writing

Wholeheartedness

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Molly

“Wisdom comes from applying yourself wholeheartedly to whatever you’re doing. The lessons in life are in everything.” –Pema Chodron (in Open Mind, 12/18)

Tonight after I finally extricated myself from my children and stumbled down to the woods in the dark to stand briefly in the light of the full moon, I recognized myself falling into a familiar pattern of self-recrimination—of wishing I was better than I am and feeling annoyed and frustrated with myself for having become annoyed and frustrated by my family. We spent all day today having a “Hobbit Day”—eating a series of themed foods while watching the first Hobbit movie and then driving into town to watch the second Hobbit movie in the theater. It was great fun, but by the time we got back home, the rest of my to-dos felt pretty hopelessly piled up around me and I felt somewhat abandoned in my efforts to get them done before bedtime (such as pack up Christmas gifts for out-of-town relatives). I also am behind on planning my family’s winter solstice ritual and really expected to have a chance to finalize those plans today. I feel perpetually behind on many things much of the time and more just keep coming. No breaks.

The final straw tonight was when I opened up my bag of cinnamon sticks that I’d bought to make cinnamon stick stars with on solstice or New Year’s Eve and they’re totally, ridiculously, uselessly short. It is too late to send them back, too late to order more, and they’re dumb and I feel dumb for having ordered them too hastily without checking the size. When I went to the woods feeling as if I should be more better, I took some of the cinnamon sticks with me to leave as an offering of sorts and to be a reminder that I’ve let go of that perfection worm as well as apologizing for things I don’t need to apologize for. When I came back in, we wrapped and packed the gifts to mail, it got later and later and I realized that my time to create a post for today was once again, up. And, I felt bad about that in two ways—one for my own silliness in making a monthly post commitment during holiday season, when obviously that isn’t particularly sensible/practical/possible, so why don’t I just give up the idea, and two, for even considering not showing up for myself and moving it up in my priority list/doing it anyway. Essentially, why would I expect this from myself?! AND, why wouldn’t I expect this from myself?! I’m ridiculous. I’m committed. I’m ridiculous. So, I’m still here. This post is being made. I’m not going to apologize for it—either way. For wanting to do it, for not wanting to do it, for not cutting myself slack and letting it go, for showing up and doing it anyway even if it doesn’t make sense…

Then, I opened to that nearly-finished Open Mind book and the quote I opened with was the quote for today and I thought oh. Today I did a wholehearted Hobbit Day instead of the other things that were/are waiting for me. That’s okay.

A nice Hobbitty breakfast…

Lembas bread.

Offering up my too-short cinnamon sticks—and my self-recrimination.

Categories: family, night, parenting, self-care, writing

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

Woodspriestess: Earth’s Symphony

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Molly

Divine hum
inner rhythm
insect chorus
bee priestesses.

Butterfly dance
leaf artist
heart beat.

Inhale
exhale
in time
with the symphony
of the Earth.

I wrote this in June after an afternoon woodsvisit during which I felt very conscious of the constant “hum” of the woods. So much living being done there. Yesterday, I noticed that some of the tiny flowers of summer that I photographed recently are humming with bees now and so the time felt right to finally share this poem. It makes me sad that in recent years seeing a bee has become like a special message or a special treat, rather than commonplace. It was good to see them buzzing and zooming and landing on these little faintly purple flowers.

At the same time that I wrote the poem, I also wrote the following:

I’m struggling with trust right now, disappointment, overwhelm, overcommitment. Twin pulls of longing. The desire to rest, draw inward, pull away, and be uninvolved and the desire to be committed, connected, involved, helpful, and impactful. These twin pulls are part of my monthly cycle, the ebb and flow of creativity and energy, and I’m learning to work within those cycles. To not make permanent changes, but also not to ignore legitimate calls for change, action, growth, and pruning away deadwood…

I’m definitely hanging on to work that might be finished. I’m hanging on with the desire to please, the stay connected, to give back, to honor experience, to be truthful, honest, authentic, rhythmic, wise, healing, compassionate, connected, whole, peaceful. Not exhausted…

Some things have changed in my life since I wrote this and I’m feeling more balanced and satisfied again. My grandma’s death has had a long-reaching effect on the whole family this year.

On the same woodsvisit in June, I also spoke this aloud…

You know what you need to do.
You know what you want.
You know what you can offer.

When you’re angry
you need to say so
don’t let it build up
don’t let it simmer and fester
don’t let it lead to resentment and bitterness
let the pressure valve open.

Take care of yourself
be your own best friend
acknowledge dichotomies
dualism
paradoxes…

sit with them both
explore their edges
feel their contours
let rough places
surprise you
smooth out what you can
and always look
for the glitter of buried treasure
hidden gems
unexpected lessons
and brief flashes of wisdom.

