Three Mornings, Three Miracles

This year, the first three days after solstice have brought three "miracles", or what I think of as miracles.

Sunday morning, just about the very first thing I saw was a bald eagle in flight. This is not a rare sight where I am at the moment, but still, they continue to be miraculous. When I was young, you never ever saw one, and they were eventually placed on the endangered species list, only (thankfully) to bounce back in recent years. I'm not interested in the political symbolism or the science. It is simply that eagles are magnificent. I feel privileged to be in their presence.

Monday morning, something even more awesome. It had been an extremely cold night, below zero Fahrenheit, and there was fog developing as the sun rose and evaporated some of the frost. Somehow, this combination of factors created a rainbow, a column-like one with its foot literally in the snow of the yard of the house I am living in! I mean, you hear of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but to my knowledge, I have never seen the literal "end of the rainbow"! There was no pot of gold, except perhaps in my head, but it was a remarkable moment...a remarkable little miracle in the midst of world craziness.

And I write this too early on Christmas Eve morning to see anything outside, but my third miracle was hearing on the radio, perhaps for the first time, Jessye Norman singing "Sweet Little Jesus Boy". What a glorious voice. What gorgeous musical simplicity. And what a fine 20th century miracle, that you push a button and out comes some of the most harmonious, breathtaking music ever written or performed. Widespread access to great music is a human-created miracle, the one I will miss the most if all goes topsy-turvy.

Whatever it is that you celebrate over the next few days, even simply getting a much-needed day off, blessings. May a few miracles come your way!

Versus

I've been in contemplative mode the last few days, helped out by being in the country again. It was an active choice allowing time away from news and chattering external input. The only input? Grandmother trees blowing, and hawks sitting on branches or telephone poles waiting for their prey, and rain turning to snow...and the dawns of the latest mornings of the year.  

That doesn't mean I am unaware of the dust storm of monstrosities facing us. Because I have seen it coming for several decades, I may be less surprised than many people, is all. Once again, I've thought long and hard about the war of "good versus evil", and realize anew what a terrible misunderstanding it is, conceptually.

Today, forget the whole feminist thing -- and, of course, as usual, politics and even the specifics of religious constructs. This is pure practicality, and personal perspective. I am one of those people who simply cannot "kill" anything bigger than a fruit fly or mosquito. In this lifetime, I could not function in our competitive world, or take up the kinds of careers (such as law) for which I was intellectually suited but not spiritually suited. I cry when I see people or the earth being injured and trashed. I want all of us to love each other and get along. I want people to honor and protect Mother Earth. I want (even though I find it hard to adjust to!) to be surrounded by love and beauty and harmony. While I am not a saint in the traditional sense of the word, I suppose I am pretty high on the "goodness" scale, but I am hardly alone. There are probably many millions (and perhaps billions) of others in this world like me.

Our traditional constructs tell all of us to "fight" evil -- indeed that good must fight evil and triumph. And yet here's the problem. If you place many of us on that battlefield -- even knowing the complete cruelty and inhumanity of the foe just over the hill -- we cannot fight. We simply do not have it in us, the will or desire to kill anyone or anything. This is not unawareness or lack of understanding. This is not fear, or putting our heads in the sand, or being unrealistic. If anything, it may be understanding the reality too well. In a duality construct, so-called "evil" will probably always "win" against "good" because good people find it entirely too hard to go against their authentic natures. We simply cannot pick up weapons as wholeheartedly as the other side does, if at all.

So what do we do in the face of the dust storm? We stand tall in our goodness, and use our best gifts to support an emerging, more unified, post-duality world. We create beautiful writing, and visual arts, and songs, and home-grown or home-cooked food, and we care for our neighbors, or family, or pets. We care for the earth. We do it to unite with people and planet. We do it in the midst of the dust storm. We withstand the dust storm. We will come out the other side into a world with no concept of "versus". And it will be a new, loving world we have helped create by being 100% true to ourselves. 

Postscript

On a very slushy, wet-snowy morning in upstate New York, I just need to add a postscript to my last post, where I talked about how hard it is, even for me, to relax and warm up to more Goddess-like situations. 

