Oracles

Monday, I said I would soon share some material that I channelled in writing on Sunday afternoon. It's pretty powerful, really powerful actually. So I'm trying to figure out if this is the right venue for it, the right timing etc. I hope I won't chicken out entirely, but I guess someone could rightly call me the "reluctant visionary"...sometimes I wish I were anyone but myself!

In a nutshell, though, I can say this. For those of us trying to see the bigger picture behind everything that is happening, trying to understand where this is all leading us in the future, the entire universe is our oracle. Everything we see and experience is arguably an "oracle", a possible window to divine messages and wisdom. Some people may be drawn to the writings of traditional religions, some to new age oracles, some to the oracle of nature -- and some have no inclinations in this direction at all. At the moment, I'm looking without (to the heavens), within myself, as well as to Nature Herself. I'm watching and listening for synchronicities. What is the Earth trying to tell us? The continued brown dryness of the grasses around here (odd for spring) seems to speak loud, as does the fact that my favorite hawk has developed a gap in her left wing, a place where at least one feather is missing. Has she encountered difficulties? Was she in a fight? She seems to be flying all right, but it is still concerning. These anomalies speak.

I guess the key is to listen to whatever or whoever makes the most sense to us personally. There may be several good oracles in our lives, or only one. Making time to listen is the biggest challenge...to hear in the stillness amidst the world's cacophony. And for people who channel as I do, once you hear and record the message, how and to whom do you communicate it? Is this material anyone wants to hear? I think if I knew the answer to that latter question was an enthusiastic "yes", I'd never hesitate. Unfortunately, I have so often been told that my voice is unwelcome, that it's still hard to move forward in a state of flow and courage.

Hmmmm.....

Digging Down On the Weekend

Actually, I'll back up a little further than this past weekend, because around the edges, I've been experiencing a subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle) transformation. I know from the Law of Attraction that you "attract" best when you are most passionate (which, of course, can work against you when you are passionately against something!), and as I guess has been evident, since moving back east last fall, I've continued to feel like I was in neutral mode. Not enthused, not finding my tribe -- thankful to be exposed to new (and old) people, places and events, and yet still not meaningfully connecting in what I sense is more of a future direction for me.

Several months ago, I started to connect online with others at the overlap of spirituality and the environment, and this has actually kept changing and evolving. It led to my feeling more open to listening to lectures and videos in that general area, and then to even more "New Age" material such as astrology, angel channeling, etc. I mean, I am an Aquarian, and while this has been a recurring motif in my life for years, I kept it as far under wraps as I could during the period when I hoped to make new inroads into English church music. Now that this is just simply not going to happen, I feel a little more freedom. 

A broad spectrum of people in these fields say that this whole month from late March through April is likely to be energetically powerful, and these folks are also (overall) much more genuinely optimistic than most other people I am encountering. Like me, they see Love growing stronger and stronger as time goes on, so to that extent, I've been feeling the warmth of knowing that I'm getting closer to my tribe.

But then my feminism kicks in. I genuinely want to hear more about the astrology of this crucial time period, and to feel the waves of Love coming toward me from other dimensions, and perhaps even to feel the presence of archangels or heavenly guides. No matter how nutty it is, is sure beats the actual news! Yet there is still a patriarchal "upwards and outwards" focus to all this that I do not dismiss entirely, but must question as a woman. If Love is increasing in presence and power right now, how is this affecting what is underfoot, below the surface, even way inwards, to the center of the earth? At Earth's very core, as at my very core.

Yesterday, this led to a brief, frenzied channeling of writing that I hope I will share with you, at least in part, next time. I'm probably the last person in the world to expect to take an interest in earth sciences, geology, geophysics, and seismology. And I doubt that I am really going to do that in any normal way. But my inner search for balance just kind of takes over. If Love is increasing throughout the universe, it is doing it at the center of all the planets as well as in ways that we will see with our eyes. Our personal heroine's journey is often down and in (rather than up and out), and perhaps Earth's is as well. 

Outmoded words

This topic has come up at least once before in this blog, but I can't find the post so I'll plow ahead, and ask you to forgive any overlap.

I'm finding that I have become ultra-sensitive to the use of words -- whether they are used to embrace or used to split people apart. At the core of this is the fact that I now understand that I am a "post-duality" being (in a sense, both "post" and "duality" are, themselves outmoded words!), someone who either came into this lifetime pretty integrated, or have come to that place through time. Either way, at this point, I see the world as one, as whole, as undivided -- and (at least increasingly in this coming era) oriented to the Love of the Goddess. 

I don't know whether this evolving new paradigm will have "dictionaries" in quite the same sense as we've known them, but there are increasing numbers of words that I am certain will not be in the dictionary, not because they have been "outlawed", but because they will no longer be used -- the underlying conditions (conflict, war, ownership, greed) will no longer exist. Of course words and word roots specific to war and separation of all kind are on this list (battle, fight, anti-, against, enemies, countermeasures...) as are conditions that have traditionally been necessary for non-combatants during times of strife: security, protection, safety. A truly loving civilization is inherently safe, so there is no need to arm or build walls to protect people. I remember when I lived in Manhattan and walked/bused/subwayed all over town on my own. I was never scared enough to learn martial arts or buy sprays or other protective gadgets. However, I do remember at times gripping my set of keys in my palm in such a way that the individual keys stuck out between my fingers, so that I could lash out if necessary. Such instincts will soon be as outmoded as certain words.

Listening to the news, I have become intrigued by how many of these soon-to-be outmoded words start with "re-" -- perhaps an etymologist could help explain this! Oddly, all of the ones I came up with are verbs. Here goes: retaliate, resent, react, resist, renounce, revoke, renege, remove, repulse, restrict, rescind, reject/eject, retaliate, restrain, reprimand....there must be dozens more, perhaps hundreds. It's like, I hear these words and the feeling in my body is so unpleasant, I know that they represent something that isn't part of me. I suppose it is old paradigm indeed that my body is, itself, "rejecting" these terms. Perhaps as this process we are going through progresses, body signals will feel more like minor nudges, and before too long, I'll hear the words so seldom that they won't really matter any more.

Interestingly, I came up with a few "re-" words that will probably last well into the new paradigm: resonance, respect, and reassurance.

I think when I wrote before, my thoughts were on the avoidance (another outmoded word!) of using "anti-" in the name of movements and organizations, that it is much more forward-thinking, for instance, to be "for peace" than "anti-war". But right now, in our current picture, the whole conflict paradigm has become excruciatingly painful, including all its lingo (wherever it is used, even in sports, spirituality, etc.) Using more love-and-peace-leaning language may at the moment require a conscious effort, but before too long, the outmoded words will quietly disappear from our lives. We won't want to experience the pain.

...and Thinking some More

Although I am incredibly hopeful, joyful even, when I think about the Love-filled paradigm that we are entering (see previous post), that doesn't make this current moment any easier.  Hearing the early morning news (and occasionally watching the evening news) has become by turns heartbreaking, absurd, astonishing, embarrassing. At times the news is even laughable, for about one minute. No amount of knowledge about the "love to come" can take away the excruciating pain of what we see before our eyes.

Yet there is a clear truth at the center of it all about what this paradigm is, and arguably has been for generations. I still cannot forget the moment when (I was in my twenties) a successful businessman said to me, "Our system is 'kill or be killed', Liz. If you can't learn how to kill, you will be killed." Obviously, he was talking metaphorically, how in the world of finance you have to be cutthroat and brutal to survive. I replied that this was ridiculous, but inwardly, I suspected he was right, and, yes, I've been "killed" over and over and over. It is a miracle (the miracle of friends and love) that I am still alive. Yet even in the New Age milieu, there seemed to be this acceptance of the system, and an embrace of goals like bigger houses and cars, more income. All of us have at least taken for granted the conveniences we've enjoyed, and yet we have not wanted to look too closely at how people overseas work for us in near slavery, how Americans have experienced wildly, painfully different economic realities, and how the earth has been pushed almost past the point of complete devastation. This is a teaching moment, a moment of a different kind of brutality -- brutal clarity. It's almost too bright to look at, but this is not the moment to turn away. It is happening because a higher quality of Love is making its way to us, and these old conflict-driven assumptions and beliefs are on their way out the door. These beliefs and people will not be able to tolerate a higher spiritual vibration.

"My" hawk came by yesterday, giving me an extra jolt of joy. Thank you, hawk.

I've been Thinking

I suppose this will come as no surprise to anyone who follows my blog, or even reads it occasionally. Yes, I think constantly. My brain never turns off, or almost never; thinking is my "doing".

