days, I wonder why I keep on keeping on, but so far, I do!

Painful prefixes

A little over a year ago, I wrote this post, but it has stayed in draft form ever since. I am not quite sure why, except that perhaps current events eclipsed the topic, or I wasn't ready to publish it for some other reason. However, it feels like the right time this morning, so, with a little editing, here we go...

Since I pretty frequently allude to the time of change we are entering, I guess I need to start exploring what things may look like, say, thirty, fifty, or one hundred years from now. Or, in this case, what they may sound like.

I feel quite certain that word prefixes that can mean or imply conflict, pushback, or pain will no longer be a major part of our vocabulary. Counter-, contra-, a-, anti-, dis-, dys-, non-, and a host of others...even suffixes like -algia (nostalgia).

Is this because some Orwellian, Big Brother regime will take over, and erase words in order to mess up people's brains? Create Ministries of Love which kill or torture people? No.

I think it will be because the human heart will literally (and simply) reach the point where it can no longer tolerate hatred, conflict or pain. Most of us will just throw up our hands and say, "I can't do this any more. I cannot focus on this any more." We won't want to fight anything or protect ourselves from anything. We will outgrow duality, in part because it has led to dire environmental crises that have completely changed our lives and perspectives. This will be change at the grassroots level, change from within, as most of us start to understand how destructive it has been to be in constant conflict. This transformation will spread to our language. Certain words will simply be used more infrequently. Their corresponding actions and concepts won't appeal anymore because we won't wish to stoke the fires of division and pain. Words and actions will increasingly exude/embody only harmony.

It's interesting to spend a day aware of words implying conflict...maybe circling them in the newspaper (if you still get a hard copy!) or writing a list of the ones you see or hear in the course of your day. Some examples: antiestablishment, atonal, disinfectant, counterattack...When you read them, how do you feel? Are they  uplifting? Do you feel a warm glow? Or does that prefix immediately put you on edge?  If you feel nothing, don't be surprised. We are all a bit numb at the moment. Just open the door to finding words (and actions) with no conflict or pain frame of reference, and see what comes in.

Goddess Words 10: Truth

The truth of the matter is that the word "truth" did not appear on my original list of Goddess words. But this week, despite complete shuffling of the deck of oracle cards I am currently using, the "Crow" card keeps coming up, and with it, messages about truth and the importance of being true to yourself. Not only that, but actual crows seem to be everywhere in this equinox/season-shifting moment, cawing and chattering their own truths.

Is there only one universal truth? I suspect so, and that it is that "Love is all there is". The Goddess connection is clear. If I slipped right by the word when I originally penned the list, it may be because of how rigidly it can be defined, and how it can slip into left-brain legalistic usages. It also may be because, around the time I wrote the list, I was teaching a course at a community college that used dystopian novels to explore how things can go wrong in society. For years, I led students through an exploration of George Orwell's 1984. Undoubtedly I chose this particular book because it was set in England, but I also saw it as the granddaddy of all dystopian novels. To this day, Orwell's take on the malleability of "truth" is groundbreaking and scarily accurate...we seem to be seeing it everywhere right now. 

So I suspect that the word seemed too "loaded" for my original Goddess list -- and it may still be, particularly when referencing "truths" forced on people from above. I'm going to focus, then, on personal truths and inner truths. Because if there is a Goddess being, or energy coming alive in the world, I believe without a shadow of a doubt that She wants humans to be completely true to themselves, to find their personal inner truths and live in alignment with those truths, whatever they may be.

The last year has been a truth serum time for me, as I guess my readers can tell. Earlier in my life, in an effort to protect my fragile inner truths, and to, let's face it, be loved or appreciated or hired, I frequently tried to love things that others loved, or to be someone that others might love or approve of. Over the last few years, and intensively in 2022, the myriad ways I was not true to myself have surfaced. 

