Gravity at the Temple of Aphrodite
30 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Myths of Our Lives Tags: Aphrodite
Celebrate February by honoring Aphrodite. Aphrodite, as she was known to the ancient Greeks (she was also called Venus by the Romans) is best known as the Goddess of romantic love and sensuality, but she can also be so much more. If you are in the Boston area before February 20, be sure to visit Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and their exhibit titled “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love.” Learn more about the exhibit here. The exhibit brings together over 150 pieces of art and everyday objects relating in some way to Aphrodite. Included are not just sacred and sometimes erotic art, but everyday items related to marriage, children, and even Aphrodite’s role as patroness to seafarers.
One of the curators of the exhibit said in her written comments that, as she lived with all these objects over time, she came to see that Aphrodite was really the Goddess who brought people together, who propels us into each other’s lives. This emotional and spiritual gravity is every bit as strong and important as physical gravity which keeps the stars and planets spinning in their orbits. Not everyone will agree, but, to me, that makes her not just a Goddess of love, but an expression of a force that includes love as well as all those emotions, impulses, and desires that pulls us to one another, a recognition that we are not really independent individuals, but part of a web of inter-related beings.
To me, this force has an effect on every moment of our lives, but really has no name. It is so deeply a part of us that we rarely notice it unless we are riven with sorrow when we are without a loved one or in pain when we are forced to live in solitude. As if we didn’t know the importance of being in a unity with others from our everyday experience, research study after research study has shown that being social – connecting and feeling a part of other people’s lives – is essential to physical and mental well being. People who spend time with others in diverse networks creating strong bonds live longer, have stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure, suffer from less memory loss and maintain better cognitive functioning, and are generally happier and less stressed. Condemning prisoners to solitary confinement is one of the cruelest forms of psychological torture.
Aphrodite’s power is, to me, not just the force bringing different individuals together, but also that which calls the many aspects of ourselves to come together to be our whole selves. As I look back on my life, sometimes I see myself not as one being, but as many early versions and shadows of who I am now. Some of these are the child who believed in the endless potential of the future, the teenager who could be silly for days on end, and even the young woman who assumed that humanity is at heart benevolent. Some days these versions of me all seem within reach and other days they seem irretrievably gone. How I would like to gather them back to me, like lovers or children lost. Many of the statues of Aphrodite have a very inward-looking aspect. Perhaps by reflecting a little on Aphrodite we can tap into this power of integrating all our selves into one essential, unfolding being.
To our peril, reverence of this force that Aphrodite evokes seems to be in ruins just like so many of her ancient temples. For all the lip service that the concepts of “community” and “unity” receive, words and behavior that divide people through borders, stereotypes, or social, religious, ethnic, or political boundaries seem to be valued highly in our century. Name-calling in politics is at an all-time high and is rewarded with votes. Officially-sanctioned discrimination and divisions seem to be everywhere. Rarely do we have time in our overly-busy culture to heal the fragmented aspects of our individual selves. What a different world we would have if everyone truly believed and acted on their belief in unity as a real virtue, if Aphrodite and her power to bring together were truly celebrated now as her image was in ancient Greece.
As we join the rest of our culture in sending Valentine’s cards and eating candy hearts in February, maybe we can find our own ways to celebrate Aphrodite and her special power of bringing people together. At one time in ancient Greece, she was worshiped in temples with elaborate rituals. Those of us who can’t travel to Europe to do that can still keep her in our minds and hearts this month in our own ways. Perhaps we might like to contemplate these words from Sappho, who mentions Aphrodite often in her poetry and who seemed to feel her as a presence in her everyday life:
I asked myself
What, Sappho, can
You give one who
Has everything,
Like Aphrodite?
What can we give to ourselves and each other besides candy and flowers, what thoughts and actions can we leave on Aphrodite’s altar within ourselves, to honor her and her mighty power to make us one within ourselves and with one another?
SEEING DOUBLE: Goddess Pairs Pop into Popular Culture
13 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in Goddesses in Pop Culture Tags: double-goddess, goddesses in popular culture, River Song
One of the unexpected twists and turns of raising a child is becoming very well-acquainted with popular culture. I hadn’t really seen much commercial television or many movies for a good 15 years before I started watching them with my son and being occasionally surprised and delighted to see goddesses popping up in the oddest places. Most recently I’ve been thinking about double, sister, or mother-daughter goddess pairs. This archetype could be one goddess with both destructive and creator sides, like Kali, or goddesses of both the underworld of the dead and the upper world of the living, like Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal or Demeter and Persephone, or any of many other similar traditions from around the world.
