god is in my belly

I hear this “God, as you understand it to be….” disclaimer these days, in an effort to appeal to the more non-denominational types. The non-denomination specific population.

So, there are folks who believe god to be an all -knowing creator/provider to the universe. There are folks who believe god to be the old uncle who died in 1967 but answers with a strong wind when a question is cast his way. Some people believe god is in the details. I’d love to pass out questionnaires …..

“Describe god, as you understand it to be”

Tonight I might describe god as the fire in the gut. The heat of digestion, the functioning emotional core. A clarity. And like all the gods as everyone understands it to be, all over the world, ever, my gut / my god, is far from on fire right now. The ashes are damp. Getting moldy, even. Everything I’ve eaten the past few days, and against my better judgement, sits like glue in my gut.

All the things I should have said but pussed out? They settle, deflated, and take up space. They stick like chewing gum in the digestion tract.
All the good ideas (divine ideas, really) that go left undone? They circle around in the bloodstream, manic-like, disrupting what is supposed to have it’s own miraculous order.
All the babies that never happened? The empty space they’ve left behind? Little pockets of reminisce, wondering, each having left its scar in that emotional core.

So, I light candles and I breathe fire. I stop the pacing and remember to dance. I remember not to name things and I remember that divinity usually happens on a microscopic scale.

I start strategizing good flora.

Voice Lessons

I've been beaten before by silence.
Old wounds are healing in the riot of my mind
and in the thunder of my feet on the ground.
The grizzled scar tissue that remains
is the conviction
~the dust that rises from the dance.
Memories are the reverberations
of second thought
~of knowing better this time around
~of choosing noise over nothing,
song over silence,
action over acquiesence.

Voice Lessons II

For a really long time, when I was in danger in my dreams, being grabbed, pulled, or having to physically defend myself, I was unable to do so. Just as a scream was going to break through into sound, I would lose my voice. It would deflate. If I needed to physically fight back, I would see myself drawing back my fist and even propelling it into a swing but in mid-air my arm would turn to lead and fall to my side, ineffective. The helplessness of these things has sometimes haunted me.

Last night, in my dream, a man approached me from behind with intentions of pulling me away into that always unknown place of danger. I started that process of screaming, expecting to fall short again, but this time it was like the dormant volcano that makes a liar out of the village people. Sound came out in powerful and welcoming screams. My conscious and subconscious merged in celebration until I was just standing there on the street screaming because I could. And then I moved on to the next part of my dream, a luxury I haven't yet experienced.

The Day She Discovered Dandelions

My religion is in every strangers breath.

My religion is in my daughter's eyes,

her hands curled in mine,

in the bloodline of time.

My religion is in the first snowfall,

bending branches

with quiet white.

My religion runs in the creeks of melting snow,

drifting

downstream.

It's in the rains that come with spring.

My religion is in a silent nod of understanding,

within the circles of friendships gathering.

My religion is in the winds that blow the treetops,

the kailedescope of swaying pines

and the day she discovered dandelions.

It's in the wish at season's end

as she blows her dandelion to the wind.

Spoons

Reading Ann Lamott has helped me to not cringe at the word 'god'. Her writing has made the whole thing somehow more palatable. Maybe it's because she herself doesn't even know how the whole thing happened ~ becoming a Christian. Maybe it's because she's so crass and a Christian that she just seems more likeable. She's not your average Christian. She has a sense of humor about the whole thing, swears alot, is honest about all her ugly feelings and she takes the word of Jesus very literally. So literally, in fact, that she finds herself trying really really really hard to accept and even love George W. Bush. And that is some hard work. I don't know if even Jesus, himself, could manage that task.

