Member of Community of Grey Sisters of Pembroke; Masters Degree in Religious Communication, Loyola University, Chicago;
Author: Called to Egypt on the Back of the Wind (2013) Planted in the Sky (2006) both published by Borealis Press, Ottawa Canada www.borealispress.com
Retreat facilitator: The Wooing of the Soul (2013)
The Sophia Salons, beginning in February 2016, offer journeys to one's own inner wisdom for small groups of women. For information: amclaughlin@sympatico.ca
I am sharing with you, dear reader of Sophiawakens, news of a follow up to the event I wrote about in my recent blog, “Awakening to Sophia.”
Embrace the Sacred Mission Dance with the Planet Saturday, March 16th, 2024 9am PT, 12pm ET, 5pm CET
with Ervin Laszlo
From Ervin: We are dancing on the planet, but we are not dancing well. We are dancing on the planet, but not with the planet. We treat the planet as a passive backdrop to our dance, a supplier of the air, water, land, and other resources we claim as our possession. We are not treating it as a partner in our evolution. We thought we could dance above and beyond the domains of life on Earth. This was a mistake, and we are now paying for it. It is time to realize that we can only dance safely and enduringly in partnership with our planet. We must urgently correct our steps and return to the dance our forebears often danced, but we have nearly forgotten. Dancing with the planet is a dance to which we can return. We have the skills and the knowledge, the technologies and the information. Now we must come up with the will and the commitment. The way for us to achieve coherence is to adapt and cooperate. It is to live in peace and in readiness to join together in coherent ecological and social systems. Coherence creates an environment capable of sustaining all people on the planet in peace and prosperity. We are cosmic beings endowed with articulate consciousness. We can apprehend our mission, and we can respond to it. We can and now must awaken to the urgent need to adopt the universe’s drive toward integral wholeness as our felt and acknowledged sacred mission. Add your heart to this global pulse event, register here: https://bit.ly/GCPulseMarch2024Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission Session 3 and 4 are now available on YouTube. If you weren’t able to join us live for the Symposium, tune into Day Two sessions: Synergizing for Change and Peace Making, and stay tuned for more sessions to be released on YouTube. The entire Symposium broadcast can be viewed at your convenience on UNITY EARTH TV – https://unity.earth/symposium-2024-global-broadcast/Day Two, Session 3: Synergizing for Change Day Two, Session 4: Peace Making Support world-changing work:please give generouslyto Purpose Earth by donating here – https://www.purposeearth.org/givedonate All of the funds will go to small grass-roots organizations,mostly in the developing world. Ways to Stay Connected:Join the Weekly Call every Wednesday at 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT, Zoom ID 606 000 1111, http://zoom.us/j/6060001111Join the Mighty Network at https://oneworld.earth?Join our WhatsApp Thread https://chat.whatsapp.com/Fq0zxKqYOGz2mQ96lmT78F Join our Telegram channel https://t.me/unityearth1111 UNITY EARTH Community Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/unityearth/ UNITY EARTH TV https://unity.earth/tv/unity.earth
The new is giving birth to the old… the task is to give birth to the old in a new time—to the primordial ancient in a world that is new. (Peter Kingsley)
On a golden October day in 2014, I began this weekly blog dedicated to giving new birth to the ancient knowing of the feminine principle of the Sacred whom some cultures have known by the name “Sophia.” Inspired by a growing sense of a Sacred Feminine Presence both within and around me, I chose the title, “Sophia Wakens.”
In May of that year on a sacred journey led by Jean Houston, I had visited Greece. Paintings and icons of Sophia adorned many of the churches. Our guide Calliope (Kapi) told us that Greek Christians have a deep reverence for the presence of Sophia, Wisdom.
“How do they see her in relation to Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom?” I asked.
“They see her as a Continuation,” Kapi responded.
Later, as we stood at the site of the Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, about twenty kilometers from Athens, Kapi pointed to a small white church atop a hill. “That is a Church dedicated to Mary,” she said. “We find that a Church built to honour Mary almost always indicates that there is an ancient temple to the goddess below.”
In the ten years since that day, I have been slowly awakening to Sophia’s Presence in my life. I’ve found a kindred spirit in the writings of Thomas Merton (see Christopher Pramuk Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton, Liturgical Press, Collegeville Minnesota, USA 2009) Yet, for the most part, it has been a lonely journey. In my desire to know Sophia I have come to see her in other guises, as a presence in ancient fairy tales, in the goddess Brigid in Ireland, in Mary, Mother of Jesus, whom I have loved since I was twelve years old.
The one who has been seeking me has exercised infinite patience over these years…..until a few weeks ago when I attended a Symposium on Zoom: “Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission”.
Inspired and sponsored by Ervin Laszlo, the experience was put together with the support of several earth-wide organizations dedicated to responding to the urgent needs of our planet at this time. With funding from “Project Earth”, the eight sessions over four days on ZOOM were offered free of cost to anyone who registered.
There were over 2400 registrants from 86 countries who either attended on screen or watched the recordings afterwards. Listening to the presenters, some of whom I knew, like Jude Currivan, author of the Story of Gaia, I felt a deep breath of “at homeness” fill me. In small break-out groups, as I listened to others speak of their personal missions, I recognized ”kindred spirits”. Comments spoken and posted by participants referenced their sense of belonging, of hope, of gratitude for this unprecedented experience of unanimity… and in a deep moment of guided meditation , it was the voice of Sophia that I heard, reminding me of my dedication to Her, asking simply, “Let me love you.”
