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Sexual Creature

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If you could picture your intuition as a person, what would he or she look like? If you sat down together for dinner, what is the first thing he or she would tell you? ***

First Buds, by John-Morgan

What would she look like?

She is bold.

She is bright and beautiful.

She is alive with light and vibrancy.

She pulses with life force, the same force that pushes seed to flower, that causes the gray gnarled bark to erupt with soft petals of blossom, that speaks fire when the circumstances require it.

She stands completely in her nature, without apology.

What does she say?

” You are a sexual creature.

Your creativity and sexuality are inextricably intertwined.

This sexual vibrant creative energy has nothing to do with men. Nothing.

It is completely about the body and the divine.

The more you disconnect from the projection of this sexual, creative power onto men, the more you will know the experience of your life force solely unto yourself.

Knowing this solely unto yourself frees you to be you in all your radiance.

Then, and only then, can you be in

right relationship

with men, with women, with all of life.

Creatively.

Sexually.

Lovingly.”

Then she says,

“I’m not your intuition. I am you.”

…

*** question posed by Susan Piver as part of the Trust30 writing challenge.

First Buds by John-Morgan licensed under CC2.0

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The Sacred Realm of a Woman’s Body

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I originally wrote this piece for Amy Oscar and her wisdom series – a series of thirteen posts by women whose writing she enjoys. Amy’s series wrapped up on Monday, and after the fact, I realized that you may not have read what I shared. So, I’m offering it here. Do go and check out Amy’s blog. Not only are there some fabulous posts in this series, but Amy’s blog is one I regularly read and thoroughly enjoy. I have a sense you will, too. I’d love to know what you think of this post, how it affects you, and what you feel about it.

::

I sit here poised to write.

My good friend Amy Oscar has asked me to contribute a post on wisdom to her spring collection of works by bloggers she loves to read.

I feel honored. I value and respect her work. I want to write something good, something fresh, and something alive.

So, I sit still and listen to my body. I close my eyes and ask my body what wants to be shared. This is where aliveness is, not in my thoughts about what I am feeling and desiring, but in the direct experience, in the cells of this body. Alive. Light. Numinous. Awake.

My body speaks of fertility, of abundance, of the rhythms of nature. My body knows these rhythms, even if my mind has forgotten.

I am aware of how much our culture fears the wildness of women, our wild nature. So much so, we have all but destroyed the home where we live, our beautiful Earth, in our quest to control and dominate this wild nature.

Feral and fertile, women’s creativity and sexuality are intertwined, like a long, long braid of gold. We know this deep in the center of our cells.

As Isadora Duncan wrote, “You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”

The body knows this.  It knows we were once wild, and it knows we believe we’ve been tamed. Old traumas and unwelcome emotions are trapped in the body, trapped until we realize the soul’s longing to be free.

As I begin to write,

I can sense my strong sexual energy and a passion for creation. I feel deeply and I am happiest when my body is set free to express this passion through movement and dance, when I paint and the colors run freely on the paper, when words, whispered from someplace unseen, come to rest, together, in a way I could never have planned.

Women are different than men. Yes. We are different. It is not only okay to say that, it is imperative we see this. Why? Let me share a story with you.

A while ago,

perhaps six years or so, I took a class called mess-painting. Mess painting is a kind of process painting, where you use tempera paints, brushes and wall street journal pages to burn through layers that keep you from your deep creativity.

In the six-week process, I painted in my own apartment, in a tent of plastic sheets that I hung from the ceiling. This is a very messy process. I painted six days a week, at least twenty paintings in a session, where each painting was created in the span of two minutes.

In mess painting, the process is to cover one full sheet of Wall Street Journal paper (the ink used doesn’t run) with paint using brushes and any of eight specific colors. That’s it.

It’s a very physical process. You have to move quickly. There is no time to think about what colors you want or how they should go on the paper. There is only enough time to move the brush to the color then to the paper, allowing something more present than thought to choose which color and where to place it.

