Goddessing: A Goddess / Pagan Blog

Crones and near-crones in pictures: Joan Myers' Women of a Certain Age (click on the photo to see the next one).

Joan says: "As a woman recently turned fifty, I find myself less and less comfortable with the way American culture defines and portrays older women I reject these cultural limitations for my own aging. I use my camera to explore possibilities, the messages and histories expressed in other women's bodies. I wish less to define than to reveal."

Permalink posted by Sage -- 5:36 PM.

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Another crone story, and so soon: Grace by pomegranatesandpaper [3/24/2004].

Maybe it started with my grandmothers? With Lalla's unconditional love and Lala's stern but consistent and well-boundaried care-taking? Maybe it's because cronehood is right around the corner, what I have to look forward to? Maybe it's my feminism? My Goddess spirituality? Whatever it is, this much is true: I'm in love with crones.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 9:34 AM.

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If a goddess aspect has dominated or defined my life, it would be the crone aspect. A crone goddess was the first to call me; when I was a wee girl I grew up close to many crones, including seven great-aunts, all little old ladies (except two of them, who weren't little); when I lived alone for the first time as a young adult I became close friends with my next-door-neighbor, Mrs. Crawford, an 80-something dynamo who was a living textbook on living well independently into an advanced, crotchety cronehood; I started walking with a cane in my mid-40s when I shifted, body-wise, into an early cronehood.

Recently, of course, scientists have proven how important crones are to the survival of our species, yet they are still almost invisible women in my culture.

The list of women celebrities who deny us the public face of the crone by their numerous plastic surgeries is long, growing, and to me, tragic. I agree with Diane Keaton, who said about plastic surgery: "What's so great about wiping the marks of experience off your face?"

In any case, in my role as cheerleader for crones, I bring you the first of what I hope may be many found crone stories: Getting Home by Robert Brady at Pure Land Mountain.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 10:42 AM.

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I woke from a dream this morning. The dream itself was an action story, a mystery or possibly thriller in which my partner and I were private investigators, investigating ... something. We had broken into a house (actually first one side and then the next of a duplex). In the first side, a man's suit pants crumpled on the sofa and a matching jacket tossed over the back of a chair in some other part of the house let us know the gender of the occupant, and hinted that he was possibly present. Luckily, we quickly discovered in some papers what we were looking for: an address which was an important clue in our ongoing investigation. (And the address we were looking for? It was the address of the house we were in. In terms of dream interpretation, this might mean either "be here now" or "quit thinking about moving.")

To get out of the apartment quickly, we left through the front door, walked across the porch and entered the apartment on the other side. We took the presence of a rope strung across the steps leading from the porch to the yard and street as a sign that we should exit from the back of the house to avoid the risk of being discovered. As we walked through the other half of the house we saw that candles were lit on the buffet in the dining room and heard the tenant (a woman) singing elsewhere, possibly in the shower. The buffet was clearly dressed as an altar. Somehow we knew the woman was Christian and that she was preparing for her Sunday ritual. There was a cat in the apartment, and as we opened the back door to leave I felt a tug -- a deep connection to the cat. I wanted to take her with me but gave up the idea for practical and ethical reasons.

Our exit was a fire escape; the yard was two stories down. As we descended the ladder, it started to sag under our mutual weight. My P was behind me, so I said she needed to go back up to the landing to wait until I had touched ground. She headed back up but got off-balance and somehow found herself dangling from a heavy chain, clinging to it in mid air. She was nervous, and I was nervous for her, because clearly her only option was to slide down the chain, carefully, and hope it was long enough that she didn't have a big fall to the ground when she reached the end of it.

Fortunately, everything worked out. We found ourselves on the ground, intact, and started walking along the side of the house, feeling satisfied that we had found what we were looking for and that we hadn't disturbed the occupants of the house or been found out.

Now there are some obvious clues to how this dream might be interpreted (obvious to me, anyway), but when I started to move into a waking awareness of the dream it was my mood, my feeling state, that felt significant, a feeling of depth and purpose out of proportion to the facts or apparent interpretations of the dream. I decided to stay with the feeling of the dream, to meditate on how it/I felt rather than on what it might mean.

As I meditated, thought pictures of yesterday went through my mind, of my beloved and me down by the lake, energized by the sunshine despite the frigid wind blowing across the water, collecting magnificent pieces of curly willow dropped from the old mother tree. The deep blue of the water was vivid in my mind's eye, and it dawned on me that this is the only time of the year when the water is that deep blue. Even in years when the lake is still frozen at equinox, the deep blue color comes through the ice. It occurred to me that it's the stillness of the water over the long winter that is responsible for this color. Five or six months of non-human activity allow the lake to return to its natural state, a state of grace.

