Dark Night

Some of you reading this may have had this experience: you wake up in the middle of the night (yeah, one or two a.m.) and suddenly find yourself sliding down into the depths of despair. In my case, here's the metaphor: it was as if I had turned on the light and grabbed the wrong pair of glasses, the ones with the patriarchal lens. I saw myself clearly from our system's "lens", someone who never really was in sync with modern institutions, and so wasn't supported in return. I could feel that hard fist of shame hitting me in the pit of my stomach, and I started sliding downhill -- even kind of understanding why I've been all-but-abandoned, and wanting to slink off into the darkness of midnight, never to return.

Thank the Goddess that I have gotten far enough in this journey of mine that I was able to catch myself. It took about an hour, but my heart and my intellect cupped hands and caught me before I fell any further. I was able to remind myself, the way of the Goddess is pretty much the polar opposite of how our world works, and yes, it has been wrenchingly hard for 67 years, but I have survived and have dedicated myself to trying my best to align to Her values. So it's OK. I probably could never have succeeded on the world's terms, and I have been judged harshly by family and some friends, but I haven't hurt other people and overall, my value comes from who I am, not how much I achieved within the context-in-place. To continue the metaphor, I took off the patriarchal glasses, and put on the ones with the Goddess lenses, and finally, around five a.m., I fell back asleep for an hour.

I guess the moral of the story is that, no matter how intentional one's spiritual journey has been, there are simply "those moments" -- when waves of pain and self-hatred try to swamp us. Those tsunamis that I spoke of a few years ago loom large and break over our heads...I guess all we can do is let the wave hit, hold on for dear life, and stay true to oneself. It's kind of interesting that Duluth was in the national news this past weekend because of surfers riding Lake Superior's enormous, frigid waves in last week's storm...

Hodgepodge

The blizzard finally hit, about twelve hours later than expected. I honor local weather-people, and it's amazing these days how fine tuned and accurate many of the forecasts are. But I get a kick out of how Nature sometimes throws a curve ball. Ultimately, She is in charge, and we can only marvel. Late in the day yesterday, down in Wisconsin, one inch had fallen in one town, and in the next town over, thirteen. The locations of bands of lake effect snow simply cannot be pinned down in advance. 

You know you are either a fine musician, or a frequent listener of classical public radio (or both) when you turn the radio on, and within two notes, you've identified the piece as Sibelius's "Finlandia". This actually stuns me, because I am not an orchestral musician or a composer/music theorist. But relatively little choral music makes its way onto these particular airwaves, and I guess it has forced my ear to expand and grow. That has to be a good thing. A little "clairaudience" (or steps in that direction) won't hurt in the years ahead.

Every passing day, I am more and more thankful that I have come to align my own personal spirituality with the Goddess. It gives me something to hang onto, as the human world seems to be increasingly conflict- and hatred-driven. It gives me something to love, when love is so invisible on the world stage. I feel calm at my core in a way I rarely have in the past. I know I will survive these times, either on the spirit plane or here on earth, so I don't really have to fret.

The wind is blowing tornados of snow in the yard next-door. A relatively warm Lake Superior is wide open with little ice, so waves are crashing into the beach at Park Point, Canal Park, and parts of the north and south shores. Although the wind chill today and tonight will be -20 to -30 degrees F, we are probably beyond the point where the lake will freeze up significantly, so as odd as it may be in these temperatures to talk about global "warming" -- it is real here. And it is almost March, sometimes the most dramatic winter month of all around here!

Goddess Words 17: New

The word "new" is used in so many contexts, I can hardly claim that it is uniquely of the Goddess. Countless religious, political, entrepreneurial, and other human developments, institutions, and inventions make a claim to being new, fresh, evolved, exciting, and forward-thinking, especially at this point in history. We are almost overwhelmed by newness sometimes. I see advertisements on TV for merchandise and technologies that I seriously cannot understand at all! I may have moved past the point where I can take it all in. In case you ever doubt my appreciation for human inventiveness, it is very much there. I could never have thought of, much less constructed, most of the building blocks of modern life. I honor that impulse in us, much as I think we've skipped a few important steps.

On this New Moon morning, then, what could be said to be the unique "newness" of the Goddess/the Divine Feminine/Mother Nature? I think of it less as the one-by-one linear development of individual things, and more as a never-ending all-connected stream of love and growth. Everlasting renewal, perhaps. Nature pushing ever-outward, into more intense layers of love and beauty. Death and rebirth, waxing and waning, ebb and flow. Out of the so-called "death" of one thing comes new life...there is no finality to life or death. I mean, it's oddly comforting to me that the "new" things of the Goddess are really as old as time, like the new moon. 

