Fire and Soil

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Brighid's Dawn, by Sandilee Hart
Brighid's Dawn, by Sandi Lee, @WakingDreamart

Fire.

I awoke this morning with fire on my mind.

Perhaps it started, not the fire, but the thinking of fire, last night. Before I went to bed, I posted this:

Sometimes, fire burns.

And in response, a man I went to high-school with replied,

So does the sun, but it doesn’t keep us from wanting it to shine on us.”


The truth does shine…

and it burns. It burns away all that is false, all that keeps the truth from being lived, if we are willing to stand in the fire. I’m not claiming to be a fire-walker. I don’t like the burning one bit. And, I’m noticing it keeps coming, regardless.

When I see this, I see an image of a forest fire that rages through, and how that fire prepares the soil for the seeds to pop and grow. Some seeds will only germinate with the help of a forest fire. These particular seeds need the heat to begin their growth.

During my time in Santa Fe, something very old was burned out of me and something that’s always been there, always waiting in the wings, began to move with new life. It moved in because I was willing to begin to stand in the fire of the truth. I was willing to speak, aloud, stories that had been buried in my body. First, though,

a side trip to Kildare, Ireland.

Last summer, I traveled to Ireland. I wrote a few posts about it here on the blog, but some of what happened has been working inside, gestating, growing and finding root.

Some of the most profound experiences centered around St. Brigid and the goddess Brighid. To be honest, and maybe someone more aware of the historical nuances could fill me in!), I am not all that clear about the connection between the two.

A little history:

Cill means cell or church, and Daire is a type of oak tree, so Kildare means “Church of the Oak.” This is one of many ways Brigid the Saint echoes a pagan goddess of the same name, since the oak was sacred to the druids. In the pre-Christian period of Celtic history, Brighid (a derivation of the word Brig, meaning “valor” or “might”) was the name of one of the most beloved goddesses. Both solar and lunar, Brighid guaranteed the fertility of the fields, sheep, cows, and human mothers; and she protected all bodies of water. Her principal symbol was a perpetual fire, representing wisdom, poetry, healing, therapy, metallurgy, and the hearth.

St. Brigid’s double monastery at Kildare was built at a location previously sacred to her pagan namesake, and the inner sanctuary of the Kildare Church also contained a blessed fire perpetually maintained by the nuns of her community. Some have speculated that St. Brigid herself once served as the last high priestess of a community of druid women worshipping the goddess Brighid, and that she led that entire community into the Christian faith.

Site of St. Brigid's Flame, Kildare, Ireland
Site of St. Brigid's Flame, Kildare, Ireland

In Kildare, I stood in the place where Brigid’s perpetual fire burned. The story goes that, after St. Brigid’s death, the fire was kept burning for over 1,000 years by women determined to keep the flame alive (I imagine not just the flame itself, but what it represented). This realization blew me away, that women could, amidst all sorts of attempts from the outside to put out the flame, keep it alive.

With a little inquiry, we found our way to where the current flame is kept alive for St. Brigid, by sister Mary. She invited us in to the room where the flame burns today. I sat down, and within minutes a complete peace came over me. The only words I could find to express how I felt in that moment were, “Full. There is nothing I need or want.” Sister Mary echoed this, saying that almost every woman who comes to the flame feels this, or something akin.

This sense of upholding life, keeping the fire lit, helping to usher in change without losing the old wisdom is so much of what the feminine is about.

Back to Santa Fe:

In my time in Santa Fe, I was surrounded by strong, wise, spirited women: Danielle LaPorte , who is “interested in liberating truth, raw reality, and grace.”; Jennifer Louden, a woman inspiring us all to serve and savor the world; Dyana Valentine,  who is, in her words, “an instigator. Seriously, I’m not for the weak of heart.” ; Susan Oglesbee Hyatt, a Master Certified Coach who describes herself as “Energetic. Honest. Motivating”; Dr. Diane Chung, a wise, Harvard-trained clairvoyant Naturopath, who has a healing approach that is brilliant; and of course, Gail Larsen, the woman who was leading us to tell our stories straight from the soul.

