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Sludge, Flow & Hallelujah

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“What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born the moment we accumulated silent things within us.”
~Gaston Bachelard

::

I’ve been a creativity catalyst now for seven years. At least, that is, professionally.

What’s a creativity catalyst, you ask? A sparker. An illuminator. A mirror. A container. A lover.

For my entire life, I’ve been creative. I’m not talking artistic. I’m talking creative. I’m talking the most basic ability of every living being – the ability to express the impulse that is life itself.  It’s just nature. Like the seed as it grows into what it is destined to become. The ability to express the unfathomable mystery into being. This is creativity. We all have it. We all are it. It’s our nature. It’s our design.

You are creative. It is your nature. Somewhere, within, a voice is sparking you on to grow, to express, to love, to risk, to voice.

Sometimes when people have been silent for too long, their inner plumbing is stopped up. Junk is in the pipes. The junk that adheres around those silent things we accumulate when we don’t trust our own impulse to express.

When expression begins to flow again, it can come out in fits and starts, belching and coughing along as the pipes are cleaned of all that was used to stop them up. You know what I’m talking about? All the crap you and I internalized about our inability to be ‘properly’ creative. To properly speak. To be proper in the act of creation. To NOT express what simply wanted to be said, done, written, painted, danced, loved. AND, to NOT express our own anger, sadness, sense of rejection, sense of futility, insert your feelings here ___________________, because we were told we must plug up the pipes.

So when we first begin to trust our impulse to express, the sludge just might come out first. And the flow might be bumpy and rocky, sort of like when the water is shut off for a bit, then turned back on. The pipes rattle. The water spits. Until the flow returns. The little self, the ego, wants to control the flow, so it can be very careful about what first appears out of the faucet (faucet being mouth, hands, feet, head, body) – all the parts of the body that the divine mystery uses to express through.

One little very important thing here – the sludge is an important part in turning on the flow again. It’s important to allow it through. You don’t have to stop to examine it in minute detail. You don’t have to create and sing another Hallelujah chorus in its name (save that for the Mystery). You don’t have to judge it as it appears. But, if you do, that’s part of the flow, too. You just might do all these things, ’cause you might just be really curious about the sludge, about what’s stopped up your pipes for so long.

I’m writing this today, because over the past few weeks, a number of women have approached me feeling ‘something’ within them wanting to express what’s inside. Specifically, they are wanting to blog with vulnerability. They want to begin to write from a more personal point of view, and at the same time, fear being too personal and vulnerable with their potential audience. They fear expressing their own unique expression.

If this reminds you of YOU, remember what Gaston Bachelard said, that our suffering comes from our hesitation to speak.

When I first began to write my websites and newsletters over eight years ago, each word I typed was so carefully crafted. I opened the pipes just a tiny, tiny bit. Maybe a trickle. Even though I created art, words that went into the cyberworld were very carefully crafted. And then, I began to find my voice. Oh, it’s been a long time coming. Not because my voice wasn’t ready. More because I thought I couldn’t find it. The pipes were rattling. The water was spitting. I kept putting my hand over the end of the hose, causing the water (voice) to spray all over, to go all cattywampus. All the while, that ‘something’ inside pushed to get out. That urge to sprout, to grow, to become was still doing its thing.

I know, deep in the marrow of my bones, this urge knows exactly what it’s doing. Trust it. It’s a lot more intelligent than the small self gives it credit for. It knows the imprint at the center of your seed. It just wants to become what it’s meant to grow into.

Oh, and by the way, I found a juciy bit-o-sludge just yesterday. I did check it out for a bit. Couldn’t resist.

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On The Edge Of Wholeness

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Pink Tulip

Lately, my posts have been flowing one from another, as if writing one allows an insight to surface and wash over me. It feels sort of like a scavenger hunt, where one clue leads to the next, and that one to the next. Maybe that’s not the best analogy, but close enough…

After writing my last post, The You That Takes Your Breath Away, I remembered something I wrote a few years back. It was never shared here on my blog. In fact, I don’t think I shared it with anyone. At the time, what I was writing felt too close to my heart to make known to others. Sometimes, this is exactly what needs to happen; we need to not speak those moments of insight so that they continue to work their way through us.

What I wrote to myself was sparked by this passage from , “Shadow Dance” by David Richo:

“We can even declare that we are what Byron saw: ‘a rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.” Eventually we realize that whatever in us has remained folded up is really that about us that was never loved. This is the sadness in the folded rose of ourselves. What was not confirmed and loved by others, especially our parents, did not have full permission to emerge. It is up to us to find this confirmation now from within ourselves, our relationships, and our spirituality. Joy results from permission to unfold.” (pg 110-111).