Stillness. Non-human activity. A state of grace.

In many ancient cultures and in several contemporary ones, the spring equinox marks the new year, seasonally and calendrically. Traditionally, statues of deities were taken from villages down to lakes or seas to be bathed, to be renewed. With the sacred bath, the goddess was reborn.

Up from the deep blue of my dream, from the waters of the lake and of my deep self came an awareness: this year, I need to focus on being.

With that thought, I popped into full waking consciousness. I reflected about my hypnopompic meditation practice and how I've used it as a tool to organize my day, to create a "to-do" list from the deepest part of me. I mused about what a "to-be" list would look like. I picked up my new mala, consecrated at the Equinox celebration, and did a being mantra.

Now fully awake, I think about this action thriller-mystery dream and its left-brain/right-brain, male/female, front/back, business/spiritual, upstairs/downstairs polarities, and about its outcome -- finding an address, a place I'm looking for, which happens to be where I am. The dream seems to be saying: Look at these polarities -- doing and being, activity and stillness -- and create some harmony and balance in your life by focusing on being for awhile, or maybe even for a year. When you wake in the morning, meditate on how you'll be that day instead of what you'll do. Let the stirred, muddy waters of your active self settle into a state of grace.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 9:18 AM.

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On March 15, scientists announced the discovery of a planet/planetoid they're thinking about naming Sedna, after an Inuit goddess. I naturally (and enthusiastically) posted this to my Goddess Religion in the News feature, and have since participated in some fun and wide-ranging online and offline discussions about the planet, the Goddess, and more.

From a myth, religion, and spirituality perspective, I like Joanna Powell Colbert's blog, Sedna swims up from the deep into global consciousness.

She roots the celestial Sedna in Native American culture and myth, hints at astrological possiblities, explores personal, ecological and cultural aspects of the archetype, and offers an invocation / prayer / affirmation at the end that I find useful and inspiring as a way to honor and embody this phenomenon / consciousness / deity in my spiritual practice.

When I drum at tonight's Spring Equinox Celebration, I'll be honoring Sedna, carrying Her in my heart, and praying that She restore balance and harmony to us as we enter this new season.

Thanks Joanna!

Permalink posted by Sage -- 1:41 PM.

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My partner announced in early January that it was my turn to be chief cook.

Yikes!

We'd both been sous-chefs in our previous relationships. When we started cooking for each other, well...at first it was a pitiful adventure but soon she pulled ahead as the creative, competent and consistent one. So voila! She became chief cook and I've been sous-chef ever since. And so it went.

When she stated that things were changing, after all these many years, I agreed to her pronouncement -- partly because she's usually not a pronouncement kind of a partner, and partly because, well, fair is fair. It helped that she explained herself. Her goal was to be more conscious at home in the evening after work, to enjoy our time together more. How could I have a beef with that program?

So we struck a deal. I'd be chief cook if she'd advise me, tell me what to put with what and how to cook and season it. You see, I just don't have an imagination for cooking, and not much imagination for food in general. (Well, I do like barbeque ribs....) I can't answer the basic question "What do you want to have for dinner?" unless I'm hungry. The thinking-creatively-about-food part of my brain is just deficient.

Or so I thought.

Last night, she called from work just before leaving and said, "What about dinner?"

Immediately, baked potatoes flashed into my head. Yes -- flashed! Weird, because I wasn't hungry yet, and even when hungry I never think of baked potatoes.

So, she made a quick stop at the Piggly Wiggly and by the time she came home I had turkey bacon crisping in the frying pan (for the potatoes) and had pulled out of the fridge the following:

ginger
three heads of bok choy
four pieces of celery
one red bell pepper
snow peas
one apple
one lemon
Umi Plum Vinegar

I stuck the potatoes in the microwave for nine minutes, and then into the oven for 20 minutes, and started my...I don't think I can call it a stir-fry because I did it on a low heat and I think stir-fry is over high heat, but what do I know, really?

In any case, a little canola oil and minced ginger with chopped celery & pepper, snow peas, slices of apple and the juice of a whole lemon simmering in them, and finally, bok choy and a generous splash of Umi Plum vinegar added at the end...created a really yummy veggie dish to go with the potatoes. Each piece had a unique taste, and together they were a taste-bud medley. At first I thought I had put in too much lemon, but eventually I decided the lemon was just right.

I'm gonna try that one again.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 10:49 AM.

