A Saturday on the Edge

I started to predict, back in the 1990s, that the decade of the 2020s would be extremely challenging. How did I know it? I don't know. I guess by the 90s, I had been alive long enough to realize that my own feminine gifts weren't being put to good use or financially supported, and I saw that this was true for most of my female friends. I realized that almost all my gut instincts ran contrary to how the world worked, which suggested that half of the world population is similarly prevented from making their best contributions to society. I suppose I hoped that within 20 years, cultures would see the unfairness of this and start to shift. Increasingly as the years passed, the musician in me could literally feel the vibrations of a world crescendo that simply couldn't be sustained indefinitely. And there was an odd humor in the possibility that with 2020, our "perfect vision" would start to emerge from the rubble of chaos.

But no matter how long one has expected something, it still doesn't diminish the sense of sadness, unease, and hopelessness at seeing the world gearing up yet again for what could become quite a substantial war. As a woman of 66, I have lost all my layers of intellectual curiosity about war, the why's and how's of battles past and present. I'm sorry, but military heroes are not my heroes. You cannot love and attack people at the same time. It is as simple as that. I resent what little I see from afar of war (as I do of over-development and over-consumption), almost literally feeling the gouging of the earth as if it were gouging of my own skin, explosions as if it were something blowing me to pieces, plastic or weaponry waste as if it were being stuffed in my nose and mouth. What we do to each other, we are doing to the earth, and to the larger Universe and the smallest atom.

My only current consolation in it all is believing that this is happening as all of us are being pulled spiritually upwards, into that "post-duality"/stream of love reality I keep talking about. It won't be for everyone. But our earth home cannot survive our current path. It cannot survive a civilization that does not respect women and honor Mother Earth and the spiritual feminine. Next week, I'm going to start sketching out what a world inspired by Goddess values would look like. Even I find it hard to "see" this clearly enough to talk about, but until we can see it we won't be able to create it.

Dreams, Con't

This has been an unusually active dreamtime for me. Or at least I am remembering more than I normally do.

Tuesday morning, I awoke from what was truly a nightmare, not my normal "can't get from point A to point B" kind of dream. It has left me almost flattened for two days, functioning but absolutely (as my mother used to say) "not myself". 

All I will say about it is that I experienced it as the reality of being, essentially, in the middle of a war zone. It is odd that it had the impact it did, given that one might say I should have "felt" several steps away from events. I don't fully understand the dream process, but in this one, dream "me" was watching a television show of people watching a television news report. Yet the net result was that I, the dreamer, ended up being absolutely in the middle of the violence. As someone whose only exposure to war and conflict has been second-hand (this makes me a most fortunate being, I know), it was as if my physical body was having this experience for the first time, and the pain and trauma were real.

Over the years, I have been teased for not going to thriller and action movies, or if I find myself at one, for averting my eyes. I avoid most television shows that portray violence. "It's not real, Liz, don't be ridiculous." And yet, I've always felt that there is a level on which it is real, that my body, at least, doesn't know the difference. Sure, I watch and read more innocuous mysteries, the ones where someone stumbles across a body and the emphasis is a more cerebral solution to a problem. Yet at times, even those are too distressing.

As I start to pull myself back together, I just find myself wondering, why do we humans inflict such hell on one another, whether it is in war, on the streets, or one-on-one? And then even more perplexing, why do we inflict this experience on people as "entertainment"? Even movies aimed at children seem to contain gratuitous violence, perhaps numbing them (or addicting them?) to future lives of violence. People might say, "this is reality", but as a woman and as someone trying so hard to access the values of the divine feminine, may I say, it is not my reality. And it doesn't have to be our communal reality; we are choosing it. The dream helped me to feel and fully understand the insanity of it all.

Valentine's Day 2022

Back on February 15, 2017, I wrote a post about Valentine's Day, every word of which is still applicable now. Check it out. (Sorry to be so low-tech, but I cannot figure out exactly how to add links on my new computer, and I guess I am staying rather deliberately Stone Age.) 

