goddess centered spirituality – Feminism and Religion

Goddess Qi Gong as a New Compass

There is a deep and insidious taboo around ageing that leaves so many of our experiences as women unspoken, as if the physical, emotional, hormonal and mental shifts of growing older should be suffered alone and hidden behind doors.

What if we can turn midlife into a positive initiation that we share together? Would it be possible to learn to read our body and psyche differently? Might practising conscious movement literally help us move through this phase? And what would happen if we re-orient ourselves towards the many faces of the Goddess?

Sometimes I wonder what I do in a year. Then I remember that I watch nighthawks migrate and coneflowers go to seed. I find Monarch caterpillars small and brave on persistent milkweed. I travel over miles of stone and moss, sometimes on my knees, seeking mushrooms and cackling with glee. I kneel in the violets, purple and white and yellow, and inhale great breaths of wild plum. I keep dates with as many sunsets as I can. I walk and walk and walk, carry leaves of mullein, crow feathers, bits of chicory, coreopsis, evening primrose, and wild rose home to press into the pages of my prayers. I pick blackberries with the bees and feel butterfly tongues on the skin of my wrist. I reach for wild raspberries under both thunder and sun. I slide down hillsides with muddy feet and antlers in my hands. I make eye contact with hummingbirds and turtles and deer and raccoons. I watch both fawns and nestlings grow. I learn how woodpeckers talk to their babies and the purring sound crows make at the compost pile when they think they’re unobserved. I lose and recollect myself more times than I can count, hold myself steady and let myself dissolve. I create new things with a wild veracity of devotion that sometimes threatens to consume me. And, I learn over and over again every day, how much it matters to bear witness, to what means to sit with myself in the temple of the ordinary each day, calling my attention back, recommitting to being here for it all, settling back into center again and again, rebuilding and renewing, witnessing and weaving, losing and finding, laughing and crying, refusing to surrender my joy and trusting that somehow it matters to be here, to see everything I can.