In the last few years, during and "after" the pandemic, once I finally acquired a computer again, I was very slow to do what most people had been doing during that time -- using that means of connecting with people and learning new things. I was still doing most of my learning through books (often older ones), and trying to figure out where on earth (literally) I might find kindred spirits, yearning for the physical closeness of a bricks-and-mortar community or partnership. I don't think I went down these old roads simply because of my age. I wanted as much as possible to learn my spiritual lessons in my own life, to learn from within, not so much from the cacophony of ideas without. Of course I've been exposed on and off to a lot of spiritual wisdom for which I am extremely grateful, and when possible here I've tipped "hats off" to these teachers. But I've tried to quickly incorporate what I needed to learn, then move on, on my own path. The downside of this? Too often having believed I am alone in some of my visionary thoughts about the present and the near future. And that has been lonely.

Suddenly, that has changed. Over the course of about five days, one video led to another (you know how that happens), and the next thing I know, I'm hearing some of my most deeply held beliefs and observations coming out of the mouths of one or two other wise ones. I mean, it's out there, a tribe of people really, really on my wavelength in a way I never thought possible. OMG. My vantage point may be a little more feminist and Goddess-centered, but still, there is serious overlap. I have more kin than I thought.

So, before I listen to too much of this material and lose track of where it is all coming from (although in the end, Source is the source, right?), I'm just going to list a few key things about these times, some of which I have written about or alluded to, and some of which I haven't yet because of fear. When you stop thinking you are alone, fear evaporates. "Here goes nothing":

• I knew 20 or 30 years ago that the 2020's were going to be the beginning of a big transition, a time when we would all start to see certain things clearly (with "20-20 vision"), and that this would lead to a complete change in human society by 2050 or so. I gather from what I am beginning to read and listen to that many visionaries are pushing that time frame up to the 2030's or even sooner!
• This whole Love thing -- the idea that, moving forward, the only sustainable creative products will be ones conceived in Love -- is bigger than I realized. Yay!
• I've been thinking for a long time that more love will mean big changes to the scientific world, and that everything we've learned will have to be rethought yet again. Because so many of these constructs (along with medicine, economics, politics, etc.) are based in human notions of conflict and fear, they simply will stop working as models. I also think that our worst inventions (the biggest affronts to the Goddess) will simply melt away, perhaps alchemized into new, more natural products that help our evolving Earth home, not hurt Her. And we will find cleaner, more spiritually evolved ways to travel, communicate, build, etc.
• Those of us trying to reconnect to Earth as we know her to be (under all these human trappings) should not be surprised as She changes. We can't go back to what things used to be like, even in Nature.
• There is a quality in these times of washing the slate clean, starting with a new canvas, like an artist. I personally think that we may (in some technological respects) return to the so-called Dark Ages, and that the current human population may be reduced in numbers by a huge percentage. But we need to remember, there is no death in the divine mind, and spirits will be changing form in order to support the increased level of love throughout the universe. People (and animal and nature populations) who leave us are simply moving on to do other important work in other incarnations.
• I was reminded again that it is not only OK, but actually optimal, to focus as little as possible on the words and actions of the least wise and loving amongst us. Such focus adds to their energy, not the energy of love. Fighting, resisting, even "standing up to", maintains duality and conflict-driven energies. What an amazing gift that we are being given such clear lessons in this regard! So, yes, we need to stay on top of the news and understand what is going on, but for my part, each day I try to pivot really quickly into, "Knowing this information, what part of the new paradigm can I create today?"

Well, that's enough for now. But really, what we see on the news is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Everything on earth is undergoing a (literal or figurative) seismic shift, and somehow we must not be afraid. The shift is in the direction of more love, and if you think about it, what's not to love about that?!

Goddess Words 41: Round

When things are too topsy-turvy, add another Goddess word to the new foundation we are building. Today's word? Round. 

I often try to go back and imagine why a word came to be on the list I created two decades ago. Why "round"? Well, even acknowledging that I am far less connected to my physical body than a lot of people, it is impossible to be a woman on this planet and not notice that there is much that is round (or orb-like) about my body. My eyes, my cheeks (yes, both kinds!), my breasts, my earlobes, my lips, my chin, my stomach, my inner organs, my womb, my knees, my heels, my finger-and-toenails, my shoulders...I've lost weight in recent months, but when I was heavier I was even rounder; pregnancy is round. I remember when I was taking life drawing classes, sketching in the body's underlying circles was often the first step, whether the model was male or female. While I try really hard not anthropomorphize divine beings, even the Goddess, I cannot help but do that just a bit. It isn't even having seen prehistoric imagery of goddesses and fertility figures, it is a feeling of roundness that I attribute to Her. The roundness of arms embracing, of the arcs of the movements of our limbs. It is the essential difference between the shape of roundness and the shape of pointed straightness. Between bowls and swords, between balls and arrows, between cups and knives. 

There are other definitions of "round", of course. When it is a noun, it seems to have a community feel to it -- making the rounds to visit family, a doctor making the rounds of patients, a person paying for a round of drinks at a bar or pub. There is the musical sense, also somewhat communal: a round or canon features the same tune being sung (or played) by different voices, only coming in at different times. A single person cannot sing a round (except, I'm amused to see, in this new internet era where musicians can video themselves multiple times, and overlay them). 

Campfires are round, important discussions often happen around round tables, and as I have said before, future leadership groups will have a round (not hierarchical/top-down) feel to them. While the natural world has some straight lines in it, or seemingly straight lines like the horizon, for the most part, earth's natural shapes are round and orb-like. (I recently did a visualization, where I saw a waterfall within my body, falling downhill among "rocks" that were soft reddish-brown orbs, rather like beanbags. The inner "rocks" were my organs.) Our manmade world, by contrast, seems to be mainly straight, flat, and sharp-edged. 

What can I do today to help support a rounder, more Goddess-friendly world? I can try to stay inwardly soft and round, and not set up a hard wall of fear around myself. I can embrace one person, or bring a few people together in a circle. I can bake (or distribute) cookies or a round birthday cake or bread or pies. I can draw a picture with a circular edge, or search a thrift shop for a round frame to place a picture in. I can walk around a favorite tree, or draw a picture of the sun or the moon, or buy a set of circular oracle cards. It is a good time to celebrate roundness.

PS: On the first full day ot spring, I saw my first robins, two of them!

Two by Two

On this freakishly warm day in the northeast, croci are coming out, trees are just beginning to bud, a hint of green is on the grass, and for part of the day there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

The heat has brought out the hot-rodders. There have been many motorcyclists and fast cars recklessly going by on the road (most always in twos) at around 80 mph, earsplitting "vroom-vroom" cacophony. I guess this is a valid sign of spring. Not only that, but I saw two jet-skis race by on the local river. These guys must have been wearing wet suits; I don't care how warm the air is, but the ice literally just went out several days ago!

I feel a bit overwhelmed by these "macho" expressions of the joy of spring. Layered onto the events of our world, it's not uplifting. But just as I was thinking that thought, I looked overhead, and voila! First one eagle then a second!!!! I swear, if I get through the coming time, eagles, hawks, and other raptors will be one major reason why. Their magnificence is uplifting. 

Over the next few days? Colder again, well below freezing at night, possibly a little snow. 

The Spider

The other morning, as I was getting ready to take a shower, there was a rather significant-looking spider in the tub. Not a daddy longlegs or a baby something-or-other. One that looked like it could bite. And yet no matter how dangerous it might or might not have been, I couldn't bring myself either to kill it or to let it go down the drain. I did the whole "glass and sheet of cardboard" thing, and took it outside and let it drop into the yard.

I say this not to congratulate myself on my nonviolence. (One of my brothers would call me "holier-than-thou", but what he didn't understand was that I was just being me.) But this morning after hearing the news, I started to cry like a baby, because I simply don't understand. Why kill anyone, anything, larger than, say, a mosquito or fly? How does anyone believe that any being on this earth doesn't deserve to be here? Much less dozens or hundreds or thousands? And yet clearly our construct is actively based on that belief. This is not about today, or yesterday, or two decades ago, or two hundred years ago. It is about virtually all of human recorded history, people (most often men it seems) killing other people in all kinds of contexts. In school, I tried to understand. Like a good student, I memorized dates of wars, names of generals, political movements. I tried to accept that such-and-such an outcome had been good and another was bad, and I tried to accept that even though I might not be a warlike person, this was humanity being humanity, and that I was the odd one out. I was the one "not facing reality". I finally do not believe this anymore. It took almost 70 years and untold numbers of world wars and national and international tragedies to get to this point.

