WoodsPriestess

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

Woodspriestess: The Language of Spring

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Molly

A blush of green begins

Delicate lace of wild plums
Graces gray forestscapes

Heartbeat in the forest sings
The passion of life untapped.
The soul of the world
is speaking the language of spring.

This morning I went outside and swooned to see that the wild plum trees bloomed in the night! (Or at some other recent date and I didn’t notice until this morning?!) There are two small ones right near the house and more dotted throughout the woods and I love them. I also stepped over by the woodpile and right onto the wild violets that grow as a wonderful little carpet over there—they’re my very favorite tiny flower of spring and I actually gave a little shout of happiness to see them! An old-new friend coming back to visit. While I like seeing things that other people have planted or that I’ve planted myself, there’s really nothing like seeing what the ecosystem has planted on its own.

I went ahead and headed to the woods then with two of my kids (the third kid was inside making pies!) I had a bit of deja-vu-ish moment, because I remember delighting in the violets and taking pictures of them at this time last year when I went on a 300 Things walk with my daughter (which in hindsight was my first ever “woodspriestess” post).

Couldn’t resist a picture of these delicious curls too (Hey! They’re “springy” in their own right 😉 )

While I couldn’t get a very good picture of it because of the breeze, I also checked on the progress of the memorial tulip tree we planted for my third baby. I have been a little worried about it, because the buds don’t seem to be changing much, but we’ve got color!

And, at my parents’ house where the matching tree resides, they’ve got a whole bunch of flowers already!

When I wrote my final reflection for my Ecology and the Sacred class, I included this reflection on those things we plant…

…on the same road on which we live, there are several former homesites, with a variety of introduced plant life that continues to bloom each year. Around the corner from us is a ramshackle house that has not been inhabited for about 50 years. It has a gorgeous flowering quince that blooms each spring and dozens and dozens of iris bloom as well, making bright spots of color barely visible through the trees that have grown up to nearly cover the house. The home in which my parents live (one mile away) is a restored log cabin originally built in 1899 and moved to the current location from a spot out by the gravel road. Jonquils had been planted along the front of the house and in the yard area (so, sometime during the early 1900’s, I would imagine) and those jonquils continue to bloom each year in the now-woods and by my parents’ house, where my mom transplanted some originals along with the house itself. When driving down the gravel road in the springtime, there is another location of a previous home that is only identifiable visually when the jonquils bloom and as their yellow glow catches your eye through the trees, you can also see a small footer of a crumbled foundation nearby, indicating they were once planted in front of a home. I am struck by the fact that this rosebush and tulip tree that I’ve introduced to my own home landscape may well outlast us and our entire home and may indeed be our most lasting “legacy” on this patch of earth.

Step out onto the Planet

Draw a circle a hundred feet round

Inside the circle are

300 things nobody understands, and, maybe

nobody’s ever really seen.

How many can you find?

–Lew Welch

Categories: family, nature, OSC, parenting, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: Tiny Flowers

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Molly

Little world
springing up
right before my eyes

Gracious
mysterious
present
observed or not

Carrying out
a small, colorful
glorious function
in the tapestry of life.

Tiny flowers know
that hope blooms eternal
pushing the way
through cracked stone
reclaiming
repopulating
rebirthing the Earth

What is a seed
but a miracle
right in front of me

What am I
but a miracle
to be seeing this right now…

(4/9/13)

I am in love with the tiny flowers of springtime. Every year there is such a thrill of discovery and a sense of tiny, basic miracles when I see the new surprising that the land has to offer. They’re often so small as to be overlooked unless you’re paying attention. I love that they’re already there. I don’t have to plant or water them or worry about them, I just get to see them. There is such diversity in the types that bloom and it seems like each month has a new gift to offer and something new to discover. At my parents’ house and at my own, I love watching the spontaneous unfolding of new colors in the field and grasslands, unimpressed with whether they have human observers or not, just doing their tiny flower thing.

: I like seeing the small, “original” version of later domesicated and “improved” upon flowers.

: My favorite!

: See how tiny, but how marvelous?

: I spied these tiny, tiny, tiny blue flowers as I left my parents’ house today. I haven’t noticed these at my own house…yet…

: The first springtime heralds!

Categories: nature, poems, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Nourishment

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Molly

I seek nourishment

Physical and emotional

Womb-deep hunger

Relentless
Hot, fiery breath

Feeding me

(4/8/2013)

Categories: poems, prayers, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 5 Comments

Woodspriestess: Grandmother

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Molly

She trails pink fingers across the sky
scoops up her stories
and offers them with smiles

She plans lunch and words
and a graceful exit
She has been an example
of living
the stardust of generations
has been knitted by her cells

She who has traveled far
She who has loved in her own way
She who has left her mark
on people, places, and things

She holds herself close now
feeling small and tired

Life’s sunset.

Quilted in bright colors
Sinking over hills of gold
and long dry valleys.

(3/31/13)

Several days ago I went to the woods at sunset, finally observing this time of day from my woodspace. As I began to speak into my little recorder, I was talking about the sunset, but somehow, it turned into a poem about my grandmother. As I’ve alluded to before, my grandmother is very sick. It has struck the family as a sudden surprise. To me, she has always seemed invincible. Small and mighty. Strong and determined. I’ve always been proud of her. If there is anything I learned from her, it is to do stuff. Don’t wait or wonder or wish, try it out anyway. She is a world traveler, my grandma. Traveling to new destinations including shortly after her recent diagnosis. When ziplining in Peru a few years ago, her children questioned her:

“I thought you weren’t supposed to do something like that with a medical condition?”

“What?” she replied, “I don’t have a medical condition.”

“What about your pacemaker?” they said

“Oh that, that’s no big deal. I just didn’t mention it to them.”

My mom is sad and consumed with this impending loss. I am peppered with distraction and overwhelmed with the swirl of life, home, work, and children, but beneath the surface of every day, I hear the ticking clock and I sense the poignancy of time. Life decisions seem more potent and urgent now. Approaching endings always seem to bring new perspective. My husband wants to quit his job after spending eight years doing the same thing and becoming less and less enriched by the experience. We have fears about leaping into something unknown, but we also know that it is more scary not to try…

Categories: family, nature, poems, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Sabbath Prayer

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Molly

Prayer
sweet wind carry it
stone hold it
earth receive it.

