Goddess in a Teapot

WELCOME!

Welcome to Goddess in a Teapot, my home on the internet.   I write about  spirituality and creativity, especially as they relate to women’s lives,  and if you go to the Blog Post page, you will find many, many posts on aspects of those topics.

You might be wondering about the name of this site. “Goddess,” a term I use here to mean the sacred in women and our lives, is in the teapot because teapots are both everyday, useful objects, and also have many spiritual and creative meanings — they are transformational, turning water and plants into something completely different; they bring together earth (tea leaves), air (their whistles), fire (heat) and water; they nurture and nourish us; they are that which women gather around to form families and communities.

This site is the first of a circle of websites that, together, make up my “house” in cyberspace where I hope you will feel at home.  Here is where I hope you will come into my “kitchen,” sit down at the table, and have tea and a chat. Here you will find all my latest blog posts, news about my writing, and some tea recipes.

When you are done here, you can go to some of the other “rooms” of my “home” and read past blog posts and published stories and articles on different themes.  To read about creativity and some pieces about creative women of the past and present, go to my “library,” The Muse’s Cave.  To find out more about spirituality and goddesses and myths, visit my “Sanctuary Within.” There you will also find out more about my novel,” The Temple of the Subway Goddess,” and how to get a free download of it. If you are part of a book group that would like to read the book, I would be happy to join you by conference call. Just contact me through the contact page of this blogsite. To enjoy nature writings and seasonal celebrations, step outside into my “garden,” The Grove of the Queen Pine. Finally, to bring creativity, spirituality, and a love of the Earth together to honor the past, create a better future, and celebrate those who are making that future happen now, step into my “attic,” Circle of Generations.

All these sites are places to celebrate the many ways in which we experience the sacred and express our creativity in our everyday lives.  The illumination of the sunrise, the noise of our families, the solidness of gravity’s pull against our muscles, the spicy taste of cinnamon and cloves, the joy and pride of creating poems or paintings or knitted scarves or gardens or educated children or businesses or whatever we make –  these and thousands of other daily gifts are all divine and worthy of gratitude.

We so often forget that we, also, are sacred and have important things to say.  We are each worthy of respect and being listened to and cared for.  Each person has her own unique wisdom that only she knows and that needs to be shared through art, crafts, or other works or it will be lost to all of us.  We each have our own destined job to do on this earth, but we have been given one another to help us through each day. I hope that these writings will help you on your own way. So, please sit down, have a cup of tea, and let’s chat!

Carolyn Lee Boyd

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NEWS

5/12/13 A MOTHER’S DAY GIFT FROM THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

Thanks so much to Mary Sharratt who posted my guest post, Mother’s Day Gifts from the Garden of Dreams, on her blog Viriditas. You may read it by clicking here.

4/18/13 DANCING WITH KALI GETS YOU TO THE OTHER SIDE

I’m very grateful to the site “Feminism and Religion” for posting a piece I wrote about Dancing with Kali Gets You to the Other Side. To read it, click here.

2/1/13 AWAKENING TO THE MYSTERY OF ABSOLUTE BEGINNINGS

I’m thrilled to have a guest post on the blog Feminism and Religion. It is titled Awakening to the Mystery of Absolute Beginnings and you can read it by clicking here.

1/31/13 CELEBRATING THE ICY MYSTERY OF IMBOLC

I’m so grateful to Mary Sharratt for having me as a guest on her blog today! You are invited to read my musings about Imbolc in New England weather in Celebrating the Icy Mystery of Imbolc.

1/8/13 – REMEMBER WHO YOU REALLY ARE

I’m thrilled to have the first piece of fiction I’ve published in quite awhile appear in this most recent issue of  The Goddess Pages. It is a short story titled “Remember Who You Really Are” and you may read it by clicking here.

12/18/12 – HONORING THE OLDER WOMEN OF DECEMBER’S DARKNESS

I’m so thrilled to contribute a guest post on the wonderful site “Feminism and Religion.” I invite you to read my post “Honoring the Older Women of December’s Darkness” by clicking here.

12/10/12 – THREE GIFTS ON MARY SHARRATT’S WEBSITE

Thanks so much to Mary Sharratt, author of Illuminations about Hildegard of Bingen, among other wonderful books, for posting a piece I wrote about the Solstice on her website. To read it, click here.

9/25/11 – REALITY IS JUST A TANGO WITH TIME

Moondance has posted a piece I wrote about dancing with the Goddesses of Time and how we perhaps time travel more than we think… To read it, click here.

8/7/11 – HANDS BAKING BREAD COMES ALIVE ON YOUTUBE!

I am so honored that Holly Lavina has made a video of a passage of one of my poems, Hands Breaking Bread! To see it, click here.

7/15/11 -TRUTH AND CERRIDWEN’S CAULDRON AT THE GODDESS PAGES

I have a new essay up at The Goddess Pages all about the power of telling the truth and Cerridwen’s cauldron.  You can read it here.  If you aren’t familiar with The Goddess Pages, it is an absolutely wonderful publication with lots of great articles, fiction, poetry and reviews in it — and it’s all online!

7/3/11 – NEW POST – CHAOS-TO-GO

If you would like to read the last column in Moondance, on chaos theory and real life, it is now handily a post for you. Click here to read it.

11/9/10 – TWO REVIEWS OF “TEMPLE OF THE SUBWAY GODDESS”

I am so grateful for two recent reviews of my novel, The Temple of the Subway Goddess.  Just posted is Loretta Kemsley’s review in Moondance which you can read by clicking here. I also so appreciate Geraldine Charles’ review in The Goddess Pages which you may read  here.

Here are excerpts:

From Moondance: “Why are clouds beautiful? This is just one of the many metaphysical questions that wend their way through this delightful read by Carolyn Lee Boyd. The Temple of the Subway Goddess encourages the reader to pause and consider the underlying theme rather than rush headlong to decipher the ending.

Boyd’s imagery is startlingly beautiful. Her scenes come alive through the eyes of her various characters, each viewing the same world in a different way. The premise threaded through each of their lives is singular: What happens when a goddess touches your life? It is a question the reader absorbs as she reflects upon her own life.”

From The Goddess Pages: “This book is magical.  Seriously.  It worked on me in a very subtle way – I love science fiction and set about the novel with my usual SF brain in gear, but quickly found that I was becoming engaged with the story in a very different way.  For as the time-travelling priestess Mira follows her own destiny to come to a time some 7,000 years in the future, to a neighbourhood which could belong to any American or European city, she finds herself strangely drawn to Suzanne, a photographer who has almost given up her calling, almost settled for a dreary day job and unsatisfactory marriage.  But what I felt was the ageless quality of sisterhood and the eternal nature of spirit calling to spirit.”

6/8/10 – ESSAY IN THE GODDESS PAGES

You are invited to read a new essay in The Goddess Pages, my first ever in that wonderful publication.  It is titled “Creating in Mnemosyne’s Circle of Memory.” It begins:  As I’ve gotten older, the distance between the past and present has gotten shorter and become an easier journey.  When I was in my 20s and first learned about ancient Goddess-focused cultures, they seemed as if they were so far away that they almost did not exist in the realm of possibility…Read more

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Painting is from The Goddess of Afternoon Tea by Celia Player. Used with permission of the artist.