“Joy results from permission to unfold.” Wow. How powerful this statement is.

We are the only ones that can give ourselves permission to do this – to unfold those oh so sweet leaves of our being, those that hid away because, for whatever reason, it didn’t feel safe.

Now, we are adults. Now, we can hold these sweet and tender places within our own heart, hear what they have to say and give them permission to unfold, permission to be seen. Perhaps, being seen first by ourselves is the greatest gift we can give to them.

With this permission comes joy. And peace. And, as these parts come back into the light, wholeness naturally occurs.

The other piece is about the exquisiteness of vulnerability. Complete unfolding brings no more separation. When we open to the fullest extent possible, nothing hidden, petals outstretched, there is no longer anything that knows separation, and this can be frightening as hell.

But, our lives are really about the flower unfolding. We yearn to unfold, to blossom into complete nakedness, raw vulnerability that allows one to be seen and known.

This ripe blossoming is also the very last step before the petals fall and the blossom dies. This is our return to the whole, the moment of wholeness that is simply a breath away from death, where death ends our separation from the whole.

At the singular moment when we unfold every ounce of our being and exist at the height of vulnerability, that of out-stretched petals, we know our sense of separate self will fall away. When nothing is hidden, we can no longer be separate. In our complete vulnerability, we open to all and to everything.

There is a peak of each blossom, when it is poised at its pinnacle of beauty. This is our moment of realization of all that we really are. In this moment, our sense and identity as a separate flower falls away and we let go into our true identity as all that is.

When our petals fall and decay, we can grow into the fullness of a human being, wise and unconditionally loving, for who we now know ourselves to be is the life force that compelled the flower to emerge, bud and blossom, the instinctive drive to open fully to the light, the air, the wind, and all of the world around us.

The edge of wholeness, this edge of ripe beauty, happens many, many times, over and over, until we know ourselves to be the beauty itself. Nothing lasts forever. And, it’s in this knowing of our ephemeral nature, that we know what it is to be fully alive.

So, here is what I wrote, back a few years ago:

On The Edge Of Wholeness

Standing on the threshold of the one true moment of existence
I know myself as both blossom and the urge to bloom.
Every ounce of my journey has been to unfold
To follow the blueprint of this flower
From young rosy bud to powerfully stretched petals
From nubile possibility to the height of complete engagement.

As my petals open to the arc of full bloom
my arms stretch open wide and vulnerable
my chest aches with joy and
I am completely available to Life.

It is in this moment of complete openness
I know that I have loved to wholeness
Every ounce of who I am
Even those parts that once felt impossible to love.

Somewhere deep in the recesses of Being
I realize the natural path of this process and
begin to feel the life force that has propelled
my unfolding welcoming me home.

I know there is this one moment
When my petals are at the height of ripeness
The height of the arc of fullness
just before  I turn to the face of release
This moment happens many, many times
And at the same time is a singular moment in my life

I can now see that petals falling is also an act of grace
For as I stand on this threshold of change
I realize it is only by being courageous enough to open
That I have come to know what I truly am

The sunlight and soil of grace have held my becoming all along
my urge to bloom was always at the heart of who and what I am
This urge to blossom is also my urge to return
To the one constant in all of Life, the very nature of all that is.

~ Julie Daley

Just look at the beauty of this inside of this flower. We would never see it if it remained closed.

Image: Pink Tulip by Julie Daley

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The Courage to Sin

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What is it to be a woman, in the fullest sense?

I’ve been sitting with this question now since January 5th, the day I read that Mary Daly had died.

It’s not that I hadn’t thought of this before, doing the work I do. Coaching is all about this. And, Unabashedly Female? This blog reflects my experience in living this question, What is it to be female?

But, a quote I read, penned by Mary, in one of the columns celebrating (make that celebrating/vilifying) Mary resonated so deeply. Right away my mind (that lovely roommate I live with) said, “Yes. OMG, she’s a genius. Mary Daly brought it.”

You see, I hadn’t heard of her until last year. For anyone who has read the scholarly works of the feminist movement, Mary Daly is well-known. But, even though I reached womanhood in the seventies, and even though I personally witnessed the way the feminists of the second-wave were vilified, something that still haunts me to this day, I didn’t really read feminist scholarly works. When I first read some of what Daly wrote last year, albeit the tamer bits, I was blown away by the ideas she brought to the table.

Here’s the quote that got me:

“Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin,” she wrote in the opening of “Sin Big,” her New Yorker piece. “The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.’ “~ Mary Daly (from Jan 5, ’10 Boston.com article, “Mary Daly, pioneering feminist who tussled with BC, dies at 81.)

