Crucible

…The work is hard

Your fingers may bleed

But each cloth stitched together

Brings together a community

A world, our future world

Under one colorful quilt

The new quilt of humanity.

–Julia Myers (in We’Moon, 2013)

Even though there is a lot of snow on the ground today, I still took some of my new sculptures down to the woods like I always do to take pictures of them and to “bless” them in that space. As I was taking the pictures and thinking about how I was so busy doing that that I wasn’t necessarily paying that much attention to the woods, but rather to the snow on the rocks and how it was getting on my sculptures, I had the flash of the thought: this is the feminist crucible of the self. This thought seemed was not actually about the act of taking pictures, but rather about the whole year-long stretch of time in the woods. I thought, again, about all the ways in which I have entered that space this year and all the things I’ve carried with me, both literally and figuratively. While I’m still “the same” in many ways, I also feel like I’m a different person than the one who first began this practice. I’ve carried and photographed sculptures, yes, but I’ve also refined both my art and my thealogy. I’ve grieved and mourned and laughed and drummed and danced. I’ve learned about myself. I’ve learned about the world. I’ve turned over heavy issues. I’ve been surprised and delighted. I’ve been scared. I’ve had stark realizations that the woods could kill me as well as bless me. I’ve turned over the stuff of my life and made decisions and had insights. I’ve turned my face to the sky. I’ve watched a snake in the leaves and a lizard on the tree and bees in the air. A spider bit me on the cheek and I still have a mark there right now. And, I keep going and I keep learning new things. Crucible.

I also read this article from John at The Allergic Pagan about an experience with The Gross Goddess at the seaside:

“This is your Goddess,” my wife said to me smiling.

“It’s the slimy side of her,” I responded.

“This is life,” she replied.

It’s strange when a seemingly mundane moment is transformed into a sacred one. I looked at my Mormon wife standing in the ocean, holding a shell, and I heard her speak the words of a true priestess: “This is your Goddess. This is life.”

via My Goddess is gross.

I’m out of time to write tonight. This is one of those times when what I can do, is what I can do, and it is enough.

Oh yeah, wait, I also want to share that I’m procrastinating terribly on my second paper for my Matriarchal Myth class. I finished reading When God Was a Woman (for the second time) and the assignment is a 15 page critical analysis of the book and the issues it raises. I’m just not that in to matriarchal pre-history stuff and I feel like I’ve read the same things over and over and over again and I don’t want to write about it any more! However, I need to write it. It is one of the last papers standing between me and my thesis/M.Div completion. It “should” be easy enough to write and I have 27 pages of possible content cobbled together in a starting doc for it. I just can’t manage to actually seem to work on it though. Tomorrow is my last chance for a while, because then work kicks up a whole bunch of notches for me until the session ends on Saturday night…