nature

Woodspriestess: Sensory

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Molly

The chair rock has a couple of nice little “shelf” nook on the side of it. I’m always tempted to leave things on it, but I make a habit of not leaving things in or (usually) taking things from the woods. Sometimes I set something on the shelf just during the time that I am out there.

Breathe deep
Breathe peace

Open hands
Open heart
Open mind
Open spirit

This is both my prayer
And my vow

Resting in sheltering stone
Listening to bird song
Feeling the breeze
Seeing the trees against sky
Tasting the very center of life.

A thealogy of embodiment is the subject of my dissertation, so I was very interested to read the Allergic Pagan’s smart and thought-provoking follow-up post to his thoughts about objectivity. He draws the conclusion that it is the body that bridges the gap between the subjective and objective. While I focused on subjective experience and the Goddess in my prior post about objectivity, I actually do find that the Goddess can be interpreted/understood through science as well—some people call it evolution, others call it Goddess and others call it God…subjective experience need not exclude scientific concepts/understanding. As in my breastmilk example from that post, I can understand the experience both objectively and subjectively and, just as John notes, this intersection occurs within the body. I also believe theapoetical language can include both as well. I’m going to explore the question of the place of the God within thealogy in my Thursday Thealogy post next week. I tend to come from the notion that Goddess holds all—and, that Goddess-language is simply a consciously chosen name for unnameable forces of life, the weaving that holds the world, a weaving including but not limited to females and males of all kinds.

Today, rather than standing or sitting on the priestess rocks, I visited the chair rock instead. It is super comfortable and I used to come here to sit after my miscarriages and then during my pregnancy with my daughter and then this is where I brought her one-month-old self to introduce her to the Earth. I used to sit here with her in a pouch or the Ergo and feel our bodies breathing in harmony, chest to chest.

The scenery looks different when considered from the chair rock rather than the priestess rocks. Here is a “slingshot” tree” and behind the big mother tree that I like so much (and that I keep hoping is still alive!)

As I’ve previously referenced, Gloria Orenstein refers to endarkenment as, “a bonding with the Earth and the invisible that will reestablish our sense of interconnectedness with all things, phenomenal and spiritual, that make up the totality of our life in our cosmos. The ecofeminist arts do not maintain that analytical, rational knowledge is superior to other forms of knowing. They honor Gaia’s Earth intelligence and the stored memories of her plants, rocks, soil, and creatures. Through nonverbal communion with the energies of sacred sites in nature, ecofeminist artists obtain important knowledge about the spirit of the land, which they can then honor through creative rituals and environmental pieces” (Reweaving the World, p. 280). This speaks to me because of my theapoetical experiences of the presence of “the Goddess” in my own sacred spot in the woods behind my house, where I go to the priestess rocks to pray, reflect, meditate, do ritual, think, and converse with the spirits of that place.

Categories: embodiment, endarkenment, family, feminist thealogy, Goddess, nature, pregnancy loss, spirituality, thealogy, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Sacrificial

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Molly

Sacrificial stone.
What do I wish to lie down
to cast off
to let go of
to be done with

What in my own life needs to be
pruned away
cut back
restructured
reshaped

This beautiful place in the woods
that holds me so deeply
that I love so well
could also kill me
these trees
tall and supple
can fall and crush
these rocks
firm, supportive and unyielding
can crack a skull
the air
blowing and caressing
can become tornadic
the sun
bright and beautiful
can scorch and obliterate

So many sacrifices
so much growth
so much change

It is never the same here
never boring
never stop paying attention
and the trees make patterns on blue sky
with thin, fingers of branches

Sacrificial stone.
What is left
when everything I don’t need
is cut away

It is beautifully warm today and I went down to the woods with an eye toward spotting signs of spring. I carried a book with me, imagining that I might lie out there for a while and read, but I set the book aside. It isn’t really a place for reading. It is place for paying attention. There is a rock that is particularly good for lying on and so I laid on my back and looked up at the skies and trees. While I like doing that, it always makes me think sacrificial stone and then I feel a little weird and “laid out.” So, today I ran with that phrase instead of hopping away to something else.

I also noticed high up in one of the trees, there appears to be growth or buds of some kind, almost like tiny flowers, and there were a lot of insects hovering around it. I though it was a sycamore tree because of the color and the bark, but squinting up at those high up, far away flowers, I think it is really a maple tree. There are a lot of very small maples in the woods, so it would be consistent. This year I plan to pay better attention to what kind of trees there are in this little grove.