“For a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.'”, is a bold, bold statement.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’.

::

Mary Daly was one courageous woman. For many, she was way too out there in her feminist radical philosophy. She was confrontational. She pushed the limits of what it means to be a feminist, hard. She set the parameters. She was willing to go toe-to-toe with the deeply held principles of patriarchy, the structure that espouses, and enforces, domination as a way of life. Many found her to be just as oppressive as those she was confronting.

As I searched the Internet in these last few days since her death, I have found a very wide spectrum of opinion about Daly, her philosophy, her manner, her life, and pretty much everything else you could think of.

Mark Vernon of the guardian.co.uk wrote, “She was an audaciously creative spirit; an awkwardly witty, deadly serious writer. She arguably did more to stretch what is possible to think in contemporary feminist theology than any other.”

At the end of Vernon’s post, the comments created a stream of back and forth banter that, in itself, was telling of the spectrum of opinion on feminism, and the still very-much-present gender upheaval, that exists in the world. Even after her death, controversy still surrounds Mary Daly.

::

But back to my question, What is it to be a woman, in the fullest sense?

As I consider the ramifications of Daly’s statement, that to be fully this female that I am is ‘to sin’, it points to the most basic premise that we, as women, are already sinners simply by being, by breathing, by existing. Basically, this is the whole Eve complex. Our fall from grace. The idea that we women are responsible for sin.

It then follows that if we do something to minimize our fullness, meaning we learn how ‘to be’ in the ‘not-fullest sense’, then we mitigate our sinning potential, so to speak. We minimize how much of a sinner we are.

I have to admit, when I am really honest with myself, much of my 53 years here on this earth have been filled with an underlying, nauseating sense of something being wrong with me, solely because I am a woman. And, I know I have minimized myself in order to not feel this sickening sense of sinfulness.

If I could somehow be ‘less womanly’, ‘less seen’, heck, just ‘less’, then I would feel less, meaning I wouldn’t have to ‘feel’ being a woman.

To see it in this raw form, though, to see it so bluntly equated, woman=sin, felt sickeningly true, not intellectually, but somewhere in my psyche. Some part of me believes this. Hmmmmmmmm….. But, where did this come from? Where did I learn this?

::

One of my teachers, Adyashanti, speaks of the word sin and its meaning, which in his words means ‘to miss the mark’. Upon researching this, I discovered this explanation:

Sin & Evil: In the Aramaic Language and culture that Jesus taught in, the terms for “sin” and “evil” were archery terms. When the archer shot at the target and missed the scorekeeper yelled the Aramaic word for sin. It meant that you were off the mark, take another shot. The concept of sin was to be positive mental feedback. Sin is when you are operating from inaccurate information and thus a perceptual mis-take. When you become conscious and aware if the results of your inaccuracy you have the option to reconsider what you have learned and do as they do in Hollywood, “do another take.” By the way, where the arrow fell when it missed the target was referred to as evil.

So, this derivation of sin would have been about the time of Jesus.

Diving further into the etymology of the word, I found this explanation of the word sin, one that comes from more recent times:

Etymology: Middle English sinne, from Old English synn; akin to Old High German sunta sin and probably to Latin sont-, sons guilty, est is —
Date: before 12th century

1 a : an offense against religious or moral law b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible <it’s a sin to waste food> c : an often serious shortcoming : fault
2 a : transgression of the law of God b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

This is the etymology that Mary Daly quoted, a derivation of the root that means ‘to be’.

If we move forward in time, forward to where the patriarchy as world paradigm has become firmly entrenched, in most of the world it is believed, either overtly, or covertly, that women are the lesser gender. It is here, within this worldview of male supremacy, that sin has moved from missing the mark to simply being human, to simply being a woman.

::

Now, granted, we can toss this whole thing out if we don’t believe in this most strict sense of what it means ‘to sin’. Or can we? We learn to make meaning through what we are taught. We are taught with words and we are taught through behavior. We are taught through culture. We learn to make meaning within the culture we swim in.

Things have changed greatly in how women perceive the idea of sin and sinning. Or have they?

Perhaps on the surface of life, in this culture, much has changed. And, intellectually this just doesn’t make sense. But what do we believe, somewhere down in the shadow?

And, what about emotionally? What about our deepest conditioning? What about the stories we made up as young girls? Not so much the stories about what we could grow up to be or do, but the stories about our core worth? Stories we began to tell ourselves about our nature as girls, and as time progressed, as women? What about the feeling of being a girl, then a woman, in a culture that is based on domination?