And at long last, I'm thinking as much or more about the rights of the animal and nature kingdoms. Up until recently, I have never been a vegetarian for long. I felt I needed meat and fish for protein, and honestly relied entirely too much on so-called "cheap" fast food because of my limited income. I think that the rise in fast food prices during the pandemic started to wean me off of such meals. And now, most recently, I am living with people who are vegetarian. For the first time in my life, I have had at most one meal of fish or meat a week (on top of a weekly tuna salad sandwich, which I'm still rather addicted to.) I had already started to cook less meat from scratch, but I am increasingly finding I don't crave it at all, or can only eat a small amount when I do eat it. If I ever return to a situation where I can completely make my own dietary choices, I'm certain I will continue to eat a mostly vegetarian diet, only eating meat from a source that takes great loving care with the animals. At this point, I see too close a correspondence between our cavalier attitudes toward the lives of animals and the lives of other humans. And of course this extends to the land, the water, and the air.

In terms of the spider-in-the-tub, there is no way that its life was less valuable than my perceived comfort. I hope I let it loose into a place and situation where it had a better chance to fully live its lifespan. 

Synchronicities

It has been an interesting week or so, because I've experienced several very small synchronicities. Not large, stunning synchronicities (happening upon someone who says, "I have the perfect longterm housing for you, nearly free for the rest of your life!" ) but the kind that gets your attention. Two-and-a-half years ago, I included "synchronicity" in my list of Goddess words...clearly synchronicity is a right-brain quality that is a beautiful way of receiving communication from the Divine. It is a lens to seeing things differently, a way of learning quickly, not slowly and step-by-step.

About a week ago, I took part in a game of Scrabble. Someone wasn't sure if the word "dint" was really a word, and I assured them that it was (and of course, a quick check online confirmed this). But it wasn't a word I had heard or read often in the past. So, what a surprise -- "dint" has shown up in two different fiction books I've read in the last few days! (In both cases, a character was able to do something "by dint of" some qualification or experience.) I didn't really take a deeper meaning or message from this synchronicity, but it caught my attention.

Peter Tremayne's Bloodmoon, one of the Sister Fidelma mysteries, was on this same reading list. I took the book out of the library before I found out about this morning's blood moon (total lunar eclipse turning the moon a coppery red during its totality). Blood moons have often been seen as symbols of change and renewal; having the image show up in life in two different ways was noteworthy. I'm sorry to say that I didn't wake up at 2:30 this morning to see the remarkable phenomenon in person, but yesterday felt like a watershed to me in certain other respects, so I add it to my belief that we are in the midst of a time of rebirth. All of us are potentially being reborn.

Synchronicity three. For the last week or so, I was surprised that, after a period of seeing hawks and eagles at least every other day, these raptors seemed to have disappeared. Yesterday, literally seconds after I was mulling this over, a bird flew by the house. At first I wasn't sure what it was, because it was smaller than the hawks I have been seeing. But after a close look at my bird book, I identified it as a "sharp-shinned" hawk. They are smaller than the more common red-tailed hawk, their chests are rust-colored, and their tails (from the side or below) seem longer and squarer, not fanned out in a semi-circle. Again, perhaps there is no deep meaning behind the timing of this moment, except that it gave me the chance to learn more about hawks -- and, hey, it is satisfying to think, "I'm not seeing as many hawks", then a hawk flies by. It gives you the feeling that the Universe is on your side, that somehow you are a part of a big, inclusive net, the Love of the Universe.

Goddess Words 40: Leadership

I've talked about leadership around the edges, and even probably said that I feel like a leader who has never led. Certainly I have the capacity to lead, only the big issue is you need someone to follow you, and up until now, that hasn't happened (!) Maybe someday...But the Goddess Herself is a leader, so it doesn't surprise me that I added this word to the list all those years ago.

Because we are experiencing such interesting life lessons on this topic right now, I want to envision something totally different...just, if you will, for the fun of it.

Leadership in the coming paradigm will have a circular, horizontal quality. Individual communities will have "leaders", yes, but the power will be shared with the whole community in a way that is hard to describe or imagine right now. Because people will no longer be brought up with the concept of "power over", that kind of power won't even be seen as desirable. People will literally understand to the core of their beings the old fashioned "golden rule" -- "if I hold power over another person or other people, then other people will try to exert power over me, and I don't want that." Enlightened self-interest will guide a warmer, more embracing kind of power by those community members who embody wisdom and understand the values of the Goddess. And "power" will move easily, spontaneously and frequently from one person to another. People won't fight for power, or start wars for power, or punish for power, or hold hostages for power. Such actions will be unthinkable. Conflict will be unthinkable, because we will understand that we are all one. We will remember the early 2000's, and not want to return to this time.

There will be little tension between people and groups about ownership of earth's places and regions, simply because it will be understood that Earth owns herself. We will embrace a less human-centered form of stewardship, turning to the wisest ones when making plans for land use, and only using the land in such a way that growth is sustainable environmentally. The new paradigm priority will not be human "progress" such as we've experienced in our current paradigm -- it will be to facilitate the healing of Earth and all beings living on earth who have experienced so much trauma. This healing alone may take many, many generations. Economic forms such as money, stocks, trade, real estate, even bartering will probably not exist in the way we know them. Love will be the currency. I know this sounds ridiculous to most people, but I'm certain that is the direction we are heading in. The only way that human culture can live sustainably on the earth moving forward is by dealing directly, and lovingly, with one another, other life forms, and the planet itself. 

Leaders won't always be women, but we women will start to understand how to use our unique qualities, strengths and perspectives, and find that they are more highly respected and honored as valid. In a less competitive world, the nuances and intuitive nature of our wisdom will be seen to "work" in a way that conflict no longer does. We will embrace completely new ways of problem-solving. Leaders (whoever they may be) will be centered in love, beauty and wisdom. They will be connected with the Goddess, and adept at bringing diverse people together in harmony.

I think women make natural leaders, but not in the old paradigm construct that is ebbing. This isn't about a woman becoming president. This is about women leading in the paradigm on the horizon, beyond presidents. 

So Poignant

This weekend, I've had the privilege (and fun) of cat-sitting, in a neighborhood not too far from where I grew up. I'm finding the whole experience to be almost unbearably poignant. So many of these houses remind me of our house, fifty-plus years ago, and the houses of my family's friends. I feel like I am in some strange time warp; except for the cars going by, it could be about 1970. And yet all I have to do is turn on the TV, and see news, ads, and shows that would have been unthinkable back then. There's a part of me that wants to run out into the street, and start yelling, "Don't you people understand what is in the process of happening right now?", but I know perfectly well that no one would listen.

I guess moving frequently has had one effect that I never really considered -- the passage of time is "about" a whole different thing when you move from place to place. Had I stayed in the Schenectady area all along, I would have measured time in other ways, perhaps the timing of jobs, or relationships, or (if I had had children) their ages. Instead, I'm completely unsuccessful at remembering when I lived where...it is all becoming a blur.

In my next post, I'm going to talk again about leadership in the new, upcoming, paradigm. It's not adequate to say, it will be the utter opposite of what we are seeing...(smile)

The temperature has jumped about 40 degrees in one day. We've raced completely through late winter and into summer. This adds to the poignancy...trying to remember what spring used to be like in the "olden days"...

Hollowed Out

I wasn't going to write today, because along with perhaps many millions of other people, I am feeling hollowed out. It's the realization that what we are watching feels like what I have experienced in so many situations in life, being told you just aren't worth anything, that your life has no value, that your interests and talents are worthless. And no matter how hard I have tried for decades to hold the faith, to know in my heart that I have "worth", what appears to be happening before our eyes is some kind of mondo bizarro truth serum, proving that the construct we live in did not, itself, move forward through history to become more inclusive and welcoming. It simply may not be capable of it. It grew out of a hierarchical world, with certain men at the top and the rest of us below, and a rubber band keeps snapping it back into that place.

So I've been uncharacteristically down, depressed. As much as I actively see and feel the return of the Goddess to our world, I still feel almost as stymied as I did six months ago, before returning east. I cannot intuit exactly where I belong in the midst of this tumult, much less how to get there. Still not quite seeing or meeting my kindred spirits, or feeling the strong, positive certainty that usually leads me to forward movement.