I'll just give one example that I don't think I have talked about before. As an American born in the 1950's, I was steeped in an appreciation of our country's beauty "from sea to shining sea". I was fortunate enough even when I was young to see the paintings of the Hudson River School, and of western artists such as Russell, Remington and Bierstadt, which presented an almost breathtakingly heavenly image of the landscape. Friends and family members moved out West, and I have appreciatively driven around those states and even lived in Montana myself. Lake Superior's beauty drew me to Duluth in 1990, and may be the one major factor keeping me here right now. 

But here's the truth. If, tomorrow, someone handed me a car and the money to do a few months of traveling around the U.S., would I take it? No. In the end, I don't find the American landscape (even the most pristine places) particularly beautiful or approachable. I have no curiosity about seeing more of the Boundary Waters, or the Upper Peninsula, or the rolling fields of Kansas, or the towering Rockies, or even the leafy back roads back east. With the possible exception of Lakes Superior and Champlain, I don't have that "hand to my heart" passionate attraction to most of my country that I do feel for almost everywhere I go in the U.K. That doesn't mean that America isn't beautiful, just that it doesn't resonate with my personal heart all that well. And this is not a huge truth-telling, on the scale of someone acknowledging their sexuality or the nature of an addiction. In the larger scheme of things, it may seem almost ridiculously small. 

Yet it is such a relief to tell the truth, to stop trying to be enthusiastic about something I am not enthusiastic about. I don't know what it means for my future, except that aligning with truth in one area may help me align with truth in other areas. And to the extent to which I'm doing my best to represent the values of the divine feminine, it is crucial that all my layers of untruth (no matter how well-meaning these "lies" were) are peeled away, leaving only truth.

Back Again

I'm back again. Sort of.

Monday was intense. I watched just about all the coverage of Queen Elizabeth's funeral from 4:30 AM central to nearly noon...I had to turn it off after the bagpiper at the end of the service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Since then, I have been shaky and somewhat out-of-body. Fortunately, some friends invited me a few hours later down to Park Point for tea on a deck looking out at Lake Superior's massive horizon line. That was about all I could manage, staring. I was rubbish at conversation.

I will leave it to others to analyze the historical importance of the Queen's death, and what it means to the world. Even I, with my love of pomp and ceremony, felt at times as if I were a fly on the wall at some similar event a century ago. It was archaic, yet, of course, strangely hi-tech, with our ability to watch from across the world, and search for music lists and other pertinent information. It was about many things much more important than this other "Liz", watching from Minnesota. 

Yet the reason I was turned inside out is that nearly every spot in the day's journey held resonance for me. "My" composer, Herbert Howells, who I've written about and whose music is so dear to me, featured prominently on the day, with organ preludes and his wonderful hymn tune (Michael) to "All My Hope on God is Founded". Howells's own ashes are buried at Westminster Abbey. The first and only time I attended choral evensong there, I was directed with other service-goers through the north aisle and, literally, stepped on his plaque without really having a chance to appreciate it. 

After the Westminster Abbey funeral service, the motorcade drove by Royal Albert Hall, which is where my University of London degree ceremony took place in 1982. They then drove by Heathrow Airport, which, of course, I have flown in and out of numerous times. Soon, thanks to the drone's bird's eye view, I saw the turnoff where the A30 heads west toward Royal Holloway College (Egham/Englefield Green), and the motorcade turned north to Windsor. Lastly, in 1981 when I was in Royal Holloway's choir, we sang choral evensong at St. George's Chapel, and with all Monday's amazing camera work, I could see approximately where I sat on that occasion. So the day had a "this is your life" quality for me and, of course, anyone who has lived, worked, or studied in that part of England. I suppose for me it is more intense than simple nostalgia because I (who have never figured out how to create a permanent home in the U.S.) have often told people that my real home is in the choir stalls of English cathedrals (abbeys/chapels...) It was a day immersed in that world from so many camera and audio perspectives, making it seem both real and surreal, natural and really unnatural. I sang along with most of the hymns and anthems (I'm not sure if I have ever sung "My Soul, There is a Country" or "Bring Us, O Lord" for an actual service, but their lush harmonies are literally the sound of my soul), and I was pleased to see a woman countertenor in the St. George's Choir. Through her, perhaps, I was represented.