On the small tulip poplar right before I enter the woods, I paused to take a photo of its scarred trunk. The first year we planted it strong winds split it down the middle. My husband taped it together with black electric tape, which I did not think would work, and yet it totally knitted back together and is totally fine. We are stronger in our broken places.

And, it finally feels like time to share my very best, favorite quote about rocks:

Rocks are very slow and have sat around from the beginning, developing powers…Rocks can show you what you are going to become. They show you lost and forgotten things.

–Agnes Whistling Elk to Lynn Andrews (quoted in Carol Christ’s essay in Reweaving the World, pg. 69)

In the same essay, Carol Christ then goes on to explain:

The Great Spirit of the Native Americans is linked to the spirits of all beings, including rocks… Susan Griffin writes, ‘Behind naming, beneath words, is something else. An existence named, unnamed, and unnameable.’ There is a human tendency to name this unnameable with personal language, to believe that it cares as we care. I imagine, but I do not know, that the universe has an intelligence, a Great Spirit, that it cares as we care. I imagine that all that is cares. Sometimes I feel that I hear the universe weeping or laughing, speaking to me. But I do not know. What I do know is that whether the universe has a center of consciousness or not, the sight of a field of flowers in the color purple, the rainbow, must be enough to stop us from destroying all that is and wants to be.

: Dog on the rocks

: Took a picture over my shoulder and behind behind my head

: Tiny sage vallantly coming up!

: Tree with little buds attracting insects.

: Rosebush needing pruning.

: More trees!

: Shadow self

: Scarred and sturdy

Categories: nature, poems, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Surrender?

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Molly

What a sweet, snuggly face.

Surrender…
open up
open wide
surrender
let go…

Is this just another word for
quitting
for giving up?
or is it the type of
intensely powerful surrender
that is required to give birth?
a surrender that is so mighty
and so potent
it is experienced only rarely

That surrender
is that which I can draw
strength from
that surrender
is the pinnacle of my own power
my own magnificence
my own embodied potency
of being
it is that surrender
that motherhood requires

and I have proven
I am up for the challenge.

This morning I struggled a lot with what my kids needed from me and with the other projects I was trying to finish. My boys had planned a party and overnight with a couple of friends for today and I knew when I got up that the clock was ticking in terms of me having any quiet time to work and think. I kept becoming blocked and frustrated and questions and needs were thick in the air. I was trying to pack up orders and bake brownies and do laundry and finish a DVD review and I hadn’t taken a shower yet, and, and, and… As I walked down to the woods carrying my youngest child with me, a word floated through my head…surrender. Part of me thought “oh, yeah! Good idea!” the other part of me thought, “that is just a sneaky way of saying, be a quitter.” So, that’s the concept I reflected on in the woods today. I took a couple more pictures and thought it was somehow appropriate that once in that space with a child, it is that child who dominates my “field of vision” so to speak. That is basically what kids do to your life!

What I recognized was that I needed to stop…just for a while…and focus on what those around me needed from the day. When I try to “do it all” anyway, I get frustrated and discouraged. If I can have the presence of mind to release for a while, we’re all happier. Part of what was hard for me was anticipating the expenditure of energy I knew today would require from me, having people in the house all day and the chaos and the mess. So, I snuggled with my baby and said…

Gathering strength
for the day

open hands
soft eyes
soft shoulders
smooth face
open hands
open heart
open home

I breathe deep
and let go

preparing to give
to be outward directed today
to put other work on hold
to enjoy my friends
to celebrate my children
to laugh with my company

knowing
that the deep, still
inner place
of rest and rejuvenation
with be there for renewal
when I need it.

I already wrote about this temporary surrender several years ago, so it isn’t a new insight, but it was a good one to revisit. I also spotted another forked stick “augur.” The rock has a nice spot of druzy quartz on it. It was cold today, but nice and sunny. Later when we walked in the evening, the moon was a bright, clear sliver and you could see the shadowy rest of the moon resting in its curve.

Categories: family, nature, poems, prayers, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: Trees

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Molly

Loved the way the clouds were in layers with trailing connections today.

To my lips
a prayer comes
thank you
I see.