About four and a half weeks into the process, I suddenly felt a very different energy begin to move through me. It felt wild and untamed. It felt animal and soulful. I had the overwhelming urge to drop the brush and dive in with my body. I painted with my fingers, hands, and elbows. I couldn’t get enough of my body into the process.

I painted until the energy quieted. And then I wrote this:

When I mess-paint, I come alive. I can’t wait to pull out the colors and begin. When I am painting I am totally engrossed. I love to see the colors mix together on the paper, to see what transpires in a given session. I find I can’t get enough of me into the mess – hands, fingers, fingernails – I am so taken with the paintings that I keep watching them as they dry, dying to see what beauty is there. What are the qualities of my painting? There is an energetic pulse to it. I can feel my soul coming through me. Does it come charging through me like a tiger? Does it spread itself on the paper with love and softness, or even reckless abandon?

It is akin to intimacy – when there are no longer any barriers between another and me: when clothes are off, small talk is quieted, distractions are gone, and there are only the two of us in conversation. The language is intimacy. The “words” are infused with love and deep meaning. There is a direct channel open where truth and soul are shared without reservation, without holding back. Passion, desire, and love all come pouring forth into this conversation between two beings. That is the incredible connection and intimacy that I long for. That is the juice I find in painting. When I create art, it is an individual act. It feels like connecting with myself in a deeply intimate way.

As I read again what I wrote then, I can feel the joy I felt in the liberation of this fiery self. I can feel the love and aliveness, and my soul’s desire for connection and expression. The direct connection between creativity and sexuality is right there and so plain to see.

I’ve been taught

to fear this power, to fear my feral side, my passion, my fire, my ferocity and uncontrollability. I’ve been taught well to fear chaos, yet it is from chaos that anything new is born. And while I was taught this, it is me that keeps it under wraps.

Chaos was wildly singing during that painting session.

Chaos is here, right now. Chaos is ushering out the old and inviting in the new. The old way is dying. Something new is coming. And we have no idea at all what that is.

It is time.

It is time to open deeply to this wild nature as woman. It is time to know it, to invite it out, to welcome it to express. It is time that we see the feminine cannot be reawakened by only knowing the feminine principle in both men and women. We must also honor the spiritual nature of women, the nature that flows through women’s bodies in ways it simply does not in men.

I’ve struggled to articulate my deep knowing that we women have this precious opportunity to come to know the sacred within the cells of our own bodies, how our bodies serve spirit in ways men’s’ bodies cannot, and what this direct experience and realization might do for the evolution of human consciousness.

And in my struggle to write about this, I happened upon an article written last year, by one of my favorite authors on this topic, Hilary Hart.  Hilary writes,

“This spiritual insight into the created world inquires into the nature of women’s bodies, and asks if the receptivity of the vagina, the spirit/matter-integrating capacity of the womb, the nourishment of our breasts, reflect an esoteric dimension that receives energy, serves the infusion of spirit into the physical world, and feeds life in a way men cannot.

Do our bodies show that we offer different gifts and have distinct roles in our collective spiritual evolution, just as they have different roles in the material realm?

While answers to these questions are not easy to come by, asking them opens us to an intriguing and compelling line of inquiry into an entire new spiritual territory – the spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

I know…

I know the spiritual nature and power of this physical world by direct experience.

I know it because I’ve experienced it by way of the body’s cycles, by way of menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding my daughters.

I know it when I remove myself from the places where I tend to be most in my head and go into the places that call to the wild succulence of my body.

I know it through the direct witnessing of the deaths of those people in my life I have profoundly loved and the births of those bright angels who are now vibrantly part of my life.

I know it because I have witnessed the cells of my own body come awake again, after a long, long sleep.

It is not mirrored in the collective consciousness, yet that does not negate it one damn bit.

It is neither valued nor protected in the linear, masculine-centric institutions of our culture, whether they be political, medical, legal or religious, yet we know this way down deep in our cells.