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Living forever in one body is not as creative as reincarnation.... ~Mellen-Thomas Benedict

Now that's a cool quote, if I've ever seen one, but much of the web article about M-TB is quotable, and cool. He died of terminal cancer in 1982 and after an hour and a half, revived. During that time, he went into the light and explored the universe. I've read some NDE literature, but its never been a major topic of exploration. I've always been more fascinated about the "here and now" than the "there and then."

But something's shifting.

It could be that I'm 50 and having intimations of mortality. Pause. Yes, it could be that.

Maybe it's serendipity...coming across two articles in a few days' span that have ignited something in me (Contemplative Spiritual Formation -- 3/11 blog -- and the above-referenced article about M-TB).

Or maybe my thinking and being are evolving, growing in a new direction. Pause. Yes, it could be that.

We are the most beautiful creations. The human soul, the human matrix that we all make together is absolutely fantastic, elegant, exotic, everything. I just cannot say enough about how it changed my opinion of human beings in that instant. (M-TB)

Certainly one of the things I find the most fascinating about M-TB's experiences is that they reflect major pieces of my cosmology, arrived at from my near-life experience(s):

• we all have a Higher Self, a direct connection to the Source


• all Higher Selves are connected, as are their humans, so we are all one Being, "different aspects of one Being," a mandala of souls


• we can transcend truth, find profound stillness beyond all silence, be one with absolute life and consciousness


• the Big Bang is only one of an infinite number of Big Bangs, creating universes infinitely


• the "void" is not a void but absolute consciousness, full of energy -- chaos from which all possibilities form


• the "reality" of the mystics looks like the "reality" of the new scientists


• God/dess is "in here" (and "out there" too, because we acknowledge that we are individual parts of a greater whole)


• everything is alive, everything is intelligent


• "we are part of a natural living system that recycles itself endlessly"

But what I didn't expect was this:

The mystery of life has very little to do with intelligence. The universe is not an intellectual process at all. The intellect is helpful; it is brilliant, but right now that is all we process with, instead of our hearts and the wiser part of ourselves. (M-TB)

Loving is more important than knowing? It's the heart, stupid.

I've been thinking of Goddess as "the mind of nature" since the late 1980s when I saw the video, From the Heart of the World: Elder Brother Speaks-- been fascinated with and awed by the incredible intelligence of the self-creating universe. And now this? The mystery of life has very little to do with intelligence?

My friends who've studied NDE say that folks consistently come back from the other side with this info: what we're here for is to love and to learn. MT-B goes a step further, stipulating love over learning:

What all people seek, what sustains them, is love, the light told me. What distorts people is a lack of love.

Loving, learning ... heart/intellect ... Ok, they're both important. But is this dualism, a polarity, an either/or?

Stay tuned.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 5:21 PM.

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Newswise: Fascinating research, fascinating findings: Grandmothers help increase the reproductive success of their adult children (female and male).

The research team "consistently found that women gained, on average, two extra grandchildren for every ten years that they lived past their reproductive life. In evolutionary terms this gives a huge benefit as it makes it more likely that women who survive long after stopping reproduction will forward more genes to the next generation. The evidence suggests that the effect is caused by the woman passing her childcare experience on to her offspring. She can also take on some of the responsibilities of childcare, making it more likely that her children will have more children more quickly.”

The researchers theorize that this is probably why humans, unlike other animals, survive so long beyond their reproductive years.

Adds a tremendous dose of sociological reality to the pagan "maiden, mother, crone" trinity, doesn't it?

Permalink posted by Sage -- 5:00 PM.

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Three fourths of Americans now believe there is no “one true faith” and that a variety of spiritual paths can be equally authentic. ~ Gerald May, M.D. (Contemplative Spiritual Formation: an Introduction)

Now that's an interesting statistic.

It's also an interesting article, though a little heavy on the Christianity perspective after starting so invitingly with a multicultural, transreligious approach.

I especially like the "Three Paths" section, which includes the Hindu system:

• jnana (knowledge or wisdom)


• karma (action or service), and


• bhakti (devotion or worship)

Many Pagans reject the concept of worship, reasoning that if Spirit/Goddess/God dwells within, how can we worship that which is a part of us? This is short-sighted thinking: First, it fails to recognize that She is within AND without, above AND below, which we usually acknowledge in our cosmologies; Second, it fails to follow through on our understanding that we do participate in and/or embody the Divine. If we believe we are divine, why shouldn't we worship that divinity? (Not talking about worshipping our egos here, folks!) Think what a world this would be if we acted as if the divine in all things, including ourselves, mattered. "Our bodies are our temples" is a truism. Don't we worship in Temples?

In any case, reading May's article is a good intro/reminder about the contemplative aspects of spiritual life.

Happy Reading!

Permalink posted by Sage -- 7:06 AM.

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