WoodsPriestess

Stand, Sisters…

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Molly

Stand together, dear sisters,

arm in arm, thigh to thigh, heart to heart–

Great CD for women’s circles! Circle of Women
(Amazon affiliate link)

stand strong, sturdy, flexible.

Stand on the seesaw

and know–

it’s always moving, never still,

forever moving up and down

always rises up again.

Stand flexibly, dear sisters.

stand together, arm in arm,

and whether you’re up or down–

Rejoice!

–Barbara Ardinger in SageWoman Magazine #78

Categories: friends, poems, readings, womanspirit, women, women's circle | Leave a comment

Our Mother Prayer, version 3

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Molly

Crescent moon over our field a couple of weeks ago.

Our Mother who art within us,
Each breath brings us to you.
Thy wisdom come,
Thy will be done,
as we honor your presence within us.
You give us this day all that we need.
Your bounty calls us to give and receive
all that is loving and pleasurable.
You are the courage that moves us to be true to ourselves
and we act with grace and power.
We relax into your cycles of birth,
growth, death and renewal.
Out of the womb, the darkness, the void, comes new life.
For you are the Mother of All Things.
Your body is the Sacred Earth and our bodies.
Your love nurtures us and unites us all.
Now and forever more.

“Our Mother” by Dale Allen

Via The Girl God

Two other versions previously posted:

Our Mother Prayer, Version 2
Our Mother Prayer
I actually use a slightly modified version of these two each morning before I get up, as a way to start my day in a “tuned in” frame of mind, rather than a frantic or stressed one. Now, I want to try to memorize this new version also, which is longer and a little more complicated!

Categories: blessings, Goddess, invocations, liturgy, poems, prayers, quotes, readings | 1 Comment

Her Name by Janine Canan

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Molly

She is dancing her Dance
and everything changes.
This is what is meant by Impermanence,
buddhist for God.

She is dancing her Dance
and nothing remains.
This is what is meant by Nothingness,
atheist for God.

She is dancing her Dance
and everything is beautiful.
This is what is meant by Changing Woman,
navajo for God.

She is dancing her Dance
and planets whirl around the sun.
This is what is meant by Allah,
sufi for God.

She is dancing her Dance
and her forms are never-ending.
This is what is meant by Shakti, Energy,
hindu for God.

She is dancing her Dance
and the Dance is She.
This is what is meant by God,
human for Mystery.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

poem from Ardor: Poems of Life

via Her Name by Janine Canan « Feminism and Religion.

Categories: Goddess, poems, quotes, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit | Leave a comment

Blessingways and the role of ritual

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Molly

I saw this gorgeous blessingway image pinned on Pinterest a while ago. Love it!

In this circle No Fear
In this circle Deep Peace
In this circle Great Happiness
In this circle Rich Connection

I’ve recently been on a reading streak with books on ritual. I’ve always been interested in ritual, especially women’s rituals, and I’ve planned and facilitated a lot of different rituals. I also have a huge variety of books that include information on planning rituals, women’s spirituality books, books about blessingways, and more. I’m branching out even more with my recent kick though, starting with buying books on officiating/planning wedding ceremonies (I have two weddings coming up in October). Then, I was talking to some mothers of newly teenage boys about planning some kind of coming of age rite/ritual for them and bought some more books on creating sacred ceremonies for teenagers. (I’m good with books for women/girls, but sadly lacking in resources for ceremonies and celebrations for boys/men.) One of the books I purchased was Rituals for Our Times, a book about “celebrating, healing, and changing our lives and relationships.” I left a mini-review on goodreads already:

There were some good things about this book about the meaning, value, purpose, and role of ritual in family life. I lost interest about halfway through and ended up skimming the second half. While it does contain some planning lists/worksheets for considering your own family rituals, the overall emphasis is on short vignettes of how other families have coped with challenges or occasions in their own lives. Also, the focus is on very conventional, mainstream “ritual” occasions–birthdays, anniversaries, holidays–rather than on life cycle rites of passage and other more spiritual transitions in one’s life.