When I read Hilary’s words, clarity flows from the connection between my own knowing and her clear articulation. A gap that had been is now bridged.

It’s as if I have been hovering above my own knowing, not quite ready to drop down in all the way. It’s as if I’ve been held up by old beliefs that still infused my awareness, beliefs that kept telling me that the sacred is somewhere else, somewhere up there, and certainly not in this female body.

We don’t need to transcend our bodies to know the sacred realm. And we don’t need to look out there for our power as women. All we need to know is here, right here, within us. It’s already here.

My body has guided me through this writing. It has taken me on the journey of discovering something wholly new.

Our way is the way of the body. Our bodies are sacred and pure. Our creativity and sexuality are physical manifestations of the creative power of the sacred. Whether or not we ever physically give birth to a child, our bodies are vessels for new life. This is the “spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

::

And, you?

I’d love to know of your experience of the “spiritual nature and power of the incarnated world.”

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Kissed by Creation

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Close to the Earth.

Full and ripe.

My body is cooking something up.

She’s been with something unseen and unknown.

She’s been kissed by Creation.

Supple and supine, she dances in the dark.

With quivers and shivers, she responds to an unseen touch.

There is something I know, but don’t yet know.

Something moves within her,

silently waiting to bring forth great light into the world.

Receptive and soft, my heart places trust in

that which knows of things to come.

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Solitary Impulse

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Creative Impulse.

This phrase kept running through my awareness as I danced on Sunday morning. Many of you know, since I write about it fairly frequently, that I dance every week, and have for over eight years. My practice is 5Rhythms, and on Sunday mornings 150 of us faithful practitioners come together to ‘Sweat Our Prayers’.

5Rhythms is a moving meditation where you dance the 5 rhythms that Gabrielle Roth discovered are at the heart of being human. In the practice, the mind is invited to let go as the body is invited to move on its own, without the normal constrictions the mind and thoughts place on it.

This past Sunday, I moved. I sweated. I let go. And in the space of these two hours of dance, this phrase kept repeating itself.

Creative Impulse.

Creative Impulse.

Impulse.

Impulse.

As I danced,

I was consciously aware of the impulse that came from somewhere deep within my body.

The impulse came up from the dark space within. When followed, the impulse guided me in a fluid movement, where there was no mover, just movement, just expression.

Deeply dropped in the body, I was aware of the impulse as a free and alive movement of energy, a never-ending stream of pulsation coming into being, then flowing out into expression and falling away into nothingness.

I was aware of the impulse…until I was more aware of my mind. Thinking. Judging. Comparing. Deciding it didn’t like the way I was moving. Deciding I looked clumsy. Deciding it didn’t like the music, or how others danced. Judging, comparing, deciding. Stopping the flow. Stumble. Stepping on my own toe. Ouch.

And what did I do then? I began to move again. Dropped back into the beat. Felt the impulse. Moved.

I’ve danced long enough to know this. But what was important this time, was a really bright awareness of this process of stopping, stumbling, being clumsy.

I came home and

considered what had happened and how it translates to life, because right now I’m stopping myself from allowing this impulse to move through me as it wishes. On the dance floor, I feel safe and comfortable to express, except for those moments when the thoughts come in.

In my life, I don’t feel that safety, even though, in reality, I am just as safe. I mean, who knows what people are thinking of me as I dance. Who knows what judgments are flying, what stories they make up about me? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I feel free there, free to move, to listen, to express.

I know this creative impulse is always here. It’s always moving up and out of the deep darkness of the inner place. When I write I can feel it. And, when I write I can feel the sudden move of the mind behind the impulse that stops it.

As I am known to do,

I looked at the word impulse, because for me an impulse feels like it sounds. It is a pulse that moves out of me, one after another, but so closely together it is fluid.

As I looked up the word in the thesaurus, these other words showed up as synonyms:

Desire.

