As war and the fruits of war, including hatred and the desire for vengeance, threaten our human community, I take this opportunity republish a vision of a Society of Peace. If we cannot imagine a Society of Peace, we will never be able to create one. Can you imagine that:
As a child, you would not have to fight with your sisters or brothers for your father’s or your mother’s attention. You would not have one mother but many as you would be raised in a large extended family. Both girls and boys would be equally loved and cherished by their mothers and grandmothers and by their uncles and great-uncles. Both girls and boys would know that they would always have a place in the maternal clan. As a boy or a girl you would never have to “separate from” or “reject” your mother in order to “prove yourself as an individual” or in order to “grow up.” You could grow up without severing the bond with the ones who first loved you and first cared for you.
I have learned as much about Goddess Spirituality from participating in rituals to the Panagia in Greece as I have from books. This is the time when Greeks honor the falling asleep of the Mother of God, an echo of the rituals of Death and Rebirth in honor of Demeter and Persephone.
From the evening of the 14th through the day and night of the 15th of August, thousands of pilgrims ascend the Holy Rock of Petra, Lesbos to honor the Panagia—She Who Is All Holy. There is something really beautiful in being among them. Last year six of us set out from Molivos at 7:30 on the 14th to meet in the square of Petra to ascend to the church.
Petra was already full of so many pilgrims that police had forbidden traffic in the main square and were directing cars into a nearly full parking lot in a field. When we got out of the car, the two others who came with me and I had a perfect view of the steady stream of pilgrims climbing the rock, which was already lit up in the twilight.
Erin Lale
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