We needn’t feel as if we need to create an entirely new world. Aspects of the long and proud history of women’s spirituality — the honoring of goddesses as well as the celebration of women’s spiritual power — are all around us. All we need to do is identify them and incorporate them into our everyday lives. These are some I have found in my own life. What others can you think of?
Everyday Vessels
This blog site is named Goddess in a Teapot because of the symbolism of cauldrons, chalices, bowls, and teapots. Here is a short story about these beloved household objects.
The Woman with Bountiful Bowls
Home
Our feelings of bonding to the small part of Earth where we dwell can be the portal to a greater connection to all of Mother Earth and a reminder that in the future we need to be attached and work locally as well as globally. I have always had a longing to create “home,” whether my actual home, or advocating for community centers in the towns where I work, or in making spaces for wildlife in my garden. I now understand the sacred nature of this impulse.
Here is a blog post that talks more about the sacred nature of “home.”
An essential aspect of “home” is making a better life for our descendants. Many of my ancestors lived for generations in the mountains of Appalachia coming eventually to settle in a small town called Goodwater in Alabama. This is a poem about one of them dreaming about being able to give her daughter a secure home.
Art and Creativity
Art is key to spiritual transformation and should be a celebrated part of everyone’s life. In a better future, everyone will create art and everyone’s art will be valued for the unique perspective it brings to the world.
In fact, art has always been essential to women’s spirituality, from the time of the cave paintings till now, from elaborate temple sculptures and the folk art of embroidery and other everyday activities. More than other, more formal art, much of this art tends to be by and for ordinary women.
Music is especially powerful. As Layne Redmond demonstrated in her book When the Drummers Were Women, drumming has long been a woman-focused art form with strong spiritual connections both in terms of women playing it to worship goddesses as well as its own transformative power.
“Entrainment” is when people spontaneously get into the same rhythm. You may have noticed that women who live together tend to get on the same biological cycles. This also happens with drumming, when drummers naturally start playing at exactly the same tempo. At these moments, music can immediately create a sense of profound connectedness to one another and also launch time into an eternal, non-linear dimension.
In the post below, I talk about my own experience with entrainment and drumming and how it relates to the greater sacred rhythm of the universe.
Drumming to the Universal Pulse
The power of music is also expressed in a story I wrote about a Paleolithic bone flute that is refound in our own time and plays a song that connects the souls of all beings through music.
Time
We are prisoners of the modern western concept of time as a non-sacred mathematical linear dimension only and thinking of our current generation as being the only one of importance. In a better future, time will be perceived as non-linear, sacred, and a source of connection between past and future people who give each other support.
Goddesses of time or who are involved with time (Kali, Juno who ruled menstrual cycles as an indicator of time, Rhea Cronia, the Egyptian Renpet whose realm was eternity, and more), reign in many different traditions. Western physics now has begun to espouse their more non-linear and fluid concepts of time.
Modern western concepts of linear time have become a means of oppression against women in particular, as our work and family obligations mean that we never have enough time to do what is important. We can, to some degree, reclaim our time by not chopping it into pieces (hours, minutes, etc.) and prioritizing what is sacred.
Here is a blog post I wrote about all this.
Time for Change: What Do the Goddesses Say?
One way to change the way we perceive time is by thinking of it not as a straight line, but as a spiral, a prominent symbol in ancient Goddess spirituality – circular, but still moving forward while also returning to previous situations.
Moving the World Forward on the Spiral of Life
Another way is to see time from above, past, present and future all at once. Here is a story of becoming a bird goddess and flying above the Earth and seeing what needs to be done from this larger perspective
Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess
When we have a millennias-long view of time, we can see our challenges in perspective and also realize that we are not alone in facing our struggles and that we are part of a chain of past generations who can support us and future generations to motivate us to strive for a better future.
In at least one African traditional culture, healers are also genealogists who heal by reminding people of their place in the chain of generations, of who they really are and their responsibility as the living link in that chain.
Even if we can’t speak to our ancestors, we can still find messages of hope sent by them, such as still living trees and bushes they planted, and to find ways to send messages of hope to future generations.
Planting Roses for our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time
Freedom
In a future world, freedom will truly be a sacred and inalienable right. I have always been in awe of the power of some goddesses to inspire humanity to fight for freedom (Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Black Madonnas, and others). The stories of other goddesses (Persephone, Sedna, and others) who were held captive and became free also express this most intense human drive to freedom. This idea is expressed in a short story of how experiencing true spiritual freedom can give us courage.
I invite you to visit the next chapter, How Do We Make a Better Future Happen?
You may also go to other chapters by using the links below, or back to the Library by clicking on the link in menu above.
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