Serving Spirit by Wendy Griffin

Wendy Griffin, Cherry Hill Seminary To me, it isn’t the belief that is meaningful, it is the feeling I get in those magical moments when I am connected to spirit.

When I was young, my mother owned a girls’ camp on the shores of a string of small lakes in Northern Wisconsin. From the age of 2 until I was 16, I spent every summer surrounded by silver birch trees and strong women. We lived in Army surplus tents and learned to ride horses and paddle canoes, build campfires and treasure the female spirit. Sunday evenings we would walk two by two singing through the forest down to the lake, where we would sit on pine logs on a little point of land between two shores and listen to the waves lap against sand as my mother read to us from Gilbran and her favorite poets. Those were our “Sunday vespers services.”

So I was raised on a Goddess path, although neither my mother nor I knew it then.

I had no interest in religion, which to me was Big Daddy in the Sky. It never occurred to me that what I felt in the forest had anything to do with religion, and I thought being spiritual meant that one prayed a lot and didn’t have any fun. When I left home at 18 and moved to Greenwich Village, I left the feelings I had those summers, what I know now was the spiritual part of me, behind. The world seemed full of wonderful adventures, and I wanted to have my share. Continue reading “Serving Spirit by Wendy Griffin”