All the fear has left me now
I’m not frightened anymore
It’s my heart that pounds beneath my flesh
It’s my mouth that pushes out this breath
And if I shed a tear I won’t cage it
I won’t fear love
And if I feel a rage I won’t deny it
I won’t fear love.
~Sarah McLachlan

Okay. I admit it. Here. To you. Now.

I… am in love with… God.

I know, I know. The ‘G’ word scares people.

I could say Spirit, the Sacred, the Divine, the Universe, Nature. I have and I do and I will.

But, something in me melts when I acknowledge I am in love with God. This isn’t the love I always thought love was; it’s the deep humility and awe I feel each time I experience the love and grace available to me when I’m stumbling out of my own distractedness, and ‘fumbling towards ecstasy‘.

Even as I write the word God here, and share it with you, I can feel old thoughts and feelings of fear creep across my mind. Old feelings brought about by a system that turned God into something I felt I had to fear, because if I didn’t, I would find myself in some bad kinda way.

Last night, Jeff and I went to Inspiration point in Tilden Park, here in the Berkeley hills. We went to mark the Solstice, the longest day of the year, by sitting in nature. You know, the nature that is hills, trees, birds, sun, wind, moon. It’s easy to say, “I’m going to go spend time in nature”, as if somewhere I’ve forgotten I am nature, you’re nature, we’re all nature.

We found a bench where the view didn’t quite catch the sun setting, but we could see its orange glow spreading out across Mt. Tam and the Golden Gate.

From our spot, I breathed in the scent of the wild.

Two red-tail hawks, life mates, followed each other from tree top to tree top. Each time they sang out their tell-tale ‘Screeeee’, and each mate responded to the other, something in me also responded, as if I were also being called by this wild, untamable force that moves both the red-tail and me.

A gopher, close by to my right foot, chewed vigorously on the long grass, causing it (the grass) to disappear down into the earth. She was chewing with such intensity, such wild ferocity.

As the sun set, the slighty-over-a-half moon glowed intensely against the deep blue almost-night sky.

Something stirred deep within me. It always does when I open to the wild forces, the wilderness that we really live in…and that lives us. I am wild and feral, even though so much of my personality was created to keep this bit of reality away from my conscious awareness. After all, if I remember how wild I really am, what will I do? What kind of trouble will I create? What kind of joy might I know? What kind of emptiness and ecstasy might I fumble into? What kind of rage might I feel and express?

This wilderness is God. I know my old fears of a mean, sitting in a throne man, are the lies I was told. This wilderness out there, and in here, are God. This wild and woolly force, which is completely unknowable and yet totally available,  is God. This life force pulsing through my veins is God. It is powerful. It is fierce. It is loving.

I can’t say I don’t fear it or that I’m not frightened of it anymore. In fact, the opposite is true. The wilderness scares the bejeebers out of me. But this fear is not the fear I was taught about God. This fear is not about my sinfulness, my automatic ticket to hell simply because I am human…and female to boot.

This fear is that heart-thumping, breath-catching feeling when you know you’re being called to step into the wilderness within, that fullest place of empty that awaits.

This fear comes from my remembrance of wild, of passion, of unleashing. This wild has nothing to do with pretending to be an over-sexed psuedo-goddess that lives to please others. This wild will never be tamed. It can’t be tamed. This wild knows tears and rage. It doesn’t deny them.

This wild is calling me to know the tears and rage that remain buried deep in this body. It is calling me to know the shame and humiliation. It is calling me to know the love and the power that waits, just under the darkest of dark emotions.

All of this, all of everything, all of nothing is God. And even then, I don’t have a clue as to what God is. I just know the love.

And, you?

There is much rage hidden in women’s bodies.

Do you feel rage? Do you deny tears? Do you fear this wildness? Do you fear love?

And, if you are a man?

What can you share about rage? About the wilderness? About your own fear of tears?

I’d love to know…

This post on Wilderness is part of Dian Reid’s blog challenge, as well as Bindu Wiles #215800 blog challenge.

Yesterday, I met a man – one man of many.

He was smart, educated, friendly. He was young. He asked what I do for a living, as we were in a somewhat business setting.