Having said that, there was a really neat moment just now, symbolic of so much. If you had asked me from the ages of 6-50, I would have probably said that I "am" one of the choristers in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and that singing choral evensong in those choir stalls represents my home. If you had asked me from 50-65 how that had changed, I might have said that in spirit, I had evolved into more of a member of the Tallis Scholars, singing a wide range of Renaissance and newer music, but outside the actual cathedral milieu. Just now, I realize I have morphed again. "My" choir is Voces8, and the video best representing who I am now is the one where they are singing "The Saddest Noise" in Grand Teton National Park. Never mind whether they did or didn't actually tape the music on the mountainside, it's the juxtaposition that counts...gorgeous, clear, bell-like choral tones in the wilderness. Recently, someone suggested I sing music of evensong to the trees and birds, and I've done it a few times. It feels a little odd, but wonderful. My actual new dream, at 69, is to be part of an elite choir singing choral evensong outside, in the English countryside or in the ruins of an ancient abbey. I want to hear the stones and the whole landscape singing with us.

And if, in this hollowed out world of ours, this is a "worthless" dream, so be it.

PS: Near the end of the pandemic, I heard Voces8 in Duluth, and it was so unbelievably thrilling, I don't have words for it. The entire audience was masked to the hilt, but once the music started, we were free. And if I am not mistaken, they sang "The Saddest Noise".

 

So big

I had drafted a new post but let it sit for a day, as I sometimes do, and by this morning it seemed completely wrong.

Everything that's happening now is so big, and then, taken together with other big things, is even bigger still. It is all completely overwhelming, and completely and hopelessly old paradigm. Unfortunately that means the old paradigm fear-based solutions or responses are also unlikely to work. In an odd way, this is encouraging to me, as it underscores my belief that Goddess and Love energies are in the ascendant, and everything on earth not in alignment with Love is rising to the surface to dissipate into their "native nothingness" (a phrase evidently used in Christian Science (which I have never explored) and Florence Scovel Shinn (whose books I have read and resonate with). But being a witness to current events, hey, living on this planet at all at this time, will be extremely painful for all of us. There will probably be no exceptions to this. I wrote on and off for a long time about "softish landings", and for many of us, that will be the best case scenario...that by focusing on Love and the things we find beautiful and hopeful, we align with what's coming, not what is hurting us now. That may snatch some of us to relative safety from the most potentially painful crash landings.

In a time like this, it's hard to focus on what we want, and yet crucial. What do I really want? Health care, or good health? An end to war, or people actively loving one another? Money, or a rich, beautiful life? A job, or perfect self-expression for someone with my unique gifts?

And what does the Goddess want? What does Mother Earth want? That we gently release the construct that has precipitated all these crises. That we understand we are one with the most brilliant stars in the sky. That we take a Love perspective into account before we do anything new from this point on. At the very least, that this be our intention from the moment we wake up in the morning. I'm "preaching to the converted", I know. The handful of you who read this are probably already doing some of this. And we will have to watch in horror as others go on a completely opposite path. But in the end, Love will be all. Nature will do what She needs to do, and beauty will find its way into the holes and crevices of the dying paradigm. New growth will birth out of the darkness.

Rabbit, rabbit

Years ago, I picked up the habit (when I remember) of saying "rabbit, rabbit" early on the first day of the month. I didn't even really know why it was done -- I see that it's an old superstition to bring good luck. Interestingly, if I recall correctly, in my old Medicine Cards (Carson and Sams), rabbit represented "fear". So maybe we all may need good luck getting through what is ahead, the manifestation of some of our worst possible fears. 

I guess I go back to "the thing speaking for itself", and trusting our guts. Yes, we are seeing what we are seeing. It's that bad, it's that self-evident. The good thing about all diplomacy and convention being stripped away is that you see the truth.

Is what we are seeing "the way of the Goddess"? No. About its 180 degree opposite. I'm going to start new months from now on saying, "Goddess, Goddess", because we need Her now more than we need so-called luck.

Goddess Words 39: Gifting

This seems like a good moment for another Goddess word. For any new readers, I made a list about 20 years ago called "The Words of the Goddess", but did nothing further with it until a few years ago, when I decided to present them one-by-one in this blog. These are not definitive discussions! I'm just mulling over what the words mean to me now, why I associate them with the Goddess, and other tangents. I think of them as building blocks, perhaps helping lay the foundation for a future, more Goddess-centered, culture.

One of the most interesting things is the fact that I used "gift" in verb form...I gather that this is still a point of contention among wordies. But "gifting" seems to be subtly different from "giving" -- to me it indicates a higher level of thought on the part of the giver, and perhaps that the gift is more personal, more intrinsically valuable, more heartfelt.

This word is appropriate in the context of the Goddess because of the biggest gift of all -- our earth home, a gift given to us and the whole universe from a place of love. We are privileged to be living on one of the few livable planets. The air we breathe is a gift. The heating of the sun is a gift. The tides and cycles of the moon are gifts. The land and its resources are gifts. And yet we have exploited so much of it, not used it thoughtfully or thankfully. 

More and more, I think about the "energy" of things, and the energy of gifting starts in the heart of the giver. The best gifts are made by hand, baked from scratch, or bought with the specific interests and passions of the receiver in mind. These gifts are love-generated, not about a good deal. A good gift happens when the giver cares for the receiver. This is true "gifting". When you make a batch of cookies, and you ring a doorbell of a new neighbor, and they open the door, there is a warm, loving connection in both directions. I personally believe that a future economy (if there needs to be such a thing at all) will be based on giving. There is a completely different, openhearted energy to giving than there is to selling, or even bartering...

The Goddess has given us so much -- for free. Nature doesn't engage in buying and selling. If Mother Earth had asked us to "pay" for all Her riches over the years, humans would be even more hopelessly indebted to Her than we already are. 

On a day when many people will be choosing not to spend money, perhaps all of us can instead give one truly generous gift to someone in our life -- we can regift, bake, cook a stew, shovel a sidewalk, or help a senior. At the very least, we can try to be like the Great Mother, and "gift" from our hearts. 

 

 

Res ipsa loquitur, again

Back in May of 2018, I first used this wonderful Latin phrase, and in a slightly different context, but it seems to become more and more relevant with every passing day. It's just that different things are "speaking for themselves". Enough is being said in so many other places, that I guess I will continue to tell odds and ends of my own story, in the theory that my story is all I have to offer the world at this pivotal moment.

In the 1980's when I was living in Manhattan and working at Time Magazine, I studied at Parsons School of Design at night. I had hoped to work toward a degree in graphic design, so that there would be some practical application to my (post-English church music) art career, but it just wasn't in me to deal with advertising and other commercial functions. In the end, I majored in Illustration, and over the years I tried on and off to make at least a little bit of money from a variety of art and art teaching endeavors, but my heart wasn't in it. Life lesson: it usually doesn't work to replace your primary life passion with another less passionate endeavor, and do it wholeheartedly.

In a portraiture class, the teacher had noticed that I was trying too hard to draw my classmate's face in minute detail, and she asked me to take off my glasses. I am so completely nearsighted, I balked at doing this, but she insisted. Of course, even being only about four or five feet away, I could now barely see the other woman's face, just the basic shapes and major areas of darkness and light. Yet this was literally almost a new way of seeing, and helped my sketch look three-dimensional in a way it hadn't been. For the rest of the class, I used my glasses only part of the time, and the resulting drawing was more balanced and satisfying than it would have been otherwise. So I think there is another life lesson in this!

One evening after this, I decided to walk all the way from midtown down to the Village without my glasses on, to see if I could do it, and to see how it changed my experience of being in the city. It was extremely hard. I mean, I was young and not really in danger of tripping, falling on a curb, or walking into people. That part of the journey was navigable. But what was unnerving was the inability to see people's faces clearly, or their body language at a distance. I guess I had become very dependent on scanning the sidewalks to see if I was in any danger...and with that form of radar taken away from me, I was, to say the least, somewhat nervous. I couldn't tell if people looked friendly or not. Once I got to the school, I was relieved to put my glasses back on and go to class -- perhaps never considering (as I have just now as I am reliving the experience) what the day-to-day life of a completely sightless person must be. Once again, my gratitude to my eyes knows no bounds.

This is a time when we will need to rely on, and trust, all our senses. Things may be "speaking" to us in different ways, and we need to "listen".

A Patchwork Quilt

Every once in a while, I marvel that I haven't yet used a particular title for a blog post, and this is one that shocks me somewhat! It's too good not to have used. All our lives are like a patchwork quilt, but mine more than most!