Today, I read a gorgeous article by Jane Goodall about trees in the Smithsonian magazine. When I went down to the woods this afternoon I was thinking that I’m getting pretty tired of not seeing any green around here. I’m ready for the woods to look drenched in color again. Then, I noticed some things…

Buds on the memorial tulip poplar we planted post-babyloss:

Trying to take a picture of the buds, but got photo-bombed by dog and cat instead.

Weird, curly black mushrooms on a dry branch: Moss…it’s green!
I also looked around at the trees surrounding the rocks that form such a nice “sacred grove” and I’m still worried that several of them did not survive last summer’s drought. I’m looking forward to them leafing out and coming back, but there is a part of me that is scared to see, as spring dawns, which of them might not leaf out.

This tree is right in my line of sight from my favorite rock and it is one of my favorite trees out there because it is so big and eye-catching. I really, really hope it made it and I look forward to being able to take a picture of its first green leaves…

Categories: nature, prayers, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Echoes of Mesopotamia

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Molly

Custom sculpture for a Facebook follower 🙂

Echoes of Mesopotamia
small figures from ancient places
ancient times
and ancient faces
ancient words
and ancient wisdom
still flowing in my veins

Clay in my hands
clay in her hands
running on the rivers of time
spiraling in the mysteries of being
spinning in the eddies and ripples of eternity

I have a strong emotional connection to Paleolithic and Neolithic Goddess sculptures. I do not find that I feel as personally connected to Egyptian and Greek and Roman Goddess imagery, but the ancient figures really speak to something powerful within me. I have a sculpture of the Goddess of Willendorf at a central point on my altar. Sometimes I hold her and wonder and muse about who carved the original. I almost feel a thread that reaches out and continues to connect us to that nearly lost past—all the culture and society and how very much we don’t know about early human history. There is such a solid power to these early figures and to me they speak of the numinous, non-personified, Great Goddess.

What were they thinking? Those ancient woman who transformed stone into potent and enduring images of the Goddess. Who crafted with their hands, something that persisted for 5,000, 10,000, 15, 000, 20,000, 30,000 years. Images so compelling that they reach across time, space, and understanding to say hello. Who made them and what was she thinking? Who am I and what am I thinking? Perhaps it is encoded in the layers of our being. Carrying on a legacy. The next link in a chain that spans the centuries and that is beyond the reach of history.

During our last women’s circle meeting we talked about our personal cultural histories and we began work on “sacred bundles” that we will continue to add to throughout the year-long course. I added photos of my ancestors, a fossilized stone shell, (because the Earth itself represents the shared cultural history of us all!), and one of my own Goddess sculptures and I tied the bundle with a Goddess of Willendorf necklace. I surprised myself by bursting into tears when I tried to explain the significance of my items, feeling the swift swirl of time and how those grandmothers in my pictures are now gone, but they were people, just like me. I also shared about the deep connection I feel to the land I live on and how my parents moved here in the 1970’s, so maybe this isn’t really where I “come from,” but that this is where my blood and roots belong. I continued crying as I described how when I sculpt my little figures, I feel like I’m part of an unbroken chain that stretches back at least 35,000 years, from the person who carved the Willendorf Goddess, all the way down to me with my rocks and clay. Later that week, my dad said he needed to talk to me and he shared that in our family history it is really only HIM who “broke the chain” of being “from” this exact patch of the Earth, here in Missouri. He was actually the only member of his side of the family in a long time who wasn’t born here and that, in truth, six generations of my family were born, lived, and died within a 25 mile radius of this very hillside that I find so meaningful. He said that he feels like his blood called him back here and he returned to this land as a young man and raised his own children here because it called so powerfully (I was born one mile from where I now live). So, he said, no wonder you feel like this is your cultural heritage and where you belong. Your lineage is right here, right where you like to be.

When I was taking a Goddess history class at OSC, I wrote the following about the common use of red ochre on Goddess figures:

As I saw the slideshow and reflected on goddess figures I have known and loved, I was suddenly struck by the realization that the walls of my home are, in a sense, colored with red ochre. We live in a straw bale house and the walls are plastered with an earthen plaster that include the red Missouri “clay dirt” that is a feature of the Ozarks region in which I live. The clay is red because of iron oxide, which is what red ochre is defined as. I looked at the Goddess of Willendorf on my altar and at her rich reddish color that exactly matches the shade of the earth on my bedroom walls. No wonder I feel such a deep, personal connection to these ancient figures—quite literally, some part of me identifies Her with home!