I told him I am working to empower women, that I coach and teach courses about creativity, and that I’m writing a book about women, creativity, sensuality, pleasure and power.

He smiled back and seemed interested. He then asked why the book wasn’t for men, too. He said, “You’re losing half your audience if you leave men out.” or something to that effect. I smiled and thought about that for a moment. Yes, that would be half the population. It could be half my audience if the book spoke to both genders.

I asked him to elaborate. I asked him to share what he meant.

He then told me that when he first heard me speak about what I am doing, his first thought was that this was about Feminism and he felt himself recoil, feeling that he didn’t want to hear it. But, he stayed with me.

At first, I was so surprised that he felt this. I told him so. I felt into what I had said, looking for where I might have interjected any sort of rejection. I couldn’t find anything, but then so much can be unconscious.

I then spoke to him about how I see things. That feminism isn’t about rejection. It is about honoring.

…

Feminism is  about women being recognized, witnessed, honored, respected, and treated as full human beings by all. It does not reject, it honors.

He then said something to the effect of, “You know, I ‘d love to talk to you more about this. I have a group of friends, men, that would love to talk about this.”

We continued to talk about women and men, and about how things can be generational – how women and men from different generations see this all differently. Makes total sense. And then our conversation ended.

::

My Heart Knows

As the day came to an end, I continued to consider our exchange. I became very curious about this sense of recoiling, rejecting, ‘othering’ that happens between many men and women, even women and women, when we speak of feminism.

How do we work to end the institutionalized forms of discrimination in the world that so inhumanely treat women and children when there are so many tender feelings that get triggered between us?

I’ve been working to separate out my anger at how things are from the desire of the mind to reject, to separate, to make wrong. Anger can be a fiery force that fuels change. It’s not bad. If anger is here, it must be felt so it moves through. And as it moves through, it can fuel my work to make things better. But anger projected onto others just pushes away. It rejects. I know it because I’ve done it over and over and over. It doesn’t feel good.

My heart certainly doesn’t reject. My heart knows this is about wholeness, about the basic goodness of all beings. My heart doesn’t fear. It longs to connect, to heal, to create something new where all are honored. My heart knows this fiery force of anger can be a positive force, bringing forth a creative power from within.

My mind tends to ‘other’…meaning, it sees other people as something separate. When it fears, it wants to compare pain, compare injustices, compare anything just so it feels separate and better, and therefore safe.

…

Finding balance within ourselves

I looked in this man’s eyes and saw such a willingness to listen, to hear, to consider, to talk. He came back into the conversation, after feeling the quick pangs of wanting to reject. What a beautiful moment that was.

I know our hearts were listening to each other. Somewhere inside we actively chose to stay in it, to listen, to hear, to witness. And in this moment, my mind softened into my heart. I could see the humanness in him and his desire to know and understand, and his desire to be heard.

Somewhere inside of me, I reject my own masculine qualities. And, I reject that I am capable of heinous acts as well. Somewhere inside, I don’t want to see. This man’s gift to me was just this…he didn’t reject me. And in this act, something inside me was healed. I can’t speak for him, but I hope he felt a similar sense of acceptance and experienced being heard, witnessed, honored and respected.

…

Listening into Liberation

I’m going to take him up on his offer to meet with me, to hold conversation, to listen without separating and rejecting, to hear with an open heart.

Somewhere within, I know, we women must make the move to liberation – a liberation that begins from within, disentangling ourselves from the beliefs we hold that keep us snared and entangled in the old thought structures and paradigms that required the word feminism to come into being in the first place.

The real question is, how can we move toward this liberation, reclaiming the feminine inside and the feminine out there,  without rejecting the masculine out there and the masculine within?

Your joy is my joy. Your sorrow is my sorrow. Your success is my success. There is no separation. There is just One.

Red Canna by Georgia O'Keeffe

::

I feel
there is something
unexplored about a woman
that only a woman
can explore.
~ Georgia O’Keeffe

::

Something unexplored…

About a woman…

That only a woman can explore…

::

What is unexplored?
about you?
about me?
about us?
about woman?

If we were to embark on an adventure of woman,
which way would we go?