Root it
in my flesh
where the fire of my spirit
may ignite it.

Hopeful
graceful
patient
purposeful

Prayer.
Of love
of service
of indwelling joy.

(4/1/2013)

This weekend I went out-of-town for a faculty conference and so I missed making a woodsvisit for the first time this year! Unavoidable, but it still felt disappointing to have to let go of my record. I have several other overnight engagements coming up during the year, so this is the first of several woods absences. I collected some items for a little travel altar and on Thursday I took it to the woods with me to kind of set up a “link.”

My Statement of Faith sculpture is made from a rock from the woods, so in a sense I brought the woods/rocks with me and then “visited” them in the hotel room on Friday morning before heading out to my conference 🙂

I have more I’d like to say, but I’m really overwhelmed with work to catch up on and I just can’t spend the time on writing right now. So, I offer what I have to offer. May I recognize that I’m enough.

Categories: nature, poems, prayers, sabbath, sculpture, theapoetics, womanspirit, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Thursday Thealogy: Dreams & Daily Practices

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Molly

“Form is the language of the universe singing its praises. Its rejoicing is seen everywhere–in the sun through a web of hair, in the flower and its petals, in the subtle folds of a garment, in the human body.” –Dianora Niccolini

A couple of months ago I experienced a really profound dream. I was walking down to the woods and in the sky above the priestess rocks saw a gigantic, beautiful, pulsating, pink, jeweled flower. I was awe-struck and staring at it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I became aware that a golden cord stretched from the center of the flower to the top of my head and I became aware that all people were connected to it by these golden cords as well. Then, in that uniquely expansive character of dreams, I somehow traveled through the center of the flower. On the other side was an immense snake of unimaginable proportion, spiraling around “the cosmic egg.” As I looked at it, I became aware that the snake was actually the whole of the universe and that along its body, in the scales, one could perceive not only each galaxy, but also a point for all times and places that ever were or will be. It is hard to describe in writing, but I still deeply remember by feelings of both awe and comprehension and this expansive awareness of reality. It was a gorgeous, trippy, and meaningful dream. I tried to draw something about it, but couldn’t do it. What I’m left with is that feeling of majesty, magnitude, and incredible connection.

In somewhat of a surprise, after the conclusion of my 31 day writing experiment, I’m very much missing my daily woodspriestess writing. “They” say it takes 30 days (or 21 or 15 or whatever) to create a habit and I created one that was pretty powerful. And, I’m realizing that it wasn’t only about the woodsvisits—I’ve been doing that since January and continue doing it today—it was the synthesis of experience with the written word. The writing itself was a practice too. I mentioned a couple of times that it sometimes felt like a burden, and it did, and I thought I was looking forward to having a “break” from having to write every day, and I do. However, I feel like there is something missing from my trips to the woods now—the writing afterward was an integrative experience or one that provided form, structure, and application of what I learned each day. Without the writing portion, I find I’m much more apt to leave and immediately “forget” what I experienced or learned that day. When I’m no longer thinking about how to shape it into written form, it loses some of its impact. During the experiment I felt bad at several points in going and only looking for things to blog about—it felt like the writing was a distraction to the experience—but, now I see how the link between experience and description provided a spiritual “container” for me, in which I could dig more deeply, look harder, and witness more. Writing offered a type of accountability. So, while I’ve enjoyed having a break from “having” to write on one hand, on the other I really actually feel a sense of loss and sadness about those missed opportunities to write and share and I’ve felt sort of at loose ends each day—like, “what about my blog post?” While I’m not going to force myself into an every day practice for the rest of the year with writing, I would truly like to continue to make it a priority. It is sad to me to notice how those things that nourish my spirit are easy to cut from my schedule when I become too busy, when in reality, they should take even more priority during those rhythms of life.

Today I also thought I might experiment with a new practice—one of drawing a card or a rune or a crone stone each day and perhaps make a daily blogging experience of that. I’m not sure I will, I’m toying with the idea—maybe a good daily project for May—but I did draw a Crone Stone today and I got the Daydreamer. It seemed very apt, describing fantasizing about things being different—“life can be boring at times–something is missing.” It describes the image as the woman resting against a tree, dreaming of a far away plan, while the tree behind her withers from neglect. It asks the receiver to consider how we can ground the fantasy and bring the vision into reality. As I looked at it, I thought of multiple things. One was simply about my life and family and sacred space being right there in the woods—I’ve got it. The people I love are right here in front of me, waiting for me. Sacred space is right there in the woods, waiting for me. This is it. I also thought about two recent experiences—I was dreaming as I often do of having a Women’s Temple or Goddess Temple and then I looked around my own living room and had the sudden realization, I’ve already got one. And, second, I was feeling disappointed in myself for not planning a springtime ritual and having people over and doing a fabulous ceremony, but then as I laid out the spring time altar for my Rise Up class last week I had a moment of realization, oh, yeah. This IS a springtime ritual. I DID do it (but, it wasn’t for my family, it was for my friends. I’d like to do more things for my family in this capacity).

My first class at Ocean Seminary College was called Ecology and the Sacred and a theme that emerged for me as I worked through the class was of a deep hunger for daily practice. I like looking back and seeing how my current practices evolved from the desire I tried to convey in the “reflection” portions of my assignments. In the first lesson, I wrote:

I have a thealogical view of the world/universe as the body of the Goddess. Everything is interconnected in a great and ever-changing dance of life…all things as intimately connected—not as “all one,” but as all interconnected and relating to one another, in an everpresent ground of relationship and relatedness. I am currently reading the book She Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World by Carol Christ and the concepts from the lesson are closely related to the process philosophy she explores and that I am personally connecting to in many ways. As does she, I imagine the divine as omnipresent (rather than omnipotent) and I feel like I can see Goddess/God in the bright black eyes of a newly hatched baby chick and in the curve of my baby’s cheek against my breast. I do not feel like the Goddess is something I believe in, but a reality that I experience in daily life.