Focus.
focus and be
know and love
try and try again
apologize when necessary
say no when you need to
and say yes when you need to
balancing twin demands
with as much skill as you can muster
and with as much self-compassion
as you can excavate from your depths…

In other news, this is the two hundredth post on this blog (I’m over 800 on my other one–yikes!). I read once that consistent blogging produces a “significant body of work,” and it is totally true. Writing here has shaped my ideas, my thealogy, my plans for the future, and also my identity, as such, as a writer and artist (it was really hard not to put those two in quotes! Notice I didn’t also say “poet”…)

Thanks for reading, following, sharing, commenting, and encouraging! 🙂

Categories: nature, poems, theapoetics, woodspriestess, writing | Leave a comment

Thesis Project

Posted on August 3, 2013 by Molly

“Here is your sacrament
Take. Eat. this is my body
this is real milk, thin, sweet, bluish,
which I give for the life of the world…
Here is your bread of life.
Here is the blood by which you live in me.” –Robin Morgan (in Life Prayers, p. 148)

“…When I say painless, please understand, I don’t mean you will not feel anything. What you will feel is a lot of pressure; you will feel the might of creation move through you…” – Giuditta Tornetta in Painless Childbirth

“I am the holy mother; . . . She is not so far from me. And perhaps She is not so very distinct from me, either. I am her child, born in Her, living and moving in Her, perhaps at death to be birthed into yet some other new life, still living and having my being in Her. But while on this earth She and I share the act of creation, of being, and Motherhood.” —Niki Whiting, “On Being a Holy Mother” in Whedon

“Woman-to-woman help through the rites of passage that are important in every birth has significance not only for the individuals directly involved, but for the whole community. The task in which the women are engaged is political. It forms the warp and weft of society.” –Sheila Kitzinger

In 2011, I started working on my doctoral degree in thealogy (Goddess studies). Before I even began my first class, I chose my dissertation subject: birth as a spiritual experience. I’ve been steadily plugging away on my coursework and somehow in the midst of everything else that I am responsible for, I’ve successfully completed 13 of my classes. I already have a (not related) master’s degree and this is why I was admitted straight into the doctoral program, even though I have to complete a lot of M.Div (master’s of divinity) level coursework as prerequisites to the actual doctoral classes. After I finished my most recent class and got my updated transcript, I finally actually noticed how many M.Div classes I’ve completed thus far on my journey and it occurred to me to email to inquire what it would take to finish an M.Div degree first. I had this sudden feeling of what a nice stepping stone or milestone experience it would be to finish something, since I know that I have a minimum of three more years remaining before I complete the D.Min! They wrote back quickly and let me know that with the completion of three courses in matriarchal myth (I’m halfway through the first right now), my almost-completed year-long class in Compassion (I’m in month 11), and The Role of the Priestess course (involving three ten-page papers), all of which are also part of my doctoral program, the only other thing required for successful completion of my M.Div would be a thesis (minimum of 70 pages).

As I’ve been working through my classes, I’ve felt a gradual shift in what I want to focus on for my dissertation, and I already decided to switch to writing about theapoetics and ecopsychology now, rather than strictly about birth. I was planning to mash my previous ideas about birth and a “thealogy of the body” into this new topic somehow, perhaps: theapoetics, ecopsychology, and embodied thealogy. Then, when I got the news about the option of writing a thesis and finishing my M.Div, it became clear to me: my thesis subject is birth as a spiritual experience! This allows me to use the ideas and information I’d already been collecting as dissertation “seeds” as a thesis instead and frees me up to explore and develop my more original ideas about theapoetics for my dissertation! So…why post about this now? Well, one because I’m super excited about all this and just wanted to share and two, because I’d love to hear from readers about their experiences with birth as a spiritual experience! While I don’t have to do the kind of independent research for a thesis that I will be doing for my dissertation and while my focus is unabashedly situated within a feminist context and a thealogical orientation, I would love to be informed by a diverse chorus of voices regarding this topic so that the project becomes an interfaith dialog. Luckily for me I’ve already reviewed a series of relevant titles.

The Gift of Giving Life (explores the divine nature of pregnancy and birth from a Christian, specifically LDS/Mormon, perspective)
Embodying the Sacred (written from a Catholic point of view)
Sacred Pregnancy (a gorgeous book with a non-specific spiritual perspective)
L’Mazeltov (written specifically for Jewish parents-to-be)
Birth on the Labyrinth Path (focuses on the divine nature of pregnancy and birth from a pagan wordview)

Now, I’d like to hear from you. What are your experiences with the spirituality of birth? Do you consider birth to be a spiritual experience? Did you have any spiritual revelations or encounters during your births or any other events along your reproductive timeline? (miscarriage, menstruation, lactation…) Did you draw upon spiritual coping measures or resources as you labored and gave birth? Did giving birth deepen, expand, or otherwise impact your sense of spirituality or your sense of yourself as a spiritual or religious person? Did any of your reproductive experiences open your understanding of spirituality in a way that you had not previously experienced or reveal beliefs or understandings not previously uncovered?