I'm blathering. That must mean it's time to stop. But in the end, I'm not really back, or at least, I'm not sure which "back" I am. My soul is tethered as much to the sound of this music in its space as it is to the various specific spaces themselves. About 95% of my life has been spent much too far from this choral, emotional and spiritual home base (yes, even for Goddess-oriented me!), and at 66, you can only be honest: it doesn't feel good being chronically cut off from yourself. I'm too shaky, still, to know what means for my future, near or long term. 

A Brief Hiatus

Hi dear friends. I think I will take a brief hiatus until at least next Tuesday. I'm in mourning, on a number of levels, but it's OK, and I'm OK. I haven't really closely followed the news from Britain; I'm basically waiting until Monday's service at Westminster Abbey to reengage. Themes of death, mourning, rebirth, and "how to go forward" seem to be universal right now. We are all in it together, aren't we?  We are all essential threads of the complex woven mystery of life on earth. I hope this mid-September treats you gently and kindly, and "See you" next week.

The Fourth Day

This is the fourth day since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and I am still in a state of genuine shock. Certainly, I have never been quite so bowled over by the deaths of other people -- family or friends. 

I've tried to pinpoint what I am feeling, because it isn't quite the same sadness I've seen in a few clips on TV news, the sadness of the people on the street in Britain. As English as I feel, the fact is that most of my life has been spent outside her orbit. I spoke on June 8 about my two near-encounters with her in 1980-81; my only childhood memories are of my mother, scolding my brothers for their bad manners at the dinner table by saying, "What if Queen Elizabeth came to dinner?" Their response? "Why would she ever come to Schenectady?" Why indeed?! Mom was also born the same year as the Queen, and looked a little like her. So there are a few emotions rising of missing my own mother and grandmothers.

What I am mourning the most is the passing of the one human woman who, over the course of my entire life, was loved, beloved, respected, and supported by millions of people all over the world. Putting aside the politics or validity of "empire", the fact is that she cared about people, about her role of service, and her duties, almost literally until the last day of her life. Very few women in our current paradigm have had access to such a visible role, and while most of us probably deserve to be equally loved, beloved and respected, we aren't, especially in the larger population. Scanning the world scene, I don't see any other women (or, for that matter, men) whom hundreds of thousands of people would line the streets for in silent respect.

Adding to the grief is the fact that I have never felt this exiled, so far from home. It's not an issue of mileage...being in Maine or Massachusetts wouldn't help. I guess that's all I will say about that for today! My "ear worms" of the last few days have been "God Save the Queen" and C. Hubert H. Parry's "I was Glad" (complete with "Vivats") -- both of which I guess are no longer appropriate. But it's like my inner chorister self has needed to express my gratitude and emotions musically, and that is my soundtrack. 

With all the transitions taking place in our world, it makes sense that this one would take place now. That's all I can say today, on the fourth day.

Wednesday Miscellaneous

This is one of those mornings when I have nothing planned for this blog, and I'm not in the right "place" to mull over Goddess words. Labor Day weekend was, for me, almost literally the beginning of a different kind of labor, that of giving birth to an updated version of me after a nine month retreat-of-sorts. In the end, it is not a "new" me, more of a case of much more fully embracing all the facets of who I am and always have been, and being willing to bring them to light rather than hide them. My big "split" is no longer that. If there is no other place on earth where England/English church music and the spirituality of the divine feminine overlap, then they (finally!) overlap more comfortably in me. The birth canal that is this moment's crazy kaleidoscope of world and national news isn't something I can do much more than acknowledge and then move on from, hopefully, within the next few months, into the light of my own "new dawn". Not surprisingly, the card I pulled this morning was "Initiation" (the equivalent of the standard Tarot's number 0, "Fool"). Yup. Ultimately, I know nothing about how to proceed, except that I am going forward inwardly dedicated to the Goddess, as best as I can understand that energy.

