I'll get to the coronation in a minute. First of all, I feel I need to apologize to my handful of regular readers, most of whom are, I think, also personal friends. And to old friends and new, some of whom have backed away at times. I know how hard it must be to be my friend, to hear me talk about homesickness for England and not know how to help. It may well feel like a black hole. I'm sensitive to black holes, having been born into such a hopeless, bottomless situation. My longing for "home" started on day one, and I guess I cannot write such a personal blog without this core life experience being omnipresent. Still, the fact that a few of you continue to walk with me on this "Liz path" means the world. I am honored by your love and patience.
It would have been a great mistake for me not to have watched the coronation. It may have been one of the biggest watersheds of my life. I can only touch on it briefly today. My mind is still reeling. Truly, there may be enough material in those four hours of television for a year's worth of blog posts!
I had kind of steeled myself for the possibility that there would be no girls or women involved in the singing, since the Abbey's choir is still men and boys. However, it immediately became apparent that other choirs were represented. It was a thrill to see (and hear) the girls and see them in the choir stalls. I've often said, that is my "home", and I felt proud (about 55 years after I would have been the right age to do so myself!) to have lived long enough to witness this. I stood up and sang along with much of the music, the pieces that I knew anyway: Parry's "I Was Glad", the Byrd "Gloria", the plainsong "Veni Creator", Handel's "Zadok the Priest", the Walton "Te Deum", and both congregational hymns, all the verses of which I knew by heart. And of course, the fact that women clergy and public figures took part in other aspects of the service is a major step forward.
However (and you knew that a "however" was coming, right?!), this was the first time I really, really got it (on the heart level) -- no amount of female participation in such an event makes it "matriarchal" or Goddess-centered. The values of the divine feminine, as I am coming to understand them, are so 180-degree opposite our major present-day institutions, that there may never be a successful "retrofit". My feelings of homesickness could never have been completely cured by living in England, having better access to choral evensong services, or singing those services. My feelings of homesickness could never have been solved by changing those outside realities. They can only be solved (for me) by more fully embracing my own inner divinity, and that of all women. They can only be solved when I can "crown" the energy of the Goddess within myself. This will never give me power over anyone else, but it will bring me "home" in the only way that counts.
That's all I can manage today.