When I use the word “spiritual,” I mean a range of experiences from a humanistic sensation of being linked to women around the world from all times and spaces while giving birth, to a “generic” sense of feeling the “might of creation” move through you, to a sense of non-specifically-labeled powers of Life and Universe being spun into being through your body, to feeling like a “birth goddess” as you pushed out your baby, to more traditional religious expressions of praying during labor, or drawing upon scripture as a coping measure, or feeling that giving birth brought you closer to the God of your understanding/religion, or, indeed, meeting God/dess or Divinity during labor and birth). I’m particularly interested in women’s embodied experiences of creation and whether or not your previous religious beliefs or spiritual understandings in life affirmed, acknowledged, or encouraged your body and bodily experience of giving birth as sacred and valuable as well as your own sense of yourself as spiritually connected or supported while giving birth. I would appreciate links to birth stories or articles that you found helpful, books you enjoyed or connected with, and comments relating to your own personal experiences with any of the comments or questions I have raised above. I would love to hear about your thoughts as they relate to:

Pregnancy
Labor
Birthing
Lactation
Miscarriage
Infertility
Menstruation
Reproductive Rights
Birth as a feminist or social justice issue…

Thank you!

With these things said, I also want to mention that I’m planning to redirect a lot of my writing energy/time into this thesis project rather than to blog posts. I’m trying to come up with a blog posting schedule for myself, but in order to actually do this thing, I must acknowledge that I have to re-prioritize some things and that means writing for my blogs probably needs to slip down a couple of notches in terms of priority of focus.

Oh, and I also hope this thesis project will turn into a book of some kind as well! 🙂

“It is hard to find a female-based concept such as Shakti alive within Western spiritual traditions. Shakti could be viewed as an expression of goddess in the female body at the time of birth. I would say its flow / expression and outcome of love is hindered by unnecessary interventions at birth which divert such energy towards fear- based, masculine forms. The use of masculine, rescue-based healing forms such as cutting (Grahn, 1993) can be necessary and useful, yet such procedures are currently used at the cost of women’s autonomy in the birthing process (see Jordan on C-section, 2007), and define the parameters of what feminist thinker Mary Daly called patriarchal medicine (1978). Modern women are largely lost when it comes to giving birth, turning to medical authority figures to be told what to do. Daly pointed to the dangers of this appropriation for women’s personal and collective autonomy.

Birthing bodies resist, disrupt and threaten standard North American modernist investments in linear time, rationality, order, and objectivity. Birth disrupts the Judeo-Christian male image of God, even as He hides the reality of female creation and creativity. I hold that women giving birth act from a focal point of power within their respective cultures and locations, the power to generate and renew human life itself from within the female body. This power is more absolute in its human reality then any other culturally sanctioned act of replication and material production, or social construction. I speculate that how this female power is expressed, denied, or acknowledged by women and within the society around a birthing woman reflects the degree to which women can and may express themselves at large. As each soul makes the journey through her/his mother, re-centring human consciousness within the female-based reality of human birth causes transformation of patriarchal consciousness as a whole…” –Nane Jordan, Towards an Ontology of Women Giving Birth

—

This post is crossposted at Talk Birth

Categories: birth, embodiment, feminism, feminist thealogy, Goddess, OSC, spirituality, thealogy, thesis, womanspirit, writing | 8 Comments

Woodspriestess: Summer Solstice

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Molly

Hot nature.
Humid thickness
of life
breath
and passion.

Sticky spirit
melting senses
sleepy mind
moving through
watery air.

Mosquitoes whine
ticks lurk
Summer is here.

She’s heavy
weighty
watery
thick
green.

Summer has come to the woods
Summer has bitten my thigh
Summer whines in my ear
Summer waits
for my ideas to bear fruit
rich, juicy, sweet.

(6/11/13)

The Summer Solstice issue of The Oracle is out and contains a slightly revised version of my Womanenergy post:

Womenergy moved humanity across continents, birthed civilization, invented agriculture, conceived of art and writing, pottery, sculpture, and drumming, painted cave walls, raised sacred stones and built Goddess temples. It rises anew during ritual, sacred song, and drumming together. It says She Is Here. I Am Here. You Are Here and We Can Do This. It speaks through women’s hands, bodies, and heartsongs. Felt in hope, in tears, in blood, and in triumph.

Womenergy is the chain of the generations, the “red thread” that binds us womb to womb across time and space to the women who have come before and those who will come after. Spinning stories, memories, and bodies, it is that force which unfolds the body of humanity from single cells, to spiraled souls, and pushes them forth into the waiting world.

via Womenergy by Molly | Global Goddess.

