"Spem in Alium"

Last night, I couldn't sleep properly for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was perseverating on the news. At midnight, I turned on my local classical music station just in time to hear the very beginning of a piece I have sung only once, but feel I know to the core of my being, Thomas Tallis's "Spem in Alium", the haunting 40-voice motet. (Oddly, and it must have been the lack of sleep, I spent several bars thinking, "Is this 'Spem in Alium'?" before realizing that of course it was.) 

By the end of the piece, in ten minutes or so, I sat up and thought something that, unbelievably, I don't think I have ever thought or said before. And that is: it is completely unacceptable that I have lived a life largely separated from this music, which is energetically me. (And of course, I don't mean just "Spem in Alium", or Howells's "Collegium Regale" or Parry's "I Was Glad" or Harris's "Faire is the Heaven" or Byrd's "Sing Joyfully"...or any one of thousands of pieces and services that are part of the English cathedral repertoire.) It is unacceptable that I was always an ocean away, or a gender away, or a nationality away, or whatever it was that pulled me apart from myself. And as much as I hope the next few weeks and months finds me incorporating this music and my visual arts skills into my self-expression in a more effective way, that is still arguably window-dressing. This tradition is me, the core of me. This is my music, my primary form of beauty, my primary form of spirituality, my energetic vibration. It is my primary form of "religious" expression, despite a personally expanded theological context. "Spem in Alium" means, essentially, "Only in Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust" -- if at this moment I dedicate my love for this music to the feminine face of God, I get to do that. I am 69 years old, it has been a journey and a half to stay alive, and I get to do that.

Needless to say, I was finally able to get to sleep. Then, to wake up and hear that Sarah Mullally has been named the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury...what synchronicity. Or is it?!

All I will say today...

All I will say today is that what we are seeing in front of our eyes isn't the tragedy (as I am sure I've said before). The tragedy is the dualistic paradigm that humans have lived with for so long. The tragedy has been believing that strife is necessary and winning is possible, in any situation. The good news is that we are growing out of duality -- into a more unified, less conflict-driven mode.  This is the proverbial dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as little as it may look like it some days. More and more people will come to realize that the only antidote to hatred, fear, and conflict is Love. And much as I, at least, cannot begin to love certain people or situations, I trust and embrace what I believe of the process, which is bringing more Love to all life in the universe. All I can do today is be as loving as possible in as many situations as possible, to align with that greater Love.

(It's still not clear whether my old camera, which I did find, will be compatible enough to use for sharing photographs, so I'll keep you posted on that.)

Go Big and/or...

As I look forward to a fuller, more rounded way of expressing my thoughts about Goddess energy and values, something beyond written essays two-to-four times a week, an expression keeps coming to me: "Go big or go home". We've all heard this so often in a variety of contexts, sports, entertainment, business, and (I assume) military. It's meant to encourage the fullest possible effort toward success, and the avoidance of returning shamefully home with one's "tail between one's legs", yet another colorful idiom. Either succeed big or fail utterly.

In recent years, I have joked with myself that, having never had a permanent home in the modern sense of the word, I have no choice but to "go big". Up until now, each post I've published has been "big" in the sense of moving beyond my comfort zone into a new level. Up until now, I guess that was as big as I could manage. Contemplating going even bigger, I realize that I need to tweak the saying a bit! Each step forward has been a step closer to home, to alignment with Goddess values and a sense of unity, oneness, and self-actualization. (The old saying is so painfully duality-based; it's either/or.) The home I am on the path to is way beyond that duality, and the trauma caused by duality. By "going big" I am "going home". They are one, not mutually exclusive.

This morning, I've decided that the easiest and most doable first step toward adding visual or musical facets to this blog (and my expression of the Goddess generally) is  to find my old camera, which recently surfaced and I decided to keep. I haven't used it in at least a decade, and I may need to take it somewhere to be checked out. But my flip-phone photographs don't appear to be transferrable to my computer, and I take pretty good nature images which I'm not currently using to the fullest. If I use the camera rather than my phone when I see one of Nature's wonders, it will be easier to periodically add these images to my blog. And in order to do that, I may need to change the overall look of this blog. For most people of the 21st century, this would be a quick no-brainer. For me, it's a huge initial step, and it may take a few weeks, but it is time. 

Go big and go home.

Goddess Words 50: Rocking

Wow. My fiftieth Goddess word. When I started presenting these words in 2022, I surely thought that I would have exhausted my list by now, but having presented only about one or two a month, there are still many to go. And from where I am "at" today, simply presenting a list of words doesn't seem like an adequate way to create a new society. Yet when I think of them as energetic building blocks, it begins to seem like a more viable foundation.

So my first word in July of 2022 was Love, not surprisingly. Today's is "rocking". An interesting trajectory! Love -- the real thing -- can certainly rock a person, an institution or an object.

Most of the definitions I see start with the traditional sense of gentle movement back and forth, as in rocking a cradle. I wonder if modern mothers ever use old-fashioned cradles or rocking chairs? They must...varieties are sold, although some of them don't require mom's presence or impetus. When I added this word to my list twenty years ago, I was thinking of the old-fashioned motherly facet of the Goddess: a being who would lovingly, gently, rock me in her arms or a cradle, and make everything all right. Part of this is that I don't remember having been rocked as a child in this lifetime, and perhaps few children have that active memory. I don't have the muscle memory either. Having stayed single, hugs and cradling of any kind have been a rarity -- giving or receiving. And of course, it isn't just a case of wanting the physical sensation of being touched, rocked, comforted, or cherished -- it is about the love behind it. I yearn for a sense of the divine's expression of Love, closeness and immanence, not the traditional distant entity in the sky!

Of course, the definitions go on to speak of back-and-forth movement of any kind, even more violent. It's a bit of a stretch to move from a mother rocking her baby in a rocking chair, to a mother and child being literally rocked off their furniture or out of the house with the force of an enemy explosion or attack. In this situation, gentleness has been turned on its head, replaced by rocking as a means of spreading fear, death, and power over. I don't believe that human-made extreme events causing rocking (bombs, war, razing tall buildings, explosions involved in construction and mining, even fireworks and loud automobile back-firings) are the realm of the Goddess. I suspect they make her weep almost inconsolably.

But rocking happens in yet another context, of course, one that is becoming increasingly common and intense, and that is earthquakes and volcanos. When these events are looked at from our limited human view of staying safe, it can seem as if Nature is attacking us. Tragically, we are all so addicted to conflict energy and terminology, it is hard to get beyond it. But looked at completely from the standpoint of the Goddess, of Mother Earth having a body which She is the sovereign of, the weather and geological pictures become more nuanced. The Earth is growing and changing right now, as are we. She is stretching, trying to rid herself of old toxins, realigning Herself for the work ahead. She is alive and sentient, and hopes that we will be reminded of that as the earth opens up and the old foundations rock and the lava flows! As hard as it is to fathom, this is Her expression of Love. Her way of guaranteeing that this planet, so very dear to Her, will remain viable and flexible, and survive as a place supportive of Life. 

And that gets us back to Love being something that rocks us. While in a sense I don't know what I am talking about (from my experiences in this lifetime, anyway), I've finally reached the point where I understand how thoroughly I will be rocked by the reality when I do experience it. (OMG! I said "when", not "if"!) Human or divine, genuine Love both gently cradles us, and rocks us to the core.

 

A Memory

As I go through this process of inwardly going "belly up" -- that is to say, finally realizing my need to use all my creative skills to express my inner spiritual reality -- a related memory has surfaced which I don't remember fully unpacking here.

When I left New York City (and the corporate world) behind in 1990, I went to Pendle Hill, the Quaker study center outside Philadelphia. It was basically the first time I had experienced Quakerism's classic silent form of worship. I had stopped being involved with church music, and wasn't attending church or cathedral services except once in a blue moon. It had begun to be obvious to me that girls and women would never have a place in that musical tradition, and so I was probably carrying a fairly heavy load of -- what? -- resentment, anger, dismissiveness. Perhaps this factor entered into removing myself to a retreat space offering silent spiritual worship.

I remember the powerful onrush of feelings, sounds, and "sights" around my first few morning meetings. Participants sat in benches around a square open space, and the first ten or fifteen minutes tended to be completely silent. Then, one by one, a few people might stand and say a short message based on their internal leadings -- something they felt compelled by Spirit to say at that moment. Meeting for worship would eventually end when the clerk or another participant reached over to shake the hand of their closest neighbor, and the rest of us would do the same. There was no minister or music (except for the rare occasion when an individual sang a few lines of a song)...there were no processions or readings.

