Thresholds

In the northern tier of states, where I have always lived, Memorial Day weekend traditionally seems to be unsettled-to-poor, weather-wise, but this weekend "took the cake", right next the the lake; 40's and 50's, grey, rainy, and then yesterday, two violent storms, one of which brought tornados to other parts of Minnesota. I still prefer this to 90's and sunny, because mystic me has an excuse for holing up and thinking, but one is still aware of being in the only place in the country where trees and flowers haven't fully come out yet!

Still, it gave me time to realize something which I think is important, both to articulate  for myself and to mention to readers.

To some extent, I have been interchanging three spiritual concepts which are, at least at this moment in history, separate, or they may not overlap for everyone. The first is having an orientation to the divine feminine rather than the divine masculine. The second is having a unity/post-duality perspective. And the third is recognizing the law of attraction at work in the world, moving beyond the notion that "things randomly happen".

By and large, none of these concepts is the norm in society. And I'm not entirely sure whether I crossed over all three thresholds in this lifetime, or had already done it in previous lifetimes. I rather think the latter, but either way, when you are immersed in a world with billions of people, it may take a lifetime to find or re-find your own core beliefs...perhaps I'm fortunate to have done it with, potentially, a little more time to spare!

But the point I am making is that law of attraction, for instance, has many adherents who focus primarily on attracting shiny new cars and increased income...these same folks may or may not have any interest in the Goddess. And there are Christian mystics who have crossed the duality threshold into a notion of oneness; they may remain deeply rooted in traditional notions of God. While, for me, all three intertwine quite comfortably (the Goddess in me, emanating out, only wants to create love, beauty, truth and joy, and draw the same back to me), these are big thresholds in these violent times, and each individual may have different experiences of crossing one or all of them -- or not...

I always find Memorial Day rather excruciating, and this year, the parallel images of flowers being put on soldiers' graves and on the graves of young children were almost too much to bear. I guess all I will say is that I don't believe notions like "ultimate sacrifice" even exist in the construct we are entering, "over the thresholds"...

A generation or two from now...

What a painful week.

A generation or two from now, the humans who exist on Planet Earth will not look back at this time and wonder about our laws, our politics, our mental health issues, or even, per se, our use of firearms.  What they will find perplexing is the fact that this late in human history, so many people still had a duality-driven set of beliefs, an "us vs. them" mentality that encouraged fighting, violence, and death. People will look at our country with particular bafflement, even astonishment. Americans have used unprecedented freedom to create...unprecedented tragedy.

It's not that violence and weapons will be disallowed in the future. It is just that people will understand from within their connection to others (and Nature). It simply will not occur to them to hurt any other person or the earth. It is not that people will "stop" violence or the use of weapons or the spread of any unwanted phenomenon. People will simply know that they, personally, must heal their personal inner divisions, their personal anger, and their own personal brokenness, and create a haven of unity and love in their own selves, rather than try to fix or punish others. People will know the folly of trying to prevent violence by using the threat of more violence.

Where I am currently living, I have access to the British "Antiques Road Show". Recently, I have often turned to this program for a little bit of solace. It involves people in a beautiful setting, looking at (generally) beautiful objects, learning about crafts and art and history. I get to see my spiritual home "for free" at a time when I have neither the means nor the COVID-inner comfort with long distance airline flights. So imagine my reaction (I think it was Tuesday evening or Wednesday) when the episode I turned on happened to be filmed near the Somme, in northern France. The entire episode was devoted to memorabilia of World War I. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. But it's the truth of our human construct, isn't it? Or it has been. And the way to move beyond this construct isn't to fight duality, or to stop violence; it is to become "non-violent"/unified to our very cores. 

Battlegrounds

I guess it's a function of my age that my main source of information about what is happening in the world is still the network news. Probably most people under about 60 rarely watch it...and I learn a lot from the TV shows I still watch (more on that in a moment) and the ads in between. Computers are not my "go to", and I have a non-smart phone. I am slowly but surely making myself even more irrelevant, yet I like myself more as time goes on and I guess that's a higher priority.

Anyway, battlegrounds. This morning's are various midterm primaries, fights against COVID and monkey pox, Ukraine, and saber-rattling elsewhere in the world, just to name a few. I've been talking about my increasing sensitivity to all this fighting, be it real, symbolic, entertainment, or in my face on the streets. Yes, even in Duluth. Is it just me? I expected that as more unified energies started to infuse the world, more conflict would come to the surface, but the reality of it is genuinely hard for the heart to take. 

