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.