Thank You, Mom

Another post that's coming as a surprise to me.  

Yesterday, I somehow managed to get beyond all my awkward feelings around Mother's Day, not being a mother, whether I have ever really felt mothered, and so forth, and found my attention being drawn to my mother simply as a person. I never got to know her well. I hear friends in long telephone conversations with their daughters or mothers, and find it amazing. Mom and I certainly became closer when I accompanied her through the last eighteen months or so of her life, but we were so, so different. I wrote about her back on February 6, 2016 ("My Mom"), and if some of today's stories have also appeared in subsequent posts I apologize. I need whatever part of her is surfacing today.

She was a spunky young girl, based on photos of her in a childhood spent just north of New York City. She had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. She and her 10-to-12-year-old friends had a club, "The Naughty Eight", and they'd smoke cigarettes behind someone's garage. She refused to learn any of her mother's creative or cooking skills, and remained adamantly outside that circle all her life, except for a few tentative forays into watercolor painting. She was extremely smart, but not "intellectual" -- during World War II, she studied for two years at a junior college before eventually following her brother to Schenectady, where she worked briefly at Union College, then met and married my father.

Mom was full of contradictions. Spunky, yes. Organized. Potentially she could have been a leader or a modern-day career woman, yet her actual self-esteem could be abysmally low. With us, and apparently even in other settings later in life, she often apologized before giving her opinion ("This may be a stupid idea, but...") She claimed not to be a feminist, and was clearly uncomfortable with that language and terminology -- yet the day I scared off some Mormon missionaries by saying I was a "post-Christian feminist", she told me that if she had more time ahead of her, she'd be a post-Christian feminist too! She had always stood up for women in leadership positions in the church, and even all-but-ran a small church between rectors, and she briefly considered the Episcopal priesthood. But not long before she died, her original Catholicism came back, along with core fears and memories. Never mind, her memorial service reflected the best of the Anglican tradition, just as she had directed many months earlier.

She had had to very deeply bury all.her emotions when she married my dad, I think, and I (their eldest child) terrified her with my introspection, my creativity, my need to analyze. From early on, I was doing the kind of inner work that she couldn't bear. I think she was scared for me too -- she knew I would never skirt the surface of things, and that life would be hard for me to navigate. My brothers were just easier -- funnier, more successful, better at "playing the game".

There's so much more, but not today. However, with all my talk of my old life flying off the back of my boat into the frothy wake, what little nugget of my mom do I want to carry forward with me, close to my heart?

She had a wonderful, almost theatrical, speaking voice. She wasn't into holding, hugging, or touching (I come by this naturally, it seems!), but I have memories of her sitting on the bed with three-year-old me, almost cuddling, and reading A.A. Milne ("Christopher Robin had wheezles and sneezles, they bundled him into his bed...") and Dr. Seuss. These rhymes poured out of her like honey. Like music. No hesitation, no fear, a river of confident, beautiful sound that is still in my ears to this day. More than anything, this is what stays in my deepest center. Thank you, Mom. 

There is a Moment

I wasn't planning to write again this weekend, but here goes.

There is a moment where you finally get it -- that all the pushback you have received over the years is proof that you've been on the right track, not the wrong one! That all along, you were aligned with future realities that were in the process of forming...and of course, they seemed absurd in reference to the reality in front of us. Much easier for "thee and me" (as my mother used to say, and, no, she wasn't a Quaker) to be labelled as strange and weird and nonfunctional and ditsy, if not worse. I shouldn't have survived long enough to reach 70, but now that I have, I rejoice looking out at the world because it is so clear. So clear! Without the balancing spiritual, intellectual, and physical energies of the feminine being respected, humanity can only go down the tubes. This isn't an indictment of the masculine, just of complete imbalance going on for far too long.

