I had to chuckle

Over the weekend, I had to chuckle. Of course a woman from a narcissistic background would eventually write a blog about herself! For nine years, no less! And it isn't lost on me that because I rarely refer to specific other people (which is the case because I feel so strongly about other people's privacy), it magnifies the focus on my own journey, putting it kind of in a vacuum. And while I do occasionally talk about world or national events, I figure that these topics are so over-analyzed elsewhere that for the most part, I don't wish to add to the maelstrom. The exception is when there is some spiritual facet to it all that I feel the need to draw attention to.

So why do I do keep writing? It is hard for me to talk about myself, seriously! My every instinct is to pull back into a closet or under a rug and disappear. Much as I deeply want to be heard when I open my mouth (or my computer!), I would never have kept at it this long if it was just about me, or I would have stuck to safer topics like the good spaghetti sauce I made last night or the forsythia blooms just coming out near where I live. 

And it isn't even that I think of the Goddess as kind of a reverse male god, who I have to prove my validity to in my words, to have something to show for myself. I think and hope I am being honest when I say that I keep writing because it is has been so very hard to reach a point where I could begin to define myself on my own terms and by my own standards, not those of society. I didn't have a road map for being the kind of woman I am, and I don't believe many women do! Our lives are valid divine endeavors, no matter what they look like, but we are rarely encouraged to think that they are. (Can you imagine public service announcements inspiring young girls to pursue careers in the arts or spirituality?!) So my "Liz path" is one word after another after another, one footstep after another after another -- this has been all I could do so far to help break that new ground. My "back"ground may have been an ideal training course, but from time to time, early trauma swamps me, and if there are tools to help out, I'll use them.

Anyway, on this cold (35 degrees), windy, miserable day, it's good to have a little laugh. I hope you find something to laugh about too! 

Step by step

As I said last time, I seem to have uncovered some really hard anger around my family, specifically my father. I guess I've been dealing with this for years, but I was really thrown nearly nonfunctional by this most recent layer of the onion. I've been numb, drained. I'm not the kind of person who finds healing in long walks or sitting under a favorite tree. I wish I were, for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it would be more consistent with my Goddess-centrism. I have, however, found it comforting to do some cooking and baking. On the negative side, I've watched a little too much bad television, and caught a few too many horrifying news reports...hmmmm.

It's always hard to start over with any new practitioner...at the first appointment, it's almost impossible tell a quick story of my life! But on this occasion, I'm not just going to muddle through without help. I owe it to those of you who read this blog, and to my friends, not to leave too much pain or anger just lurking around in my system. I'm grateful to have had the family I did in many ways -- it almost guaranteed that I would end up unconventional! And some of the anger and pain have been catalysts for my feminism and my exploration of new ways of being in the world. But there's a tipping point where it could swamp this fragile little boat of mine, or hurt others, and I don't want either of those outcomes. I'm thankful to live somewhere where there are a few different therapy options.

I often pull one or two oracle cards in the morning, to help me address the challenges of the day or any questions I have. Yesterday, I was shuffling my Motherpeace deck (the cards are round), and about a.half dozen of the cards went flying (literally) out over the edge of the bed to the floor. Two that ended up face up were The Tower and The Fool. It is interesting, in many decks, the Tower figures basically dive head first out of the collapsing structure, which has been hit by lightning -- chaos, life turned upside down. And the Fool is often pictured walking normally, but rather cluelessly, off a cliff or into a raging river. (It signifies the very beginning of the journey, when you are childlike and have a beginner's mind.) In the Motherpeace deck, however, the Tower figure is still upright at the top, seeming to receive shamanic information about the disaster -- and the Fool is walking upside down on her hands into a river.

In my journal, I sketched a little picture of me diving headfirst off the tower and landing safely on my hands in the river. Kind of a blending of the two concepts. As hard as these last few days have been, I feel strangely strong, as if I'm "officially" leaving behind the crumbling structure of my beginnings, and playfully entering the flowing waters of the Goddess. Whatever is going on, I need to walk through the process step by step and not flinch or try to turn back. And I need to not forget love.