In response to my Week 1 assignment, I was asked “when you go about your everyday life activities do you have any rituals that you incorporate into them to vivify your spiritual insight with your day-to-day ecological mindfulness? If not, this may be something worth exploring.” This question stayed in my mind throughout the remaining twelve lessons of the course. In the second lesson, I wrote:

I do feel a powerfully strong urge to bring spiritual mindfulness more fully into my daily life–“practicing the presence of the Goddess” in a more explicitly developed/acknowledged manner–but I have trouble figuring out exactly how I wish to do this. I wear a Goddess ring that serves as a mindfulness touchstone for me (when I remember to look at it!) and I find listening to various spiritual CDs as I go about the mundane activities of my day brings a sense of the sacred into my everyday tasks (like laundry), but I have a hunger in me to do something more…

Shortly after, I added to these thoughts:

…when engaged in these outdoor observations, I was struck by how I feel this deep sense of being part of the fabric of life most profoundly, clearly, and cleanly while outside. As Naomi Wolf said, I feel that “We were all held, touched, interrelated, in an invisible net of incarnation…”—I might describe this additionally as being held in the hand of the Goddess. However, in practice, I spend much more time inside than outside. There are always so many things “to do.” Work to do, chores to catch up on, things to be done inside the house, that my experience of the natural world and that sense of being held in a net of incarnation is often postponed, in a way for, “later,” once I’m finished with all my work (which, never ends!). And, I realized today, that means my sense of the sacred or of divinity in the world is sometimes also postponed. This isn’t satisfactory! So, I continue to think about—and welcome ideas about—how to incorporate some rituals into my day a way that more meaningfully integrates my spiritual life with my everyday life…

And, about midway through the course, I wrote:

I also continue to reflect on my interest in incorporating more “ritual” into my life that honors or expresses my sense of the divine and I realized that I think I’m really simply seeking to cultivate a state of basic mindfulness in my day. So, not ritual per se, but ongoing awareness and mindful participation in the daily rhythms of life (including mindfulness of my connection within a larger environmental whole).

Thanks to the opportunity to articulate this desire, I started my first truly daily practice, some time at my living room altar:

In the course of my experiences with this class, I’ve started to spend a little time in the morning before my yoga practice in prayer/reflection/communion with my sense of the divine. Since that sense is intimately entwined with nature, I find the best way to do this is to sit looking out my window, watching the play of sunlight and shadow, and talking quietly to myself/to Goddess energy about what I envision for my day. This has been a powerfully grounding and focusing experience and something that I felt was missing in my day, something I was seeking to cultivate and have now been able to do because of the observer/reflection sense that is being honed more clearly through this course.

During week six, I also wrote: I feel emotionally embedded with the land and this daily process of energy exchange.

This is NOT a black and white picture, it is actually how the day looked just this Tuesday. I thought: “this looks as gray as I feel right now…”

And, I also thought about this quote by Robert Kennedy Jr. as quoted in the book Last Child in the Woods:

“‘We’re part of nature, and ultimately we’re predatory animals and we have a role in nature…and if we separate ourselves from that, we’re separating ourselves from our history, from the things that tie use together. We don’t want to live in a world where there are not recreational fishermen, where we’ve lost touch with the seasons, the tides, the things that connect us—-to ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before there were laptops and ultimately connect us to God.’ We shouldn’t be worshipping nature as God, he said, but nature is the way that God communicates to us most forcefully. ‘God communicates to us through each other and through organized religion, through wise people and the great books, through music and art,’ but nowhere ‘with such texture and forcefulness in detail and grace and joy, as through creation…And when we destroy large resources, or when we cut off our access by putting railroads along river banks, by polluting so that people can’t fish, or by making so many rules that people can’t get out on the water, it’s the moral equivalent of tearing the last pages out of the last Bible on Earth [emphasis mine]…Our children ought to be out there on the water…This is what connects us, this is what connects humanity, this is what we have in common. It’s not the Internet, it’s the oceans.” (page 198)

During week nine, I also got thealogical about chickens:

I’ve said before that baby chicks are one of the things that make me believe in “the Goddess.” Maybe that sounds silly, but when I sit before a nest and see the bright black eyes and soft down of a new baby chick, where before there was just an egg, I feel like I am truly in the presence of divinity. This, this is Goddess, I think whenever I see one. There is just something about the magic of a new chick that brings the miracle of the sustaining force of life to my attention in a profound way. (New babies of all kinds do it for me, but there is something extra special about chicks!) Of course, when several died, I couldn’t help but feel sad about all of that work and that wasted potential and how that little baby had come so far only to die shortly after hatching, but that, to me, is part of Goddess/Nature/Life Force too. I do not believe in a controlling/power-over deity who can give life or take it away at will or at random. I know that things just happen, that the wheel keeps turning, and that while that force that I name Goddess is ever-present and able to be sensed and felt in the world and in daily life, it/she does not have any kind of ultimate “control” over outcomes.

This was a really, really long way of saying that I want to keep writing regularly about my “woodspriestess” observations as I continue my year-long experiment with visiting the same place in the woods on daily basis. I found something I was seeking in the interplay between visit, spoken word, and written exploration and I think it is something worth continuing.

Here I bear witness to the universe singing its praises…

Categories: Goddess, nature, spirituality, thealogy, Thursday Thealogy, woodspriestess | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Nature’s Blessings

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Molly

Blessed by wind
and blessed by rain
blessed by love
and blessed by pain.

Blessed by tree
and blessed by land
open heart
and open hand.

Hopeful spirit
drawing near
Goddess presence
is felt here.

Open up
open wide
rest with courage
peace inside.

Breathe in deep
feel heart beat
blessed stone
beneath feet.

Listen, watch
learn and more
today, tomorrow,
from the core.

Blessings of the earth
and soul
Nature’s blessings
keep us whole.

