It's Different...

OK, so the other week, I spoke of how reading a book about mysticism had forced me to consider how thinking of the Divine as "The Beloved" does (or does not) resonate for me. This is a brief update about that.

It's becoming clear that this terminology simply doesn't quite reflect where I am, spiritually. As for why, I am not entirely sure. The factors I brought up last time probably enter into it. The implied duality of the concept is part of it, as is the issue of how hard it is to think of the feminine face of the Divine being my lover, or the object of passion. It's all just a little strange. 

Of course, me being me, my first thoughts were, "I am doing it wrong." "I am not a mystic after all." "This author knows much more about all this than I do" (which is true!). "Maybe if I tried harder, I could do it right." 

Almost upon thinking them, I realized these thoughts reflected my old way of being, my tendency to join with the world in making myself wrong. So in case I haven't done it before, I'd like to try to articulate what my relationship to the Divine actually is. My way of being a mystic right now may simply be a little different.

Even though ultimately I think of the creative force of the universe as beyond gender, perhaps far beyond Love as we know it, at this moment, I can only use my best human senses, and with those senses, I see absolutely every drop of energy in the Universe as the physical outpicturing of the body of the Great Mother. This is the only way I can describe it at this moment in time. I see myself as one small facet of that woman's body, one fractal, one iota, one cell as it were. I guess you would say that instead of loving Her, being passionate about Her, seeing Her as a beloved outside of me, it's more that I love being part of Her. I love the privilege of being integral to Her at this time as She is going through a rebirth. I love the parallels between Her life and mine, and, yes, sometimes I see no separation between them...not in a narcissistic way I hope, but in the fractal sense of all being one. It's less a case of spending my days yearning to be part of Her, and more a case of yearning to grow and blossom where I am, already within Her.

There are moments when my efforts to articulate these things come uncomfortably close to the language of the scriptures I grew up hearing (and singing) -- well, such is life. Despite decades of trying to find unique new words for a new age, the language hasn't changed as quickly as some of us have. So we do our best. I guess I tell this story by way of giving all of us permission to try to find the words for who we are, and what we believe -- despite conformational forces out in the collective. If our "way of being" is different, it's different. And that's OK. On this Saturday of torrential rain, it's OK.

Nearing One Thousand

As I come close to reaching my one thousandth post, which will presumably come well before my ten year anniversary on August 8 (we cannot assume much of anything these days, can we?), I feel a great deal of satisfaction -- despite the fact that I have so few readers. Perhaps because I have so few readers! Whoever you are, you are beautiful and very precious to me, like family.

There's not much more I can say today. To some extent, things are a muddle. One or two things I was completely clear about a few days ago have become utterly unclear. The anxiety I feel to "move on" and start anew is balanced out today with an equal dose of complete emptiness within. But not in a negative way. It's just like Monday's powerful new moon stripped me of everything both limiting and lifesaving, and I am just a vessel, in the two senses of the word -- a container (like a vase) and a boat. I'm both filled with water, and bobbing on the water, the powerful amniotic waters of the Goddess, and for this one wonderful moment, the waters within me and outside of me are utterly balanced. I am where I am. I am who I am. It is OK. It is enough. If it took nine hundred and ninety-some-odd posts to get to this point, I am thankful. And if along the way, even a few other people resonated with the themes of this blog, I'm even more thankful.

My very first post (in 2015) was called "Transition", and I've already used the title "Home", so my one thousandth will be called, "Arrival". 

Memorial Day Miscellany

On Memorial Day, I didn't do what we are supposed to do, honor those who have died fighting in wars. I completely honor veterans, but not war itself, so this weekend is always a hard one, as are most of our national and religious holidays for various reasons. Actually, in a sense, the long weekend ended up being more about "memories" than "memorials" for several reasons, including having watched about an hour of a friend's old family pictures from the 50's through 70's. This was not my family, but a family from this area, with c.1960 birthday parties, and grandmothers wearing the same kinds of dresses as my grandmother, and teenage brothers with similar bushy hair as my brothers, and a similar station wagon, and summer trips to woody areas, and hippie granny dresses, and old fashioned sneakers. Perhaps some of you have experienced this, where someone else's pictures almost seem to be pictures of your own family, but they are not -- quite! I've reached the blessed point where it's not as painful as it used to be to think about my family...perhaps this slightly arm's length approach to "getting out the old family photos" was perfect in that respect.