And, I was touched by this post and its Call:

Along the way, you will meet up with sisters who have answered their own calls. After years of trudging alone to the single note of our own call, we begin to sense first, then to see their dirt-smudged, tear-streaked faces. Their scars look comfortingly similar to our own. We are a ragtag tribe of outcasts, moon howling, spiritual homesteaders. The notes of our own call begin to merge and blend, and we become a symphony of stragglers, circling in sacred ritual- we are never truly alone. Our wounds are treasure maps tracing our stories back to the moment we said no, enough, no more, now, this time, my time. They bind us, these wounds, these calls, one to another on this dark wooded path.

To answer The Call is to choose a life outside what anyone else deems worthy, understandable, logical. We are heralded by some as over-emotional, ridiculous, dramatic, eccentric, strange, weird, unnatural. Others like us will recognize themselves in our journey, our words, our artwork, our altars, our homegrown vegetables and homespun clothes. They will feel they are home when they smell lavender at our neck and see sage on our tables.

Our legacy is red, and burns with a passion we cannot contain so that it seeps out and stains our daughters and sons, marking them for a new way of life that emerges- because we were brave enough to answer a Call.

via Her Strange Angels: Call to the Wild Wood ~ A Blessing for the Solstice.

And, I was super psyched to get two new books free on Kindle this weekend:

From Lisa Micheals:

And from Rachael of the Moontimes blog!

I also appreciated this timely reminder from Chrysalis Woman:

It’s now that we Celebrate the womanifestation of the seed dream/s we conceived at Winter Solstice. Much like the Mother Mysteries associated with this time, we are giving our full attention, time and creativity to nurturing, sustaining and protecting our dreams, while reveling in the abundance of all that we are the creatrix of.
With all of this heightened activity and energy, we may find ourselves bumping up against the shadow of the Mother Archetype. With the full activation of our Fire energy that Summer Solstice generates, we can experience “burn out” by over-giving, over-nurturing, over-protecting, and/or over-doing. So remember to “Mother yourself” as you are caring for your creations. Seek out and create support systems that sustain YOU, as you work to sustain your hopes, dreams and all that you love.

via Shine Your Light! – Chrysalis Woman – Returning to the Mother and Each Other.

I feel like I’m in one of these stages right now and working it through.

I’m still working on our own simple family ritual for summer solstice. It will involve many drums! 🙂

—

P.S. I have a good friend named Summer and I had to smile as I transcribed my “Summer” poem, because I imagined her biting my thigh and whining in my ear! (Really, it was a mosquito!) ;-D

Categories: holidays, nature, poems, resources, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess, writing | 3 Comments

Sunday Sabbath: Rest

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Molly

Surprise milkweed bloomed and looks gorgeous! (and yes, is almost never without a butterfly atop)

Clear your mind
rest your body
still your chatter
become fluid…

Opening to breeze
birdsong
to the richness
of solitude

the messages
from butterfly wings

shadows making patterns
across rock.

Hold your place
hold steady
and watch the swirling change
around you
unfold
in hopeful majesty
and exuberant life.

Be still
let everything else fall away
let your body melt into rock
held by the arms of the earth
and spin through distant galaxies
with invisible
silent
magical
grace.

I’ve been out of town this weekend and with no opportunities to blog, though the thoughts of things to blog about continue to arise and I have a backlog of both pictures and recordings to get to, “someday.” Rest has been on my mind though as I gave a presentation about Moontime and honoring our menstrual cycles at the conference today, even though I’m actually at the most energetic and productive point in my own cycle. The “rest” poem above arrived as I was preparing for my presentation and packing for this trip, so it feels appropriate to post today.

As I shared during my presentation:

“…Could it be that women who get wild with rage do so because they are deeply deprived of quiet and alone time, in which to recharge and renew themselves?

Isn’t PMS a wise mechanism designed to remind us of the deep need to withdraw from everyday demands to the serenity of our inner wilderness? Wouldn’t it follow, then, that in the absence of quiet, sacred spaces to withdraw to while we bleed — women express their deprivation with wild or raging behaviors?…” –DeAnna L’am via Occupy Menstruation

The essay I finished writing while at Pismo Beach was up on Feminism and Religion earlier in the week. I struggled in the writing of it because I was in a different head space, not to mention literally in a different space, while trying to work on it. I felt distant, distracted, scattered, and unfocused while I was writing it and worried that that was what would come through. Instead, it became a cohesive piece that “flows really well,” according to the editor. Reading it now, it feels like someone else wrote it—I guess I did manage to get into the writing-zone after all, even with my mind being preoccupied with a different place, different subjects and different people…

In the aftermath of giving birth, particularly without medication, many women describe a sense of expansive oneness—with other women, with the earth, with the cycles and rhythms of life. People who become shamans, usually do so after events involving challenge and stress in which the shaman must navigate tough obstacles and confront fears. What is a laboring woman, but the original shaman—a “shemama” as Leslene della Madre would say —as she works through her fears and passes through them, emerging with strength.