Since I wrote that post five days ago, it has become clearer and clearer: if it is hard for me to "take" an environment characterized by warmth, welcome, acceptance, etc., how much harder must it be for people whose lives (and perhaps philosophies) are steeped in the opposite qualities, who default to conflict and anger and pushback. In the world as it has become, love has perhaps only been one option, and a scary one, even for those of us on board in theory. I mean the real, "love is the only thing that exists" kind of love. Our hearts have so many walls up to keep out the hurt of non-love.

A sort of parallel thought came to me over the weekend as well...a "what if?" Up until now, the things I really wanted out of life have seemed impossibly out of reach. Sometimes it has literally felt like I was hitting some solid existential wall. I'm thankful for the amazing journey I've had trying to connect with what I love, and thankful that I have survived so far, but it hasn't been an easy path, or one that brought longterm, fruitful alignment with my passions, or community. But it occurred to me, having so recently 100% committed to the notion of a Goddess -- "What if She passionately wants me to be fulfilled? What if She wants her daughters to live their best, most beautiful and powerful lives? What if things would be different with the Goddess than in the religious construct I was born into?" Yes, it is complicated for me by the fact that I am connected to that old construct through the service of choral evensong, but for the rest of this holiday season, I will focus on the joy of being a facet of a thoroughly loving Goddess, and on the (almost unbelievable) notion that She wants me to thrive. I'm not talking money, I'm talking, being powerfully me, in the place where it makes sense. For me (and perhaps many other women), may that kind of self-actualization be the new light that is dawning in the world. 

Laughing with Myself

Well, I guess no matter what role you play in this world, you have to laugh at (or with) yourself from time to time. When you are a mystic, it can be hard -- you take yourself, the world, and spirituality so very seriously, but when there's a chink in your armor, and you see certain things clearly, you have to laugh. I mean, really.

So, I keep writing about gravitating to love and harmony, compassion and community, no matter what. That this is the way of the Goddess. The other day, I actually found myself in an environment unusually well-characterized by these qualities, and what happened? Rather than being thrilled, I found myself stiffening up, becoming more uptight than usual, more aloof, less open than most of the people around me. Now I don't know for sure whether this particular group has the potential to be "my tribe" -- that remains to be seen -- but in the hours after the event, I mulled over why I had responded that way. I've tended to be on the outside looking in in so many situations, the new person in a community, the stranger; changing that perspective on a dime simply may not be possible. And snobbery remains my worst failing. It's no longer based on what it might have been based on earlier in my life (a socio-economic/ethnic group that I never really belonged to, or understood, anyway); now it could be said to be more a case of the snobbery of solitude. I think I carry a belief that being so alone (a mystic and "anchoress") has made me too different from others to really join current-paradigm groups anywhere. There may also be an element of underlying distrust -- I have experienced too many masks of "niceness" over the years that covered up less positive qualities. I'm literally scared of clowns, and masked balls, and Halloween, after all! And perhaps I push away before I can be pushed?

Interestingly enough, within 24 hours, I actually discovered another organization online that seems to align with the qualities I'm talking about, and yet after a few minutes of excitement, I felt the same stiffness take over. And when I went back to look for the specific page the next day, I couldn't find it! Again, should I laugh or cry?!

So "tribe" keeps slipping through my fingers, whether due to my own conflicted energy or events outside myself. But the third part of this story has a somewhat happier ending. This morning, somehow, in spite of it all, I was able to claim that central place where England, English church music, and the Goddess overlap. I realized that no matter how many or few people may also inhabit this place, this is my home. In that sense, no one can take "home" away from me. Spending 95% of my life in another "place" doesn't invalidate it. Whether I have a tribe or not doesn't invalidate it. People not understanding me doesn't invalidate it. Those are my core passions, my primary Goddess-given gifts. And for the shortest moment in time, literally two or three minutes, I truly celebrated myself, and laughed for joy. What an incredible ride it has been! And what a novel experience, to laugh for joy, not "at" myself or other humorous situations!

"All You Need is..."

Love.

The other night, the most surprising experience led me to feel grief and sadness.