I guess that is what I didn't grasp back when I was 15 or so, when we girls were suddenly being encouraged to dream, to find out what we wanted to do, to pursue careers. Forget about the fact that my preferred life was still completely closed to girls and women. I was too young to understand the overall history and institutional rigidity. Somehow I optimistically thought the gate had opened and the voices and perspectives of women would change the world overnight. Over the years, day after day, year after year, I just couldn't understand why this wasn't happening.

I am trying really hard not to push back against the pushback. (If you are serious about "Do unto others", how can you cause any conflict?) But I am aware that, just as the world has been speaking a language I don't understand, I speak a language the world doesn't understand. These languages are so completely unrelated that it may be necessary to release old hopes or expectations of a middle ground. As this rapid ascension process moves forward, there will probably be not only a third way, but a third language, which comes from the heart. I personally cannot quite grasp how that will work, but there is a moment when you know it will work, because it must.

Quite the Week

I don't have to tell you. This has been quite the week. And, strangely enough, I awoke this morning hearing these words in my head: "This is your day, Liz." Hmm...this isn't my birthday or any anniversary that I know of. I haven't heard or seen any news that might reflect significantly on my present or my future. Heck, a rainy weekend looms, and Sunday is Mother's Day, and I am not a mother! I have been writing every day this week, and I am not entirely sure how this experiment went. Next week, I will probably return to my usual two-to-three times a week. But I feel the weight of most of the world's women on my shoulders -- so many have no freedom to speak their truth at all, much less to write it. So however articulately or awkwardly, I plow ahead.

Perhaps connected with the above, another phrase came to me as I was out on my walk: "I know where I belong." This may not seem radical, but it is. In any given moment, I have rarely felt I was where I really belonged. Even now, if I use my logical brain to define such an ideal place or situation, I stumble. But something in my heart broke through this morning, reminding me how it would feel. My knowing is in my heart. That's a start. Maybe that's what is meant by "my day". And maybe Sunday will be the day of the Great Mother!

Try to stay grounded, all, amid the swirling cruelty and hatred out there. An old era is passing.This is our time, hard as it may be to believe most mornings!

Looking Without

Interesting. I'm glad for my archaic old dictionary, which has my intended "without" definition first -- without, as in "outside". Interesting, too, that the only other time I used this phrase was in April of last year ("Oracles") when I spoke of all the different ways (outside of me and within) I was accessing spiritual information.

Since then, I have moved to where I don't seem to be engaging too well at all with the "outside world", even as it pertains to some of the wise folks online who have saved my sanity over the last few years. How fortunate I've been to discover people as new paradigm as I am, as aligned with (and curious about) the Age of Aquarius! But unlike some of them, I don't seem to be interested in galactic energies, or archangels, or light codes, or crystals, or even (now) oracle cards. These colorful "patches" are definitely an integral part of the new age quilt we are all sewing, and the right paths for some. But right now, they are too much for me...too extraneous, too distracting, too "other". It is all I can do to align with myself. I continue to be somewhat haunted by the fact that I come from such a narcissistic background, but I get a bit of a chuckle out of it too. I suppose it comes in handy in terms of looking within -- who does it better?!

It's like, me, my writing, and the Goddess. That's all, right now.

There's a surprisingly cold wind here in the northeast. The sun is high in the sky, but it is crisp and cool, almost fall-like. I'll take these conditions over 100 degree temperatures any day. The first lilacs are coming out. I'm trying to stay as grounded as possible in nature. Trying to notice and celebrate Mother Earth's fidelity to her process, and be inspired to stay faithful to mine.

Two Rainbows

Yesterday's most remarkable event was the fact that the day started with a rainbow, and ended with one as well. The early morning one came almost immediately after a rather strange 6AM sunrise, orange in color (not red). The heavens opened, and yet the low-hanging sun remained clear of clouds, leading to a rather faint rainbow to the southwest, amidst the raindrops. And the reverse situation happened about an hour before sunset, this time producing a much sharper rainbow with two visible "ends". It's always exciting, even at my age, to see the end of the rainbow!