Yesterday, I needed to do an errand at our local mall, and boy, there is nothing more surreal than a mall! (I wrote a story years ago about a future time when malls were museums. People paid to look at life as it was in the late 20th/early 21st century.) I find it almost impossible now to go into any large store, be it grocery, natural foods, pharmacy, clothing, or books...The number of products is completely overwhelming, especially when they are encased in plastic. When you've been living in survival mode for decades, almost everything on the shelves seems unnecessary...I guess I'll leave it at that. (Obviously, one or two things were "necessary" to me or I wouldn't have made the trip, and most of these items must be necessary for someone, or some system.) Even as we speak, many Americans are having to rethink their priorities, if they have lost their homes or jobs. Things are happening at the right time, in a way none of us can fully know.

I am within earshot of the highway which heads south from here, and the constant loud hum of cars around a holiday weekend is intense. People who waited an extra day or two to leave the Boundary Waters for the Twin Cities are heading south. We haven't had any nights in the thirties yet, but trees are beginning to change, and most of the wildflowers in the garden are skeletons of their former selves. I actually love those spare shapes, which are almost fractal in their repetitiveness. The quality of light in and outside the house has been amazingly rich, as well. You wish you could bottle it and look at it again in mid-winter!

Goddess Words 9: Spirals

Thursday, I pulled a Spiral oracle card, so it seems like as good a time as any to  present that word, a little way down my original list.  There are so many spirals in our world, both in nature and manmade: shells, hurricanes and tornados, water going down drains, coiled snakes, galaxies, new plants unfolding, bedsprings, labyrinths, spiral staircases...Spirals suggest movement, out from a center point or back into it; growth; and the process of life-death-rebirth. There's also a potential three-dimensionality to spirals, travel down and then up, or vice versa. And, of course, they are essentially circular, and from that perspective feel more Goddess-oriented than straight lines, blocks and squares.

My life has resisted a traditional, left-brain, chronological, linear unfolding and has been an exuberant (and yet often terrifying) collection of spirals. Almost everywhere I ever lived, from Schenectady, to the Champlain Valley, to England, to New York City, to Duluth, I've lived or made extended visits more than once. I'd love to claim that I circled around, gained new wisdom, then approached the old places from a new, higher energy, but that hasn't always been the case. I think sometimes it was simply  finishing lessons that needed completing. As for my many trips to England, I was "only" trying to return to the place I feel at home. My life has been my job, I realize now, and so it and my resume have defied easy categorization; I know people have found my process confounding. Heck, I have found it confounding. If you want success or stability in the current system, I don't recommend lots of circles and spirals. From the beginning, I think I may have been Goddess-inspired in ways I didn't understand, but whether I could be seen as "successful" even in that context, only time will tell.

Anyway, spirals have been the path and have shown up on the path. I told you once about my childhood dream of the tornado of fire, which I now see more positively than I used to. Then, in 2008, on a visit to San Francisco -- ostensibly to explore a new age-y degree option -- I found my way to Grace Episcopal Cathedral on a Sunday morning. The service left me in tears, grieving over decades away from my original love of English church music. After the service, I walked their outdoor labyrinth, and committed myself to finding a path back to my own center. A few years later, on a trip to Dublin, Ireland, to audition (as it turned out, unsuccessfully) for the mixed choir of Christ Church Cathedral, I visited Newgrange, the 5,000-year-old passage tomb. There are spirals and triple spirals on many of the stones there. I'd love to visit again, because I don't think the intense power of the place completely registered. It was still hard at that point to fully embrace both church music and pre-Christian expressions of spiritual wonder. Yet when I have had the opportunity to sing in a cathedral, it hasn't been a stretch to envision the sound literally spiraling upwards through the roof to the swirling musical heavens above, bypassing all specific theologies.

I like wearing spirals...my favorite earrings are silver spirals. If I were ever to get a tattoo (as of now, I am still put off by the idea!) it would be a spiral. I have used spirals in needlework, and find Marija Gimbutas's The Language of the Goddess (1989) incredibly inspiring, with hundreds of illustrations of early human spiritual symbols and designs, many of which are circular or spiral. The "language" was visual. My entirely non-scientific impression is that the Universe is an ever widening spiral of love energy, with more and more galaxies giving birth to new ones out on the periphery, always a bit ahead of what we can see or conceive of. 

Are there spirals in your life?