Among the presenters were Indigenous leaders who brought their ancient wisdom of respect for the Earth, some bringing messages like the recent one received by the Kogi people, of the Amazon Rain forest. The Sacred Mother has spoken to them of the urgent need to act now to save the planet, warning that two years is the time limit for a turn-around of human behaviors that are destroying the living systems of the earth.
Chief Dwayne Perry, Inspirational Leader of the Ramapugh Nation, said, “we are the caretakers of the Earth and all who dwell therein…our Sacred Mission has already begun.”
Here is a sampling of the words of wisdom spoken during the Symposium:
“Something new is emerging and it starts with each one of us… this is the end of the beginning….Let’s dance with the planet and dance with each other…I have great hope in human nature….human nature is nature in the human form.” (Ervin Laszlo)
Madonna of Combermere
“We’ve done the Mystic thing,” said Canadian songwriter, Tatiana Speed, before singing, “Awake my ancient memory, let me remember who I am.”
Jarvis Smith, environmental activist in England, through years of deep listening, has received messages from the Earth Mother: “Wake up to living in gratitude for all I have given you….”What you call a crisis, I see as a way to bring people together. I can transform this.”
A renowned spiritual leader in India counselled: “It’s time to come down from the mountain, get up from your prayer cushion and your yoga mat.”
During a silent meditation, led by a gentle wise woman who invited us to ask, “What is my sacred mission?”, the clear response rose in me: “Embody Sophia (the Sacred Feminine)”. Later, we were invited to walk an imaginal labyrinth, to listen deeply, in the Quaker tradition, to share aloud, if what arises seems meant for the whole group. I, who love words, heard nothing. I felt the warmth of a loving embrace which I knew was from Sophia. Only then did I hear words, “Let me love you.” I waited, wondered, then understood this message was for the entire group, so I spoke it.
A week later on Sunday February 18th, Ervin Laszlo appeared on the ZOOM screen, his eyes alight with joy, purpose, enthusiasm: “Where do we go from here?” he asked, inviting “all those engaged and those who formed this (to) join together in a semi-formal alliance.” He added “I pledge my own full allegiance to this….I can offer copies of my new book to each member of the Alliance….I’m very keen on continuing this Alliance.” He encouraged us to “keep in touch….create a program… on Internet (focused on) the evolution of our species on this planet.
“We are one with each other and the world around us. There is no distinction between personal mission and Humanity’s mission: to advance life on this planet, to advance consciousness….What is good for the planet is good for us.
“Transformation needs to happen….the sense of mission expressed here….beings endowed with consciousness can bring a higher level… Humanity will continue.”
Facilitator Jon Ramer was visibly moved: “I’ve never seen something like this before…. I presume, Ervin, this invitation is to all humanity.”
These words are now written in my heart:
Absolute Trust in a Conscious Loving Universe.
Human, come home.
Wake up to Living in Gratitude.
While institutions fail us, we have to look to one another. We are the superpower on the planet.
A story from the Celtic tradition that illustrates the importance of the cailleach and her energy is the story of Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall and his four brothers come to a well to get a drink of water. The well is being guarded by an old woman who represents the cailleach or hag. When the first brother goes to the well, she tells him that if he wants to drink the water, he must give her a kiss. He is horrified and refuses; she sends him away. The other three brothers go in turn on the same errand, and each refuses to kiss the hag. As the story goes:
Then it was Niall’s turn. Faced with the same challenge, he kissed the old hag and embraced her. When he looked again, she had changed into the most beautiful woman in the world. “What art thou?” said the boy. “King of Tara, I am Sovereignty . . . your seed shall be over every clan.”i
This story suggests that in order to have access to the life-enhancing energy represented by the water in the well, it is necessary for the young masculine to embrace this particular and perhaps unattractive aspect of the feminine energy. Why is this so? The cailleach represents the wisdom gathered by living in right relationship with the earth, something that requires reflection, stillness, and attentiveness. It knows more clearly what is needed and what is possible in each situation, and it is aware of the consequences of particular actions. It knows how to proceed slowly; it understands the value of times of waiting and times of allowing. It knows how to be and how to act.
So how can we, you and I, begin the journey back towards wholeness and balance?
Brigid in her cailleach form can help us to embrace these difficult and fearful aspects of our lives. The cauldron, a central image in both the Celtic and other traditions, is a vessel for transformation and transmutation. In many stories, the cauldron is first filled with unpalatable raw things, which then are used to create a nourishing soup using the transforming energy of the universe through the action of fire and water. The transformation of the contents of the cauldron is supervised by the cailleach energy, which works inwardly, quietly, and slowly to bring about an unforced and timely rebirth. The transformation of the cauldron’s contents concentrates their essence and offers them back in a new and more suitable form. From this process, we learn that the possibility of transformation and re-birth always exists, no matter how devitalised something appears to be. A new rebirth can be achieved when we submit ourselves and our concerns to the inward and slow transformational energy of the cauldron and the cailleach.