[Monica Sjoo describes] the homebirth of her second son was her, “first initiation into the Goddess…even though at that time I didn’t consciously know of Her…”

via Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly Remer | Feminism and Religion.

This week I also put up a post on Pagan Families that was modified from my introductory post on this blog and I’m pleased to welcome new subscribers who found me in this way:

In late December 2012, I decided to begin a year-long spiritual practice of “checking in” every day at the priestess rocks in my woods. I committed to spending at least a few minutes there every day, rain or sleet or shine, with children or without, and whether day or night throughout 2013. 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. When I went down to the woods to “listen” to this idea, I spoke a poem that included the word “woodspriestess,” and I thought…hmm. Maybe this is what I’m doing. As I planned, I started this practice on January first and have not yet missed a day, except while traveling (and, then I bring a small rock from the woods with me so that I can still “check in” with them). In March 2013, I decided to do a thirty-day experiment in which I made a daily post/picture about my “woodspriestess” experiences. It was a rich experience in many ways. (The daily practice will continue through 2013, even though I have not continued writing on a daily basis after the March experiment)…

via Small Sacred Places.

This daily time in the woods provides a regular, daily opportunity for me to rest, if only for a few moments, and it is so nourishing and feels vital to my very being. I’m not sure how I was getting along without it before!

At the river on Thursday.

Eyes open
ears open
heart open
mind open
spirit open

to miraculous possibilities
of being…

Categories: blessings, introversion, moontime, nature, poems, sabbath, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess, writing | 2 Comments

Thursday Thealogy: Theapoetics

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Molly

Sculpture made by my six-year-old and named, “The Cutest Goddess in the World.”

Turkeys gobble
birds sing
plum petals fall
raindrops kiss stone

take a moment and sit
hear, taste,
smell, and touch
the very field of creation.

(4/16/13)

I’m having such a hard time lately focusing enough to write coherent posts. I flit from site to site, idea to idea, and just can’t settle my mind enough to say what I want to say. I feel distracted, preoccupied, and unfocused. Maybe I need to go to the woods more often. As it is, I sit here with my little stack of books: Midwifing Death, What Dying People Want, and Sacred Dying. They came too late for me to really use them in any sort of helpful way for my mom or grandma, but at least I’ll have them in case I know anyone else who needs them. I am a tiny librarian in my own way and it is books that I turn to when I need help or want to help. They’re what I offer. Books are my first and longest-lasting love. I also sit by a pile of books waiting to be turned over as I plan my spring women’s retreat and write two assignments for my OSC class on Ritual and Liturgy. My heart doesn’t quite feel in that though either—too many variables, too much unknown…

There is so much we don’t know
so many possibilities we can’t imagine
maybe that is what I touch
in the dreamtime
and the woodstime
maybe I am surrounded
in all times
and all ways
by those who have gone before me

here, in the woods
I touch
and am touched
by something
something that kisses my eyelids
with a breeze
that blesses my brow
with a raindrop
that cradles my body
with stone
that fills my senses
with pleasure and awareness
and that connects me
to the great, grand whole of creation

and I know that I am a part of Her
and She is a part of me
forever.

Though my individual thread might end
my part of the tapestry is eternal
and I dance right now
with the lifeblood
of purpose and connection.

(4/16/13)

A few days ago, I sat in the woods and thought about death and life and ancestors and children. While I sat and spoke into my little recorder, the plum petals fell steadily all around me like snow. It was beautiful and soothing.

In my piles of books are also those which I want to put back on the shelf, but that are waiting because they had sections I marked to share. One of them—a really excellent anthology of essays by priestesses (or “sibyls”) called Voices of the Goddess—contained a section that made me think of my own theapoetical experiences. Though, I then feel self-conscious, embarrassed, or somehow “arrogant” or something for identifying with it—like, who do I think I am?!

The Goddess grants her gifts of creativity in many ways, but the personal invocation, the inspired lyrical utterance is always nearest to the surface. This poetic wellspring is part of the sibylline legacy and there is no denying it. It speaks the language of the blood and belly as well as the language of the crystalline stars. It is a weaving song that meshes heaven and earth with the underworld. Poetry is the mouthpiece of the metamemory, the deep, ecstatic memory of an oral tradition that remembered the Goddess daily in domestic and tribal rituals. Since there are not Goddess rituals or liturgies from former times, we have written our own, often drawing directly upon the raw material of personal experience…Poetry can both bless and uproot, it can extol or refute. It is the true voice of the Goddess speaking through her sibyls. Personal or prophetic, poetry is communication with a deeper level of understanding. It is a gateway for the Goddess to pass through.

