Goddess Words 57: Worshipped (off the list)

Well, this is a first. I'm presenting a word that I originally put on the list, but have just crossed off it! 

Twenty years ago or so, as I began to more fully embrace the power and values of the Divine Feminine, it was natural to try to define things as a mirror image to the religious construct of my upbringing. Instead of worshipping a traditional notion of God, I would worship the deity's feminine face. Never mind that I was never drawn to any rituals in that regard, somehow I thought She would want, or expect, "worship" in some new permutation. Eventually, I might find a way to honor Her in some regular way.

And yet, as of now, this hasn't happened. I've sung songs like "We all come from the Goddess" in song circles. Years ago, I used to join a few women on solstice and equinox. As you know, I occasionally draw an oracle or Tarot card (although even this has become rather infrequent). But overall, I don't feel called to worship the Goddess, per se. Odd from a woman whose other passion is the music of choral evensong!

I think part of it is, if I were the Goddess at this moment in history, I wouldn't want humans taking the time to worship me! This is such a major energy shift, such a sudden movement upward, that people need every ounce of energy to evolve and grow in more love, for each other, for all beings, for the earth, and (yes) for Her. I think we are called to love Her, to respect Her, to honor Her, and even to sing Her praises. But does She expect regular "services" or prayers or rituals? Maybe a few generations down the road when the Aquarian age is more fully established...although even then, I don't think She will want us to engage in the kind of energetic imbalance that "worship" usually represents. And my hunch is that She would feel more comfortable with spontaneity than rigid protocol. Perhaps the best events in the future (and even now, when we can squeeze them in) will be "celebrations". Celebrations of the truth, of love, of beauty, and of Her values. Personally aligning with these values day-to-day going forward is "worship", in a higher, freer, form.

Threescore Years and Ten

For days, I've been trying to articulate what it means to reach 70, what it feels like to reach 70, and other related thoughts. The drafting process has been much harder than I expected. On the one hand, if the span of a life was "threescore years and ten" back in biblical days (Psalm 90), then reaching this milestone in our era should theoretically be "easy-peasy". If 70 is the new 50 (or 40, or whatever), then this should only be a minor blip. And yet...and yet...so many people never make it this far, for a host of reasons, both natural and unnatural. One of my own brothers only lived to 55. Having lived such an uncertain, change-dotted, and unconventional life, I am still amazed that I am here.

It is strange...the last few weeks I have been fearful that something would happen to prevent me from reaching this watershed. This negativity is very unlike me...but I became fixated on the thought that I didn't wish to die in my sixties. So a wave of relief has washed over me this morning. Somehow, despite a whole lot of odds, I have made it this far. It is an immense privilege. I even feel little peeks (and peaks) of joy.

Twenty years ago this summer, I hosted a large 50th birthday party event -- for myself. Having never married or had children, it was the equivalent of a wedding, baby shower, and big birthday bash rolled into one. I lived in a small town, so there were dozens of local people, plus some dear friends from further afield. My dad even came across country for it. It was a Big Deal, and I am proud of having had the nerve to go through with it! And yet my recent review of old photos makes me aware of having been quite a different person back then. I was still uneasy with my true passions (although a friend did make a Goddess-themed cake!), and it was a moment when I still hoped to "make it", somehow, in a more conventional sense. It was fun being the center of attention, but did anyone really understand who I was at my core, even me?!

The energy of today is really, really different. The image I am getting is of a low bar, like a limbo game at a party. I just want to sneak under the bar and get to the other side in one piece, with maybe a low-key lunch out with friends or a big piece of chocolate cake with chocolate icing. No singing, no presents, no big deal. 

In an unrelated aside, I need to say this. I truly, truly do not understand the cruelty we are all seeing right now. I mean, completely do not understand or resonate with it at all. It is horrifying and sickening. Even the slightest iota of pain to any living thing is hard to bear. Yesterday, when I took a shower, I suddenly realized that a large daddy longlegs was struggling near the drain. I am so nearsighted, by the time I tried to "help" him, my efforts basically sealed the deal. He (and some of my hair) had to go into the trash. I was nearly in tears...to inadvertently kill anything so close to my birthday almost did me in. 

I try to remind myself that, ultimately, "there is no death in the divine mind" -- for me, for you, for your pets, for any being. Life is eternal. Before "birth" and after "death" we are eternally part of the great stream of life and love passion surging through the universe. As I move through a quiet anniversary, here is my intention for upcoming weeks and months: "This is the chapter of the story where I soar on love's winds -- and love's wings! May this quiet portal bring me to my most powerful 'place', where I am more help to people, the earth, and the Goddess than I have ever been." 

More thoughts on forgiveness

I last wrote about forgiveness about two years ago, but this is a somewhat different approach.