Philosopher Richard Kearney in his poem Bridget’s Well speaks of the importance of this inward and downward journey and suggests that it is the only way to access the life- giving and inspiring fire of Brigid that lies underneath the water.
“I will rest now at the bottom of Bridget’s well
I will follow the crow’s way
Footprint by footprint
In the mud down here
I won’t come up
Until I am calmed down
And the earth dries beneath me
And I have paced the caked ground
Until smooth all over
It can echo a deeper voice
Mirror a longer shadow” (2)
This poem suggests the importance of that deep journey to the well where the source of new life and the fire of passion is found. At Imbolc (Feb 1st) the tiny spark of new light discovered in the deep womb darkness of the winter solstice has grown sufficiently to safely emerge from that inner world and begin to transform winter into spring !
At this time Brigid appears as the fresh maiden of springtime emerging from the womb of the cailleach, queen of winter. Here Brigid embodies the energy that breathes life into the mouth of dead winter. The energy of Brigid at Imbolc is the energy of Yes, and it can only emerge from the place of stillness!
Brigid is also closely associated with the life giving aspect of fire, a fire that doesn’t burn but which can never be fully quenched. When this fire comes from a clear and deep space, as happens following the inward journey, it will be significant and filled with truth and potency. This life-giving fire will act within in individuals, within the land, in the relationships between the people and their land, fanning the fires of creative endeavour so that all of life forms can partake in the symphony of new life emerging each springtime! The fire discovered through this deep journey is an inner light which guides each of us to find our next step!
Richard Kearney in his poem “Brigit’s Well” also speaks of the re-emergence of a new fire born of a deeper place within
“Then the fire may come again
Beneath me, this time
Rising beyond me
No narcissus- flinted spark
Behind closed eyes
But a burning bush
A fire that always burns away
But never is burnt out” (3)
I believe that the archetypal energy of Brigid, the embodiment of the divine feminine, present within the essence of the Celtic tradition has the capacity to lead and support us in transforming the present wasteland into a new life sustaining society. For this to happen, it is necessary for us to understand that the archetypal energy that Brigid represents is a real aspect of the human psyche, one that has been largely dormant over the past few hundred years, but is now re-emerging. Each of us can become keeper of the Brigid flame by developing and living those qualities and values that distinguished her. As we align ourselves with her archetypal energies, she supports us courageously and safely to face the demons of this time. She teaches us how to stand still in a wobbling world, to act as a unifying force, to hold the space of possibility and so become agents of transformation. So we ask for
“The mantle of Brigid about us
The memory of Brigid within us
The protection of Brigid keeping us from harm from ignorance,
from heartlessness this day from dawn till dark” (4)
When we embrace her energy Brigid will hold us and guide us through this transition. I believe she is the one who has the power to awaken in each of us “An eye to see what is, the heart that feels what is, and the courage that dares to follow.” (5)
Footnotes for Parts 1-3:
1 Amergin Jan de Fouw Amergin Wolfhound Press Dublin 2000
2 Richard Kearney quoted in Stephen J. Collins The Irish Soul in Dialogue the Liffey Press Dublin 2001 p 147
3 Richard Kearney quoted in Stephen J. Collins The Irish Soul in Dialogue the Liffey Press Dublin 2001 p 147
4 Poem source unknown
5 Celtic triad found extensively in the literature
As we consider the qualities embodied by Brigid as reflected in the stories of her life as abbess of Kildare Ireland, it is obvious that these qualities are similar to those present in her incarnation as pre-Christian goddess.
Brigid by Jo Jayson
Brigid is considered a threshold person, one who can straddle both sides and remain detached. This quality, which is central in her life, is highlighted in the stories of her birth, which attest that she was born on the threshold of the house, neither within nor without; that her father was a noble man, her mother a slave; and that he was a pagan, her mother a Christian. From her origins, she has this ability to stand in the void and remain centred within it, while holding the creative tension between two opposite perspectives. Many stories from her life portray her as a person capable of resolving conflicts in a healthy manner. Being centred and aligned within herself, she is detached and can grasp the energies of both sides clearly thereby facilitating a resolution. She has the ability to stand still and remain focused, in spite of the uncertainty present in the outer world.
As a child and a young woman Brigid constantly challenged the accepted norms of her society, especially those expressed by her father when they opposed to her own values. This reflects Brigid as a person who lives her life from a place of deep inner knowing and inner authority.
She also refused to marry any of the suitors that her father arranged for her, because she had chosen a different life path and destiny. She would not compromise her soul journey!
Brigid’s generosity is legendary and is related in numerous stories of her giving away food and clothes to people who came to her monastery or whom she met along the way. This generosity was, it seems, based on her absolute faith in the abundance of the universe to provide all that was needed in each moment. Each time she gave away the butter or meat needed for the next meal it miraculously reappeared in time for that meal!
Brigid’s capacity to bring forth new life, to nourish, to create plenty in the crops or an abundance of the milk from cows, and to manifest or create ex nihilo is a reflection of the true abundance and with the prosperity of the society, living in relationship with the land , created by her. Her life and work thrived because of her deep trust and an absence of fear.