There have been many times I pick up a book or land on a Christian radio station and have put it back down or hit the "seek" button because there is some kind of reference to "His love" or "His ways" and maybe it's the patriarchy of the whole thing or maybe it's just those spokespeople of his coming back to haunt me, but if I'm going to try to envision some holy spirit that has a hand in the workings of the cosmos, I want that hand to be free of gender. A genderless hand. A genderless god. Is it Ann Lamott that sees god as a big, robust black woman and Alice Walker that envisions god as a little boy? I envision god and I still just get a little shifty. I envision god and I get pissed that his counter balance got such the short end of the stick. Ani Difranco sings "I had to leave the house of God because the cross replaced the wheel and the goddesses were out in the garden with the plants that nourish and heal."

There have been enough injustices in the name of god that I don't want to put myself on that side. And at the same time, some of the nicest people I know are some of the most devout Christians.

Ok. I only know two. Three if you count Ann Lamott, but I don't know her personally. But I am grateful for those that I know. They keep my bitterness at bay.

It saddens me that there is such divisiveness between the Christian religion and Paganism. Maybe there is a Welsh ancestor raising her fists somewhere in my DNA that is just livid about the fact that her traditions, over centuries, have been swept under the hearthrug ~ and then the broom hung outside as evidence of the witch within the household.

I find myself trying to balance, this time of year, what it means to truly honor the Solstice for what it is and, at the same time, relax enough to allow Ella her Christmas fun. Merging the two has become an artwork.

Look at the different Christian holidays that conveniently merge with Pagan holidays. The Christmas tree, an evergreen, symbol of life in the dormancy of winter. The lights that are strung during the holiday, marking the Sun getting that much closer to the Earth, the days getting just a bit longer with the Winter Solstice.

And Easter, or Eoster, or Equinox. Exactly what does a rabbit have to do with the rising of Christ? And the egg? Both are symbols of fertility, of the Earth warming and things coming back to life. Culturally, these symbols have stayed with us and found their home within the context of Christian traditions and so few people take the time to trace the roots of their meanings, to wonder how they're related to those three angels outside the tomb.

I don't want to feel like I'm on one side or the other just as I don't want to exclusively consider myself a feminist. I'm not a particular fan of any title that ends in an "ist". If I must claim one for myself, I'd have to use the term "humanist", but then, what about the other species and the planet itself, bearing the burden of us humans?

Three winters ago, Starhawk came to Vermont to host a talk, a ceremony and a Spiral Dance. Prior to the dance we started what's called a circle song. It's a song that repeats itself over and over, the group taking on harmonies as we go.

Breath by Breath
Thread by Thread
Conjure Justice
Weave our Web

We are a Circle
Within a Circle
WIth no beginning
And Never Ending

As we continued to sing this chant, there were a few people walking around with baskets in their hands, passing out balls of yarn about the size of one's fist. When everyone had their ball of yarn we danced, ending up in a circle of people, still holding the balls of yarn. We proceeded, while holding onto one end, to hurl the ball across the room where it would be caught and then hurled again elsewhere. There were about fifty to seventy people in the room and by the time the balls of yarn were completely unwound, there was a web in the center of the circle almost twenty five feet in diameter. Small children starting crawling underneath it in wonderment. Adults began to join in. Starhawk spoke of the web we weave each day by the choices we make and connections we make. By our intentions and our perceptions. In all of our hands, between two fingers, we still held the initial peice of our yarn. To understand the impact of our decisions on the webs we weave, we then had to work our way backwards, following the yarn to the other end. In this we came eye to eye with everyone in the room in a strange and holy game of Twister.

Beside my bed I keep a few items that keep me grounded to my convictions. That remind of things too easily forgotten in the hectic day to day. My lapis blue ball of yarn is one of them.
In one hand I hold the masculine, the memories of what it felt like to have Jesus in my heart, and in my other hand I hold the feminine, the familiar face of the old religion, the nurturing rhythm of what it means to live within the seasons and the elements.

In the center, balanced between both extremities is my heart. Neither feminine nor masculine, Jesus or the Goddess, but a soft merging of each, like spoons sidled up, one curved gently into the other.

Night Choir

I shut down the computer last night and looked out the window at a cloud covered sky. No moon in sight. Resigned the full moon walk and settled myself on the couch with chocolate trail mix and Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. Fifteen minutes later the clouds rolled over and the moon was bright enough to come streaming into my living room.
Winter having finally descended, it's delay a little creepy, I threw on about forty sweaters and headed outside to walk up the hill and hang out with the bright light in the sky.

The night is always quiet where I live. The houses are spaced by about a quarter mile and the only noise I usually hear, other than the bard owls, is the male donkey down the road. When Blue hollars, he sounds like he's on the verge of a painful death. He's the only stud among nearly forty female donkeys. Can you just imagine the pheremones in that barn!? Ella's little friends get frightened when they hear it in the dark. It's a combination of deep, passionate, primitive longing and pure torture. Hormones can be like that.

But Blue must have been satiated because the valley was quiet. And the ground was glittering with the new snow of the season. I walked up the road to where the Dezotelle's old farmstead used to be. There's an old trailer now where the brick farmhouse used to be before it burned to the ground. Beside the trailer is a gargantuan barn and beyond that is a long stretch of Sound of Music pastures. The location of this place is a wind turbine's dream. There have been times in the past when I've found myself up there, at the end of the dirt road and under the bright moon, dancing slow and feeling peaceful. Like prayer in movement, all covered in wind.

I think this what I had in mind with this moon walk, but on my way up the road I noticed that my boot tracks were not the only ones in the newly fallen snow. There was another track, much bigger and with a much longer gait. A man's boot. One heading in the direction I was walking and then the same boot track heading the opposite way. But I didn't know which direction had come first. The coming or the going. And I knew that at the top of the hill I wouldn't feel alone enough to pick up a dance. To pray to the moon. To even feel safe, safe as this mountain town is. I grew up in a weird little town where men with no teeth whistle at 11 year old girls and turn their car around to gawk and be creepy. Too much of that is still with me. I tried walking in his tracks for about forty seconds, just to try it on for size and maybe overcome my jitters, but my dog is old and I didn't trust her to protect me so I turned around, feeling a ghost at my back.

I climbed back up my driveway and found myself behind my house, in my own yard, which isn't really a yard but about 20 acres of pasture. I walked out to the middle of it until I felt like I was in the center of someone's hand. In the palm. And I stood there looking up at the moon until I was dizzy with how fast the clouds moved. I stood listening to the wind move down valley along the western ridge. It sounded like a creek in mid-April after the snow has melted from the mountains. It sounded like a freeway or the constant crashing of the tide. It was that glorious nothing kind of white noise of nature that doesn't get heard above the boots crunching in the snow. And I had to walk a long line down my memory to remember the last time I afforded myself this luxury. The last time I just sat and listened to wind. How much motion there is in just standing still.

I never really did pray to the moon like my friend had suggested. I threw a few words at her. Little pleases, and help, and thank you very much but it was a kind of first correspondence thing and I wasn't feeling the connection. Much as I love the moon, I don't think it's who I'll be casting my prayers to. I'll just stand under the light and listen the wind beneath her. Let the choir of night have it's performance.

This is How I Draw the Moon

My friend Israel suggested a few weeks ago that I go outside and talk with the moon. We were discussing religion and I was telling him about my dilemma with who or what or where I cast my prayer. His name is Israel because his parents were Jesus hippies when he was born. They've gone from serious Jesus hippies to serious consumers but I think all their passion for faith permeated the amniotic sac, and his consciousness, because he spends a great deal of time, himself, on matters of faith and religion.

I've known him now for more than ten years. He's the only person who has been able to successfully walk me into meditation. We used to have wonderful sleepovers at his River Street apartment and stay up all night talking about boys and the Goddess, candles burning on his windowsill and Dead Can Dance chanting from the speakers. He's since become a member of the Catholic church (because he loves Mary so very much) but he gave that up shortly after the confirmation (what exactly do they call that in Catholicism?), because it became ever clear to him that there isn't much room in the Catholic religion for gay men. After that he started going to synagogue. He liked the generic god-ness of synagogue, but again, no good woman to worship there. I'm not sure exactly where he's at now. I've gotten some very beautiful Buddist art post-cards in the past few weeks but I think through it all, he just loves Wicca. I don't know.

But I haven't actually gone out and talked with the moon yet, although, I've thought a great deal about it. It's full today and I'm thinking it's a pretty good time. Two nights ago, I crawled into bed and she was right above my head through the four paned window. Almost full but not quite. I kept my eyes on her and started thinking of her as god. How sometimes she's present and sometimes she's not. She's sometimes waxing. Sometimes waning. Sometimes just under cloud cover. But her presence is constant even if we can't always see by her light. That's how alot of people view god, yes?

When my daughter was four years old and she and I were living in a big wooden house at the end of a long dirt road, we used to take off all our clothes in the winter time, pull on our big, clunky snow boots and run outside on the deck and dance naked under the moon. We'd shake our bodies for about twenty seconds, run inside to stand by the woodstove for about a minute and then repeat the process over and over again until the tea pot whistled. We haven't done it in years, maybe because we moved back in with dad, but it seems like the kind of thing that should remain. Pick it back up now while she's still young enough to get a kick out of dancing naked under the moon with her mom.

Maybe while I'm out there, I'll pray. Or maybe after we drink our tea and she goes to sleep, I'll head back out there, wound up in my wool cape and sit on the hill behind the house and just throw myself at the moon, soul and all, and wait for the sound of god's breath on the wind.

In the Beginning

I used to really love Jesus. I didn't grow up loving him. We were formally introduced under stressfull circumstances and the relationship never really got off the ground. Years later, under the fuzzy umbrella of adolescence at a week long Christian summer camp, we met again and that's when things really got going. I came back year after year for more and tried real hard to make him proud in the months between. Being good in the eyes of Jesus isn't always an easy thing to accomplish between the ages of thirteen and eighteen but, relatively, I think I did alright. Our falling out was quick and we haven't really kept in touch. I still think he's a great guy but I think now that he's just as much, no more ~ no less the son of god than the guy who pumps my gas at the Citgo station.

My folks were raised in the church. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same church, the same basement parties, sock hops and football games. Their church was an old brick corner chapel. Methodist. We'd go every once in a while when I was growing up but it was more an effort on their part to feel like they did their job on the faith-front. To expose us. To appease the grandparents. We actually did a bit of church hopping. Throughout the years we tried different churches. Different denominations. Different preachers. Now and then we'd drive up the mountain to our cousin's church and listen to Pastor Jack preach. I hated dressing up for it and I hated the scratchy wool tights that were never quite long enough under the scratchy wool, pleated skirts. The benches sucked and bible school never made a lick of sense. It was all forgotten on the ride home.

In 1985 the Weidler's moved in down the block. They lived in a big yellow house and when you looked through the big front window all you could see was a big wooden cross hanging on the wall. There were six stunning blond children between the ages of 6-16. They were all big boned and beautiful and came with an almost unrecognizable southern drawl. They were Georgian Baptists and found their spiritual home at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Plymouth. My first time attending an outing with Christy, the big boned beautiful blond who was my own age, we went to the church and played games in the yard out back. Scavenger hunts, relay races, obstacle courses. I think I was eleven years old.

After the outside fun, we filed in to the basement of the church and munched on cookies and fruit punch while their preacher instilled the fear of almighty god in all our hearts with the epitimy of hellfire and brimstone. By the end of the sermon my heart was pounding and I was scared enough to pee my pants.

My dad and brother were out of town that night and when we got back to Christy's, I ran down the block and around the corner to my own house, threw open the door and started crying hysterically to my mother that I must accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior right now. Right now. Where's the bible? Do we own a bible?

It was grabbed from the rack of encyclopedias (which were frequented about as much as the bible in our house) and I proceeded to ramble on some kind of promise and swear to Jesus and to please not let me go to hell if I die tonight and to please not send my family to hell if they die tonight. Guilt by association, you know?

I think the distraction of oncoming adolescence and the eventual end of my friendship with Christy helped me to forget about the trauma of my exposure to the Baptist religion. I missed Sunday morning buckwheat pancakes at her eight foot long kitchen table and the clutter of a big family, but I didn't miss her church outings. They've forever tainted my perspective on Baptists. I still think they're all fucked.

Jesus and I met again among the congregation of the First Church of Christ, who, I guess, are a little more relaxed in their approach to heaven and the holy ghost. My friend Jen went every Sunday with her family and if I wanted to sleep over on a Saturday night I could count on having to attend with the family. But this wasn't traumatic. I even kind of enjoyed it. The people weren't as hysterical. As manic. As fucking impractical.

Jen's father was a beautiful Philipeno man who looked like Lou Diamond Philip but more handsome. He was on his way to delinquincy when he met Jen's mother, a beautiful blond haired, brown eyed Irish girl, and he fell right in with her family. Married, made babies, found god. Their marriage was my only example of how good a marriage could be and the only reason I believe that you could be married (or involved, in my case) and be happy at the same time. They'd look at eachother from across the room and over the heads of their three kids and all their three kid's friends and it was like dynamite. Like a flint finding the spark. Good good stuff.

The summer between my eighth and nineth grades, I went to summer camp with Jen. It was about an hour from home, out in the sticks, and a week long. On one side of the road there was a tabernacle and the boys cabin. On the other side of the road was the dining hall, the canteen, the girls cabin and the creek where we'd swim and be baptised if we were so ready.

By the end of my first week, I called home and begged my mother to give me permission to be baptized. She scoffed, like I'd asked her remortgage the house, and told me I'd already been baptized when I was a baby and there was no need to be baptized again.

Each summer I got to know Jesus a little better. He wasn't the guy with the thorny crown and holes in his palms. He wasn't dead. He was the carpenter guy who walked among the poor and hung out with the down and outs. I could relate to that. I liked down and outs. He was the guy who looked a little like my brother when he grew a goatee and let his thick red hair grow below his shoulders. He was kind and his words made sense. Couple all that with campfires, falling stars and the smell and delight of boys and you really do have the makings for magic.

By the third summer, I got the okay to be baptised and on the last night of camp that summer I gathered my good friends around me, the friends who thought it was okay to be a Christian and a teenager. The friends who we'd try really, really hard to stay in touch with throughout the school year but lose contact with by the time winter sports started up. The friends who picked the ball right back up the first day of camp. They each took a long white tapered candle and followed me into that freezing cold creekwater and made a half circle, like the crescent of a moon, around me. Mr. Lew, my best friend's dad and my sparkling example of a good husband, recited the baptismal words. I responded and when it was all said he held my back and submerged me in the water.

My first real holy experience.

It would be almost four years later, after really getting burned by the people I let be god's representatives, that I'd receive a christmas card from one of the adult weinee's at that camp. The one who held the fire that burned me. The card would read:

Wise Men Still Seek Him.

The picture on the front would be his cartoon artwork. I would take the card and a pen and beneath his words I would write:

Wise Women Know Better.

..... Return to Sender.

What long stories we have when it comes to the spirit. When it comes to finding our own. I still think wise women know better. I've gone from being submerged in that creek to being submerged in the Goddess tradition, in the spirituality of Native American medicane. I've peice-mealed together elements of Buddhism and shamanism. I've taken an anthropological approach to what divinity means and how to measure it's meaning. I have a buffet of options and they all serve me well but I still don't know exactly who to direct my prayers to like I did back then. I know that holiness is in the seasons, the turning of the moon, the Solstice, Equinox, Samhain and Beltane. I celebrate beauty on a daily basis. But I still haven't totally found the balance or overcome the shudder I experience at god's mention. I still dig Jesus but god freaks me right out. Not god itself, but god's name. I'm still trying to find peace in the name of god. I'm still naming god.