However, one section I marked was about the elements that make ritual work for us and I thought about blessingways and how they neatly fulfill all of the necessary ritual elements (which I would note are not about symbols, actions, and physical objects, but are instead about the emotional elements of connection, affection, and relationship):

Relating–”the shaping, expressing, and maintaining of important relationships…established relationships were reaffirmed and new relationship possibilities opened.” Many women choose to invite those from their inner circle to their blessingways. This means of deeply engaging with and connecting with those closest to you, reaffirms and strengthens important relationships. In my own life, I’ve always chosen to invite more women than just those in my “inner circle” (thinking of it as the next circle out from inner circle) and in so doing have found that it is true that new relationship possibilities emerge from the reaching out and inclusion of those who were originally less close, but who after the connection of shared ritual, then became closer friends.

Changing–”the making and marking of transitions for self and others.” Birth and the entry into motherhood—an intense and permanent life change–is one of life’s most significant transitions. A blessingway marks the significance of this huge change.

Healing–”recovery from loss,” special tributes, recovering from fears or scars from previous births or cultural socialization about birth. My mom and some close friends had a meaningful ceremony for me following the miscarriage-birth of my third baby. I’ve also planned several blessingways in which releasing fears was a potent element of the ritual.

Believing–”the voicing of beliefs and the making of meaning.” By honoring a pregnant woman through ceremony, we are affirming that pregnancy, birth, and motherhood are valuable and meaningful rites of passage deserving of celebration and acknowledgement.

Celebrating–”the expressing of deep joy and the honoring of life with festivity.” Celebrating accomplishments of…one’s very being.

Notice that what is NOT included is any mention of a specific religion, deity, or “should do” list of what color of candle to include! I’ve observed that many people are starved for ritual, but they may so too be deeply scarred from rituals of their pasts. I come from a family history of “non-religious” people and I feel like I seem to have less baggage about ritual and ceremony than other people do. An example from the recent planning for a mother blessing ceremony: we were talking about one of the blessingway songs that we customarily sing–Call Down Blessing–we weren’t sure if we should include it for fear that it would seem too “spiritual” or metaphysical for the honoree (i.e. blessings from where?!) and I remembered another friend asking during a body blessing ritual we did at a women’s retreat, “but WHO’s doing the blessing?” As someone who does not come a religious framework in which blessings are traditionally bestowed from outside sources–i.e. a priest/priestess or an Abrahamic God–the answer felt simple, well, WE are. We’re blessing each other. When we “call down a blessing” we’re invoking the connection of the women around us, the women of all past times and places, and of the beautiful world that surrounds us. We might each personally add something more to that calling down, but at the root, to me, it is an affirmation of connection to the rhythms and cycles of relationship, time, and place. Blessings come from within and around us all the time, there’s nothing supernatural about it.

I also think, though I could be wrong, that it is possible to plan and facilitate women’s rituals that speak to the “womanspirit” in all of us and do not require a specifically shared spiritual framework or belief system in order to gain something special from the connection with other women.

In another book I finished recently, The Power of Ritual, the author explains:

“Ritual opens a doorway in the invisible wall that seems to separate the spiritual and the physical. The formal quality of ritual allows us to move into the space between the worlds, experience what we need, and then step back and once more close the doorway so we can return to our lives enriched.”

She goes on to say:

You do not actually have to accept the ideas of any single tradition, or even believe in divine forces at all, to take part in ritual. Ritual is a direct experience, not a doctrine. Though it will certainly help to suspend your disbelief for the time of the ritual, you could attend a group ritual, take part in the chanting and drumming, and find yourself transported to a sense of wonder at the simple beauty of it all without ever actually believing in any of the claims made or the Spirits invoked. You can also adapt rituals to your own beliefs. If evolution means more to you than a Creator, you could see ritual as a way to connect yourself to the life force…

As I continued to think about these ideas, I finished reading another book on ritual called The Goddess Celebrates. An anthology of women’s rituals, this book included two essays by wisewoman birthkeeper, Jeannine Pavarti Baker. She says:

The entire Blessingway Ceremony is a template for childbirth. The beginning rituals are like nesting and early labor. The grooming and washing like active labor. The gift giving like giving birth and the closing songs/prayers, delivery of the placenta and postpartum. A shamanic midwife learns how to read a Blessingway diagnostically and mythically, sharing what she saw with the pregnant woman in order to clear the road better for birth.