Fury

It always seems to happen, and yet for some reason, it always takes me by surprise. Each time I reach a new plateau in my journey (most recently, a new willingness to be defined by my centeredness in the divine feminine, and to go so far as to create some visiting/"business" cards that say so), there's a major pushback.

Sunday morning, far too early, I woke up in what I can only call a state of fury towards my father, who is no longer alive. In a general sense, it had to do with all the ways he put his own well-being ahead of anyone else's -- especially his family's -- and I guess that's all I'll say at the moment. I realize I need to find a therapist locally who has expertise in treating the trauma caused by extreme narcissism. I've been so good at intellectualizing the situation. I believe that, as a soul, I chose this experience in this lifetime, and that I needed to understand such a loveless world from the inside out because it is so prevalent in most of our institutions. And although I stopped communicating with my dad a year or so before his death, I knew that fighting him or his condition was pointless. I've tried to transmute my knowledge into a new focus on the Great Mother.

But clearly, I ended up leaving my own human emotions "under the rug". The little girl who not only felt unloved, but knew for a fact that she was unloved in any genuine sense of the word, is now a 68-year old woman with almost no experience of what it would be like to be cared for. I don't mean rescued, I don't mean loved romantically or swept off my feet. Just what it would be like to be cared for (because of exactly who you are and how extraordinary you are) by a family, a community, and a culture, heading into old age. Thank the Goddess for my female friends in whom I have experienced facets of such love and care. But for heaven's sake, our whole world should be like this! All older women should be guaranteed a beautiful, secure home, and the conditions in which they can best express their loving wisdom and impart it to younger generations.

It's not lost on me that this is Earth Day. And it's also not lost on me that one of the definitions for "fury" is an angry woman. How angry is Mother Earth at centuries of thoughtless defilement? Perhaps all these threads are really a single one. I don't believe that She is likely to express her fury fighting back at us (as we are Her creation). I anticipate acts of transformation and transmutation. And so may I transform and transmute my own fury....

Goddess Words 28: Piercing

It is interesting that I included this word in my original handwritten list. This morning, it seemed to catch my eye as being rather too violent for the qualities I associate with the Goddess. When people (or things) are pierced, it's usually through a protective layer, skin, eardrum, a tree's bark, a layer of soil...most human weapons pierce in some form, and the intention of that action is most often hatred or fear. 

Even the usage I suspect I was thinking about all those years ago -- something like those old-fashioned paintings of female saints being pierced through the heart by the love of God -- is too potentially painful for me now. It is my impression that the Goddess really doesn't work that way.

Hmmm...so, does this word still belong on my list? If so, this is energetically how I would see it today: If love is really the only true energy that exists (and everything else is just human blockage of the power of love), the way that love reaches our inner core is through the pathways that we open up. From my earliest years, I built up substantial walls to protect myself, emotionally, and it has only been one-brick-at-a-time that I have started to dismantle these walls. And whether I knew it or not, I have been inviting love in. As our walls come down, Love comes in. It cannot help seeking out more places to "be love". So if love finally reaches our hearts, it isn't violence from without or piercing in an old-fashioned sense, so much as our withdrawal of resistance. We finally start letting love in, and it surges, as the water does when the dam breaks down. At first this may "hurt" somewhat as we get used to new shapes and life energies, but if what we are experiencing is genuinely love, that is our natural state and we will acclimate. 

Definitely a word to keep mulling over, however...for the person I am today, it still "feels" a little too sharp.

The Voice of Beryl

A few years ago (and I seriously don't remember when this was...two, four, seven years?) I had a very clear vision of a young woman from pre-Christian Britain. She was in the southwest of the island, now Dorset, Somerset, Devon or Cornwall, and was looking out to sea from a high bluff overlooking a beach. I don't know a whole lot more than that, except that she had a great deal of feminine wisdom and in my mind, I started to call her "Beryl". If there was such a name two or more thousands of years ago, I have no idea, but it has stuck with me, along with all the usual questions: is this a past life figure? An actual ancestress? Or a complete figment of my imagination? Am I channelling her? Or am I just trying to find a slightly more unusual name for myself than "Liz"?