For several weeks, my morning meetings weren't silent, they were almost raucously loud. My brain filled in the silence with hymns, organ preludes and postludes (the louder the better, you know, the Widor Toccata kind of thing!) I would inwardly recite  the 1928 Book of Common Prayer communion service ("Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid..." In fact, I could practically recite the priest's part of the entire service!) I could hear snippets of sermons I had heard over the course of my life, and little bits and pieces of other religious writings, readings, the Psalms, and so forth.

It would take weeks for this cacophony to settle down. Intellectually, I understood that early Quakers had started as a sharp deliberate contrast to the tradition I had grown up with, so I was experiencing in real time what that meant -- replacing outward forms of God and the worship of God with an inner sense of the divine, and inner worship, if you will. Perhaps even those first Quakers had a hard time not hearing organs, singing, and sermons. Sound rushes in to fill the silence at first, that's for sure.

I would finally begin to understand, intellectually, then actively experience, this new reality. It was like a photo negative of my spiritual life to date, but once it took hold, the notion of "that of God within" became firmly rooted. One day, sitting in the silence, I suddenly "heard" a message that needed expressing. My body literally shook ("quaked"), and so I stood up and spoke. I cannot remember what I said, but it was a powerful experience. I think this is when I finally started (started!) the path towards trusting my inner truth, a path that arguably has only now begun to solidify.

And as an example of the latest manifestation of the process: I am grateful for the left brain skill to be able to articulate in words so many of my experiences and observations. But even as I reach the end of this post, I find I have the urge to use a more "right brain" form of expression too, to find a more spontaneous way to express the feelings, the colors, the inner and outer music. This moment in history is shaking it all up, like a snow-globe, with the glitter that's been kind of pushed under the carpet demanding to fly through the air, and be seen.

The Portal

At the retreat space I recently stayed in, there was an intriguing, almost Gothic front door. When it was open, and I looked from the dark inner room to the hot, tinder-dry bizarre-for-September landscape outside, it seemed more like a portal than most doors. (My own personal definition for this word is a metaphorical doorway from one reality to another.) Even though most of the work I did on retreat involved simply coming to terms with, and growing to love, who I am, a lot of that was looking backwards and gathering up, with tenderness, all the threads of my life, all my skills, all my passions, all my experiences. But it appears that when I left that building, and walked over the threshold the last time, I was "going through a portal" more powerfully than I realized. As recounted yesterday, the first step was a vague sense of needing to bring music and art into my creative efforts in a new way.

Today may mark the second step. Again, these thoughts are still quite unformed, but here they are. It is not just a case of somehow bringing together the music I love and the art skills I learned over thirty years ago. It isn't about "using" these older skills in a slightly newer expression, or maintaining the focus on a certain religious tradition, or painting tradition, or simply bringing all these influences together into one opus (although that was my first thought). It's not about making music in a traditional church (or cathedral, or concert hall) venue, or using art to portray today's external world.

My new creative endeavors will involve literally turning myself (and these skills) inside out, making them completely and intrinsically mine, reflecting as best as I can the values of the divine feminine. It will somehow involve taking media apart and re-presenting their sights and sounds, trying to illustrate my inner visions of the future. I realize that this isn't completely novel! Expressionist and visionary artists, and modern composers, have long brought the inner, "out". 

But until now, I couldn't do that, I guess. I still felt that the traditions I emerged out of were too powerful to break away from or to "make my own". I was shackled to how things have always been done (strange for a girl who wanted to sing with the boys!) and what people might think of me if I strayed. What has changed in recent months? These extraordinary times, for one. Turning 69. And the process I've been through of releasing most of my old belongings. I loved my grandmother and her lessons on how to oil paint. But the other week, when her painting box (which I had left in a "free" pile by the side of the road) went to a new owner, I was so excited. When my mother's sewing box went, ditto! When most of my music books and CD's went to a university music department, ditto! Liberation. Loving one's history and gently letting go of most of its physical reminders = the portal.

As I've been writing this, it started raining for the first time in weeks and weeks!

Stepping out from the Starting Line

On Saturday, I was sitting by a big window, looking out at an unusually warm autumn-y scene, peeling apples for an apple crumble, listening to some English church music, when a thought came to me. Up until now, my primary building block efforts on behalf of the Goddess/Age of Aquarius have been in writing in this blog, particularly my Goddess words. And I'm proud of what I have written and processed here. But in a flash, this thought came to me: it is time to add music and visuals (art and perhaps photography) to this endeavor. To create a more multi-media way of expressing myself. I have the musical skills, I have the artistic skills. 

Of course, it's kind of interesting that I thought this in the immediate wake of having given away most of my music CD's, painting supplies, and other traditional media. Also, in the wake of brainstorming about new creative expression.  Actually, it makes a certain amount of sense. I had to release the old in so many ways...clearly I am not meant to go forward as a traditional oil painter (much as I love "Portrait Artist of the Year"), or to sing in a cathedral choir. The time has come to bring these skills and passions forward along with writing, in a new way. Can I envision exactly what I am talking about? No, although a few flashes of inspiration have tried to get through to me over the years. But there may never have been a moment when it was more imperative to express love and beauty and harmony in as many ways as possible. If writing no longer feels like enough, then I have other powerful tools to use to record my impressions of where we are headed. What the new age will look like, feel like, sound like.

Hmm...heady stuff for the new moon and the autumn solstice. May yours be equally rich!

Back to the Starting Line

This morning, I am almost in tears, I am so thankful and happy. The process of this particular "retreat" (and the cat-sitting day or so as I ease out of it) has been so intense and profound -- and, at 69-going-on-70 -- so necessary. A reckoning. A PhD dissertation. A point which I'm sure relatively few people attain, that, "Thank goodness I've reached this point in this lifetime" moment. I did a happy jig the other morning, and while I'm not feeling quite as agile this morning, I am glowing.

I mean, in some ways it is so simple and so obvious. By the time I was about six, all the pieces that make me "me" were in place. I had already (at 4) fallen in love with the English men and boys' choir tradition (and had deep memories of other lifetimes in that country). I wanted to sing (or later, to conduct or have some other significant connection with the tradition) -- and I also had a clear sense of my identities (and past lives) as a saint and a nun. And I had been pushed ahead in school, so my intellectual capacity was recognized by teachers. I mean, by second grade!!! What this last week provided was the opportunity to circle around and return to the core truths. Completely. Fully. Warm-heartedly. Embracing myself. With forgiveness for myself and the world. Back to the starting line. 

Because, with a few exceptions, most of my life from that point forward involved trying to fulfill society's expectations for me or, failing that, to find a way of being me that would at least meet with some minor measure of acceptance in some circle or another. How could I make "being me" work, especially in rugged capitalist America? Energetically there is simply no overlap. And my sense of the Goddess's values being just about literally the opposite of our culture's adds to the picture -- I think I was on Her wavelength before I realized it. The amount of energy I have expended all these decades doing things that weren't "me" -- trying, sometimes desperately, to fit in, or succeed, find a home, or adopt other peoples' passions -- yikes! I always say it is a miracle that I am alive, and I say it again. I don't regret anything and I met such extraordinary people along the way. I've been getting clearer and clearer about this for years, haven't I? But finally I completely trust myself and my perceptions. It's like some kind of powerful truth serum has washed over me, and I can delineate with exceptional clarity those experiences that were genuinely "me", and those that were not.

Putting aside for a moment all the other ways I have denied being myself, there's the question of England. I am on another binge watch of "UK Portrait Artist of the Year", and reminded again of the shame I have always felt at knowing in my heart that England is home. Sort of like, when I'm in the US, England is my guilty secret, and when I've been in the UK, I've not dared fully relax into being happy and at peace. It is a part of me I have fought and fought and fought, especially recently. But this time, I am not fighting. I'm embracing it. I'm seeing pictures of "home" on the television and feeling the warmth and love percolate through me. Allowing myself to simply be that person, to allow the mantle of unacceptance and shame drop away effortlessly, and be in joy.

It's interesting that the finale of the season I just watched had the winning portraitist paint author Hilary Mantel, and in the painting she is wearing a prominent scarf, almost a mantle. I don't think any of these kinds of coincidences are coincidences!

OMG. I'm so thankful. It took 70 years, but I've made it back to the starting line. For whatever it is worth, near the top of my list of assets for the Aquarian Age is that each human being on earth be encouraged to fully be themselves! Each and every human being. 

Unplugging

The whole idea of a retreat is to unplug. Heck, even under normal conditions, I'm less plugged in than the average American -- but it was good to spend about 24 hours with public radio news turned off. While there is a certain early morning hour where I frequently hear national news, extended local news and weather, and -- yes! -- a star report (astronomy, not astrology), I was reminded that this is more than enough for me every day. After the silence, this morning's news seemed particularly shocking and rife with "non-Love". Had I rapidly become sensitized, or was the news actively less Love-filled? I don't know. Maybe both. But there is no question -- even a person of high spiritual intelligence becomes more numb after every encounter with the headlines. Finding that right level of exposure (where I feel up-to-date without sliding into anger or hopelessness) is challenging. 