I return, I guess, to old paradigm linearity for a metaphor that came to me this past weekend. I have the impression that, for me, 2023 will represent my "graduation" from, let's say, my master's degree in "life", and my entrance into a PhD program. Whether it will literally mean a move from Duluth or not, it will have that quality...I cannot get the new degree at the old university. It takes a lot to scare me, but fear has definitely been rising at the notion of even one more major change, whatever form it ends up taking. And yet to keep learning and growing (important to this Aquarian), I need to have the courage to step up the ladder once more. It may even, literally, involve "graduating" in June, having the summer "off", and then starting at the new place/activity/"school" in the autumn. May I be inspired by humans all over the world, courageously facing new realities, both wanted or anticipated and...not...

It's Just Not In Me

There's been something rolling around in this very active brain of mine for some time, and this cold, windy day seems to be a good day to try to express it.

OK, so I listen to the public radio news headlines just about every morning. I need to have some sense of what the world is dealing with, not unlike how, back in the day, I was expected to read the daily New York Times cover-to-cover before answering TIME Magazine's Letters to the Editor. It was the pre-internet era, and because the magazine came out only once a week, the newspaper was the best way for a Letters Correspondent to get caught up with world events in between issues.

Despite the fact of having been lectured to all my life about certain things being the "human condition", it has always been hard for me to personally understand or feel personal responsibility for most of the crises that are reported on in the news. In the case of the recent earthquake, as the numbers of deaths soar, it is becoming clear that political and geopolitical issues are almost as shaky as the movement of the earth itself. Mass shootings, war, people fleeing from terrorism, violence, and hatred. The release of toxic substances into the air and water. Corruption. Despotism. Theft. Drug and alcohol addiction. 

I mean, there is literally almost none of this that is "in me". I'm sure I am the brunt of jokes, because for decades I barely had the instinct to benefit myself by making enough money to live on. I now understand that it was in large part because the greater system is based on something that is also not in me -- the desire for "profit". It's hard for me to imagine committing most of the sins on the church's list. (The one sticky exception to this is that I suppose you could say that I have "coveted" -- a life of doing what I love in the place I love. I have "coveted", or dearly desired, self-actualization. This isn't quite the same as coveting my neighbor's TV or SUV, but coming to peace with how it all turned out may be my biggest spiritual challenge.) It makes me laugh sometimes that my generation of women fought so hard to be included in institutions like the church, and yet perhaps such institutions literally were geared specifically to addressing the lives of men. It is bittersweet to think of many generations of women, deprived of societal power, kneeling submissively, heads bowed and covered, shame-filled, whose actual sins were barely a blip on the radar! Also bittersweet to remember that some of man's most inspired and beautiful artistic and musical creations were on behalf of the church...these threads are completely intertwined, aren't they?

We women of a certain generation have "fought" all our lives, to be heard, to be able to do certain activities or careers, to balance families and jobs, to stay healthy. And yet none of us can possibly expect to successfully fight (to the bitter end) all the violence and hatred that is being unleashed now. Fighting just isn't "in" many of us. Conflict isn't our natural state, and we don't do it particularly well. Pushback is too painful, and too hopeless. Perhaps this means that the whole dualistic conflict-driven paradigm is starting to break down. The blessing of being an older woman is that, speaking only for myself, the only thing I have in me is to be myself. I can only "be" what is authentically in me. I don't really believe in commanding anyone or anything, but in this context, there is only one commandment: "Be Thyself." 

"Love Day"

I've decided to start calling Valentine's Day, "Love Day". Millions of people saying the word "love", or sending that word in greeting cards, might help the world a little bit right now.

Over the years, I know I have been a bit cynical about this holiday. OK, so I've never (even as a teenager) had a "Valentine", or received roses or candy from anyone who was more than just a friend. The only way I seem to know about romantic love is from Mary Balogh romance novels, and of course the male heroes of these books were created by a woman! When I go into grocery stores and pharmacies in January and early February, I cringe at the wall of junky red plastic gifts, plastic-covered boxes of chocolates, and silly cards. And when I multiply one local store's worth of Valentine's Day disposable gifts by perhaps millions around the world, I could faint, pre-seeing them all in landfills and the ocean. I would trade just this one so-called holiday for a gift-free one, where the men of the world literally lay down their actual (and metaphorical) weapons in favor of genuinely learning to love. I know how hard it is, since in 67 years I have barely figured out the easiest lessons (like loving music and art and England and dogs and food!) but you have to start somewhere. A man who gives me chocolates on Valentine's Day isn't as likely to become my "hero" as one who is seriously capable of loving. And if I meet him, in this lifetime or the next, it will probably be when I am similarly capable of, and ready for, that kind of love.