I know that, until recently, I have lived my life with the unshakable sense that there is something less valuable about me, simply because I was born in a female body. While intellectually I knew this wasn’t so, somewhere in the recesses of my psyche lay hidden beliefs and fears that this body is sinful, that my womanhood was somehow dirty and bad. I see it reflected in the media, in quasi-pornographic programming showing women being beaten and tortured, raped and abused. I see it reflected daily in the myriad ways women are objectified, repeatedly, to sell everything from hamburgers to beer to cars to razors.

It is my experience, and in the experience of many of the women I have worked with to awaken to the divine feminine within, that we swim in this notion that to be a woman in the fullest sense is to sin. We swim in the cultural sea, and we swim in our own internalized pool of it. It’s a deep and dark pool that lies in the shadow, far from the light of Spirit, far from the light of the Goddess, far from the light of the God I know. We carry this pool around inside us. That’s the kicker. If we hold conditioned beliefs, that are unconscious, we swim in our own little pool of perceived sin.

This pool is the only pool that really matters, for it feeds the negative, compulsive, shadow thoughts that keep the inner-patriarchy in place. And, it’s the only pool one can change. But, when we do clean our own pool, the big pool becomes a little clearer and cleaner.

::

Sitting with Mary Daly’s statement, I have read it and re-read it. Writing this post has been like a long labor. I’ve written, and re-written, until I could wind my way around to something I already knew, but needed to see in a simpler form, for anything true is really, really simple at its core.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’, when she is trapped in patriarchy.

“For a woman … ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin’, when she is trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet.

And, when she’s not trapped in patriarchy?

Ah, woman ≠ sin.

As you can see, I’m a lover of logic and math. But, I’m even greater lover of the Mystery, which is the Mother of math. This Mother is the heart of existence. This Mother holds us all in her womb, the womb of truth. If we’re willing to hang out here, the truth will be revealed.

As I sat in the Mystery with Mary’s wisdom, this oh, so, young part of my psyche cried out with very familiar mantra:

‘be small and silent and agreeable = be safe and loved and wanted’.

Here was the part that keeps me believing, even when I know on so many levels this is crap.

::

I know this. I know it is only the stories I tell myself. But, when the stories are woven into the fabric of the culture, into the belief systems that keep the patriarchy in place, it can be so hard to step back far enough to see the obvious. I had to see the equation woman = sin, I had to feel it, I had to sit with it, I had to open my heart to the part of me that believes this seductive lie.

It is seductive. It seduces us with its promise of safety. It beguiles us with the promise that if we give ourselves away, we will be wanted. In believing this lie, I can settle down into the oh so sickeningly comfortable familiar arms of, ‘I will safe’.

Of course, the equation is different at different times for different women.

Sometimes, it looks like:

‘be like a man = be safe and loved and wanted’

or

‘be asexual = be safe and loved and wanted’

or

‘be youthful, sexy, and beautiful as hell so every man will want me = be safe and loved and wanted’

or simply

be silent = be safe.

::

I have done a ton of work to disengage from this cultural story. It’s not only cultural, it’s familial. We, all women and men, learn our story of illusion at a young, young age, from parents who also were taught these seductive lies.

Much of what I’ve done has allowed my mind to once again trust my heart and my body.

When I drop down into this sensuous female body I exist in, I can feel the dark richness of the feminine, the dark loveliness. This is oh so different than the darkness of the shadow.

From my own experience, I know that this is the place from which my own internal power flows forth. This place within the depths of my body and my heart, is the place where I am the fullest in every sense.  It is the place where I feel wholly holy female.

Here, in this wholly holy female place, I am no longer ‘trapped in patriarchy’. It has no power. It does not exist.

In reality, the only thing that is real is what is here, now.

The patriarchy is an illusion, a story, albeit a powerful one because so many minds have agreed to uphold it, thereby granting it power.

::

In remembering Mary Daly, perhaps we can focus on truth, your truth as a woman. This truth stands alone from academic philosophy and theology, cultural conditioning, and gender differences. This truth is free to question. This truth is to know, and to be, you in the fullest sense.

Thank you, Mary, for your fierceness and your courage. You certainly weren’t perfect. You were controversial. You didn’t ever shy away from stating your beliefs, wholeheartedly. You stirred things up. You pissed people off. But, you blew the conversation wide open. You shined not just a light, but a high-beam on the shadow of this culture, a shadow that only harms women, men, children and everything that is living.

Who knows how history will hold you and your ideas, but I do know that you have added to the conversation, a conversation of possibility where all women and girls might one day know, relish and celebrate the fullness of what it is to be female, while also coming to know their healthy masculine side, and where all men and boys might discover the beauty of their feminine side, so that we all might live in true gender respect and harmony.