I’m not usually a rhyming type (at least in the woods. I have a tendency to annoy my kids by singing a little ditty at home that includes the phrase, “and it was rhyming time!”), but sometimes things surprise me and rhymes emerge after all! I’ve been missing my daily writing practice a lot. I hadn’t realized in full what it had added to my daily woodspractice. I’m writing more about this for my post for tomorrow. Today, I’m taking a day off from class work and I’m doing the other things that I want to do. I read to my kids, I played with my toddler, I packed for a trip, and got dinner started. I planned a gazillion blog post ideas. I made a baked sweet potato for my lunch. I haven’t checked in with my classes once and I think that is okay. Surely I deserve a day off from classwork, right?!

I also walked my labyrinth…

Visited my baby’s memorial tree:

Noticed the tulips’ progress:

And, I’ve been working on a little travel altar to take on my trip. (no picture yet)

Categories: blessings, chants, nature, poems, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 2 Comments

Woodspriestess: Stoneflower

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Molly

Like flower growing from rock
the world is full of tiny, perfect mysteries.
Secrets of heart and soul and landscape
guarded tenderly
taking root in hard crevices
stretching forth
in impossible silence.

Sleeping
resting
waiting
watching
knowing
that all one needs
is a crack in stone
and a seed of possibility…

On Friday evening, when I went for an unexpected walk through the woods with my husband and daughter, we discovered something that delighted and thrilled me and seemed like a perfect symbol of what I’ve learned from my time in the woods this March. It was rock with a small, perfect flower growing out of it. Difficult to take a picture of there in the leaves, I was so stunned by its beauty that I could hardly leave it…

The rock also had this cool swirly pattern that looked like a galaxy or universe, but in the picture looks more like a face!

Over the last 31 days, I entered this woodspace in many different ways. Angry, disappointed, sad, joyful, satisfied, tired, hopeful, prayerful, celebratory, creative, grieving. And, I left each day with a sense of inner peace and stillness, of quieted mind, restful body, and connected soul, if only for a few moments. While I’ve been maintaining my daily practice since January, what I’ve learned from the last 31 days of this blogging-every-day-project—the commitment I made to write each day about the changing tapestry of the woods each and every day of March—is deeper and broader than when I was going to the woods without the accountability of writing. While at times I’ve felt like I needed a break from feeling “forced” to write and laughed at myself over the self-imposed to-dos I too often layer upon myself, I’ve learned a lot. During this month I’ve learned that it is okay to be spiky, that it is okay to have a lot to write about and not a lot to write about. I’ve learned to do it anyway. I have learned about the value of this woodspriestess time as a spiritual practice. I’ve learned to move it forward in my day, to spend longer at it, and to make it a top priority. I have learned to pay attention and that I can always see something new. I have challenged myself to always see something new, to learn something new. I have learned that lessons come from sometimes the most surprising and unwelcome of experiences. I have noticed what shares the earth with me, the things that fly, the things that crawl, the things that walk. I’ve bonded with the trees. I’ve recalled that rocks sit around developing powers and wisdom. I’ve composed words I’ve gone on to use more publicly and in ritual.

I’ve realized that the spoken poetry of the forest is its own gift, its own language, its own way of exploring the world around me and that sitting on a rock with a recorder instead of at a computer or with a notebook, unlocks something creative in me in a unique way. I have meditated on the crone, the maiden, and the mother. I have asked questions about hopelessness and despair. I have listened. I have received answers. I have discovered questions. I have come to a more full understanding of my own place in the tapestry of life. I have had clarity and much as everything changes, I have yet to leave the woods with less clarity than that with which I entered. I’ve discovered ways in which my children can come with me and I’ve discovered ways in which children scatter my attention. I have blessed many sculptures. I have prayed for strength, safety, and guidance. I’ve asked for blessings on my work, tasks, and rituals. I have been ragged and I have danced. I have been forlorn. I have been buoyant and exuberant. And, I have watched it all. I have seen winter drift towards spring and then back towards winter and then back towards spring again. I have planned. I have actively witnessed and engaged in that invisible web of incarnation; consciously touched my thread in Her weaving. I have listened to my breath, felt my pulse, watched my thoughts, and gazed at the sky. I have held space. I have held hopefulness. I have held children. I have created art. I have been moved to tears. I have laughed. In this microcosm of the planet, I have touched eternity. I have tasted truth. I’ve discovered a means of touching my soul. I’ve cultivated an authentic and rich spiritual home and identity. I have been sheltered. I have listened and been listened to. I have heard and been heard. I have seen and been seen. I have known and been known. I have been witnessed into being and I have witnessed so carefully. I am a woodspriestess.

Thank you for the many blessings of this time and space. Thank you for witnessing me, thank you for hearing me, thank you for seeing me, thank you for helping me.

“As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I’m the Earth. I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.” ~ Alice Walker

“This little patch of earth and this little pile of stones; I can wash the dust off my face and skin, but this earth is in my bones” – Ralph McTell

“…A big rock is a good place to sit and worship, looking out at the world. That feeling you feel, when you see the woods, the ocean, a flower, is the first-fruits offering of worship. The natural world, not the [human]-made world, provides us the right proportions, the right perspective. By naming that for your children, you claim worship as a common human experience…” –Gina Bria (The Art of Family: Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality, p. 73)

“The essence of the spiritual path lies only in the beauty of the ordinariness, in the mundane, and in the freedom of separation between the spiritual and the ordinary.” –Dr. Thynn Thynn

As I was speak-writing the above, I was suddenly jolted by seeing my dog chewing on one of my precious sculptures. I must have left her behind after taking pictures one day and not noticed. Luckily, she’s still okay!

I also paid special attention to the maple that grows there out of the priestess rocks, thinking of how it too was once a tiny seed that eventually split rock, strongly and intimately entwined with its landscape.

And, connecting multiple experiences, today we found the tiniest and most delicate of small green plants growing in one of the drain pipes in our not-yet-fully-set-up aquaponics greenhouse.

Felt like a sign that things will definitely grow here, whether we try or not!

Tender green shoot in unlikely place
Tenacious tapestry of life
This weaving unfolding before my eyes
This is my religion.