I look back this morning, wondering what this particular portal signified, and I'm not sure. I wrote a blog post yesterday (for those of you keeping up with this temporary daily schedule, thanks!), agonized a bit about my future (very old paradigm!) and then saw the movie "The Devil Wears Prada 2". It, too, was very old paradigm, at least for me. Not only were there scenes near the old Time and Life Building on 6th Avenue, where I worked in the '80's, but I found the characters' pursuit of wealth and power actively off-putting (where in the past I might just have found it mystifying). It's hard for me to deal with scheming and manipulation, and overall, I couldn't find it funny or interesting. When Meryl Streep's character says words to the effect that she loves her work, I'm glad for her, but I know that I never would have loved a career like that. And that is OK. It's all so glamorous and so fragile. I still grapple with shame at not having "succeeded" in a small or big way, but at this point I have very few regrets. Ah well, the film provided a few moments of humor, and a short vacation to the Big Apple and Milan!

Today will be rainy, morning to night. Probably not one peek of rainbow-creating sunshine, so I'll have to find the light within. Blessings, friends.  

A Purer Form

I am thinking and writing about so much right now that it is hard for me to keep up, probably much less you! But I think I stumbled on something the other day (in "May I?", May 2) that I need to unravel a bit more.

Recently, several of my online astrological and spiritual folks have talked about humanity's evolution away from being so head- and throat-based to being more heart-centered. Love will increasingly become our way of connecting, our way of speaking, our currency, and our source of information. It's been satisfying to hear this, since it resonates with what I have often tried to articulate too.

It dawned on me yesterday that linking this observation to my England and English church music shift, it's like so many of the thoughts I used to have (about only being able to be happy over there or sing that kind of music) -- and the limited words and music I was willing to say/sing with my throat -- are the factors flying away in the wind. What is staying in my heart is a purer form of that lifetime of love, a purer sense of "home", and a purer sense of "harmony". My passion has gotten both smaller and more condensed, and bigger and more expansive. To go back to my metaphor of the banquet table, this may be the moment where many of us bless the bigger spread, and then just grab our absolutely favorite, essential elements (and perhaps some new ingredients) to create a mini-masterpiece, a purer form of our passion. That smaller but more powerful nugget of passion will go through to the new paradigm, and become its foundation.

Peace

This week, I have decided to write every day, Monday through Friday. It just seems like the kind of time where this is necessary. And the first word that met my eye when I made that decision was "Peace". Strangely enough, it not only appears as if I have never used that title for any of my thousand-plus posts, but it is not on my list of Goddess words. How is that possible??!

Being this spontaneous means that I cannot hope to do more than scratch the surface...so that's liberating. I have increasingly written as freely as I can (early on, I almost always drafted my essays on paper first), but with a day or so between posts, I usually do some mental pre-planning. That may not happen this week!

So...peace. My old dictionary definitely presents the word within a duality context -- "freedom from or cessation of war...freedom from civil disorder..." And a number of modern online definitions start there as well. It has always troubled me that peace prizes always seemed to go to people who stopped wars, or who "fought" against conflict. Even before I really understood the post-duality world we are entering, it began to be clear energetically that fighting was fighting, and that if peace could only be defined in relationship to war, then there could never really be lasting peace. The world doesn't seem to have gotten there yet, overall, although I think more and more individuals have. 

What would bring about a peaceful world in this Aquarian Age that we are entering? It is all about the landscape within us. Peace will come when more and more people go to their cores, and face their personal pain, traumas, and disappointments. This is hard work, but when you do it, inner healing is possible. When more people create a state of peace within themselves, they will attract other genuinely peaceful people. This is completely bottom-up peace process, doing almost all the work within and valuing that work because we understand it will eventually resonate outward, locally then globally. 

For about three hours yesterday, I felt utterly at peace -- joyful, calm, happy. I won't say it was strange (although it was, a little!), and I haven't quite been able to keep it going, but I know that even when I can string together a few minutes of such a state, it may be "worth" any and all outward actions.