::

This post has been the most difficult I have written. It felt as if I was giving birth to something so much larger than my own understanding, and I was. I have been giving birth to the raw courage to sin by being fully a woman in all my fullness in THIS paradigm we swim in, the paradigm of patriarchy.

We don’t live in the time of Jesus, when sin meant to miss the mark. We live in the patriarchy, where women are seen, way down deep in the shadow, as being sinful, simply by their nature.

To me, having the courage to sin does not mean to spew anger and hate at those that hold power. It means to do the work it will take to come to know myself through experience, not by way of what I have been told it means. It means to question what I have made up about myself, my worth, the world itself and my relationship with it.

It means to be fully female, to embody the divine feminine, to disentangle one’s being from the powerful structures that keep us believing in our own powerlessness. It means being that which we are, divinely female, embodying the life principle that, by design, created us to bring life into life.

It means to step into this power, to stand and speak, and to give my whole-heart support to other women and men who are willing to stand, speak and step into their own personal power.

As it turns out, it is only my own knowing, my own courage I can birth, but by sharing this knowing, I hope to help crack apart the tightly held beliefs about the prevailing structure we hold so tightly to.

::

Look out your eyes onto the world.

There is nothing written on it.

There are no words.

There is no etymology.

For women and men, the beliefs we hold and the meaning we place on it, is simply in our minds, in how we think we see the world.

The world itself is empty of all meaning and all belief.

It is empty of all that we attempt to make of it.

It is here, in this emptiness, that the mind can rest.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know the simple elegance that we are.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know our divine inheritance.

It is here, in this emptiness, that we can know the goddess, not as story or image

but as the coming and going, the birth and death, the dance of light here in the world of matter.

It is here, we are safe, loved and holy whole, simply as we are.

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That Which Is Yearning To Be Born

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Each day of December, I am being moved to post by Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Today is Day 31 Resolution.

To start with, I don’t make resolutions. I know that creativity can only emerge when we let go of expectations and welcome the mystery to unfold. That takes surrender – a surrender to the mystery that we are, that life is, that awaits in the next breath. So, from this place, let me enter into my intention for the next breath, and the next, and so on…

In contemplating my final post for this best of 2009 challenge, I’ve been reflecting on not only my year, but also on my experience as a participant of this challenge. One encapsulates the other. During these past 30 days of December, I reflected on this year of ’09 and posted 30 reflections. Some posts captivated me more than others. Some posts connected me with new friends more than others. Some have worked on me more than others.

So for this final post, I am bringing all of this together in some way, without knowing how it will end. One thing I have discovered through this process of daily blogging, is that, if I am present and pay attention to what wants to be said, it eventually comes around full circle in a way I never expected.

There were tugs and pulls along the way of this year, and this challenge. I have discovered that when I open the channel and trust, what tugs and pulls is what wants to be born. When I keep the channel open, it propels itself forth into being.

I’ve been blown away by the community that’s been created through this blog challenge. I think, perhaps, we are hungry for connection, hungry for community, and hungry for the kind of dynamic creativity that comes from sharing our innermost thoughts with others we are drawn to.

Toward the end of these 30 days- day 29 to be exact – I noticed a thread running through many of the posts I read…a thread that pulled together our hungers. As I twittered to Karen Caterson (@SquarePegKaren), “Something is being born right here between all of us, and it is raw and beautiful.”

I know, deep in my heart and belly, that women share a profound love for each other. Sometimes this love is covered over by strong conditioning that has taught us to be jealous of each other, or to not trust each other, or to even be intimidated by each other. But, underneath all these fears, lies a deep-seated love that is unique to women. I see this love all the time in how the women in my life are there for me in a second if I call. I see this love in how my daughters care for each other, and how they would do anything for me. This same love has begun to shine through our best of 2009 posts, our comments, and in our intention to connect and share consciously and copiously, woman to woman.

To own my power, to put it into action in the world, means stepping into new territory. The power of the feminine primal matrix is demanding to be embodied by women. Something else is dying so this sacred life principle can be born anew, for the benefit of all beings.

In my work, I’ve made a distinction between the feminine and being female. I think it’s a critical distinction.

All of life has both masculine and feminine energies. For so many centuries, the masculine has been perverted then let loose to run rampant, creating actions that have slowly sucked the life-force out of all living beings. This rampant energy of greed and abusive power has dominated men, women, children, animals and the planet. Having been out of balance for far too long, we are experiencing a crumbling away of the old while the birth of the new is imminent. The old is dying as the new is being born.

