A Little Nap

Sometimes, a little nap is all you need.  All you need to remember that life is not hopeless.  That all your future choices are not laid out in plain sight like cards on a table.  There is still mystery.  There is still a bend in the road.

"Oh, there's another bend in the road at their end," answered Anne lightly.  "I've no idea what may be around it - I don't want to have.  It's nicer not to know."

A little nap is sometimes all that's needed to put things in perspective.

Thank GOD for little naps.  Sometimes.

Lovely Summer Things

The last time I had a free summer, I had so many plans!  See below:  Summer 2011

This is what I want my summer to be:  beaches and bikes and bright moments.
Feel free to join me in any of the following:
1) volunteering at a beer festival.
2) going to the beach.
3) reading in parks.
4) browsing farmers' markets
5) dressing up
6) dressing down
7) CAMPING
8) taking dance classes
9) going to a play
10) barbequeing

Then I broke my arm while biking downtown and I felt like a lot of this went down the drain.  It was pretty defeating.  I don't remember much about that summer beyond that.

Let's see.  Summer 2012 was Sound of Music.  Sitting with nuns in a hot cafeteria, watching the beautiful days roll by and feeling cheated of my outdoor time.  I thought Summer 2013 would be better since rehearsals for Steel Magnolias would start later on, but somehow I found myself driving to rehearsal in June and wishing that I didn't have to spend my evenings in a cold church basement and my hikeable weekends in Vancouver.

Part of the problem is that I always have so many expectations when summer rolls around.  I set myself up for disappointment in a lot of ways.  In Summer 2013 I did some wonderful things!  I had two weeks off and for one of them I went to my cousin's wedding in France!!  But I was really unsatisfied in general.  I had a lofty list in my mind and when I reviewed it in September, too many things were left unchecked.  It was sad, really.  I let my fantasy summer make my actual summer seem disappointing.

So.  This summer.  2014.  I do have plans.  Lovely plans.  But I am also aware that I have a tendency to get ahead of myself and become unsatisfied with what is actually happening.  To combat that, I'm maintaining a list of lovely summer things as I do them.  Look at these lovely things!

1.  Biked to work (and home!)
2.  Early morning breakfasts with Mom and/or Dad
3.  Evening walks to Multnomah Village
4.  Spontaneous happy hours with co-workers
5.  Family time - walked the parade! and jumped in a pool!
6.  Watched Orange is the New Black and didn't even feel guilty because I know I'm active enough.
7.  Late night heart-to-hearts with close friends.
8.  Watered my garden!
9.  Read in the sun in my garden
10.  Gone out to eat with Peter

All good things.  And more to come!

Um ... no thanks.

A few months ago I saw this book called, She:  Understanding Feminine Psychology, and I was super excited until I saw that it was written by one Robert A. Johnson.  I don't need to read anything else about what men think about women.  I want to read what women think about women!  Also, this book I found today at the library was hilarious to me: 

Pass!

Anyway, many men are fabulous writers.  We all know this.  But when it comes to women, I don't care what they have to say.  Not right now, anyway. 

Gathering and Re-Gathering

There's a physical thrill that runs through me when the moon returns.  "Hello Lady." I might say.  Or even, "Dear Mother, there you are!"  It is such sweet relief to see that round curve of her appear above me.  The moon and her cycles, her veiling and unveiling, are such powerful reminders that we are coming around again.  There is always another opportunity to journey toward fullness, or to descend into darkness or introversion for a time.  She returns.  She rises and reveals herself again, in her own time, at her own pleasure.

I needed this gentle nudge tonight.  I am struggling to free myself from the mindset that life is a straight line.  I reject that!  I am tired of this feeling that there is only one shot at each hour, each day, each minute, and if I use that hour in a way that is wasteful or unproductive then it is lost forever.  That is such a useless and self-defeating way to think.  And I fall prey to it every day, goddamnit.

Now, I am gathering my body to myself, patting it down and reminding it of our power.  There is no more impatience, no more frustration that I let it all fall away today, that I lost that hard-won centeredness in one fell swoop.  There is only the gathering and the re-gathering.  The journey once again toward fullness.

Hello Lady.  I'm so happy to see you again.

Head up, eyes open.

I've been reminded recently of how wide open my life is.  There's this beautiful Clarissa quote (there's always a beautiful Clarissa quote):

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

There's a sense that my life is moving once again.  There's another bend in the road as my old friend Anne would say.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. - Kahlil Gibran

Part of my nerdy quote joy is finding connections.  I love this idea of blossoming into your life, of unfurling.  There's a sense of sweet anticipation to it.  So here I am, head up, eyes open, hiking happily toward that bend in the road.

Quoting!

I don't know why I love quotes so much!  Yes, I do.  It's because someone else has looked inside of me and said, here, let me put that thing into actual words rather than colors or feelings or sounds.  Or it's because I read something and I have that wonderful "aha!" or "yeah, yeah!" or "click!" moment.

Did you know that the "yeah, yeah!" or "click!" moment is what women's consciousness raising groups were all about?  Those moments when some other person shares from her own experience and something inside of you rises up and says, "YEAH, YEAH!"  I love those moments.  I live for those moments.  It's what I'm looking for when I read about women.

Back to quotes.  I have my little quote board to the side here so I can dip back into them at any point.  They allow me moments of divine clarity.  I eat them up.  Recently I read a book called Women Who Run With The Wolves by a woman named Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  She's a Jungian analyst and a cantadora, a storyteller.  In this book she unwraps old stories and pieces together the bones to help women rediscover their wild nature.  It's beautiful, helpful, fascinating and true.  Man, I love books.  This woman is also a quote machine!

Behold!  Clarissa gets her own quote board in this post:

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” 

“Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.” 

Clarissa shakes me up.  Clarissa makes me sit still.  Today, I'm thankful for the hard work that other women have done that allow me this moment on my couch or on my computer, going, "YEAH, YEAH!"

Searching for Sophia

The other day I read about a thought experiment at Harvard Divinity School in 1973, which was intended to raise male consciousness of how women feel in a world (or a religion) where language reflects only one gender.  The professor asked each student to imagine that he was the lone male in a classroom full of women in a completely feminine institution where he was expected to understand that feminine words apply equally to both men and women.

How would you feel if, "every time a professor says 'womankind' she means, of course, 'all humanity'?  When one enrolls in a seminar on 'The Doctrine of Woman' the professor intends at least to deal with men also.  When one sings of the Motherhood of God and the Sisterhood of Woman, one breathes a prayer that all men as well as women will come to experience true sisterhood."

Sometimes I have conversations in which I feel that I have to convince the person I'm talking to that not having inclusive religious language is harmful to women, that the patriarchy is real and that it gets me down.  After reading about this thought experiment, I see how absurd the situation would be if the roles were flipped.  Men, as they are today, would not stand for this.  They would be up in arms!  And yet women live with it everyday, many of them quietly, not realizing that there could be something else.  Many of them not wanting anything else.  But I do.  I want something else.  There should be an inclusive religious language that allows both men and women to relate to both male and female terms and images of the Divine.  Now, of course the Divine is neither male nor female; so really, what does it matter?  Ask the men in this thought experiment if they thought it mattered.  Amiright?

Now, it is a whole other conversation to talk about the difference between men and women and how much of one there really is.  Obviously, individuals cannot be defined solely by their gender.  But we cannot deny that our historical and cultural realities have been worlds apart.  And we women and our stories have been sadly misrepresented and overlooked.

I grew up learning the sacred stories of men and I believed that they applied to everyone, to "mankind."  I've since felt the loss of the point of view of women in those stories.  Where is the story of how Sarah felt and what she said when Abraham went to sacrifice her only child?  How did she relate to God?  What did she consider holy?  What were her sacred stories?  Where are the female sacred stories?

I want to learn all about Durga, who saved the world from the Buffalo Demon, first by cutting off his head and when that didn't defeat him, finally by piercing him through the heart.  I want to learn about the Shekinah, the female face of God in Jewish mysticism, and how she lead the Israelites through the desert.  I want to know more about Jesus-Sophia, Wisdom in human form.

It's not just women that need these stories.  When our perspective, our innate strengths are lost or dismissed, everyone suffers.  Men who are more relational and less success-oriented suffer.  Women who feel they must become men in order to compete for the things they want suffer.  Children suffer when they learn that linear thinking is the only way to be smart.

This conversation is huge and many wonderful writers have weighed in on it in countless venues and from many perspectives.  I am not capable of, nor do I wish  to tackle every element of this discussion.  I just want to know:

Where are the female sacred stories?