This weekend, in the lull after yet another round of paring back on belongings, several ways that I continue to hold onto some negative inner baggage popped to the surface, perhaps not surprisingly. During the course of this latest process, I was pretty fastidious about blessing the photographs that I chose to throw out, thanking  people for the roles they had played in my life. I wasn't as generous-hearted about paperwork. Lets face it, many of the old papers represented institutions and business entities, and I have never felt any alignment with that world. A few weeks ago, it was simply a basic feeling of, "Wow, I'll feel lighter when I recycle this old stuff." But of course, the bad feelings weren't necessarily situated in those brown storage boxes or on the sheets of paper themselves. They were still lingering deep inside of me, my heart, my body, my psyche. Fortunately, the revolving door moves so quickly these days that it didn't take long to realize that I needed to do a little serious healing work, at least around a handful of memories. I'll say a little more about my process below.

What emerged from this was really facing my complicated feelings about nearly 30 years without health insurance (and, usually, health care within our current construct). Back then, I realized that I was going to be on a unique path, and would have to learn unprecedented self-reliance in terms of my physical health. I knew, increasingly, that I was readying myself to operate in the new paradigm. And yet, I also must have been "swallowing" a measure of resentment over the hoops people need to go through to "earn" basic medical attention. I scanned my body for signs of these negative emotions, and focused a lot of love on them, but also felt amazement and gratitude that I'm still here, as ever.

Inevitably, my thoughts took me beyond my own personal experiences. In the current tumultuous moment, what is the bigger picture? How are we who are mystics and healers to respond to widespread cruelty and inhumanity? For those of us not called to protest or push back -- if our role is to embody the new paradigm -- where (if at all) does forgiveness fit in?

In an older dictionary I still consult, the financial and legal roots of the word "forgiveness" are highlighted, but in our modern era, it's more about the psychological release that comes from the decision to no longer hate or resent someone who has harmed us. It's a complicated notion, no matter what perspective you look at it from, isn't it? I have been blocked all these years by the fact that the people and institutions that have caused me the most trauma have not had the capacity to ask for my forgiveness. In that situation, I find it impossible to think or say, "I forgive you." But if I get stuck in my own unforgiveness (duality again!), I cannot be an effective light worker.

So what is the new paradigm path in these situations? I can only speak for myself here, and present my path. 1) I acknowledge the reality of my memories and the hard emotions they bring up (or the reality of a current personal situation or event in the news). Really look at it and feel the pain. 2) (This step is "where I am coming from" and may not work for others.) I go back as far as I can, historically, often acknowledging that the core pain may come from really big, long-arc movements like patriarchy and duality. I cannot adequately explain the historical necessity for these trends in the human experience, but I remind myself that everything I have experienced in this lifetime was birthed in these old models that are now shifting. 3) Then, in that context, I try, if possible, to feel compassion for any person who represents the old paradigm. (Better still, if I can possibly feel genuine, positive gratitude for that person or situation -- for their role in helping me learn new truths -- that's great.) But if I cannot feel either gratitude or compassion -- if an institution or person has simply been too unrepentantly cruel -- then all I can do is say, "I do not speak this old, inhumane language and it is time to turn around and move forward to create a more love-centered world." "Forgiveness" is another concept that will not last long in the new paradigm, because it references not-love. As we move forward, fewer people will knowingly hurt other people, so forgiveness will gradually become unnecessary. 

With every passing day...

With every passing day, I become more convinced that the enormous missing piece in our world is "respect for the Divine Feminine"... that this is evident in virtually every event, conflict, and crisis in the news. At this pivotal moment, I can't see how any single change ("stopping" this, that, or the other thing) could possibly bring long term stability or peace. Only an enormous spiritual leap upwards, bringing with it an embrace of the Goddess and the power of Love, has that potential.

I'm reading an amazing book: The Serpent and the Goddess by Mary Condren. Like so many feminist classics that I discovered in recent years, it was published in the late 1980's. I have only finished the first chapter-and-a-half, but even if I returned the book to the library now, it has been grounding and vindicating, a reminder that there is a reason trying to self-actualize as a woman has been consistently challenging, nearly impossible sometimes. That I may finally have done it (at least within myself) feels miraculous, especially in the context of everything we are seeing right now. Of course, perhaps this painful (and sometimes absurd) "contrast" is helping to push some of us upward into the new paradigm. 