In the circle of strong women, strong sisters there to gain wisdom on how to speak wisdom from the stories of our lives,  I re-experienced the strength of the feminine fire. In this fire, it was as if words flowed directly out of the ground of being. They came out raw and untouched by the overzealous mind that wants to manage and package the words in some way, for ensured acceptability. I shared stories in this circle that I have told only to a few, very close, people in my life. And in the sharing of these stories, something shifted, transmuted and transformed. We were, and are, a circle of alchemists, turning lead into gold.

As I stood in front of my sisters, waiting for the words to emerge, I could feel their love, their devotion to the truth, their willingness to hear me, wide-open to the wisdom I had to offer. As I sat in the circle, waiting for my sisters to speak, I held them and witnessed the wisdom emerging through them.

Something here, so wise and so powerful.

Even though St. Brigid’s flame was extinguished, what I imagine it represented, the light of the sacred within matter, is still alive in each woman that lives. And, it is this light that is asking to be reawakened in the world.

As a woman, as an embodiment of the Sacred Feminine, this light is alive within you. It is the fire of your sacred light. We can help each other to reawaken to this light within. And, it is this flame, this light that the world needs to remember its sacredness.

The Wisdom That Holds Us All

To underscore the wisdom that is holding us all, let me return to the fire that I opened with, the fire that burns.

As I sat at the keyboard this morning to write this post, all I could see was fire, an image of a seed, and Sandi Lee‘s image of Brighid. I planted the seed and began to write.

As I wrote, two things became clear. In finding a little history of St. Brigid, I stumbled upon this: that today, February 1st, is St. Brigid’s day in the Northern Hemisphere.

The First of February belongs to Brigid, (Brighid, Brigit, Bride,) the Celtic goddess who in later times became revered as a Christian saint. Originally, her festival on February 1 was known as Imbolc or Oimelc, two names which refer to the lactation of the ewes, the flow of milk that heralds the return of the life-giving forces of spring. Later, the Catholic Church replaced this festival with Candlemas Day on February 2, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and features candlelight processions. The powerful figure of Brigid the Light-Bringer over-lights both pagan and Christian celebrations.

Then, as I researched Imbolc, I discovered that one symbol of this time is the candle and flame, mostly from the celebration of Candlemas.

I began with fire and truth, and a wee feeling of Brigid, and lo and behold, everything coalesced in a way that my mind could never have figured out.

Learning to trust the seed, to trust what wants to be told, said, written is a way of the feminine. She emerges through symbol, through what is ripe in the moment. She speaks to us in many ways.

As Gail teaches, we each hold original medicine, something that others receive from us as we share from the deepest places within. Danielle shared with me that she experienced my original medicine as “Dark rich moist soil, like the kind that seeds crave.”

There’s that seed, again.

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In Tune With The Whole Of Life

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Hello, I Love You, by Zenera
Hello, I Love You, by Zenera

Anytime you think of sexuality, you’ve got to think of your whole life.” Cornel West

Reverb10 Day 06
Prompt: Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

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Love.

This year has been about making love. And, I’ve used my heart, my body, my mind and my soul

Now I know most of us have been taught that making love means having sex with someone we love. But, I want to break open the tiny sliver of a way in which we see sexuality, sensuality, the erotic.

The way we currently see sexuality is limiting, yet it is so much more. Collapsed and hidden within our culture’s definition of sexuality are sensuality, longing and desire, passion and beauty, and touching to deeply connect.

Let’s take women’s sexuality today – so many women see pole dancing as a way to find their sexy selves. Connecting with our fire in this way isn’t a bad thing at all. It has helped so many women tap into a part of their nature and give it breath. And, yes, it is just one way. And, it can be limiting. It is also a way that can fit into this culture’s view of women – as sexual creatures, even objects, that are here to serve men’s erotic fantasies. The pornography industry is big business. It has a particular view of women, and it isn’t a pretty one. This industry has become ubiquitous in our culture. Its perspective has infiltrated mass media.

When we see ourselves through this perspective, is it serving our wholeness, is it serving how we see and value ourselves? This doesn’t mean trying to eliminate this view, but rather opening up to our whole lives, a sense of wholeness as souls here to love life, to serve with our whole being

I want to open up our view of our sexual energy so we see what’s been hidden. There is a fire in the erotic, a fire that can serve our work in the world.

What if our sexuality could be informed by our intentions, not our conditioning?

I see the possibility for a profound shift for humans: to open our point of view around love-making from an act in the bedroom to all of our acts in the world. To know ourselves as erotic beings in a way that is whole, loving to self, and in tune with the whole of life.

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A story that captures the essence of what I’m wanting to convey:

This man in India is a man of the Brahman class. As a Brahman, he is not supposed to touch people who are beneath his caste. What he does is feed the poor, the homeless, the destitute, the old people who have no one. He cooks each day, then delivers the food, even feeding some people by hand, the ones that can’t feed themselves. He also explains how he loves these people. He is shown bathing them, giving them haircuts and shaves, even massaging their feet. His actions show great love. His voice speaks great love. He is showing these people great love in each action. His touch seems to indicate that he is loving them with tenderness, true compassion and caring.

His actions so clearly show what I am trying to convey. His love infuses his actions.

You might ask why I call this making love, and not simply doing good works. You might find it confusing to mix up sexuality, sensuality and the erotic, and doing work in the world with great love.

All of this can be confusing, because trying to communicate with each other through words is limiting at best. Words come with baggage. We collapse distinctions around words, causing them to point to a mixed-up jumble of conditioning, experiences, beliefs and desires.

For me, this opening up of our minds to our own soul nature is crucial if we are to rediscover our whole nature as sensual, sexual, erotic loving beings, and find the fire and passion to unleash our greatness.

I’m wanting to explode open our limited conditioned ideas of sexuality and making love, for buried in them is our fire, our passion, our power. We are so much more than objects that can be sexy, if we do all the ‘right things’.

Here in our culture, many times when we see people touching we immediately think in terms of sex and sexual attraction. We make up stories about touch. Yet, touch is one of our most amazing senses, and one of the most amazing gifts we can give another. To touch and feel in the heart at the same time, brings a closeness unique to the sense of touch.

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Somewhere, eros and sex got mixed up.

Somewhere, love was thrown into the mix, making things downright messy.

From Wikipedia:
Éros
(ἔρως érōs[2]) is passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. The Modern Greek word “erotas” means “intimate love;” however, eros does not have to be sexual in nature. Eros can be interpreted as a love for someone whom you love more than the philia, love of friendship. It can also apply to dating relationships as well as marriage. Plato refined his own definition: Although eros is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself. Plato does not talk of physical attraction as a necessary part of love, hence the use of the word platonic to mean, “without physical attraction.” Plato also said eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros.

eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth…Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to seek truth by eros.

Audre Lorde wrote this of the erotic:

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

She adds this:

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. …

But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.

We can choose to see what perspective we are operating under. The European-American male tradition has choked the life out of women’s eroticism, out of our sense of our erotic, sensual selves. It’s put it all into narrow confines and wrapped the words sexuality and sex around them. Everything points there, and yet in reality, that simply isn’t so.

::

A soul that can give of itself to the whole of life.

2010 has been about discovering for myself, what it is to be a sensual, erotic being. In making love to life, I am beginning to re-member the sensual and erotic nature within my being that I cut out because it didn’t fit into the cultural tradition in which I was raised. I began to earnestly make love to life, to let go of the small narrow ways I see myself, so I can open to the erotic nature of the soul and of life itself.

What is it to be a soul in a human, female body, a soul that longs to remember its wholeness, the beauty of the world in which it lives? A soul that can give of itself to the whole of life?

Bringing our whole selves to our work, to helping give birth to this new paradigm means re-discovering our nature, a nature that can bring the joy, the eros, the love back into a world starving for what we have to give. We can unleash a passion that fuels our work, so we give our whole selves to it, not just our small, timid egos.

I am in the midst of this making, a making of how I live in this world, how I see myself and what I can truly do, so that it isn’t quite so overwhelming, but rather a natural extension of my nature.

Let’s allow ourselves to notice the fire that was hidden, the passion and joy for life that have been tucked away in the bedroom, or that have become non-existent in our lives, because we believe they can only come out when we’re having sex, or feeling sexy.

Let’s allow each other to discover this for ourselves, to not judge how we do so, but to know we’re all on this journey together, in service to the emergence of the sacred feminine within us.

::

Image courtesy of Zenera, under CC2.0

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A Fire Rages

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Burning Heart, by Roger Quayle
Burning Heart, by Roger Quayle

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A fire rages within me,

the fire of longing to be the beauty

that is the center of my own heart.

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image by Roger Quayle, CC2.0

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