A few years ago, I took a pilgrimage to Crete with the hope of meeting the Great Goddess. I was yearning from something undeniable, proof that would allow me to be a card-carrying believer. Although our group was led to powerful ancient sites where we enacted sincere rituals and dances, each time I failed to feel greeted by Her universal power.
Except once. And I almost missed it.
One day, a small but determined group of women took it upon us to co-lead a ritual at Skotino cave, an ancient site used for sacred purposes from the Bronze Age through the Roman era. The collaborative approach to facilitating a ritual was new to us, so we all felt especially ignited and giddy. Before we descended into the depths of the cave, I sang, (something I NEVER do). I had been provided lyrics, but I made up my own melody, which my fellow initiates sang back to me, as a call and response.
Continue reading “A Cave Story by Arianne MacBean”
A few years back, I turned forty years old. On the cusp of this landmark birthday, I wrote about the stigma of so-called midlife crises. I resisted the idea that changes associated with midlife should be mocked, when indeed many of those changes actually represent something like birth itself. I have come to think, however, that I was perhaps naïve in my wild embrace of midlife self-birthing. I still believe what I said before, basically, which was that midlife occasions opportunity for self-knowledge in a way that is largely inaccessible to babies, children, adolescents, and novice adults. What I could not have known a few years back is how much it costs to answer the waking self’s summons.
In my dream, two large cats are walking towards me on a sidewalk. They are large cats, not house cats, rather, lions or tigers and they are walking on two legs, standing up, like humans. Wait, their bodies are human, only their heads are feline. As they come closer, they appear to have top hats on their heads. They look like twins. I step aside and they stroll past me.
Last month I came face-to-face with a fisher.
The elevation difference brought us face-to-face. I found myself staring into a fierce, furry-brown, teddy bear face. It exuded a stout confidence and an instinctual danger thumped. Eye-to-eye, neither of us moved. What was this thing? Suddenly from the reservoir of memory a recognition emerged—it looked like a wolverine. But wolverines aren’t in these woods, right? Fifteen unflinching seconds passed and then it leapt back into the woods. I stood mesmerized by the beauty and surprise of it—this was not something ordinary. 
Feminism and Religion 