It is said that from the moment Brigid learned to know God her mind remained ever focused on God. She remained connected to God and the heavens while living on the earthly plane. Her power of manifestation was a result of this ability to be aligned heaven to earth. The strong connection between her inner and outer worlds allowed her to focus her energy onto a particular intention and ensure its manifestation.
The story how Brigid got the land for her monastery in Kildare is a wonderful example of her ability to manifest what is needed. She states clearly what she needs and asks the local lord for land. First he refused but she is not deterred by this. She pursues her request in a different way by asking “Give me what land my mantle will cover.” He says yes! When she placed the mantle on the ground it grew until it covered enough land for the monastery .This reflects a woman who can hold her intention clearly, even when on the surface it seems that her request will not be met!!
These inspiring stories of Brigid relate to her active life in the world, where she embodies and live true spiritual power!
But what and where is the source of this power?
To fully understand the power and the qualities that Brigid embodied, as reflected in the many stories about her life, we need to begin with an exploration of the role of Brigid as Cailleach, the aspect of the Divine Feminine that rules during the season of Samhain (winter) at the beginning of the Celtic year. This I believe is the wellspring from which Brigid’s power manifests in the world emerges.
What then is the energy associated with the hag, crone, or cailleach aspect of the divine feminine? The cailleach is the embodiment of the tough mother-love that challenges its children to stop acting in destructive ways. It is the energy that refuses to indulge in inappropriate personal or societal dreams. It is the energy that will bring death to those dreams and fantasies that are not aligned with our highest good. Yet, this cailleach energy also will support the emergence and manifestation in the world of the highest and deepest within us. It will hold us safely as we embrace the darkness within ourselves and our society. It is an energy that insists that we stand still, open our hearts, and feel our own pain and the pain of the earth. This is the energy that teaches us how to stay with the process when things are difficult. This energy will not allow us to run away!
Her way of being is a slow, inwardly focused way, with minimum outward activity: a way that values times of active waiting that pays attention and allows life to unfold.
An essential part of the journey that all the great heroes and heroines in world mythologies undertake includes facing and embracing the energy of surrender, darkness, and death. The hero or heroine learns the next step required in their outer world journey only by submitting to and being initiated into the dark world of the cailleach.
Through this initiation the mature masculine power can emerge and lead each one to find their true path. When this happens the action that follows will be in the service of the true feminine and bring forth wisdom and compassion creating new life, vitality, and sustainability. However because western society is currently dominated by the young masculine energy, present in both men and women, characterised by its “can do” attitude, there is an urgent need for each of us to make this heroic journey with the cailleach, so that we will become agents for the transformation of our society.
Reflecting on the turmoil present in the world today it is clear to all, but those steeped in denial, that all is not well. It seems that something ails us humans; something that causes us to live in ways that disrespect our mother, the living earth, and all our relatives. We ask what is it in us humans that creates such a restless world where there is little sense of belonging, nurture or home and which causes so many of the species with which we share this planet to suffer?
Artwork by Andrea Redmond, an artist living in Donegal, originally from Prince Edward Island, Canada
The exclusion of the Feminine energy in our naming and understanding of the Divine is reflected in a corresponding absence and valuing of feminine energy in all aspects of life in western society. The devaluing and exclusion of the feminine energy over the past centuries has created a distorted story about life which has resulted in a world whose shape and vibration create disharmony.
So how do we find our way back to a more harmonious way of life? If we know what is missing and what ails us, it may be possible for us to make the journey back towards wholeness and health.
In times of great danger and challenges, cultures often seek the wisdom for the journey ahead in the stories and myths that sustained them in an earlier time. However as Poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnail suggests this requires an understanding that “actual myths and stories themselves soar way above any uses to which they may have been put to already and can and must be retranslated by each generation in terms of their own need and thus liberated into a new consciousness.” (1)
At the present time there is a wonderful re-emergence of aspects of ancient spiritual traditions by people all over the world. The reconnection and embodiment of these ancient spiritual traditions, myths and stories has the potential to release the spiritual power needed for us to become agents of transformation within our society.
At this time many people are becoming aware of the wisdom of the feminine. As this happens, the absence of genuine feminine energy present in most institutions, both religious and secular, throughout western culture, becomes obvious. To include the presence of the divine feminine energy in creating a world whose shape is more wholesome requires a fundamental reclaiming of the essential role of the feminine in all aspects of life. In order to create change within the physical world and in our society it is necessary to change the dreams and stories held within the imagination of a society.
My own journey over the past 25years has been primarily within the Celtic spiritual tradition. This tradition has emerged over many millennia and continues to evolve. It includes the wisdom of the megalithic, the pre-Christian Celtic and the Christian Celtic traditions as they met and engaged with each other through the ages. I believe the rekindling of the flames of this tradition, which have lain dormant for many centuries, “like coals under the smooring awaiting a new kindling” holds a key to the recovery of the wisdom needed to create a more sane society.
“God is good and he has a great mother!” a statement sometimes heard in Ireland, reflects an important truth at the heart of the Celtic spiritual tradition, one that honours the presence of the divine feminine and understands that even God emerges out of the feminine energy of being-ness. The Divine Feminine is present at the heart of this spiritual tradition and plays a central role in both Celtic spirituality and Celtic culture. There are many goddesses within Celtic mythology; however Brigid, as both goddess and saint, occupies a central place as representative of the Divine Feminine within Celtic tradition.