What grew in the unplugged silence? A surprising level of acceptance of my personal "goodness", joy, and inner unity. Putting it this way sounds bizarre, I know. Yet as someone who is aware of having been pushed back by the time I was in the womb, chronically teased for being "holier-than-thou", and derided for my inability to "get with the program", I have swallowed a lot of self-hatred over the years. Most of us assume it is only people who aren't good enough who are weighed down with self-abhorrence, but believe me (as I think I've written before), the opposite can be true. Beings who cannot love loathe Love, Goodness, Joy, Beauty and Harmony. Those of us who represent these qualities are often oppressed/pressed down along with other populations. And we squelch it within our own selves when we are around others -- so as not to seem "holier than thou". What a ridiculous vicious cycle! To have a few days where I can fully accept -- even embrace -- my own inner goodness -- is valuable beyond belief. 

This morning I did a little happy jig around the living room of my retreat house! (I can assure you, this is new!) The Goddess's return calls for a celebratory unveiling of all our bright lights. This light is guiding Her back to us just as we are being led to the heart of Her. The "dawning of the age of Aquarius" also calls for joyful celebration. (Non-Love will simply fizzle out. That will be news worth plugging in to!)

A Monday Mystic

Despite all my good words the other day, old habits are rising to the surface, and this morning I find myself counting down the hours until my retreat is over. I guess I simply have to forgive myself, allow those feelings of scarcity and limitation to wash over me, and try to rise up and get an eagle's-eye view of things. I am a mystic every day, on Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, whenever and wherever. I can choose never again to let time or exterior conditions dictate my essential qualities. And when old ways of thinking do intrude, I can choose to be gentle with myself and others.

Interestingly enough, I may hate to see this retreat "end", but in fact it has had its challenging moments. I haven't slept well. I don't think this has to do with physical comfort...more a spinning mind. And I have listened to public radio news periodically to keep up with what's going on, which leads to more mind-spinning. Perhaps not a good idea on retreat! I'll give that a 24 hour rest, and see if it helps. Another challenge is that over the weekend, there was a very well-attended festival only a hop-skip-and-a-jump from where I am, and crowds and music spilled over. I guess you cannot always completely "retreat" even when you try...and that's OK. This is an extraordinary time, a speeded-up time. Right now, there may always be overlap between worlds and experiences. Perhaps everything is "liminal space" right now.

Here's what I'll do -- look at these next few days as study time, and then, heading back "into the world," go into my practicum, my opportunity to further experiment with being a mystic in a frenzied world. How can these spiritual lenses help me facilitate earth's changes, and humanity's challenges? How can I best serve people, non-human beings, the Earth, and the Goddess? How can I be Her, today (Monday) and everyday?

Clocks

I'm only a few hours into a retreat, and I'm already counting down the days and hours until it ends -- and not in a good way. In the, "I wish it didn't have to end" way. This is old energy, but there it is.

First, may I say a word about clocks, without trying to delve into the whole thing about whether or not time really exists. That's beyond my comprehension. But I am a clock person, a "wear an old-fashioned watch" person. I tend to arrive places early, and be very conscious of timings, even when I am not in charge of an event, or have no way to control things (like buses running late, etc.) It can lead to some stress and anxiety which a more clock-free person might never experience.

On a larger scale, clocks have loomed largest for me on occasions (like right now) when I am spending a limited time doing the thing I am happiest about, which makes me, "me". The classic was the year I spent studying in England (and for nine months, singing services with the Royal Holloway choir) -- I was in such a perfect milieu for me, and was so happy, that I wanted more than anything to stay there the rest of my life! But my airline ticket back to the US was scheduled for late September of '81, and so my mental clock started ticking down almost the day I arrived. As the year progressed, I became unhappier and unhappier (although I was able to pull it together and finish my thesis work), and as I've already mentioned several times, I cried all the way back across the Atlantic. What was I dreading? "The real world." Having to return to find work that would likely not interest me, pay back student loans, play a part in corporate America, in a country that felt foreign, etc. The contrast isn't quite so stark now (more like, returning to prepare for low-income senior housing or a better equivalent) but that sense of "the real world" energetically not fitting me is as profound as ever, perhaps even more so because of the events we are witnessing. 

I had an "aha" this morning, and if it's the only one I have over the next few days, this will have been a rich retreat! The "aha" is the realization that, of course, what I didn't want to leave wasn't just England, the church music milieu, the retreat center/contemplative milieu, or even simply being on my own, able to use my time as I wish. What I have hated seeing the clock tick down on is me being me. Me feeling free to be absolutely who I am, without allowing our culture or our economy or others' opinions to squash her.  My Goddess-orientation may be a relatively new wrinkle, but She was always there under the surface. Even with such power within me, I tended to cringe once the clock ran out, and let the "real world" take over, dictate events, and batter me about. I handed over my power.

The trick now, is to return to the so-called real world, knowing that my Goddess-centered, English church music-loving, mystic, New Age self is now more important to me than anything the world serves up. Anything. I plan to stand tall, walk out of this door, and continue (energetically) to be fully me, knowing the alarm will never again go off on that!

A Step Further

The ups and downs of the last few weeks have been the catalyst for the urge to take this "Goddess thing" a step further. This is a good thing. I mean, the urge has been there for several years, but the pandemic and post-pandemic time led into the "leave Duluth" time, and these things were, well, distractions, if the truth be known. And while a renewed impulse to move on is in place again, I realize that there is an even stronger imperative -- the need to do more than simply write about the Goddess in this blog. I'm about to do a weeklong "retreat", and my purpose? To brainstorm even the most unlikely possible new scenarios. (I have to come up with a better word than "retreat". I mean, when I'm on retreat, I am basically returning to me. Maybe each time I go on retreat I am going home.)

So there have been a few slightly wacky ideas in my head for a while, pushed back by my inner "conventional girl". (Hmm...funny that the word "convent" is in there, given my anchoress tendencies!) I mean, I've been many things, but I've never been weird. I wasn't a hippie, I never took drugs. I've always dressed conservatively or boringly (albeit often in hand-me-downs). For a relatively short time when I was trying to make money as an artist and art teacher, I tried to look the artsy/New Age part, but it never really "took", except for my earrings, which remain rather distinctive. To do anything that might draw too much critical attention to me continues to be hard to consider, even after a decade of writing this blog.

Among the things I am throwing into the brainstorming mix are:

• Dressing more like the Goddess every day...what would that look like? Probably focusing on a single color, like various shades of blue and teal, wearing more silver jewelry, getting dressed in the morning intending to be Her representative and making sure my looks count more. I probably spoke about this years ago, but it still hasn't happened
• Walking across country (well, OK, with my feet, it might have to be travel by buses or trains) leaving hand-written notes from the Goddess wherever I go, and speaking about Her when someone asks me
• Beginning to do videos instead of or in addition to these written posts. I've thought about this for a while, but never got up the nerve
• Creating a huge sculpture of the Goddess. Again, this has been in my mind for years, but not owning property, there has been the tricky question of "where?" Ultimately, because I don't believe there's any property that isn't hers, this is a false roadblock
• Literally becoming an anchoress for the Goddess, if I could find someone to be my support system. An oracle-in-place. People would hear about me by word of mouth and come to speak with me in person.

This coming week, I'll consider more ideas as they come to me...seriously consider them. I think I've finally moved beyond, "people will think I'm strange". That doesn't matter any more. There cannot be anything stranger or more horrifying than much of what we are seeing in the world.

Parallel Realities

This weekend, I was able to pull myself together and go out into the world to do some "normal" things. That is to say, things that in modern America aren't considered odd in the least: I had coffee with a friend at a coffee shop, I went into three huge big box stores, and I attended a street art fair. 

The coffee was pretty easy to manage, especially as the weather was fine enough to sit outside at a picnic table. Friendship and the out-of-doors -- a good combination. But the big box stores were truly torture. In all three cases, I was basically "along for the ride", but there were a few essential items I needed and the timing of the car ride was providential. Still...these cavernous buildings crammed with items made from plastic, or wrapped in plastic, or in many cases, both, have come to be an impossible energetic mismatch for me. The one store with a focus on clothing (much of which is also made of man-made materials) had the added disadvantage of being an unholy mess, with apparel tossed hither and yon, shoe box piles toppled over, and sales signage all askew. The line to the cashier was crammed with what I assume are meant to be impulse purchases, all completely glitzy, plastic, unnecessary, terrifying. That so much of our economy and international tension is based on literally shiploads of these kinds of items is mid-boggling. 