I am not a traditional quilter, using fabric. When the pandemic started, I began to create small knitted "quilts", more like lap robes, to give various friends. I wanted to gift them with a measure of comfort, and in some of these situations I think it did help, and that the blankets are still being used. Some acquaintances started giving me old used balls of cotton, wool, and acrylic yarns, so most of the little blankets have been patchwork even in that regard -- materially "mutts". It's an ongoing project, since I have barely scratched the surface of my list of friends. And inconveniently, I've started to find that knitting bothers one of my shoulders...darn.

This weekend was a life patchwork, including several concerts, a movie (well, actually, five Oscar shorts), and a church service (that in the end wasn't very appealing). I am being pushed -- and pushing myself -- to do some kinds of things that aren't in my wheelhouse, simply because unless I am to end up really out in a shack in the wilderness, I need to see if I can find kindred spirits, somewhere. It's interesting that when you are so spiritual, the obvious answer would be church, and yet I've reached the point I just about cannot stand church services, or worse, the coffee hours afterwards. (I think I could stand attending choral evensong in England, closing my ears to some of the readings, but that's about it.) Just about everything rubs me the wrong way, from lingering traditional God talk, to the new thing of having hymns projected onto screens, to sitting quietly for sermons, readings or meditations, to being talked "to". And in the context of the Goddess, I really don't think that She wants worship, just our attention and respect. At the moment, the only "church" I can tolerate is communing with my hawk, looking at the sunset, writing here in my blog, and things like cooking, baking and yes, knitting. But so far, those things haven't yet gotten me any closer to a permanent home for my old age. 

What a life, and what a time. At least, looking outwards, I can see clearly where not to find kindred spirits.

Becalmed

When it has been outrageously windy for days on end, to wake up to dead calm is quite unsettling. I've grown tired of the constant noise, and yet its disappearance feels like yet another foundation being pulled out from under us. Maybe if the wind is no longer roaring, then "it" has all been a figment of our overheated imaginations and stability (however illusionary, temporary or unsustainable) has returned. It only takes a brief glance at news online to realize that this isn't the case. Still, I welcome the sudden calm.

I guess that's the opening to another story, one that I don't think I've ever told you. I am not entirely sure when this happened, perhaps 50 years ago.

I was out sailing in a small Sunfish with my youngest brother. Lake Champlain had had, for an hour or so, perfect light winds for such a sailboat, and we had gone down to Split Rock and over to Vermont, and were back near the shoreline south of Essex when the wind suddenly died. We were becalmed, a word that should be used more frequently than in a sailing context! I mean, completely becalmed. We didn't have far to go, and it might have been possible to use the tiller to push the rudder back and forth to gain forward momentum, but for a few minutes we just sat in the water. I was looking at the beautiful sunset over the New York shoreline. We may have been chatting about nothing, or looking for faint evidence of wind, as you do.

All of a sudden, some kind of live being rose out of the water, creating an enormous wave. It had a smallish head and an arc-shaped back -- it didn't leave the water entirely, but created a half-moon shaped watery image that was there one minute, gone the next. I guess I shrieked and pointed it out to my brother, who I know at least saw the telltale ripples in the water. At that moment in history, there had been relatively little scuttlebutt about "Champ" (or Champy), Lake Champlain's version of the Loch Ness monster, although I'd heard of sightings. But I had recently seen a TV special about Nessie, and I immediately assumed that a lake monster is what I had just seen. My brother pooh-poohed me, and indeed, several times over the years when I brought up the story, he insisted that I was wrong, either that he hadn't seen anything at all, or perhaps a fish. And of course, at this late date, I can't know for sure what I saw, although I'm in much better company, as in recent decades, sightings have been taken far more seriously, even by scientists.

But I think there are two bigger metaphorical points here. First of all, had it been windy, Champy and his or her "wake" would have been invisible to two young sailors paying all of their attention to the breeze, coming about, and avoiding getting too close to shore. It was the calm of the usually wavy lake that made this being's momentary leap above water visible. The second is the lifelong problem I have had, not being believed about many things I say, from the most seemingly fanciful ("I've just seen a monster") to the most profound ("I've seen the future and I know what is coming"). Yes, it started in my family, but it has continued on into most situations I have been in -- thankfully, not all. While I think it has something to do with being female, I don't think that is the whole story. Humanity has limited itself to only a few ways of knowing, and anyone who breaks free and finds other ways of seeing or sensing may be left unheard. And in that situation, it is hard to continue to believe in oneself. 

Thankfully, I still believe I saw Champy, and I still believe most of my other observations, whether the "lake" is wavy or whether it is becalmed.

Really Happening

Well, I guess it's really happening. 

The key to everything, moving forward, will be to not give in to fear. Whenever possible, not give in to, or act out of, fear. Fear is the energy of this wave, and it is just about the only language we are hearing. It may become ever-harder to represent Love, but hanging onto that core of ourselves is key. 

An interesting thing happened early this morning. I spoke the other day of having realized that my "energy" and that of my year at Royal Holloway had closely matched -- and subsequent experiences here at "home" had changed me so that more recent visits to the UK were unsettled. (Honestly, since then I may never have experienced an energetic match to my surroundings.) Well, this morning I had the first moment of acceptance in my whole life. I could feel who I was 45 years ago -- and completely appreciate her -- but also feel how very different I am now simply from the standpoint of energy. I could feel the overall energy of the life I would have led over there, and ways in which I would have been more constrained. If I made a commitment to the Goddess before this lifetime even began, to learn and grow more in Her model, I finally understand that all along, I made the best decisions I could in order to do that. I was doing my real job in a way that I couldn't have done in most other situations, even ones that might have seemed far more appealing. I think I've said this before, but the realization has grown beyond my intellect and into my bones; this lifetime was exactly what it needed to be to arrive at this moment.

I guess it takes a storm to see the truth clearly, outside and inside oneself.

This morning, hordes of grackles are swooping around, completely oblivious to manmade events and trends. I also just saw my hawk, and communed for two minutes or so, before she flew off. I take comfort in just seeing these birds.

45 Years Ago

45 years ago this coming fall, I flew to London to start my MMus at Royal Holloway College. I think I have spoken of my first sight of the college through the morning mist, and mentioned a few other first impressions. I arrived a good week or so before classes were to begin, and what has been with me these last few days are some of the other "firsts" of that stretch of time. When I realize that I didn't personally know one person, or one thing about how Britain really works, it is a marvel to me now (having become far more cautious with age) that I navigated it all so well. (I speak about several aspects of that fall in my September 3, 2015 blog, "Caving", around the 35th anniversary -- yikes!)

A few of those firsts -- taking a new friend up to Cambridge to hear the King's College choir sing choral evensong (which I had heard the very first time two years previously in my initial visit to the country). My first main meal at Holloway's dining hall, going through the "boog tube" (cafeteria line) for a heavy, meaty plateful and randomly choosing some new friends to sit with, several of whom I still stay in touch with. Walking to downtown Egham to open up an account at the local bank -- I cannot imagine now how I managed that, except that I must have carried over a bank check from my own institution. After doing that, I remember wandering down Egham high street, and stopping in a bakery to grab a sandwich, only to be stunned by their minuscule size. I had most recently been living in Alexandria, Virginia, and there was a local sandwich shop that I still remember...with enormous sandwiches on thick homemade bread. Egham's sandwich was on a small white bread roll called a "bap", split in two, spread with a little butter or oleo, with a small slice of cheddar cheese in the middle. I was much slimmer back then, but still, I realized my American appetite was in for some gastronomic challenges. Paying my bill to the college, my hand shaking so hard that I had to rip up the first check (cheque) and start all over again.

Standing outside the college chapel after morning services for almost a week, begging the choir director to allow me to audition. I eventually was accepted into the mixed men and women's choir; it turned out that there had been concerns about my American accent! Singing daily morning services, regular evensongs and services at cathedrals, would turn out to be the highlight of that year, and by extension, my life. Having new friends say they would "knock me up in the morning" (ie: knock on my door to make sure I was awake for breakfast!)  Meeting the head of the music department, and the scholar who would be my tutor, as well as other music students. Going to the Englefield Green pub some evenings with new friends, feeling far more socially and academically confident than I ever have, before or since.

Why am I thinking about this now, at a moment of things going completely "pear-shaped"? I guess it is to remind myself of how well I navigated those first few days and weeks, despite not knowing a soul before my arrival. Sure, there had been written letters back and forth to the college, but I knew no one. Something tells me that before long, I may be in another situation where I'm a complete newcomer. A post-COVID part of me is far less confident, not up to any new task. Yet if I can remember that I have started completely afresh many, many times, most strikingly, 45 years ago, I hope I will have the courage to do it again.