Miscellany number two: I've been listening to some fascinating talks online about astrology, earth changes, and related topics, and am finding something even more fascinating: many of these people are speaking of some of the transitional kinds of events and trends that I have envisioned for decades. I mean, if I was alone back then in predicting such changes (and I am sure it only felt that way...), I no longer am. We are clearly in what I used to call the Transition (with a capital T) and there is much more to come.

I guess what I never really foresaw was exactly how violent things would become, that some humans (are they really?) would actually appear to increase their cruelty towards others. This isn't where we are headed in the long term, but tragically, it does seem as if the birth pangs of the new paradigm may be even more painful than I expected. Still, most days I feel more encouraged and upbeat than ever. Such vile forces may be able to do many things, but they cannot kill our inner peace or Love. Those of us who have worked hard in recent decades to align to the divine within have shifted the spiritual and energetic landscape; some of us may closely match the aura of the emerging Aquarian age. In an odd way, holding that energy is suddenly getting easier.

Old, in a new way

This week, I did something old, but in a new way. For the moment, I'm not going to say much more about it because I have a lot to process. I recognize that on occasion, I have promised my readers that I'll update them soon, only to forget or move on to other things, possibly driving you crazy! I apologize. I don't think this will be one of those situations, but I'm someone who has to give ideas time to completely formulate before telling friends or readers. To go back to a recent blog metaphor, I need to keep the cake in the oven until it is completely baked.

Suffice it to say that at this moment when "going back to when things were better" is such a thing, it is really crucial in my personal path to discern the difference between "going back" in a new way, and thinking old thoughts or simply re-walking old ground. There is a difference between taking action to enrich your life and world, and taking action focused on going backward to heal old personal pain (as important as such healing is). There is also a difference between simple nostalgia, and connecting with roots for the purpose of greater stability growing upwards. Particularly as my identity as an "anchoress for the Goddess" becomes clearer and stronger, I find I am less interested in outward opportunities and more interested in that energetic tether connecting me downwards to the earth's core, and upwards to the outer edges of our universe and beyond. Where will such grounding happen most efficiently and effectively?

The northeast is cold and rainy, and there has even been snow in the mountains. There's such a strange contrast between the lush greenery of trees, fields, lawns and shrubs, and the need to put on a turtleneck and a winter jacket. Mother Nature is doing what She needs to do, probably thwarting a lot of people's beginning-of-summer long weekend plans. It is another reminder (lest we still need one) that we are not in charge.

Geniuses

Yesterday, I went to a movie about Michelangelo, the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, and all-around creative genius. It was a good movie, appealing to my scholarly and artistic sides, and showing minute details of sculptures that must be impossible for most museum/church visitors to see. Putting genius aside, it was the first time in my life that I understood the gruelingly hard work of sculpting from stone. How he created human figures of such extraordinary realism in such an unforgiving medium goes beyond human understanding, not to mention the sheer number of works. It's almost a genius beyond genius.

And the film interviewed a significant number of women scholars and artists, which might not have happened a few decades ago. There was a bit of balance, even though all the other masters named in the film were male.

Still, I found myself squirming in my seat at times. I think what it is, is that I'm just tired of the focus on male genius. Back "in the day", I was immersed in the Victorian concept of history being a succession of great men, and I think I was at least passively comfortable with it, incredibly so in retrospect. At least I accepted that, historically, this was the way things had been. But clearly I have been shifting in a significant way. It's not that I can't see the genius of Michelangelo, DaVinci, Van Gogh, Picasso...or hear the genius of Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms -- and my beloved Howells. The greats in all these forms of art were geniuses, and deserve the lavish (sometimes even slavish!) praise. And it's not just the pain of thinking about all the opportunities talented girls or women didn't get, or even my own genius never quite getting off the ground (except perhaps in this blog). More and more women of genius have had their work recognized recently, and it's clear that "we" have been there all along, even if largely invisible. As we emerge into the light, it shifts the whole picture, doesn't it?