Drive.

Pulse.

Pulsation.

Thrust.

Beat.

Signal.

Stimulus.

Urge.

Force.

Pressure.

Impetus.

Whim.

Wish.

Itch.

Inclination.

Yen.

Bent.

Spur.

In simply reading them, I feel the impulse. Try it. Read them again, and feel how they feel in your body. Feel the words move through you. What do you discover?

For me, there is a resonance with the feeling of spring, of emergence, of a pushing up through soil, of a seed emerging into the light. There is also a sense of body function, inspiration, breath, pulse, desire…all pointing to a wide open sense of eroticism, of creation at its core giving birth in each moment to a new moment.

The practical side of this,

is seeing of how many ways I stop the flow with minuscule thoughts, tiny aberrations in the fluid movement of time and creation, where I attempt to stop what is happening, where I clog up the pipes, sit back and think rather than stay in the fluid motion of action that comes from within.

The flow stops when I don’t feel safe, for whatever reason. Sometimes, I’m still amazed at how important safety is for the ego, how it looks for that at all costs.

Not that we must be in motion all of the time.

In the dance, there are many moments where the impulse moves in tiny, tiny ways, even to a point of pure stillness, where what is moving is simply respiration, sweat dripping, maybe even a muscle trembling ever so slightly, a finger with a tender pulse, a ever-so-slight movement of the eye.

These moments happen all the time in life, where there is a pause, a breath, maybe even a languishing time of being still, silent, inward-turning.

This impulse is intelligent and wise.

It is the same impulse that moves through us all, yet how it expresses through each of us is different. And, how it expresses through women is different than men, for the female body is different than a man’s body.

This impulse knows something our minds can’t know. And right now, this impulse is guiding us to truthful action if we are willing to trust it to move through us.

I know this is happening in my life. I’m making choices that aren’t comfortable, aren’t cozy, aren’t safe. And in doing so, I find myself stumbling, hesitating, maybe even stepping on my own toes, missing the beat of the music, bumping into others I love and care about.

What is it I trust in

as I move out in directions I don’t know? There is a footing inside, a place that never changes, something I know is there. I don’t have a word for it, really, but Rilke does:

“But your solitude will be a support
and a home for you,
even in the midst of very
unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all your paths.”
My solitude. That place of aloneness. Only I can feel the impulse, can know its movement, can taste its insistence, can bow to its fortitude. Only I can give breath to it, can trust the pulse inherent in it, can allow it to inspire me forward.
As it is for you. Only you can know this in yourself. It is a place of great aloneness, yet we dance together all the same.

That’s okay. All that matters is that we keep dancing, keep breathing, keep moving our feet, letting the impulse move us, trusting that our own solitude is exactly the footing we are standing on, even when there is nothing underneath our feet.

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The Other Half

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Sometimes, the urge to write is so strong. That’s only half of it. What is strong is the urge to write and then share the words with others.

Sometimes, it feels like what I write has been said many times before, yet I still find I must write it.

Sometimes, I wonder about this urge, about why it is necessary. No, that’s not quite right. Make that imperative. It is imperative that I write and that I share it.

Sometimes, the words feel meaningless, as if they are just words.

Sometimes, when the words come out, they seem pleasant, powerful. And, I know there is something else there.


“Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.” ~Kahlil Gibran

The muse has her way with me. I type as she whispers, as she infuses something else into the work.

Who knows why we are moved to express what we do and how we do it? Who knows?

There is more to it than meets the eye. There is more than simply that which can be seen, noted, measured.

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Remembering Self

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Reverb10 Day 07
Prompt: Community.
Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010?
What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

::

For four years, now, I’ve taught a course at Stanford Continuing Studies on Creativity and Leadership. I teach the Creativity part, and my colleague teaches the Leadership portion. The two topics intertwine throughout the ten weeks.