I thought I would add two things today. The first is that the kind of love I am talking of in recent posts, "the only power in the Universe" kind of love, both is and isn't the hearts-and-flowers/relationship love celebrated (to a small degree) in our culture. I mean, that's part of what love is, but probably the tip of the iceberg. And because our duality paradigm tends to present "love" as constantly at odds with fear and hatred, it is hard for us to wrap our heads around a scenario of an entire Universe filled only with love. Our brains and hearts cut love short, turn it around and focus it on something to fight, and we can't feel the expansiveness of the whole. If I have any sense of it at all, it is still my brain that "gets" it more than my heart, but this is slowly changing.

Despite this lifetime having been rather empty of one-on-one love and romance, I feel increasingly as if it is something I did experience in at least one earlier lifetime, and this kind of serious, committed relationship isn't at all unimportant or superficial. At some point in one's string of lifetimes, it may be the best way to learn about divine love, one wide, glorious doorway to it. Will I circle around again? I hope so, before too long. But in the meantime, today, I love that I am sheltered, fed, warm, and healthy, and that I have friends. In whatever form love visits you today, may it be a beautiful experience.

Post Number 600

First of all, may I just say how unutterably tragic it is that the world is teetering on the brink of another war. As of the early television news this morning, it was "just" the brink...all involved have the power to back away and find other solutions, as there are other solutions to almost any sort of conflict. But when too many people are actively attracted to conflict, or when too many people are invested in conflict, or when too many people hate or are fearful, it becomes a law of attraction thing. "Like energies attracting like." If there ever was (or is that "were"? Augh!) a weekend for the rest of us to calmly manifest love, creativity, beauty, and harmony, it is this weekend. 

So today appears to be my 600th published post. I started writing back in August of 2015, which means I have averaged approximately 100 essays a year. Truly, this blog is one of the handful of things I am most proud of. The content, I attribute to that of the Goddess within me, to the extent to which I am able to translate my impressions of Her into words. But the pride comes more from the fact that as of yet, I haven't lost heart and given up. Every single push of the "publish" button has required increasing amounts of courage. I don't look very courageous, with my greying long brown hair, bundled up against Duluth's bitter cold in about five layers of clothes. I don't feel very courageous, creakily getting out of bed in the morning and simply trying to get safely up and down the city's steep hillsides to the bus stop, or post office, library or grocery store. 65-going-on-66 is no walk in the park. But this blog "place", where I have practiced finding the deepest layer of me and letting her out to air, is my life right now. And I am so grateful that it is -- and you are -- here with me.

I'm no numerologist, but evidently six is the number of such things as love, harmony, empathy, and nurturing. It is undoubtedly the number for this month, 02-22, and for this year of 2022. So let us not forget that at the core of this tumultuous year, beautiful qualities reside. 

Lost Sheep

Over the last few weeks, the traditional Church of England General Confession (which we Episcopalians of the mid-twentieth century learned from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer) has been weaving in and out of my consciousness. "We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts...We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us..." 

The context in which I understand these words has changed entirely, of course. For me, this isn't about sin in the biblical sense. It is about humanity having completely lost sight of the validity and crucial importance of love, the divine feminine, and the health of the earth. We've lost ourselves in an endless addiction to buying and consuming. Our technical prowess has far outstripped our spiritual capacity to use tools wisely. We worship conflict, and dismiss love and beauty. We thrill to the sight of tanks and explosions and weapons, whether on screen or in real life; we demand convenience and safety, even as the piles of plastic pour into landfills and the ocean. "And there is no health in us" -- is the pandemic really "about" COVID, or the anger that is spreading like wildfire? Is it possible that global warming (and all its attendant ills, including disease) is at least in part due to the heat of our own rage?

A "general confession" in this religious tradition is one spoken by the whole congregation together, as differentiated from a personal confession (to a priest) of specific individual sins. I suppose it is a way of saying, we are all in this together. I'm one of those people who has spent a lifetime apologizing, often for things I didn't do. I felt such a chronic sense of shame and embarrassment, that the word "sorry" came out all the time. In recent years I have tried to grow out of taking responsibility for things that, strictly speaking, I didn't do. However, I am a human being in these times. Directly or indirectly, I have been a part of what is beginning to feel like an awfully lost culture. I don't believe the Goddess wants us to spend valuable time in worshiping her or apologizing for past "sins". However, I have a hunch She would appreciate a moment of acknowledgement from all of us, individually or collectively. We have strayed too far from love. We are hurting ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth. Most of us have the capacity to re-align closer to love, each and every minute. In the traditional prayer, petitioners ask to live a "godly, righteous, and sober life..." My version of that would be, "May I love myself, my neighbor, and the earth." And in the face of all that is before us, may I not lose heart.