I grew up watching the Wizard of Oz movie, but I hadn’t thought about the two witches as goddess archetypes till recently. They are identical sisters, one “evil” and bent on death and destruction and the other “good” and helpful (with a really great sparkly dress). This past year, I also found a very delightful time traveler by the name of River Song in the British science fiction series “Doctor Who,” one of my son’s favorites. River Song has two aspects – she can be a gun-totin’ avenger who wreaks havoc and beats up evil aliens when she needs to while being at other times a deeply wise, profoundly loving and transformative figure who sacrifices her own life for others. All of these characters strike me as having elements of the double goddesses, as being both “wrathful” and “compassionate,” life-giving and life-taking. As I think about the witches, they seem as if they could be caricatures of the double-goddess, the trappings of the dualities of these goddesses without the depth and spirit, battling rather than transforming and expressing the dualities of life. At the same time, River Song seems to me to be a 21st century version of the double-goddess–well-integrated, powerful, and able to effectively navigate our century (and the future). I doubt that either the witches or River Song were written with any ancient goddess figures in mind, but their similarities and differences, given that they were written about 100 years apart, seem telling to me.
Both the witches and River Song obviously have this double component and each are part of fantasy fiction. Both are theoretically aimed at families with kids. Both, I think, have deeper messages than most entertaining fiction, whether the political issues that supposedly underlie the Wizard of Oz or the Doctor Who values of non-violence (mostly…) and kindness. Quite importantly, both are portrayals of real female spiritual power. In the Wizard of Oz, it is the witches who really can make things happen, whereas the male wizard is just a charade. River Song’s influence is more usually more subtle, making significant transformations in situations and other characters with a few words or a well-placed gift.
At the same time, both have very significant differences. The Oz witches are fragmented into two beings and neither one has any component of the other, rendering them so one-sided as to have no relationship to real women’s lives. In contrast, River Song’s two aspects are well-integrated. She was brainwashed as a child to be an assassin (she has a lot of backstory…), but rather than completely denying that experience, she has made it critical to her ability to both defend herself and others and her wisdom that comes from deep and sad life experience. She is in control of her two aspects and can choose which to express depending on which is needed. This seems to me to be a fairly good description of how real women use their power – acknowledging all aspects of themselves and being able to call on whichever they need to reach their spiritual and worldly goals.
In addition, the witches and River Song seem to me to be moving in opposite directions in terms of stereotypes of women. The two Oz witches reinforce the image of women as “good” or “evil” that has caused so much destruction and repression over the millennia. While again, that was not the intent, the reinforcement, especially given the wide distribution of both books and movie, was real. River Song moves the stereotype towards oblivion by being complex, emotionally human (if not strictly biologically human), and able to use both aspects of herself for good. She also has a healthy sexuality, loving the way she looks and going after who she wants to be in a relationship with.
Of course, the characters were created at very different times. The Wizard of Oz was written in about 1900 before women could vote, when women had few career or life choices, and when only a few pioneers in the western world like Matilda Joslyn Gage considered the importance of female spirituality or ancient goddess archetypes. River Song follows on decades of research, publications, and more public awareness of female divinity in history and in contemporary women, whether any of these consciously went into her creation or not. I like to think that this speaks well of how much more openness to and acceptance of women’s spiritual power there is now than 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago, since I really can’t see a River Song-type character in popular television turning up much before that.
To me, a major task of our generation is to find ways to translate the rich heritage of female divinity, including those goddesses that are millennia old, for our own times. River Song and other characters reflective of positive female divinity are, to me, fresh voices in how to do that, even if this was not an intent of their creation. (The witches in the Wizard of Oz are, to me, reminders of how far we have come. ) I would never have placed a complex wrathful goddess in a science fiction tv show, but she works wonderfully and subtly speaks to the social and ecological issues addressed in the episodes. She and other similar characters may not be responsible for major transformations in how people experience and express their spirituality, but they can be cracks that help open the door to new ways of thinking.
Where are you seeing goddesses in places you didn’t expect?
Revering Forgotten Dreams of Our Earliest Mothers
01 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in In the Past
I begin the New Year with a post about our earliest art and spirituality…
As we enter into winter’s deepest weeks here in the northern hemisphere, when the light is growing but the cold and snow drive us inside, it is a good time to enter into the “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” as Werner Herzog calls the cave in France that gives his film, just out on DVD, its title. The film, which had only a very limited theatrical release, shows rare footage of the art in the cave, some dating to 30,000 BC, as well as what little information exists about what may have happened there.
Most of the paintings are of animals running, fighting, hunting, resting and walking — things Paleolithic humans would have observed animals doing. The only figure that appears to be human is of a woman’s lower half that resembles the Willendorf statue figure.
As the scientists in the film explain, we really cannot know what went on in the cave or, assuming that the paintings had a spiritual function, what Paleolithic spirituality was like. However, we can express what we, as humans, experience in the presence of this art, whether in person or, when that isn’t possible, through media like this film.
When I look at the figure of the half-woman, I see the power of creation surrounded by the life-giving as well as life-taking power of nature in the dynamic yet precise animal drawings. Thinking back to the environment of those times, the animals were both what provided life for women and their families as well as perhaps the greatest danger as people were killed or injured hunting or getting in the way of stampedes or animals on the prowl for food.
What I love most about the cave paintings is both their intense beauty as well as the proximity of the power of the female figure to that of the animals. The female figure is close to the animals that original creators must have greatly feared at times. Her power is also deeply embedded in the power of the animals as if both were elements of the same spiritual power. Whatever the paintings meant to the original artists, when I see them, I feel tremendous courage in facing and putting oneself in the midst of one’s fears as well as acknowledging and celebrating one’s own spiritual power.
How would this translate to our own time? To our own lives? Can we use our own spiritual power as life-givers, as humans, to face the most dangerous aspects of ourselves and transform them into beauty, into life-affirming power? So many of us do this each day when we use anger at injustice to effect change, when we turn back cruelty with kindness towards its victims, when we name those prejudices that have gone unchallenged for too long for what they are.
The lives of those who created these paintings are so different from ours that we can never know whether our experience of them is anything at all like that of their original creators. Yet, at the same time, I do believe that some experiences are universally human. As I was thinking about this post, I got two automated calls from our local police department. One reported a little boy missing in our neighborhood and asked for help in keeping an eye out for him, then the other told us that he was home safe. In the cave are the footprints of a child about the same age, most likely made shortly before an avalanche closed off the cave, preserving it for us to find millennia later. No human remains are in the cave, so presumably the child found the way out again. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me that perhaps that child’s wanderings created the same sense of community concern and relief if the child returned home safely.
Perhaps, too, some of the emotions evoked by the cave’s paintings are also universally human. Perhaps the women who saw their own bodies in the drawings in the cave would be proud of the courage and life-affirming acts of women 30,000 years in the future who were inspired by the paintings to contemplate their meaning.
If you have not seen “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” you might wish to think about finding a copy of the DVD and watching it. Winter is a good time not only because it is traditionally when stories from ancient times were told, but also because it is when our environment may be closest to those of the original Paleolithic people who made the paintings. Europe was much colder then and the people would likely have felt more at home in the chill of winter looking out at barren and snowy landscapes than in the steamy heat of summer. Maybe if you watch it, you will also see yourself on the cave walls.
Find Yourself By Getting Lost
18 Dec 2011 3 Comments
Exactly two years ago today I was given a great gift by a nun looking for the highway. It was the end of the day and the only people in the community center where I work were myself and two other staff people. We were discussing how December 18 is a difficult anniversary for each of us. Two of us had serious winter weather car accidents and another received a cancer diagnosis, all on December 18 of various years. We were wondering at the coincidence of that, and how it was good to have other people around us that day for support, when a nun in full habit came rushing in the door. She was “lost,” looking for a state road that is nearby, so we gave her directions and she ran out again, trying to beat the rush hour, holiday traffic. A moment later, the door opened and she came back in with a plastic bag fill with hundreds of small holy medals of the Virgin Mary. She gave each of us one and said, “These will protect you,” even though she knew nothing of what we had been discussing. We all still have them and December 18 has since been less a day about anxiety and more about how sometimes we are blessed by being the recipients of little miracles.
I have thought a lot about this concept of getting “lost” since then. I get lost a lot. In fact, put me behind the wheel of a car and it is as if I have been set down in the middle of a desert with no roads or signs. I can get lost driving down a road four blocks from my home if it is dark and I can’t see the houses to know where I am. I think it is easy to get lost in our world. We are always thinking of five other things as we travel. We rarely can just go slowly, taking in all that we see and experiencing it, getting ourselves oriented as we go. We must be always be somewhere to do something, and probably be three or four somewheres to do three or four different tasks each day.
When I looked for stories of goddesses getting lost in this way, I couldn’t find any. I did come across the stories of Isis and Demeter. Both suffered tremendous losses – Isis of her beloved Osiris and Demeter of her daughter Persephone. Both wandered in the throes of their grief, finally both becoming nursemaids to royal children in places they just happened to be. Both tried to give the babies in their charge the gift of immortality, and as a result, their goddess identities were revealed leading finally to the recovery of their lost loved ones.
It seems to me that the wandering of these goddesses had unexpected good endings because they were not wandering lost, but wandering as a reflection of who they were — goddesses in deep mourning. They weren’t wandering as the result of “doing” something they were tasked with accomplishing but rather as the result of “being” who they were. When they happened across people whom they could serve, they were able to stop and stay long enough to help others and be assisted in return to find their loved ones.
The need to be constantly “doing” is, to my mind, a particularly insidious way that women have been kept from finding, expressing, and living their true natures and power. Only a few generations ago, it was considered morally dangerous for women not be constantly doing some household task because it was believed they would sin if they were not always sewing, mending, cooking, cleaning. Even today, the concept of the “supermom” or “superwife” or even “superemployee” is, to me, the same thing under a different name. It is said that 80% of the work in the world is done by women. Many of us are expected to do the equivalent of two or three jobs, spending endless hours at work and at home. How many of us don’t wake up in the middle of the night solving a problem or listing all the things we need to do the next day? And how are we supposed to find the time and energy to use our voices, create our masterpieces, change our world to suit the needs of all people when we are always chasing the end of our “to-do” list? No wonder we get confused and lost so often.
Maybe we can learn a different way of being lost from those goddesses and the nun. When we take the time to journey, truly be wherever we are, to be of service through gifts of ourselves, we are proclaiming our sacred nature. We diminish ourselves by always feeling that we are only worthy if we are going someplace to do work or even to rest so that we can accomplish something later. Wandering lost as Isis and Demeter did is a celebration of being the divine spirits who we are.
Over the years I have learned is that when I am lost, I shouldn’t stop, but rather just keep going and eventually I will find my way back to somewhere I know. Part of this is likely because the region where I live has two major highways in concentric circles with roads that inevitably lead to one or the other. But I also believe that there is a lesson to be learned. You will get to where you think you are supposed to be eventually, but maybe your inner spirit has made a path for you that requires you to be elsewhere than where you think you are going. Maybe, like the goddesses and the nun, your great and destined work for that moment isn’t written in your weekly planner, but is to be found by stopping, looking around, and seeing what you need to do where you are.
I believe that the same principle holds for all of us together. While we have come a long way in the past couple of centuries, I don’t believe anyone would say that our world is the way we would ultimately like it to be. But, as a result, there are many compassionate tasks to be done and people to spend time with who we would never have met if life were perfect. As we find our way out of the chaos of our current world, let us be like Isis and Demeter and stop along the way, not where we always thought we were going, but not “lost” either.
Reveling in the Solstice
11 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
From mid- to late December, people from many times and places — from the ancient Hopi to classical Rome to medieval Europe– raucously reveled in a world turned upside down. For a few short days each year, everyone would sing and dance, mock the powerful and holy, and escape their cultural roles and responsibilities with merriment, play, and joyful abandon. As I begin to think about planning my family’s holidays, I consider how far from these wild and outrageous bacchanals are our sweet, sedate and maybe overly sane year-end celebrations.
Some of these older, unruly traditions have a distinctly sacred female face. According to John and Caitlin Matthews’ book, The Winter Solstice, among the deities celebrated at the Saturnalia during this time was the mother goddess Ops and the woodland goddess Strenia. One goddess especially associated with this time of year, however, is the Celtic Cailleach, The Queen of Winter, who received mid-winter sacrifices and offerings. Cailleach is a creator Goddess, ruler over earth and sky, who is able to transform herself from an old woman to a young woman as many times as she wishes. She is envisioned as a “hag,” wizened and wild, but also wise and powerful.
I wish I lived in a time and place where all normal activity stops and truly dissolute revelry is expected and encouraged at least once a year. Only two moments of my life come to mind that really qualify for this honor. One was in the 1980s, when my roommate and I marched in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade*. Another was about 10 years ago, when I attended a Goddess Gala that included a most amazing culminating evening festivity.
What made both of these memorable experiences a sacred revel was that they were not only about high-spirited joy and pleasure, but true enactments of stories of coming from winter’s desolation into a hard-won light. Life in the Village in the AIDS-stricken 1980s, as I remember it, sometimes seemed to be a daily litany of horrifying sickness and death of those who had been the most full of life, creativity, and soul. As I marched with the bands and dancers, I sensed that, for that one night, those around me were defying the fate that was stealing so much from them, declaring that their spirits would overcome mortality even if their bodies could not. Similarly, the element of the Goddess Gala that I remember most was meeting Kali (really a woman dressed as Kali of course) in the dark woods as we went in groups to the celebration. Each of us had to decide how we would get past her and on our way to the ceremonial bonfire. The only answer was to dance with her, to embrace our fears and revel in the wheel of life, death and rebirth, to come together, as we did an hour or so later, in spirals of women dancing for all the generations of women before us who could not dance or express who they truly were.
Maybe this sense of coming out of the darkness of the long nights into the light is what our Solstice seasonal celebrations are missing as we politely gather round dinner tables and trees and open gifts or even quietly wait for the Solstice sun. Perhaps we have forgotten how to truly welcome the light by giving ourselves over to song, dance, and revelry because we no longer allow ourselves to experience the essence of the deep nights, whether physically due to the omnipresence of electric lighting, or spiritually as our culture has grown ever more hesitant to look death and tragedy in the eye and confront it.
The Winter Solstice should be a time of great healing and renewal as we integrate into ourselves all that we have been through in the past year and get ready for light of the coming New Year. All over the world, chaotic creator goddesses from many traditions teach us that the only way to truly be reborn is experience and acknowledge the sorrow in our lives and face our fears. When we dance and sing from pure joy of living in the face of heartache and loss, we can bring all that is best in us to transform winter’s hardship into the light of hope and wholeness. Is it any wonder that so many of the wrathful creator goddesses like Kali and Durga are envisioned in dancing revelry? Or that both the Greek Demeter and Shinto Goddess Amaterasu were coaxed by bawdy songs and laughter into bringing springtime back to the world that they had plunged into barren winter?
This holiday Solstice season, even if I do not revel as I once did, I will honor Cailleach and all the reveling Goddesses and think of them when I see the lights on my tree or in the bright winter sky. When I look into the eyes of friends, family, and strangers around me, I will try to remember the long, gloomy nights they have overcome to gather at these quiet celebrations with me. And maybe I will find just one truly outrageous, riotous and completely inappropriate act to do each day.
*In case anyone is wondering, my roommate went as the Doctor in Dr. Who, circa Tom Baker, and I was Sarah Jane.
Holly Lavina’s Video of Hands Baking Bread
07 Aug 2011 2 Comments
Many years ago I published a poem titled “Hands Breaking Bread.” Imagine my surprise when I found that Holly Lavina had made a video of it that was on youtube! I love the video – her reading as well as the graphics bring out elements of the poem even I hadn’t experienced before. Her video illustrates so perfectly that no creative expression belongs to one person alone. We each remake every poem, song, painting, dance just by witnessing it and add so much more when we bring our own creativity to a work. Thank you, Holly! Here’s the video:
Here’s the complete poem, too.
Hands Baking Bread
When my hands bake bread, I knead
Ocean, rock, the flesh of beasts and flora then
Draw down honey moonlight for alchemy’s fire.
My frail, mortal fingers unite all that was to create all that will be and
I embed within each loaf this woman’s power of touch
That can halt the most merciless onslaughts with a caress
That can melt centuries of isolation with a warm stroke.
My hands give away the bread,
Nourishment for body and tinder spark for soul.
Across a hostile desert, a woman’s desiccated hands accept my gift
In an act of graceful courage.
Once she eats
Her fingers tingle in an awakening of the
Sweet, invincible bond between women,
The body of that connection between every element of the universe,
We have created over and over, since ancient days,
In the shared ritual of mixing, kneading, waiting, baking.
Each receiver of bread returns to her oven and bakes a fresh loaf
The aromas rise, restoring the power of our touch
Molecule by molecule, to all women who breathe in air
Making of us one and also many, each stronger in herself for
Being with one another, like grains of wheat or flecks of herbs in a loaf.
Such a simple act, baking bread, a daily chore.
Women’s hands roiling earth and sky together, one with another,
Recreating ourselves as floury bakers of that force that spins every atom
Binding us in joy with yeast and wheat
Feeding each other the miracle of one more day in each other’s lives.
First published in Moondance, December, 2005 – March, 2006
Chaos-to-Go: Life as a Holy Speck in an Infinite Messiness
03 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
First published in Moondance, March 21, 2011
When spring arrives in New England, every acre burgeons into chaos as millions of spores and microscopic one-celled wonders, plants, fungi, animals, and birds emerge from an icy sleep into manic activity. Every year I marvel at this emergence of boundless life for a week or two until precise patterns of rivers and fields take shape. I experienced very much the same joy and astonishment when I first felt my unborn son move, when I realized that another being had somehow come into existence in the midst of the everyday disorder of my ordinary life. Surely these miracles cannot be, but they are.
Over this winter, I read books about the latest mathematical and scientific discoveries. With the world in its uncertain state, I sought sure, simple, and unchangeable truths. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that in the thirty years since I studied these subjects in college, the chaos of spring and rebirth has overtaken the orderly and mechanical perspectives of Euclid and Newton.
Chaos theory is, as I understand it, a view that the universe is incomprehensibly complex and its elements are deeply inter-connected. The theory was developed to explain seemingly random occurrences, like a surprise snow squall on a cloudless day. The most famous example is the “butterfly effect” in which the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world begins a series of occurrences that lead to a tsunami on the other side.
The theory has been applied to just about everything from the weather to human behavior. By using chaos theory as a new way to look at the world, we can see our actions as the result of uncountable preceding events that have tremendous effect on our own future and on those of others as their consequences reverberate through time and space.
Chaos is not new. In fact, the idea of chaos is ancient and, in many traditions, is envisioned as a woman, or, more precisely, a goddess. In this perspective of old, chaos is not disorder, but is, instead, the primordial great void, the boundless and unformed infinity that existed before creation of the physical world. To the Greeks, chaos was called Gaia, both before and after she formed herself into the Earth, stars, planets, and all that exists. Other cultures had different names for her. In this worldview, it would make sense that the physical manifestation of the spiritual vision of Gaia is a “chaotic” interconnected, complex web of everything that exists because all comes from and ultimately is Gaia.
In the totality of my life thus far, I see myself as a nexus of innumerable past events, most of which I considered to have little importance. Perhaps one line of occurrences started when I was twelve. A book fell off a library shelf into my hands which then sparked my continuing interest in mysticism. This fascination led to more books and, thirteen years later, to a lecture by Merlin Stone, where I was introduced to ancient goddess-centered religions. Another twenty years and hundreds of related events later, Stone’s presentation resulted in my volunteering to help with a women’s spirituality magazine. There I met a woman whose Internet journalism skills brought me to Moondance, which lead to your reading of this column. It is so comforting to think of ourselves and our lives not as isolated fragments, but rather as indispensable elements of a larger, meaningful whole.
For me the deepest experience of chaos is motherhood. My son recently began applying to colleges. This is supposed to be a deterministic, regimented, non-chaotic process of gathering data and sending it off in hopes for acceptance to a school that will increase one’s chances for lifelong material and personal success. As I read his list of achievements and essays about influential people in his life, the unique grown up who my son has become emerged before my eyes.
Suddenly I saw threads of interests and talents that began almost at birth. When pulled together, they define my son and seem to indicate what the next step of his life should be. This never would have happened had we not approached this academic exercise by welcoming the holistic disorder and unexpected delights of chaos.
As the most active mothering phase of my life ends, I must reset my course. At one time I would have this entailed distressing, life-changing transformations. Now I know that I only have to twist slightly in whatever direction catches my fancy to renew my life and maybe even someone else’s. Reading a book with an eye-catching title may cause me to embark on a new career. Buying a fair trade scarf may bring the few dollars needed to a women’s cooperative so that it can finish building a school that might educate a future leader. I am relieved, inspired, and liberated to see that each day’s actions need not be rare and monumental to be profoundly important. I do not have to somehow become a saint or celebrity or best-selling author for my years on Earth to be worthwhile; I can simply be my best self, and that is enough.
Tonight, if the sky is clear, go outside and look at the stars. Feel the ground beneath your feet and contemplate how the soil holds the relics of the years of life on this planet before your birth. Keep your eyes on the stars that will shine on everyone who will come after you. Understand your essential place in the universe is the result of a nearly infinite number of occurrences over billions of years. But also know that you are the contributor of an additional immeasurable number of great things to come. Savor this most precious moment of the universe’s messy, energetic, delightful, and most beautiful chaos, for who knows what it may bring.
The Royal Wedding, Disco Balls, and The Goddess of the Land
01 May 2011 1 Comment
You may have heard that there was a Royal Wedding at Westminster Abbey this week. Some polls showed that not even most people in Britain were that interested in it, but you wouldn’t have gotten that impression from the million people lining the street outside the Abbey or even from the Royal Wedding fervor in my neck of the woods. Members of my family were up at 5 am to take in every moment and just about everyone at my office was DVRing it and bringing in Dunkin’ Donuts Royal Wedding donuts. When I asked them, a bit insensitively, I suppose, “what was the big whoop,” it was hard for people to quite put their fingers on why this wedding made them so happy and fascinated. It was “an inspiration,” “a little bit of fun,” “the stuff fantasies are made of,” they said. There was just something about it…
Which makes me think of the tradition of The Goddess of the Land (and not just me – others have also seen mythic significance in various aspects of the wedding*). In the ancient Celtic tradition, as well as in others, kings married the Goddess of the Land, the spirit of Mother Earth, and without her favor they could not rule. Caitlin Matthews, in her excellent book King Arthur and the Goddess of the Land (Inner Traditions International, 2002) describes this tradition and its relation to such Celtic goddesses and mythic figures as Rhiannon, Epona, and Gwenhwyfar. Could it be that some of the reason people were so drawn to this event was an unconscious remembrance of this idea that a happy marriage of king and queen guaranteed peace and prosperity, two qualities so lacking in our own time?
If that is the case, how much has changed in the past 30 years since the marriage of Charles and Diana! Diana, as I have read this week, was only 19, hardly knew Charles, and was of privileged birth. She became the celebrity of celebrities, far removed from ordinary folk, though people I know who adored her did so because of her good-hearted charity work on behalf of those in need and the fact that her well-publicized family troubles made her both more human and more noble.
Kate is, as her fans have told me, a new kind of princess. They tell me she is 29 and the first woman who is or could become queen who is university-educated, she has held a job, and she a commoner. Reporters have noted her “normal” family and how comforting that must be to William. The number of people at the wedding that Kate and William knew through their charity work far outnumbered the celebrities. If rumors are true, she and William will do their own shopping and live as much like regular people as you can while waiting to be king and queen. One of my favorite details is that Kate’s sister Pippa hung disco balls at the Royal Ball to make the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace a bit snazzier.
Maybe a Royal Wedding is really just a Royal Wedding, but I cannot help but wonder if the difference between the popularity of Diana 30 years ago and that of Kate today is not also related to the Goddess of the Land and how she is re-emerging in the everyday lives of women as the Sacred Feminine within each of us. Could it be that women love Kate because she is not so far removed from them? She shows that the royal/sacred is now not outside their world, but is inside them. Their sense of the sacredness of their daily lives is reinforced by Kate and William’s choosing of normal over royal.
My favorite poster handmade by a spectator along the wedding route said “It should have been me!” More important than ”It should have been me!” is “It could have been me!” because we all could be, and are, the Goddess of the Land and are responsible for the Earth’s protection and the creation of peace and prosperity. Every way that women from all walks of life discover and demonstrate that is a big whoop indeed.
* I found these two commentaries and I’m sure there must have been others: http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Royal-Wedding-Marrying-the-Land-Star-Foster-04-28-2011 and http://planetaryenergies.net/2011/04/28/astrology-of-the-royal-wedding/
Leaving Eggs in Ostara’s Forest
24 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
Every Spring Equinox, I join a circle of women who gather and celebrate the coming spring by telling the story of Ostara, a goddess from Europe from whose name the word “Easter” comes. Since elements of her story are part of the Easter tradition being observed today all over the world, I thought I would tell her story and how I think it is as meaningful for today’s world as it was hundreds of years ago.
Ostara was a gentle and compassionate goddess who loved to take walks through the forest, reveling in the chirps of the birds, the blooms of the delicate woodland flowers, and the romping of the animals who made the forest their home. One day in very early spring, just about the time of the Spring Equinox, she was walking and shivering because the season had been especially cold this year. She came upon a small bird, frozen and close to dying, unable to fly away to someplace where it could be warm and live. She quickly transformed the bird into a rabbit so it could hop away to a nice, cozy hutch to recover. She had to work so fast, however, that the transformation was not complete, and from that time on, the bird-made-rabbit still lay eggs. Every year, at about the time of its rescue, the grateful rabbit would hop through the forest, placing beautifully decorated eggs along Ostara’s path for her enjoyment.
I love so many elements of this story. I am moved by Ostara’s deep love for each being of the forest, that a goddess would stop to save one small bird. To me, this is an important message of spring, when each small spring bloom seems so precious because it has been so long since we have seen flowers. Each baby animal and bird needs nurturing by its parents as well as by all of us, even if this means not disturbing a nest, no matter how much we would like to look at the babies. So many hearts need healing after this past long winter that has held so much sorrow all over the world. When so many deaths have been counted in the thousands from both natural and human-made disasters, focusing our loving attention on each small being is an affirmation of the sacredness of every life and the spectacular wonder of our planet.
I love that Ostara turns her focus so quickly from enjoying her forest walk to compassionate service. She reminds me of Tara, who sometimes is shown sitting in a lotus position with one leg extended, ready to spring into action whenever she “hears the cries of the world.” Ostara reminds me that when I need help, it is okay to peep that I need a little transformation and that help will come. Assistance may not come in the form I expect and life may never be the same as it once was, but assistance will appear, even if it is just me identifying the problem so that I can find again my own inner power to solve it.
Like everyone else, I sometimes hesitate to help because I do not feel that I am the best for the job; that maybe if I stay behind, someone else who is more perfect will come along to do the job better. I sometimes doubt my own abilities to do even those things I feel called as a sacred mission to do. Ostara reminds us that we do not need to be perfect to help. A half a rabbit is better than a dead bird. And sometimes our imperfect help makes an even more perfect outcome – without Ostara’s almost-but-not-quite transformation, our Easter baskets would be much less beautiful, just as sometimes the help that isn’t quite what we had planned causes us to be more resilient, with a wider experience, and sometimes leads us in a direction we hadn’t mapped for ourselves but turns out to be just the right way to go.
Finally, I love that the rabbit expresses its gratitude in such a tangible way – those beautiful eggs along the forest path. It is so easy to feel gratitude without expressing it. I find that so many times people do for others and never know how much their help is appreciated. I’m sure that there have been years when Ostara was sorrowful during her Spring Equinox walks for one reason or another and was cheered by seeing those lovely eggs and being reminded that what she does makes a difference.
I think that this year I will celebrate this day by finding one person who has helped me without being asked, who always springs into action at the first sign that someone is having trouble, and who does what she or he can without worrying that what is done is perfect, and find a “colorful egg” way to say thanks. Maybe I will write a check their favorite foundation. Maybe I will bake a cake and leave it on their doorstep. Maybe I will write a note of gratitude and ask how I can make their next difficult task a little easier. Maybe I will simply take a walk through the forest and thank the Earth by looking for small beings who need help – a plant that is growing on the path and needs to be moved out of the way of hiking feet perhaps – and being Ostara for the day.
Inviting Goddess to Your Tea Party
09 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Everyday Life Tags: goddess tea rituals, kuan yin tea, mint tea, tulsi tea
We all know how heavenly tea is, but even from ancient times it has had a mist of sacredness about it. And in all the years the teapot has symbolized the sacred in women’s everyday lives on this blog, I have never written about the close connection between goddesses and tea. So, as the chilly early spring winds swirl around outside, make yourself a cup of your favorite tea and learn some goddess and tea lore.
Walk into any fine tea shop and you will find Quan Yin tea, a Chinese oolong tea. Quan Yin, also spelled Kuan Yin, as you may know, is a bodhisattva of compassion, “she who hears the cries of the world.” Her story is that she became enlightened and was about to enter into Nirvana, but was so moved by the suffering of other beings that she vowed to remain in this world until all beings had become enlightened. You can see Quan Yin in the photo above.
No one knows exactly how the tea came to be named after her, but I especially love the story that a poor farmer, a Mr. Wei, was despairing that her temple near him was rundown and in disrepair. He was led to a small plant. Mr. Wei cultivated it and became so prosperous that he was able to rebuild Quan Yin’s temple and named the plant’s tea after her.
In India, Tulsi is an herbal tea known as “holy basil” with myriad physical and mental health benefits. Besides its use as a tea, tulsi leaves are also hung in homes to promote purity, peace, and harmony. Tulsi is considered to be divine in itself, an incarnation of the goddess Lakshmi, who has come to Earth as the basil plant to benefit all humanity. One of my favorite teas pairs tulsi with lavender.
The abundant mint is not only a wonderful tonic and delightful tasting tea, but has its own goddess story. Mentha was a Greek goddess who was turned into the mint plant by Persephone, the wife of Hades, because of her husband’s love of Mentha.
Not surprisingly, herbs in general have many goddesses or female spirits associated with them. Airmed, an Irish goddess mourned her brother and, when she buried him, all the world’s herbs sprung from his grave and instructed her in their use. Circe, who lived on an island, tested out her herbal potions on the sailors shipwrecked on her shores. The Buschfrauen of central Europe were delightfully wild women spirits who lived in bands in the woods and might let their herbal secrets be coaxed out of them. There are many, many other stories associating herbs with female divinity – these are just some of the ones I enjoy the most.
The process of making tea is, in itself, a kind of ritual. You put water in a pot made of earth, heat it with the element of fire, then watch as the steam escapes into the air, and you are left with a transformed magically healing brew. Of course, the formal Japanese tea ceremony expresses this sacredness of tea perfectly. In fact, part of the ceremony honors yet another goddess, Huchi-Fuchi, a goddess of fire.
So, the next time you are seeking a way to bring sacredness into your everyday life, or to express your gratitude for the many mysteries and wonders of this beautiful earth we live on, or experience the healing powers of goddess, why not make your own tea ritual? As you pour the water into the teakettle, think of Sedna, Yemaya, or any of the other many goddesses associated with oceans, rivers, or water. When you turn on your stove, honor fire goddesses like Pele or hearth goddesses like Hestia. As you ready your teapot, feel its solidity and be reminded of all we are given by our Earth goddesses like Gaia or Coatlicue. When you put in your tea, thank goddesses of the land where it was grown. As the steam rises, send up on it gratitude to air or wind goddesses like Kanuga. When you finally have your cup of tea in your hand, thank yourself for all you have done today and know you deserve these moments of peace and enjoyment.
By the way, to find out more about these and other goddesses you may wish to add to your tea ritual, consult any of the many books that describe the world’s goddesses. My favorite is Patricia Monaghan’s New Book of Goddesses and Heroines both for its comprehensiveness and because it has a wonderful index in the back listing various symbols, like the elements, stages of life, etc., and the goddesses associated with them.
