Goddess Words 44: Bake

This is a hard morning to approach Goddess words, because so many of the terms on my list are on a high spiritual energy wavelength, and overall, this morning, I am not. I couldn't get to sleep last night for hours (a more "usual" problem for me is falling asleep immediately, but waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep). There's always bounceback from my deep epiphanies, and I guess after my "step forward" post the other day, a "step backward" could have been expected -- plus, this week I am spending a few days doing something old in a new way (see my last post). I think part of what kept me up in the night is trying to envision acting from a higher, purer place. It sounds great on paper, but the logistics and reality are another story!

So this morning, when I scanned over my original list of words, most of them (whether I have already written about them or not) seemed completely insurmountable. Too much to deal with, much as I wish to add to the foundations of a more Goddess-centered world...until I came to the simple word, "bake". Aha, I thought. A word I might be able to face today.

Some background. I don't quite remember when baking became important to me. My Schenectady grandmother was quite a good baker, although her daughter, my mother, was not, or at least she had zero interest in it. When Mom baked, it was from a mix. But on and off over the years, I've baked pies, especially in the fall, when I could use fresh local apples. That experience was catalyzed when a Duluth friend shared her pie crust recipe with me, using equal parts shortening and butter. I finally became a confident pie baker. (You may wish to go back to my December 8, 2017 post, "Baking Required".) I'm one of those people who sees a piece of fruit and thinks, great, what kind of pie, or bread, or crumble can I make from that?! (Or, can I paint a still life in oils?!) From 2021 to 2024, I added cookies to my repertoire in a serious way, making weekly batches which I hand-delivered to two Duluth shelters. Since coming back east, baking has become a bit more hit-or-miss again, but fresh ingredients still draw me -- yesterday, I made a crumble with fresh rhubarb, fresh frozen raspberries, and a leftover apple. Pretty tart, but yummy. I guess it is no surprise that I love to watch the "Great British Baking Show".

So what is the association with the Goddess? When I wrote this list, what was I thinking? Well, part of it must literally run deep. Almost all definitions of "baking" refer to cooking in the heat of an oven. And even though I never became pregnant in this lifetime, I am still very aware that all of us women are, in effect, ovens, potentially the place where new life "bakes". Earth herself is an oven, hot at her core, baking things that we have never seen and perhaps never will. And even though many modern ovens have glass windows in the front, there is always a bit of a mystery to the process, especially when you bake bread, Yorkshire pudding, or another item that might sink if the door opens. There is that hint of suspense -- how will it turn out? Is it baking properly? Is it rising?

Baking is an activity that virtually every woman alive has taken part in, and most women through history. (The only exception I can think of are the very rich, who are cooked and baked for, and I feel sorry for their loss!) It is creation. It is nourishment. It is love. It is for the good of the world. Apart from every other way in which stripping women of homes, food supplies, and kitchens is immoral, is depriving them of a place to cook and bake. I've experienced this in a relatively minor, nonviolent way in my vagabond life, but still, I know the frustration of not having your own cooking space, your own spice rack, your own bowls and spoons and cake pans easily at hand. Being uprooted deprives us of one of our most powerful ways of rooting, creating food for loved ones. I believe the Goddess cares about this, and is saddened by all the myriad ways that we have been lured away from doing our own baking and cooking from scratch, in community and for community.

I can only ever guess at the importance of my Goddess words to the Goddess herself, but I am proud to add them here as a definition of me. Right up there with "I am devoted to the Goddess", "I am a mystic", "I am a musician", "I am a thinker", "I am a lover", "I am a writer", "I am an artist", "I am an Aquarius", is -- "I am a baker". I think a new paradigm is currently in the oven; I smell its lovely aroma and see it rising. It won't be long now until it is born, sprung from the oven.

A Whole New Story

Well, the last few days have indeed been intensely hard. Really feeling the pain of a lifetime of blocked passions, rather than primarily analyzing it, hit me hard. Hard, hard.

And yet...

