Not Surprising...

I guess it is not surprising, in the wake of so much earth intensity and personal growth, that a hard moment would enter the mix. As part of what started out as a fairly innocuous conversation the other day, some of my family's demons rose to the surface, and I have had -- at the very least -- to acknowledge their continuing potential to cause me pain. 

This isn't something I could illustrate with art, photography, or music (even if I had pulled all those strings together already) so all I will do today is express again the message I received early in this lifetime and often: you are not worthy of our attention, financial support, or love. Period. Full stop. Yes, I was fed and housed through high school, attended private school and college, and seemed to benefit from the 1960's Capital District infrastructure that I currently see around me in its 21st century iteration. On the surface, it was a good American start in the world. But way deep down, there was no "there" there in this little nuclear family. There was no actual top-down Love, and the person who could be blamed for everything was not only blamed, but deep-sixed. The person with probably the greatest ability to love was ostracized. I mean, this first happened on my "birth day", and then over and over from then on, and the psychic pain is immeasurable. I keep thinking that I've done as much healing work as I can, but clearly I have not. 

What is so traumatizing about our current time is seeing the very same impulse playing out on the larger stage. Perhaps it was "the human condition" of the previous paradigm to leave unwanted people in the psychic wilderness or kill them off. But that sorry paradigm is coming to a rapid close. The Age of Aquarius has started. The Goddess is in the ascendant, and such activities will rapidly become obsolete. In the future, we will never do such things to our children, any of our children. 

I think this is the moment for some of us to address past trauma and pain, and make a final push to heal. Wounds may be manifesting as physical pain, emotional pain, or a combination of the two, and obviously some measure of active healing cannot hurt. But I also think we are going through the portal into an era where, literally, a lifetime of slights can no longer hurt us. If, in the past, other people chose to operate from a place of non-Love, their choices can no longer hurt us. By next year, 2026, it will be time to move forward without the heavy load of past grief. It is time to completely let go.

I know how important I am. This is not ego, or narcissism, or power-hungriness, it is simply understanding that when you are a facet of the great Goddess, you cannot possibly be "unimportant" or "unworthy". It is time for all of us to start resonating with new words like "worthy", "extraordinary" and "brilliant". And it is time to see what life is like when it reverberates those energies back to us!

"Spem in Alium"

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

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

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

All I will say today...

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

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

Go Big and/or...

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

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

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

Go big and go home.

Goddess Words 50: Rocking

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

A Memory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Portal

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

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

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

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

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