So I guess I just cannot "do" it anymore, in effect worship the great men of history, much less those of this day, or their grand ideas, their ways to technologize human society, their savior impulses. I'm tired. I'm done. This isn't where I can put my energies any more. For the rest of this lifetime, I intend to focus largely on the creations of women. I intend to focus largely on honoring Earth, Love, and the greatest "genius" of all, this extraordinary universe's creator and/or creatrix. (I understand that this creative impulse exceeds all human conceptualization, but for now, I will look primarily through a Goddess lens. She is my model for genius.)

Goddess Words 44: Bake

This is a hard morning to approach Goddess words, because so many of the terms on my list are on a high spiritual energy wavelength, and overall, this morning, I am not. I couldn't get to sleep last night for hours (a more "usual" problem for me is falling asleep immediately, but waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep). There's always bounceback from my deep epiphanies, and I guess after my "step forward" post the other day, a "step backward" could have been expected -- plus, this week I am spending a few days doing something old in a new way (see my last post). I think part of what kept me up in the night is trying to envision acting from a higher, purer place. It sounds great on paper, but the logistics and reality are another story!

So this morning, when I scanned over my original list of words, most of them (whether I have already written about them or not) seemed completely insurmountable. Too much to deal with, much as I wish to add to the foundations of a more Goddess-centered world...until I came to the simple word, "bake". Aha, I thought. A word I might be able to face today.

Some background. I don't quite remember when baking became important to me. My Schenectady grandmother was quite a good baker, although her daughter, my mother, was not, or at least she had zero interest in it. When Mom baked, it was from a mix. But on and off over the years, I've baked pies, especially in the fall, when I could use fresh local apples. That experience was catalyzed when a Duluth friend shared her pie crust recipe with me, using equal parts shortening and butter. I finally became a confident pie baker. (You may wish to go back to my December 8, 2017 post, "Baking Required".) I'm one of those people who sees a piece of fruit and thinks, great, what kind of pie, or bread, or crumble can I make from that?! (Or, can I paint a still life in oils?!) From 2021 to 2024, I added cookies to my repertoire in a serious way, making weekly batches which I hand-delivered to two Duluth shelters. Since coming back east, baking has become a bit more hit-or-miss again, but fresh ingredients still draw me -- yesterday, I made a crumble with fresh rhubarb, fresh frozen raspberries, and a leftover apple. Pretty tart, but yummy. I guess it is no surprise that I love to watch the "Great British Baking Show".

So what is the association with the Goddess? When I wrote this list, what was I thinking? Well, part of it must literally run deep. Almost all definitions of "baking" refer to cooking in the heat of an oven. And even though I never became pregnant in this lifetime, I am still very aware that all of us women are, in effect, ovens, potentially the place where new life "bakes". Earth herself is an oven, hot at her core, baking things that we have never seen and perhaps never will. And even though many modern ovens have glass windows in the front, there is always a bit of a mystery to the process, especially when you bake bread, Yorkshire pudding, or another item that might sink if the door opens. There is that hint of suspense -- how will it turn out? Is it baking properly? Is it rising?

Baking is an activity that virtually every woman alive has taken part in, and most women through history. (The only exception I can think of are the very rich, who are cooked and baked for, and I feel sorry for their loss!) It is creation. It is nourishment. It is love. It is for the good of the world. Apart from every other way in which stripping women of homes, food supplies, and kitchens is immoral, is depriving them of a place to cook and bake. I've experienced this in a relatively minor, nonviolent way in my vagabond life, but still, I know the frustration of not having your own cooking space, your own spice rack, your own bowls and spoons and cake pans easily at hand. Being uprooted deprives us of one of our most powerful ways of rooting, creating food for loved ones. I believe the Goddess cares about this, and is saddened by all the myriad ways that we have been lured away from doing our own baking and cooking from scratch, in community and for community.

I can only ever guess at the importance of my Goddess words to the Goddess herself, but I am proud to add them here as a definition of me. Right up there with "I am devoted to the Goddess", "I am a mystic", "I am a musician", "I am a thinker", "I am a lover", "I am a writer", "I am an artist", "I am an Aquarius", is -- "I am a baker". I think a new paradigm is currently in the oven; I smell its lovely aroma and see it rising. It won't be long now until it is born, sprung from the oven.

A Whole New Story

Well, the last few days have indeed been intensely hard. Really feeling the pain of a lifetime of blocked passions, rather than primarily analyzing it, hit me hard. Hard, hard.

And yet...

