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.”
A Living Spirituality
I hope your religion 
has plenty of roses
and lots of sunrises.
I hope your faith
is full of smiles
and alive with joy.
I hope your spirituality
tastes good,
smells sweet,
and holds you kindly.
I recently finished reading a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection. (Side note: it doesn’t indicate it clearly in the title or book jacket that it has a significant emphasis on AA, but the assumption seems to be that the people who are reading it will be AA members, which I am not.)
As I read it, I started to reflect on the glorification of suffering in some religious perspectives as well as the ascetic mystical traditions that encourage extremes of self-denial (only eating one a meal a week, wearing only a single rag, sleeping on a board without a blanket or with a rock for a pillow, etc.) and how sometimes these seem to be held up as admirable examples or goals to attain. I wrote this short poem above spontaneously while talking to my husband about the book and then read the poem aloud during a small online circle.
Goddess spirituality to me is a spirituality of joy, of embodiment, of presence, and feeling. It is a living spirituality of embodied knowing and truth. It is about being in your body, about loving where you are, about being alert to the everyday magic and ordinary enchantment that surrounds you, and about trusting the world to hold and nourish you.
When we arrived at the beach this year where we stay each January, I started writing a new book, which has started to flow forth like it was already formed and just waiting for me to sit down at the keyboard. I’ve written 44,000 words since we arrived on January first and I think I’m going to have a complete (rough) new book by the time we return home at the end of the month. It is primarily about devotion and daily practice, about walking a goddess-centered path, about a spirituality that holds you kindly.
“When religious ideologies and their associated spiritual practices begin to take us away from our lives instead of connecting us to the center of ourselves, we need to be willing to let them go. To not be in a hurry to replace them. Instead, we can shift our focus back to the ordinary and bless it with the gift of our full attention. Then watch in awe as it brims with holy light.”
—Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy
Resources:
- Goddess Magic Circle community on Patreon
- #30DaysofGoddess ongoing daily devotional practice
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