The one grocery store in the mix was not much less overwhelming. In fact, it may be more so. (Sorry to bring this kind of thing up again, but I have to do it!) It is so huge and spacious, so glamorous in some respects, that its effect was even more uncomfortable. My mind conjured up (as it frequently does) being a citizen from a war zone, or a visitor to this country from a place of scarcity -- how to even mentally take in all the space, the piles and piles of produce, the numerous brands of each kind of food? The fruit and vegetable area must have been as large as two good-sized American homes, and there were maybe five people shopping at that moment. Who is buying all this food? How much of it is being tossed out in the dark of night, and where? What happens to the tons of expired food? I mean, this isn't about becoming better at collecting such food and distributing it to needy populations--in many communities this is already being done. It's about my certainty that this whole model has been unsustainable for decades, and can't last much longer. But then again, I've thought this thought for years. Plastic is arguably pushing the situation past the tipping point...food items that until recently were still being packed in easily recycled glass bottles or jars are now in plastic. The Goddess in me is in such unbearable pain searching the aisles for my few items, I wish there were another alternative. But this area's only whole foods stores (with some access to bulk buying) are almost impossibly far away for someone with no car. Everything is challenging without a car here. I knew that was going to be the biggest difficulty of the move away from Duluth, and it has been. I don't regret my move one bit, but this is the reality.

Lastly, the outdoor art show. Again, a conflicted experience. It was a beautiful day, and lots of people were out. There was quite a mix of art, quality-wise. I have pretty high standards, so there were really only two participants whose work I really liked. I was glad to see some very young artists displaying their work, but my age was showing -- their work was filled with cartoon, superhero and other references that I didn't quite get! For about 20 minutes, I sat on a bench and essentially people-watched, which also included a considerable amount of dog-watching. Fun. Normally, I would say that art is an important balance to everything happening in the world right now, worthwhile whatever the quality, medium, or subject. But nonetheless there was a sense of unreality about the scene around me. As happens so often with me, I wanted to run around screaming, our world is about to change utterly! Don't you see what's coming? And oddly enough, Mother Nature may Herself have spoken when the wind came up, and a number of artist's metal display units came crashing down, leaving artwork flat on the street and, in some cases, broken. I was sorry for the painters, but also felt a bit better. We have to expect the unexpected right now.

I hate to be so "yes, but..." with so many things. Perhaps this is why I'm experiencing some pretty big swings in energy. I just don't look out and see or feel my exact energy match anywhere. Some of my newfound kindred spirits online seem to be far more undilutedly happy and enthusiastic about our current shift of eras. They seem to be able to move more completely into the New Age without focusing on what some people are calling the old "timeline". Perhaps it is because my connection to that old paradigm has always been so tenuous, and I have had so little security. I'm thrilled that we are finally entering the Age of Aquarius! Overall, I can sense how completely dated and unworkable the old loveless ways are, and I'm excited at the calibre of people around the world who are rising to a new level. It's just that I can feel the lower energies powerfully too, because I've been on my own navigating them for so long. These two realities couldn't be any more different if they tried. But as of now, there are few completely new paradigm places or institutions, so for just a little longer, I guess, the parallel realities will be with us, until the old ones simply fizzle away and we slowly start to build new institutions from the ground up.

Goddess Words 49: Hospitality

I guess it stands to reason that someone from my background might include "hospitality" on a list of Goddess words, as if the Goddess is some kind of society hostess! 

Returning to the Capital District has forced me to look at my childhood influences, and in this regard, I'd have to say that neither my mother or my father were exactly "hospitable" people. I mean, Mom didn't routinely have friends dropping by for coffee or tea (although her bridge club arrived en masse about once a year). I don't think my dad had any friends, so there were never men coming over to play poker in the basement or to watch football. But there were some special occasions, particularly a very formal yearly New Year's Eve party. Once I was old enough, I was allowed to stay up as guests were arriving and play waitress with trays of hors d'oeuvres. The men weren't in tuxes exactly, although I remember cummerbunds; black and white evening jackets were the norm, and the women wore long shimmery dresses and jewelry. Before too long, the living room was too smoky and drinky for me, and my mother would shoo me upstairs as a man with a deep bass voice intoned one of the Christmas letters we had received, to guffaws of laughter. (I always felt rather sorry for the sender.)

One definition of hospitality includes the word "generous", and to me, this is key. To be true "hospitality", a person's welcome needs to be genuine, from the heart, embracing. It's not about impressing people, or good business (although these days that facet has entered into it), or feeling sorry, or forced good humor. It's about not serving the coffee that's been sitting in the urn for hours, but making new coffee. It's about really caring that the person you are welcoming is comfortable, and has been refreshed. Some of this is so engrained in me that, even having so rarely had my own place in which to entertain or welcome people, I sometimes find myself playing that role in other peoples' houses. There is something in me that just cannot help it. The visitor may have travelled some distance, may be tired, thirsty or hungry, and simply may just need to sit down. I get it.

Judging from my favorite Sister Fidelma mysteries, hospitality in 7th century Ireland was written into law, at least as far as monasteries, inns, and some other institutions were concerned. It was a societal obligation to put up the stranger at your door, and this filtered down to individuals in the smallest of hovels. I cannot know whether, thus codified, hospitality lost its spontaneity and generosity, but at least someone wandering on a dark road at night could expect to be welcomed in some kind of basic way at the first house with a lantern at the door. We all need this at some point in our lives, perhaps often.

In the context of current events, it is almost unbearably painful to see how our national concept of hospitality has been turned on its head, Our stance couldn't be further from that of the Goddess -- hate-filled not generous, pushing out not drawing in, cold rather than warm. I shudder to think of the "karmic payback" we are drawing to us.

Well, we are all playing a different role in the enormous shift that Life is undergoing right now, and we can only find the role that is right for us, and play it. If I've said this before, forgive me the repetition -- I think that the values of the Goddess are so instilled in me that my role is, in effect, to be the hostess, welcoming people to the new era, recognizing the difficulty of the journey we have all undertaken, and wishing to provide travelers with a soft chair, a cup of hot tea or ice water, a snack, and a footstool. I want to provide hospitality, to say "welcome". You made it. We made it. This paradigm is real, and this is what it feels like -- warm, welcoming, generous to all, and a relief from the tumult we've been through. I'll want people to take all the time they need to acclimate, to heal, and to refresh. If they make it to the door, my light will be on...wherever I am.

And another...

This is one of those weeks when, if I write, I am still alive. Now things aren't as dire as that, by any means, but this process of "ascension"/keeping up with emerging Aquarian energies as the world falls backwards/staying true to myself is not getting easier. I feel ripped to shreds, and in a "space" I don't recognize (and this is on top of how unrecognizable our culture has become.)

The process is getting more interesting in at least one respect, however! I got one phone call yesterday, just one, and it was to confirm that I will have the opportunity to do a three- or four-day retreat next week in a rather interesting location. More (perhaps) about that later. But it confirms for me that I'm in this "place" where the only communication actually reaching me is information that I truly need, spiritually. Nothing else is coming in -- and perhaps some of what I am sending out is, itself, unnecessary for me and for those at the other end, thus the silence.

I know I've said this at least once in the past...I've kept going with this blog in large part to chronicle what it has been to be a 21st century-American (with stronger ties to Britain)-Goddess-centered mystic. What life is like when your values are the complete opposite of the culture. The joys, the wonder, the complete uncertainty, the fear, the hard decisions, the solitude, the occasional moments of connection and beauty. The wavering in and out of feeling held by the Great Mother. There may be no one out there with my exact imprint, but as I found in the friend I spoke about last time, there are certainly other wandering female mystics and always have been. The difference is that in this era, I have this venue to express my thoughts. In a way, this blog is my only true "home". If my posts are any help to even one other woman on a mystic path, I'll feel "successful".

I'm still not necessarily planning to write every day moving forward, so not to worry when a few days go by. Still, I feel led to be ever more regular and open with both good and bad -- about my life path. (I feel less led than ever to commenting on the crumbling infrastructure outside of me, because the focus now needs to be on trying our best to navigate the path to a very different future.) 

Another Day

I think there may be a few people who check in to my blog to make sure I am still alive, and I am so appreciative of them. Yes, it has been "quite a journey" and this is probably a good way to check. Here I am today, September 4, 2025, another day! I am thankful to be in a beautiful setting, which is sustaining and encouraging...but doesn't always completely smooth the path.

Because of one of the ideas I was considering yesterday, I was reminded of a remarkable woman I met about 30 years ago. She was a much older version of me, an Aquarian mystic, and she had been wandering for at least 30 years. We couldn't help but compare notes. She was the person who explained to me that people with old paradigm thinking and an ability to function well in our old paradigm financial system are the ones who thrive, as do those with new paradigm thinking and an ability to function well in our old paradigm financial system. It's those of us who are "new-new" who find no traction, no easy way to move forward. I think that she eventually made her way "home", but how far into old age she lived, I don't know. I hope she had some comfort and community toward the end.

At the time, I remember thinking, if the next thirty years of my life are as unsettled as hers has been, I won't be able to bear it. There must be something I can do differently -- and yet, my life was a variation on the same theme. It has been "unbearable", and yet bear it I have -- and most women around the world bear much worse. I think I mused once before over whether the experience of contemporary male mystics is different or easier. I suspect so, but I don't know any personally. My hunch is that they may be taken more seriously, and listened to more readily. I value my alone time more than anything, but the woman in me longs for community, sharing, and mutual learning and respect. And my ideal community (like my ideal choir) would mix the gifts and sounds of both men and women.

A few wispy white clouds on the horizon today...rain must be due. Or storms of some other nature.

On an ascension path, I guess there are stretches of time when your new energy just simply doesn't communicate with the old energy surrounding you, and there's an awkward readjustment. Goddess give me the strength to keep going, and to take the path ahead -- when I know what it is! Thank you for bringing me to another day.

Five Monarchs

I don't know that I have ever done two posts in one day, but I had to add a short post script. Yes, it's been a particularly unclear week. I feel so clear in my own self, but, as ever, not in terms of how to navigate the world. I said I needed to look for beauty, or something beckoning and shimmering to hold onto, and on a walk just now, I saw not one, not two, but five monarch butterflies. That's more than I've seen all summer combined! It's a little pathetic to hold onto this for dear life, but I will. If they can stay alive in this crazy world and flit from goldenrod flower to goldenrod flower, then I hope I can too.  

When the Bottom Drops out

I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how I have experienced so many revelations recently, and so much in our outer world is shaking and quaking. 

But I feel like I am having one of those weeks where just about everything is dropping out from under me. My living situation is shaky, and when I try to connect outward with people or make plans, it doesn't happen properly. I'm not hearing back from texts and calls, and I'm not even getting the pleasure and learning from various online teachers that I was for a few months. Fall is coming, and with it the panic about where I will be when it gets cold and icy. It's so simple really. I want what I've wanted for years, to find people like me and be in community with them. But my take on things isn't easy for some people to absorb, and while inwardly I know that I am a treasure (!), not everyone has seen me, my presence, or my process that way. At my age, and at such an insane moment in our culture, it would be so easy to throw up one's hands and say, I just can't do this anymore.

What will keep me going? Breathing. Remembering that the time we are entering is much more "my time" than the time we are leaving. Finding one thing that is good and beautiful. One thing that is working. One beautiful thing in nature. One thing that shimmers beautifully on the horizon. I signed up for an event that I think will play that role, so I hold on tight while the gauze is tearing and the bottom is dropping out. If any of you are going through this kind of thing, please know that I'm with you.

What's Next?

There are "suddenly" a lot of people saying some of the things I've been saying for years -- well, not so suddenly I'm sure. It's just that it took me a long time to find them. Anyway, we are all trying to make sense of the new era we are entering. Today seems like a good day to try to articulate a few of the qualities of this upcoming time, based as best I can on my own thinking. It will be harder and harder to remember when or how I was influenced by other thinkers, and, basically, it will not matter anymore anyway. All of us are being inspired by Spirit, by the Love at the core of it all, so all our egos are increasingly taking second chair. 

In one sentence, the Age of Aquarius will be a time characterized by Love. Love will be the only potent force in the universe. This process has started, as easy as it may be not to believe it. People, processes and institutions that have been based in conflict, hatred, and pain are scrambling...perhaps they know their time has come and gone. Yet all of us have to look honestly at all the underpinnings of our lives, and sense whether our foundations are built on all-Love, or on "Us vs. Them, Good vs. Evil, Right vs. Wrong, etc." Frankly, most of the personal or societal building blocks constructed in the old paradigm are likely to collapse, without any help from us. No fight is necessary here. It is Love filling every space currently empty of it. 

In a way, that's why I've lived the way I have. I knew I might eventually need to live without "modern medicine", so I tried to get my body used to it. I knew it might eventually be hard to be laden down with a lot of possessions, property or financial complications, so I stayed as uncomplicated as I could. I knew that what is currently considered "success" would be considered completely immaterial toward the end of my life, so I tried hard not to measure myself by that yardstick (although that may have been the hardest thing of all). I don't think we can prepare, per se, for the process we are about to go through, except to stay in the present and be grateful for whatever blessings we currently experience. It's probably a good idea, too, to stay aware that things may change utterly. If you have a home, or health care, or income, now, you may or may not have them down the line. You may or may not live in a landscape that looks familiar down the line, or even continue to be alive on this earth plane. Just remember that life itself never ends, and that all of us are eternal beings. There is no death on the divine plane, and some people who are alive now will "die", only to play important spiritual roles behind the scenes moving forward. For a period of time, we may be uncomfortably half-in and half-out of the new age, and every day will be a complex navigation of that reality.

Ultimately, this is a time to welcome -- for those of us capable of love, harmony, beauty, and respect for the earth, it is literally "the dawn of a new day". For those of us who honor the Great Mother, She is back. But others literally cannot stand the idea of such a world. There will be earthquakes of both the natural and human kind. If possible, embrace it all, even the chaos. It is happening, and it is real. It is a time of shocking beginnings and endings, a tearing of the fabric that held us in place, But that's the whole point. Our culture was like a big gauze bandage, trying to protect humanity's greatest wound -- duality. As the gauze tears away and the open sore is exposed to the air, it will be exceedingly painful for a while, but slowly but surely the wound will finally start to heal. We will not need the specific bandages that have been in place for so long.

Again, Again

Back in May of 2017, I wrote a post called "Again" in response to an act of mass violence, and numerous times since then I have made at least brief comments about these events. On most of the occasions, it has seemed that so much was being said by so many, that there was little healing to be had in adding to the cacophony. Yet today some thoughts were on my mind upon awakening, so I'll do my best to share them, not in the spirit of fixing the problem or blaming or solving...just, what would shift the conflict energy that we are stuck in?

We all know this deep down -- there can be little success trying to fix what is outside ourselves. The only true solutions are within each of us individually. Are we at peace with ourselves, with friends and family? Are we at peace with the kind of work we do, how we live, how we spend time? Are we at peace with absolutely every nook and cranny of our lives, and with our larger history? There are personal places I get stuck, some of which I have spoken about in this blog, and then in the larger history of our country and the world, which I don't speak about as often. What inwardly causes me the most pain is to face the violence of the early "settlement" of North America, the revolution that bought our "freedom", and the violence of the move westward. The violence toward the people, plants, and non-human beings new settlers encountered, the violence inherent in the creation of roads, dams, cities, train tracks and mines. The violence toward the earth Herself. The violence in our political, economic, social, and medical systems and our language. The violence (real and diplomatically muffled) in our relationships with the rest of the world. The violence in our sports and "play", the violence in how we produce food and other manufactured items, and the violence in our relationships with the deep oceans and vast outer space. 

This is a yes-based universe, I am sure of it (I think this is an Abraham-Hicks-ism). So it's hard for me to see how anger and blame expressed outward -- even understandable movements for specific changes -- will cause the desired effect, especially in this Age of Aquarius. If the energy of a response is itself too violent or confrontational, it is likely to beget more violence and confrontation. What may shift the energy, though, will be for individuals to look inward, and really look honestly at the ways in which conflict and violence are part of our communal history as well as our own personal stories. Look unflinchingly. Accept the reality. Do whatever work we need to do to heal our personal trauma and pain, so that our role as a ripple effect will end. Then move ahead with a complete and utter commitment to harmony in every area of life. Not everyone can do this. Some may have to keep fighting -- this may be the divine agreement they made before this incarnation. But some of us have already released "the fight", and more and more will do the same every day as this Age continues. As higher levels of Love enter our universe, the violence around us may seem to be becoming more frenzied, but before long, it will wilt and die from lack of oxygen. There will be too much Love.

Yesterday, I sent photos of beauty to my friends in Minnesota who I knew might be particularly distressed right now. I had been to Schenectady's rose garden, and so mostly I sent pictures of roses. Making the choice to spread beauty in this moment was just about all I could do. Again, again.

Three Revelations

I had gathered from various astrology sources that this past weekend's new moon was going to be powerful, and it certainly was for me. How about you?

In a conversation on Thursday, I came to a realization about the so-called prosperity gospel (about which I really know virtually nothing except that it is a "thing" in some churches) and its new age cousin, where you try to gain prosperity or success through visualization and other techniques. The latter is something I tried on and off over the years. Both of these cases represent ego-driven effort. It is all about personal success, achievement or material gain. In a flash, I realized not only why the new age version hadn't worked for me, but why such beliefs may actually be inconsistent with Goddess thinking. Does the Goddess want every human being to reach their fullest creative, spiritual, joy, love, and beauty potentials? Yes. But our individual efforts to gain personal worldly success, wealth, land, belongings, and status have brought humanity to the edge of ecological disaster. Wanting so much for ourselves (and in some cases, our families) -- outside of any community context, or concern for the health and future viability of the planet itself -- goes over the edge into pure selfishness. All of us in the West have been brought up immersed in this basic ethos, and I guess even for someone like me, it took far too long to disengage and see what it is doing to the Earth. A more Goddess-centered way of thinking would consider any action's toll on the planet, and how all of us, as the broader community of humans, can blossom. It would never be just about "success for me". (Revelation number one.}

Then, on Saturday, I was in a setting with multiple tall pine trees whose trunks were bare of branches. Two trees had been, I guess you could say, decorated in a manner I have never seen before. At about the five foot mark, both tree trunks had plastic-covered chain "necklaces" with a central metal plaque, saying that they (the plaques or the trees?) had been given in memory of so-and-so. This struck me as grotesque. What had these trees done to warrant being enchained? Visually, the trees look constricted, suffocated; all of this was done for the ego gratification of a person or a family. "My tree. A tree in my honor." On an energetic level, binding it didn't seem too far away from taking a chainsaw to it -- in either case, the tree was allowed no agency. The tree was never asked for permission, just as Nature generally isn't. (The thought wasn't a revelation to me, but the image of a tree in chains was. Number two.)

Then lastly, the big one. Saturday evening I watched something on public TV about tombs and fragments being discovered under the transept crossing floor at Notre Dame de Paris, as the building is rebuilt. The cathedral's original choir screen was knocked down several hundred years ago, and, evidently, simply floored over. For the most part, English cathedrals still have their choir screens, whose original purpose was, of course, to literally screen or separate the choir and clergy taking part in the service from the parishioners down in the nave. It created a higher, holier space where the official acts of worship took place...and it was a space for the tiniest elite. Few men and boys -- and no women or girls -- could go through that beautifully-decorated portal.

Now, I've known about this history, of course. How could I not? However, over the years, my focus was on the music, wanting to sing it, to learn the repertoire, to be an active participant in the choral part of worship (yes, even though my concept of the divine was decidedly broader than the church's!) But watching this documentary, I had an epiphany. This wasn't just about singing. This was about being "allowed" near the heart of the divine. This was about being in the holy presence, not on the outskirts. When I've said that my home is in the choir stalls of British cathedrals, this was arguably about a lot more than wanting to march in, robed, to sing a service. It was about being empowered in the divine, and embraced by the divine, in a much broader sense. Think of all the girls and women throughout northern European history who stood or sat in the naves of cathedrals and churches, knowing they would never play an active part in any ritual, in any capacity. While this has changed in some denominations in recent years, it was a weighty third revelation nonetheless.

Maybe, just maybe, I tried to go through that portal not just for me, but also for all those women in the centuries before me. Maybe, just maybe, this hasn't only been about my own ego. 

Be the Love Anchor (or Anchoress!)

Early yesterday morning, I was mulling over something, and it relates somewhat to my post on magnetizing. This essay has morphed a bit over twenty-four hours, and updates some earlier material, I'm sure. Thanks for your patience.

Here it is. All of us have been taught that to "get" anything, we need to look outside ourselves and "apply" or compete. We apply for summer jobs, college programs, grants, career jobs, and even volunteer work. People apply for car loans, mortgages, credit cards, and insurance. People (in effect) apply to find roommates, apartments, dates, spouses. We create a persona to sell ourselves on social media and to win in games. Companies "apply" for our patronage with advertising and strange gimmickry. All of us, whether we know it or not, or want to or not, have been energetic fisherfolk, constantly throwing baited hooks out into rapidly-flowing rivers to see what bites. And I think subconsciously, most of us have tried to form ourselves into the person appropriate to the situation -- the appealing employee, the appealing mate, the appealing renter, the appealing corporate entity, whatever. In such a setting, a process like the one I have gone through, diving down and in to a core of true personal identity, can seem both irrelevant and impossible. It has even felt that way to me.

So (as I think I alluded to the other day) it's no surprise that even now, I keep trying to look outside of myself for the tribe of people just like me. As I look to my periphery, I see a wide range of "tribes", most of which have at least a bit of overlap to me: environmentalists, feminists, peace activists, healers, astrologers, channelers, shamans, historians, archaeologists, musicians, artists, and gardeners/farmers. There is a facet of myself in each of these "places", but none of them are -- per se -- my encompassing home or tribe. When I reach out and think, finally, "home!", it isn't...quite.

Why? The missing piece in most of these groups is an essential Goddess-focus, a core set of assumptions about what life would look like if the divine feminine were honored. And having come to believe that I may have spent many lifetimes holding the energy of the Goddess in the British Isles (and in positions that kept me near the center of the spiritual and academic worlds there), I still cannot move forward without that piece in place. I may recently have recycled much of the material I held onto to document this lifetime's journey, but it doesn't mean that I've thrown away my passions or identity -- only the assumption that I will need certain physical material in the future. The Goddess-England-English Church Music "intersection" is my unique raft on the river, the lens that I look through and am. It's not working to cast out a hook or a shout-out to say, "Hello, here I am, pick me for your group!" Just as I doubt it would work to cast out the hook to "catch" people for a group of my own.

Yes, it's so frustrating. Have you experienced it? Is your "intersection" equally unusual? For those of us in this position, the only course may be to pull our little boat into the stillest bay of the roiling river, and put our anchor down at least for now. From there (speaking for myself) I must just do the things I do best and love -- write, sketch, listen to choral evensong services or talks by the wisest people I can find, read (often about England), cook, bake, and do things occasionally with friends. Take pictures of nature with my little flip phone. Commune with animal beings (a hummingbird hovered about two feet from my face yesterday!). "Be" love, the best that I can be. And see who or what shows up when I anchor down!

Be the Love Anchor. 

 

Goddess Words 48: Magnetize

When in doubt, a Goddess word. (I woke up wanting to write, but I didn't know about what.)

Those of us who, over the last few decades, have consumed a fair amount of "New Age" material have a pretty good take on magnetizing. The idea is that if you clearly articulate intentions or goals, or if you visualize your preferred outcome, you will draw to you what you want. There were times when I tried (and tried and tried) to magnetize the practicalities of life -- better income, a job that would at least be somewhat interesting, a car. And yet I rarely had good results. I was (and am!) grateful that I have so often had a softish landing when I jumped out of the proverbial plane, but it's almost laughable how the old fashioned way (hard work ethic, and flooding employers with resumes) never worked for me, and the new age paradigm didn't really either. 

I am becoming convinced that the Goddess absolutely does magnetize, but in a different way. I think what magnetizes is the overall quality of your energy field, not specific actions or intentions. That this mirror, so to speak, senses absolutely every emotion within us, and bounces them back to us with amazing speed and precision. Now the gurus have been saying a variation of this all along, right? If you want a new car, but deep down you feel unworthy, then it will be nearly impossible to magnetize the latest model. However, the way that I think Goddess energy is different is this: in a Goddess-centered reality, I don't think it would be possible under any circumstances to magnetize a sporty new car or a mansion on the Pacific, because those goals were not created by entities (or within a paradigm) that worked with the Goddess from a place of Love. They are for the most part the products of a desire for profit or power. I sense that the only way to magnetize going forward, especially for some of us, will be to immerse ourselves in feeling Love, harmony, beauty, truth -- and wait to see where we are led. Perhaps the only "specific" requests we can make are ones like this: How can I more effectively spread Love? Where is the best community of Love? How can I make Love my only currency and my only home?

I say this as I am in the midst of learning this lesson again, the hard-ish way. In true Transitional mode, I've put any number of things "out there" in the last month or so, applications, or letters to appropriate people in the kind of direction I wish to go, etc. etc. And nothing bounces back. The old me feels the old frustration. But now that it's becoming clearer and clearer that these actions cannot catalyze, my energy is doing that, I'll focus on that in upcoming weeks!

There is an intriguing parallel thread to this: the power of the magnetism of our belongings. As I go through the rest of my boxes, I have experienced firsthand what a powerful experience it is to give away things that are literally and figuratively too old, and no longer vibrating at my current wavelength. In the past, some of this material might have brought up anger, shame and worthlessness (and those emotions definitely tried to emerge even now), but most of the time I'm in a place of near joy. "Thank you, experience A, B or C, but I'm done with that facet of my formation, and it's time to move on." Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the possibilities I was considering for my life even a month or two ago now feel out of the question. I'm done. I've graduated from that academy, or that, or that, and no longer need the refresher course -- or the objects that represent them. I would never recommend tossing belongings because you wish to make spiritual progress -- it's more likely to be the other way around. If you've made the spiritual progress and you look at an item and there is no spark of life to it anymore, the time has come to find another home for it. If it has been blocking your forward movement, it's less likely to continue to do that as you magnetize your new energy. 