::

This is woman’s terrain.

A place woman knows, but doesn’t yet know.

It’s where soft petals open to the light,
where sweet fragrance fills the air,
where we receive that which our hearts have longed for.

::

It’s right here…right under our noses.

Let’s discover together.

There is pleasure in numbers.

::

A Year of Great Promise, (C) Shiloh Sophia McCloud

There is a Hassidic saying which goes: “When the moon shall shine as bright as the sun, the Messiah will come.”

Woman through her struggle to understand herself and to articulate the highest values of the feminine principle, could begin to make the moon shine so that it softens the sun-brightness of our present consciousness. In accepting her depression, her suffering, her loneliness, her longing to outgrow the inarticulateness and powerlessness of her past existence, she may accomplish something truly heroic and extraordinary for life, something which humanity in centuries to come will recognise and cherish. Each woman who gives birth to herself and responds to what life is asking her to accomplish, contributes to the survival of our species and the diminishment of human suffering.

~Anne Baring

::

Over the past week, I have written about despair and grief, emotions that are far from the flowers and chocolates of Valentine’s Day. And, many of my friends are experiencing a depth of emotion, similar to what I have written.

Deep emotions are part of our experience as women – and, perhaps, it is becoming so every day that passes. Why so, you ask?

As Anne Baring writes on her site, at this time in history, women are birthing a new kind of consciousness. They are vessels for the shift that is occurring

Women share a different kind of love, one that isn’t always reflected out there in the culture. When you know, and feel, this love, it changes your life. May you always know this love is here, as a deep well to draw from, especially in times when you are polishing the moon within you.

::

So, this is a valentine to you, dear woman, dear friend.

May you know the beauty of your own soul.

May you give birth to the radiant You that has been there all along guiding you to this day.

May you trust in Her voice as she calls you to listen to your own deepest wisdom.

May you come to know that you are part of a long history of women who love life and will do anything to nourish and encourage its growth and emergence.

May you see yourself as a Mother, through and through, whether or not you have ever given birth to babies, and may you call forth this Ancient Motherhood within, to love yourself wholly and deeply, first, so you have the energy and strength to share your love with others.

May you always shower yourself with love and compassion, trusting that you are wholly, and holy, female, just as you are.

::

Image courtesy of Shiloh Sophia McCloud. Her paintings are remarkable, as is her work in the world.

Heart of Midlothian by Niffty on Flickr

image attribution

::

Each day of December, I am being  moved to post by Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Today is Day 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year?

::

I do love nice stationery, but this morning I don’t feel compelled to write on this. What I am compelled to do is celebrate and thank. This comes from two things: Gwen Bell’s post on How to Write Non-Digital Thank You Notes and my post from yesterday about social web moments and women connecting.

After I wrote yesterday’s post where I shared about the wonderful connections with women I have made during this year, I felt an urge to celebrate as many of these women in today’s post by thanking as many as I can for the gifts they’ve given me by sharing their personal experiences so vulnerably and beautifully. These women have also shared by coming to my blog, reading and leaving a thank you note to me in the form of a comment – something that lifted me and encouraged me to write with more courage and vulnerability myself.

This is my digital thank you note to you beautiful women. This is my celebration of you!

So, in no particular order at all, here’s to you beautiful women. I celebrate you and your voices of vulnerability and truth!:

Julie Jordan Scott: Passionately Creating

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: The Barefoot Heart

Karen Caterson: Square Peg People

Kathy Loh: Full Moon Path

Lena West: Xyno Media

Amy Oscar: Story, Spirit, Seed

Emma James: Pleasure Notes

Kelly Diels: Cleavage

Gwen Bell: Big Love in a Small World

Mynde Mayfield: m Squared

Bindu Wiles: The Awakened Life

Marjory Mejia: Sacred Flow

Lindsey Mead: A Design So Vast

Alana Sheeren: Whole Self Coach

Floreta: The Solitary Panda

RandiBuckley: Randi Buckley Coaching

Carrie Bouler: Different World

Dian Reid: Authentic Realities

Olive & Hope

Chris Zydel: Creative Juices Arts

Lisa Lauffer: Deep Waters Coaching

Alicia McLucas: Life Coach

Kate T.W.: Amusing Fire

Mary Liepold: Peace X Peace

Kate Moller: Team Northrup

Danielle Vieth: Team Northrup

::

If you feel compelled, take a moment to check out these beautiful women and the work they do in the world. It is an honor and pleasure to know each of you. I look forward to our deepening friendship in this coming new decade.