Overall, having largely embraced the whole scope of my journey, I now rarely feel "regret" per se, but a little of it rises up when I think to myself, what if I had discovered this (and perhaps a dozen other books) back in the mid-eighties to the mid-nineties? What if my journey had taken me on the path, say, of becoming a feminist scholar? Might I not potentially have had at least a more stable existence, and a "tribe"? It is certainly possible...intellectually, that route would have been far more satisfying than jobs in retail, restaurants, and lower-echelon teaching. But I'm not sure in those days I could have pivoted completely, given that I still secretly hoped someday to enter into the field of English church music. Recently, I've been able to "marry" the Goddess and choral evensong, but it was just too much of a stretch 35 years ago, when there wasn't one woman in the field. I didn't dare reveal my feminism...as if it wasn't evident already, huh???! And I might never have reached the same point of integration. 

I feel strangely light and optimistic today, but it goes back to "when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose"... I'm so ready for the new paradigm, and I am beginning to feel the energies of it in daily life. Little moments of wonder and joy. Every day of this lifetime was undoubtedly the appropriate training for where I am headed, wherever that may be. With every passing day, I begin to understand the patterns and events that brought me here, and I bless this present moment in time as "perfectly as it must be", a threshold to something quite fresh. Using the same ingredients, but creating something bigger, more brilliant.

On the Threshold of 70

Some of my online peeps are speaking of -- or modeling -- going through a death process (metaphorically, not literally). Just as our old paradigm institutions are crumbling and can't move forward into a higher, love-based manifestation, we personally won't be able to move forward without letting old parts of ourselves die. Well, as ever, I don't really need classes or rituals for such things. That is my life, with all the changes I have regularly made. Most recently, there is nothing like weeding through a lifetime's worth of old photographs to mirror the expression, "having your life flash before your eyes." Even the pictures from before I was born -- my grandmother in a slim long skirt and broad hat in 1915, my mother standing near Arthur's Market in Schenectady's Stockade area before her marriage, my parents on their honeymoon in Quebec --  are part of my story. I'm holding onto most of these historic snapshots, plus ten or twelve from each phase of this lifetime. 

And yet, this lifetime feels over. Absolutely done and dusted, as they say over the pond. I don't say this from despair at the collapse of our larger paradigm. Quite the contrary. For someone like me, the American experience was never fertile soil. A female mystic and English church musician? As someone I once knew used to say, I felt as welcome as a hair in a biscuit. The pressure to try to be anyone else, with any other core identity and passion, was so strong it nearly erased me over and over and over again. I see these snapshots -- the bemused looking "working girl" at Time Magazine, the overwhelming view out my window of Lake Superior making me feel miniscule, a heavier version of me caretaking my dying mom and later trying to stave off bankruptcy by selling my artwork. I hold my baby nieces, terrified that I will drop them, represent a small-town art association in a fourth of July parade, smile with friends at their Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. I used to laugh at the fact that I had several "para" jobs -- paralegal, paraprofessional. But my whole life was trying to be "like" a normal American, and yet I operated literally alongside everyone, not genuinely fitting into any of these pictures. So It feels good to pare this collection way back, just to the number that I could show a future friend "who I was from 1 to 70".

Two major things have changed over the last few weeks. If you have been reading this blog, you know that I not-so-secretly and passionately love England and its cathedral choral music tradition. Over the years, it has been like a love affair, only unrequited, waves of love energy going out constantly, seemingly into the void. Part of my shame was the fact that with a few important exceptions, I felt no reciprocation. It became part of my knee-jerk reaction to assume that I never would.

But the other week, these incredible words came to me: "What you love, loves you in return." This may not always be true of people or institutions, but in my case, I suddenly felt that yes, there is an entire landscape, an entire soul of place, that loves me. For the first time ever, I have started to be able to watch videos and movies about the UK, and feel almost 100% warm, delighted, engaged and included. I'm no longer staring across an abyss -- I am in the picture. And in tandem, another related step forward. Yesterday I was on my own, and I turned on Parry's "I Was Glad" and Harris's "Faire is the Heaven" at full volume. I sang with total, loud, joyful abandon. No shame, no longing, no bittersweetness, no crying, no expectations. Just sheer joy, harmony, and unity. My landscape and my music love me back, and it is super powerful. 

If this isn't a rebirth on the threshold of 70, I don't know what is.

Goddess Words 56: Warmth

It seems appropriate on a frigid day like today to speak of warmth, both the physical sensation of being not-cold, and the personal quality of friendliness. I am one of the fortunate Americans who is under a warm roof this morning, many thousands in the south still being without power. Upstate New York (like my previous temporary homes in the northern tier of states) is used to cold winters, although Winter '25-'26 has been particularly brutal. But it will be unforgettable for generations to come in many normally-warmer states.