On a (seemingly) unrelated topic, yesterday there was a sunrise unlike any I have ever seen (admittedly, I may only see the actual sunrise only a few times a month). The sun's disc was brilliant red. I mean, red. Not orange, or red-orange, or reddish-blue. Fiery, bloody, red. There were no clouds, and the sky around it was pale yellowish-blue. The color reflected briefly on the window screen, but after about two minutes the whole effect morphed into a more normal dawn hue. While I didn't fall into a fear-filled place (that this was an omen, perhaps?) I noticed it. Gaia was speaking. What was She saying?

The Black Balloon

OK, so in my last post, I spoke of how dearly I wish to have my portrait painted. (I was reminded again of how much of my truth has been the opposite of my surface life: arguably, I haven't wanted to write about Herbert Howells or any other musician, I've wanted to be written about. I haven't wanted to live in other peoples' houses, I've wanted my own home. I haven't wanted to paint portraits, I've wanted to be painted, etc.) I breezily said it might take a day or two to process my experience with the TV program about portrait painting, and yet within a few hours of writing the post, I came "this close" to taking it down completely, something I have never done. Why? Because I was horrified by the potential narcissism of saying I want to be the subject of a portrait. The narcissism of wishing to be seen.

When you are the daughter of a father who is an off-the-scales narcissist, and you finally understand that reality, any sign that you might be in the same league is terrifying. And, of course (a related point?), we women are far more used to being the object, not the subject.

A metaphor came to me. It's a bit belabored, but forgive me. I realize that when I was a child, it felt like I was an empty black hole -- a black balloon, perhaps -- attached to my father's face. Surely, I thought, if I was literally right in front of his eyes, he'd see me. If I could play the organ well, or get good grades, or sing beautifully, or create beautiful art, maybe he would finally actually see me. But those charming, friendly-looking eyes simply couldn't see me, no matter my proximity. His ears could not hear me. With perhaps one or two exceptions over the years, my accomplishments were greeted (if at all) with a bland, "That's nice." When I first started my blog, he read two or three of the first posts, and then told me it was very nice, but he didn't understand a word I was saying. Yes, he too had a genius IQ, but my form of the written language was beyond him.

The other part of being the black balloon on your dad's face (thereby being somewhat of a leech in my own right I am mortified to grasp) is that he didn't breathe life into me, he sucked it out, sucked me dry. I was his source of oxygen (and, presumably, others were too), so my little balloon was perpetually depleted and lifeless. And because I would go out into a world that is, itself, horrifyingly like my dad, I remained rudderless and ultimately empty in this balloon-like black hole. He died in 2018, coincidentally (?) the year I returned to Duluth, and I appreciate this morning what a perfect place that was to go through the process of starting to see myself through my own eyes, and to breathe through my own nose. This dire condition undoubtedly continues down the generations simply because people can never fully actualize as their own genuine person, so the next generation cannot, and the next, and the next. Whoever we really are doesn't feel valid, or worthy of being seen, heard, or experienced, and this affects everyone around us. To the extent that my existence in this black balloon may have harmed anyone around me, I am excruciatingly sorry.

Still, even in that context, I am so glad that I didn't remove the previous post. Rather than being negative, a case could be made that it is one of the healthiest posts I've ever written. That I could finally take pleasure in being me, and look forward to seeing how other artistic and sensitive people might interpret me in a painting, has to be a step forward -- as long as it is something I would wish for other people too (and I do!) May all of us who have lived under this kind of shadow finally come out into the light, to be fully seen, appreciated, celebrated. May all of our colors and perspectives reveal our deeper Source of Love. And I welcome the Goddess out on that stage with us. How many facets of Her loving persona can we celebrate today? It is time to be the subjects of our own portrait, and to see Her as the primary subject of earth's portrait.

 

A New Painting

In my previous post (the last of my first decade of writing), I referred to the Goddess painting a new painting in our world, and here I am in the first post in a new decade, writing about painting again. Just at the moment when I have been finding homes for old art supplies, weeding out my old paintings and those of my grandmother, I think I have finally accepted that (in this lifetime) I was not meant to be a famous painter. It hung over my head for years that "if only I had a big studio", I could do the work I want to do, but, no, of course, it works the other way around. You have to be compelled from within to paint, paint, paint, and then you must find the right studio. From early in my time at Parsons in the 1980's, I knew two things. I was only studying art because there was no chance (at that time) that women would ever get to sing English church music at the highest levels, and I had to express beauty somehow. And two, that I didn't have the same passion for art as I did for English church music. I dutifully fulfilled my homework assignments with ease and skill. Art flowed out of me -- I had a teacher who was convinced that I had been one of the great masters in an earlier lifetime (Add that to my list!) And yet...it was almost too easy. I didn't long to paint, I didn't need to paint. It wasn't fulfilling, or compelling as a goal for this lifetime. Thus no studio, thus at 69 the giving away of old easels and canvases. My artistic outlet at the moment is tiny hand-drawn postcards, and that is enough.

So, in the midst of this frothy eddy of old expectations and belongings and current realities, what do I discover on TV? A series that is hardly new -- UK "Portrait Artist of the Year". Somehow, though, I never saw it, either over there or over here. And last night and early this morning, I binge-watched big time, riveted. Just riveted. I had to really become clear with myself -- do I miss painting? No, absolutely not. And I recognize that I never really gained much skill in portraiture -- the likenesses these artists achieved were sometimes staggering. But I knew that world inside and out. I loved thinking, what approach would I take? What composition would work best? What color palette would I use? How did they do that? I was pretty good at picking each episode's three finalists, but in the end I was surprised by the season winner, and yet pleasantly so. 

And last but not least, in true topsy-turvy Liz style, I knew what was drawing me in. I want to have a brilliant portrait done OF ME. I want to have three or six or eight artists arrayed in front of me, painting different facets of me, seeing me, perhaps revealing me to the world. I don't want to paint, I want to be painted. I want to be seen in that way! That certainly is a new painting, isn't it? I mean, I've reached this turning point before, but not quite so emphatically. And I don't know what it means spiritually or metaphorically, but maybe I will by tomorrow.

At ten years, the last of the old words

Tomorrow, August 8, is the ten year anniversary of this blog. I'm so proud of this accomplishment. It is perhaps (along with my early efforts to open up the world of English cathedral music to myself and other girls and women) my greatest achievement. I have grown and changed so much this last decade...and of course my life hasn't brought me success, renown or income! Some days, it takes a great deal of courage to continue on at 69.

But I hope to do just that. And moving forward, my goal is to make these posts increasingly Goddess- (and Aquarian Age-) aligned. Before I do that, there is one last bit of negative, "old" business I want to tackle, one last duality-based word that comes to me almost from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep: "affront". 

The other day, as I waited for a friend to check out at a pharmacy, I found myself crammed in between two metal carousels of plastic toys, each wrapped in plastic. Within seconds, I was envisioning all these toys -- and most of the thousands of other plastic items in this one store -- bobbing around as trash in the ocean. I had to physically restrain myself from screaming like a banshee and running from the building. 

If plastic were the only thing I find offensive about modern life, that would be my "cause", but it isn't the only thing. In fact, as I have alluded to before, it is hard for me to find any aspect of our modern world that isn't an affront to what I believe are the values of the Goddess. The list is almost endless: war, weapons, conflict of all kinds, development sprawl, toxic chemicals, power over, profit...I mean, at the very least it is all an insult to me, which is probably why I have functioned so poorly. When I try to imagine the Great Mother's expanded vantage point on it all, it takes my breath away. For thousands of years, we did not take Her needs and wellbeing into consideration -- so of course this neglect has led to this overheated, shaking moment. Affront after affront after affront, a train of pain, roaring down the track with no brakes.

And of course, to those who see it all differently, I am the affront. I am the one who never bought into the norm.

In the larger picture, I don't worry about any of it. Love is going to take care of revealing what needs healing, and She will have the "last word" to catalyze that healing. Who-fought-who and what-was-an-affront-to-whom will no longer matter in upcoming years. We are leaving that place of duality and conflict, heck, we are leaving history, almost literally. But if people wonder what went wrong, why is all of this happening, all they need to do is go to the store and look at the plastic. Really look at it as future garbage. We didn't think ahead, and we thought we could keep out-inventing all our problems. But that wasn't possible, and the moment of truth has finally come. So it is time to let go, and let the Goddess repaint this picture.

A new era beginneth, just in time for a new decade of writing. And a fresh new way of being. Time to shrug off these old affronts, and simply glory in being at one with Love.

Goddess Words 47: Wow

Hmm..."wow." An exclamation in response to something amazing, surprising, huge (my definition). Why I added it to my list of Goddess words all those years ago, I'm not entirely sure, except that I probably sensed that some of the manifestations of increased Goddess energy in the world would be amazing, surprising and huge. This seems to have been the quintessential "wow" week, up and down the scale. 

I haven't tried in any serious way to keep up with all the new discoveries and changes in astronomy, physics, new underwater life forms, and emerging evidence of earlier civilizations. I basically just scan the headlines. But, wow. I mean, wow!

Then, that 8.8 earthquake (and the many that seem to have preceded and followed it, if I understand correctly). Sure, it's remarkable that there was as little damage as there was, and that immediate fears around the Pacific Rim quickly faded. However, Gaia is waking up. There have always been volcanos, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but what we will see in the next few years will be "wow"-worthy on a whole new level. Like many of us, She is changing from the inside out, so expect the landscape to keep evolving before our very eyes.

The world and national news isn't necessarily a "wow" to me -- almost nothing surprises me that much, I'm sorry to say -- but its clarity is pretty stunning. Truth is emerging from under the surface in a way that can no longer be ignored or misunderstood. Everything is connected, "as above, so below", right? Talk about landscapes changing. These political, social, economic, religious, and educational landscapes will undoubtedly continue to morph, and morph again.

On a personal level, this week's "wow" was how I was hit by the enormity of my recent trip to Duluth and paring down my (still relatively few) belongings by 2/3. This week, from the same internal "place", I started to go through my remaining few boxes back here. This was the core of my memorabilia, my "if-someone-ever-writes-a-biography-of-me, they'll-need-to-see-this" STUFF. Over the years, most of it has constantly been in storage, partly because I couldn't bear to deal with it. Here's an example: From 7th through 10th grade, I attended St. Agnes School in Loudonville (near Albany, which no longer exists in its original form). In a pile of papers, I stumbled on not one, but two or three letters from the school, dated from 1958-64 or so, indicating that I'd been essentially pre-accepted to the school based on some "friend (or relative) of a friend" thing between my grandfather's second wife and the headmistress at the time. I mean, strange, interesting even, but I did not actually enroll until 1968, which is all that matters. Is the minuscule weight of these letters and envelopes worthy of continued storage as we head into the Aquarian age? No. Ditto elementary school report cards; all but one of the six or so copies I kept of my Smith College commencement program; and the heavy 1960's-era photo album of my first trip abroad. You remember those awful books with sticky pages and clear plastic covers holding the snapshots in place? I pulled out about 15 of the photos, the itinerary, and the group photo, and tossed out the rest.

It's liberating. This lifetime has been fascinating, terrifying, and unusual, and I will carry it forward with me. But now I feel literally less laden down and defined by it than I ever have. The question I keep asking myself is, "Will this item help me navigate the paradigm we are entering?" By the end of the next few weeks, with only a few nostalgic exceptions, I will be down to just the belongings I think may be relevant to my role moving forward. If even these eventually prove to be too heavy, they will go too.

So that brings me to my previous post, and I guess it is all related. By finally openly acknowledging my belief that my "life" has had an arc of thousands of years, not just dozens, my current incarnation makes a lot more sense. It isn't diminished, just contextualized. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to feel like one is called to speak for the Goddess, and it made no sense at all as I persisted in thinking of myself as a "little girl from Schenectady". But each toss into the recycling pile has liberated me from that limitation, and speaking out in this way now seems like the work I have been leading up to for a long, long time. It is a relief.

Wow.

I Wasn't Going to Write Today

(I wrote this in draft form on Saturday morning.)

I wasn't going to write today, but some early reading broke open something that I still cannot fully explain, even to myself, but I need to try.

I am reading Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have developed a thing about raptors, and, silly me, I somehow thought this would be a feel-good story about raising such a bird. Instead (and I'm only about halfway into it) it is a grueling account, with parallel stories about English writer T. H. White and his own experience with a hawk. At one point, she speaks of the moment when the life you didn't lead meets up with the life you did, and interestingly enough, this comes only a few pages after a brief descriptive reference to a Cambridge college dining hall. Immediately, despite the early hour and my hot night bleariness, I had an epiphany.

Over ten years ago, I unexpectedly sang choral evensong with the mixed choir of King's College, and then was invited to the dining hall afterwards. But the jolt I felt just now did not derive from that specific experience or from the year eating in Royal Holloway's somewhat less glamorous dining room. It felt like a true window to a past life. I've always assumed that many of my lifetimes have been spent in England, specifically at cathedrals or Cambridge or Oxford, and I have alluded to this. Clearly I've been priest, choral singer, choral director or composer, academic, and perhaps even royalty or nobility. In a way, it doesn't matter. What matters is the energy of the place and the daily spiritual ritual and focus. In this lifetime, though, this little girl from Schenectady could never settle into New York City, or Duluth, or Burlington, or Helena, or the Capital District, because of literally dozens of previous lifetimes spent in Britain at the heart of whatever milieu was central to the era's spirituality. In distant pre-history I was involved in honoring the Goddess (as "Beryl"?), and then must have morphed into Druid then Christian modes. And in this lifetime, the segue back (or forward) to the Goddess again. 

As hard as it is to finally accept it (and I've been teetering on the edge of this for a long time), it becomes very clear why I could never have been British in this lifetime. Over there, I would have become even more identified with this (still) mostly-male set of traditions, and it would have been much harder to break loose. And I didn't "take" in that world, because it knew that beyond my femaleness and Americanness, I was the "other" in an even bigger way. At heart, I was not on the same page, theologically. (I sobbed all the way home from England at the end of my MMus studies in 1981, with airline stewardesses checking in every half hour or so to see if I was "OK". No, I wasn't OK, I was being physically wrenched from my home of thousands upon thousands of years, and I must have known deep down that in this lifetime, I would not get back permanently until late in life, if at all. On the short flight from LaGuardia to Plattsburgh, I looked down from the plane at upstate New York's primeval forests, feeling overwhelmed by wilderness on every possible level. In nearly 45 years, that feeling has never completely gone away.)

The odd thing is realizing that I am centered in my current spirituality in much the same intense way I have always been in those earlier lifetimes. And if we have entered the Aquarian age, as I believe we have, then (I'm very sorry to say) those cathedrals, colleges, chapels, choral evensong services, classrooms and dining halls are no longer the center of "it all". They are not power hubs the way they were for so many generations, at least not the institutional structures above ground. However, Gaia is establishing new power centers around the world as we speak (and unveiling forgotten ones) and many of us may be drawn to them. Whether there will be rites and rituals, or whether life itself will be the only ritual, remains to be seen. Consistent with my post the other day, it isn't either/or. I will bring all these influences forward with me into the new era. I finally feel more at peace with paradoxes and varied threads of experience.

The life I might have led crossed the life I did lead this morning, and it was energetically extremely powerful. There's much more to process about this...I may not publish this post for a few days.

A Contrast too Painful

A few days ago I spoke of being turned on by some wonderful vegetarian recipes, and the urge to make them isn't going away. If anything, it is growing, and that's so interesting.

And yet...even I, who try so hard to stay focused on the emerging Love-based paradigm (not the conflict-based one currently in its death throes) find it hard to feel quite the same about eating right now. I'm old enough to have known about dozens of wars and famines, situations where civilians (mostly women and children) suffered and died in large numbers. I've never been left entirely unmoved, although on many occasions I quickly went into "left-brain" mode and tried to focus on understanding rather than feeling. (Even now, the journalist, historian and artist in me defaults to "observer".) This moment's worst monstrosity is not always reported on at all, or falls late in a newscast. One is left wondering why much of the media's primary focus is (as ever) on missing young women, scandals and the deaths of "beloved" TV, music, or sports stars...don't we see ourselves and our childish selfishness, our attention to glitter, and our avoidance of the real question -- what is it in us that prompts us to kill other people and hurt the planet? And as a culture, when will we understand that this brutal era has ended? Because it is already over. There is literally no future to it.

Everyone alive has a different role to play right now, and as hard as it is to live with these contrasts too painful to bear -- why do I have the right to eat healthy meals today when many thousands are dying of starvation? -- I have to keep reminding myself that there is no more waiting. The Age of Aquarius is here. Those who are incapable of Love are erupting in violence, but within a few short years, such actions will literally no longer be humanly possible. Earth's higher spiritual energies will make hatred impossible to express, and eventually, nonexistent in the human soul.

So I go back to my old mantra -- my job is to write beautifully, create beautiful art or music, treat people as kindly as I can, and cook or bake to nurture myself and others. All of these actions are consistent with the emerging Goddess age and the Age of Aquarius, and therefore well worth doing...but this weekend as I do them, I dedicate my actions to people who are being deliberately starved and made invisible. I walk the tightrope, welcoming the vibrant new era with these exhausted people in my arms. Holding them gently, lovingly, like a Mother.