Last month when I shared a photo of some of my Goddess sculptures on Facebook, someone left a comment saying simply: Echoes of Mesopotamia. And, I really liked that.

Goddesscraft.
Womancraft.
Lifecraft.
Who molds who?
Who sculpts who?
Is it just one beautiful dance
of exuberant co-creation?

Expansive memory,
silent witness,
inner wisdom,
embodied connection
solid space
all twisted together
in an incredible tapestry
of time
culture
power
and life.

Today, in the woods, I carried some of the sculptures I’ve made recently and am getting ready to ship to their new homes and I offered this prayer for them:

In this place of elemental peace
with the earth, stone, trees, sky
as my witnesses
I bless, dedicate, and consecrate
these sculptures.

May they go forth
in wisdom
love
grace
and peace

May they bring a message
may they carry with them
the loving intention
with which they were birthed
and may they go forward
to speak to those who need to hear from
to enter the hands and homes of other women
with love, joy, power, and connection

May they recall deep wisdom of deep places
bright kindness
of bright spaces
and may they be just
what another woman needs

Categories: art, blessings, Goddess, nature, OSC, prayers, sculpture, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, women's circle, woodspriestess | 6 Comments

Thursday Thealogy: Woodswisdom

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Molly

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ― Carl Jung

“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

“Let silence take you to the core of life.” ― Rumi

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.” ― Thomas Merton

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.” –Theodore Rubin

I had grand plans to share a whole bunch of fabulously insightful thoughts today based on a fabulously insightful post about Objectivity over at the Allergic Pagan, but this week is the busiest and most difficult week of the (college) session for me. I actually feel like I may have shortened my lifespan by staying up too late and working too hard. I usually maintain a pretty good work-life integration (I don’t say balance here intentionally, because it is hard for me to see work and life as two separate things that have to be “balanced.” I want them to integrate into a seamless flow that is just…life and living). However, the end of session grading tips me over the edge from doing good most of the time to edge of total freak out. Luckily, I’m finally catching on that this is normal and it is brief, it isn’t going to last forever and it doesn’t mean that I have to go on a big quit-fest or sink into a pit of despair about my “inability” to handle it all. So, today I slipped out to the woods and I laid on the rock and looked at the blue sky and listened to the birds and I thought, my gift to myself is not to expect anything else out of me today. I’m just going to lie here for a bit and look and rest. No thealogical insights required after all, who cares what I already named my post. I noticed the temperature is lovely, there were all kinds of birds out and about singing and flying and rooting through the dry leaves. I reflected on how beautiful I think it is that when I lie down on my back and look up at the sky, the trees there make an awesomely perfect circle. I took one picture over my head and behind me…

And one in front of me, and I noticed how the angle of the sun made it look like two completely different days, rather than just a different angle on the same day:

I remembered my most fundamental and core thealogical insight from my Ecology and the Sacred class:

I really do feel like the relational context of our lives is the fundamental core of the human experience. We cannot not be in relationship to the things around us, not just in terms of other humans, but plants, trees and animals. We are even in relationship with the sun, the wind, and the rain. And, the net that holds the whole, is what I name as divinity.

And, earlier in the week I noticed this poem and saved it to share:

How I go to the woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.
~ Mary Oliver

via ♥ Journey Of Young Women:

And, I saved this fabulous saying:

Via Naturalistic Pantheist

In the spirit of keeping it real and balancing (integrating?) the spirit with the bite, this afternoon I found a large bunch of entrails on my front porch. They were so copious that I actually feared for a moment that something had killed one of our cats. As I laid there on the rocks, breathing, thinking, feeling calm, feeling rested, letting some thealogy roam around my brain, doing a little musing about “sacrificial stones” and wondering if there was any poetry in me about that, and mentally re-giving myself permission to rest, our little dog trotted down and put his face right over mine and I jumped up screaming, “ENTRAIL MOUTH!” and ran back to the house…

Categories: nature, spirituality, thealogy, Thursday Thealogy, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: Spiky

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Molly

Spiky
flawed
imperfect
crabby
anxious
scattered
distracted

isn’t noticing this
Zen too?