This morning, Lake Superior offered up a most spectacular Love Day gift...an extraordinary sunrise. For about a half hour, the whole southeastern sky was a dramatic pink/orange/purple mass, with the horizon line brightly neon. As the sun came close to rising, all the color drained from the clouds and into the area around the sun, which then came up a blinding orange. Yet within minutes, it was as if a grey shade was pulled down over the sun, and clouds and lake quickly became solid grey. Today is warm and will soon be rainy, later snowy...I was surprised that we had a sunrise at all, given the weather forecast. I guess with sunrises, as with love and beauty, you sometimes have to look quickly before they disappear.

Saturday Echoes

The ripple effects/echoes of the quake are still hitting me here in Duluth, although I assume not literally. The fact that it is winter is haunting...knowing how quickly frostbite can set in. There is something so elemental about the images of people clustered around fires. In the modern era, it is, even for me (expecting increasing numbers of such events in the future), mildly terrifying. As the shock is wearing off and the reality is hitting the people who have survived, this time period must be particularly painful. 

It is really important to remember that earthquakes can happen almost anywhere...as much as it would be reassuring to hope that they wouldn't happen "here" (wherever that might be for anyone!) I have experienced three mild earthquakes. Two were in the Champlain Valley (epicenter in the Adirondacks), and one was in New York City (epicenter in Westchester County). Even a minor shaking of the ground is extremely unsettling, emotionally. I really don't know how Californians can live with it...or how or when survivors of major quakes return to any kind of emotional normalcy. It might have been less traumatizing thousands of years ago, when there were fewer people and minimal infrastructures. Earlier peoples lived at ground level and were probably far more aware of the minute changes in the environment and animal life that signaled impending harsh natural events. 

The word "quake" started me thinking of Quakers. This religious sect started in England in the 17th century, essentially in reaction to the outward trappings of the Church of England. After leaving New York City in 1990, I spent a few months at Pendle Hill, the Quaker study center outside Philadelphia. It was my first experience with silent meetings for worship, which took place every morning. There are no Anglican-style choirs and processions and clergy and liturgy. There are zero "distractions". Quakerism is about you and the Divine. You are encouraged to listen to the voice of the Spirit within you, and ideally you only stand to speak in meeting when you are genuinely led by the Spirit, which can be accompanied by physical shaking or trembling. I assumed this was only a metaphor until the morning when, sitting on a hard bench in the silence, I started to shake. I could feel that I needed to say something, but honestly, I wasn't sure what would come out until I stood up and opened my mouth. I don't remember what I said, but it was a turning point. Since then, finding my own spiritual truths has been the focus of my personal spiritual life and writing this blog...even as the C of E's choral evensong service remains my preferred spiritual practice when I can attend it.

But it makes me think, are earthquakes/volcanos/tsunamis/tornados/hurricanes oracular phenomena? Nature is always speaking to us, but in these singular events, is She opening up from her core to engage with us in a major way? Is She speaking truth from Her center? When human trappings collapse around us, what is audible in the silence? What are the echoes saying?

What an Hour

It's not often that I write two days in a row. It's also not often that I have what feels like such a momentous hour between about 5:30 and 6:30 AM. But this morning got up and running early, it seems. 

The first thing was hearing two hard and poignant things on the news. The first is that (not surprisingly) the death toll from the earthquakes is rising sharply. The second is that the war in Ukraine is causing arms manufacturers to ramp up production. More on these two in a second.

Shortly after hearing this, my ears perked up. Was I really hearing Anglican chant on public radio? I turned up the volume, and sure enough, I recognized the sound of the a cappella group Cantus, and Bobby McFerrin's Psalm 23 (which at some point I heard in a cathedral setting, although I cannot remember where). By the third verse, I realized something surprising. The group was singing "She" and "Her" (as in, "She restores my soul"/"She won't forsake me"/"I will live in her house"). This new version, dedicated to his mother, isn't brand new, but I guess between my time without a computer, and spending relatively little time online now that I have one, I had never heard it.