Reconnecting with and re-membering the spirit and archetypal energy of Brigid, in both her Goddess and saint manifestations, is an essential task of this renaissance. Brigid, although normally associated with the maiden and mother aspects of feminine energy, is also expressed in the cailleach form, as indicated in the prayer “Molamid Brid an mhaighean; Molamid Brid an mhathair; Molamid Brid an cailleach” (Praise to Brigid, the maiden, the mother, and the crone).
These three different, but related manifestations, the maiden, the mother, and the cailleach, or crone, together create a divine feminine trinity. Each aspect of this trinity occupies a different role within the life, death, and rebirth continuum. The Feminine energy is both the harbinger and the birther of new life and is the destroyer of life that has been spent. It is experienced at the thresholds of life and death and rebirth.
In the past 20 years there has been a new awakening of the importance of Brigid and her place within our lives and our world. Her Feastday at Imbolc in now celebrated in many places in Ireland and all over the world. There is an understanding perhaps it is time for us individually and collectively to recover the qualities that Brigid embodied in her lifetime, marking her as a woman of true spiritual power.
Below: The Shrine of Brigid in Faughart , Ireland , believed to be the birthplace of Brigid of Kildare( Photo, February 1, 2018)
In JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Gandalf has just revealed to Frodo that he must accept responsibility for a ring of power left to him by Bilbo. Gandalf continues, “This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that (the Dark Lord) lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it– but he must not get it.”
Frodo sat silent and motionless. Fear seemed to stretch out a vast hand, like a dark cloud rising in the East and looming up to engulf him. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black.”
Remove the wrappings from Tolkien’s tale. Its heart speaks to us. Fear “like a dark cloud rising in the East” engulfs our planet with a series of climate crises, wars, disasters. We hear ourselves echoing Frodo’s words: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”
Gandalf’s wisdom also echoes: All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
To decide that will require wisdom as well as courage. Yet we also need a sense of hope, as well as sources of solace…. This I wish to offer especially in one area of our current darkness: the depredation of our planet, Gaia. And for this I turn to poets who, as Teilhard de Chardin has written, also serve us as mystics and philosophers. To find hope in Gaia even in the midst of our suffering, it’s good to remember the words of Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet: When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
The poet Alfred K LaMotte reminds us that even now Gaia has delight to offer us, to sustain us:
YOU ASKED
When you asked,
How can I face
such a dark world?
the answer was all around you.
The wands of pine
in rain-laden breeze answered,
bell-throated, blackbirds
ringing over the wetland
answered, stars
floating on a still pond
answered, dancing
snow of milkweed,
pearl-eyed mushrooms
seeing through midnight
in the forest answered:
This world is not the seat of sorrow.
This world is sunlight
playing in a risen mist
over the fountain of beauty.
The seat of sorrow is your heart
aching, thirsting
for its own illumination.
But the healing is easy.
Turn your gaze around
and see into your source.
You are that fountain, that
refraction of prism’d beauty.
Listen to the raindrop fall,
how it finds its way home,
as fallen things do,
to the hidden spring
under pungent green moss
where it was born.
Even the raindrop answers,
Yes.
Jude Currivan in “The Story of Gaia” describes a mystical moment of beauty and wonder during a solar eclipse:
On August 1, 2008, together with some fellow travelers, I climbed one of the high peaks of mount Huashan, located about 120 kilometers from the city of Xian in China, to witness a total Solar eclipse. Across from me was another of the five summits of this sacred mountain.
With their rocks delving deep into Gaia and their peaks reaching high to the heavens, mountains have held spiritual significance for millennia, inviting pilgrims to undertake journeys of inner and outer discovery and revelation. Indeed, the Chinese phrase for pilgrimage, h’ao-shan chin-hsiang, means “to offer respect to a mountain.” And from ancient times this particular massif, carved from a single huge block of granite, and the precipitous and dangerous paths to its crests have held especial meaning, offering hard-won opportunities for insight and guidance.
Its five-peaked shape spreads open like the lotus after which it’s named – symbolizing a flower that rises from its roots in mud, through water, to open its blossoms to Sol. Representing purity of heart and mind, the lotus and thus the mountain embodies the sacred seat of Buddha, as attested to by the many shrines and temples adorning its flanks and heights.
After a spectacular cable car ride to near the top of the peak and a steep climb to its crest, we arrived in the late afternoon of a beautiful, warm late-summer day. In the pale blue sky above the mountain, Luna in her fullness was slowly but inexorably extending her shadow over the disk of Sol.
One small cloud was visible in an otherwise clear sky. But as the eclipse continued to proceed to its few minutes of totality, when Luna completely covered Sol, the arc of their combined path, to my consternation, dipped behind the cloud.
After journeying so far to witness one of the most glorious of cosmic phenomena, it seemed that I was destined for it to be out of sight and only to sense its occurrence. So, I closed my eyes, aiming to attune with the coming few minutes of totality, when Gaia, Sol, and Luna perfectly aligned.
With my conscious mind having surrendered to whatever I might experience, I had no further expectations. A few moments later, though, I heard clairaudiently a message to “open your eyes.”