Categories: nature, poems, quotes, spirituality, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 7 Comments

Saturday Sabbath: Song from the Mother

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Molly

Today, we were gone all day at one of our work parties with friends. While I didn’t actually take a full digital sabbatical, it made sense to me to switch my “sabbath” day post/thoughts around and share those today and then share my end-of-the-31-day woodspriestess blogging experience tomorrow. I’ve been saving this gorgeous picture and lovely Mother Song to post (reprinted with permission from the artist) and the time finally has arrived!

I also read these two fabulous quotes:

“Whoever you are
whatever you are
start with that,
whether salt of the earth
or only white sugar.”
–Alice Walker (in Open Mind)

And…

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

And, on my extremely brief visit to the woods this morning, I took a picture of the rock I think of as the “yoni stone.”

Categories: Goddess, nature, quotes, sabbath, woodspriestess | Tags: goddess, mother song, nature, quotes | 4 Comments

Woodspriestess: Women’s Circles

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Molly

“I see a chain of women, each listening to each, being present to her as she waits
for her Self to be born, for her feeling values to come to form and to birth…
Woman after woman, being present, as each finds her voice”
Judith Duerk: Journey to Herself

“The calling a woman feels to gather in Sacred Space with other Sisters starts first as a low and slow warmth that begins to burn. If left unfed, it rises quickly to a raging fire of desire. It will not be denied and can only be quenched by the nourishment of Truth, Candlelight,
Song And Sisterhood”
Ayla Mellani ~ Founder of Chrysalis Woman

“You will be teachers for each other. You will come together in circles and speak your truth to each other. The time has come for women to accept their spiritual responsibility for the planet”
Sherry Anderson & Patricia Hopkins ~ The Feminine Face of God

quotes via Chrysalis Woman

In February 2010, I bought the Rise Up and Call Her Name curriculum from the UU Women and Religion store. I listened to the CD that came with the curriculum over and over during one of my darkest personal experiences, the experience of my second miscarriage, and it spoke to me deeply at a time when I needed it and when I was not able to be “heard” in any other manner. It was at this time that the shift in my life’s focus became apparent to me, from birthwork to women’s life cycle work, and priestess work. I dreamed of facilitating the series of classes, but it took me until this year to actually make that dream a reality. We’ve been having quarterly women’s retreats locally since the end of 2010 and I’ve facilitated the Cakes for the Queen of Heaven series a couple of times as well as Meetings at the Moon for mother-daughter pairs, but Rise Up kept waiting in my closet. This year, I decided to offer it as a year-long once-a-month class, rather than as a 13 week series. I thought this made sense in terms of people’s busy schedules and ability to commit. As it turns out, committing to something once a month for a year may also be asking too much of many women and only a small handful of women made the commitment. We now have just a little circle of six, but we’re doing it and it actually feels like the perfect group after all (I’m easily seduced into bigger-is-better ways of thinking about groupwork, even though smaller groups can be much more rewarding experiences!). This afternoon was our March class and it really felt like it “healed” me from my disconnect, separation, can’t listen/reach out the way I wish to, feelings from my “making a place for others” post on Wednesday. My post from Wednesday was very much an artifact of not having any time alone to regroup from several stressful, too-busy days in a row. This afternoon before the Rise Up class, my parents had my kids over and I spent some time first down in the woods visiting the rocks further down the hill, including these that form a lovely circle…

On my way back to the house, just look at what popped out at me from the ground…

This is one of the “stepping stones” on the way to the priestess rocks. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed her before! When I came in, I put on the Rise Up CD and worked setting up a springtime altar. When I lay out an altar, I often kind of force myself to include the “right” objects representing the four directions. This time, I decided to just put on the altar what wanted to be there and what communicated something about the purpose of the day. I loved the result! It was one of my favorite circle altars so far.

Altar with addition of springtime daffodil from my mom, rearrangement of many things by toddler daughter, and eating of fig cookies as part of the “ingathering” ritual…

Circle round
circle round and celebrate
circle round and sing
circle round and share stories
circle round and reach out a hand

circle

no beginning
no end

In my college classes, I often tell my students that in working with people, we need to learn to think in circles, rather than in lines. Circles are strong. Circles are steady. Circles hold the space, circles make a place for others. Circles can expand or contract as needed. Circles can be permeable and yet have a strong boundary. Linked arms in a circle can keep things out and show solidarity. Linked energy in a circle can transform the ordinary into sacred space. Hands at each other’s backs, facing each other, eye level.

In the woods, I offered this prayer for our circle:

May our circle be strong
may our circle be harmonious
may our circle be steady
and may our circle grow and change

please guide me as I priestess this circle today
please help me to see, hear, and honor those within the circle
help me to act with love in my heart, hands, and mind
help me to guard the energy of this space
help me to facilitate sacred connection

let us all act as sisters
as companions and friends
hold hands
hold the space
hold each other…

I also chose the following reading to use following the “ingathering” ritual at the opening of the Rise Up class. We did it as a responsive reading (i.e. I read each line and then the group repeated it). It felt perfect!

I am a woman,
a human being of extraordinary strength, wisdom, and grace.
My woman’s body was created in the body of a woman.
I am daughter, sister, mother
in thousands of generations of women…
I am a woman,
part of and the whole of the first circle,
the circle that transcended space and time,
the circle of women joined.
–Ann Valliant and Kathleen Klimek (in Open Mind by Diane Mariechild)

I had such a positive, happy feeling after the close of our class. I did not feel drained or as if I’d been doing too much or giving away too much of my energy. I felt nourished, healed, connected, and satisfied. In February, when I took my annual computer-off retreat, I had the realization that a lot of the scattered and distracted feelings I experience are more often related to children and parenting than to technology (I’d been blaming technology, but with the technology off, I realized it was actually the kids!). And, today I had a similar realization—that perhaps I often feel drained by people contact as well as scattered, distracted, and unable to fully connect, because I’m usually trying to do that and mother at the same time. While mothering is fulfilling too and my kids are certainly extremely important to me, oh my goodness it was just a delight to spend time with these friends today just us, with no kids asking us for anything. It was much easier to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, when there were no other needs to fulfill but our own!