overbooked
overdone
overdrawn
stretched thin
taut
tight
tense
snappy

I don’t go to the woods to write poetry. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know anything about poems. I’ve never actually written a poem and yet, here I am with all these poem-like posts, and a proportion of this blog’s followers seem to have become so for the “poetics” in my title, rather than for the Goddess (the “Thea” in theapoetics). I go to the woods for stillness. For quiet. To listen. While I end up speaking when I’m there, it is more like I’m receiving than anything. I think of it almost as a “channeled” poetry, or spontaneous poems that come to my mind and out of my mouth without conscious direction or effort. I record what I say on my iPhone and later I transcribe the recording and a “poem” is the result. I don’t do this with anything else or anywhere else, just there in the woods. Theapoetical experiences? Or, a quietness of being and mind that allows my own inner wisdom to surface or my subconscious mind to speak? Or is it hearing myself think? Hearing myself into speech? Usually, what comes to me in these experiences isn’t crabby or stressed, even if I just felt that way a minute before, because it is in that space that I find silence and peace and in that state of bodymind, I’m not stressed or crabby any longer. However, I do persist in this misconception that to be Zen is to be calm and if I’m not calm, I’ve blown my Zen for the day. Today I was reminded that the Zen is in the noticing. That’s all.

Today, I noticed my own spikiness…

At some level, I feel like I always have to be “nice” and never get angry. Since I’m human, I fail in this self-expectation multiple times every day. I feel hypocritical to be blogging about spiritual topics and musing about peace on earth, while also being snappy at my kids and family, feeling overcommitted and stretched thin and needing to say NO to expectations and shoulds. What right do I have to call myself a priestess, when I can barely juggle my life, family, energies, and others’ expectations? In the woods today I also said:

It feels hypocritical to call myself a priestess, to come commune in the cold winds of this hillside, but that is life too. It wouldn’t be real if I didn’t sometimes yell and what matters is that I’m willing to keep trying and trying and trying. I’m willing for tomorrow to be a better day. I’m willing to take risks and start things, even though I feel like a failure, I’m willing to offer the service I have to give, even though I’m not perfect.

Earlier in the year when I began my daily practice, I ended up down in the woods with one of my kids’ action figures that I’d brought home from my parents’ house in my coat pocket (I went down to the woods before going back in the house so he went along). It is a Signs of the Zodiac warrior, Cancer the Crab, and his plastic body has a lot of sharp spikes on it. I decided he would be my photo for the day, because that is real life too. It isn’t all Goddess sculptures in the sunshine, sometimes there are warrior crabs around. And, sometimes I, too, feel spiky and crabby, just like this dude:

When I took the pic I thought: he looks like I feel.

It takes a lot for me to keep posting when I people I know in real life are reading what I write, because there is a fear in me that they probably notice that which I also criticize in myself—“hey, what does she mean a peaceful home, I just heard her yell at her kids?!” There is a vulnerability and a courage, of sorts, in continuing to write anyway. And, it is strange really to feel more comfortable with strangers reading than people I actually know.

When I came inside today before leaving to teach, my friend and my mom were at my house and they said, “oh, were you out doing that woods thing?” and I kind of cringed to myself at that. But, in an interesting moment of synchronicity, my mom also said, “do you have wet hair?! It’s so cold out you will have frozen spikes.”

Yep, I’m spiky. And, guess what…

The woods are spiky too
Nature isn’t always nice
She has sharp teeth

The swirl of life’s energies
carries some decided unpleasantness
and very sharp edges

rocks are hard
ice is slippery
wind creates tornadoes
fire destroys

Mother Nature has an edge
a sharp, strong bite
is it really any wonder
that sometimes I bite too.

“The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life.”

-Starhawk

Categories: family, nature, poems, priestess, spirituality, theapoetics, women, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

Woodspriestess: Night’s Heartbeat

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Molly

Tonight the leaves were rustling very noticeably in the light breeze and I kept looking up at the trees and sky—so, I tried to get a picture of what the trees at night look like when looking up at them…

Sweet wind
geese honking
night falling
trees swaying
snow melting
planet turning
in deep black space

Hope springing
life singing
leaves rustling
seeds waiting
sap running
I hear
night’s heartbeat

(3/3/2013)

I was gone from home for most of the day and didn’t make it out to the woods until it was dusk. I heard distant geese and the dry leaves were making a very noticeable chorus. I’m interested by how the cats and dog immediately notice when I go out and come down with me and sit on the rocks too. I’m not the only one with a daily practice! I also noticed, unfortunately, how I was preoccupied by thinking about what I was going to write tonight and what picture I could take in the poor light, as well as trying to figure out if I was even going to have enough time to post before midnight. This detracts from the mindfulness practice of these woods visits…though, noticing the preoccupation itself is also a kind of mindfulness. So, since the leaves were so communicative tonight, I tuned in to what else I could hear in the nightfall space and that brought me back into a point of focus.

