My friend, a beautiful and wise woman, Lianne Raymond, has just released her video of a talk she gave in March. When I first watched this video, I was deeply moved.
I love it when women tell their stories. I love it when women share each other’s wisdom. I love it when we come to know the deep wise ways within our own soul by seeing and hearing this wisdom expressed through another woman.
I’m not going to say much more. Lianne’s words speak volumes. To know more of Lianne’s work, visit her website and read this poem she recently shared.
Be sure to share your feelings and thoughts with Lianne in the comments.
Have you ever had a day where everything around you sparkled? Where everything was so vibrantly alive? Where there wasn’t even a question in your head about anything because you were simply alive, aware and awake?
That’s how yesterday was for me. Perhaps it was a combination of dance (my early-Sunday-morning ritual), brunch outside with beautiful friends, a crazy-gorgeous day in San Francisco with a temperature of 80+ degrees, and time spent cleaning my home and cooking good food. And, perhaps it was one-on-one time with my grandson on Friday, a time to just be with him and to see the remarkableness of his unique soul and how it already shines through at 3-years old.
What I know, deep in the belly, is the more I come home to this woman’s body, the more I know I belong to this earth. This body came out of the earth and it will return to the earth, and while I am alive in this body, to know I truly belong is to know I am part of the earth. When I know this, when what I am settles down into the body and fills the cells of the body, I am no longer thinking my way through life, I am alive and I see everything around me as the same unutterably beautiful aliveness.
Yesterday, I came across this brilliance by John O’Donohue (someone I tend to quote often as he was entirely wise):
“In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act.”
Beauty isn’t what we are constantly told it is.
Beauty is the sacred appearing gloriously and unabashedly as the form into which it is born.
And when we experience beauty, this appearance of spirit enlivening matter, even if just for a split second, we remember, we awaken to our true nature and we surrender to this nature all in the same moment.
One place I so often experience this is when I commune with flowers, especially when the light flows through their petals. Just last night, as I was walking home from the grocery store, I passed by my neighborhood florist shop and stopped to look in the windows. All last week, the shop was filled with at least six different kind of peonies. Big, huge bunches of peonies lined their old oak tables. I took photos. I sat and just looked, while tears filled my eyes. The proprietress knows me, now, and she came over for a second just to stand with me as we both admired the fullness of beauty we were witnessing. But last night, the shop was closed and the only peonies left were those that filled two vases sitting in the front window. They’d been left in the front window for the weekend, just to delight the senses of passersby like me.
These peonies in the window were in their last stages of blooming, with the petals already a little bit translucent, as happens when the decay begins. I was captivated by the mix of such intense beauty and short life span…how for just a short, short time these blossoms poured their uniqueness forth into the world, only to soon return to the earth.
We are like this. It’s what makes life so precious and amazing…the luminosity, and the numinous presence that looks out from behind your eyes.
We belong here because we are this. It has taken me all my life to come home…55 years of wandering to realize I am home. This body is my vessel of belonging.
My gift is to help guide women to come home to this body, right here, right now, and to open to this deeply erotic field in which we live, and create, and love. To know we belong here and have such beautiful gifts to share with this world that is hungry for our wisdom, our nature and our love is the gift that is waiting to be received.
This is the feminine in real life, and it is deeply practical. We can’t fully give our gifts until we are fully here. When we are fully here in the body, we are no longer fighting being fully alive, no longer fearing what might come in the next moment.
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And, you?
What is your gift to give in this life?
How fully do you feel you belong here, on this earth?
What can help bring you home to this knowing that you belong and are an intrinsic part of the life that is breathing you?
Take some time today to notice what brings you home into your body, into your vessel of belonging. Notice when you are already here, already aware of the aliveness of life. And, notice if there is resistance to being fully here.
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I’ve included this amazingly sensual song from yesterday’s dance (thank you, Claire!). I hope you enjoy it.
Jericho by Weekend Players (Pursuit of Happiness, ’03)
The lyrics speak to what I’ve written here. When our senses are filled with life, with Source, with what we really are, we see things as new, as continually coming into existence and then back into non-existence.
