Goddess Centered Practice
In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as "theapoetics"—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.”
Everyday Magic
One of the things I’m passionate about in the Circles I facilitate is our capacity to experience everyday magic. To me, this is a sensation of being fully alive and vibrant and connected and in flow, while going about my everyday life.
Two weeks ago while on vacation, we were staggering along the below-freezing, wind-whipped beach and I was thinking about my “Core Desired Feelings*” for 2017. I decided one is definitely “everyday magic.” Just then, I looked down and there in the sand was my word of the year, Thrive, on a little square. I couldn’t believe it! And, I have no idea how it didn’t just blow away in all that wind. Everyday magic indeed!
Miracles are unexpected joys, surprising coincidences, unexplainable experiences, astonishing beauties…absolutely anything that happens in the course of my day, except that at this moment I’m able to recognize its special value.
–Judith M. Knowlton in Meditations for Women Who Do too Much
In late fall, I wrote of flowers. I described a pumpkin blossom appearing outside my tiny temple and how I then drew the Pentacle from Womanrunes. Thinking of this rune of protection, I reflected that sometimes protecting our own energetic boundaries, actually means dropping to our knees by a flower. The next week, another fresh new pumpkin blossom appeared and I went to admire it even though I didn’t really “have time” to be sitting with flowers. I drew my card and…you guessed it! The Pentacle again!
In the same book above, author Anne Schaef reflects:
Miracles are constantly occurring around us. Serendipities abound in daily life.
The issue is not that these miracles are absent. The issue is that often we are absent. We are standing on a hill of diamonds, and we are looking for the gold mine beyond the next ridge.
As we reclaim ourselves, we being to notice the extraordinaries of the ordinary. We quit thinking about being present and start doing it.
It was only as I looked at the photo of the pumpkin blossom later that I realized the blossom itself is also a five pointed star...
(*The concept of Core Desired Feelings comes from Danielle LaPorte‘s Desire Map book, which I’m in the process of reading and very much enjoying!)
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