I also like turning to go back inside and seeing my cozy home waiting for me through the woods. Doesn’t it look welcoming? 🙂

Categories: endarkenment, nature, poems, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Practice

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Molly

“My political activism grew out of my spiritual understandings of the earth as the living Mother, because the Goddess is injured wherever there is injustice, wanton cruelty, poverty, and pollution.”

–Monica Sjoo

I’m still in a bit of a mental funk. Feeling discouraged and down and despairing about the nature of humankind and wondering what I can really do to make any kind of difference. Also, my kids are being difficult lately and I keep thinking, oh. my. word. If I can’t create peace in my own home, how am I supposed to change the world?!

The ground is still snowy and slushy and it was cold in the woods today. I didn’t stay long. And, I didn’t have any particularly fabulous insights or inspiration and found myself thinking…on only day two…why did I think I could do this writing every day thing? Then, I started looking around more clearly and I noticed, robins! Lots of them. I was only in the woods for about five minutes and I saw at least eight robins flying from branch to branch. I didn’t get a picture of any of them, but this means spring is on the way.

And, as I turned to go back inside I had the sudden thought that this is my practice. This is it. It doesn’t matter what does or doesn’t happen, it matters that I’m doing it.

Regime change begins at home…

Categories: family, nature, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Saving the World?

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Molly

Today marks the beginning of a 30 day experiment in daily writings/photos about my sacred space in the woods. I made a New Year’s resolution of sorts to visit the same spot every day for a year and to take at least one photo and to explore through that process my relationship to the environment around me and its seasonal evolution.

First a picture…

It started snowing again today and one of our cats, Big Mama, followed me down to the priestess rocks. I noticed her delicate little footprints in the snow on top of one of the rocks. Another thing I noticed and have remarked on before to my husband, is how there is a little trail of naturally occurring “stepping stones” that make a path through the woods to the rocks. When we first moved here, one of the things I wrote on my to-do list was, “make a sacred spot in the woods” and I imagined putting stepping stones down to said place. Well, come to find out, no “making” of a sacred space necessary…it was already there…AND, no need to put down my own stepping stones either. They, too, were already there. Metaphor for life? Or, just life.

The path naturally appears/is uncovered as the stones there keep the light snowfall from sticking to them.

Some posts may be very brief, or photo-only, but I’m actually kicking off my experiment with some heavy thinking today…

I’ve been feeling depressed and discouraged lately after reading some really horrifying articles about incredible, unimaginable violence and brutality against women in Paupa New Guinea who are accused of being witches as well as a book about human trafficking around the world (I wrote about this in a post for Pagan Families last week). Then, I finished listening to David Hillman on Voices of the Sacred Feminine recently, in which he issues a strong call to action to the pagan community and to “witches” in the U.S. to do something about this violence, essentially stating that it is “your fault” and that instead of wasting energy on having rituals to improve one’s love life (for example), modern witches should be taking to the streets and bringing these abusers to justice. And, he asserts, the fact that they don’t, shows that they don’t really “believe”—believe in their own powers or in their own Goddess(es). This brought me back to a conversation I had with a friend before our last women’s circle gathering…does this really matter that we do this or is it a self-indulgence? We concluded that it does matter. That actively creating the kind of woman-affirming world we want to live in is a worthy, and even holy, task. I don’t have time to fully go into it all right now, but I also think the legacy of the sixteenth century “witchcraze” is powerful and the attitudes that drove it are alive and well in the world today. There is a lot of fear still bound up in that word and perhaps that is why people fail to respond to Hillman’s challenge to take to the streets.

I asked the woods today and they responded…

What can I do to save the world?

Saving the world is a Christ complex
an illusion of superiority
a delusion of grandeur.
Or is it?