I am curious as to whether, in her time, she was respected for her wisdom. I am curious as to whether her voice was heard more than many women's voices today. I am curious as to what her day-to-day life might have been like, and how long she might have lived. I am curious as to whether her voice is speaking and singing to me today -- I suspect so, as part of the chorus of wise women throughout history, in every part of the world and in every heritage. When it becomes too overwhelming (or too audacious) to think that I might be channeling the Goddess, it's comforting to have Beryl as my intermediary, my foremother. But I see this larger choir of voices as singing the harmony of the future as well, the music of love, beauty, and respect for life on the earth and in every galaxy. I don't see these singers as stuck in a linear chronological timeline, in other words. (Perhaps not even in the linear musical staves we sing from today!)

So I wanted to bring Beryl to your attention, in case I refer to "her" in upcoming essays. Who is your spiritual foremother? Can you picture her? Where is she? 

Kin

First of all, today feels like the first day of spring. It was the first morning with a real live beautiful musical "dawn chorus". Yesterday, I saw my first robin. It rained all of eclipse day, and we had had 18 inches of snow a week ago, so the ground is finally moist enough to start sprouting green grass and the beginnings of flowers. And though chickadees are here all winter, two days ago I saw a "boreal" chickadee with distinctive brown coloring. Even here, those birds are rare. Last but by no means least, shipping season has started, so the bridge and ship horns have started sounding.

Along with all these firsts seem to be coming regular inner firsts, as I have mentioned already. The issue of "home" is rising to the surface again, along with the realization that, more than ever, this is not about finding a permanent roof over my head, a structure I never have to leave. I've never really had one, so it is hard to imagine having one now, as we head into such unsettled times, although I would love a home permanent enough to better support my effectiveness at functioning. No, the longing that has emerged over recent weeks is almost completely about finding my people, my clan, my tribe, my kin. To be at home with people who are like me. And this is not about race, or gender, or economic level, or even education or roots. It also isn't about finding people who match my individual skills (writers, musicians, artists, mystics, feminists...), or who are generally loving and beautiful. I'm blessed with friends in many of these areas -- truly, I may only still be alive because of them.

But suddenly, pressed to define what I am looking for, it is other beings who are laying the groundwork for the world that will exist, say, a century from now, after the current transitional time. Other people who see where we are headed in terms of love, Goddess values, and harmony, and whose lives are "about" that emerging paradigm, not focused on fixing or supporting or tweaking the current one.

I remember, almost 35 years ago, sitting on the floor of my first apartment in Duluth, staring out at nearly the same view I see today, grappling with God. I just didn't understand why I had been given strong gifts in several different areas. If I had just been an artist, or a musician, or a writer, or a spiritual seeker, I thought I might have had some chance of success in the world. But there didn't seem to be any way to fully actualize all of these areas of endeavor, especially as a woman. It seemed hopeless. And of course I would go on to bounce around from one passion to the other, and from one semi-menial job to another, because all of it was too overwhelming and too unsuitable for the standard work world.

How is today's view (outward to Lake Superior, and within) different? I have finally embraced all my gifts. I understand that they were meant to be part of this life experience, and I see them as completely intertwined. They are my "superpowers", and my path through the present and the near future. They are the skills I will need -- at a bare minimum -- if I survive into the new paradigm. I'd like to meet and live with my family, the people who have lived their variations on this kind of preparatory lifetime, and who are themselves looking for kindred spirits to walk with into the new age.

Confirmation

Back on April 4, 2018, I wrote a good piece about my confirmation in the Episcopal Church.  I was thinking about that event again this week, and planned to write about it thinking that this was the 60th anniversary -- only it's not, it's the 59th! The little white 1928 Book of Common Prayer given to me on the day has (in my still-childish handwriting) my name and date, 1965. A lifetime ago. I was barely nine years old, much younger I suspect than anyone would be confirmed today, or allowed to re-affirm their baptismal vows. The fact that in my confession several days before, I acknowledged having "committed adultery" proves I really didn't understand most of the words or concepts!

