woodspriestess

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

Woodspriestess: Spirit in Practice

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Molly

Gathered here in the mystery of the hour

Gathered here in one strong body

Gathered here in the struggle and the power

Spirit, draw near.

–Gathered Here, Hymn #389 in Singing the Living Tradition (UU Hymnal)

Tomorrow, I’m presenting the service at my tiny local UU church. I’ve spent probably a lot more time than I should have getting ready for my presentation. I’m using the first part of the Spirit in Practice curriculum which is part of the vast treasure-trove of resources available from Tapestry of Faith via the UUA. My goals for this presentation are threefold:

To connect us to a sense of larger UU identity
To give us a taste for the resources available at our fingertips via Tapestry of Faith
To help us understand that “spiritual practices” are appropriate, desirable, and meaningful for UU’s too

Our local fellowship leans very heavily towards the secular humanist and academic in regard to its services and shies away from anything “spiritual” in nature (for more on this broad UU habit of avoiding matters of the sacred and how that hurts our communal, religious experience, see the wonderful article, Imagineers of Soul from UU World magazine). I really, really want to offer the possibility tomorrow that we can both be rational, logical, social justice-oriented UUs and have a shared spiritual experience. As Christine Robinson explains:

Why do people come to church? It is not to learn. People don’t even go to museums to learn. It’s not to be entertained. People don’t even go to Disneyland just to be entertained. They come to church, especially they come to church, to quench a thirst, find meaningfulness, to have an authentic experience, or, in a more traditional religious language, to connect with mystery and see their everyday lives reflected in the mirror of eternity. Churches, then, and the lay and ordained people who lead them, are Imagineers of Soul, sorcerer’s apprentices in the art of quenching thirst, filling voids, opening the doors of meaning.

We do lots of things as church people, of course: teach the children, comfort the dying, change the world. When we do these things as religious people, they evoke the “holy”and if they don’t, we’ve failed at the only thing the church can uniquely do. And the truth is, we fail a lot, sticking to the safely secular, avoiding reverence, skirting awe, and missing opportunities to conjure up a sense of the spiritual. That failure comes in spite of the fact that significant lay and ministerial voices have been saying for two generations that we Unitarian Universalists are missing something important if we take a secular, hands off the spirit approach to our life together.

One of the reasons I stopped attending church regularly was because too often it was missing the “imagineers of soul” connection and was instead an intellectual discussion. I love intellectual discussions just fine, but I live 22 miles from church AND I greatly value weekend time with my family. It became so if I had to choose between listening to a presentation about foxes or hanging out at home, I’d choose home every time. What I hope to explore tomorrow is the role and value of regular spiritual practices in both group and individual life.

Today when I went to the woods, I sat on a rock and sang the song I’m going to use tomorrow over and over, louder and louder. I’m a terrible singer, but I’m no longer willing to let embarrassment over that win and stop me from trying. I’ve also learned with my women’s circle that after we get through that first, awkward, discordant, confusing round, we actually end up sounding pretty awesome. Too often, groups stop singing after the first run through and what builds is a collective sense of, “we can’t do this,” or “don’t bother, we’re hopeless!” Tomorrow, I plan to “make” us go through Gathered Here at least four times–I hope to demonstrate to the group how much better we get with just a tiny bit of practice and that also singing together is a powerful, communal experience that can solidify and strengthen our sense of having a shared “faith tradition” (rather than solely a shared tendency to vote Democrat). And, that we individually don’t have to be “good singers,” but that in community we can even sound kind of beautiful.

I’ll don’t know if the group will appreciate my offering tomorrow, but I have to try. Maybe next time, I’ll actually talk them into making UU prayer beads 😉

The other thing I thought of today was how my woodspriestess daily practice has been steadily been moving up in priority in my days. That is part of having a robust daily practice. I have to do it. Name it as valuable and take regular action to bring it into life. If I put things off until “later,” I end up staggering out to the woods at 11:30 p.m. with a flashlight and a sense of obligation. Now, I do it first, regardless of what the rest of my to-do list says. Seriously, if I “don’t have time” to take five minutes to restore my soul in the woods each day, what kind of life am I living?! When I first became a student at OSC and was taking the Ecology and the Sacred course, one of the things that I was hungering for was a regular, spiritual practice. That class helped me evolve in several ways and I feel I’ve finally found the kind of integration between theory and practice that I was seeking (I have ways I’d like to take it deeper too. More on that some other day).