This is one of those pivotal moments. Even I, in a long journey toward a more Goddess-centered perspective, hadn't until now completely turned the corner. But by the end of the short recording, I think I did. It sounded so right. So beautiful. So true. And the fact that music by a male composer was being sung by an all-male group made it particularly stunning. I was about to say "earth-shattering", but right now that is clearly a problematic metaphor.

So, back to earthquakes. First of all, I didn't mention drones yesterday. Talk about literally getting a bird's eye view, impossible even a few short years ago. Secondly, I keep reminding myself...there is no such thing as "death" in the divine mind. Life and love are ever-flowing. People who leave this earth plane for whatever reason, at whatever age, still live and grow on the spirit plane. I'm trying to find for myself the best way of talking about these events without sounding unfeeling -- and I guess the way working best for me today is to get away from the terminology of "disaster" and "tragedy", and into a terminology of gratitude. I am thankful for those who have gone through this extremely hard experience. I am thankful for those who volunteered to leave the earth plane at this time, to help all of us learn bigger lessons. I am thankful for the brave mothers who find themselves without their children, and the brave children who find themselves without their mothers. I am thankful for the bravery of those in serious physical pain, or still waiting for help. I am thankful to all the brave people who have rushed to help. I am thankful for the food aid, medical aid, shelter aid. I am thankful to the Goddess (in whatever form She/He/It takes) for comforting people literally in the "valley of the shadow of death". I am thankful that this event may shake some new thinking into our human perspectives. I am thankful that Nature is doing what She has to do to continue to make this earth plane viable for life.

And in the end, I am thankful for the harsh contrast of hearing about people voluntarily choosing to build weapons. If such news makes us sad, may we choose our own loving and thankful path today. May everything happening in the world help propel humanity and the earth into a more love-filled reality.

Quaking

Back on October 27, 2021 ("Natural Disasters") I wrote about trying to get away from using that particular term. In a world without human beings, tornados, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, etc. would simply be "events", wouldn't they? When these phenomena happen "naturally" (ie, without human intervention like fracking), they might temporarily harm animal populations and habitats, but there would be no one there to classify them as disastrous, per se. That is our human-centered assessment. Collapse of human infrastructures, the loss of human life, and widespread dislocation are disasters to individuals and human communities. But they don't happen in order to hurt humanity. In a way, they are not too dissimilar to a human sneeze, cough, or hiccup, in Earth's body. Pressure has built up under the surface and must be released...

However, the coverage of this latest earthquake has definitely been far more painful to watch than I remember, and I was trying to figure out why. Suddenly, it hit me. So many of the videos and pictures seemed to be coming from the phones of individuals on the scene. Not professional journalists, but people who might literally have run for their lives with their smartphone in hand or in a pocket, taking videos as they ran, or as soon as they got into the street. I don't remember, in the past, the feeling of literally being there, of feeling the terror so acutely, the pain of people under the rubble, the children holding out their stocking feet near a small fire. Similar imagery of war still keeps me at more of an emotional distance, since I get caught up in wondering why humans deliberately hurt each other. But here, the human tragedy is in full, random, and sudden immediacy. (The reporting we used to see "in the olden days", pre-cell phone cameras, was after-the-fact, only we didn't really know the difference. The buildings were already down, the damage done.)

Perhaps it is fanciful, but I wonder if earthquakes have the capacity to break open our psyches just a bit. Things have been raw and rocky the last few days. Sunday was the 22nd anniversary of my mom's death, and it stood to reason that I would experience a strange, childish reaction to an invitation to go out. (Long story short, I could hear my mother saying, "Go out and do this, Elizabeth. How are you ever going to meet people?" But COVID fears and other factors left me so on the fence, I finally chose not to go. I truly didn't seem to be able to ascertain what I wanted to do.) A few days ago, I also went through a few hours of sheer terror, thinking about what it would feel like if "all my dreams came true". I didn't understand why it was evoking terror, not joy. And more dreaming. This morning, I awoke from the first dream I have ever had about my decade at Time Inc., an anxiety dream where a pile of old-fashioned letters about four feet high was awaiting my attention. I woke up quaking, literally, that I couldn't do the job properly.

All of these concerns seem so insignificant compared to the road ahead for the people of the quake. But from halfway around the world, I still want to say, I trust Mother Earth, and believe that this event was nothing personal. I bow down in awe to the power of Nature, I celebrate the energy constantly moving under the skin of this planet, and I quake knowing that there is a wisdom so much greater than ours, passionately moving the stream of life forward.