There has been a lifting of that old energy off my shoulders. It's almost as if the Goddess is telling me, "Dear one, you did your best. You would have found a more traditional path toward using your gifts if it had existed, but basically at this moment in history, it didn't. We found a way for you to learn in unexpected ways, in Duluth rather than London, rowing rather than singing, waitressing and retail rather than serving as an archivist, professor of music or religion, artist, or lawyer. You learned how to stay healthy on your own, to follow a path of love and friendship rather than money, and you saw me (and the condition of Mother Earth) sooner and more clearly than you might have otherwise. Your life was exactly as it had to be for the role you will play in the times to come. We needed you to take this kind of path. Thank you for being so steadfast."

So I do feel lighter, and more thankful! After several years of talking about rebirth, I think it has actually happened (thank you for putting up with me, my dear, patient readers!) The lingering darkness and bittersweetness is lifting. I can tell that I am open to a whole new story, entirely new kinds of possibilities. I'm listening to more and more talks online about astrology, metaphysics, and the intersection of spirituality and nature. I'm exploring some old things in new ways, genuinely no longer an energetic match to old things in old ways. It is unnerving, trying to get out of the habit of using old experiences to help anticipate ways of navigating in the world, but I realize I must start each day with a completely new slate, and to try to do something, anything in a different way, even if it is only the direction I head out on my daily walks. 

And if the evidence of my eyes and ears is correct, this is corresponding with a "whole new story" for earth itself. It is hard to draw away from the darkness that seems so out of control, and it is extremely painful, unbelievable. But it makes it all the clearer that the only viable path to the future is Love. Earth's new story is infused primarily with love, beauty, compassion, and joy. When that is the case, the old details and the old disappointments no longer matter so much.

It's a relief, actually

In my last post, I wrote about being hit hard by what I guess you could call the extreme contrast between my life and the new pope's. It was a hard piece to write, and to be honest, I hit an energetic wall all day yesterday. 

But it is a relief, actually. I don't think I ever completely understood how "wiped off the map" I was by the age of 17, just about the time when society as a whole was telling us young women, "for the first time in history, you can do or be anything you want." If that was true for other American women (and I know that it wasn't necessarily, but at least if it was theoretically true in first world countries by about 1973), then it was not true for me. I wasn't enough of a believer to become, literally, a Christian saint or nun, and I wasn't male enough to enter highest expression of the Episcopal/C of E church choral music tradition. My greatest gifts and passions seemed to be complete non-starters. I remember myself at that age, pale, sapped of life energy, just kind of going through the academic and personal motions. The fact that my family went from upper crust WASP to extremely impoverished almost overnight around that time probably wasn't the cause of this distress, but it certainly added to the confusion. I think the entire time I was at Smith (and frankly, most of the time since then), I was in a bit of a fog, earnestly trying to get good grades or do a good job at whatever I was doing, earnestly trying to fit in somewhere, yet feeling like I was marching through peanut butter. Because I tried so hard to stay on top of the spiritual growth piece of the puzzle, I usually managed to avoid feeling the actual trauma of my life energy and passion consistently hitting the wall, and being pushed back in my face.

And in ways, I've been the lucky one. The pushback I received was not, for the most part, physical abuse. I have never been raped. I have never been beaten. I have never been in a war zone. The rejection has been verbal, metaphorical, financial, and often quite subtle. Perhaps that is why it took so long to really understand how painful it has all been. Perhaps that is why it took the appearance in the news of a male spiritual leader of my exact age and nationality to realize how my balloon was deflated from the get-go while his was allowed to rise. It is heartbreaking, and this may be the first time I completely feel the heartbreak.

Ultimately, this isn't about the rather unusual specifics of my life. It is about the fact that the vast majority of the world's women have never truly had the opportunity to self-actualize. It is about the current paradigm almost completely wasting our true talents; the mess humanity is in shouldn't be surprising. If I seem to be fixated on the paradigm shift we are currently going through, it is because a Love-based paradigm is the only path I can see towards women's true empowerment and fulfillment. The cracks of my broken heart are letting in the light of this fresh beam of Love.

PS: My thoughts are with the area near Duluth, this morning, where several wildfires are raging. How unprecedented must that be, in May?

Another "What If..."

What if I had been a boy?