Today is a holiday here in the US. It’s Memorial Day, the day we remember those who have given their lives in service to this country. Mid-day, around 2:00, I decided to walk over to the Presidio Graveyard, to sit for a moment in remembrance. I’d read a few things online about the holiday, and so many comments on these articles and posts were political in nature; thoughts about war and whether it was necessary, about which president had caused the most deaths, etc., and I wanted to just get away from all of that and go remember the men and women who have died in service.
The very odd thing is that I couldn’t find the graveyard. I must have made a wrong turn, somewhere. In doing so, I came upon the Inn at the Presidio, a new Inn on the grounds that is stunningly beautiful. I went inside and roamed around to see the Inn.
Alongside me was a woman who was also looking at the Inn. She was dressed, beautifully, mostly in black with a touch of red and yellow, and wearing a dressy hat, the kind women used to wear. She doesn’t live in San Francisco, but she has come to the city many times on Memorial Day to place flowers on the graves of three of her family members – her uncle, grandfather and grandmother. She said she’s been coming for a number of years. She had just come from the graveyard. She seemed introspective and had a gracefulness about her.
As I headed back outside to go to the graveyard, I thought about this woman. I was taken by her dedication to remembering these family members; that she flies from out of town to visit their graves and place flowers. I wondered about how our holidays and rituals can move away from the very reason they were first established and become somewhat generic in nature…about BBQs and  baseball and getting away.
For whatever reason (if any), even though I headed out to find it again, I never did find the graveyard. I felt a little lost, something I rarely am with regard to finding places. I’m usually the one that can find anything simply by my internal radar. I ended up walking for a while, but felt lost amongst all the white wood and red-tiled buildings. I’m struck by the fact I got lost; yet, what seems to have really impacted me, was this woman and her family.
Many times when I write a post, at the very end everything makes sense. I get to the end and the ribbon to wrap it all up appears out of nowhere. No ribbon, here. No sense-making.
Perhaps, my visit was more about considering what it means to remember and to witness how these deaths have touched life. I just keep remembering her graciousness and the very clear way she loved those who died serving.
Dance – where I’ve learned to sink down into the layers of this body that I had feared for so long.
Most of you, those who read me fairly often, know by now that on Sundays I dance. I Sweat My Prayers with 149 other beautiful dancers.
Yet, even though you know I dance, I am not sure you know the depth of what dance means to me; what it has offered to me. When I first found 5Rhythms, ten years ago, I was in deep need of healing.
I can’t quite put into words what this practice of 5Rhythms has brought to my life – the movement and awareness and healing is so much more than any words could ever begin to describe.
Dance brings me alive, and the more I give myself to the dance, the more it strips away my defenses, my veils – and the more it reveals the truth of what I am.
When I dare to dance the truth, I have no idea what I will come to uncover.
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Yesterday was Sunday and I danced.
And, it was Plant a Kiss day…at least for 16 of us bloggers who decided to see what happens when you plant a kiss and then write about it.
What was my kiss and what did I plant?
I planted the deepest desire to dance the truth, to unveil myself, to plant my kiss on the dancefloor with breath.
When we dance the 5Rhythms, we are silent with our mouths and generously expressive with our bodies. We ‘speak’ with the body. We breathe through our feet and move with the breath.
My kisses were breath, planted on the dance floor with each step.
As I breathed, I moved, and as I moved I discovered how powerful an intention is, how powerfully the body can express this intention to reveal. My intention was an offering of truth, of pure expression. I found so many kisses of breath – a kiss of joy, a kiss of love, a kiss of touch, the softest most tender touch of the skin; a kiss of power, a kiss of kindness, a kiss of whatever showed up in the dance, even those more painful places like grief.
As I danced, I was feeling joyful and then ‘our song’ began to play – the song my late-husband and I shared. As soon as the first refrains of ‘Killing Me Softly’…
Strumming my pain with his fingers Singing my life with his words killing me softy with his song killing me softly with his song telling my whole life with his words killing me softly with his song…
…landed in the cells of my body, I shuddered with grief and tears. Suddenly what had been such great joy moved into tears; and as suddenly as those appeared, just as suddenly a soft pair of hands landed gently on my shoulders.
I turned around and saw my friend. She put her arms out and I moved into her generous hug.