–Caitlin Matthews in Voices of the Goddess

While I wouldn’t venture to call myself “prophetic,” I do experience something personally very important to me there in the woods, something I’ve previously referred to as, “Entering into radical relationship with the Goddess through art, poetry, and nature…” or, theapoetics. When I wrote about this topic for Feminism and Religion, I included this poem:

Goddess Direct

Goddess, where are you?
I am within you and around you
in your heart that seeks answers
and connection

Goddess, do you exist?
Yes, I am as real as your own heartbeat.
I am here in the bird’s song
I am here in the breeze that touches your face
I am as solid as the stone you sit on

I am that which weaves the Whole.
I am that which holds the All.
I am that which flows,
dancing lightly
through the heartbeat of every form on this earth

I am within you and around you
beneath you and above you
I am your home

I am that which you seek
I am that which you know
And, I love deeply, richly, and well.

via Theapoetics By Molly | Feminism and Religion.

I still don’t think of myself as writing poetry and certainly not as a “poet.” These words are something that just comes out. Something that emerges. Something that is created in a very different manner than the rest of my writing. It actually feels like an altered state of consciousness that “writes itself” and when I go back to listen to what I said, I’m often surprised or feel like I’m listening to someone else speak. That’s theapoetics. Go sit in the woods and see what happens when you open your mouth! 🙂

Categories: Goddess, nature, poems, prayers, priestess, spirituality, theapoetics, Thursday Thealogy, womanspirit, woodspriestess, writing | 2 Comments

Thursday Thealogy: The Motheredness of the World

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Molly

My most recent post is up at Feminism and Religion on the subject of Mother Goddess imagery (and my mamapriestess art). It was written partially in response to the critique sometimes expressed that Mother Goddess imagery is “exclusive” of women who are not mothers:

I am also of the opinion that Mother Goddess imagery may well be less about women as mothers and more about the motheredness of the world. In this way, I do not find the image of the Mother Goddess is exclusive, rather I find it exceedingly appropriate. Every person and mammal on this planet—male, female, black, white, hetero/homosexual– since the dawn of humanity has had a mother. It is a truly unifying feature. And, it isn’t about the role, it is about the primal relationship. The root of life. As Naomi Wolf writes in Misconceptions while reflecting on an ordinary street scene and suddenly understanding the web of life and the universality of motherhood (even the squirrels!):

“We were all held, touched, interrelated, in an invisible net of incarnation. I would scarcely think of it ordinarily; yet for each creature I saw, someone, a mother, had given birth….Motherhood was the gate. It was something that had always been invisible to me before, or so unvalued as to be beneath noticing: the motheredness of the world.”

This understanding of the invisible net of incarnation is the foundation of my own thealogy and my ethics.

via Goddess Mother | Feminism and Religion.

Goddess imagery is also about valuing human women and their bodies:

The sociocultural value of a divine presence that validates women’s bodies cannot be overestimated. Indeed, patriarchal religion in its most destructive way seems to have grown out of the devaluation and rejection of female bodies. A religion that rejects the female body, that places the male and its association with “the mind” and the soul rather than the earthy relational connection of body, is a religion that easily moves into domination and control of women. Reclaiming Goddess, reclaims women’s bodies—names them not only as “normal,” but as “divine,” and this is profoundly threatening to traditional Judeo-Christian belief systems. Thus, the primacy of relatedness and connectedness as the core feature of the Mother Goddess model has broad reaching implications for women’s spirituality, as a direct contrast to the dominator model of patriarchy.

In Carol Christ’s classic essay, Why Women Need the Goddess, she quotes feminist theologian Mary Daly (Beyond God the Father):

“If God in ‘his’ heaven is a father ruling his people, then it is the ‘nature’ of things and according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male dominated. Within this context, a mystification of roles takes place: The husband dominating his wife represents God ‘himself.’ The images and values of a given society have been projected into the realm of dogmas and “Articles of Faith,” and these in turn justify the social structures which have given rise to them and which sustain their plausibility.”

In the same essay, Christ explains: “The symbols associated with these important rituals cannot fail to affect the deep or unconscious structures of the mind of even a person who has rejected these symbolisms on a conscious level…Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected, they must be replaced. When there is not any replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures in times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat.”…

via Goddess Mother | Feminism and Religion.

Last time I wrote about a similar topic here, I received some comments asking about the role of “the God,” which is not a symbol I engage with or feel comfortable with given how steeped that name is in the oppression of women, saying that a thealogy without the God doesn’t seem very “whole.” While I would still like to address this question with more thought in a future post, as I wrote the above, it came to my mind again, because it is true that almost everything has a father as well—so, what about the “fatheredness of the world”? My thought when originally asked about “wholeness” was that I don’t have a particularly literalist conception of the Goddess and so to me, she is a name for that which holds the all, which is, ultimately unnameable, but can be experienced in a variety of direct ways. I experience it as the Goddess. And, I find political, social, cultural, and spiritual value in the naming of that subjective experience/wholeness/weaving of life as Goddess. “Goddess” as word and symbol is important, really important, because it breaks the patriarchal “hold” on defining divinity.

