Serendipities 2

Ten years ago, less than two weeks after starting this blog, I wrote a piece called "Serendipities 1". It's astonishing that I haven't written another essay on this topic since then, isn't it? But here I am, exploring serendipities at another life moment, about a completely different kind of incident. But not that much different...I keep spiraling around the same mystic tornado, just moving up or over or around the intense spiritual energies in updated ways.

This last month has given me opportunities to redefine my life focus. It isn't a case that I have moved beyond England and English church music -- there is still something so potent there that they will never not be part of my system. However, through some chance online discoveries about two months ago, I have become increasingly inclined in my more New Age direction. If you go back to "Digging Down on the Weekend" (March 31), you'll see some of this unfolding. In a single month, my "intersection" seems to have evolved to something more like Goddess-Quantum Astrology-Earth Changes. What I understand about astrology I can fit on the head of a pin (I am starting the process of at least learning a few basics), but what I have discovered is that there is a community of people out there as interested as I am in the coming earth and human spiritual transformation (way ahead of me, actually, in gaining expertise and exposure). It was always hard for me to fully embrace this futuristic aspect of myself, possibly because the other side of me was holding back in an effort to make my church music mark. Now, as a civilization, it seems we've crossed some kind of line and I can make this leap.

Still, the church music I love is not irrelevant in this regard. I believe it has a beauty and energy signature fully consistent with the coming age, and that it may play a key role in how all this unfolds, for me anyway. Similarly, my deep connection with English soil and the stone cathedrals continues to resonate. The music of the spheres needs grounding for us on earth, and all of this seems to be truly "of a one".

So, the serendipity is that yesterday, I listened to a remarkable interview, and within about an hour, I had found my way at least five miles to my favorite used bookstore, and bought three relevant books, two by one of the people I had just heard speak. This wasn't serendipity completely out-of-the-blue, it was serendipity following a hunch. My gut told me I'd find some books that I needed, and I went for it. I am thankful. And if I needed reminding, these are the kinds of serendipities that will characterize the Aquarian era.

My Beloved...Animals

I am reading Mirabai Starr's wonderful Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics (Sounds True, 2019).  Every time I read the words "women mystics", or find that aspect of myself validated through processes like studying my astrological chart, I feel I've finally come home. The woman that I am is an actual "thing". It isn't that it pushes aside my second-to-second concerns about whether I will ever have a permanent roof over my head, but it does remind me, once again, of how metaphoric my whole life has been! Where the "home" I've been seeking actually is.

However, the book is making me think (although I'm only on chapter 2) that there may be a piece missing in my mystical journey, one thread that ties mystics of many traditions together: an intense longing for a connection to the Divine, for union for what is sometimes called "The Beloved". This is too complex of a topic to really unpack here, but it is complicated, isn't it, by changing images of the Divine, and the movement from duality into post-duality...and it can be hard to think of your Mother as "the Beloved".

Still, Starr's discussion of this forces me to look at the fact that I have never really felt the kind of passion she describes, whether on the human plane or towards the Divine. (The closest exception may be how strongly I feel about England and English church music.) I've had very few moments of dazzling joy and intense longing for spiritual union. My spiritual journey has at times actually felt rather plodding, a step-by-step path away from today's spiritual and societal models, a long time in the murky middle where I wanted to avoid locking God into gender norms -- and more recently, regular steps out toward the other side, embracing the feminine aspect of the Divine, the Goddess. My "passion" (in true Aquarian style) may be more intellectual, clicking in place perspectives on how the Goddess might see certain situations or react to them. I feel passionate in my alignment with Her overall, but the word "yearning" doesn't resonate at the moment, perhaps because I don't feel quite far enough away to yearn for Her. Complicated...and perhaps by the end of the book some of this will be resolved or make more sense.

While I was "grappling" with this (my new favorite word!), an eagle flew by. A bald eagle. And as it (he/she?) soared, I did feel longing, to be one with it, to soar above it all, to be one with that kind of magnificence and freedom. The day had started with three wild turkeys in the yard (abundance, gratitude, life in community), and Saturday, while a friend was driving me around on some errands, a coyote (trickster, playfulness) crossed the road in front of us. I had never actually seen a coyote before. I've heard them, of course, but never seen one. I realize that increasingly I do feel a genuine yearning to see and experience these animal emanations of the Divine, these wild creatures, regularly and up close. Who knows whether all of us or all of them will survive the changes to come, but today anyway, they are the focus of my love and longing. They are my Beloveds.

No Going Back

One of the things I believe about this time is that it will be an unprecedented leap forward/upwards. This is putting aside all political, economic, and technological considerations. When you are a mystic, those factors are on the sidelines, and what is at the center is spiritual. Ultimately, I think spiritual considerations are driving all the others, that the influx of Love is rattling all the constructs not made of Love.

