Saturday was the Lion's Gate, a concept I had never heard of before sometime last year. (I'll let you look it up, because even now, after about eighteen months of listening to astrological talks, I still don't understand the actual astrological pieces of any of it, just the general energies.) This whole month, what with 8/8 Lion's Gate and then two eclipses, is apparently particularly powerful, astrologically and spiritually, and a portal for those of us women more fully embodying the Divine Feminine.
Because this portal appears to be coinciding with my reaching deep into myself to heal some remaining bitterness and pain around church music, it was interesting to remember words from Psalm 22, which I used to hear on recordings (and also sang at Royal Holloway and possibly also at St. John the Divine): "they gape upon me with their mouths: as it were a ramping and a roaring lion." In fact, this is such a classic psalm, giving creative organists leeway to literally mimic (musically) the roaring lion (and bulls and hounds, among other traumas!) Our choral Anglican chant would proceed in such a controlled fashion, while the organist decorated/word painted ornately around us.
In my personal life, I haven't been a roaring lion. And yet just now, I re-read the last three or four posts, and realized with surprising satisfaction that the roaring lion in me is coming out. By telling some of these stories, I am no longer in hiding. I am no longer as scared. The real me is becoming more and more visible. Roar.