However, as a mother of sons and the wife of a husband, I have wrestled with questions as to whether Goddess-oriented thealogy excludes them as males in the same way that Judeo-Christian imagery primarily excludes women. I continue to return to “no,” because in their own experience of having been grown and birthed by me (well, my sons, not my husband!), the notion of a female image being fully capable of literally being able to hold both male and female within her, is exceedingly natural, appropriate, and logical to them. When we do family rituals, I do often use spiritual naturalist or spiritual humanist type of language rather than gendered divinity. Sacred Universe is a great term as are the generic labels Spirit or the Sacred or Nature.

As I’ve shared a photo of previously, at my toddler daughter’s request, I recently made a “Daddy Goddess” sculpture as well to go with my many others—as I was making him, I realized I do have some room for a Green Man type of symbolism after all:

And, as I shared in my Feminism and Religion piece, a couple of months ago my six-year-old son made this sculpture for me…

“This is the Goddess of Everything,” he told me. “See that pink jewel in her belly, that is the WHOLE UNIVERSE, Mom!!”

Yep. He gets it! 🙂

Categories: family, feminist thealogy, Goddess, parenting, spirituality, thealogy, Thursday Thealogy, writing | 4 Comments

Sunday Sabbath: Revolution

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Molly

“We need rituals of memory…because a political movement, the public policy and tactics of our movement, does not come from our ideas, but from the bloody and joyful substance of our lives. We need to be conscious about what our lives have been, to grieve and to honor our strength, in order to break out of the past into the future.” –Minnie Bruce Pratt

“I believe the lasting revolution comes from deep changes in ourselves which influence our collective life.” –Anais Nin

“I want a women’s revolution like a lover. I lust for it. I want so much this freedom, this end to struggle and fear and lies we all exhale, that I could die just with the passionate uttering of that desire.” –Robin Morgan

“To dance is to reach for a world that doesn’t exist,
To sing the heartsong of a thousand generations,
To feel the meaning of a moment in time.”

– Beth Jones

Social change has been on my mind a LOT lately. Ever since I wrote about human trafficking in a post for Pagan Families, I’ve been consumed with and disturbed by the seemingly endless human atrocities around the world every day, often against women and children, but against men as well. I’ve handled it both by writing about it and by acting.

I recently became a regular contributor to the Feminism and Religion blog, which is humbling because the women there all seem so smart and I worry about not measuring up! In my first post as an official contributor rather than a guest, I continued to wrestle with my questions about the value of women’s circles and about one’s ability to “change the world”: Do Women’s Circles Actually Matter? I was again both humbled and proud (do those two work together?!) to see the post getting a lot of shares on Facebook today thanks to Journey of Young Women sharing a photo, poem, and link to the post.

And, I kept talking about this changing the world stuff on Pagan Families as well: Hold to the vision…

Finally, I was amazed, inspired, and awe-struck by the beautiful mothers that I have the privilege to help and so I wrote some stuff for them too:

International Women’s Day: Mama, You’re Amazing!

International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

“In the heart of the Goddess nests the world
and within it
something beautiful is incubating
waiting
watching
resting
knowing that change will crack it open…*”

–Molly Remer

I went to the woods quickly before I left for town today. It rained heavily all night and the woods were heavy and wet. As I stood there, I kept hearing the sound of rushing water and thought perhaps I could hear the river running. But, I decided it couldn’t be the river, too far away and plus, how full could it be after one night of rain? I sometimes think I can hear a river from our back deck as well and usually decide it is the wind in the trees or perhaps distant highway traffic noise.

However, then when I went to leave for town this is the sight that greeted me!

This is a usually dry river bed crossing. I rarely see the water high enough that a whole chunk of road is covered too. No wonder I heard rushing! I was on my way to a mother blessing ceremony and had to back up and take the long way into town.

I have a specific birth bracelet that I usually wear to mother blessings and so it was one of my pictures for today 🙂 (I also note my horribly dry winter skin. Need lotion, stat!)

The ceremony was a really lovely one for a special mama who has been on a long, difficult journey during this pregnancy. It was truly beautiful to spend the afternoon in sacred space with my friends. As our project following the ceremony and potluck, we painted stones for the honoree to use to line a flower garden path. Paint is not my medium, but I tried…

“She’s turning her life into something sacred: Each breath a new birth. Each moment, a new chance. She bows her head, gathers her dreams from a pure, deep stream and stretches her arms toward the sky.” –Monique Duval

—

P.S. Dang! I really wrote this on Sunday, March 17 (well, most of it was actually written in advance on the 16th to allow me the digital sabbath today), but then when I did the final edit (finally finding the author to the above quote!) and hit publish, it had just passed midnight and says it was posted on the 18th. I’m not going to consider this a strike against my posting-every-day experiment…