There has been a lifting of that old energy off my shoulders. It's almost as if the Goddess is telling me, "Dear one, you did your best. You would have found a more traditional path toward using your gifts if it had existed, but basically at this moment in history, it didn't. We found a way for you to learn in unexpected ways, in Duluth rather than London, rowing rather than singing, waitressing and retail rather than serving as an archivist, professor of music or religion, artist, or lawyer. You learned how to stay healthy on your own, to follow a path of love and friendship rather than money, and you saw me (and the condition of Mother Earth) sooner and more clearly than you might have otherwise. Your life was exactly as it had to be for the role you will play in the times to come. We needed you to take this kind of path. Thank you for being so steadfast."

So I do feel lighter, and more thankful! After several years of talking about rebirth, I think it has actually happened (thank you for putting up with me, my dear, patient readers!) The lingering darkness and bittersweetness is lifting. I can tell that I am open to a whole new story, entirely new kinds of possibilities. I'm listening to more and more talks online about astrology, metaphysics, and the intersection of spirituality and nature. I'm exploring some old things in new ways, genuinely no longer an energetic match to old things in old ways. It is unnerving, trying to get out of the habit of using old experiences to help anticipate ways of navigating in the world, but I realize I must start each day with a completely new slate, and to try to do something, anything in a different way, even if it is only the direction I head out on my daily walks. 

And if the evidence of my eyes and ears is correct, this is corresponding with a "whole new story" for earth itself. It is hard to draw away from the darkness that seems so out of control, and it is extremely painful, unbelievable. But it makes it all the clearer that the only viable path to the future is Love. Earth's new story is infused primarily with love, beauty, compassion, and joy. When that is the case, the old details and the old disappointments no longer matter so much.

It's a relief, actually

In my last post, I wrote about being hit hard by what I guess you could call the extreme contrast between my life and the new pope's. It was a hard piece to write, and to be honest, I hit an energetic wall all day yesterday. 

But it is a relief, actually. I don't think I ever completely understood how "wiped off the map" I was by the age of 17, just about the time when society as a whole was telling us young women, "for the first time in history, you can do or be anything you want." If that was true for other American women (and I know that it wasn't necessarily, but at least if it was theoretically true in first world countries by about 1973), then it was not true for me. I wasn't enough of a believer to become, literally, a Christian saint or nun, and I wasn't male enough to enter highest expression of the Episcopal/C of E church choral music tradition. My greatest gifts and passions seemed to be complete non-starters. I remember myself at that age, pale, sapped of life energy, just kind of going through the academic and personal motions. The fact that my family went from upper crust WASP to extremely impoverished almost overnight around that time probably wasn't the cause of this distress, but it certainly added to the confusion. I think the entire time I was at Smith (and frankly, most of the time since then), I was in a bit of a fog, earnestly trying to get good grades or do a good job at whatever I was doing, earnestly trying to fit in somewhere, yet feeling like I was marching through peanut butter. Because I tried so hard to stay on top of the spiritual growth piece of the puzzle, I usually managed to avoid feeling the actual trauma of my life energy and passion consistently hitting the wall, and being pushed back in my face.

And in ways, I've been the lucky one. The pushback I received was not, for the most part, physical abuse. I have never been raped. I have never been beaten. I have never been in a war zone. The rejection has been verbal, metaphorical, financial, and often quite subtle. Perhaps that is why it took so long to really understand how painful it has all been. Perhaps that is why it took the appearance in the news of a male spiritual leader of my exact age and nationality to realize how my balloon was deflated from the get-go while his was allowed to rise. It is heartbreaking, and this may be the first time I completely feel the heartbreak.

Ultimately, this isn't about the rather unusual specifics of my life. It is about the fact that the vast majority of the world's women have never truly had the opportunity to self-actualize. It is about the current paradigm almost completely wasting our true talents; the mess humanity is in shouldn't be surprising. If I seem to be fixated on the paradigm shift we are currently going through, it is because a Love-based paradigm is the only path I can see towards women's true empowerment and fulfillment. The cracks of my broken heart are letting in the light of this fresh beam of Love.

PS: My thoughts are with the area near Duluth, this morning, where several wildfires are raging. How unprecedented must that be, in May?

Another "What If..."

What if I had been a boy?

This whole new (American) 69-year old Pope thing has really hit me surprisingly hard. He is just a few months older than I am. According to all the stories I have read, early in life he knew he had a calling to be a priest. He rose up the ranks in the Church, and now he will have what is surely one of the hardest, most delicate jobs in the world, but he will also live in relative luxury, surrounded by the most glorious art, architecture, music and sculpture ever created. He will be supported in everything he does, waited on, venerated by over a billion people, and listened to respectfully by world leaders, clergy and ordinary Catholics. Clearly his family, and Chicagoans generally, are proud of him.

This little American girl also knew her calling early. I knew by 6 or 7 that I wished to be a nun or a saint. (If I told my parents this, I suspect they just rolled their eyes over their cocktails or said, "That's nice, dear.") By 8 or 9 (you've heard this story), I announced to my mother that I loved the Episcopal church and its music and liturgy, and that I was a good Episcopalian but I was actually pretty sure I was not a Christian. She was driving me down to choir rehearsal, and she almost drove right off Nott Street into a telephone pole, and through clenched teeth told me never, ever, to say such a thing ever again! Within a few more years, by 11 or 12, I had thrown out my strictly spiritual dream and focused on English church music, wanting to become the first woman conductor of the men-and-boys Choir of King's College, Cambridge. And yet, by the time I graduated from high school at 17, I understood that even this would never happen. Without fully understanding that I was effectively in exile -- as a post-Christian feminist American woman beyond the structures of the patriarchy -- I sensed that fulfilling any of my original dreams was hopeless and impossible. Now at 69, forget palaces and cathedrals, I have never had a permanent home or any real security outside the love and concern of friends and occasionally strangers. I am painfully separated from family (this is partly my choice). And, darn it, I still cannot find a decent, wearable pair of summer sandals, so I continue to use a very worn pair of hiking boots in the late spring heat. 

In the end, I could live without the glorious trappings of spiritual "power". Yet what would it be like to be heard, to be respected? To be embraced and lifted up? I cannot know whether, if I had been a boy, my path would have taken me to the top of the religious, church music, or spiritual world. But at least there would have been a better chance of not being invisible. I am grateful at least that I currently see such vivid signs of the birth of a completely new paradigm, one where women will play a prominent role!

I doubt I will ever have the opportunity to speak to the new pope. But if I do, these are the questions I would ask him: What if you had been born female back in 1955? Or what if hierarchies back then were all-female? What if when as a young boy you played "priest", your family chided you to remember that only women could be priests in your religion? What if, instead of encouragement, you had received only pushback? What if you were told over and over that only women had power in the religious aspect of society as well as all others? How would you have re-channeled all your spiritual passion? What kind of work would you have ended up doing? Where (literally and figuratively) would you be now? 

The Mother's Tears

The other evening, there was a brief hour or so of bright sun late in the afternoon. Needless to say, it was welcome, and quite spectacular, the sun being lowish in the sky and casting a rather orange glow on a suddenly brilliant green world. The "brief hour" was preceded and followed by an intermediary hour or so of waffling back and forth between grey/showery and partly sunny -- and then by about 7, we had returned to rain, quite torrential as I was going to sleep.

I've mentioned that I have discovered some wonderful New Age figures online who share my long-term enthusiasm for the future of the earth, and humanity itself. Their take on the spiritual leap we are in the midst of is very similar to mine. I cannot tell you what it means to finally find some kindred spirits after the long journey I've been on. 

Yet there is usually one significant difference -- as ever, I seem to fall between some cracks. For the most part, these folks speak of Source Energy, Infinite Intelligence, etc. For years, I also tried to use such neutral terms, but they were too detached for me. There are writers in the post-monotheistic world who still speak of God in the traditional way.  And then there are certainly Goddess-centered women who focus on connecting with Her through healing, Nature, clothing, rituals, etc. I love the immanency of this, and yet there isn't always the broader vision, the discussion of future trends that my intellect needs.

For me, the Age of Aquarius is the Age of the Goddess and Her values. I specifically see myself as one of Her representatives. Ultimately, do I think that the Creator can be limited by any human understandings of gender? Of course not. But although I was never a mother in this lifetime, I am a woman. I have felt the pain and rejection of the female experience and the Earth experience in my own body for over 70 years. I can't seem to completely slough off that pain, dismissing it as simple growing pains/birth pains in our spiritual leap upwards. I'm personally not the most "feeling" person in the world (thinking is my home base) -- but I do feel, and I believe the feminine face of the Divine has been feeling all along, the pain of war, "man's inhumanity to man", torture, the thoughtless use of the Earth, and the cruel shedding of the blood of humans and animals. She has cried often, and still does. Once the Aquarian age is fully established, there will be fewer occasions for literal tears, but tears right now are valid. (And can any of us imagine hundreds of female spiritual leaders gathering to choose a leader, with most of the world intensively following the event? Can we imagine female spiritual figures being that influential? I cannot.) I rarely cry, but today the mother's tears have caught up with me, for all these reasons.