Wind Chill

It is hard to know what more to say about anything today. The northeast continues to be unusually cold and windy. There has been no January or February thaw to speak of, and while this ex-Duluthian isn't really suffering, it has seemed more like Duluth than I expected for my return to supposedly warmer climes. Other, more metaphoric chills are adding to the sensation no doubt. 

To riff a little more on the raptor theme, when the wind is howling, I try to imagine being a hawk in the wind. In fact, I just found some neat videos of hawks basically staying put -- hovering -- as they face the strong wind and scan the ground for prey. Is this something to emulate as we face these strong winds of change? The ability to allow this extremely strong energy to keep us afloat, not to sink us. I don't know exactly how to do that, and of course, I am not scanning the ground for prey. If anything, for signs of life and love and hope. To ride (and rise!) above what we need to rise above, and follow earthbound paths when we need to as well.

I did a neat visualization yesterday which helped me see one thing clearly. The only time in my life when my personal energy closely matched the energy of where I was in England, was the year of studying for my MMus at Royal Holloway. My serious-academic-nun-in-a-previous-lifetime-lover-of-singing-English-church-music-persona came close to exactly matching the moment and place. But after that, time spent both in the American urban wilderness, and in smaller rural American towns and cities, shifted my personal energy. I learned things that I wouldn't have learned if I had lived in the UK, and I learned them in a manner (like rowing at dawn on Superior Bay, and driving small cars around North America) that wouldn't have been possible anywhere in Europe. My wilder self was unleashed. My own soaring hawk was unleashed. Perhaps that is why my recent visits to the UK have been just sort of energetically a see-saw; I kept expecting my newer self to match older situations, and she didn't. I don't know what that means for the future, except that I can only go forward, wherever, with who I am right now. 

Raptors

I've mentioned having often seen hawks and eagles where I am living at the moment, and this week at the Farmer's Market, there was a table with a hawk, a barred owl, and a raven (to look at, not to touch, and certainly not to buy!) I've gotten rather close to our local hawk in the neighborhood, but at the market, I was only maybe four feet away. These birds (particularly the hawk and the owl) are so spectacular. I'm not sure exactly why at this late stage of my life, I seem to have developed a "thing" about them.

Actually, when I was at Pendle Hill back in 1990 (see my February 12 post), I blindly chose "eagle" from a pack of medicine cards to be my animal totem, and subsequently formed a small eagle from raku clay. After firing, it frankly ended up looking more like a chicken, but the concept of eagle inspired me to "soar" around the country. I watched for bald eagles during that car trip, and over the years, saw more of them in Duluth than I ever have elsewhere. On September 21, 2023, I wrote about the extraordinary experience of having a merlin hover in flight outside my window, and now finding that I have a companion hawk has cemented my interest for good. I have a large intimidating picture of the face of a British red kite (similar to a hawk) next to my bed.

It's interesting that I would be fond of these large raptors (the word comes from the Latin word, to snatch), whose place in the food chain is so dominant, and who, indeed, snatch smaller animals out of the water and land, for food. Clearly, I don't feel the same about people who are rapacious (same root), and steal from or kill weaker people, animals or nature. I suppose it is at least in part because such human behavior seems to me to be a choice, not a necessity. And, it is interesting that the word rapture also comes from the same root, as in being spiritually "taken" or ascendant. Bringing the circle around, I'd say there is a kind of rapture for me in seeing these raptors, whether in flight, on trees, or being shown to the public on a makeshift perch atop a folding table. I honor the sharpness of their vision, and the fact that nothing escapes them. I honor their magnificence and wish to be just as magnificent.

This Beautiful House

The other day, I said it was blustery in more ways than one, and I guess that applies today as well. Since last night, there have been wind gusts certainly up to 50 or 60 mph; I look back to childhood in this part of the world, and while I remember lots of snow, I certainly don't remember this kind of wind at any time of year, particularly in the winter. 

Something hit me very strongly, perhaps in a gust of wind. That is, that in effect, I have been a solo "Goddess community" for years now. In my recent narrative about driving around country, I said I liked driving alone, and I guess truthfully that preference extends to living, even though my financial non-functioning has made living alone in recent years impossible. It is simply that my way of being in the world has been rather unique, and it is sometimes better being alone to really solidify who you are. And the truth is, for me to wait until I find kindred spirits, to "find a Goddess-centered community", may not happen. I need to think of it at the moment as me being the community, and knowing that wherever I land in upcoming months will be the "location" of that community. It's not about rituals, or worship, or protesting against anything. It is just a case of values, and eventually, meeting and living with people who share my values. All along, it has been hard being post-duality, and now it seems nearly impossible...but every day that I'm still alive is another foundational brick, whether I write in this blog or add to my Goddess words, or not. 

What, in short, are the values of my community? That Mother Nature is the only one who "owns" the land. That as a community, we honor primarily Earth's needs, then secondarily, our own human ones. No one person has power over any other, or has the right to hurt or destroy any other person or being. (Indeed, in the larger sense, we simply do not have that power anyway.) The guiding spirit of the community is the Love of the Goddess, and the beauty, unity and harmony of that Love, and we work more in a circular, horizontal way to figure out solutions to problems. We turn to Her before making small or big personal or community changes. Love is the currency, not money. We share, and do things for the love of it, not for a paycheck. We understand we need to roll "with" the way that Earth is physically changing and what Mother Nature needs to do at this moment, not fight it. We need to pull back our human footprint, and do/use less, whenever possible, while encouraging the unique "being-ness" of each individual person. 

Some people may see this as "bluster". Some people may see this as unrealistic. But the reality that was created over so many generations is now waning. I feel pretty certain that I've already experienced the way of living that I just described, and I'd like to welcome people to the door of this beautiful house!

Well, well

This is something else. It's not only the actions that stun, it is the sheer rage and hatred behind them. There is no way for reasonably good people to get into that same head space and react or operate that way. We need to try not to fear. If there are only two things in this world, love and fear (and I would suggest that "fear" is the "fear of love"), then being people of genuine love is really the only option. Just being who we are. I learned in my family that goodness, per se, was simply not welcome. Something like that is happening now on an enormous scale. Maybe it's been under the surface all along...

If I achieve nothing else moving forward, I just want people like me to know they are not alone. I had hoped that I would find more of a physical community of kindred spirits, to be in at this time. That hasn't been the case so far, but I know that we are a string of bright lights around the world, still glowing and still beautiful. Our main job is to remain beautiful, and to try not to focus on or reference other energies. And to my female friends, do the things that women have always done for all of human history: cook, bake, make clothes, care for others, teach, nurture, honor creation, create beauty. Women's work and perspectives are needed now more than ever. The Goddess is with us, appearances notwithstanding.

Valentine's Day 2025

We aren't seeing a lot of love on this Valentine's Day. Lots of pink, lurid pink decorations and boxes of candy in the stores. Surface love.

What keeps me going is knowing that the only thing that will work going forward is real love. Genuine love. In the midst of it all, I'm constantly trying to find evidence of love, in the birds in the sky or the slightly melting ice or the pileated woodpecker's bright red patch, or in other people, like the store clerk's friendly greeting or messages from friends. It's hard to accept how many people seem to be able to function without love, and unfortunately the rest of us may not be able to make up for them. Perhaps we shouldn't try. Each of us is responsible for our own loving, and to try to continue to love through these hard times. 

Sending love to all of you today, yes, really! 

In 1990

More astonishment, more dismay, so more stories. I have a (mostly) hand-written memoir still in storage (yup, in Duluth still!) I hope this story isn't one I've told here in the blog, or at least that it's been a while.

1990 was a pivotal year. I left Time Inc. and New York, and initially went to Pendle Hill, the Quaker study center outside Philadelphia. After almost a decade in the big city, this was a healing balm, so much so that I stayed longer than I originally intended. Part of what I was doing (in the quiet, introspective space) was trying ("once and for all", which really has never happened!) to address the England/church music issue. From what I could see at that pre-internet moment, there were still no girls or women in the good British choirs, and even though this might have been a great moment to visit the UK to explore my options, rightly or wrongly, I still felt defeated and unwelcome. So over the course of several months, I tried to gear myself up to better get to know my own country. In the quiet of Quakerism's silent worship, I was living high church Anglicanism's utter religious opposite -- maybe I could do the same in a life somewhere in America.