An Interesting Dream

On occasion, I've mentioned how much I would like to have the kinds of dreams I read about in New Age-y books, where I'm walking up a grassy hill, and meet a fairy godmother under a green tree, and am taken on a magical path and taught lots of wise lessons. I "ask" for such guidance-filled dreams, but the ones I remember tend to be so strange, I often cannot make head or tail of them.

Two nights ago, I had one that I initially thought was nonsense, but I think was one of my idealized dreams in disguise. In it, I was living in a New York City apartment (oddly enough, I think it was the East Side, even though I only actually ever lived on the West Side). I had ordered out for pizza, and it arrived, but was encased in an enormous, sealed tin can, like a huge tuna can, only square. It wasn't until after the delivery guy left that I realized there were instructions about opening the container on a sheer piece of plastic...only they weren't exactly instructions, it was a user name and password, as if for a web site. Perhaps I had no computer, I don't know, but my dream solution was to set out walking uptown to find the pizza place to get the answer. It was cold and wintery, and when I got to the address, it wasn't a restaurant at all, just a very messy studio apartment, with a haggard older woman slumped in a chair in the corner. I don't remember what she told me, sadly, but evidently it was the key to getting the pizza box open, because I walked back downtown light-hearted, knowing I now knew how to do it. That's when I woke up!  

Thanks to having so recently read Sharon Blackie's Hagitude, I pretty quickly identified the messy old lady as the Goddess (although, of course, it could also be the part of me that is feeling wise, but exhausted!). And, yes, I am "hungry" to understand the next leg of my journey, so I get a kick out of the idea of that prize being identified as take-out food (!) which is still hidden from me for whatever reason. The time is not yet right, perhaps. And it's interesting, too, that this morsel of wisdom arrives in a form that is completely unlike the present-day norm of a cardboard box. So I guess the message is that there may be something unexpected or unusual about how I find the next step forward. As ever, stay alert, don't assume anything, be prepared. And (something that I find a little easier at this age) be thankful for today.

Believing

One of the most surreal aspects of closing in on my 67th birthday is realizing that I graduated from high school at the age of 17, meaning that I have (at least theoretically!) been an adult for 50 years! Half a century. I think of the young woman I was in 1973, pale, longish brown hair, glasses, and angst-ridden...and I am still pale, with longer brown hair and glasses. The only difference is that, for the most part, I am no longer angst-ridden. It's tempting to wonder, if my present self could speak to my 17-year-old self, what would she say? And I can certainly think of two or three crucial things that might have potentially changed my path. However, the fact is that, being who I was at that moment, I would never have understood the messages. Our paradigm being what it was and is, I really don't think I could or would have done much differently. Time and many hard "contrasts" were needed to bring clarity.

The other day, I bought the Motherpeace Tarot (and guidebook) at our local used book store. This would be an unusual set of cards if only from the standpoint of being circular; it is also feminist/Goddess oriented and only "dated" in the sense of originating in the 1970's, 80's and 90's. In a world still so male-dominated, the cards seem fresh, bright and alive, and I guess I needed them, needed a breath of fresh air in this frozen landscape. 

I picked a card today after having listened to some extremely grim news on the radio. And it was: "Judgement" (major arcana). Yet in a gloriously new paradigm message, there (quite literally) is no judgment. The image shows a rainbow of light, love and life  infusing earth from outer space. There is no harsh judgment or blame, only love bathing the world. Deep down, that is my belief system. That's it, in a nutshell. I think that was my belief system at 17 as well, only it took 50 years to realize it, and become OK with it.

If I were to speak to any high school senior right now, it would be to say that figuring out what you believe about life must happen before setting further career, educational, personal, or consumer goals. If those practical goals aren't consistent with your spiritual beliefs, you may never reach them. I guess I have said this before, but in my world, every 17- or 18-year-old would meet with a wise advisor before committing to college, jobs, marriage, or other adult steps. Time would be spent getting to the bottom of the person's core beliefs and passions. The culture at large would honor what each individual learned, and the steps they would need to take to grow into fulfilling adulthood (which, of course, would look different for each individual!) What would our world look like if a core cultural belief was that each human should be given the opportunity to reach their highest potential, in the field they love? What would the world look like if everyone believed that love is all there is?

But in the end, I cannot make anyone believe that. All I can do now is fully embody that belief in myself...and I'm finally old enough to do that!