I watched Michael Moore's documentary, "Where to Invade Next". I don't know what I expected, exactly, but it turned out to be a fascinating film -- he visited various countries with enviable programs and social systems, hoping to inspire Americans to adopt them: gourmet public school cafeteria lunches, homework-free schools, free university educations, incredibly long paid job vacations, excellent women's health care, civilized prisons, female prominence in all forms of leadership...basically, I don't know which was more stark: my incredulity that the (mostly) European countries have such people-friendly programs, or the incredulity of the Europeans being interviewed that we don't have them!

Initially, I felt uplifted. But soon I felt quite weepy. My life (and my relative inability to function in our much more cutthroat system) might (yes, "might") have been so much different in one of these countries. Even putting aside my specific upbringing and my efforts to take part in English church music, what would it have been like to live in a society that places a higher value on human life and self-expression? That supports people more warmly in their unique aspirations and individual journeys? That wants its workers and citizens of all ages to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled? Clearly, none of the countries featured is without huge problems, and things may have changed since the filming was done about a decade ago. But this movie caused me to reconsider the statement I made the other day about rarely seeing the Goddess in the world. By the final examples in Iceland, I could "see" the Goddess...while the institutions cited are still mostly patriarchal, the lives and values of women seemed to have had a greater transformational impact in these other countries than they have done over here. I felt sad for us.

As we near a new year where love may seem even more invisible than ever on the wider world stage, it becomes more important to make love visible in ourselves. To make love our "home". To base every action in love and beauty, whenever possible. (When it is not possible, just bless the situation and move on to one where loving and being loved comes easily.) The song is right, about love being all we need.

The Day After

(I wrote this as a draft last Saturday, but due to snow and other factors, couldn't get back to it until now. It still seems relevant. PS: As I update this, snow is falling again.)

Well, Mother Nature was definitely in charge on Thanksgiving...heavy, wet snow ended up cancelling many family get-togethers. The apple crumble I made ended up feeding the few, not the many. I think it elicited one or two smiles...

And yet, the blanket of snow and the enforced time off seemed to focus a spotlight on the "excessiveness" of this whole upcoming month. The excessive amounts of food, the excessive travel, the excessive spending, the excessive materialism. While other countries seem to take part in some of this end-of-the-year activity, I don't believe anyone does it quite like the "good old US of A". For years, I have found December to be hard, increasingly impossible, but in the last few years it has become almost grotesque. Truly. If we are still admired around the world, it is hard to see how. The rapaciousness of it all -- from top billionaires on down to people lining up to race into stores for good deals -- is jaw-dropping and embarrassing. And I guess the question in my heart at least every other minute and a half is, where is the Goddess in all this? Where? She's not in grocery stores crammed with plastic-covered food, She's not in big box stores crammed with plastic-covered home goods, She's not in all the resources necessary to fly or drive or otherwise motor people and goods from place to place. She's not in urban and suburban sprawl. She's not in overeating, or over-binging on TV shows, or violent sports, or war, or "artificial" intelligence. In fact, I've reached the point where I am hard-pressed to imagine anywhere She might be in this world we've created. No wonder it took me almost seventy years to find Her. She's still largely invisible to the eye.

For the first time, I am reading Marianne Williamson's A Woman's Worth, and the first two chapters are simply awesome. It's basically about a woman's heart and divinity being within, which is, of course, why it is so hard for most of us to link up with them outside ourselves. As with so many of the other books that have meant a lot to me the last few years, it was written thirty years ago. Clearly I wasn't ready back then to make that inward journey so completely. Now I have done it.

Forgive me, repeating myself. This is what I think Mother Earth wants and needs from us now -- respect and love. Only respect and love. She doesn't need us fighting the forces that are hurting Her. She needs us to stop, stand still, and love the earth. Accept Her agency and power over the planet. Allow Her to go through the processes She needs to go through. We don't need new inventions to fight global warming -- the "fight" is part of the warming. We don't need new financial investments in clean energy -- "investing" in anything but Nature's wellbeing is at least part of what got us into this pickle in the first place. Earth will not be saved as we want it to function. It will be "saved" in the manner that guarantees the planet's longterm viability for many forms of life. We have to release our personal and societal expectations, or they will be released for us.

The snow is melting. For upstate New York, anyway, it was sort of a "teaser" storm. The day after Thanksgiving, things started to go back to "normal". Or did they?