Right as everyone was leaving, I remembered I’d wanted to offer aura photographs via a little app I’d gotten for my phone quite a few months ago… I would not really place a lot of stock into its authenticness, but it was really fun and actually surprisingly on target!

After everyone left, I headed back down to the woods with my husband and daughter. We went on a spontaneous ramble through the woods and made many cool discoveries that I will have to write about in a later post…

stepping out on an adventure…

Categories: community, friends, nature, prayers, priestess, ritual, spirituality, womanspirit, women, women's circle, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Top Thirteen Most Influential People in Goddess Spirituality

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Molly

Earlier this month I was very interested to see a series of posts on Raise the Horns about the top 25 most influential people in the birth of paganism. When I read Mankey’s post, it reinforced my own conception of Goddess spirituality as having a distinctly different lineage and flavor than much of contemporary paganism. His list, while extensive, useful, and accurate, involves a distinct lack of Goddess scholars, highlighting to me that Goddess spirituality IS a different movement and isn’t actually just a Goddess-oriented branch of contemporary paganism. Indeed, almost everyone on his list I’d either never heard of, not read, or don’t enjoy their writing. I immediately started to draft a list of my own and came up with 13 women, which seemed delightfully appropriate. We in the Goddess feminist community have our own path, herstory, and lineage, one that really only began in the 1970’s in direct connection to the feminist movement, rather than the pagan movement.

Not necessarily in a particular order, here is my own list of the top thirteen most influential people in the development and articulation of Goddess Spirituality as its own distinct path. (I’ve been scrambling to finish collecting my thoughts in time to post this list while it is still Women’s History Month!) Only one of my own picks also appears on Mankey’s list.

Carol Christ–this feminist scholar is the most skillful and intelligent thealogian of the present day. Christ’s influence on my own ideas and concepts has been profound. Her work is academic, focused, and deep, and she wrestles with heavy questions. I particularly enjoy her books Rebirth of the Goddess and She Who Changes. A brilliant, thoughtful, amazing writer, Christ’s essay Why Women Need the Goddess remains, in my opinion, one of the most important and influential articles of our time.
Merlin Stone–author of the classic When God was a Woman, this professor of art history changed the landscape and understanding of ancient cultures and their relationship to the Goddess (and, yes she drew on the work of Murray and Graves, but moved into feminist thealogy rather than pagan practice).
Riane Eisler—author of The Chalice and the Blade, she made a significant contribution to the understanding of the history and development of patriarchy as well as offering a solution in the form of a partnership model of society.
Marija Gimbutas—scholar and archaeologist and author of several books chronicling Goddess figurines from around the world, including The Language of the Goddess, her work has come under scrutiny and criticism, but remains a potent contribution to the lineage of the Goddess movement.
Starhawk—the first of two on my list who bridge the gap between more “classic” paganism and feminist spirituality, Starhawk had a huge impact on the development of a female-oriented spiritual tradition. Her book The Spiral Dance was the first introduction to the Goddess for many women. In keeping with what I find to be a personal lack of click with a lot of pagan authors, I did not particularly enjoy The Spiral Dance and actually read it much later than most of the other books about feminist spirituality that I reference in this post, but regardless of personal taste, her influence on the Goddess movement is profound.
Z. Budapest—considered by many to be one of the first mothers of the feminist spirituality movement in the U.S., like Starhawk, Z’s writings are not my personal favorite resources because of their heavy Wiccan orientation, but they are undeniably classics in Goddess circles. Z has taken heat from many pagans for her position on transgender people.
Patricia Mongahan–recently departed author of Goddess-specific resource books like The Goddess Path and Wild Girls, Patricia’s writing is more practical and less scholarly/thealogy-oriented than some of my other favorite authors.
Monica Sjoo—radical artist, ecofeminist, and Goddess scholar, Sjoo wrote The Great Cosmic Mother and one of my other favorites, a critique of New Age spiritual paths called New Age Armageddon. Her classic and awesome painting God Giving Birth narrowly avoided ended up in Court on the charge of “obscenity and blasphemy.”
Hallie Iglehart—while less well-known and influential than some of the other women on my list, Hallie was personally very impactful to my own Goddess path, since her books were some of the first, personal and experientially-oriented Goddess-specific books that I read. She is the author of Womanspirit, a synthesis of feminism and religion, and of The Heart of the Goddess, a visually stunning collection of Goddess images and meditations/reflections.
Cynthia Eller—while Eller’s book focused on debunking the “myth of matriarchal prehistory” made her lose popularity among many in the Goddess community (see her clarifying comments here), her scholarly engagement with the complexities of articulating the concepts of feminist spirituality and of thealogy is challenging, illuminating, and offers the opportunity to dig deeply into one’s own perspectives. Her book Living in the Lap of the Goddess is a thorough exploration of women’s spirituality and the Goddess movement.
Charlene Spretnak–another rocking writer with a thorough grasp of the sociopolitical and cultural context, value, and purpose of Goddess spirituality, her classic anthology The Politics of Women’s Spirituality is one of the best and deepest explorations of the concepts, personal experiences, philosophies, and thealogies of why Goddess.
Karen Tate—through her weekly radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine, I would venture to say that Tate is one of the most influential and dedicated “Goddess advocates” of the present day.
Elizabeth Fisher and Shirley Ranck—authors of germinal religious education curriculums focused on feminist spirituality and woman-honoring traditions, originally published by the UU Women and Religion program, their work with Rise Up and Call Her Name andCakes for the Queen of Heaven continues to change the lives of women around the country by introducing them to a vision of what the world could be like if the divine was imaged as female.

Also deserving of mention are:

SageWoman Magazine (and her editors)—this specifically Goddess-women oriented publication is a treasure and a delight.

Feminism and Religion blog–daring to explore the intersection of religion, scholarship, activism, and community, FAR is not specifically Goddess-oriented, but includes Goddess scholars amongst their contributors and weaves a beautiful, living, organic tapestry of the multifaceted web of feminist spirituality in the present day.