Together, we danced to the words and music that always take me back to so many sweet moments of life shared with Gary. Then, my friend surprised me. I whispered to her that this had been our song, and she whispered back, “I know. You shared that with me when we first met and first danced together.” I just looked at her in awe. That was at least eight years ago and she remembered.
You see, this friend just lost her husband, too, not quite three years ago. She knew how I felt and in her generous and loving way, she reached out to me to hold me in whatever feelings might show up. Her response was immediate, generous and open. She was killing me softly with her touch.
As Killing Me Softly ended, we ended our dance and I moved into other partnerships on the dance floor. I felt even more open, even more trusting, even more willing to plant my feet deeply, open my heart with more tenderness and vulnerability, and trust in the flow of the dance.
I moved with love, planting kisses with my feet wherever they travelled, blowing kisses with both in-breath and out-breath. As I danced, I marveled at how responsive the human body is to touch, both the touch of skin and the touch of intention. I could feel the power of the willingness to be open and vulnerable.
In planting love wherever we land, we never quite know what will grow. And, we never quite know if our own love will come back to us, through another.
Perhaps we are all planting kisses with the breath.
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Plant a Kiss Day –
In the spirit of Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s work, 16 inspiring and creative bloggers (including me!) set out to “Plant a Kiss” in the world on Sunday, April 29. Today each of us is posting about that experience. Click here to visit the main Plant a Kiss page, where you can easily link to all participating bloggers. For every blog that you visit and comment on, your name will be tossed into a hat for a chance to win one of many amazing prizes.
I just spent three magical days on Whidbey Island with women I respect and love. I originally met each of them online; now I know them as real life friends. These women are beautiful human beings.
We soaked up the sun and the beauty of Whidbey Island. We watched a bald eagle with awe. We danced, laughed, and were amazed by each other’s brilliance.
I loved being with them. I witnessed so many forms of beauty. I opened my heart and asked to be loved.
My body was held.
My soul was fed.
My eyes were dried.
My laughter was immense.
The inside of me, that place where no knows what really goes on, where no one sees the tumult of my soul unfold, is richer, wiser and forever changed from my time with these women because, as Rilke wrote, “inside human beings is where God learns.”
Just ten hours
after I returned from Whidbey, I co-taught a class with my friend and colleague, Mary Corrigan, for the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment in San Francisco. Mary invited me to join her and the sixteen female entrepreneurs she’s teaching in this six-week course on creativity and business.
I led a segment on sensual discovery…ways to come into the body so we can be present and awake to the creative spirit within and the world in which we create. It was amazing…women so present in their bodies that it became difficult to engage the brain in it’s usual form of over-thinking and judging.
Mary and I then dined at Gracias Madre on a delectable meal of empanadas and beet salad. If you’ve ever dined at Gracias Madre, you know there is no way to describe in words the beauty of this food.
All of this time with women and with the feminine. I am fortunate. It seems to be the nature of my life these days.
Something in me longs to know myself unveiled. Something inside of me hungers to experience the feminine face of God. Something in me drinks in these moments when I am in the company of women who are willing to be vulnerable, willing to speak of their fears as well as their wisdom, willing to open their hearts to each other so we can all come to know the depth of the feminine in human form.
I am drinking up the healing offered from these gatherings of women.
We are coming to know the feminine in ourselves by knowing it in other women. It is a remembering, a relearning, a reclaiming.
I now know that my love of, and thirst for, connection with other women is divine appetite.
This divine appetite is God wanting to know God in unabashedly female form. Through them. Through me. Woman to Woman.
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And, You?
Are you, too, hungering to gather with women? Are you hungering for this healing? Are you thirsting to know yourself as the sacred in female form?
Can we open our hearts to this deep, deep longing within, this place where God learns? This place where the divine spark within each of us can experience the sacred nature of all of life?
Join me in this place of longing and desire, this place of divine appetite. This is the place of the new story of Woman.
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Awaken the Wild:Â a 7-Day Virtual Sensual Immersion from Molokai
I’m traveling to Molokai in just ten days to attend another gathering of women. Yes, this seems to be the nature of my life these days.
While I am there, I’m going to be sharing my experience on this wild island through this complimentary eCourse, “Awaken the Wild”. Over seven days, you’ll receive a daily email that will direct you to a password protected page with audios, images, poetry and practices to bring this wild land into your life and awaken the wild land within you.