[emphasis mine, because isn’t that just a cool idea?! I feel another blog post coming on in which I “read” my own blessingway experiences and how they cleared the way for my births]

Baker goes on to describe the potent meaning of birth and its affirmation through and by ritual acknowledgement:

Birth is a woman’s spiritual vision quest. When this idea is ritualized beforehand, the deeper meanings of childbirth can more readily be accessed. Birth is also beyond any one woman’s personal desires and will, binding her in the community of all women. Like the birthing beads, her experiences is one more bead on a very long strand connecting all mothers. Rituals for birth hone these birthing beads, bringing to light each facet of the journey of birth…

“I wish for you a life full of ritual and community.” —Flaming Rainbow Woman, Spiritual Warrior

(in The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens)

“Genuine, heartfelt ritual helps us reconnect with power and vision as well as with the sadness and pain of the human condition. When the power and vision come together, there’s some sense of doing things properly for their own sake.” —Pema Chodron

(in The Thundering Years: Rituals and Sacred Wisdom for Teens)

Other posts about mother blessings can be found here.

–
Amazon affiliate links included in book titles.

This post was originally published on Talk Birth

Categories: blessings, resources, ritual, womanspirit, women, women's circle | 4 Comments

The Central Value of Relationship

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Molly

This post was originally published in The Oracle, the publication of Global Goddess and is based on a lesson I completed during one of my classes at Ocean Seminary College.

According to one of my favorite Goddess scholars, Carol Christ, the central ethical vision of Goddess religion is that all beings are embedded in a web of interconnected relatedness. All beings are part of the web of life. Everything is in relation—indeed it is possible to have relationships with the sun, sky, wind, and rainbow, as well as to other people, animals, plants, and the Divine. Everything is interconnected and does not exist without connection/relationship. Connection is strength, not weakness, and it is central.

As Christ explains, “The rituals and symbols of Goddess religion…[bring] experience and deep feeling to consciousness so that they can shape our lives; helping us broaden and deepen our understanding of our interdependence to include all beings and all people; binding us to others and shaping communities in which concern for the earth and all people can be embodied.” This connection is celebrated ritually through:

Invoking the four directions in ritual
Earth-honoring practices
Invoking the four elements in ritual and including symbolic representations of them
Visioning the Earth as the body of the divine
Venerating the Divine Female, which celebrates rather than denigrates women, the body, the earth, and the natural cycles of life
Wheel of the year orientation/celebration

These things are the mythos of Goddess religion and the ethos that results is:

Women who have pride in being female and pride in and love for their bodies.
Men who respect women as inherently valuable
A planet that is treated responsibly and with care
People who act as if they are a part of rather than apart from it—damaging the earth becomes no longer acceptable
Nurturing life and caregiving are acts that are valued
Motherhood and children and parenting are treated as worthwhile and meaningful activities and this is reflected in cultural, social, and political practices (such as in paid maternity leave of adequate duration)

Goddess ethics are “discovered within the web of life” rather than imposed from without. This has been true for me as a non-religious person for much of my life, who later discovered Unitarian Universalism and through that Goddess spirituality. I’ve never seen the need to have religion define for me what is a good, moral action and what is not (my experience is that many people with Christian backgrounds can’t understand how this is possible). What feels right and good and moral and ethical can be learned through living and in the context of family and relationship, it is does not have to be doctrine. Some people would argue that you cannot trust your “feelings” as to moral action, but I find more evidence to support the idea that ignoring your feelings and doing what you’re told instead has historically created a good deal of harm.

Also according to Christ there is “no self that is not created in relationship with another.” I used to struggle somewhat with this notion—my inherent understanding of the world was of the central value of human relationship, but if this is true, then without my relationships who am I? Relatedness as central originally seemed to me to make humans your “god.” I spent what feels like years trying to figure out who I was independent of other people and it is basically impossible to do so, BUT, this also gives other people too much credit or responsibility for my identity. I was consumed with needing to find my core self, my true self, and I chafed at the notion of “no self” or “selflessness” from Buddhist traditions. I have since learned that defining myself in the context of relationships to other people is too narrow a lens, I left out many other pieces of the web of connection. I exist in relation to the world, not just other people, and that includes Goddess power/energy. I name the holding web as Goddess.

It is profoundly disordered to think you can exist independently of others, but I also believe that you can be in relation to yourself, in a sense, in a healthy and strong way.

Interestingly, it was through my discovery of women’ spirituality and Goddess that I finally was able to regain a sense of myself as inherently worthy and valuable and NOT have this worth tied to doing for others, because I found that I could be related/relational TO the web or larger whole rather than just other people, whose affection towards or need of me may be transient. I used to feel so buffeted by the whims of others, rather than having a solid sense of being held in the hand of the Goddess (embedded in the web of relatedness). My sense of related embeddedness allows me to still be intimately engaged with and related to, while still not dependent on others for self-concept/identity/definition. My sense of self can come from within a relationship to my perceived place in a larger whole or web of existence. I feel I have reached a point where I can value all relatedness/relationships, rather than identity seeking through relationship or role exclusively with other people.