Categories: sabbath, womanspirit, women's circle, woodspriestess, writing | 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

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

Body Blessing to and from the Mother

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Molly

Feet planted solidly on Mother Earth
Drawing up
Solid
Gaia energy
Rich life
Pulsing planet
Power of being

Shoulders back
Chest open
I breathe in the Breath of Life
Wind
Air
Oxygen
Swirling
Flowing
Breathing me

Spreading my arms
Hands open
I feel the pulse of my heart
Blood flowing
Life giving
Throughout my body
The blood of my womb
Matching the tides of the ocean
And the pull of the moon
Linked in watery wonder

Breathing deep
and clearing my mind
I feel the spark of life within
Fiery
Molten
Passion blooming
Vibrantly alive
And dancing
Twisting through my spirit
With energetic ecstasy

Breathe in
Breathe out
Draw it up
Draw it in

Resting now,
In the hand of Mother Goddess
Breathing with her
Standing with her
Resting with her
Knowing her
Deeply

Blessed be.

I composed the above as my first post as a regular contributor to the Pagan Families blog on Patheos!

Alternate:

This month I was also planning our winter women’s retreat and I decided to modify the blessing somewhat to use as our opening invocation. This was the first time I’d used something that I written entirely on my own and it felt vulnerable—I had to ask, “how was that? Was that okay? Did that work?” 😉

The purpose of the invocation is to ground us in our bodies, while also connecting us to the larger swirl of energies that surround us—as I composed it, I envisioned sort of a circle, in which we are embedded and moving within. I feel as if this invocation itself creates a circle and brings the immanent and transcendent together into shared space, as it both invokes the elements and awakens your body.

In this version, the words included in parentheses are optional replacements or additions, according to your specific group’s needs.

Little herbal goddess doll we made during the retreat also.

Feet planted solidly on Mother Earth
Drawing up
Solid
Gaia energy
Rich life
Pulsing planet
Power of being

Shoulders back
Chest open
Breathe in the Breath of Life
Wind
Air
Oxygen
Swirling
Flowing
Breathing you

Spreading your arms
Hands open
Feel the pulse of your heart
Blood flowing
Life giving
Throughout your body
The blood of your womb (veins)
Matching the tides of the ocean
And the pull of the moon
Linked in watery wonder

Breathing deep
and clearing your mind
Feel the spark of life within
Fiery
Molten
Passion blooming
Vibrantly alive
And dancing
Twisting through your spirit
With energetic ecstasy

Breathe in
Breathe out
Draw it up
Draw it in

Resting now,
on the Earth
And in this circle (of women)
(In the hand of the Goddess)

Breathing with her
Standing with her
Knowing her
Deeply

Blessed be.

Categories: blessings, friends, invocations, poems, prayers, priestess, readings, ritual, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, women, women's circle, writing | 1 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

Endarkenment « Feminism and Religion

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Molly

My third guest post at the Feminism and Religion blog centered around the idea of Endarkenment. Here is an excerpt:

It is from this dark space that we emerge—whether from our own mothers or from the more mysterious cosmic “sea” of soul—and it is to darkness that we return when we close our eyes for the final time…

I find that within Goddess circles the idea of “the dark” remains commonly associated with that which is evil, negative, bad, or unpleasant. The Dark Mother, while acknowledged and accepted, is often at the same time equated with death, destruction, challenge, trials, and obstacles. While I recognize that the concept of a dark, demonic, and destructive mother might too have a place in goddess traditions…I also think this is unnecessarily limiting and that the idea of the “Dark” in general is in need of re-visioning. It is not just with regard to the role or place of death within the wheel of life or the Goddess archetype that Goddess as Dark Mother and destroyer can be honored or recognized, but the Dark as a place of healing and rest can also be explored.

via Endarkenment By Molly Remer « Feminism and Religion.

The post received a lot of comments and some people definitely disagreed with my remark that in “Goddess circles” the dark is associated with that which is negative. I’d love to hear your thoughts as well!

Categories: feminist thealogy, Goddess, spirituality, thealogy, writing | 4 Comments

Guest posts!

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Molly

I haven’t had a chance to post here very often this month, but I do have several guest posts finding homes in other parts of the internet!

My guest post Blessingways and the role of ritual appeared on Pagan Families’ new home on Patheos this month. And, my other guest post for Pagan Families, Guardian of the Womb, has also been transferred to their new home on the web.

I’m looking forward to an online Winter Solstice ritual tomorrow night at Global Goddess and I’m pleased that my piece, Goddess Wheel of the Year: Winter Solstice Ritual, was just published in the Solstice edition of the online magazine The Oracle. I had to laugh a little because I got the issue via email and thought, “oh! I have to check out the ritual article, because it might have something I can use for our family ritual this Friday!” and then I looked and it was MY article. Oh well!