I am reading Mirabai Starr's wonderful Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (Sounds True, 2019). Every time I read the words "women mystics", or find that aspect of myself validated through processes like studying my astrological chart, I feel I've finally come home. The woman that I am is an actual "thing". It isn't that it pushes aside my second-to-second concerns about whether I will ever have a permanent roof over my head, but it does remind me, once again, of how metaphoric my whole life has been! Where the "home" I've been seeking actually is.
However, the book is making me think (although I'm only on chapter 2) that there may be a piece missing in my mystical journey, one thread that ties mystics of many traditions together: an intense longing for a connection to the Divine, for union for what is sometimes called "The Beloved". This is too complex of a topic to really unpack here, but it is complicated, isn't it, by changing images of the Divine, and the movement from duality into post-duality...and it can be hard to think of your Mother as "the Beloved".
Still, Starr's discussion of this forces me to look at the fact that I have never really felt the kind of passion she describes, whether on the human plane or towards the Divine. (The closest exception may be how strongly I feel about England and English church music.) I've had very few moments of dazzling joy and intense longing for spiritual union. My spiritual journey has at times actually felt rather plodding, a step-by-step path away from today's spiritual and societal models, a long time in the murky middle where I wanted to avoid locking God into gender norms -- and more recently, regular steps out toward the other side, embracing the feminine aspect of the Divine, the Goddess. My "passion" (in true Aquarian style) may be more intellectual, clicking in place perspectives on how the Goddess might see certain situations or react to them. I feel passionate in my alignment with Her overall, but the word "yearning" doesn't resonate at the moment, perhaps because I don't feel quite far enough away to yearn for Her. Complicated...and perhaps by the end of the book some of this will be resolved or make more sense.
While I was "grappling" with this (my new favorite word!), an eagle flew by. A bald eagle. And as it (he/she?) soared, I did feel longing, to be one with it, to soar above it all, to be one with that kind of magnificence and freedom. The day had started with three wild turkeys in the yard (abundance, gratitude, life in community), and Saturday, while a friend was driving me around on some errands, a coyote (trickster, playfulness) crossed the road in front of us. I had never actually seen a coyote before. I've heard them, of course, but never seen one. I realize that increasingly I do feel a genuine yearning to see and experience these animal emanations of the Divine, these wild creatures, regularly and up close. Who knows whether all of us or all of them will survive the changes to come, but today anyway, they are the focus of my love and longing. They are my Beloveds.