My favorite quote about the concept of existing in the context of relationship comes from another of Christ’s books, She Who Changes:

“Martin Buber, there can be no ‘I’ without a ‘thou,’ no self apart from relationship. Martin Buber said that before speech is developed, the hand of the infant reaches out for its mother (or other nurturer).’ In other words, before Descartes could formulate a thought, and certainly before he knew that he thought, he reached out his hand in relationship. The existence of the other is as certain as the existence of the self. Long before infants learn to speak, they come into relationship with others besides the mother, and with the physical world, with cribs, toys, sunbeams, shadows of leaves blowing in the wind. The existence of a world and the existence of others can be doubted only by someone who imagines that he or she could exist apart from relationships. According to process philosophy, a person who imagines he has no relationships is to be pitied-or committed to a mental institution. His thoughts on this matter certainly should not have become the foundation of modern western thought.” (Christ, 74)

I have learned a lot about the fundamental truth of relatedness through my own experiences as a mother and the quote above brings chills to my body. Relationship is our first and deepest urge. The infant’s first instinct is to connect with others. Before an infant can verbalize or mobilize, she reaches out a hand to her mother. I have most definitely seen this with my own babies. Mothering is a profoundly physical experience. The mother’s body is the baby’s “habitat” in pregnancy and for many months following birth. Through the mother’s body is how the baby learns to interpret and to relate to the rest of the world and it is to mother’s body that she returns for safety, nurturance, and peace. Birth and breastfeeding exist on a continuum as well, with mother’s chest becoming baby’s new “home” after having lived in her womb for nine months. These thoroughly embodied experiences of the act of giving life and in creating someone else’s life and relationship to the world are profoundly meaningful. With my last baby, I actively introduced her to the world—taking her out one morning and touching her feet to the earth and introducing her to the planet.

With my baby, I also see so clearly how she sees herself reflected in my eyes—loved and worthy and wonderful and true and beautiful. She looks to me, in my eyes, to gauge safety and danger as well as worth and respect. She sees me seeing her and what I see is SO GOOD. (And, I also see her seeing me and I’m pretty great myself!)

—

Molly is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who lives with her husband and children in central Missouri. She is a breastfeeding counselor, a professor of human services, and doctoral student in women’s spirituality at Ocean Seminary College. She was recently ordained as a Priestess with Global Goddess. Molly blogs about birth, motherhood, and women’s issues at http://talkbirth.me and about thealogy and the Goddess at http://goddesspriestess.com

References: Carol P. Christ. She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World. Kindle Edition.

Categories: feminist thealogy, Goddess, spirituality, thealogy, women, writing | 3 Comments

Mealtime Prayer

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Molly

I send prayers of gratitude to all

that has given of itself on this day.

The strong beans, and the hardy grains,

the beautiful leafy green plants and the sweet juicy fruits.

I thank the sun that warmed and vitalized them,

just as it does me,

and the earth that held and nourished them, as it does me,

and the waters that bathed and refreshed them, as they do for me.

I thank the fire that transformed them,

just as I wish to be transformed by the fires of Spirit.

I thank the hands that grew and prepared this food,

just as I thank all those that have touched me in so many ways.

–Sedonia Cahill in Life Prayers

Categories: blessings, nature, prayers | 2 Comments

Indivisible

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Molly

“…Blessed is the Creation

In its magnificence.

For the Spirit dwells

In every living thing.

And is indivisible.”

–Mary de La Valette (in Life Prayers)

Categories: liturgy, nature, spirituality | Leave a comment

Making Your Own Sistrum

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Molly

In ancient Egypt, priestesses used a sacred rattle-like instrument called a sistrum. Similar rattles were also used ceremonially in Africa and by shamans of various cultures. I learned about sistra when reading Karen Tate’s book Walking an Ancient Path. She refers to using a sistrum as a modern-day priestess to cast a circle, to invoke the four directions, and to cleanse houses and sacred spaces. I was immediately intrigued and did a little online research. My eye was immediately caught by a primitive style of sistrum made using a forked cedar stick and I became obsessed with making one of my own. Last weekend, Mark and I went out into the woods where we’d cut down some cedar trees earlier this year and we found piles of perfect forked sticks to use. First we peeled all the bark off which took several hours. Mark discovered that underneath the bark, his stick had been “carved by nature” (i.e. bugs!) in very, very cool patterns.