Is it instead
a description
of what it is like to care?

Be awake
Be sensitive
Be present

Keep reading
Keep reading
Keep reaching
Keep laughing

Raise sons and daughters
who love themselves
and each other
and the earth

Say no to violence
in home
in thought
in act
in deed.

Say no to microaggressions
and to micro-spending decisions that support oppression
Say yes to micro-acts on the side of love
Say yes to not giving up on macro vision
and big picture thinking

Always be willing to dig deep
to think hard
to feel strongly

Rise up
stand tall
say no
be counted
hug often
hold your babies
hold your friends

Circle often
stand together
refuse to give up
when defeated, rally once more.
Persist in a vision of the way things could be
and take action
to bring that vision into reality.

Hug well
laugh often
live much

Speak your truth
tell your story
stand up for the silenced
speak for the voiceless
believe that hope still has a place

Hold steady
hold strong
hold the vision
hold each other.

When I came back inside, I added another Kiva loan to the three I already have going. I chose a women’s cooperative in Pakistan with a craft business. I paid for the loan using my profits from selling my own goddess art. I also signed up to sponsor a woman in the Congo via Woman to Woman International. Maybe this isn’t “enough,” but it is something. I work hard to support women in my own community in a variety of ways. I write all over the place…maybe that isn’t “real” help, or maybe it is, but I can’t stop doing it.

Categories: feminism, feminist thealogy, Goddess, nature, spirituality, thealogy, women, women's circle, woodspriestess, writing | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Molly

Statement of Faith

I have come
Earthpriestess
woodspriestess
nightpriestess

winter’s chill
bone deep
life solid
sliding
whispering
chilling

I have come
seeking answers

I have come
seeking questions

I have come
offering service

I have come
to know
and to be healed

I have come
to commune

to speak
and to listen

I have come
to find out
that which it is I need to know

How I may best serve

and how to keep my heart open
my mind free
and my hands loving

in Her service
in this time
and in the place
on this Earth…

(12/26/12)

In late December, I decided to maintain a year-long spiritual practice of “checking in” at the priestess rocks in my woods. I committed to spending at least a few minutes there every day, rain or sleet or shine, and whether day or night. I also decided to take a daily picture. My idea was to really, really get to know this space deeply. To notice that which changes and evolves on a daily basis, to see what shares the space with me, to watch and listen and learn from and interact with the same patch of ground every day and see what I learn about it and about myself. I want to really come into a relationship with the land I live on, rather than remain caught up in my head and my ideas and also the sometimes-frantic feeling hum of every day life as a parent and teacher. I started this practice on January first and have not yet missed a day (it is only February now, so I’m not yet very impressive!). I considered making a daily blog post to go with it, whether lengthy or not, and include the pictures I’ve been taking of the ever-changing space and what catches my eye, but decided maybe that was premature and perhaps added a layer of “have to” on top of the “want to.” I also considered that it might get boring to those who follow me here—“yeah, yeah, more woods and rocks, we know, you like them.” So, after keeping up the practice for six weeks now, I’ve come up with another plan. Starting in March, I’m going to do a thirty-day experiment in which I make a daily post/picture about my “woodspriestess” experience. Then, if that works and is fun and doesn’t bog me down and readers seem to like it, perhaps I’ll continue the project (I’m going to continue the daily practice, what is up for consideration is just whether or not I’m going to write about it).

A couple of days ago, on my way back home from the woods I found a rock lying right in front of me on a patch of moss like a “gift” of sorts. I don’t usually take things from the woods, but I felt like this one was for me to take and so I did. I made it into one of my polymer clay goddess figures and today when I went back down to the woods with her in my hand, I had the strong sensation…this…this is my statement of faith…

Categories: nature, poems, priestess, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 9 Comments

I keep vigil…

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Molly

This post is cross-posted at Pagan Families.

One of the first Pagan bloggers I ever followed online is Teo Bishop, a solitary Druid and prolific writer. Recently, Bishop wrote about creating community poetry for use in liturgy based on the starting line, “I keep vigil to the fire in my heart” (see current contributions from other writers via this post: We Keep Vigil: Crowdsourced Poetry). Bishop started this experiment last year during Imbolc, when he composed a spontaneous poem to Brigid. As someone who frequently experiences spontaneous poetry in the sacred spot in the woods behind my house, an experience I refer to as theapoetics, I was instantly captivated by this whole keeping vigil thing. Imbolc has a natural connection to the cycle of pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding and the fire in my own heart burns brightly for these pivotal life experiences. So, I went down to the woods, opened my mouth and this is what emerged…

I keep vigil
to the fire
in my heart.