When I did, I literally began to shake with emotion and tears began to flow down my face. My gaze took in an amazing scene. Across the valley beneath me and upward to the pointed mountain peak beyond, the disk of Sol was now exactly covered by that of Luna. Fully clear of the small cloud and with no sunlight to reflect off Luna’s face, the total eclipse created a perfect circle of utter blackness against the backdrop of bright sky.
Of itself, this incredible sight is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of our Soular System. Yet, in a further miracle, the eclipse appeared almost impossibly poised: perfectly balanced, exactly and only for its few minutes of totality, on the very tip of the mountain.
This trinity of Sol, Luna, and Gaia experienced uniquely, only at this precise moment and at this exact vantage point, and shared only with my fellow travelers and a few young and local Chinese people was, as yet, the most wonder-full sight of my life.
It was as though the galaxy had sent an emissary to remind me of the vast black hole at its center and even, perhaps, as a sense of connecting to its sentience through the totality of the eclipse.
I watched this miracle in silence, along with the world around us that also seemed spellbound, as, in their cosmic dance, Sol and Luna, majestically sashaying together, slipped behind the peak. Moments later, now hidden from our view, as they silently parted to go their separate ways until their next communion, the sky behind the mountain crest before us exploded into light.
Solar eclipses as seen from Gaia certainly appear like nothing else in our Soular System and may be exceedingly rare or even unique throughout our galaxy and even entire Universe. The striking image of what black holes might look like when seen up close, may be nearest to this celestial phenomenon that occurs with awe-full regularity a few times every year. It’s a vision that on a profound level inspires in me a sense of the “black whole” of no-thingness and yet al-thingness.
Let us set our hearts to find what we are called to do with this, our time. And let us sustain our courage, our joy with the beauty that still exists on Gaia.
If you grew up Catholic in the years before the Second Vatican Council, chances are Mary was at the very heart of your faith. You prayed the “Hail Mary” many times daily; you sang hymns to Mary as you walked in May processions carrying flowers to decorate her statue; in every trouble and doubt, in every dark moment of your own life, you turned to her as to a mother whose love for you was unconditional. You probably knew by heart the “Memorare”, a prayer to Mary that says, in part, “Remember…Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession was left unaided…”
At the call of Pope John 23rd, 2600 Roman Catholic Bishops gathered in Rome for the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960’s. Believing they were restoring a balance, they invited Mary to step from her throne, and guided her gently to a place among the faithful, the followers of her son, Jesus. The “excesses” of Marian devotion were curbed… and then what happened?
Over the past fifty years since the closing of the Vatican Council, we have seen a burgeoning of interest in the “Sacred Feminine”; a recovery of ancient stories of the Goddess; archaeological finds that create renewed interest in the time when the Sacred One was honoured as a woman; an explosion of writing among theologians, historians, cultural storytellers, seeking to understand the power and presence of “Mary” in the Christian story. I will cite a few here: The Virgin by Geoffrey Ashe; Missing Mary by Charlene Spretnak; Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Truly Our Sister by Elizabeth Johnson.
Though I am no theologian, I have a consuming interest in the many aspects of this mystery. What I glimpse is this: the human heart longs for a divine mothering presence. Ancient cultures honoured a feminine divine who over millennia was called by many names: Isis in Egypt; Inanna in Sumeria; Ishtar in Babylon; Athena, Hera and Demeter in Greece, Anu or Danu among the ancient Celts; Durga, Kali and Lakshmi in India; for the Kabbalists, Shekinah; for the gnostics, Sophia or Divine Wisdom. Christianity had no “Mother God” to put in the place of the Goddesses whose worship it was determined to eradicate. Geoffrey Ashe’s theory is that Mary’s gradual ascension in Christianity was not an initiative of Church Leadership, but rather a response to the hunger of the early Christians for a sacred feminine presence.
How it came about is less interesting to me than the reality that Mary became for us an opening to a loving feminine sacred presence. Or, put another way, a loving sacred feminine presence responded to the cries of her people when they called her “Mary”, just as that presence had responded over the millennia to other names cried out in love or sorrow or desperate need.
Over these darkening days as we descend to the longest night of the year at the Winter Solstice, Mary will be our companion. We reflect on her pregnancy, her waiting, her uncertainty, the doubts of those who love her, the trust that sustains her “while she opens deeper into the ripple in her womb…” as John O’Donohue has written.
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her.
A face deciphers itself from water
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first.
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.
John O’Donohue Connemara Blues
Doubleday, Great Britain, 2000; Bantam Books, 2001
This is profound mystery. For Mary. For each one of us who carries the Holy within us, seeking a place of birth. We walk the dark road, with Mary, in trust.
We walk companioned by one who knows our struggles to maintain our trust in the face of inner doubts and outer calamity. We walk with one who loves us and encourages us until we are ready to welcome “the day which will be born from the womb of this present darkness.”
Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could to a town in the hill country of Judah. She went into Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. Now as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, “Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord? For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy. Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Gospel of Luke: 1:39-45)
This moment in Mary’s story is so familiar that we may miss its deeper meaning. As a child, I was taught that it was about Mary being so unselfish that her first act following the angel’s visit was to rush over to assist Elizabeth who was six months pregnant. I see it differently now. Now I know that when annunciation happens, when life is upturned with an unexpected invitation to gestate, nurture, birth newness, our hearts, like Mary’s, long for the presence of someone with whom to share the joy. Each of us experiences in those moments the absolute requirement of being with someone who knows mystery in the depths of her own being, as Elizabeth does. Would not each one of us set out at that time and (go) as quickly as (we) could to the embrace of a friend whose gaze mirrors our wonder and delight?