We drilled holes in either side of the forked branches and poked wire through on which we strung a variety of beads, charms, and stones.

They weren’t satisfyingly jingly enough, so Mark cut out some circles out of a sheet of brass and drilled holes through the middle. That was the perfect touch!

I was ridiculously pleased with my results. I absolutely love it!

I fancied mine up by wiring three awesome clay Goddess beads on the outside and adding a ribbon and handmade pewter spiral bead.

This was a fabulously fun and enriching project! I highly recommend it. Coincidentally, or cosmically, we collected 12 extra forked cedar sticks in the woods and I think that is just perfect for making these at our fall women’s retreat. We just randomly collected them until we felt done and I said, “I probably need about twelve of these if we’re going to make these at our retreat.” We counted them and…amazingly…there were exactly twelve of them! So, I think it is meant to be 🙂

Categories: art, nature, ritual, women's circle | 1 Comment

I can hear Her breathing…

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Molly

Sitting on the earth before it
I feel it

Life force, energy

Powerful, potent

running throughout

Everything is something

Life prevails and is beautiful.

–Molly, April 30, 2002

Several years ago, I jotted this down while sitting next to a special rosebush in my front yard. I was thinking about it this morning and realizing that today I would personalize that “it” as Goddess, but also that I’ve had a sense of “it”–this divine web of incarnation–for a long time.

She is always whispering to us

we may call Her by different names

yet She is always there

even when we forget to listen

My attention was caught by these quotes via Facebook this week:

“‎The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. [She] to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapt in awe, is as good as dead.” —Albert Einstein

“‎What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”
~ Alan Watts
via www.pantheism.net

“So for me the Goddess was just a certainty, easy to contact, no need for temples. All you need is to walk out in nature. If you have nothing, just a blade of grass, you pray with that one blade of grass and she will still come. It seemed like a loving, ever present deity who liked to take care of her own, appreciated being prayed to.” ~ Z Budapest

via The Girl God

Categories: Goddess, nature, poems, quotes, spirituality, theapoetics | 1 Comment

Earth Mother

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Molly

Our Mother, whose body is the Earth,
Sacred is thy being. Thy gardens grow.
Thy will be done in our cities,
as it is in nature.
Thanks be this day
for food, and air, and water.
Forgive us our sins against Earth,
as we are learning to forgive one another.
And surrender us not unto extinction,
but deliver us from our folly.
For thine is the beauty, and the power,
and all life, from birth to death,
from beginning to end. Amen.
So be it.
Forever.
Blessed be.

–Henry Horton in Life Prayers

Categories: blessings, invocations, nature, poems, prayers, quotes, readings, spirituality | 2 Comments

Knocking…

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Molly

Last night I dreamed I was in

the living room with my friend

There was a knock on the door

Listen, I said

That’s the Goddess

We looked at each other for a long moment

and then I said,

It is time to open the door

and let Her in…

8/27/2012

Edited to add–when I hit publish on this, the random WordPress quote I got was suitably this one: “Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.” –Marsha Norman 🙂

Categories: Goddess, spirituality, womanspirit, women, writing | Leave a comment

Guest Posts!

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Molly

I’m pleased and excited and proud to have a guest post on the Feminism and Religion blog today! The article is about theapoetics–discovery of the Goddess through poetry and direct experience. As I note in the comments, I think I might be the first person to use the term “theapoetics” (instead of theopoetics) in this manner and that is extra exciting to me.:)

I had a guest post on The Divine Feminine blog this weekend also. This one is about defining Goddess. I have lots more to share about this subject saved in my drafts folder waiting to eventually see the light of day.

These topics feel tender/vulnerable to me and I don’t actually feel “safe” sharing the links on my personal Facebook page the way I usually do when I have articles published. I also asked that my last name not be used on the defining Goddess one. Why publish work that I feel tender about? I have no freaking idea. I just feel like I MUST. It is a compulsion almost. To write, to share, to tell about it. Even when it is scary. I have said before that I’m not a risk taker. But, I then realized that is only in the sense of not taking risks like going sky-diving—in my personal, spiritual, emotional, and academic life, I take risks all the time. I’m brave!