I keep vigil
to the women
of the world

women’s voices
women’s stories
women’s lives

I keep vigil for the birthing women of the planet
whether she gives birth
at 5 weeks, 12 weeks,
15 weeks, 20 weeks
or 42 weeks

I keep vigil for the mothers
who cry over tiny bodies
of their babies
I keep vigil to
the bright hot spirit
of the newborn babies
that greet the world
with eyes wide open

I keep vigil for the woman
who cries in the night
I keep vigil for the woman
who births with joy and exultation
I keep vigil for the woman
who struggles and suffers in birth

I keep vigil to the midwives
and the women who serve each other
midwife means loves women

I keep vigil to
the breastfeeding women
of the world
and I keep vigil to the mother
whose heart was broken
in trying to nurse her baby

I keep vigil for the mothers who laugh
and the mothers who cry
the mothers who sing
and the mothers who moan
the mothers who need
and the mother give
the mothers who triumph
and the mothers who “fail”

I keep vigil for the mothers
who try again

I keep vigil for the mothers
who want more children
and who cannot have them
and I keep vigil for the mothers
who have more children
than they truly want

I keep vigil for the women
who pull their sweet, warm, slippery babies
up to grateful hearts and breasts following birth
and I keep vigil for the women
who let tiny bodies slip through their own
never to take a breath of life

I keep vigil for the women
snuggling nose to nose with their children
hugging
laughing
braiding hair
playing
reading
dancing
cooking
and I keep vigil
to the mothers driving,
transporting,
shuttling,
attending lessons,
taking movies and pictures
losing sleep at night

I keep vigil
for the mothers of the world
I keep vigil
for the women of the world

I keep vigil
to the fire
in my heart.

1/28/2013

What comes to your mind when you think about keeping vigil? This Imbolc, what fire in your heart are you tending? What burns brightly in your spirit? To what are you keeping vigil?

Categories: liturgy, nature, poems, prayers, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, women, writing | Leave a comment

Breathe peace

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Molly

Open your heart to the world
open your hands to your sisters
open your life to your children
open your spirit to the Goddess

spread your arms
open your chest
lift your face to the sky

breathe deep
breathe peace

Each year, during the first week of February, I take a “computer-off retreat” (within the parameters of having a job that requires being online). That time is now and I’m so looking forward to a digital rest. I also treated myself to a Breathe Peace online class (ah, the irony, since I’m having a computer off retreat! Luckily, the online class lasts throughout the month of February, so I can take my break and still come back to it!) I also have a new book called The Magickal Retreat: Making Time for Solitude, Intention & Rejuvenation and I’m toying with the idea of doing an outdoor, all night “vigil” of sorts (maybe as a family).

(Amazon affiliate link included)

Categories: nature, poems, retreat, womanspirit | Leave a comment

Gaia’s Heartbeat

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Molly

Spirit of the solid earth
I draw you up
through my feet
into my legs
pelvis
torso
arms
hands
heart
throat

Gaia’s heartbeat
fills me
the rhythm of the tide
tugs at my womb
the breath of life
breathes through my lungs
the iron of the stars
runs through my veins
and the fire of life
pulses at my core

I draw it up
draw it in
breathe it out
breathe it in

I am it
and it is me
She pulses through every fiber of my being.

1/15/2013

Categories: blessings, nature, poems, prayers, thealogy, theapoetics, womanspirit, writing | Leave a comment

Born flaming…

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Molly

A Little Planet
Every particle of every thing
rock, water, flower, human
has been in the same place flaming
in the heart of our ancient sun
before the earth
came flying out of it.
The irises in your eyes
the tissue of roses

the slow giant rocks in mountain hearts

were all born flaming
locked in the sun as it drifted
like a light on dark water.

–Lawrence Collins in The Earth Speaks

And, this:

“The Goddess Herself is not a belief or a dogma, she is a symbol for a transformative understanding of what is already here, what we know, what we can become. She is a real power, the name we give to the binding force that holds together the universe.”

–Starhawk (in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality)