Monthly Archives: December 2013

Women’s Mysteries, Women’s Circles

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Molly

“Women united in close circles can awaken the wisdom in each other’s hearts.” ~The 13 Indigenous Grandmothers (via The Girl God)

“Feminism catches fire when it draws upon its inherent spirituality. When it does not, it is just one more form of politics, and politics never fed our deepest hungers.” –Carol Lee Flinders (in The Millionth Circle)

Show up or choose to be present.
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning.
Tell the truth without blame or judgment.
Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome.

–Angela Arrien (in The Millionth Circle)

“Women’s mysteries, the blood mysteries of the body, are not the same as the physical realities of menstruation, lactation, pregnancy, and menopause; for physiology to become mystery, a mystical affiliation must be made between a woman and the archetypal feminine. A woman must sense, know or imagine herself as Woman, as Goddess, as an embodiment of the feminine principle…Under patriarchy this connection has been suppressed; there are no words or rituals that celebrate the connection between a woman’s physiological initiations and spiritual meaning.”

–Jean Shinoda Bolen

The final quote above comes from a very helpful resource for priestesses, the Women’s Mysteries Teacher’s Journal, which is available for free online!

I read and enjoyed two relevant blog posts this week as well, the first about women’s capacity to push each other’s buttons and how it can be easier to work with “victims” than “leaders.” Important to consider…

The process of working with one’s own buttons can be very useful in feminist life. From my own experience and from following the news in feminist and Goddess movement I know how easily women’s groups can break up, often due to strong women pushing each other’s buttons. Have you noticed how we find it easier working with the victims of patriarchy and patriarchal religions, than with the leaders of feminist groups? How we find it easier to help, than to cooperate? In this we might fall into a trap of patriarchy and assume the role of a patriarch rather then a feminist leader.

via Buttons and Hooks by Oxana Poberejnaia | Feminism and Religion.

And, the second this priestess pep talk:

She supports and believes in you utterly. All you have to do is trust Her, and keep on showing up.

Because You are Enough.

Always.

Completely.

You are born of magic, a daughter of the Goddess.

You are a Priestess charged with sharing Her blessings, Her beauty, Her power with the world as it manifest through you, you unique thing you, and it is your DUTY to get out there and create that vision, that life, she is inspiring you with…”

via The How to Be a Priestess Pep Talk

I’ve mentioned that I’m looking forward to the new anthology coming out from Goddess Ink and I very much enjoy the snippets from the book they shared on their Facebook page (I also pre-ordered the book!)

Goddess Ink
From “The Kohanot: Keepers of the Flame” by D’vorah Grenn: “How do we move forward from here? Being a priestess can be exhausting. Without proper shielding and protection, women can find their precious energies only going out, and too rarely being replenished. We must continually find new and effective ways to guard against becoming depleted. Every day, we witness the positive, transformative effects of “restoring women to ceremony,“ to use Lynn Gottlieb’s phrase, another reason it is vital that we continue our work. But to do so, we must protect our spirits, psyches, hearts and time25; those who have been spiritual leaders for some time are well aware of the pitfalls of not doing so. Since others rely on our strength and clarity, this is not a task to be postponed or ignored. We must carry and pass on the knowledge of how to take better care of ourselves, along with our spiritual teachings.”

How do you replenish yourself and protect your energy? In this last week as I’ve worked to finish all my grading for the end of the school session, I’ve been aware of how I tend to let self-care go first—I haven’t practiced yoga in four days, keep getting to the woods at 11:00 at night instead of in the morning, staying up until 2:00 a.m., etc. I feel okay about the out-of-balance because I know it is a very short term push that will end soon, but I think I/we must be mindful of this not becoming a regular habit or pattern of being.

There is also this good one about the priestess path and the idea of mastery…

Goddess Ink
From “Models of Leadership” by Ruth Barrett: “A woman on the priestess path must be vigilant in examining the unconscious tendencies and unexamined habits she has learned from her culture. Another unexamined tendency, which is crucial to recognize, is that American culture is in all-out war against mastery. I use the word “mastery” as it is used in the martial arts. Mastering the physical, psychological and energetic skills required to achieve, for instance, a black belt in Aikido is a path that requires discipline, openness to learning and the patience and persistence to work through plateaus. The black belt is not a goal, it is a journey. The journey is the destination. A sensei (master) of a martial arts black belt is still a student. Mastery is a path, not a title or a credential. It is the process of recognizing and achieving potential. So it is with the priestess path. The more I know, the more I know there is to learn and I must endeavor to have an open beginner’s mind.”

The snow is finally melting and this afternoon I went on a dinner date with my husband (as well as finished up shopping for stocking stuffers and for our solstice dinner. Lots of plans for fun food!). I didn’t get to the woods until about 9:30 and enjoyed the company of the full moon for a time in a much warmer-today woods. We did a very small mini-ritual on the back deck together as well, just with our candles, checking in on the intentions we set during the last full moon, making new intentions, and closing with a short prayer.