The course is based on a course from Stanford Business School called Creativity in Business. It’s highly experiential, as a course in creativity needs to be. Creativity can’t be taught. Yet, it can be facilitated. Exercises, guided visualizations, and great theory all combine to open students to their deepest creative resource within. This course helps guide students to begin to trust their creativity.

Community of Students

What really deepens this trust, though, is the community that’s created over the ten weeks. It’s created because students are willing to share about themselves, about their experiences with the material, and about how they are changing as the course progresses.

Each week we do experiential exercises. After the exercises, the students share with each other, and then share with the entire class. Not everyone is comfortable sharing, but many are, and the class is richer for it.

In addition, each week the students have a ‘live-with’, which is a practice for the week that helps them bring the course to their daily lives, both personal and professional. The ‘live-withs’ are ways to be in the world. For an example, the first week the live-with is “Have No Expectations.” They spend the week living the practice, then come back to class and share their experiences.

Last night, the ninth class out of ten, we covered the topic of Prosperity and Self-Worth. In our class, we see Self as Essence, as the source of one’s creativity. This Self is perfectly ordinary, not special at all. We each have a unique essence that is ordinary, and at the same time, totally extraordinary.

In this particular class, we do an exercise that allows each student to really be seen, seen for who they are rather than the person they think others want to see. You know what I mean there, right? That person you pretend to be, the one that you think others want to see.

An important part of this exercise is to see others with your heart, rather than simply with your eyes or your mind. Seeing with the heart awakens compassion and soul.

Last night, as this exercise was taking place, I could feel the energy in the room grow more vibrant, more alive. As each person was being heard and seen, their own unique qualities were being reflected back to them, and their inner light began to radiate out. It was very palpable and completely amazing to behold.

The students left happy and joyful. Some even sat around talking to each other for quite a while, even after my colleague and I left the room.

We need to connect.

This is what community does. True community, where each person is seen through the heart of the other, allows for connection, for remembering Self. Community creates a place where fragmentation can heal, both collectively and individually.

We are meant to be in community, to be in relationship. We need community to know ourselves, by way of the reflection through another who is open, attuned and present to us.

We need to be connected. Our souls wither when we’re not.

As humans, we suffer from the illusion that we are separate beings. Living in a culture where we’ve been taught to do it on our own, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to ‘man-up’, we’ve suffered greatly. We’re vulnerable in life. We’re vulnerable in our human state. We need each other. And, we women truly need each other right now to re-discover our true nature and the gifts we’re here to give.

In 2011, I long to create a community of women to teach this same curriculum to. I envision combining the creativity work with discovering the wisdom of the body. It will be a community of women gathered together to discover this true nature as souls in female bodies.

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The Undoing

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alba a settembre
alba a settembre, by francesco sgori

Don’t just do something, stand there! ~ Rochelle Myers

Reverb10, Day 04
Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

::

In the creativity course I teach, one of the most important ways of being is to ‘Pay Attention’. It is one of the keys to living a creative life.

Standing there.

Being still.

Coming to our Senses.

::

For me, in this body, in this life, the real wonder of it all is that I am alive. That I exist at all. That this body breathes on its own, that the heart beats on its own, that thoughts come and go on their own.

Wonder doesn’t need to be cultivated. Wonder is present when I stop trying to manufacture things with my mind that already exist in a much more real way.

It is the doing, the trying to make things a certain way, that get in the way of the direct realization of what is already here. Like Grace. Wonder. Awe and amazement. Humility. Love.

If there is anything I do, it is the undoing. The unraveling of efforting, the trying, pushing to make it happen.

It is to stop, stand still and receive what is being showered upon us. Right now. Right here. With a wide open heart and body.

When I do, wonder is already present.

::

So here is the paradox. There is a doing, but it is an undoing.

Recipe for Wonder.

Time: None
Ingredients: None
Skill level: You must be a beginner. If you’re not, remember you are.

Stop.
Stand Still.
Look.
Listen.
Feel.
Touch.
Sense.
Taste.
Smell.