And yet even being more conscious of this than most people, I find it hard to cast my eyes consistently forward. In trying to move forward, I literally moved "back" six months ago (to the part of the country I know the best) and at times I still find myself trying to figure out my future by trying to decide how to reincorporate my past places or belongings. How can I pull it all together? Will I ever close this expansive circle? And let's face it, you cannot move much further back than your birthplace -- except to the womb (!) Perhaps in an odd way, that is what I am doing!

Yet seriously, what if all I have to work with from this moment on is the full person I have become in seventy years, plus the proverbial roller bag and over-the-shoulder tote bag? What if I won't have the privilege of having what my own maternal grandmother had toward the end of her life, a nice Victorian-era apartment with room for her creative tools and art books and cookware and paintings? What if I finally let go of most of the boxes of books, diplomas, family memorabilia, my academic and post-academic research (chant and Herbert Howells), and decorative tchotchkes? I've held on, carrying within me a decidedly old paradigm conceit -- that I will finally be valued in some setting or other, and somebody will want to know more about my background, my tastes, what was of value to me, how I got where I landed. That someone will want to write about me, or paint a John Singer Sargent-like portrait of me. In an odd way, I have kept this material as much or more for others' sake as for my own, proof to the world that I actually existed...But the Goddess knows who I am. What if the coming changes are so major that my relatively small array of possessions won't even matter? If my hunches are correct, old paradigm qualifications, proof of "worth", and written material will almost instantaneously lose their merit over the next few years. If I am truly a being of the new paradigm, as I have sensed for years, then this material may be, at best, an unnecessary weight, at worst, a complete impediment on the path ahead.

While I feel some urgency around this, I'm certainly not planning to do anything this weekend other than to sit with these thoughts. I'll just try to stay in the present (with the rocks and the birds and the budding dandelions and flowering trees) -- not moving backwards or forwards. It's a harder challenge than it seems, even for me!

Goddess Words 43: Action that's Fun

Yes, "action that's fun" is not only more than one word (joining a few on my list), but it also seems to be a strange one to focus on at this time. I mean, I agree. Fun. Yikes. What has been "fun" about 2025?

And why did I add it to my list in the first place? In a Goddess context, what is "fun"? I can't quite go back and remember my c. 2005 thoughts, but I suspect that I was trying to validate the kinds of things a mystic such as myself considers "fun" -- not attending night clubs, or heavy spending, or drinking, or competitive sports, or sunning on a Caribbean beach, or driving fast cars or boats. Even placing aside my singular idea of "fun" (attending or singing a choral evensong service), other "fun" things in my book are also more introverted -- reading, baking, watching hawks and eagles, visiting with friends, writing in my journal or blog, knitting, watching baking shows...

I suppose all of these have as their aim, "being pleasurable". Everyone on the planet finds pleasure in different activities, but certain activities are so quiet, so non-commercial, so peaceful that they are effectively invisible. The Goddess is used to invisibility, as are most of us women -- yet our fun, loving, beautiful activities are the glue holding societies together.

Yesterday, I did something fun that might seem unexpected for me -- I clambered around on some rocks. Now, I love rocks. Perhaps having often been resident on a lakeshore explains this. Like a "lizard" (my college nickname!), I like to sit on warm rocks. But as I get older, my poor bunioned feet cause me to be increasingly cautious. My toes head in directions other than forward -- I can only wear most shoes for short periods of time, and as a result, my ankles aren't as strong as they used to be. So I've been afraid of attempting to navigate uneven rocks and boulders. But yesterday, I threw caution to the wind, put on my sun hat, and went for it. And when I sat on one rock looking at other rocks (which more and more experts agree are sentient beings), I felt like I was among friends. I smiled. I was a wild woman in the wild, in a wilderness cathedral. The sounds were not "Preces and Responses", true -- they were the calls of birds and distant traffic and the wind in the trees. My response was to smile. I had acted. It was a perfect, fun, beautiful action for this moment in time. It was valid. It added, I hope, a healthy energy to the world.

 

Earth Days

There have been millions of earth days since the beginning of time. Even since the dawn of recorded human history, there have been well over a million days when earth's specific needs could have been prioritized, but for whatever reasons, they rarely have been. We're certainly at a pivotal moment, having brought the planet to the edge of non-viability. Calling one day a year "Earth Day" hardly makes a dent, does it? I've struggled a bit the last few days, looking backwards at what humanity has done, at ways in which women, many populations, and the earth have been undervalued. Yes, even I do what comes so naturally to us humans, even though I tend to do it inwardly -- I fight with myself and with a world of events that seem completely out of balance. I grapple.

And yet...once I chill out a bit, I remember this: we are in the midst of such an energetic and spiritual leap upwards that, in a few decades, our world may be almost unrecognizable. This isn't just that natural forces will re-form much of the landscape and the constructions that we thought would stand the test of time. It is that new, more brilliant life forms will start to become visible, especially to those with the eyes of Love who are able to see them. Viability for planet earth may not be about returning to a pre-Industrial Age reality (although some of the lush wildness of earth's life in the past may return. In this transitional moment, we may circle around and help to breathe new life into some life forms that have been lost or have been put at risk.) But ultimately we are circling upwards, so there will be new shapes, colors, and life forms. Mother Nature is the ultimate creative artist, and our limited sight may simply not be capable (right now) of envisioning how Earth's future will look. Fortunately, it is within our power to take appreciative note of the new phenomena we see, like the vivid rainbow I spoke of last week. And hey, Nature (even at Her most seemingly "destructive") gives us something awesome and beautiful to focus on in the midst of societal changes that are so shocking and profoundly troubling. 

A Double Rainbow

Yesterday, I saw what might have been the most beautiful, most vivid rainbow I have ever seen. It was late afternoon, and the slanting sun suddenly came out from behind extremely dark, rainy skies, yielding two brilliant arcs (although admittedly one was far clearer than the other). The end of the rainbow appeared to be about a tenth of a mile away (although I suppose if you were to walk to that spot, the actual rainbow would be further away still...), and what I noticed most of all was the brilliance of the purple, or violet. My phone's camera couldn't do it justice. And often, with my eyes, I cannot see the purple spectrum at all.

Then, to add to the thrill, there are hawks and eagles in the vicinity in this morning's strong, snowy winds. And when I took a walk, the snowflakes falling on my black jacket retained their unique, distinctive shapes just long enough for me to be reminded of their beauty and wonder.

When I say, if I survive these times, it will be because of Nature, it is not hyperbole. The works of man have become so grotesque that it is almost unbearable. I guess the blessing is that things in the news are so very clearly "what they are"... one doesn't have to wonder, or unravel ambiguities. The only joy I regularly find is in knowing that Nature will last, these other things won't. We are seeing the birth pains of the age of Aquarius. So inwardly, I align with rainbow, and eagle, and ladybug, and the grass greening in the snowfall, and the howling wind, and I stay expectant. What new natural marvel will show itself later today?

I'm doing something that breaks my heart, and sounds a little melodramatic...I am writing old-fashioned notes to many of my British friends, basically saying "adieu", because I sense that if there was a window of opportunity to get back there for a visit, that window may have closed, at least in the old paradigm sense of the word. I remain curious about whether all the things I love will be easier in the new paradigm...and I'll hold onto the memory of that brilliant double rainbow for the rest of this dear lifetime. 

A Portal Day

Informally, I consider the eleventh of any month to be a portal day...the two "ones" seem like a gate to be walked through. And I try to remember, early these specific mornings, to ask the Goddess for guidance. Getting through any day has always been a challenge, although I cannot remember a moment in my lifetime when things were so fraught with uncertainty, potential conflict, and rage. If I spoke in the past about love being the only path through these times, I'm being tested myself right now -- do I have enough love in me to get through one day unscathed, much less indefinitely into the future?

Yesterday was going to require a bit of interesting choreography...a ride to the local library, making photocopies at the library, walking half a mile or so to the convenience store, perhaps purchasing an ice cream cone to eat while waiting for a bus, taking the bus to a place I needed to hand in some paperwork, then a taxi back to where I am staying. For over a decade, I've been reliant on public transportation, walking, and the occasional friendly ride, but still, I never have quite relaxed into believing all will go well. Ultimately, when you have your own car, you have the power of your own timing, and that's not the case when you're dependent on others.

In the end, it was a curiously satisfying day. The ladies who run the library were friendly and complimentary. The woman who served me ice cream was equally friendly and helpful. As I sat and ate my coffee and oreo scoops, a man came up to me and said, "Happy Easter!" and pressed a scratch-off lottery ticket into my hand! I had never seen him before, and I just had time to thank him before he walked away. (I never have any luck with lottery tickets of any kind, but I'm going to save this for Easter morning just for the fun of dreaming.) At my final destination, the young woman who waited on me was extremely personable, and complimented me on my owl earrings! Last but not least, all the transportation, including taxi, went fine. They were modest destinations (interesting that my last post was on "travel"!) but I was beaming ear-to-ear, even knowing that every successive day's news seems to make foreign or long distance U.S. travel less and less likely or enjoyable. I'm still not ruling out wider horizons, but henceforth, every day of the month (including portal days) may need to be dealt with individually, in the present, and with more gratitude for a safe return than has been the norm, even for me. It reminds me that this should have been my way of operating all along; every day is a portal, after all.

An unusually grey, cold and rainy/snowy morning for mid-April. Will we get to see tonight's pink full moon?