In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, the adult female grows fierce when the cubs are threatened. And we….? ~Marianne Williamson

We women are protectors of the children and of the earth. Look at the love in this woman for her child.  You can feel it.

In the Iroquois tradition, it was women who held the key responsibility of deciding whether or not to go to war, for they considered, fully, the effects of war on the children, on the generations ahead, and on the earth itself. We love our children. But we, today’s women, have been deeply conditioned out of trusting our own instincts, our feelings, and our fierceness.

Earlier this year, there was a story in the NY Times about women in India who could not feed their children. I remember reading it, and looking at the accompanying photos of these beautiful women with their starving children, and realizing just how deeply we have been conditioned to believe we have no power. What stopped these women from doing ANYTHING they could to feed their starving children? When I wondered this, I turned the question back on myself. What stopped me from doing anything to feed my starving children and grandchildren? It’s not that they don’t have enough food. They do. For now. But, and this is the important message that is now coming out loud and clear, we women know deep inside that there is something horribly wrong with the way things are in the world. As Marianne Williamson expressed, our cubs are threatened. We are all threatened. We feel it in our bodies, for we feel the wounding of the earth and all children in our bodies.

As I read this article, I felt rage that these women had no hope to feed their children, and complete wonder at how our conditioning is so strong as to kill the instinct in us to do whatever it takes to get food in the mouths of our babies.

A beautiful woman, Diana Stone, has written a book that will be released in the spring of next year. She came to speak to our Institute of Sacred Activism workshop in September. She told us that the Iroquois have said that women must stand and speak. It is time for women to stand and speak.

The time is now. I have heard this too many times to be able to hold back any longer.

The time is now. For women to speak. For women to stand and speak, to voice what they are feeling.

The time is now for me to speak, as a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother.

We are facing this challenge each and every day. What greater challenge could there be than the end of the world in the way we have known it to be. I stepped my toe into the waters with my post on Living Gratefully. But that was not enough.

Enough is enough. I spent the afternoon, yesterday, with two of my three grandchildren. When I look at them, I wonder what kind of world they will live in. I wonder how long they will get to live. I wonder how much suffering they will endure, simply because we, people who have the ability to do something about the state of affairs we find ourselves in, have done nothing to really stop the anguish of the earth, to stop our own greed, to stop our separate ways.

Yesterday, I received this long quote from a dear friend. It is an excerpt from a book she is reading, Wisdom’s Daughters (2002), which contains the words of Women Elders of Native America. The woman whose wisdom follows is Vickie Downey of the Tewa Tesugue Pueblo.

It is the time of the feminine. With a woman that is what we feel. When I look around at the different women, I see sadness and a heaviness within themselves. What they are experiencing is what the earth is experiencing — her sadness and heaviness because of the way her children are living today. Women, they have that; the feeling is there in their hearts more so than the male people, cause the male is always doing things. The male also has to realize that he has a female part to him and he has to start feeling that same feeling.

Women have to be recognized. The words of women have to be recognized. The women will come out. It might be prophesied or doesn’t have to be prophesied, but the feeling is so strong that women will come out and voice their feelings. Whether people want to hear it or not, it is going to come because it is meant to be. It is that time.

Most women can’t comprehend what it is. They feel it. It is like a depression so they go to psychiatrists, therapists, trying to figure it out. Or it turns into physical ailments. Feelings into physical ailments. So they don’t know. They know something is going on but they cannot pinpoint exactly what it is.

As people, as native people, we are trying to do our best to tell the world this is what is happening to you. This is what is happening to us. This is what is happening to the earth. No matter how many words we give them, how many books we give them, how much information we give them, it won’t help them until they finally decide “well, I am going to accept this. I am sick. I am a sick society. I am a sick world. I am a sick person.”