Feel your feet on the ground.

Allow This to hold you.

Open your heart.

Open your body.

Receive.

Know whatever it is you know, deep in the cells, down in the body.

::

The Queen of Wonder, Mary Oliver, says it all:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

~from When Death Comes

Image, alba a settembre, courtesy of  Francesco Sgori, under CC2.0

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Beautiful Evidence

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Smell Of Freedom
Smell Of Freedom

Whatever it may be that holds you captive is nothing compared to what wants to set you free. ~ @GuyFinley

::

#reverb10 day two’s prompt is from Leo Babauta at Zen Habits:
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

::

Serendipity is always happening, just like Grace is always available…we just have to be open to receiving. Today’s reverb10 post is no exception. Yesterday, I came across the quote above by Guy Finley. It captivated me from the moment I saw it…it’s captivating because I know the truth of it. It is beautiful evidence of the creative power within each of us.

What wants to hold us captive is absolutely nothing compared to that which wants to set us free. And this has everything to do with writing…

For me, writing is a direct path to freedom. Dance is another. So is love-making. Play. Prayer.

We are meant to be free. We are free, except in our minds. It is only the mind, the conditioned mind, that holds me captive. And so it is in my writing. When I am not free in writing, it is because I listen to those small voices in my head that tell me all sorts of stories about everything but freedom.

I could try to eliminate the mind, the conditioning, the stories, but that would be a waste of my time, my energy, my life force. They aren’t going to go away.

It’s my choice which one I will feed…that which wants to hold me captive or that which wants to set me free.

::

Think of your own creative experiences. Consider the power of the force which yearns to be free. Consider the smallness of the voices that keep you captive. Consider that you might just be afraid of the power within you that longs to be free to move, to express, to voice, to sing, to love.

In Lisa‘s reverb10 post, Writer Love, she tells of how her “writer envy transformed itself into writer love” – beautiful evidence that “Whatever it may be that holds you captive is nothing compared to what wants to set you free.” And it will set you free, if you open to the Grace of it.

::

Smell of Freedom is by Gagilas on flickr under cc2.0


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A Woman Here to Write Her Life

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blossomtime
Blossom Time by AussieGal

The erotic impulse and the creative impulse are inextricably intertwined. ~ A Stassinopoulus

…

I’ve been teaching, rather I should say facilitating, creativity courses for a number of years, and I’ve noticed some interesting things about creativity.

We are educated out of our creativity. Sir Ken Robinson speaks eloquently of this.

We’re born creative. It’s our nature. Yet, only 2% of adults believe they are creative.

Creativity isn’t an act of the thinking mind – it’s an act of nature, and that nature is most accessible by way of a mind embodied, by way of the heart and soul.

Creativity is a flowering, an urge from within, an explosion of life force that propels the seed up through the ground, the baby out through the mother, the cherry blossom to bloom, the seed of an idea into an innovative force.

Creativity, Love, Sexuality, Sensuality are all aspects of our true nature – the life force that flows through us.

Our biggest block to allowing this force to flow is our fear of losing control, which is also our fear of the ‘little death’, the ‘die before you die’ that is at the heart of awakening and the expression of the sacred.

…

Our creativity is our nature, a nature that is wild, unfettered, feral, and unpredictable, just like our sexuality. Totally unpredictable, yet so necessary to life joyfully lived. It can feel frightening, yet so full of the very thing our souls are thirsting for:  a full cup of life’s eroticism.

Our need to control keeps our true nature at bay. It keeps us in a kind of limbo, where we long for the freedom to create, yet at the same time, telling ourselves that others hold the key that can unlock that freedom.

The freedom is ours if we’re willing to let go of control and allow life to move us.

An Issue of Authority

No one can give the green light to life to move through us, but us. Each of us can speak the quiet, yet powerful, ‘Yes’ for Life to take us on the ride it has planned for us.