I find that feminist spirituality can be distinguished from paganism because of the inclusion of a core sociopolitical orientation and distinct sociocultural critique. Feminist spirituality to me is the intersection of religion and politics. It is religious feminism. It may or may not include literal experience of or perception of the Goddess, but it names the female and the female body as sacred, worthy, and in need of defense and uses Goddess symbols, metaphors, stories, and experiences as primary expressions of divinity and the sacred.

After originally writing this list, I thought of many more women I should have included and I kept meaning to do a part two follow-up article. I’ve yet to finish that, but this is who I would add…

Six More Influential Women:

Shekhinah Mountainwater (pictured at right): tremendous personal influence on my life and work.Original creator of Womanrunes and author of one of my all-time favorite goddess spirituality books, Ariadne’s Thread.
Diane Stein–I particularly enjoy her anthology The Goddess Celebrates and also her book, Casting the Circle.
Vicki Noble–her book Shakti Woman is a powerful and important read.
Barbara Ardinger–if I had to choose a favorite book for ritual resources and goddess spirituality, her book A Woman’s Book of Rituals and Celebrations would be one of those at the top! I also enjoy interacting with her as a sister blogger at Feminism and Religion.
Barbara Walker–author of several goddess-oriented sourcebooks, The Essential Handbook of Women’s Spirituality is another of my favorite resources.
Nancy Vedder-Shults–I first “met” Nancy through hearing her music at a Cakes for the Queen of Heaven training. Her CD, Chants for the Queen of Heaven, was my first-ever purchase of goddess-specific music (I didn’t even know there was such a thing until hearing her songs!). Later, I continued to enjoy her contributions to SageWoman magazine and now through direct interaction on the Feminism and Religion blog.

Other cool books/honorable mentions:

Save

Categories: books, feminism, feminist thealogy, Goddess, resources, spirituality, thealogy, womanspirit | 74 Comments

Thursday Thealogy: Making a Place for Others

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Molly

I went to the woods intending to take a picture of the setting sun, but I’d accidentally hit the reverse-image button, so my own face was looking at me instead. So, I thought…that’s most real!

“…in listening you become an opening for that other person…Indeed, nothing comes close to an evening spent spellbound by the stories of women’s inner lives.”–Sacred Circles

This morning my attention was caught by this blog post’s exploration of becoming most real:

Becoming most real means becoming aware of what we are doing and feeling all the time. It means noticing not only our imagined or desired reality —the one we’re cooking up in our mind to soothe our discomforts and fears — but also the reality that actually exists, the one that is most real…

[during a stressful experience]…But then I asked, “What is most real?”

I noticed that I was feeling tense and stressed. That I knew already. But I also noticed that I was struggling to change things, trying to force myself to feel relaxed. And that was the key. Because then I went from being lost in the struggle to being aware of the struggle. I went from identifying with the struggling to identifying with my deeper self that sees the struggle. For a moment I was grounded in the unflickering flame of my true self. For a moment I achieved the very aim of yoga.

You can practice being most real by asking yourself, “What am I trying to feel right now, and what am I actually feeling right now?” These two are related: What you are trying to feel right now, or more specifically, the fact that you are trying, is what you are actually doing; it is most real. Most real is not the state you are trying to achieve but the state you are in. That’s where you’ll find the greatest vitality, peace, and happiness.

via Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi (book review).

I’m three quarters of the way through a year-long OSC class based on the book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. We’re examining and practicing compassion to ourselves and in personal relationships, community relationships, and to non-humans. The subject of the sixth month was, “making a place for others.” What does this mean? The author explains…

I began to notice how seldom we “make place for the other” in social interaction. All too often people impose their own experience and beliefs on acquaintances and events, making hurtful, inaccurate, and dismissive snap judgments, not only about individuals but about whole cultures. It often becomes clear, when questioned more closely, that their actual knowledge of the topic under discussion could comfortably be contained on a small postcard. Western society is highly opinionated. Our airwaves are clogged with talk shows, phone-ins, and debates in which people are encouraged to express their views on a wide variety of subjects. This freedom of speech is precious, of course, but do we always know what we are talking about?

Armstrong, Karen (2010-12-28). Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (Kindle Locations 1476-1481). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Previously used in: Plucking out the heart of mystery

I spent all month working with this idea and very often, I suck at it. One of the roles of a priestess is to hold the space for others, and I do find I am able to do that in a ceremony environment and also in a support group setting, but it pretty much ends there. This isn’t really new for me, when I worked in battered women’s shelters, I remember coming home and being aware I was monopolizing the airspace with my husband and saying, “I spend so much time listening to other people and their pain, that then when I get home I just need a space too and I no longer feel like I can give it to anyone else.” So, I feel as if my closest family members rarely get to experience my ability to hold a space for others, because they’re sort of forced into that role for me instead.

I’m really feeling exhausted this week. Worn out and beaten down. Incapable of keeping up. Dropping balls. Forgetting things. Having to leave things undone, unreplied to, unfinished, let go. Bad mother, bad wife, bad friend, bad person. I know from past experience that this isn’t a permanent feeling. It is directly related to not enough time at home alone and too much outward directed energy with no time to refuel and recollect my energy. Next week looks much the same. Some of it is self-imposed. A lot of it is related to other people’s expectations of me (or perceived expectations). I keep feeling as if I’m making the wrong choices, doing the wrong things, letting myself get scattered and fragmented and overwhelmed and panicky. And, as I write it all out, I then feel like I can see how my thinking is disordered and I feel judged.