I think that when I added this to my list of Goddess words, I was referring to the human emotion of warmth, although it is possible that in a more Goddess-centered world, the earth might not experience its current extremes of cold and hot temperature. That's something we cannot know right now. But human warmth is something we have a bit more control over, or at least some of us do! I think the most shocking aspect of recent events has been to watch the deliberate cruelty towards other people, the complete and utter absence of warmth, empathy, or kindness. In the past, when I read about historical events characterized by this same brutality, I think even I lulled myself into thinking that humanity is slowly improving...that such vile treatment of other people surely must be going the way of the dinosaur. Now it is becoming clear that is not the case.

Looking at the religious tradition that I grew up in, I realize that there wasn't much in the way of warmth. Majesty, yes, drama, yes, a beautiful prayer book and musical tradition, and fine words about love and caring for others. (In the church context, I never felt held, embraced, cared for, or noticed in a motherly way, and in turn, in some areas of my own life, I have kept a rather cool interpersonal energy, I am sorry to say.) Even exhortations to care for the sick and feed the hungry came across as kind of "arm's length" -- in my church experience, after the Gospel reading was finished, I don't think we were literally expected to look struggling people in the eye, and to walk with them and hear their stories. And, of course, because of the underlying duality of the paradigm (good vs. evil), the energy I felt so often around the theology I was exposed to was militaristic and combative. I once did a collage using clippings from an old hymnal -- all of them about marching off to war, and victory over evil, etc. It was horrifying, the high percentage of hymns containing such expressions!

One of the things I keep reminding myself is that, even before these current horrors, our entire system was far from "warm". There may be nothing "colder" than a financial construct whose only consideration is how much profit you make. Forcing people to "earn a living" is cold. Competitive systems in health care, education, housing, and so many other areas of our world are cold. Many of us who couldn't navigate such coldness were encouraged even by the most well-meaning people to at least try to function -- "it is the only system we have, Liz." But there's the problem, we adapted and adapted and adapted to this chronic coldness, and can only see its deficiencies clearly as it reaches its final, crumbling stages. 

I don't believe that a person can be warm and compassionate and still own or use weapons, but urging people to change may not work. We have entered the Age of Aquarius (and the return of the Goddess), and from this point forward, conflict will gradually, "simply", stop working. Human coldness -- as much as it seems to be spreading right now -- is on its last legs. This is a monumental shift, and it is happening as we speak. From now on, if we have the choice, acting from a place of compassion and warmth will always work better than pushback and fighting. Warmth toward others is a core value in the emerging paradigm. It will be there in the future, but the coldness won't be. We need to keep holding on to that truth if we can, like a warm cup of tea.

Old Photographs

On this extremely cold and snowy day (at least for this part of the world), I have been doing two things -- shoveling snow, and going through and weeding out old photographs. No, it is not lost on me that over the last week, our nation seems to have gone over a cliff. Perhaps it is because of this that I feel so strongly called to address my blue box of snapshots, and reduce all my remaining belongings as far as possible

I think I have had this box for at least 30 years. Some of the pictures in it were in scrapbooks "back in the day", but I came to realize that the books were too heavy to keep moving around, so -- ta da! -- the pics (and hundreds of subsequent ones) were piled into this box in no particular order, although I did manage to keep them stored vertically. There are a few from junior high school and high school, family events, summers on Lake Champlain, some more from Smith, my year at Royal Holloway, my almost-decade in New York City (I took a photography course at Parsons, so some of these are in moody black-and-white), Pendle Hill, Duluth (my first incarnation there), the Champlain Valley years, and many dozens of my nieces. I don't have many from the last 15 years or so, through the digital age, since I took fewer pictures and they didn't often get printed out.

But if any of you have gone through this process, you know it is an emotional one. As with some of my memorabilia, I've held onto photographs not only to remind myself of the places and people in my varied and unusual journey, but as proof to show others, or as talking points. I've held onto this notion that a granddaughter figure might befriend me before I die, and I could sit with her and go through my pictures, telling her about people, places and situations. As I near 70, the notion that I will have such a person -- or that we will have the leisure to pore over memorabilia -- seems to fade. And these events and people seem almost literally like they are from another lifetime.

(I almost forgot to mention an important thing when I first published a few hours ago. Each picture that I have decided to release to the "no" pile, I have touched, and thanked that person or place for their role in my life. I hated throwing them out on a symbolic level, but when these photos are piled together, they are just too heavy to keep!)

One other comment -- it's been a bit unnerving seeing dozens of photos of my dad, smiling in nearly all of them, looking like the sweetest guy in the world and not quite as I have described him. For the millionth time, I've questioned my own experience, and yet deep down, I trust myself. It's a reminder that things can be -- uh -- complicated.

Tomorrow's chore is to go through the "keep" pile one more time, both to put the pictures in some sort of order, and to further weed out duplicates and others. This isn't serving to put the unconscionable cruelty of this moment out of mind, but it does ready me to be agile enough to serve the Goddess and the spirit of Love, moving forward.