So I won't revisit what I talked about last time. But out of curiosity, I did go back to that prayer book's services of baptism and confirmation, and the Articles of Religion, and almost swooned. To say that I have gone down a whole different spiritual path is a colossal understatement. And it is fascinating that even in the 1980 prayer book still in use, the first three baptismal/confirmation vows have to do with "renunciation" -- of Satan, evil powers, and sinful desires. Why talk about these things first? From a post-duality standpoint, it makes no sense to bring them up at all, much less most prominently. And the subsequent vow to "follow and obey" Jesus feels particularly antiquated. Maybe it is because I have so rarely had anyone follow my lead in anything, that I cannot imagine asking/requiring anyone to literally obey me. And I can't imagine turning around and making such a vow to any human or divine figure (male or female). I keep trying to intuit what the Goddess might say in certain situations, and of course I don't know for sure, but my impression is that She doesn't ask for "obedience"...She isn't outside us, requiring this or that externally. She would just love to have more of us open our hearts to the other half of the spiritual story, within (or potentially within) all of us.

So I guess the threshold I wrote about the other day is, in its own way, a "confirmation" -- that I have finally reached the point where I could not retake any of those standard vows. In a completely different context, a friend of mine recently made reference to feeling "untethered", and I gave a wry chuckle and said that I have felt that way all my life! But until the last few months, there was still the lightest, tiniest thread still tying me loosely to the church. It appears to have snapped. 

A New Threshold

I seem to write regularly about crossing thresholds, walking through portals, liminal spaces, etc. I guess my life is more dotted with these experiences than most people's, or at least more consciously/intentionally dotted with them. It's part of the mystic path, perhaps, the shamanic reality, always entering new states of consciousness. But this  threshold of "68", particularly the last month or so, has been really, really, intense. The "place" I am in today feels literally like a new landscape from where I was even at the beginning of the year. 

Here's what I think has happened. After circling around near this major portal for years, I finally walked through it -- the portal into a completely Goddess-centered reality. I've made a commitment to Her, and to representing Her values (and higher, conflict-free values) as I understand them, more consciously and deliberately than ever before. And by taking that step into the new landscape, it feels like a door has closed behind me, almost literally. I know in my heart that for the rest of this lifetime at least, I will not be able to reference/reverence most of the constructs in place, even in a sometimes pathetic effort to try to keep going. It never worked well for me, it was never "who I was", and frankly, it isn't what the Goddess needs from me now, at this important transitional moment.

Take Easter. I was on the city bus on Saturday, Easter Eve, and two people were talking with great enthusiasm about the church services they were going to attend on Sunday. It seemed to me that their happiness went way beyond anticipating singing some wonderful, celebratory hymns. I mean, just from their voices, I could tell that the risen Christ symbolized something very important to them personally, the victory of life over death. I realized that never in my whole life has there been joy for me in the Easter celebration -- only joy in the singing of beautiful music. 

In this current moment, around the edges (and I didn't attend services anywhere), all I could hear was duality -- life vs. death, good vs. evil, battles done and battles won. All I could see was the violence of a holy man being nailed to a cross, and somehow that action being reverenced throughout history by being re-lived and re-lived over and over again. And as much as I know that the "victory" is the resurrection (not the crucifixion), even that doesn't feel like winning to me. I don't want "victory" in my life anymore anyway, as it is a duality concept. The Jesus I would like to have known is the real person, the real mystic, walking this earth path as we do, learning, stumbling, and growing. 

I don't think that even if I had had the opportunity this year, I would have been able to tolerate services at my favorite English cathedral. While it is too early to tell whether the door has completely closed on that relationship, so central to my life thus far, I feel so different this morning that nothing would surprise me. 

It's actually quite terrifying. Now, to imagine a door locking behind me is, in itself, too duality-based...I don't think the new territory is that black and white. This spiritual path is one of freedom and harmony, and there may be moments when I'll circle back into old "landscapes" or ways of being if I need to pick up an old thread. But do I feel like I am essentially in a different place, that I have crossed over a major threshold? Yes.