I see it is critical for women to open to, and act from, the power that comes from fully surrendering to what we are: women. This is not power that is abusive, such as we have known in our lifetimes. Rather, this power comes from surrendering to one’s life force. Each of us, each living being is powerful beyond measure, when we no longer deny what is real and true within. The power that we are becomes unfettered and free when the ego turns to be of service to the soul rather than obstructing it.

As I wrote in my post, The Challenge is Now:

So, the message is coming through loud and clear. This is the challenge, and it is here, now.

The Dalai Lama recently surprised listeners when he said, “The world will be saved by western women.”

Two great quotes have been swirling in my head for some time, now.

You must learn not to be careful. Diane Arbus

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you! Isadora Duncan

These words take me back inside, where my feelings and instincts as a woman reside. My fierce love was tamed, made dormant and silent. But we were once wild here, and we are still wild within.

What will it take to stand and speak, to grow fierce and vocal?

In my post of yesterday, December 30th, Women, Power and Sex, Jeanne Hewell Chambers (@WhollyJeanne) commented most eloquently. I’d love to share what she wrote here, as it sums up so beautifully what my work in the world is, and what I know other women are feeling called to act upon:

“…yes, let’s have this conversation . . . and let’s keep having it until we’ve changed the world. let’s start with ourselves [women]: let’s honor and respect and cherish and adore the sacred and mysterious creativeness that is us. let’s do it for ourselves, let’s do it for others, and let’s keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it until we have trained ourselves and others how to see. let’s keep doing it until we reach that special tipping point where it is the accepted way of being in this world – the only way of being with ourselves and with others.” ~ Jeanne

May we, as women, step into our power and stand to speak our truth, so that one day we can stand alongside men in true equality, with reverence and respect for each other and for all of life. May we all be of service to that which is yearning to be born into being: the sacred feminine and a true and lasting peace that embraces the whole world.

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Truth

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Self

The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins. ~Sister Chittister

As I pondered today’s prompt, “A word or phrase that encapsulates your year”, a flurry of words swirled into my awareness.

Autonomy

Sovereignty

Personhood

Responsibility

Inner-Authority

Value

Self-worth

None of these captured this year – they merely helped point to a feeling of how the turning of the days of 2009 have shifted my consciousness. They brought me to here, this moment, while helping me to distill and encapsulate the unfolding of my life over these 365 days.

Looking back, I can now see how this year has been about learning the power of choice. All these words point to the opportunity that exists in each moment to choose what the still voice within asks of me, rather than succumb to the status quo, the conventional ‘wisdom’ of our culture, that right now, doesn’t look so wise at all.

I have come to understand just how seductive this status quo is. But over the days of this year, this voice within has become louder and more insistent. At times, I have wanted to run away from this voice within, but there is no peace out there. The only peace I am finding is not really peace at all. The peace is in surrendering to this that compels me with insistence, burning, and longing. It is here that I must jump. Jump into the blackness that is the unknown depths of my heart. My body. My soul. That is all that is here.

Truth, my word for 2009.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 17? Word or phrase. A word that encapsulates your year. “2009 was _____.”

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Destruction is Creation’s Handmaiden

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I come from a long line of female artists. My mother, her mother, and her mother, were all painters. I used to paint, many years ago. Now, mostly I write. And dance.

Coming from this maternal lineage of artists, I have always highly valued create expression of any form. I guess that’s why I eventually left the tech world and settled into work that revolves around creativity and coaching.

Up until this year, only one of my mother’s paintings was hanging in my own home. It was a gift for my birthday a few years back.

That changed when mom died last year. By the end of 2008, we had gone through 52 years of layered treasures as we sorted through her belongings. She had lived in the same home for all of those 52 years. It was a many-month, river-of-tears, process to sort through everything she left behind. Sifting through the layers, we discovered more of her paintings, as well as those done by my grandmother and great-grandmother. We sold the house in the last few days of 2008 to a family that promised to love and care for the house my sisters and I grew up in.

Once we sold her house, I these treasured pieces home. I didn’t hang them immediately. I guess I wasn’t quite ready.

Then, one day in March, I decided to hang them. One was my mom’s favorite. Another one, I found out in her shed (I guess it wasn’t her favorite). The third was a water color that my great-grandmother painted almost 100 years ago. My home changed after these paintings were hung. Each day, I stop to appreciate them.

Just yesterday, as I was preparing to write this post, I found out from an old neighbor that mom’s house had been demolished. Bulldozed. The house, the garden, the brick walks she had lovingly created, destroyed in order to build a McMansion in a primo part of Silicon Valley. Mom, and her house, are gone. I know life moves on. This is now their new home to build.