Life being a mirror, I came to terms recently with how hard I have fought my whole life, just to survive. This is not the "fight" of loving violence, or trying to gain power over others, or the warrior spirit. This is the fight of starting out at the bottom of a family black hole, and trying to claw my way out. This is the fight of being a seed planted too far beneath the surface and trying to make it to the light. This is the fight of knowing the infrastructure in place cannot support the kind of person I am, yet knocking on doors and writing letters and generally making a fuss trying to be seen or heard. It wasn't a fight to "win". I just believe deep down that I am valid, and that I have the right to exist as the person I am. I fought to stay true to myself, not to change myself to fit the conflict-driven norm. It's not really a subtle distinction, but I need to acknowledge the fighting I have done, and, like all fighting, it did not send pure loving energy out into the Universe. So, yes, I've even had it with that relatively low level of conflict. More and more, I am just sinking into the flow of the Goddess as best I can, and letting that stream take me. I know there is no reality to "death", so I don't need to fight for my life any more. I am in Her stream, and somehow, in ways I don't understand, I will be better off being a tree branch floating downriver than being used as a stick to beat down doors.

But one more confession. What is the hardest thing to release in my own battleground mentality? I still love the original "Law and Order". I love it when "Ben Stone" (or "Jack McCoy") goes at it in the courtroom (modern battlefield) and roundly beats the "bad guy". There is still just enough of that good vs. evil in me, my own inner lawyer, my own inner pioneering attorney grandmother, to thrill at a case well argued -- and won. I know that leaving the duality paradigm will be a blow to most forms of entertainment, literature, even music, dance, and poetry. Conflict is such an underpinning to everything, even the arts. What will we do without it? That's for another day, another blog post.

Non Sequiturs

At this liminal moment, the things on my mind may or may not have anything to do with what I have been writing about recently. And I guess that is OK.

I have been yearning to have some kind of small, hand-held musical instrument. Despite having been to two excellent organ recitals recently, I know that my organist days are over. Just to play the organ for a few minutes would involve letting a church know that I am reasonably skilled on the instrument, which would then lead to requests to play for services somewhere (not to mention a ton of practicing!). But I just cannot play/sing/or otherwise lead congregations in traditional hymns and music anymore. I miss playing Bach (perhaps somewhere, somehow, I can sit down and play the St. Anne Fugue again!), and I'd love to pull out all the stops and play a few hymns in an empty church, but that's about it. As you can imagine, it is not the right instrument for small-scale, personal playing. Over the winter, I occasionally thought a small drum would be fun, but oddly enough, what had begun to appeal was a rattle. 

Yesterday, as I was shuffling my oracle cards, that thought entered my mind, then, seriously, what card do I blindly pick but "Rattle"? The book speaks of shamans using rattles to connect with Spirit, and their efficacy as tools for moving forward in an earth-friendly way. I had had other plans for yesterday, but I decided to brave downtown's "colder by the lake", and took the bus to the one shop that seemed likely to carry them. Sure enough, a small selection was available, and I am now the proud owner of a pair of South American gourd rattles. For a little while this morning, I tried to get used to the sounds and the rhythms I can tap with them. And I was struck by the implied contrast between me, sitting on an old couch in Duluth, Minnesota, using a pair of rattles, and my English church music peeps, marching in stately lines and in dark choir robes and long white cottas into cathedral choir stalls to sing choral evensong. For perhaps the first time in my life, I wasn't nostalgic or ironic or embarrassed. I just embraced how wild it is that my life has encompassed such a wide spectrum. 

An unrelated funny thought has been on my mind recently. We Americans think of ourselves as the freest people on the planet. And relative to most countries, this is undoubtedly true. In small and larger ways, we have an outrageous number of options; brands and types of toothpaste, salsa, automobiles, health insurance plans, jobs, housing situations...you name it, we are free to try them all. But it has hit me, there is one area where we basically have no option, and that is to function within our capitalist economic system. What if, at the age of 18, everyone sat down with a wise counselor, and we could decide what system was best for us? For some, it would certainly be the system in place. For some, its opposite or democratic socialism. For some, a bartering economy. For some, a gifting economy. For someone like me, there would be no money at all...love, art and beauty, and joy would be the "currency". I can even imagine American-style advertising, all these systems saying "choose me, choose me", and there being absolutely no more shame in one's decision than there is in opting for decaf latte over espresso. Of course, there is probably no practical way this would ever happen. But it's an interesting thought, isn't it?! 

Crises

It is a measure of something that after barely ever using the word "crisis" in this blog for seven years, I am now using it again for the second time in about six weeks. 