The Visitation
In the morning it takes the mind a while
To find the world again, lost after dream
Has taken the heart to the underworld
To play with the shades of lives not chosen.
She awakens a stranger in her own life,
Her breath loud in the room full of listening.
Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief
Of belonging to what cannot be seen.
Soon she can no longer bear to be alone.
At dusk she takes the road into the hills.
An anxious moon doubles her among the stone.
A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.
Two women locked in a story of birth.
Each mirrors the secret the other heard.
(John O’Donohue in Conamara Blues)
As we take this fragment of Mary’s story, holding it in the firelight of our heart, seeking for a likeness between her story and ours, what do we glimpse? How does her song resonate with ours? When have we known what it is to awaken as “a stranger to (our) own life”?
Is there not in each one of us the fragility of something so utterly unimagined, yet wholly real, appearing in a morning’s glimpse, disappearing in evening’s shadow…. that we require a mirroring presence to affirm its existence?
In this experience we are at the heart of our calling to provide the inner space for newness to gestate in preparation for birth. Each of us knows the need to nurture this newness in times of solitude. Yet we know also the absolute requirement of being companioned by others if our hearts are to remain open, nourished, and (as Hildegard says) juicy!
Each of us, like Mary, is walking a new path, one whose gifts, ecstatic joys, shuddering griefs, are as unknown to us as Mary’s were to her. But I believe Elizabeth would bless each one of us as she did Mary:
Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.
Advent was once my favourite Liturgical season. The weaving of a wreath that smelled of fir trees in winter forests. The candles whose shared light grew steadily with each week. The mysterious darkness of earth and heart, as both awaited the radiance, the wonder of Christmas. Enchantment.
There came a dark November day when I knew I would not gather the evergreen boughs that fell to the earth from generous trees near my home. I would not purchase four candles (three purple and one rose-coloured). I would not spend four weeks awaiting Christmas. These symbols no longer held meaning: the four weeks of Advent were meant to represent the four thousand years that humans awaited the birth of Christ.
It was the Irish priest-writer Diarmuid O’Murchu who pointed out that paleontologists estimate human life on this planet was conscious at least six million years ago, and that timeline keeps getting pushed back…. Cosmologists, most notably the luminous Teilhard de Chardin, acknowledge that there is a form of spirit/light/consciousness in all that exists on the planet, including rocks. That takes us back to the beginnings of our universe, more than thirteen billion years…
Further, as O’Murchu suggests, the earliest conscious humans expressed in artwork and ritual an awareness of a power in the universe that held them in love and light in all earth’s ages before the coming of Christ…
So what place can the four weeks of Advent have in this new Universe Story? The allurement of the Universe as the expression, the visible Presence of Love in our lives, was/is so powerful that I gladly relinquished the lure of those dark weeks of Advent. Disenchantment.
And then I began to fall in love with the Winter Solstice. I discovered that this amazing yearly time (which for our ancestors only became evident in earlier dawns and later sunsets after a few days) was the reason why the early Christians chose December 25th to celebrate the Birth of Christ. Celtic scholar Dara Molloy, author of The Globalization of God told me when I visited him in Ireland that it was the Celtic Christians who also suggested June 24th, a few days after the Summer Solstice, the time of the waning of the light, for the Feast of John the Baptist. Hadn’t John said of the Christ, “He must increase and I must decrease”?
Slowly, over recent years, the beauty, passion and power of the Christ-story are being rewoven by many among us on the loom of our new knowledge of the Universe. Bruce Sanguin has done this with clarity and poetic elegance in his article, “Evolutionary Cosmology”:
The season of Advent is an affirmation of the dark mysteries of life. In these four weeks, we enter into a deepening darkness, a fecund womb where new life stirs. Before the great Flaring Forth 13.8 billion years ago, there was only the empty dark womb of the Holy One. We have a bias against darkness privileging the light in our tradition. But most of the universe is comprised of what scientists call dark matter….for the universe to exist in its present form, and not fly off in all directions, the gravitational pull of the dark matter is necessary. Creation needs the dark in order to gestate.
Advent is a season of contemplation and meditation in which the soul, if allowed, falls willingly back into that primordial darkness out of which new worlds are birthed.…
When Mary uttered those five words, “Let it be to me”, she was assenting to the descent into the sacred mystery that angels announce in the seasons of Advent and Christmas. We are called to trust this descent into darkness, making ourselves available as the ones through whom a holy birth can happen.
To go deep into the Season of Advent is to trust that there are galaxies of love stirring within the womb of your being, supernovas of compassion ready to explode and seed this wondrous world with Christ-shaped possibilities
Are we willing with Mary to consent to the birth of the divine coming through us? Are we willing to actually be a reconfigured presence of the originating Fireball, prepared to be centre of creative emergence – to give birth to the sacred future that is the dream of God? Are we willing both personally and in the context of our faith communities to birth the Christ?