Wildflower I noticed yesterday in the vineyard–both tender and brave 😉

Categories: Goddess, spirituality, writing | Leave a comment

Blessing to Close a Ritual

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Molly

I came across the following in the book The Power of Ritual by Rachel Pollack and I think it is an excellent closing blessing for many types of rituals. I’m going to use it tomorrow!

Open your heart to the Sun
Open your eyes to the Sky
Open your ears to the Sea.
Deep love to the round Earth who has given us bodies.
Deep love to the stars for their energy and light.
Deep love to our mothers and fathers for the gene patterns of our souls.
Deep love to our mothers, for the home of our first growth.

We bless each other for the truths we have shared.
We are people of love.
We are people of bone.
We are blessed.
We are people of light
We are people of words.
We are blessed.
We are people of truth.
We are blessed.

May it be so.

Categories: blessings, prayers, readings, ritual, women's circle | 1 Comment

Embodied Prayer

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Molly

Sister, before you get all busy and serious about your new year resolutions,
take a moment to tune into that force which beats your heart,
which grows the leaves on the trees, which creates and tears down,
everything.
Tune into the captivating rhythm of evolution,
and dance your way into your holy calling.
The whole universe is dancing with you.

–Awakening Women Institute

I’ve felt a pull to return to this quote above and to something I wrote about embodied prayer at the dawning of 2012. I have had a tense, taut, and tight couple of days in which I’ve been irritable and impatient with those closest to me (for whatever reason, the people I know less well, usually get the “better” side of me, which just doesn’t seem like the way things should be!). It is strange because on one hand I feel like wonderful things are unfolding in my life in ways that feel meaningful, on purpose, and right, while at the same time I continue to struggle with finding the balance between what I need in my life for myself and what my children need/expect/deserve from me–the two often, frankly, feel incompatible. I continue to believe that there is a way for our family to live in harmony together, companionably meeting each member’s needs for self-expression, self-development, love, and authenticity, but then with weeks like this, I feel as if perhaps that IS an unreasonable hope!

When I became ordained as a priestess, one of the things that I vowed to myself was that I would remember to be a priestess of my own hearth first, rather than to become so pulled by the expectations of others outside my family that they get my best and my family gets the scraps. I’m amazed by how opportunities have been opening up to me since accepting the priestess call—I’m planning multiple rituals and ceremonies, I’m going to a Goddess festival next month, I continue to make steady progress on my doctoral degree and finished another one of my classes this week, my brain buzzes with ideas for my dissertation, I’m absolutely stoked to have two articles accepted for publication at the Feminism and Religion blog (one of which seems to actually be an original/fresh idea in the field of thealogy!), I have a guest post accepted for publication on The Divine Feminine blog, and I had an essay published in The Oracle (the online zine for Global Goddess) called The Central Value of Relationship. I also have other ideas for classes/circles I’d like to facilitate and participate in. These things feel great. They feel right. They feel like where I belong. They also feel risky and brave and big and complex. I love the life of the mind and ideas that I’m experiencing in my classes. I love spending time in my own brain. I love thinking and writing and teaching and learning—“priestessing” my community in all of these ways. And, yet, then I feel bad and guilty about having snapped at my kids while trying to finish these–how ironic–essays on spiritual growth and development and then I feel like a fraud. And, every day I find myself with a “time deficit” and feeling taut and on the edge of freaking out because there is just SO. MUCH. TO. DO. All the time. And, I don’t feel like I ever get a break to just be still and rest. It is almost like I don’t know how to rest.

So, here’s what I wrote at the beginning of the year:

This year, I’d like to let go of shoulding myself. If I don’t truly have to do something, I’m only going to do it if I want to do it. If the word “should” enters the picture about anything, I’m going to use that as my cue to NOT do whatever it is I’m letting should me. Sound like a plan?

I enjoyed reading this post from Dreaming Aloud recently and the writer observes that she is only going to be able to be her for the new year: “I might even let myself mother to my own standards too! Wouldn’t that be nice, rather than failing every day because I don’t do everything the way the books say.” She also included this interesting idea about 3/4 baked: “Another influential book in my life…Zugunruhe… talks about the 3/4 baked philosophy, where the author urges us to do our work the best we can, but rather than spending all our energy in refining it ad infinitum, put it out to the world 3/4 baked and let the feedback and the inspiration it creates, and your own distance, do the final honing, because really there is no such thing as perfect.”

Embodied Prayer

My other intention for 2012 was a very personal one that I felt extremely hesitant to write about. As soon as I read the quote I shared above from The Awakening Women Institute, I knew I wanted to share it. When I applied to graduate school in thealogy, I wrote in my application that I wanted my life to be a living prayer for social justice and women’s empowerment. Then, based on my work in my graduate classes, I started to be asked to write for publications focused on women and religion. I have always felt very cautious and wary of sharing any of my ideas about spirituality or religion publicly and so this makes me nervous for a variety of reasons. So did starting this blog and I’ve sort of tried to avoid connecting it to my “other life.” However, if I’m actually going to be writing these articles and having original ideas in the field, it is time to shed discomfort and speak my truth! I think my primary concept of living prayer is really about mindfulness. Being here and being aware.

In September, the Awakening Women Institute offered via Twitter to give people “temple names”—you were asked to respond to the question about “your edge right now in your life. What is calling you, what is challenging, what is opening?” I was instantly intrigued and responded to the offer with the following: “I have multiple edges–I feel at the edge of being able to truly live my faith, having my life be a living prayer. I also constantly teeter on the edge between meeting my children’s needs and meeting my own needs–and trying to find the harmony in that; trying to find the place in which our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs (not requiring ‘sacrifice,’ because we have a seamless integration!).” The temple name I received was: Embodied Prayer. At first I felt slightly disappointed, like, yeah, I said that already. But, as I “rested” with the name and stated it aloud—i.e. “I am Embodied Prayer”—it became a powerful daily practice for me (that I seem to have lost hold of recently).

I have long sought strategies to integrate a sense of the sacred in daily life and have also known that at the root, what I’m really wanting is daily mindfulness. My “temple name” came to serve in some ways as mindfulness touchstone for me—as I go about my life, I ask myself what kind of “prayer” I’m offering in this moment. And, is this the kind of prayer I want to embody right now? (i.e. this week as I feel cranky and overextended and tense and annoyed, I’ve been stepping back slightly and looking at my “prayer” and realizing that I wanted to embody a much different sort of offering to the divine, to the web of life, than a stressed out cranky prayer.) This step back and self-reminder, sometimes calms my mood and allows me to breathe more deeply and kindly, but recently I’ve solely been using it in a self-flagellating way: what kind of prayer is THAT, you loser! You think you’re a priestess?! What a JOKE, you SUCK. What about this priestess of your own hearth bit, failure woman?! I also become angry at myself when I forget to use it, forget to be mindful. I’ve also described this practice as reaching out to touch my thread in the fabric of the tapestry of the world. When I get caught up in my own busyness, I lose sight of my “weaving” within the overall tapestry of life, that holding web of incarnation that I call Goddess, and I’d like to always remain mindful of that connectedness—or, at least to notice when I’ve lost it and reach out my hand to that which is always there, surrounding me.

Then, as I was thinking these thoughts and berating myself, and always continuously trying to be better and dang it failing every single day at being better (and, yet, trying again the next day!), I read this blog post today from Jen Louden called I’m Not Liking Myself and I’m Not Doing Anything About It. Say what? Do you mean I DON’T always have to “be better” and to have my life be one long, relentless, ever-failing self-improvement project?! Maybe this is possible: “So if you ever find yourself not liking yourself, put down the self-improvement and take a nap. But no mean thoughts allowed!”

Oh, and by the way…to what/why is this prayer of which you speak offered anyway?

This is actually part of the main subject of my upcoming guest posts on those other blog, but I’ll touch on it now anyway. Something that made me feel as if I belonged to our tiny little Unitarian Universalist church and like there was indeed a spiritual niche I fit into, was a hymn we sang during one of my first visits with a line of, “some call it evolution, and others call it God.” That notion that there is something widely felt by many, but called by different names and within vastly different systems of belief and understanding, is why I continue to identify as a UU, even though I’m not closely involved with the local church any longer. This force, this connecting “glue” that holds the universe together might be named by others “God” or “the Universe” or “Nature” or “Life Force” or “the Sacred” or “Divinity” or “the Tao”—I feel most satisfied when I personalize it as Goddess. I do also feel Her presence directly in my life—call it an energy, call it the sacred feminine, call it the divine, call it source, call it soul, call it spirit, call it the great mystery…I perceive a web of relatedness and love within the world and I choose to put a feminine form to that energy—to name it and know Her as “Goddess.” When I am embodied prayer, it is mindfulness of this connection and relatedness of which I speak.