And the word is completely warranted this morning. It is a crisis when gunmen routinely enter stores, malls, houses of worship, and other public spaces to kill people. It is a crisis when there is limited baby formula to feed the next generation. It is a crisis when human rights are threatened, when the environment is threatened, when seventy years of relative peace in Europe is threatened. It is a crisis when prices rise and people start becoming fearful.

As I've said before, I think that all of these crises are really a single crisis, kind of the final act in a play called, "Patriarchy", another word I have barely ever used. Last week, I bought a book in a used book store, published forty years ago, basically saying that patriarchy was the cause of all the crises facing humanity -- which, of course, were all the same crises we are doubly facing now. It was shocking to see this mirror held up to where we were then, and moving in my mind fast forward through the events and trends in between. Of course, in 1982, I probably would never have bought the book. I was working in the corporate world, trying to pay back a heavy load of student loans, trying valiantly to be a "normal" American in the wake of my heartbreaking decision to turn my back on England and a church music tradition that, as a woman, I couldn't enter. At that point, I didn't really see myself as a feminist, and these kinds of words were uncomfortable for me. They still are today, frankly. There's anger in them, frustration and anger, with a paradigm that just seems to keep giving us too much to be frustrated and angry about. 

At its essence, putting aside the male- or conflict- orientation of our current paradigm, the problem is that it is hierarchical. Somebody is above somebody else. Somebody is worth more than someone else. Someone's work deserves more income than someone else's work. And everything we do as humans is worth more than our earth home, and more than anything else in the galaxy. Instead of looking at our place in the Universe as a horizontal disc of equally important places and people and planets and lifeforms, instead of being able to generously embrace all life everywhere, we are taught early on to claw our way vertically to the top -- or accept a humiliating place at the bottom. And then we wonder why life is so violent and brutal.

Oh, dear friends. There is another way of living. It's hard to make it work, but it is worth trying to find the "place" beyond all these uncomfortable words and realities, and not put it off until that ultimate hierarchical concept, "heaven." Find heaven in one minute or one hour today, on this planet, in this moment, and it slows the worldwide momentum of crisis. Infinitesimally, perhaps, but that's all any of us can do today.

My Baker's Dozen

As this week draws to a close, there are literally dozens of possible world and national events to talk about. But I've decided to draw on every ounce of courage that I have, and publish a list I wrote in my handwritten journal on March 31. I hadn't planned to do so, feeling it was too personal, but there's the problem. For over six decades I have locked most of my passions, gifts and best qualities within me...Now, as I have said before, I literally have nothing, so I have nothing to lose. I have no employer, no investments, no permanent home, and no significant others. It is uncertain when I might be able to return to England, and if I do, I don't envision being able to start a career in English church music. (At this point, I can barely sing at all.) I've reached the point where, if "the true me" irritates people or prevents me from future "success", that's just how it's going to have to be. 

So...what prompted the list? I have been listening to a series of academic lectures this winter, basically at the PhD or post-doc level. Occasionally the academic jargon was a bit over my head, but overall, I loved it! My brain loved it. I was like a sponge soaking up water. That is what started this personal journal post, which I will present largely as is:

March 31, 2022

"...I think the reason I felt energized and elated yesterday afternoon was the fact that I was embracing the fact of my extremely high intelligence, my 'Genius IQ'. I mean, that is yet another thing that I collaborated with the world to try to snuff out. I'm going to list the 10 most important facets of who I am [it turned out to be a Baker's dozen of 13]:

1. I am a passionate woman!
2. My passion for English church music/musical skills
3. Passion for England itself
4. Passion for the Goddess/Her values
5. Extremely high IQ - intelligence
6. Extremely high wisdom quotient, visionary
7. My upper crust WASP heritage/aristocracy
8. My belief that capitalism is unhealthy
9. My outspoken feminism
10. My ability to write and speak truthfully and be vulnerable
11. My artistic vision and skills, love of beauty
12. My capacity to love
13. I am a homebody and a contemplative

If you think of it, every single one of these traits, either "the world" tried to snuff out, or my family or friends subtly were uncomfortable with (and/or I actively tried to downplay so others wouldn't feel intimidated) or were reasons I didn't get jobs, or scared me...or...

If and when I am fully me, I am "terrifying". Our culture hasn't got a "place" for someone like me. That is why I am "homeless"...

...Every single one of these truths make me who I am! They are the traits the Goddess gave me in this lifetime. In my own agony and discomfort around just about all of them, I wasn't true to her. I didn't honor her. I saw me through the eyes of a male God and hated myself. I was terrified of myself. I disempowered myself.

I "confess" these things. I don't think in this lifetime in this culture I could have done any differently, but I acknowledge this state of affairs to the Goddess. I want Her to know that I recognize my part in not up to now fully embracing the woman She created me to be. I want her to know that -- at the risk of being perceived as the kind of narcissist that is my family heritage -- I celebrate all these qualities from this moment forward.

So, there you go. It's powerful, so, of course, that's why it was so scary to publish. There have to be women and men out there with lists of their own, afraid to let the world know who they really are. But with homes being flattened by tornados, fires, and wars, and lives being changed overnight by disease and the economy, there's no time like the present, is there?

It's interesting. In addition to trying to hide the qualities I was criticized for (or thought I would be criticized for), there are several huge, challenging paradoxes. I've spoken often about the difficulties I've had reconciling the Goddess with church music, so I'll leave that for now. But the other huge one is reconciling my inner Dowager Countess of Grantham with my total lack of belief in the validity of capitalism (or communism for that matter!) I mean, stately homes, all the furnishings, staff, grounds, etc. -- not to mention all the Western world's great art and music -- would not exist without the economic underpinnings of capitalism, as it grew over the last 500-plus years. It is in part because of my inability to bear that system that I've lived as I have, that my wardrobe consists of a handful of items from big box stores, that I've never owned property, etc. So how to explain the fact that the environments I feel most comfortable in are, truly, stately homes, cathedrals, major art museums, and the like? In the "Upstairs, Downstairs" of life, I am Upstairs. What I wouldn't give to live in that environment (and wear those clothes!) even for just one day! Talk about a truth you want to hide from the world. But somewhere in there must be a gift of leadership and nobility that I am meant to use, perhaps in a different form. Lordy.

What's your Baker's Dozen? Just write them down in your journal, and silently embrace them. It will change your life. To finally be able to say, "This is me, and I love her" is a complete rebirth.

Feeling my Way

One of the challenges to following a more deliberately Goddess-centered life is that there is no institution to turn to, no Bible, no holy book. If, in fact, early civilizations were more rooted in the feminine and in the cycles and wisdom of the earth -- and if many of the relics from that time can be interpreted that way -- there is still no written record. It was literally pre-history (pre-his-story). I owe a debt of gratitude to dozens of writers whose books, at the very least, told me I am not alone, and between all of us, we may each be filling in pieces of the puzzle. But this path as I now understand it was, and continues to be, a journey more of the intuition than of the reasoning mind. 

That's hard for me (!) Starting in the 1990's, I made several efforts to find academic programs where I could study my emerging interest in the divine feminine. The traditional seminaries and divinity schools (at that time) had no programs, and few courses, on women and spirituality outside the Christian worldview. Several nontraditional programs that I looked at seemed exciting at first, but weren't academically rigorous enough for me and/or were too much from a male perspective. How's that for a paradox? Even now, I gather that this whole field is problematical for mainstream education, not the least of which because of the risk of speaking in now-outdated, rigid gender stereotypes and generalizations. This is a real concern, and I struggle with my own tendency to oversimplify (men do this, women do that). I'm going to devote a full post to that, I think.

Still, no matter how it ends up being defined in future, there is a real but invisible reality/set of values/set of choices in our world. To carve that alternative path through our visible world systems takes a process of almost moment-to-moment discernment and discomfort. For years, it seemed everywhere I turned, institutions worked in ways I didn't understand, and I was willing to take on the mantle of the fool. It was easier to think, and present to the world, that I was simply too ditzy, too impractical, came from a family that wasn't good with money, and so forth. It is only now that I see that perhaps all along, I was resonating with Goddess values that are such a complete contrast with our world, that there has literally been no room for them. I was invisible because these values were invisible.

Yes, another metaphor! It is like being severely nearsighted, making your way down a dark tunnel. Each time you hit the right or left wall, it hurts, and you feel your way back to the center and slowly move forward. You start to trust your intuition the way you used to trust only your brain. When "truths" are being presented in the media, or the corporate, medical, religious, or entertainment worlds, you listen to your body and see if they feel good to you. If not, rather than fight back, you feel your way back to your own center, and try to operate only from there. You live with the fact that there are few models, no "authority" figures, little to no "pay", and no "logical" set of steps forward. There is, to borrow a term from one of the major world religions, no "Way". The path will be different for each person, and consist step-by-step of the most loving action (or at the very least, the least harmful, least fearful action). In this blog, I'm definitely feeling my way. But I think I have finally reached the point where I understand that the reason my life has been so challenging isn't that I didn't do the old paradigm "good enough". It is that I wasn't able to let go, trust my feelings, and do the Goddess paradigm completely enough.