So after a brief visit with my parents, I bought a tiny red used car, and set off to see this country. The Quakers had an informal network of potential places to stay, called "Traveling Friends", and I also had actual friends and family scattered about. My original thought had been that I would go all the way to California through the middle of the country, then circle back via the northern route. And if along the way I found a place to live that called to me, so much the better.

One of my brothers had told me that I would hate the center part of the country, that it was too flat to be interesting. And yet, oddly enough, I found that I loved the flattish farming landscapes that I started to find in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. One striking thing was, every time I saw a barn silo on the horizon, my brain interpreted it as being an English cathedral or church tower. It was the first time I had been that far west, in a place where agriculture was all. I stayed in eastern Kansas with an older couple who were Quakers, but they attended worship meetings that were programmed, that is, more like a conventional church, with hymns and readings. They told me to go out onto their long gravel driveway and look at some of the stones. Sure enough, it was quite astonishing -- virtually every piece of rock held a fossil of either sea life or some other early form of animal life. They explained that Kansas had been long underwater...how did I not know that?

I loved driving alone. I kept an atlas in the front seat, and that's how I navigated, with quick glances down. (At this point, I don't recommend this method!) I stopped every few hours for gas and a snack or bathroom break. And I tried to arrange the next night's shelter the night before, although I think once or twice I was forced to use a motel. The oracle of the license plates started saying "Minnesota" early on...lots of Minnesotans drove by me throughout the trip. My playlist? Old-fashioned cassettes of Loreena McKennitt, Maura O'Connell, Nancy Griffith, REM, and Mary Chapin Carpenter...I stayed with a cousin in Colorado, but I had been gone at least three weeks by then, and I was already beginning to get weary of movement. I also quickly became weary of the Rockies...too imposing and overwhelming. So the idea of heading to California was scrapped. Instead, I wended my way up to Montana to see my brother, and then started back east via Montana's ghost towns (Roundup and Ingomar) and North Dakota. I was disappointed to be heading east again, but nowhere had yet grabbed me as a place to stay and set down roots. 

Silly roadside attractions like the world's largest ball of twine aren't as much fun alone, but I did stop from time to time to see them, just to say I had. I tried not to think of the extreme contrast between these tourist attractions and the ones I had seen over the years in Europe...I had made the best life decision I knew how to make under the circumstances, and for the moment, "that was that".

I would end up attending a Quaker gathering in Wisconsin where I met a woman from Duluth, Minnesota. I was embarrassed not to really know where that was, but once I looked at my map and saw that it was on Lake Superior, I became intrigued. I was invited up for a visit and headed up Interstate 35, not knowing what to expect. When I drove over the crest of the hill and looked down over the city perched at the end of an endless lake, I knew that I had, at the very least, found a place to explore. I had mixed feelings, though -- within the hour, I had also found a small Episcopal church. I pushed open the front door, and, amused to be smelling the typical Episcopal smell, I sat in one of the pews and burst into tears. The rector came and chatted with me, to make sure I was OK. She reassured me that feeling a bit disconcerted was normal after so many changes and travels, yet I found myself asking God (not the Goddess yet!) what on earth was going on. I would end up staying much of that decade in Duluth, although I came and went a few times, and always knew it was more of a spiritual "perch" than a permanent home. And I would return there before COVID for another five years or so. I am enormously grateful for how the city, my friends, and the lake held me safe at times when I needed that.

Thinking back on that trip around the country, I marvel at the fact that I was so free. I had worked hard in the corporate world for almost a decade to pay back my student loans, but, unmarried and with no children, for that short time, I had no major obligations. (Unfortunately, I didn't yet feel any guilt about the use of a gasoline-powered car to wander rather aimlessly.) A hundred years earlier such a solo trip would have been impossible; there were no cars, no interstates, and few women with any autonomy. And sixty-five years from now, it's hard to know what life will be like for anyone, male or female. It seems almost like that year was a blessed moment in time, bringing me an equally blessed measure of freedom. While it didn't bring me the life I might have preferred, it brought me rapid growth as a spiritual woman, and a perspective I might not have gained otherwise.

Goddess Words 38: Vision

Another day leaves me astonished and speechless, so all I can think of to do is to set another building block in place. For whatever it is worth, this is my 950th post. In a sense, all of them have contained "Goddess words", or at least the best I could do being the human I am in this time. Goddess willing, I will reach my thousandth post within a few months. Who would have thunk?

Vision. What did I have in mind twenty years ago when I added "vision" to my list? I am not sure, so I can only riff on what it means to me now.

One gift of the Goddess is literal vision, the capacity to see through one's own physical eyes the real physical view before them. As someone who has been very, very nearsighted for this entire lifetime, the fact that my vision has been correctable to nearly 20-20 has always been a really amazing gift. From reading music to reading books to driving a car to sailing a boat to knowing a place forever as soon as I have seen it once, these beautiful eyes of mine have supported my growth, travel, learning, and, at times, fun. They have supported creating and experiencing beauty. Half a century ago, my prescription required thick "soda bottle" lenses, and that was to some extent demoralizing...forget about appearing beautiful, anyway! But as time and technology went on, the dreaded plastics made possible more attractive, thin-lensed options. Of all the plastic items I'm grateful for, which influence my life for the better every day, my glasses and frames are at the top of the list.

Vision can, of course, be metaphoric. Being clear-seeing can require a lot of courage. Our current moment is a case in point. When your physical eyes work in tandem with your values, and you are willing to see behind and beyond the obvious, you may be on the road to being visionary, to seeing patterns that suggest how the future may pan out. Indeed, the moment may come when you see everything from your visionary core. Things may only become comprehensible from the lens (so to speak) of your spiritual perspective. I think this is about where I operate now, but even that is not, on the cosmic level, "20-20", or anywhere near. So...

What is 20-20 Goddess vision? I can't get myself into Her eyes, except to say that they see so very much more than we do. Her vision is undoubtedly not just "visual"/eye-based, but also intuitive, sensing, feeling, and growth-based. It's more of an energetic thing. On some level or another, the current state of the world may not even be visible to Her in the human sense of the word, since we have left Her original "vision" so far behind. It may be that she is relying much more on feeling the energy we are emitting because what we are manifesting is visually so painful. Yet even those feelings must be causing Her excruciating pain. 

I suspect that She has a very clear vision of how to get earth through this transition, and that Love is the main ingredient. Yikes, I am getting boring, but truly, I'm sure that this is the only path forward as we head into the Age of Aquarius. We aren't called to love things or people we don't love. But what we are called to do, in the worst of the chaos, is to remember what true love is, and what it feels like at the core of one's being. No matter what news you are confronted with early in the day, align with the vision and heart of the Goddess, yourself, your friends, and nature. Stay as calm and strong as you can. 

Witness

There are so many tragic facets to this time we are in. One of the most, for me, is knowing without a doubt that within months, many of the people who were cheering loudly a few months ago will be in a state of horror and shock. They didn't understand the true nature of what they were unleashing...now they must be beginning to. It's a hard way to learn a lesson...but it is a lesson humanity could and should have learned many centuries ago. When the divine feminine is not respected, when the earth and human women aren't respected and honored, life is too lopsided and there can be no sustainability. There can be no happy ending. It's like a car racing down a highway with flat tires on the left side. Sure, a driver may be able to keep the vehicle going for a while on the rims, but eventually there will be a spectacular crash.

The hardest thing I am finding right now is experiencing the massed emotions of hatred, fear, and contempt so very directly. I've always been sensitive to the negativity at the core of most of our institutions and structures, but enough buffers were in place to prevent it from being obvious. Now, the buffers are falling away, and all the outmoded evil has risen to the surface, to eventually dissolve. Being "just a witness" isn't really an option, because sabers of loathing are being thrust into all of us left and right, at every turn. All of our lives will be changed -- there is no safe high bluff from which to watch the so-called battle. In fact, those who assume they are safe, may be the least so.

We all have different roles to play at this time. We all made different agreements on the spiritual plane before coming into this lifetime, when such a huge earth transition would be taking place. One thing I know I need to do is try not to judge the validity of others' responses...I need to put all my energy into maintaining my own hold on Love. Just that "little" task is hard, hard, hard. I've had a cold this week which I think is unshed tears, but I don't seem to be able to cry. I guess it may be because I'm ultimately relieved that this Transition-to-All-Love has clearly started, and that I am still here for one more day, to witness it.

Another Story

I continue to be speechless, so I'll tell another story.

This is a story I briefly referenced back on 10/29/15, but that's almost a decade ago, so I'll tell it again now, and at the end see if there is any relevance to today, a blustery one in all senses of the word.