When we do that we can heal. Then we turn around and we help each other. Then there will not be homelessness. Then we won’t have hunger. We won’t have wars….

So, the message is coming through loud and clear. This is the challenge, and it is here, now.

The Dalai Lama recently surprised listeners when he said, “The world will be saved by western women.” We women in the west, have the more power, resources, and connection to each other than women have had anywhere in the world for many, many centuries.

All over the world, now, women have the ability to voice what is happening, to stand and speak, whether it be to each other, to their neighbors, to their government, or to each other through. We can speak through many means, which blogging is but one.

Two great quotes have been swirling in my head for some time, now.

You must learn not to be careful. Diane Arbus

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you! Isadora Duncan

These words take me back inside, where my feelings and instincts as a woman reside. My fierce love was tamed, made dormant and silent. But we were once wild here, and we are still wild within.

What will it take to stand and speak, to grow fierce and vocal?

Image by Yogendra174, Flickr

This post is part of The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge (by blogger Gwen Bell):
Day 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

“The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.” Jimmy Carter

Wow. When I first read the title of the July 12th Observer Op-Ed by President Jimmy Carter, “The Words of God do not Justify Cruelty to Women“, I didn’t quite know what to expect.

As I read the piece, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A man who was president of the United States stepping into the minefield of women’s rights with courage and conviction, enough conviction to leave his church of six decades, the Baptist Church.

As I let what President Carter had written seep into my awareness, I felt something hard to put into words. It’s the feeling of having another human being express, aloud, something that I have known to be true, all my life, deep in the recesses of my being, even though the established ideology of the many cultures of the world denied its truth. Here was a man speaking it with such strong conviction and courage.

All my life I have witnessed this falsity played out, the falsity that women are lesser beings. It is a belief that is ingrained in the culture I live in, and in many of the cultures of the world. I imagine there are still some small pockets of indigenous people who continue to honor women as equals to men, encouraging the gifts women bring, as well as those of men. But, I grew up in a culture where this falsity was a part of the system, and so, I internalized this belief. I internalized the sense of not being as good as, not deserving the same opportunitties, not, not, not …

I grew up as a middle-class white girl in the United States where I had so many more options that others. I had, and have, more options than so many women and men; yet, and here is the crazy-making part, I witnessed the gap between what I was told and what I experienced.  If the world believed women were lesser beings, then I must have been crazy for knowing, and believing, something different. I internalized a sense of distrust of my own knowing. I internalized all the crazy-making thoughts that seemed to support the cultural belief that women are second-class. At a young age, I adopted the belief that the world around me fiercely held to.

My process of awakening to an innate sense of self-worth and self-trust as a woman has taken decades. It has been necessary to look deeply within, to inquire into my own self-limiting beliefs, as well as those beliefs held by the culture I live in. It has been critical that I ask myself, with fierce truth-telling, if what I hear and see reflected out there is real, is true. In this process, I have come up against all of my internalized beliefs about my worth and the worth of women. I saw where I was telling myself all the lies that I had been told. I came to understand that those lies were illusion. I came to know that I am created in the image of an intelligence far greater than anything my mind could comprehend, an intelligence that does not create flawed and sinful beings. I came to see the beautiful light and life that lies within the female body.

More recently, I came to understand that men are not the enemy, women are not the enemy, there are no enemies. We are all part of the whole. We are all dis-illusioned, conditioned by beliefs that keep us separate and at odds with each other; somewhere within, we know these are illusion. And, we are all capable of seeing clearly, if we choose to question our own belief structure with fierce truth-telling.

Fast forward to yesterday: here was Jimmy Carter finally, in plain and simple English, saying what I know and feel as true, know by way of my own experience, that women are not lesser beings. A feeling of rightness and peace came over me, a rightness that happens when what you see and hear outside matches what you know inside.

You might read President Carter’s Op-Ed, and even this post, and say, “Of course women are equal”. But, it is one thing to know this intellectually, but another thing to know it emotionally, to no longer believe those old feelings of low self-esteem and low self-worth, or to no longer feel a sense of being better than or less than. When I read his piece, his words resonated with what I feel inside.

I feel something big is shifting in the world. I believe in the power of the truth. If we wake up out of this illusion that women are lesser beings, and realize mutual respect and honoring between the genders, this same feeling of rightness, of peace, can pervade the world we live in. And, perhaps we can realize true honor and respect for all of life, the earth, animals, plants, ocean…all living beings.

Thank you, President Carter, for taking this courageous action, and speaking it out into the world, for in your speaking it aloud, we take one more step forward to a world where men and women bow down to each other with mutual respect, dignity and honor.

Photo credit: The Carter Center

WOESER, a Tibetan poet and blogger, is struggling for visibility. In today’s New York Times This Saturday Profile, Woeser (going by a single name as is tradition in Tibet) is highlighted as a Chinese woman of Tibetan ancestry who discovered her roots and moved back to Tibet. She began to research the history between Tibet and China and began blogging and writing about what she saw was happening. In 2003, her first book, Notes on Tibet, was published and quickly sold it. But before the second run could be printed, the Chinese government banned the book.

Needless to say, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to silence her. They have blocked her blogs and her travels to Tibet are scrutinized.

From the Times, ‘Despite her relatively high profile both inside and outside China, she is well aware that her liberty is fragile. Since 2004 she has been waiting for a passport, which would allow her to travel and speak abroad.

“I feel so insecure inside,” she said. “I feel like I’m sitting on the edge of a cliff and I could fall down at any moment.”’

I feel great respect for Woeser for her willingness to write the truth as she sees it, regardless of the dangers she faces in direct response of her doing so. She is honoring what she knows to be true from within her, finding the courage to keep going in the face of strong condemnation from the Chinese government.

More and more women are finding the courage to step forth and speak out. I feel it is of utmost importance that we support these women in solidarity…all of us, both women and men. Women such as Woeser are exhibiting leadership of a new kind, leadership that comes from listening to what one knows to be true deep within and having the courage to express it from the heart.

What can we do to support Woeser in her vision to travel and speak in other parts of the world? I welcome your comments.

If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together
purely and simply for the benefit of mankind,
it will be a power such as the world has never known.
~Matthew Arnold

What will it take for women to come together in such a way? It’s already happening all over the world. In small ways, and in some very major undertakings, women are listening to the voice that is calling them forth to speak truth and to say, “Enough is Enough”. What if we were all to speak up and speak out, and come together “purely and simply for the benefit of mankind? What do you have to say? Who can you bring together? When will you do it?

What is the source of our first suffering?
It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak.
It was born the moment we accumulated silent things within us.
~Gaston Bachelard

I just re-connected with one of my best friends from my childhood. We grew up in Palo Alto, California before Silicon Valley came upon the scene. If you have ever been to the Bay Area, you know the geographic beauty that we enjoy here. It is a beautiful place with an amazingly vibrant and diverse culture. Growing up here was a treasure in itself. I remember days of riding my ten-speed in the hills that rise up between Palo Alto and the coastline. I remember growing up with people who were intelligent and thoughtful about the world we live in.

Just yesterday, this best friend sent me a picture. She has been scanning old pictures and came across this one. I am on the left. Just seeing this image brought back a flood of feelings and memories of a time in my life when I felt so connected to the world around me, especially nature through all the time I spent outdoors. As I thought back to this time, I realized how important these years are. It’s during these times that we have a glimpse into our deeper nature and a sense of our place in the world. Once we grow up and move out into the world, and into making a living, most of us lose contact with our own internal knowing, because we believe we have to conform to our culture and society to make it. And, we believe that conformity requires letting go of who we really are and what we truly want to do with our lives. It’s not that we consciously choose to go against our authenticity, but rather we are conditioned to do so.

Seeing this picture and remembering that time in my life, with all the friends and experiences it held, re-affirmed who I am and what compels me to action today in my life. I know that my work with women to awaken our connection to the Earth and our connection to each other is exactly what I knew somewhere deep within me when this picture was taken.

Think back to your youth, those years when you wondered what your life would hold. What did you envision. Who did you see yourself to be? Are you honoring that deepest place within you, that place that speaks to you quietly, but insistently?