Thursday Miscellany

Northern Minnesota's air temperatures this morning ranged from -20 to -40 degrees F.  To get the wind chill temperature, add (or subtract, if you will) another ten to twenty degrees. At about 6:30 a.m., I took some trash out to the curb for today's pick-up, and was reminded how, apart from the almost instant frostbite, these temperatures are a difficult challenge for your lungs. I mean, you take a deep breath, and throughout your system an alarm seems to go off saying, "where's the oxygen?" 

Thirty years ago, I had to work no matter what the weather. When my car didn't start, I'd stand like an ice sculpture waiting for the bus, arriving at the restaurant in tears, and blinded by the half inch of solid ice on my glasses. My first winter out here, I frostbit my feet, not understanding that I needed boots large enough for space around my toes. And having no health insurance, I did not seek treatment for it. In the intervening years, my feet have healed enough to function with the right boots, but in this off-the-scale frigid weather, even indoors they feel strange, like they know I am "this close" to doing it again. I am privileged to be retired enough not to have to go outside, but the reality is that I both love and fear life in this climate. Around here, you can't even pretend that humanity is in charge. We are here at Nature's sufferance, and it is life that, for over half of each year, is on the cutting edge of being unworkable.

The price I pay for choosing "low-income retirement/time to write and be a contemplative" is housing insecurity, which is probably more frightening here than almost anywhere in the U.S. But it is as broad as it is long...this winter, with a roof over my head, I have been in more of a constant state of gratitude than I have ever been before. Every time I walk by a warm radiator, or have warm water for a shower or to do dishes, or even when I just look at the outside thermometer, I say, "Thank you Goddess." And I mean it.

There was a great example on the news this morning of what I was talking about yesterday, our tendency to fight negative conditions, which I believe leads to the growth of those conditions. Cities, states, the federal government, even the White House, are geared up to "fight gun violence". Oh, dear people, no. Sometimes, I feel like my motto has become "res ipsa loquitur". The thing does speak for itself, doesn't it? I mean, when your system encourages weapons manufacturers to sell more weapons; when your movie, television, game and publishing industries glorify violence; when the belief is in place that fighting is the only way to achieve "victory", how on earth could fighting violence ever diminish violence? If I'm proved wrong, I will eat my proverbial hat. But until then, my work for the day is accessing (and trying to stay in) a place of harmony, alignment, and peace. And moment-by-moment gratitude that today I am sheltered.

Words of War

In the two weeks that I was focusing on my experience with narcissism, there has been considerable saber-rattling on the world scene. 

I need to say this; putting aside the realities of war, conflict, hatred, prejudice, and injustice, which are unbearable, I have reached the point where I also cannot bear hearing or reading the words of war. In fact, I can bear them so little that I won't even select a few to use as examples. The words themselves hurt. I feel pain, within myself, on behalf of people who may get hurt, and on behalf on Mother Earth who is inevitably injured by human conflict, verbal or physical.

A case can be made that I am far too sensitive. Certainly that is what people have told me my whole life. But I think now, late in life, that I am attuned to a post-duality/only love core reality, a thermostat that I finally trust. Because we are entering a time of shifting paradigms, and the old paradigm feels ancient, completely outdated. It even looks outdated on the news film. We have been through this too many times over thousands of years. Yet the war paradigm is going to be fighting for its life, and words are a big part of that. 

Whenever possible, we can choose to pay close attention to the words we say. A few years ago, a lawn sign showed up on many front yards that said "HATE has no home here" (or words to that effect). I remember cringing, because these well-meaning people had, in fact, given hate a prominent home in front of their house. So many organizations are "anti-war" or "anti-racism" or "anti-global warming", yet these kinds of titles simply reinforce focus on the negative condition, and help it to grow.

In a post-duality world, there is no conflict. There is no "anti-". There is no "other". There is nothing to fight. Look, I just focused on duality in those sentences, didn't I? It is genuinely hard to re-birth oneself out of that paradigm. Noticing one's own words is a first step. Noticing the effect others' words have on us is a second step. Then comes articulating what we really want -- a world of love, peace, harmony, and beauty. If people think we are being Pollyanna-ish, so be it. Let's be Pollyanna-ish together.