Back in 1982, a year after earning my MMus degree in London, the degree ceremony (where we would be handed our diplomas) was scheduled for December, and I arranged for time off from my job to go to it. (Originally, part of the draw was that Princess Anne was to preside...I have to be truthful and say I looked forward to at least this brief contact with the royal family!) As it would turn out, the princess was not in attendance. As it also turned out, it would be the only time in my life that I wore the academic gown and hood (that colorful fabric "thingy" hanging down your back) appropriate to my degree. Royal Albert Hall was packed, I had no proud family in attendance, but it was still thrilling and perhaps in ways that I didn't understand yet, the moment representing the highest "old paradigm" goal I would ever achieve.

That evening or the next, I was invited to a celebratory party in a part of London I didn't know very well. I made it to the correct tube stop, then started to walk downhill in what I hoped was the right direction. Out of the blue, I realized that there was a tiny little old lady walking with me on my right side! We greeted one another, and we started to chit chat. I must have told her why I was in London, and where I was from in America. She started to tell me a little about her own life, including the fact that she was very creative, loved to cook and do needlework and paint. I remember very clearly telling her that she reminded me of my own grandmother, who was very dear to me. 

When we reached the bottom of this long downhill road, it ended at a t-junction. I told her that I was going to have to turn right -- could I help her cross, or get to where she was going? She basically said, "No thank you dearie, but it's been lovely talking with you", and started to walk left. I glanced away for a second, but then looked back toward her to make sure she was all right, and she was gone! She had completely disappeared. I looked in every possible direction; no old lady. Within days, I would learn that my grandmother had died, and not only that, she had died that night around the time that I met this old lady. Did I immediately assume that this woman was my grandmother coming to "say goodbye" to me? Yes! Do I still believe it? Yes!

What does this have to do with today's exceptional moment? Superficially, very little. But the kinds of stories I want to pass along have to do with kindness, the Great Mother, and miracles of a positive nature. This might be a good time for all of us to remember our grandmothers, and listen for their messages to us, in our memories, in our hearts, in the trees, in the clouds.  And even I need to be reminded that there are (and will be) meanings behind the meanings, behind the meanings. 

 

Sleet

On this sleety upstate day, I could make a joke about skating on thin ice. I could preach or lecture or predict. I could say, I've seen this coming for ages. But instead, I think I will (with the help of the Goddess) tell a random story about my life. Something you may not have heard before, anyway.

When I was 14, I went on a school trip to France. I had been taking French since fourth grade (yes, the Schenectady public schools began foreign language instruction at that age back then, although by the time my brothers came along, it was no longer the case). I have vivid memories of meeting at my private girls' school near Albany. All of us were in (non-uniform, for once!) skirts, blouses and light spring coats with clunky-heeled 1970-era shoes, and we had been provided with TWA carry-on bags. Our teacher (who was French by birth) and her sister (who taught at another area private school) were our only chaperones, and we must have made our way to JFK by bus. I don't have memories of our flight, although as it was my first time on an airplane, I must have been both excited and a little scared. When we reached Paris, we were met by a small touring bus driven by a friendly guy who spoke little English. 

Our first stop was to have lunch at a cafe west of Paris, and then we headed to Mont St. Michel, which is a stunning small, steeply-pointed island topped by a thousand-year-old abbey. I presume that the moment I saw this, "I knew I wasn't in Schenectady any more"! Oddly enough (considering my interest in cathedrals and cathedral music), I have no real memory of the abbey or the architecture, except for the hard uphill climb on foot.

From there, our tour took us south, through the area of France where our teachers had grown up (Rennes, Nantes, La Rochelle). In fact, at their small actual "hometown", the entire population came out to greet us; an enormous, formal dinner was held complete with speeches in English and French, and bottles of wine on the table, which we were allowed to drink from.

From La Rochelle, we turned north and east towards the chateaux in the Loire Valley. The ones I remember are Blois, Chenonceau and Chambord. What can I say? I loved them. While I can no longer bring myself to respect or appreciate the ways in which people accumulated the wealth to make such extravagance possible, coming from relatively dreary upstate New York, it was a thrill to explore these palatial homes and their formal gardens in early spring. There would be a later connection too -- Royal Holloway's red brick Founder's building was modeled after Chambord. My second floor "dorm" room looked out on turrets, chimneys and pillars that, in effect, I had "seen" a decade earlier at Chambord. And my master's thesis discussed (and transcribed) a medieval piece of chant in Aquitanian neumes (musical notation). In 1970, I don't think we went as far south as Aquitaine, but my early experience in France helped me to feel enough at home so that I could do some of my MMus research at Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale.

We visited Versailles too, of course. It is so over-the-top gaudy that I don't remember being as impressed with it. Then the cathedrals of Chartres and Notre Dame...at that point, I hadn't yet visited an English cathedral, so I couldn't compare except that the music I heard around the edges (choirs practicing, etc.) was distinctly French, so I felt a little out of my element. I wish I had seen these cathedrals again recently...when Notre Dame burned, I felt that I might not want to see its restored version, but if I get back to Europe, perhaps I will. If...

Why this story? Why now? Well, for one thing, visiting Europe so early in life was priceless. Seeing any other country and grasping that people live differently all over the world, was priceless. Using my foreign language skills was priceless. All our lives, and travels, and educations, matter. A horrible, ill-advised curtain is being pulled down and it's possible that soon we will all be discouraged from not only travel, but the "journey" of education and new knowledge. I feel so speechless about current trends -- when words fail me, I'll continue to write of and appreciate some of the blessings I have experienced. I'll be a witness. Suddenly it is feeling like a bygone era. 

Speechless

Somebody who loves writing rarely feels "speechless", but over the last 24 hours, I cannot find words to express anything that we are seeing in front of our eyes. 

Adding to the surreality of it all is the fact that I was away for two days with virtually no access to news, so there was the sense of having perhaps fallen asleep for a long period of time, like Rip van Winkle, and having woken up in a completely strange new world, reflecting values so far from my own that...well, I was about to say "I won't be able to function", but that has been the case for decades, so what else is new? Still, we find ourselves in a whole higher realm of non-sense, that is for sure.

What will keep me going is the fact that there is only one path forward no matter what -- Love. Genuine love. I suppose that I am more convinced of that now than ever.

The other night, I woke up at 3 AM, and decided to read. Believe it or not, I am for the first time reading Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes). "Believe it or not" number two? I wasn't two pages further in the book when my ears picked up what initially sounded like distant music, but I realized was the sound of coyotes howling out near the frigid woods. (I just learned that coyotes are also called "brush wolves".) I don't believe in coincidences, and I guess this is the message I take from it: the powers -- superpowers -- that I claimed the other day (loving, having intuition, feeding, nurturing, giving birth, creating music, art and harmony, etc.) are women's "wild" inheritance. Just by being ourselves right now, we are wild. We are wild and authentic, and valid in a way we aren't seeing in the "powers-that-be". I need to be what I want to see.

Power Saturday

What a bizarre, tragic few days in regards to air travel. What a strange, strange time we are in.

One of the thoughts that got me up in the middle of the night is the nature of human power. Growing up in our culture, even I haven't always questioned the predominantly male notions of power (or having power) that, yes, "power" the world. This is largely power over other people, power over the planet, its environment and animals, financial power, power over women and children, acquisition of land and money, the power to hurt, use weapons, or declare war...well, the list goes on. We are seeing it in almost every arena. I've never been able to function well in this equation, and for a long time, I just looked at it as, "this is who I am not". I thus tended to see myself as "having no power". Certainly, that is how it felt, but that self-talk was utterly self-damaging. As you know, I've slowly but surely started to write about the Goddess words that came to me twenty years ago or so, words that express the qualities not only of the Goddess, but of all women. We women do have power, but what is it, really? In the night, I tried to define it more succinctly. I tried hard to feel it. If my woman power is not the above, what is it?

It is my ability to love. It is my ability to give birth, whether to children or ideas or art or music or other expression. It is my ability to feed. It is my ability to feel and empathize. It is my ability to heal. It is my intuition. It is my power of spontaneous understanding. It is my creative problem-solving. It is my connection to Nature. It is my understanding of what Nature is currently going through. It is my desire for harmony and peace. It is my ability to see clearly -- what has been, what is, and what is coming. It is my ability to express these things in words, as best I can.

It is still hard to make the u-turn into feeling powerful, but there is no question that these things are valid forms of power, the power of Love. If the world hasn't seen them as such, perhaps it will now start to, as non-Love stops working.