It's Raining

Perhaps it is because I've most recently been living in the upper Midwest -- I am not used to day after day of rain (something that was rare in Duluth). Indeed, until a week or so ago, upstate New York seemed to be abnormally dry. Turning a corner as quickly as other factors in our life, the weather has made a sharp turn. The trees are covered with a layer of green lichen, and excessive rain has also caused the disappearance of my beloved raptors and other birds; a quick search just told me that wet feathers make it hard for them to fly. Yes, flowers are coming up like crazy, seemingly early. It's beautiful, but I'm finding it hard to fully appreciate the beauty, and not because of the rain, per se. Unprecedented changes are making me physically (and hopefully temporarily) soggy and logy. My own body is changing within me. Such intense energetic changes could hardly be taking place in the environment and in society around us, without their taking place within our actual physical selves. As with everything else, I expect enormous change, but need to stay as calm as possible, and connected to the Goddess, when everything is in transformation. 

If what I've been saying all along is true, Nature is doing what She needs to do to bring earth back into some semblance of balance. And at the risk of over-anthropomorphizing the Goddess (which clearly I am doing here), I often experience rain as Her tears. With all the forms of information all of us have access to, I can still only see or feel the tip of the iceberg of the myriad tragedies unfolding on the earth, but She experiences it all. She has been at the receiving end of most of it. She grieves. She knows how joltingly hard human life has always been for too many, and will continue to be during this transition upward. For the moment, in the Capital District, rain is a minor inconvenience, making it hard to get outdoor exercise (or even from a house to a car) without getting soaked. But around the country and the world, water is reshaping the physical landscape in a major way. The only way to make the process slightly less humanly painful will be to allow this reconfiguration to happen, not to blindly "rebuild" or return to our earlier vision. 

Referencing/Reverencing

Back on March 7 of last year, I wrote a piece on this subject ("Reference/Reverence") and I will try not to repeat myself. But here it is, a year later, and this subject is even more resonant. There is so much in the news that is horrifying and repugnant, so much (more than ever) that is the polar opposite of what I believe in, and it is almost impossible not to rise up, internally or externally. Even putting aside the decision about whether or not to enter into this societal conflict, there is the issue of how one is seen by people outside oneself. When you don't stand up on one side or another, you can be perceived as apathetic, spineless, supportive of the status quo...and all sorts of things that you aren't. Trying to explain that you are "post-duality" doesn't necessarily communicate anything but pompousness. I haven't yet dared to tell anyone I've already lived through this time and understand what will work and what will not -- that even makes me feel pompous! 

But ultimately, here's the thing: to respond to the evil that anyone outside me chooses to do forces me to spend my own (ever-shortening) life-time referencing that evil. I am focusing on it, making it more alive by my energy, and all that attention brings me closer than I'd like to "reverencing" it. At this moment of my life, if I have any passion at all (and I recently spoke of how that emotion has been hard for me to access outside English church music), I intend to focus it only on the Goddess and her values. I must "spend" my Love currency on Beauty, Mother Earth, Community, and this extraordinary galaxy-wide spiritual transition upwards. Love can be my only reference and reverence, the only use of my time.

I've been wearing a silver/amethyst ring that when purchased, I called my Goddess ring, and I was wearing it on the third finger of my right hand because I couldn't quite bring myself to wear it on the left. But yesterday, I switched it over, the symbolism being that I am now (and perhaps have always been and always will be) wedded to Her. An anchoress for the Goddess, whether I live next to a cathedral, a tree, a lake, or a river. And in a way that I don't think I've completely understood, I woke up this morning really, really understanding that the Aquarian age has started, and Love is the only path forward, for me or for the world. The time I have been expecting and anticipating isn't in the future, it is now. It is here.