For me, Life is God. It is the mystery. We give many names to it, because we want to understand it, to know it, to have some insight into it so we can ‘know’ it and control our experience in some way.

One of the ways I try to control (in a fairly unconscious way) is looking for permission to create what I really want to create. Of course it isn’t so literal when it shows up in my day-to-day life.

As my dear friend Jeanne says, “It’s an authority issue.”

I wonder, when did I put someone else in charge of me? When did I give someone else the key to my feral self, my wild unfettered creativity? When did I hand over the rights of my body, my soul, my power?

At one point in my youth, I traded my power to create for safety and love. Smart choice for a little one that was too young to survive on her own. Until it became conscious, I didn’t realize how often and how much I was trading my voice for all the things that kept me connected.

The only thing is, that kind of connection isn’t real, nor is it true. That kind of connection is a not-so-helpful trade-off of power with another that keeps us both locked up in the search for safety, rather than the expression of what wants to be known.

…

The deeper I dive into the creative fire, the more I know this connection between the erotic impulse and the creative impulse. The desire to know the mystery that is at the heart of my nature shows itself in many forms.

There are many out there that wish to hold the power over my body, my femaleness, my sexuality, and this feral female instinct. How long will I go along with that crazy-making agreement?

This woman’s body belongs to no one. This woman’s wild self is free. I am fortunate in this. I live in a place where this is still so, even if others are banging drums to change that.

It is up to me to set the impulse free, to write it, to dance it, to sing it, to speak it. And to enjoy the eroticism that life offers, not as a woman that is simply here to please a man, but a woman here to write her life.

The men I honor and respect revel in that writing. They celebrate the coming together of the creative impulse and the erotic impulse in all women, for in doing so they set their own creative impulse free, as well.

…

In my post on Extending Love, I wrote of learning to love everything, beginning with that which felt the easiest to love. My own sexuality hasn’t been the easiest, yet if I am to write my life, it is one of the most important places to extend my love.

Lucille Clifton writes of magic hips, hips that hold the cradle of creativity in women.

Maya Angelou knows this well:

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

How would I describe this cradle of creativity, this place of the source of infinite generosity and abundance within my own body?

We’ll see what the mystery brings…

…

Image courtesy of AussieGal on Flickr, under Creative Commons 2.0 License

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Morning Prayer

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Mother to All That Is
Mother to All That Is

…

This Morning

this morning I am pregnant with all that is to come today.

may i give birth joyously to that which longs to be.

may i no longer fear the birthing process.

may i let go, knowing that all that holds me is Grace itself.

…

This photo is one I took on my trip through Ireland. It is an image of a Sheela na gig on the underside of the Kildare Cathedral tomb of Bishop Wellesley, in County Kildare, Ireland. The image is occluded, or hidden, on the underside of the tomb.

There are many theories as to the origin of and meaning behind the Sheela na gig, but nothing is known for sure. Maureen Concannon, in her book titled “Sacred Whore“, speaks of the Sheela as a representation of the Mother Goddess, and that it is an ancient symbol of Birth, Death and Re-birth. This symbol can be a powerful entrance into the consciousness of the Great Mother.

Others have different definitions, and some question if all labeled Sheela na gigs are really Sheelas and hold the same meaning.

For me, with the little I know at this point of what the Sheela represents, what is most important is finding some opening into the realization that all women are created in the image of the Great Mother. We are all, by simply the fact we were born into a female body, capable of bringing life into life. Our bodies know things. Our bodies have instincts and intuitions. Our bodies are wise and are sacred vessels that can bring spirit into the material world.

There is something of great importance in this for where we find ourselves now as a species. Something old is dying and something new is being reborn. Women have something important to bring to this death and this rebirth, something different than men bring.

Let us discover this together, and let us be midwives to each other’s birthing of that which longs to be born. It will certainly take a village, a large and connected village, to birth that which is crowning now, right now.

…

And, you?

What are you birthing?

What do you fear?

Who can you ask to midwife for you?

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