I know that destruction is creation’s handmaiden. There can’t be one without the other. How easy it is to celebrate creation. How difficult I find it is to stomach destruction.

I wish I could end this post happy. I can’t. Right now, I’m grieving yet again.

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge
Day 13: What’s the best change you made to the place you live?


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So(u)l Food

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image ‘Silence Talks‘ by lepiaf.geo, Flickr

Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily.  ~Gwendolyn Bennett

I sat down to write this post on New Food (again, today’s post is part of a blog challenge I have accepted for December). The challenge has been great for my writing, as it forces me to sit down and write each morning, something I have been finding hard to do as I painfully contract through the birthing of my book.

Blogging is such a great practice because it forces you to let go of so many of the normal strategies of resistance. Especially blogging every day. When you are committed to getting it out there, you do it, but the life-cycle is short enough to learn the discipline to do so. At least for me. At least so far.

So my process of writing for this challenge has been to look at the prompt the night before, go to bed with it in my consciousness, wake up, make my tea, sit down to write, and stare out the window at the dawning of the day over the hills of Tilden park. We live, literally, across the street from this beauty. It is food for my soul, this green beauty before me. Ah, there it is. Food. Back to the topic at hand. Food. New Food.

What new food did I find in 2009 that I hadn’t know about before? As I consider this, I think of Sol Food, a great place in San Rafael that serves up the most delicious Puerto Rican Cuisine. You gotta check out their web site just for the fun interface, great music and beautifully detailed descriptions of their food. I opened the site and have the music playing in the background. It’s a mixture of music and kitchen sounds from the restaurant.

But, I knew about Sol Food in 2007, so it doesn’t count (if I stay true to the challenge).

In fact, I didn’t discover any new food in 2009. Not in the traditional sense of food. However, (if you read my blog regularly, you’ll know I had to go here), I did discover, more deeply, a new food for the soul (emphasis on more deeply).

Food for the soul. Just as important as food for the body. My new food for the soul is Silence. Yes, Silence. For some reason, actually not for any reason at all, Silence has grown to be a staple in my diet for my soul. Like my body craving chocolate, my soul craves silence. Anywhere I can find it. Silence. Beautiful deep, rich, dark silence. The kind of silence that pulls you into its center, your center.

I gobble this silence up. When I sit gazing out our window at the park. When I hold my grandbabies while they sleep. When I lie in Savasana. When I meditate.

Now, I actually found silence, before 2009, too. Obviously. But, silence is so much more than we think it is. I have come to experience is the deep, rich, dark silence that is at the center of everything smack in the middle of noise. And life. And chaos. That is the new food of 2009. This delicious manna for the soul that nourishes me to the deep center of my heart.

I experience this silence in dance at the height of chaos. While driving down the most gnarly highway in the Bay Area, 880. While changing the dirtiest diapers ever smelled. While standing in the grocery store check-out – okay, this one is a little harder to get. And, even while eating at Sol Food – one of the nosiest restaurants around.

Silence is here all the time. Just tune in to it. Feel it. You are swimming in it. Let it hold you. I find this food for the soul to be the most nourishing of all.

ps if you are still reading, something really funny just happened. I JUST NOW (at the bottom of this post) realized the pun inherent here. Sol Food. Soul Food. I just now got it. I think this joke is on me! As I went to title this post, I noticed I had started with the title Sol Food, thinking I would write simply on that. Then, as always happens, the post wrote itself, circling back to the beginning. Love it when that happens!

This post is part of Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge

Day 12: New food.


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Spirituality and the Internet

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Day 7 – Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Blog Find of the Year

This is how I see the blogsphere. A million stars tied together through connections, deeply intimate thoughts, fiery proclamations, warm invitations – a connection of souls sharing the essence of who they are and what they are here to do.

In my academic travels at Stanford, I wrote my honor’s thesis on Spirituality and the Internet. Back in 1999, when I first had this idea, the Internet held fewer constellations. In my part Computer Science/part Design major, I wanted to marry these two aspects. This topic came to me in a moment of panic as I sat across from my adviser in a show-down meeting where I HAD to make a decision on what to create. At Stanford, Spirituality and the Internet met with many raised eyebrows, a few chuckles, and couple of thoughtless remarks, but only curiosity and encouragement from my adviser, Clifford Nass.

Since those days, I have moved into coaching, teaching and writing rather than computer science; but, I am still intrigued by technology and its ability to connect us, and our thoughts, yearnings and aspirations to share our deepest essence with others, and to know others by way of theirs.

In perusing the blogsphere, I have discovered many homes where beautiful souls live. In this realm, I just can’t say what is best, for best is determined by the moment, when I happen to land on a site, am warmly invited in, and I find a moment of connection where my guest serves up her/his beat meal.

Some meals are hot and fiery (White Hot Truth), some are sexy and funny (Cleavage by Kelly Diels), some are simply breathtakingly beautiful (Amy Lenzo), some offer me the opportunity to look deeply into life (Hiro Boga), and some call me forward to take the road less travelled (Chris Guillebeau).

But, ONE blog calls me back to why I do what I do: Peace X Peace. As their name implies, their mission is to bring peace to the world, by bringing women together. Each time I read their blog, check in with the site, and read women’s stories at Voice X Voice, I re-dedicate my life’s work to bringing peace to the relationship between men and women, for the sake of our children, our planet, and all living beings.

Voice X Voice is a good analogy for the blogsphere as I see it. It’s why I blog – to sing my soul into the chorus of all souls. As I looked at all the blogs I had discovered this year, I realized even more that we all have something so important to say, AND our voice has its own flavor, its own qualities, its own complete ordinary uniqueness.

For too long, our voices have been silent. What a beautiful thing Spirituality and the Internet has become.

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Growing Whole in the Darkness

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“All beauty contains darkness.” ~ Daniel Odier

Learning to see, and then act, outside of the current patriarchal structure has been a journey of ever widening circles, much like a spiral. It is the journey of living the feminine, a way of life that is very different than that which I was taught to know. It means trusting what is revealed in each moment of present awareness, and feeling for what is ripe with the promise of birth. I go in and out of living this way, but as the circles of understanding grow, I find myself opening to the darkness of the feminine to receive Her guidance.

When this guidance is revealed, the only thing that lies ahead is darkness, the darkness of the unknown. The only thing known is that one choice, the one thing that is the most obvious choice. My mind struggles with the darkness, wanting desperately to know what lies ahead, and yet I also know in my heart that this darkness, this unknown, is the mystery of life waiting to be revealed. The divine mystery is the new, is this darkness from which all emerges.

What I am learning to trust in is the strong pull of this knowing. You might call this intuition, but for me, as I live deeper into the cells of my own body, it is knowing.

I found, what I guess you could call the ‘best’ book of 2009, this way. I saw it on a friend’s desk and knew I must read it. The pull was unavoidable. A friend had given him the book, for reasons he couldn’t understand. He had no intention of reading it, but for some reason had not yet given it away.

I would call this book a gift. A gift given and gratefully, and voraciously, received. Not all of the book kept my rapt attention, but the parts that did carried me deeper into the darkness, deeper into the parts of myself that were thirsting for light. I was yearning for gnosis. Through a marriage of the wisdom of this book and my own willingness to allow a new kind of knowing to emerge from within, I began to deepen my trust in this darkness.

The book that has so many dog ears, cracks in the spine, lines underlined, recommendations to others, is Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. The authors are Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. In my knowing, this book can be a guide book for the journey into darkness that we all, and most especially women, must take. As Woodman states, “The evolutionary imperative within the collective unconscious is pushing us toward a new level of consciousness.” We must learn to stand alone, in our own wholeness, if we are going to survive. And, learning to stand alone means diving into the darkness, to come to know ourselves again in a whole new way.

As Odier shares, there is beauty in darkness. It is the rich soil from where all of life emerges.

Today’s post is Day 4 (best book) of Gwen Bells’ Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

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Sacred Activism

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The most life-changing ‘article’ I experienced this year was, and still is, The Great Death, delivered in the medium of video by Andrew Harvey. This video is actually the first of seven, and it drew me in so quickly and deeply that I watched another, and another, and another, until I had watched all seven in one sitting. As I watched, I realized I finally had a term and words to put to what my work has become – Sacred Activism.

Over the past seven years, I have been drawn deeper and deeper into the darkness of the Sacred Feminine. It really has been longer than that, but it was seven years ago that I could name what was happening within my being. I’ve been aware of the re-awakening of the sacred feminine within consciousness, as a whole, and within my own psyche. I left my work as a programmer/analyst because I knew I must help birth this consciousness within me, and within others.

After being zinged by Andrew, I contacted the Institute and joined their co-creator program in July. This first year, they had four coming-togethers in Oak Park, Illinois, so I joined in time for the third and fourth program. Being a part of the program has changed my entire view of how to do this sacred work in the world.

“When the joy of compassionate service is combined with the pragmatic and practical drive to transform all existing economic, social and political institutions, a radical divine force is born – Sacred Activism.

This is my third post in Gwen Bell’s blog challenge, the best of 2009

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