This whole new (American) 69-year old Pope thing has really hit me surprisingly hard. He is just a few months older than I am. According to all the stories I have read, early in life he knew he had a calling to be a priest. He rose up the ranks in the Church, and now he will have what is surely one of the hardest, most delicate jobs in the world, but he will also live in relative luxury, surrounded by the most glorious art, architecture, music and sculpture ever created. He will be supported in everything he does, waited on, venerated by over a billion people, and listened to respectfully by world leaders, clergy and ordinary Catholics. Clearly his family, and Chicagoans generally, are proud of him.

This little American girl also knew her calling early. I knew by 6 or 7 that I wished to be a nun or a saint. (If I told my parents this, I suspect they just rolled their eyes over their cocktails or said, "That's nice, dear.") By 8 or 9 (you've heard this story), I announced to my mother that I loved the Episcopal church and its music and liturgy, and that I was a good Episcopalian but I was actually pretty sure I was not a Christian. She was driving me down to choir rehearsal, and she almost drove right off Nott Street into a telephone pole, and through clenched teeth told me never, ever, to say such a thing ever again! Within a few more years, by 11 or 12, I had thrown out my strictly spiritual dream and focused on English church music, wanting to become the first woman conductor of the men-and-boys Choir of King's College, Cambridge. And yet, by the time I graduated from high school at 17, I understood that even this would never happen. Without fully understanding that I was effectively in exile -- as a post-Christian feminist American woman beyond the structures of the patriarchy -- I sensed that fulfilling any of my original dreams was hopeless and impossible. Now at 69, forget palaces and cathedrals, I have never had a permanent home or any real security outside the love and concern of friends and occasionally strangers. I am painfully separated from family (this is partly my choice). And, darn it, I still cannot find a decent, wearable pair of summer sandals, so I continue to use a very worn pair of hiking boots in the late spring heat. 

In the end, I could live without the glorious trappings of spiritual "power". Yet what would it be like to be heard, to be respected? To be embraced and lifted up? I cannot know whether, if I had been a boy, my path would have taken me to the top of the religious, church music, or spiritual world. But at least there would have been a better chance of not being invisible. I am grateful at least that I currently see such vivid signs of the birth of a completely new paradigm, one where women will play a prominent role!

I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to speak to the new pope. But if I do, these are the questions I would ask him: What if you had been born female back in 1955? Or what if hierarchies back then were all-female? What if when as a young boy you played "priest", your family chided you to remember that only women could be priests in your religion? What if, instead of encouragement, you had received only pushback? What if you were told over and over that only women had power in the religious aspect of society as well as all others? How would you have re-channeled all your spiritual passion? What kind of work would you have ended up doing? Where (literally and figuratively) would you be now? 

The Mother's Tears

The other evening, there was a brief hour or so of bright sun late in the afternoon. Needless to say, it was welcome, and quite spectacular, the sun being lowish in the sky and casting a rather orange glow on a suddenly brilliant green world. The "brief hour" was preceded and followed by an intermediary hour or so of waffling back and forth between grey/showery and partly sunny -- and then by about 7, we had returned to rain, quite torrential as I was going to sleep.

I've mentioned that I have discovered some wonderful New Age figures online who share my long-term enthusiasm for the future of the earth, and humanity itself. Their take on the spiritual leap we are in the midst of is very similar to mine. I cannot tell you what it means to finally find some kindred spirits after the long journey I've been on. 

Yet there is usually one significant difference -- as ever, I seem to fall between some cracks. For the most part, these folks speak of Source Energy, Infinite Intelligence, etc. For years, I also tried to use such neutral terms, but they were too detached for me. There are writers in the post-monotheistic world who still speak of God in the traditional way.  And then there are certainly Goddess-centered women who focus on connecting with Her through healing, Nature, clothing, rituals, etc. I love the immanency of this, and yet there isn't always the broader vision, the discussion of future trends that my intellect needs.

