I recently wrote about what it meant to priest for the Goddess. In it I quoted, noted Buddhist roshi, Pat Enkyo O'Hara, who once said, "When asked of all the wisdom traditions why Zen, I said, because I live a life of Zen."  In a reframe, I suggested that I live a life of Goddess. Many have messaged me to clarify what I mean by that?

Goddess is the everyday constant in my life. She is the immanent divine within me, around me, the all and the vast nothing; but also the transcendent manifestation standing before me. She is the totality of my life experiences, regardless of circumstance, and I manifest the life I have in Her service because She is worship for me. I confess worship is one of my favorite words. When I was growing up my grandmother would say, “Worship is a verb!” Meaning that there was more to being a Christian than just showing up on Sunday morning or worse, just at Christmas and Easter! She was not wrong, as worship is in fact both a noun and a verb.  But what is worship? 'Worship is the action of religious devotion often directed towards a deity."

At it’s core worship is about worth, our worth and Goddess' worth. Worship the word, is derived from the Old English worthscipe, meaning  worthiness or worth-ship—to give, at its simplest, worth to something.  One of the things at drew me into Goddess was an overwhelming sense of worthiness within Her presence.  Before I was in Her presence, I felt hopeless. Before I felt Her divine embrace and understood that interconnectedness, I felt worthless.  The Charge of the Goddess mentions worship once. “Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices.” Following this is "all acts of love and please are my ritual."  Henry Ward Beecher, is quoted as saying, “I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.” 

The worship I offer to Goddess is different than ritual or daily practice. While surely part of the worship experience, Goddess informs in every aspect of my life not just one designated moment. Worshipping Goddess from the simplest like not using disposal plastic thus preserving the Earth; to the complex like who I share my bed thus preserving my body, every moment is embodied worship. Because the first act of worship actively engages us the inherent worth within Goddess it transforms us into vessels of love. Because She loved first, so I can love today. Love, the transformer of hate. Love the healer of pain. Love in a heart that rejoices when we call upon Goddess empower that love, is yes, still the law.

That is what I mean by I live a life of Goddess. I am devoted to Goddess and devoted to Goddess as me. Devoted to the principles ascribed to the Earth as her vessel, to the spiraling life forces that are within the vessel and to the vessel that contains Her divine magic. Living within the Goddess and of the Goddess is ultimately not about what spell I do or don't do, but the intention I bring to the devotion that is living a life of Goddess. My worship with Goddess leads me back into self, and into inherent worth, and deeply into Her. It is there I find hope and where I discover and explore, and where tomorrow's offers peace are the vessel of transformation. This what I mean by living a life of Goddess. Goddess as worship. Worship as the vessel. The Vessel of Love.