The things that are holy and sacred in this life are neither stored away on mountaintops nor locked away in arcane secrets of the saints. I doubt that any church has a monopoly on them either. What holiness there is in this world resides in the ordinary bonds between us and in whatever bonds we manage to create between ourselves and the divine.
—Patrick O’Neill, “ Unitarian Universalist Views of the Sacred

On a not-totally-related note, something that interests me, but that I have little experience with is “augurs,” or the reading of natural “signs” and learning from them. It is almost like a form of divination in a sense, or a type of listening to a response to a prayer, or the receiving of a message from the world. Today as I reached the rocks, I saw this little arrangement on the ground. I didn’t touch or adjust it. It doesn’t intuitively mean anything to me, but the shape of the sticks and the “arrangement” of the items in what looks like a deliberate sort of way, caught my eye. If I was good at this augur stuff, I could probably have learned something else today!

Categories: resources, ritual, spirituality, UU, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Molly

The world needs you.
Sing your strengths
dance your passions
smile your successes
hug yourself with compassion
for your painful moments
take a second to drink it up
and to rest in powerful certainty
that you are enough

Breathe out
breathe in
soft shoulders
soft belly
strong legs
strong woman

A mother who is seen
who is heard
who is appreciated
who is valued.

In and out
Mama, you’re amazing

(3/8/2013)

Today, on International Women’s Day, when I went down to the woods I spoke (wrote?!) a Prayer for Mothers that I then published on my other blog. After a pause, I added the above words as well.

My children have a “thing” about losing their shoes. Every time we leave the house, it feels like mass chaos of shoe locating, even though we have a specific place where shoes are supposed to be kept. Recently, after scouring the house for ages, giving up, and finally digging out some different, older shoes for my toddler, we then eventually located her shoes in the cupboard with the bread machine. This week, one of those same favorite blue shoes went missing and we haven’t been able to find it anywhere, so she’s been wearing her pink shoes instead. Today, when I stepped out to go down to the woods, the missing shoe was waiting for me at the bottom of the deck stairs.

When I’d headed out to the woods today I’d been thinking, again, about the balance between mothering and “personing” and how difficult it feels a lot of the time to meet everyone in the house’s needs. I persist in thinking it is possible to actually live our family affirmation: our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs. However, last night and this morning it felt like anything but! So, finding the shoe seemed like a little message. I’d brought out a pendant that my husband made for me using several items of meaning to me. I think of it as one of my priestess necklaces. The moon goddess pendant in the middle is one of a set of matching pendants that I gave to my mom and my friend when we went to the Gaea Goddess Gathering together last fall (I’ve bought some more of them recently to give to the other members of our circle so eventually we can all have matching necklaces). While at the GGG, a lot of issues came up for me about family harmony and I bought matching stone “doughnut” pendants from one of the vendors for my husband, kids, and myself. We wear them during our family full moon rituals each month. My friend and my mom each gave me one of the stone points during a “mother” ceremony at the GGG and during that time I felt very acknowledged and “seen” by my friend in the priestess role I’m growing into with our women’s circle. So, today, it felt like an integrative experience to take a picture of the shoe and pendant together.

Then, when I went to pick my kids back up from my dad’s house, we couldn’t find my daughter’s pink shoes anywhere and had to come home without them!

—

For past International Women’s Day thoughts about birth activism and feminism see this post.

Categories: blessings, family, friends, poems, prayers, priestess, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

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: Remembering

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Molly

We remember you, baby girl
you lived inside your mama
and we recognize and honor that life
the gifts you brought to those who knew you

We wanted you to stay with us
here on earth
and you are missed
every day

We remember you, baby girl.

This weekend marks the six month anniversary of the stillbirth of a friend’s baby. Today, I went to the woods to remember her. I took a picture to contribute to the virtual memorial her mother is planning. On the version I will give to my friend, I included the baby’s name on the larger leaf.

Categories: blessings, pregnancy loss, woodspriestess | 1 Comment

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: Behold

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Molly

Behold this circle of women
it is blessed
behold this joy
it is blessed
behold these messages of peace
understanding
and empowerment
it is blessed
behold this circle
behold the women
behold the power
it is blessed.

May these sculptures take flight. May they draw up the power of this sacred space. May they draw upon the energy of these woods and these stones. May they soak it up and may they carry it with them to their new homes. May they carry the message of love and intention with which they were birthed. May they carry that message into other waiting women’s hands. May they speak clearly, truly, and deeply to those who need to hear from them.

Behold this circle
it is blessed

Categories: art, blessings, poems, prayers, spirituality, theapoetics, women's circle, woodspriestess | Leave a 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…