Categories: community, feminist thealogy, night, priestess, quotes, resources, ritual, self-care, spirituality, women, women's circle, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Family Full Moon Ritual

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Molly

Two years ago, in conjunction with one of my classes at Ocean Seminary College, I realized that it was high time for me to try to offer spiritual nourishment and experiences to my immediate family members throughout the year. I want to be the priestess of my own hearth first. And it was at this time, my idea for Family Full Moon Fun was born and we’ve kept it up, with varying degrees of success, ever since.

I usually envision a delightful family ritual with loving connection, meaningful symbolism, spiritual experiences, and perhaps a drum circle. When asked what they want to do for Family Full Moon Fun, my kids usually want to eat treats and watch movies. Though we’ve had some profoundly magical experiences together, often the full moon sneaks up on me, leaving me feeling snappy and unprepared for having fabulous full moon fun and instead having more like rushed, mediocre full moon fun. Recently, I lamented that perhaps I was going to stop trying, because it just didn’t seem to work. Then, I had several realizations. One, in doing something like this for kids, I need to keep it simple. Two, less talking from Molly = more fun for family (the kids need to have active, verbal, responsive parts of the ritual). Three, my kids are already telling me what they think is fun, how I can pull that in to my vision of a regular spiritual date with my family, rather than reject what they’re telling me as not suitably ritualish enough? With these thoughts in mind, I jotted down a very simple ritual. We did it last month and it was wonderful. In fact, my seven-year-old son, who is known for his semi-wild, very physical, and not-particularly-mindful mode of engaging with the others or the world, asked us all to hold our candles up to our hearts and say that we were thankful for love and the light in our hearts. Then, he said, “thanks for doing this kind of stuff for us mom, I really like it.”

Here was our ritual, which we conducted standing out on our back deck in the light of the full moon. Each of us brought a candle and an item for our family altar representing something we’d like to grow and develop in the coming month:

Circle up and place hands on each other’s backs and do a “toning” (group humming) together to unify our energies and sync us up/bring us into ritual space. I actually do this at every ritual I priestess because it is a very connected way of “casting the circle” with our own bodies and physical energy. We usually hum in unison three times. With kids, sometimes it is not in unison and my eyes met my husband’s over their heads in an effort to stifle laughter at the discordant chorus we created.
Invocation using the body (I had a hunch this would work well for kids because it is physically involved, rather than just listening). Turn to the south and rub your hands together, feeling the heat generated by your own body. Fire lives in you. Welcome fire, welcome south (kids repeat with great energy and enthusiasm). Turn to the west and lick your lips, feeling the water of your own body and how it is connected to the waters around the world. Water lives in you. Welcome water, welcome west. Turn to the north and feel the strength and stability of your own body, connected to the earth. Turn to the person next to you and give them a hug, feeling their solid presence. Earth lives in you. Welcome earth, welcome north. Turn to the east and take a deep breath in unison, inhale, exhale, feeling the breath of life in your body. Air lives in you. Welcome air, welcome east.
Then, holding our candles, bathed by the full moon’s light, we each shared our wishes and goals for the coming month as well as what we brought for our family altar and what it represented.
Eat full moon cookies together to symbolize our commitment to our intentions.
I offered a prayer for family togetherness that I made up intuitively and the kids all repeated each line after me, i.e. “May we celebrate each other’s successes, may we communicate positively…”
Holding hands, I thanked them for participating, “may the circle be open…” and we adjourned inside to place our items on our family altar.

I’d also decided to make a simple dinner so that no one had to spend too much time in the kitchen, so I made chicken and potatoes in the roaster and a salad. We came inside and watched our favorite family reality show, Face Off, together while eating our dinner. We enjoyed more of our full moon cookies for dessert and the kids made hot cocoa to drink. And, then we did some drumming.

Full Moon Shortbread Cookies

3/4 c. butter, softened

1/3 c. sugar

2 c. white flour

Mix together until stiff dough forms, adding a 1-2 TB more butter if needed. Roll out and cut in full moon circles. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. For half of our cookies, we melted chocolate chips and dipped one half of the cookie in the chocolate to make some half moon cookies to go with our full moons.

On a related note, one of the members of my Priestess Path group on Facebook recently shared her website with us, which is a collection of family ritual ideas to celebrate pagan holidays. It looks like a great resource: Pagan Family Sabbats and Esbats | Rituals for moms, dads, and kids to celebrate the 8 Pagan Sabbats and Esbats

–

Crossposted at Pagan Families.

Categories: family, holidays, night, parenting, ritual, spirituality | 4 Comments

Womanrunes: The Moon and Star

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Molly

Womanrunes: The Moon and Star. Rune of Faith. Inspiration, Truth, and Psychic Healing.

Hold to the hope. Hold to the vision. Hold to the healing. Hold to the vigil kept by your heart.

What do you have faith in? What does faith mean anyway?

What do you know to be true? Where do you find inspiration and sacred calling?

What fire is waiting to be lit within your own breast, your own home, your own community?

What do you have to share? What do you have to say?

Sing about it. Dance about it. Tell about it.

Engage in deep talk. Deep thought. Deep commitment. Deep change. Deep healing.

This is a stone of uncovering. Of revealing. A stone of tapping in to that which already is, to that which you already are. To the potential that waits in your heart to bloom. To the passion that waits in your throat to be loosed. For the fire of creativity that swirls in your belly to be freed. Stone of inspiration. Stone of igniting.

Have faith in your own deep purpose, your own deep potential, your own deep calling, your own deep longing. Be still. Place your hand on your heart and listen. The answers wait within.

The sun rises, the earth turns, the moon bathes the world, the tides lap the shore. We are carried by a great wind across the sky. We are a vital thread in the weaving of Life. An intricate and interesting part of a magnificent tapestry of Being in which it becomes difficult to distinguish weaver, web, and thread, so closely are they wound together.

After you’ve spent time in your own heart space, open your eyes. Take a look around, gaze at this bright, beautiful, wonderful world. Looks at the smiles of those you love. Look at the memories that have carved space in your heart. Feel what comes welling up out of you. What must be said. This is your truth. This is your inspiration. This is your healing. It is also your gift.

May the moon and stars always light your way, for you carry stardust in your bones, and some part of you will soar on the wings of time forever.

—

Update: this project evolved into a real book!

The first post in my Womanrunes series is available here and all others here. The runes and the names of them come from Shekhinah Mountainwater’s Womanrunes system for which there are no written interpretations available other than the name and one word meanings. I’m engaging in a semi-daily practice of drawing one and then going down to the woods with it to see what it “tells” me–basically, creating what I wish I had, which is a more developed interpretation of the meaning of each womanrunestone.

Categories: Womanrunes | Leave a comment

Runes of the Goddess

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Molly

Some time ago I wrote a post in which I described reading the book Runes of the Goddess while on vacation in California. While there, I picked up smooth beach rocks and brought them home to create my own set of runes based on this book.

To the set, I followed my intuition and incorporated one additional stone from Lady of the Nothern Light: A Feminist Guide to the Runes by Susan Gitlin-Emmer: Ansuz: Mouth. (This book was recommended to me in the comments section of my previous runes post and it is a good resource as well.)

Ansuz, or mouth, is the Goddess as source of all speech: song, history, poetry and the magic in naming and words. She is the source of inspiration, the ways in which Her daughters partake in Her divinity. This is an especially important rune for artists, writers and storytellers, because it means that they are able to hear Her voice clearly. If you are using your creativity in some project, this rune is telling you your vision is true, that it comes from your deepest source. What you are working on is important and it is your job to bring it into being. If Ansuz comes to you in a reading, listen carefully for the voice of the Goddess; She has something to say to you. Listen for Her voice within you. Use Ansuz in your spellwork when you need to hear Her voice and when you need Her to hear you. Ansuz is the power of all naming. Think of the many thousands of names for the Goddess. Speak your own names of power. Remember that She is the source of all being, and honor Her with all you say. Know that all history is fluid, including your own. You can rewrite the stories you tell yourself about yourself, reshape your personal mythology. Call on Her and the power of Ansuz to shape the words of your spells and incantations. Know that speech can call things into being. We cannot conceive of that which we lack the words to describe. Words can limit what we see as possible. Invent new language. Remind others of its power. Sing Her songs in your rituals. Honor and invoke her with poetry.

While it seemed a little simplistic, all I did was draw the runes onto the beach rocks with sharpies and they turned out very nicely

What I do with my Womanrunes is a type of divination too, but it is pretty simplistic compared to the artform described in Runes of the Goddess. Author PMH Atwater uses a set of 16 runes based on the ancient Elder Futhark runes and she calls them Goddess runes. Each time they are used, the whole set is cast and interpreted. Rather than relying on a single stone for guidance, the whole cast is interpreted based on the pattern and relationships to each other as well as their relationship to the questioner and the question asked. (There are two question stones, one for a male questioner and one for a female questioner. The questioner holds the appropriate stone while thinking/asking their question and then casts them all. The rest of the runes are considered, in part, based on their relationship to where the question stone falls in the spread. In my set of beach rock runes, pictured above, the red stone with no symbol in the upper right is the female stone and the one next to it is the male stone.)

These are two of my first castings in July, one for my husband and one for me). It definitely takes practice to figure out how to interpret them as a whole.

Categories: divination, Goddess, resources | 1 Comment

Strength

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Molly

“We all share a deep vulnerability. Everything changes. Wisdom is the ultimate protection because it helps us face life as it really is. Concentration doesn’t lead to wisdom, it makes exploration possible. Concentration builds the strength and courage needed for deep exploration.” –Michele McDonald (Open Mind, 12/10)

Please forgive yet another post based on this same Open Mind book. Since the year is almost over, I’m finishing it up (it is a daily reader of meditations) and so it is right here and handy by my computer. It is highly worth the read! I read so much and so rapidly that I appreciate the opportunity to work slowly through a book over the course of a year like this.

I woke up this morning with an image in my mind of drawing a card from my Goddess Inspiration Oracle deck. Even though I was running short on time (shorter than I knew due to unexpected still nearly impassable snowy road conditions that needed to be braved on my way to town), I decided to draw one and run to the woods with it. Interestingly, I drew Saci, which was about strength:

Saci is a Hindu goddess associated with physical strength, leadership, and observation. The message on the card is: take steps to develop your physical strength.

Divine Power.

Later at the skating rink with my kids and our friends, I talked briefly with one friend about her recent experience with a vision/message and I thought as I was driving home about following through on those hunches and inspirations and what we can learn from them. I don’t know that I specifically learned anything from this strength card itself, but it did make me think about how little attention I pay to my physical strength as a feature of myself. I just posted on Facebook about “knowing that I’m strong,” but that was in relationship to stamina for grading papers, not literally…

There are a lot of types of strength—physical, emotional, vulnerable. It can be strong to ask for help, to know when to stop, when to fold, when to keep going, when to try again, when to surrender.

You can do a free reading from this deck online here. And, you can also download an app version of it for your iphone. 🙂

Categories: readings, womanspirit | Leave a comment

Whew!

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Molly

Light from the back porch (saying, “come back inside!”) and light from the moon.

“We are nature. We are nature seeing nature. The red-winged blackbird flies in us.” –Susan Griffin (Open Mind, 5/29)

I got to the woods at 11:00 tonight after a long day of grading papers, interspersed with household tasks and kid needs. I keep trying to remember that this is only a very temporary phase and my usual “balance (such as it is) will be restored soon. I enjoyed looking at the moon (which is half right now, even though it my pictures it looks almost full) and the sensation of the quietness in the woods tonight. Still snowy, dark. Almost silent. I tipped my head back and watched the lights from a far off something flying noiselessly across the sky, noticing how the sound of it followed, rather than preceded it. I listened to my own breath and became aware of a humming sound, a ringing almost, in my ears. Just the biological effect of having my head tilted back, or tinnitus, or the divine hum and heartbeat of the universe, I’m not sure. The sound I think we hear when everything else is quiet and our minds are still. I heard a guest on Voices of the Sacred Feminine talk about this once—that if you settle down and listen to the sound behind everything else, it is a “divine buzz” or hum or the “ommm” to which the world vibrates.

“Mother earth, sister sea,

giving birth, energy

reaching out,

touching me

lovingly.”

–Miriam Therese Winter (Open Mind, 7/5)

In other news, we’re having a holiday 10% sale in our etsy shop (use code: HOLIDAYS10OFF). I love that these goddess pendants represent a collaborative creative effort with my husband. Feels like a union of energies.

Categories: art, nature, night, quotes, self-care, spirituality, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

I make the effort

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Molly

I make the effort
to maintain a ground of oceanic silence
out of which arises the multitude
of phenomena of daily life.

I make the effort
to see and passionately open in love
To the spirit that infuses all things.

I make the effort
to see the Beloved in everyone
and to serve the Beloved through everyone
(including the Earth)

I often fail in these aspirations
because I lose the balance
between separateness and unity,
and I feel afraid.

But I make the effort.

–Ram Dass (via Letters to my Daughters by Beth Sage-Owens)

It was pretty silly of me to plan a new blog-every-day experience while simultaneously entering the heaviest workload of the school session. I made this commitment to myself to show up though and so I’m doing it, even though it basically feels ridiculous to expect of myself and I’m not sure that what I’m sharing in these hastily banged out little posts actually has any value to anyone else! The school session ends on Saturday though and the rest of December will be ahead of me to continue my experiment/experience as well as turning my attention to my thesis (this month of posts was kind of going to be my wrap-up “lessons” from a year in the woods). I came to the computer wondering if I already had anything in my drafts folder I could use today, in my own best friend style, and behold, I did. This poem that I copied from a book at the beginning of October. And, it was pretty appropriate for today 🙂 After the GGG this Sept., one of the women I met there offered to mail me a book of her past writings and newsletters and this poem caught my eye and I saved it to use someday.

I visited the woods very hurriedly today because I was getting ready to leave and drive to class on potentially icy roads. I said, “I’m just going to take a picture and leave!” BUT, guess what? I could see both the moon and sun from the same spot (I had to move around a little) and the light in the woods was beautiful. And, as always, it restoreth my soul.

Moon

Sun

So, this is what I’ve got to offer tonight, nothing more, nothing less. I make the effort.

Categories: GGG, nature, poems, quotes, readings, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Be-ing and do-ing…

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Molly

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that my last post on Feminism and Religion was about my grandma’s memorial service. This is a snippet:

However, this is what I would say about her, and what I did say about her: my grandma lived her life and was a vibrant example to all of us of how to live well and wisely one’s wild and precious life. I valued most about her all the interesting things she did. She was active and busy. She was always doing stuff. And, it was cool stuff and she was a cool person and I loved her and learned from her precisely because she was so busy and interesting all the dang time. I come from a long line of busy women with lots of interests and abilities. Maybe that is just fine.

via An Epic Woman: A Feminist Eulogy by Molly | Feminism and Religion.

I received a comment remarking on the “doing” orientation of my memorial speech/service and this gave me food for thought:

Having read both your eulogy and Grace’s, I’m left wondering if we define feminism in terms of doing instead of being. I think I do, and I wonder if that doesn’t get me in trouble sometimes. I hear you acknowledging and affirming your own lineage of “doing,” and that seems to be a good thing. I’m not calling that personal affirmation into question, but our collective understanding of feminism. Anybody have any thoughts on this? Are we still trying to overcome the stereotype of the passive female? Or is this connected to our need for feminist activism? And what is a feminist “being” anyway? Being feminist in the moment? Embodying the Goddess?

These are excellent questions to consider and something I actually turned over a LOT while I was writing this and in thinking about my grandmother because I could see that this was happening. So, I thought I’d share what I turned over in my response to the comment…

How DO we define a feminist mode of “being” (or any kind of “be-ing” for that matter)? Being, how someone IS and how we know who we are, often eludes definitional capture, which is exactly why we describe others in terms of doing. What IS “being” anyway? Often, I actually find the idea of “just BE” or “be-ing” or the like crowds up my head with yet another admonition of something I’m supposed to DO to be “correct” and adequately self-helped. I’ve also noted that it feels damaging to me to associate “doing” or activity as a “masculine” trait and “being” (or passivity/receptivity) as “feminine.” I also know that in feminism or otherwise it often takes “doers” to get good work done–suffragists, for example! (our activist lineage you reference too)

In regular life, however, rather than theory or self-help books, I find we see someone’s being through the doing–and that can be feminist aligned or otherwise, for sure!

Returning to my grandma as my example, through her doing, I saw her being. In the quilts she made, I saw her love and attention. This in a real sense was her language of being. And, because she DID, one of those very quilts is still there on my bed and I sleep under it every night, even though her being is no longer here with us (or is it still here, because it is still communicated through the works she left behind her?). Her name is signed with a clear, confident stroke on my bedspread in her own hand and it covers me as I sleep. It was through her travels, that we saw her spirit of adventure. It was through the works of her hands that we saw her creativity. It was through her words and conversations and the books she read that we saw her intelligence. If she hadn’t been willing to DO those things, could we have actually seen who she WAS? Brilliant, irrepressible, adventurous, determined…

(Actions speak louder than words!)

Of course, balance is also important. “Doing” self-care also matters. In self-care practices, I think we encounter being in a feminist sense (maybe??). I maintain my daily woodspractice of sitting in the woods each day–there, I can just BE at last! Or, can I? Since the moment of being requires doing to get there–I had to get up, leave the house, go to the woods, walk up onto the rock and sit there, paying attention, feeling the air, thinking my poems, hearing the birds, watching the sunset. That is still doing, in its way. And, I like it.

Ah ha! So, might a feminist-aligned distinction also be found in doing for others vs. doing for/with oneself, perhaps? (I think my grandma actually got this one down really–I easily see both of these in her life)

I’ve actually struggled quite a bit in my own life with self-recrimination over not being able to “just BE,” “better.” And, it is in that sense that I recognized the “noble legacy” of coming from a long line of busy, do-ing women.

So, while our works or our “doings” may be how we are valued and that is kind of bad/patriarchal–but these opportunities are also how we show people that we value them too (feminist). HOW we “do” matters and it in THAT that we can find a feminist connection. In showing up, in doing that memorial service and doing that speech through my tears, I showed the room my own being and how we are/were connected. That was what I could DO for my family and for my grandma. Prepare a service that was loving and respectful and that honored her and who she was, at least to us—and through that, other people could see who she was too (as well as through the other people intimately involved with the memorial luncheon. I’m writing only of my experience/contribution with it, but it was a labor of love from my aunt and other people as well). My grandma helped contribute to her own obituary and requested the menu and location for her own memorial luncheon. That is doing too, yes, but it also epitomizes her way of being–I don’t know that the two can be separated or unwound from the the other. And, that active quality of doing life, was then, who she WAS in being. It is circular (and that’s pretty goddessy in itself!).

How can we describe someone without describing things they did to evidence that? To demonstrate that? I’m not sure. I think without being able to describe the doings of others, we end up with exactly the platitudes and caricatures that I find most decidedly unfeminist. i.e. “She was always loving and caring and supported me 100%.” I find THAT type of memorial statement hollow and nearly meaningless in the vagueness as well as very self-centered (I.e. Only defined in relationship to how “she made me feel.”) How do we actually KNOW that she was those things, how did we SEE that from or with her, or—all too often—-is that just what we think people are supposed to say about grandmas and we find we never knew who she was at all? (Because all we looked for or tried to feel was a stereotype of “she was always loving and nurturing” and forgot about, or never paid attention to, her laughing on the back of an elephant in Africa?)

I sense even more to write about here… ;-D

(As a side note, since she died, I’ve also found myself reconsidering the notion of “stuff” and “clutter” being somehow bad or undesirable, because that is what we have left now. I know that “memories are what matter,” blah, blah, blah, but the fact is that the “stuff” that remains of my grandma’s life and presence is a vehicle for memory and an echo of her and her being/doing that means she is still a part of my life in a tangible way, not just in a when-my-mind-turns-to-her way. Does that make sense? For example, I have one of her Shirley Temple dolls from 1957. Towards the end of fall when the doll came to live with me, I took her down to the woods for a visit. Now she sits in my kitchen. I like the connection. :))

Categories: death, family, feminist thealogy | 4 Comments

Sacred

Posted on December 9, 2013 by Molly

Let us be clear that when I say Goddess I am not talking about a being somewhere outside of this world, nor am I proposing a new belief system. I am talking about choosing an attitude; choosing to take this living world, the people and creatures in it, as the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, to see the world, the Earth, and our lives as sacred.” –Starhawk (Open Mind, 2/7)

Today I made sugar cookies with my kids:

And polymer clay ornaments for myself:

I noticed that it snowed more overnight and my old footprints in the woods were covered up and smoothed over. Yesterday, I also noticed how interestingly the snow on the deck rails had melted:

I finally got some work done on my matriarchal myth paper, but it is tedious going. Tomorrow begins the big push to get the school session finished and piles and piles of papers graded. I’m going to get up early and devote most of the day to it.

Every day sacred…right?! 😉

Categories: family, nature, parenting, quotes | 4 Comments

Crucible

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Molly

…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…

Right before I left the woods today and turned and saw this and it seemed very suitable to my “crucible” thoughts.

Categories: nature | 1 Comment

The Full Circle

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Molly

“Goddess is Magic, the subtle forces of planets, moons and stars, and the Powers of our own Deep Minds. And She is Our Ability to Call forth that which we have need of, and to banish that which we no longer need. And therefore let us gather together in our communities, and join with the forces within and without…”

–Shekhinah in Open Mind (9/25)

Diane Mariechild, the editor of Open Mind, then goes on to explain the following:

Goddess is the full circle. She is birth, life, death, and rebirth. [People] need the Goddess. The planet needs the Goddess. We need to celebrate and embrace the full circle of life; to know that all of life is contained within this circle. There is nothing that is outside the circle…Goddess is energy, a way of balanced relationship, an openness of the heart that allows us to have a full experience of life, with all its pain and all its joy.

Find a quiet time during the day or the night when you can sit alone and feel the energy of the world around you. Tune into the natural world—the water, the air, the light of the sun or the moon, the trees, the Earth. Can you sense this energy? No need to call it by any name. Sense. Breathe. Allow

Last night and today, it snowed a lot. I was interested to see the juncos–snowbirds–show up several days before the snow, when the temperature was still in the 60’s. They hopped around in the driveway and I told my husband that I guessed the forecast was actually going to be right, even though the air didn’t feel like it! I used up most of my writing energy/time today by writing blog posts about our winter family fun on other blogs. And, today my blog post about my grandmother’s memorial service (which I planned and served as the priestess for) was published on Feminism and Religion:

It was deeply important to me to have multiple voices represented during the small, family-only, service and I enlisted all the grandchildren present, as well as her step-grandchildren, in an adapted responsive reading based on Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road”. I chose it precisely because it spoke to the irrepressible, adventuresome spirit of my grandmother. It was a lot of pressure to be responsible for the family ceremony for the interment of her ashes. I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted it to be what she deserved. I wanted it to “speak” to every person there. I wanted it to be worthy of her. I hope it was enough.

via An Epic Woman: A Feminist Eulogy by Molly | Feminism and Religion.

I also found out that my revised thesis prospectus was accepted and I can officially use my Woodspriestess project as the subject of my thesis!

And, I decided I simply must pre-order this amazing-sounding anthology of writings by modern priestesses:

From “Priestessing with Integrity” by Sylvia Braillier:

“Priestess . . . favored by the Goddess, wise woman, sage and a guide to others on the path. Being a priestess is a vocation that honors the sacredness we embody as women. We are fortunate to live in a time when the Goddess is returning and we can represent and support her work here in this world as priestesses. It’s easy to make up romantic notions about what it is to be a priestess. Not to say that some of them aren’t true, but it’s a package deal that includes real challenges and great blessings. When the rubber meets the road, what does being a priestess really entail?

Whether initiated as a priestess within a tradition or by the challenges and blessings of life, certain responsibilities are part and parcel of the vocation. The job of priestess doesn’t stop when you leave the circle. It is a life commitment to accountability and integrity, not only by performing your duties to the best of your ability but by walking in life as a living representative of enlightened behavior and speech. As a priestess, your behavior sets the bar. One of the greatest gifts you can give is to teach by example and live the teachings as fully as you can.”

http://www.goddess-ink.com/priestessanthology.html

May we all live well and wisely and take any opportunity to play in the snow 🙂

Categories: family, feminist thealogy, Goddess, nature, priestess, spirituality, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Winter Rose

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Molly

Snowy rose.

It takes patience to photograph a rose

it take patience to grow a thorn

it takes patience to be a rosebush

it takes patience to be born.

Snow has fallen in the forest and the air is cold and misty.

Throughout the summer and fall, I took pictures of my rosebush by the back deck, focusing on one rose specifically that I took pictures of throughout its lifespan as a sort of in-depth study of its bud, bloom, full flower, and decline. I meant to do a post about the life cycle of a rose and include all the pictures as well as my sense of connection through it to the larger cycle of life, endlessly repeated. The moments passed and I never wrote the post, but today one small piece of what I thought one day as I tried to take a picture of it came back to me as I stood on the rocks. In the breeze, it is hard to steady the bush enough to take a non-blurry picture. Trying to steady it and thinking I would have to give up on getting a clear picture, I snagged my finger on a bramble and I thought about how patience is required for both tasks.

Here are some of those rose pictures:

And, here are some of today’s snowfall. The Wheel keeps on turning and I keep on watching (and living it).

Categories: nature, woodspriestess | 6 Comments

Self-Improvement

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Molly

So, two days ago I wrote about giving up the idea of personal perfection and yesterday I mentioned enjoying how the internet “smallens” the world. One of those smallening experiences is the opportunity to be Facebook friends with authors I admire and one of those authors is Jennifer Louden. She is one of my all-time favorite writers and I have her books—The Pregnant Woman’s Comfort Book, The Women’s Comfort Book, The Couples’ Comfort Book, The Women’s Retreat Book, and The Life Organizer (new paperbook edition and digital support kit is available now). I’ve read her books for years and return to them often—she has a unique ability to not be a self-help author, while still being helpful and about working with the self. I’m planning to work through The Life Organizer again beginning in January (I did it in 2008 and actually kept it up the entire year). Jen has always seemed real to me. Approachable. Authentic. Not fake or gimmicky at all. I don’t get the “sales” feeling from her, nor do I get a glitzed-up perfection image. And, though she writes about spiritual topics, I detect no touch of what I would semi-meanly call “shaman chic,” which is a surefire way to rub me the wrong way. Anyway, we’re Facebook friends and I comment at various times on her status updates, a recent one being:

“Be willing to look at your own life and want more for yourself without beating yourself up or making it about another self-improvement plan.”

Ooh! Such a good tip and yet one I wasn’t sure I could actually figure out. So, I commented to that effect: “I joke that I’m tired of my life being one long self-improvement project. However, I also want to reach my own potential!” She said she’d write a blog post for me and today, she did. See. World, smallened. So cool. While I perhaps didn’t explain myself in full—what I think I really meant when I used the word “potential” in my comment was that, “I worry about whether ‘self-acceptance’ can be a sort of a screen for hiding behind or an excuse for ‘giving up’ and not fully developing yourself”—I still loved and learned from the insights she offered in this post, especially this:

Your potential isn’t something to be reached, it’s something to be trusted.

After I read her post with a couple of tears prickling in my eyes, I shared my done-with-perfection spontaneous woodsvision with her. I didn’t write about it here on the day it happened because I didn’t feel like I had enough time and besides it was kind of…weird.

I saw that this perfection thing was a white worm that was wrapped around my heart and also curved into the grooves of my brain. Sitting there on the rock in the woods, I unwound it. Pulled it out. It was long and ropy and invasive. I held it out in open hands and it floated off down the hill, dissolving into a million sparkles in the sunshine until I couldn’t see it any longer.

I felt lighter after this and like I really was, truly done. I don’t need that wormy thing any more. I had the same sense of certainty about being done with apologizing for things as well. Hope it really lasts!

Today, my woodstask was actually taking new pictures for our updated listings on etsy. See, sometimes there are visions, sometimes there are poems, and sometimes there is business. I love how the same space has born witness to it all over the course of the year. I feel like I both bear witness and am witnessed there in that same space. Earlier in the day I’d been thinking, again, about my dissertation. In shifting my thesis topic to my woodspriestess experiment, I feel more confident that I have something original to offer. It is an offering of myself and my own experiences—and a personal process of spiritual inquiry that I hope can be of some benefit to others. With birth as the focus of my dissertation, while I might have 200+ pages of notes and over ten years worth of reading, writing, and thinking, I’m not sure I have anything new to offer. However, looking at my sculptures, I felt a renewed sense of confidence that this is actually what I have to say that is new. These figures are my language and my lessons, the symbols of what I’ve learned, how I’ve grown, and what matters to me. I’d already decided to “frame” my thesis in the context of my sculptures and I feel somewhat confident that I can draw that over to my dissertation and use a sculptural framework for my narrative as well…

P.S. I also decided that I’m not going to waste my energy fretting over literally getting my daily post published by midnight. When I say “today,” I’m not talking about the day we’ve technically just slipped over into. I’m talking about what happened before I stayed up past midnight and finished this post!

Categories: art, birth, books, self-care, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Deep Talk

Posted on December 3, 2013 by Molly

“No lesson is learned immediately. There is a phrase used in West Africa, deep talk, which means that anybody will understand it on a certain level. People who are interested in really understanding more take that lesson deeper. As far down as you take the advice you could still go deeper if you lived longer enough.” –Maya Angelou

I really like this concept of deep talk, even though I’m not totally sure I completely get it. I’ll keep living and see what I learn…

I already wrote a short post tonight on my other blog in which I mentioned being amazed sometimes about how the internet “smallens” the world. It is truly incredibly. Last month, I got a message from Nané Jordan, who I quoted in my original thesis proposal. She happened to find my blog post and offered to send me a copy of her own dissertation and thesis on birth/women’s spirituality related themes. The package arrived today from Canada and I am very much looking forward to digging into her work. I’m also sending one of my own pewter goddess pendants back to her and I love that we’ve made this connection, through words and ideas, from across the miles.

As I sat on the rocks this afternoon, looking at her dissertation and thesis, I felt really concerned about my ability to do this. To dig this deep. To so deeply engage with my ideas. I flipped through her work thinking, how did she DO this? I worried that maybe I think too casually—skimming over the surface in internet soundbites and the blank safety of a computer screen, when I should really be wrestling in the mud with my theories. Dibbling, dabbling, working in bits and pieces and fragments and hurried scraps, rushing along. Do I think deeply enough to carry a project of this magnitude and effort through? Then I thought about how just a few minutes ago I stepped the wrong way in the leaves and twisted my ankle a little. The cat bit my hand and I smacked at her in an un-spiritually-evolved, non-zen manner. I thought about how I stepped on an armadillo in these woods and I knew something after all: this is my mud and I’m wrestling in it with my theories…

“We need to approach our state of mind with curiosity and open wonder. That open curious listening to life is joy—no matter what the mood of our life is.” –Charlotte Joko Beck

(*both quotes again from the daily reader, Open Mind, by Diane Mariechild. Love this book!)

Categories: nature, OSC, spirituality, womanspirit, women, woodspriestess, writing | Leave a comment

Practice

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Molly

“My writing is a practice. It requires that sort of daily repetition and solitude—being with oneself—awareness—awareness of one’s body, awareness of one’s thoughts, awareness of one’s own process. And meditation makes me more aware of everything I do, so it makes the movements within my writing process clearer to me.”

–Susan Griffin (in Open Mind, 10/16)

It is interesting to see that I’ve decided to begin this new daily writing practice at a time in which I don’t feel much like writing any blog posts! Hmm. Today, my time in the woods was abbreviated slightly by the return of my small children, but before their voices came floating over to me, I was sitting with the sound of woodpeckers. There were at least three different ones near me of at least two types and it sounded like there were more that I didn’t see. As winter steadily approaches, I’ve noticed that there is much less bird song in the forest lately, but today (warmer) the woods were alive with the sounds of birds and squirrels. Woodschorus.

Sunset

Got obsessed with collecting acorn caps to make hats for Christmas ornament elves

A mysterious hole in the ground that wasn’t there yesterday.

Can you see the little woodpecker?

I’ve also noticed that while I enjoy being alone, I’m feeling a little cooped up and isolated lately–the Thanksgiving holiday meant that our usual weekly activities were different from what they usually are and I’ve gone nearly a week without seeing anyone other than my immediate family and my parents. My nerves feel a little shot by the voices of my darling children, I’m really feeling extremely done co-sleeping with my toddler daughter, and all three of them seem out of sorts and extra messy, wild, loud, disagreeable and irritable too. I think they also miss seeing their friends and going places.

With winter’s approach and the turn of the wind to cold, it has also come to my attention that I want to create some more sacred spaces inside my home. Before I began my woodspractice, I used to sit at my living room altar every morning and spend some time in prayer/reflection. Now, I’ve let it get a bit dusty and so over the weekend I spent some time cleaning it up and rearranging the items a little bit. Today when I sat down at my desk to work on my classes, I lit a candle and then designed to squeeze a little altar space in front of my textbooks 🙂

I’m having trouble allowing myself the moontime downtime my body calls for as well. Though I very nearly talked myself out of it AND very nearly apologizing for wanting to do it, I did carve out a small niche of time in which to participate in Paola’s New Moon Intention call this evening. I laid down with a heat pack with a candle and a pocket goddess sculpture as a tiny altar space and listening with my eyes closed to her voice and to the intentions of the other women in the virtual sacred circle. I’m glad I gave this to myself, even though it meant people were waiting for dinner.

Yesterday, I decided that I’m no longer willing to expect myself to be perfect. I’m done with that. I’m cleaning it out. Unraveling it from around my heart and brain. Done.

“Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.” –May Sarton (in Open Mind, 10/25)

“It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched.” –Tillie Olsen (in Open Mind, 11/8)

In keeping with the swirling change of the seasons, I fell in love with this amazing picture of Shekinah Shaking Out the Seasons by Caron McCloud (Shiloh Sophia McCloud‘s mother). For some reason it came to me today and I felt absolutely transfixed by it: