Author: Molly Remer

Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min, is a priestess, mystic, and poet facilitating sacred circles, seasonal rituals, and family ceremonies in central Missouri. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses at Brigid’s Grove (http://brigidsgrove.etsy.com). Molly is the author of nine books, including Walking with Persephone, 365 Days of Goddess, Whole and Holy, Womanrunes, and the Goddess Devotional. She is the creator of the devotional experience #30DaysofGoddess and she loves savoring small magic and everyday enchantment. http://30daysofgoddess.com

Margins for Magic, by Molly Remer

My ritual today
is to forgive myself
and to begin again
with what I have….

A rite of renewal:
Step out under the sky
whether it holds thunder or sun.
Rest your hands against your heart.
Say: I am here.
I am grateful.
Open your arms to the sky.
Feel air soothe you
and wind bless you.
Say: I am radiant in my wholeness.
I am loved.
Sweep your arms down
to touch the Earth (or the floor.)
Say: I am connected.
I belong.
Settle your hands against your belly.
Say: I am centered.
I am powerful.
I am strong.
Return your hands to your heart.
Wait.
The sacred will meet you here.

We pause today in the middle of the road to listen to a mockingbird perched in a crabapple tree by an abandoned house. In clear and rapid succession, it runs through its impressive repertoire: Phoebe, cardinal, chickadee, titmouse, laser-gun, a few extra trills and beeps and back again. We stand, heads cocked and silent, to experience the performance before walking on with a smile, pausing again to inhale deeply as we pass the wild plum trees so sweet and fleeting. I have been preoccupied with projects, feeling bright, creative energy burgeon inside me as it does around me, so many things tug at the mind and ask for time, leaving my dreams restless, my eyes wild, and my mind awhirl with both pressure and possibility, a persistent urgency that calls me on and away and out of being where I am. On the way back home, we stop again because there are five red winged blackbirds, conversing by the neighbor’s pond and we circle through the grass to examine white flowers in the pear trees and to check for peach blossoms (none). I love spring in Missouri, it restores and nourishes me. It reminds me I am home. I sit with my tea listening to a distant chainsaw and the wild turkeys in their rites of spring, a light rustle of wind, and the clinking of my flattened spoon wind-chimes from years gone by. A lone crow glides in to alight on an oak tree beneath the sun. It tips back and forth briefly, wings a satin shimmer in the sunbeams and then drifts away like a black kite through the spring sunshine. I have joked that the description of my next book could be: “I sat. I saw these things.” And, this is true, for I did, and this is my news for today.

Listening to Our Landscapes, by Molly Remer

Today the hawk is back, tail feathers lit gold and black by a bright and welcome sun. It stays only a moment before tilting out of the tree and continuing on its way, but this moment is enough to spark a sense of joy and wonder in my chest, the awake kind of glee that fuels and feeds me, that inspires and holds me. This feels like the Year of the Hawk to me, of clear focus and intentional commitment. I watch it glide away between the trees and take a deep breath of release and freedom. I re-center myself into my body and reconnect to the sacred What Is. I am open to clarity. I am open to trust. I am present with this day’s unfolding.

The Webs We Weave, by Molly Remer

Each year, as fall peeks around the door tasting the air and sending cool tendrils of change slipping across the horizon and skimming across our shoulders, I feel clarity descend, a sharp and sudden certainty that I do know exactly what I want to do and where I want to focus.

In early September, we watched an orb weaver spider make her web by our studio. Much faster than we might have imagined, she tumbled gracefully through almost empty space, connecting long strands from porch gutter to hydrangea bush, returning to the center often to stabilize before launching into the next direction. The sun was setting and we stayed captivated by her dedicated intention, moving next around the middle and expanding from the center rapidly connecting her many threads. Finally, we walked on the road, watching the sunset illuminating the bluestem grasses in the field as the nighthawks darted bat-like above our heads on their annual migration. We returned to the web at dusk surprised to see how much finer the structure had become, each strand now laid very close to the one above it in a radiating circle. As we watched, I felt a sense of liberation chiming in my bones, freedom that comes from knowing with firm and dedicated awareness which way to go, trusting the threads of my own life to hold me as I make my way with both purpose and grace.

Monarch Magic, by Molly Remer

When my father was a boy in the 1950’s, he had a butterfly collection. His friends would bring him dead butterflies to add his collection and ask him what they were called. He got so many monarchs that his reply would be, “Thanks! That’s a ‘common sicker,’” secretly meaning they were so common he was sick of them. Now, my father is 70 and his grandchildren rarely see a monarch butterfly, the population of them having declined by 85% or even more in just two short decades. This rapid change is one of the most clear and alarming, observable indications of the massive changes wrought by both climate change and industrialized farming in our very own lifetimes.

Each year, I watch for monarchs from my Missouri home, during their migration season that carries them over our heads and on their way to Mexico. Each one I spot feels like a brush with magic on the wing, a testament to endurance and to hope. I watch them careen along in their delicate and determined way across highways and rooftops, across cars and parking lots, across my own house, and across open fields. I watch them alight on thistles, on goldenrod and oak trees, vine and bush. I see one above the Atlantic Ocean at Daytona Beach. I see two above the weeds in the Dollar General parking lot in Alabama. I see one above the sunflowers by the overpass in Kansas City. I see two coming over the Walmart roof and into the Staples parking lot in central Missouri.

From the Archives: Sacred Water by Molly Remer

This was originally posted on August 9, 2017

“Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.”

–Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth

The women have gathered in a large open living room, under high ceilings and banisters draped with goddess tapestries, their faces are turned towards me, waiting expectantly. We are here for our first overnight Red Tent Retreat, our women’s circle’s second only overnight ceremony in ten years. We are preparing to go on a pilgrimage. I tell them a synopsis version of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, her passage through seven gates and the requirement that at each gate she lie down something of herself, to give up or sacrifice something she holds dear, until she arrives naked and shaking in the depths of the underworld, with nothing left to offer, but her life.

Inanna’s Sisters, by Molly M. Remer

Sometimes I feel like my own Ninshubur.
I set up a lamentation in the street.
I call my own name,
beat the drum
to lead myself back home,
prepare the temple
for my own arrival.
I will not give up on myself,
will not abandon my own wholeness,
I refuse to sacrifice my Self.
I will not stay in the underworld forever.
We all need people in our lives who will say:
No, this will not do.
I’m coming after you.
I will help you to crawl back up,
back out, back through.
I will reach out to you.
I will boost you up.
I will rise with you into becoming.
You will not stay behind defeated
and alone so long as I,
your Ninshubur,
draw breath.
I will beat the drum for you.
I will call your name.
You are not alone.
Come back to me.
I see your power
and your strength.
I hear your longing.
Return,
return,
return.

I first met Inanna in the firelit darkness of a midwifery retreat in central Missouri. Toddler son at my breast, I watched, spellbound, as the charismatic, dark-haired midwife recounted the tale of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, through the seven gates we traveled, to the seat of our own wounding and our own medicine.

Spiritual Practices for Summer Flourishing by Molly Remer

The spiritual life need not be
divorced from the physical.
It is with our hands that we make magic
It is with our breaths that we offer prayers.
It is with our eyes that we see beauty.
It is with our hearts that we know love.
It is with our ears
that we hear birdsong and ballads.
It is with these bodies
that we reach out to touch the holy
every day.

This morning, I watched the baby woodpeckers. Still nestled safe within their tree they stab wildly at their brave parents who cautiously poke snacks into the trunk and then dive away again, narrowly evading the enthusiasm of their progeny. I peek at the baby phoebes too, heads nearly full-feathered, no more room for a parent in the nest against the wall of our house. They peer back at me, black eyes solemn, while the hummingbirds dodge and weave and battle it out between branches. I hear the thin and persistent cry of a broad-winged hawk from somewhere in the oaks just outside my vision. Summer is settling into the woods, though spring seems just barely to have arrived. The woods are becoming heavy and green and closing to exploration as the bugs and brambles stake their claim and exact their blood prices for entry. The blackberries are in bloom, wild and riotous, their white flowers open gratefully to both rain and sun. The wild raspberries have already begun to set their fruits, hard knobs of green clustered hopefully on each cane. The mulberries were brave enough to try again after frost crisped their efforts to black, now re-leafed, small green flowers and starts of berries once more emerge to hang with delicate promise next to their ruined brethren. As I finish writing my poem and offer my prayers, I look up to see a bald eagle making great wide circles above the house. The sky is clear and blue and the air is sweet and fresh and full of promise. I sit, as I do, in this cocoon of green, my heart wide, my mind soothed, and my soul replenished by the magic of place and all it manages to hold and teach each day.

The Vows We Make, by Molly Remer

I make a vow of self-sovereignty,
a declaration of wholeness,
a promise to myself that I will keep:
I vow to listen to my heart,
to claim my power and my voice.
I vow to live my own magic,
to step into the center of my own life
and live from there.
I vow to live a life
that includes space for me,
to stand up for what I need,
to listen to my longings,
to honor my inner call,
to do my own work with trust.
I vow to never abandon myself.
I vow to inhabit my own wholeness
in all ways.

In February, I signed up for a Vow of Faithfulness class with WomanSpirit Reclamation. Guided by Patricia Lynn Reilly (of “Imagine a Woman” and A God Who Looks Like Me fame) and Monette Chilson, the class was based on Patricia’s book, I Promise Myself: making a commitment to yourself and your dreams. Structured as a seven week online women’s circle, the class took us on a deep dive into vow-making, culminating in a vow ceremony in which we made a public (to the class that is) declaration of our own vows to ourselves. As the class unfolded, I found myself reviewing past vows as well as sensing new vows bumping up against my consciousness, whispering to be heard.

Seeds of Promise, by Molly Remer

Imbolc brings an invitation into change,
to step into the forge of transformation,
to sink into the holy well of healing,
to open ourselves up to an evolving path
of growth and discovery.
It is now that we remember
we are our own seeds of promise
and while there is time yet
to stay in the waiting place
biding our time
and strengthening our resources
so we have what we need to grow,
soon we will feel the wheel
urging us onward,
the call to set forth
becoming unmistakable and strong.
Let us settle ourselves into center,
nestle into trust and determination,
and extend outward from here
feeling the sweet wind caress us
and the fiery forge beckon us
as we heed the summons to roll on,
the path opening up before us as we move.

The Crone of Winter, by Molly Remer

Just for right now,
let the swirling soften.
Exhale into the day,
wherever you are,
whatever is happening.
Allow a cloak of comfort
to settle across your shoulders
and enfold you
with peace and restoration.
Draw up strength from the earth
beneath your feet.
Settle one hand on your belly
and one hand on your heart.
Feel the pulse of the sacred
you always carry within.
Breathe in
and know you are loved.
Breathe out
and know you are free.
Trust that you are carried
and enfolded
as you go along your way.

A chill is in the air and Winter’s Queen has spread her gray cloak across the land. She has stilled the leaves and frosted the hills, has quieted the scurrying, and placed her fingers firmly on the pause. In this waiting place, hushed and chilled, we remember the preciousness of the light of renewal, we remember how essential the warmth of connection. Just as the earth does, let us, too,
lay aside what is unnecessary and draw close to one another once more, rekindling the fire of community, offering one another what nourishment we can. Let us enter a time of deep restoration with intention. Let us listen to the call of contemplation that twinkles in these dusky hours of replenishment and renewal. Let us pause and wait with grace.