What’s been on my mind today is listening to other people; making a place for others. I’ve been thinking about seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, knowing and being known. About witnessing each other. But, is there really any way to see and to truly be seen or is it all so filtered through our own lenses and our own interpretations of experience that we all just bump around into each other’s “ice cubes” rather than actually connecting? (See Charlotte Joko Beck for the “ice cube” thing.) I’m such a self-monitor, the watching of myself becomes painful, and I feel inauthentic or critical of my own responses and being. I want to be able to connect authentically, to reach out and engage with others deeply, to have the same sense of understanding of other people as I have of myself and this patch of earth I live on. Today, in the woods I thought: this is just all so relentless. And, then I thought: yes, it IS relentless. Life is relentless. That is what makes it beautiful. I sometimes feel as if I’m becoming more and more distant and disconnected from people even as “connection” takes a prominent position in my thealogy and my values, and yet it feels so hard, and I feel so tired. And I want for everyone to get along and I want for everyone to be friends and I want for everyone to understand each other, I want for everyone to be seen and to be heard and to be known. I want this for myself and for others and yet, I can’t do it. Sometimes I feel separated from others by glass. The way I share my own feelings and taste my own experiences is through the written word. Companionship lately ends up making me want to run away (again, I know logically that this isn’t actually true, it is symptom of not having the two hours to myself that I need. Once I have some two hours I’ll be back and not at the verge of tears all of the time anymore). I want to separate right now. Separate so that I can write about connection…

What is real?

Sun on its way down.
I had a weird moment here in which I laid my head on my knee, where my phone was resting–both my eyes were open and because one of them was looking at the reflection of the trees/sky in the shiny front of the phone and the other was actually looking at the ground, it was like I could see the trees and sky superimposed on the leaves/rocks and it was very surreal. Since I was writing about perception and thinking, again, about subjective experience, it seemed like a fitting moment–one I wished it was possible to photograph too!

Feel your breath
feel your pulse
notice the butterfly
watch the hawk
hear the spring peepers
witness the sunset
listen for howling
give thanks for that relentless, hot, hunger
that fuels you
celebrate your own passion
and your refusal to stop trying
feel tears prick your eyes
feel tiredness sweep your body.
wind in your hair
life at your back and at your shoulders
hope on your lips
love is in your hands…

I can’t make a place for others unless I’m willing to make a place for myself.

Categories: family, friends, introversion, nature, Thursday Thealogy, women's circle, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Woodspriestess: Dawn to Dusk

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Molly

Darkness falls
entering sacred space
stepping from holy ground
to holy ground.
Recognize it.

Owl calls
moon rises
sun sets
small dog sits
leaves rustle
heart beats
blood flows
breathing in
breathing out…

Feeling the world spin
feeling the earth turn.
Watching her weaving at work
in the night.

(12/26/12)

This morning I experienced another woodsfirst. Sunrise. We are late risers usually and I believe this was the first time (even after living here for eight years) that I’ve seen a slice of sunrise from this place in the woods. I couldn’t stay long and it wasn’t that impressive, but I saw it, and it was another new moment in an ever-changing, ever-surprising, familiar place.

After I left, I got this great idea—I’d go back and take a picture at sunset too and, and…also when the moon was rising! Wouldn’t that be a cool series…Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise, I’d call the post, maybe I’d even have one of those cool moments in which the moon is coming up and the sun is going down and there is a delicious sunsetmoonrise in a Neapolitan sky. Well, since the woods always has lessons for me and they parallel that of the rest of life, that was not actually what happened. We were gone all day taking our youngest to a pediatric dentist out-of-town and then doing some other things while in the city. When we got home, I knew sunset was coming soon, but I let the best moment slip by me while distracted by “catching up” and by the time I went back out, there was nothing visible from the woodsplace any longer—I don’t know that there ever would have been tonight though, because the sky was pretty overcast and the sun sets on the opposite side of the priestess rocks (which face sunrise), so what I usually am able to see in the sky is any long fingers of pink that paint their way along the horizon. And, then, my phone was out of photo storage and I had to stand there annoying myself by deleting pictures instead of watching the remaining trace of sunset from the place out in the field instead in which I could actually see it…

the last bit!

And, then it was way too cloudy to even see the full moon at all, let alone get a sunsetmoonrise type of moment! So, I mined my old recordings for another moonrise night and included my words from that night instead. And, I had a full moon over the greenhouse picture from the same time in December as well…

I did see the full moon last night on my way home from my class and it was gorgeous 🙂 I’m still writing and posting and noticing anyway, even though it isn’t perfect (or even particularly interesting and certainly not what I’d imagined writing about) and as this 30 day experiment comes to close, I do have an overall sense of satisfaction about the process. Being “forced” to write every day is an experience in and of itself. Challenging myself to look closer and see more has been very rewarding. Going ahead and posting anyway, even if I’d expected something different or wanted to do more, or am afraid I’m being boring, or have to rush a little or leave something out or scramble to finish before midnight, or don’t have any striking insights to offer…that is a practice too, and I’ve learned a lot from it.

Categories: family, nature, theapoetics, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Woodspriestess: Change

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Molly

Tiny change may be invisible
but impactful just the same
the sun emerging from behind a cloud
a bonewind stilling for a minute
shadows marking the ground
clouds drifting
bird song
rooster call
snow melting
ice dripping
breath moving

in and out…

There’s something in most of us that longs for some kind of solid core. Something to return to. Something to come home to. Something to rest in. Yet if the only constant is change, and you can never step in the same river twice, perhaps it is similarly unrealistic to expect to a steady core in personality or personhood. Or is there…

The river on my way home. This is the one that floods my road sometimes and that I can hear rushing from the woods.

Breathing in,
breathing out.
Heart pulsing.
Lungs moving.
Watching.
Waiting.
Listening.
Hoping.
Praying.
Noticing.
Becoming.

Clouds cover sun
shadows fade to earth
airplane crosses broad sky
trees stand steady
My heart keeps beating
I breathe in
and out.

One of the things that has struck me repeatedly about my woodspractice is the constantness of change. Today, I had to look hard for it at first. I actually a sense of, “same old, same old,” when I first stepped out onto the rocks and thought that I couldn’t see anything new or different, but then I did notice and I did see. And, it is incredible how everything keeps moving, evolving, changing, adapting. It also surprises me, but maybe it shouldn’t, that later in the day my mom often accidentally brings up the very topic that was on my mind during my woodsvisit. Today we spoke about the changing texture of friendships and relationships and I thought about what I’d just thought about…that we may expect this “core” from people, that may not actually exist. Or does it, truly at some level? I don’t know.