“…if the human species wakes up and knows how to live
with responsibility, compassion, and loving kindness,
the human species can be a living organism
with the capacity to protect the body of Mother Earth.
We have to see that we inter-are with our Mother Earth,
that we live with her and die with her.”
Just like the oceans, winds, too, move in cycles, eddies and flows.
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Women’s bodies are connected to the Earth, and when we are conscious of her, conscious that her soul needs healing, too, we can love her back to healing.
Like the earth, we are not rational beings, no matter how hard we try to make it so.
Our world is not linear nor rational. It’s only the rational mind that tries to categorize, compare and contrast in order to make some sense of the spiral, circular nature of life.
The feminine moves in non-linear ways.
When you find yourself making yourself wrong for not being reasonable and rational all the time, moving in spiral and circles rather than a straight line, remember our Mother and how she moves. Remember your nature. Remember you are connected to her, and in this remembrance you organically and naturally participate in the healing of all of life.
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Watch the time-lapse video, Perpetual Ocean, on Nasa’s Flickr page.
The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created this beautiful animation called Perpetual Oceanwhich visualizes the ocean’s surface currents over a 30-month period between June 2005 and December 2007. The animation was created using NASA and JPL’s high-resolution model of the global oceans, which is normally used for running simulations and predicting changes in the currents. But this time the results were exaggerated to produce this short film that looks like it sprang from a Vincent Van Gogh canvas.Â
I’ve been wanting to include some examples of the feminine in real life here on the blog, so you can have a sense of what I am talking about when I speak of the sacred feminine. She is revealed, more and more, each day.
I’ve created a new category, The Feminine in Real Life, that will include some great examples of how She is rising in the everyday world.
A Lullaby
The first post is this absolutely gorgeous lullaby in the video below. It cuts right to my heart. Her voice, the words, and what is unseen all come together to create such beauty. It brings me to tears, and to a feeling of deep relatedness to life.
Before you watch,
I want to share these words that I saw just yesterday from Marion Woodman:
“…when we’re talking about that feminine that’s missing, we’re talking about the heart energy. That can fill a room. Certainly in a relationship it’s the energy that holds presence. By which I mean the child comes in or the person comes in, has something to tell you or they have prepared a little bouquet. Have you got the time to see it? Have you got the time to see the love that went into it? Can you hear the anguish in the voice that is talking to you?”
The feminine principle would attempt to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it would say, where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?
…it is so difficult… to talk about the feminine because so few people have experienced it. What I’m talking about here is presence, and relatedness.”
The video:
The lyrics:
I Have Never Loved Someone, by My Brightest Diamond
I have never loved someone the way I love you I have never seen a smile like yours And if you grow up to be king, or clown, or pauper I will say you are my favorite one in town I have never held a hand so soft and sacred When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard I will send you all my love upon the breeze And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay
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The presence of the feminine, receptive, tender, and powerful: “I have never held a hand so soft and sacred.” “When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key.”
You can feel the presence as she sings the song. You can see its effect on the people in the restaurant. Tears. They have been touched. She, the singer, is touched by the presence moving through her.
In fact, in the description below the video, the person filming writes of the effect:
“After the concert I finally dared to ask her what I wanted to ask her that morning, to sing us this lullaby that struck me down. It’s Sunday morning, a morning of hangovers. The whole hotel seems suspended in the air. We ask her to get to the bar, to make it sing for her, to sing for her son (for whom she had written this song). We erase ourselves. She, she doesn’t. After we’re done filming, I cry. She cries too.”
Struck me down. Powerful words on the effect of this presence. It is clear that this presence touches everyone. How did it touch you? How does this radiance affect you?
What would our world be like if we embodied this feminine receptivity more deeply? Would we come to know, as experience, that the hands we hold are ‘soft and sacred’, that when we hear laughter from those we love, that we are knowing ‘heaven’s key’? Would we listen, deeply listen?
To embody the feminine in life is to come to know it as experience, not just as an idea in our heads but as real life experience. We haven’t experienced it much, for it has denigrated, called weak.
This is the receptive radiance of the feminine in us all, women and men, that aspect of self that can simply receive and bear witness.
It’s a beingness, and it calls for a not-doing, a letting go of doing so you can be with.