For me, the Age of Aquarius is the Age of the Goddess and Her values. I specifically see myself as one of Her representatives. Ultimately, do I think that the Creator can be limited by any human understandings of gender? Of course not. But although I was never a mother in this lifetime, I am a woman. I have felt the pain and rejection of the female experience and the Earth experience in my own body for over 70 years. I can't seem to completely slough off that pain, dismissing it as simple growing pains/birth pains in our spiritual leap upwards. I'm personally not the most "feeling" person in the world (thinking is my home base) -- but I do feel, and I believe the feminine face of the Divine has been feeling all along, the pain of war, "man's inhumanity to man", torture, the thoughtless use of the Earth, and the cruel shedding of the blood of humans and animals. She has cried often, and still does. Once the Aquarian age is fully established, there will be fewer occasions for literal tears, but tears right now are valid. (And can any of us imagine hundreds of female spiritual leaders gathering to choose a leader, with most of the world intensively following the event? Can we imagine female spiritual figures being that influential? I cannot.) I rarely cry, but today the mother's tears have caught up with me, for all these reasons.

It's Raining

Perhaps it is because I've most recently been living in the upper Midwest -- I am not used to day after day of rain (something that was rare in Duluth). Indeed, until a week or so ago, upstate New York seemed to be abnormally dry. Turning a corner as quickly as other factors in our life, the weather has made a sharp turn. The trees are covered with a layer of green lichen, and excessive rain has also caused the disappearance of my beloved raptors and other birds; a quick search just told me that wet feathers make it hard for them to fly. Yes, flowers are coming up like crazy, seemingly early. It's beautiful, but I'm finding it hard to fully appreciate the beauty, and not because of the rain, per se. Unprecedented changes are making me physically (and hopefully temporarily) soggy and logy. My own body is changing within me. Such intense energetic changes could hardly be taking place in the environment and in society around us, without their taking place within our actual physical selves. As with everything else, I expect enormous change, but need to stay as calm as possible, and connected to the Goddess, when everything is in transformation. 

If what I've been saying all along is true, Nature is doing what She needs to do to bring earth back into some semblance of balance. And at the risk of over-anthropomorphizing the Goddess (which clearly I am doing here), I often experience rain as Her tears. With all the forms of information all of us have access to, I can still only see or feel the tip of the iceberg of the myriad tragedies unfolding on the earth, but She experiences it all. She has been at the receiving end of most of it. She grieves. She knows how joltingly hard human life has always been for too many, and will continue to be during this transition upward. For the moment, in the Capital District, rain is a minor inconvenience, making it hard to get outdoor exercise (or even from a house to a car) without getting soaked. But around the country and the world, water is reshaping the physical landscape in a major way. The only way to make the process slightly less humanly painful will be to allow this reconfiguration to happen, not to blindly "rebuild" or return to our earlier vision. 

Referencing/Reverencing

Back on March 7 of last year, I wrote a piece on this subject ("Reference/Reverence") and I will try not to repeat myself. But here it is, a year later, and this subject is even more resonant. There is so much in the news that is horrifying and repugnant, so much (more than ever) that is the polar opposite of what I believe in, and it is almost impossible not to rise up, internally or externally. Even putting aside the decision about whether or not to enter into this societal conflict, there is the issue of how one is seen by people outside oneself. When you don't stand up on one side or another, you can be perceived as apathetic, spineless, supportive of the status quo...and all sorts of things that you aren't. Trying to explain that you are "post-duality" doesn't necessarily communicate anything but pompousness. I haven't yet dared to tell anyone I've already lived through this time and understand what will work and what will not -- that even makes me feel pompous! 

But ultimately, here's the thing: to respond to the evil that anyone outside me chooses to do forces me to spend my own (ever-shortening) life-time referencing that evil. I am focusing on it, making it more alive by my energy, and all that attention brings me closer than I'd like to "reverencing" it. At this moment of my life, if I have any passion at all (and I recently spoke of how that emotion has been hard for me to access outside English church music), I intend to focus it only on the Goddess and her values. I must "spend" my Love currency on Beauty, Mother Earth, Community, and this extraordinary galaxy-wide spiritual transition upwards. Love can be my only reference and reverence, the only use of my time.

I've been wearing a silver/amethyst ring that when purchased, I called my Goddess ring, and I was wearing it on the third finger of my right hand because I couldn't quite bring myself to wear it on the left. But yesterday, I switched it over, the symbolism being that I am now (and perhaps have always been and always will be) wedded to Her. An anchoress for the Goddess, whether I live next to a cathedral, a tree, a lake, or a river. And in a way that I don't think I've completely understood, I woke up this morning really, really understanding that the Aquarian age has started, and Love is the only path forward, for me or for the world. The time I have been expecting and anticipating isn't in the future, it is now. It is here.