So bring on the Christmas pageants….and when that cardboard star-on-a-stick glitters above the baby Jesus, think of it as your cosmological kin winking at you and settling over you as well, lighting you up as a sacred centre through whom the Christ waits to be born.
(based on the teachings of Cosmologist Brian Swimme on the Powers of the Universe, illustrated with insights from Jean Houston and from the writings of poets and mystics)
Homeostasis: Here what has been developed is sustained, maintained… The goddess Sarasvati in India plays only one note on her long-stringed instrument; body temperature stays at 98.6F…. We may reach a level of sameness in our prayers and practices, our work and relationships, the structures of our lives, our liturgies…. but if kept too long, safety leads to stagnation. We reach a plateau as the urgency subsides, the joy fades into the commonplace; what seemed wonderful becomes the everyday, the expected. Our lives slip into the “nothing-happening” of an Austen novel, and we may not even notice how dull it is. The universe gets bored with us. That was Dorothy’s life when we first meet her in the Wizard of Oz. Grey skies, grey land, grey telephone poles.The only thing really alive was Toto; then he was taken away.
Cataclysm: For the next level of growth, of deepening, something has to wake us up, shake us up. It may take a tornado to blow us all the way to Oz…. We must orchestrate the breakdown for the breakthrough to occur. The mystics endured cataclysm in different ways: Julian of Norwich was sustained in her near-death experience by the presence of love whereas Angela of Foligno, a follower of Francis of Assisi, learned in the darkness where she lost everything that love would never leave her. For by that blessing which came with the darkness I did collect my thoughts and was made so sure of God that I can never again doubt but that I do of a certainty possess him. Trust in the darkness and loss finally brings us through to the light. Etty Hillesum, who died in Auschwitz during the Second World War, wrote: I shall try to help you, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, though I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that you cannot help us, that we must help you to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days, also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of you, God, in ourselves. And in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much you yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us but we must help you and defend your dwelling place inside us to the end.
Jean Houston says that the call is to “radical reinvention” in order to speciate, to become a deepening spirit of the earth for her new emergence. Like the seed, the mystic must go down into the darkness of the earth, let go of the success of walking in the midday sun of her own achievements, her own goals and triumphs.
Synergy: mutually enhancing relationships. Life at the Benedictine Monastery of Helfta was an illustration of this: four mystics lived there in the 12th century, sustaining one another in faith and love and their mystical experiences. The writings of the mystics can offer synergistic energy, the guidance and wisdom we need; now we are more deeply aware of the earth and its living beings, of the universe itself as offering shared energies to us; the bio-mimicry that teaches us how creatures on our planet survive cataclysm; the characters in the Wizard of Oz, representing heart and brain and courage are a splendid example of synergy.
Transmutation:slow but deep change over time; releasing us from old powers that hold us in check: the personal unconscious (Freud); the collective unconscious (Jung); the whole biological nature (Bateson). The universe is at work within us: we are part of the cosmological unconscious (Swimme); we are the universe reflecting upon itself through us (Teilhard). On the mystic journey, our own efforts to be still, to listen, to pray, to seek inner guidance….
Terese of Lisieux said our efforts are like a child trying laboriously to lift her feet to climb high steps until at last love scoops her up in her arms, carries her to the top…evolution of species; the ancient tale of the earth gradually being created by bits of soil being placed on the back of a turtle… we recognize transmutation taking place in us when we no longer fit into old patterns, relationships, structures. Then we must seek out others to help us to keep going.
Transformation: Sudden. Go looking for guidance in the mystics, writers and poets who have experienced this. Welcome beauty into our lives. We have within us a visionary process which is a source for the recoding of the planet. All the codings for the life of the unborn future are available in us. We are the recoding, the reset button.
After a long illness, a bout of scrupulosity, Caryll Houselander had an experience of God that removed her obsessive fears and gave her a profound peace: “It was in the evening, I think. The room was dark, and the flames of firelight dancing on the wall seemed almost to cause me pain when I opened my eyes….I had realized in a dim, intuitive way that it was not something I had done that required forgiveness, but everything I was that required to be miraculously transformed.”
Interrelatedness : a vision of caring with a sense of the whole an invitation from the cosmos to see all of life as interconnected, as did the mystics, the astronauts and now the physicists. We need an overarching vision that is so simple and alluring that we can see what the world can be…. What does a world look like that really works for everyone? This is an incredible grace and opportunity for us, born on this beautiful planet at this time in history.
Radiance: the power of wisdom: The sun gives off messages as gravitons that pull us to the sun; the sun interacts with the moon and new gravitons feed us; the earth responds with a flood of gravitons….human presence depth perception. We are frozen light…
Hildegard of Bingen, the astonishing 12th c. abbess and genius, wrote: “From my infancy until now, in the 70th year of my age, my soul has always beheld this Light, and in it my soul soars to the summit of the firmament and into a different air….The brightness which I see is not limited by space and is more brilliant than the radiance around the sun ….When and how I see this, I cannot tell; but sometimes when I see it, all sadness and pain is lifted from me, and I seem a simple girl again, and an old woman no more!”
Brian Swimme says that every being you meet holds fourteen billion years of radiance. Radiance is the primary language of the universe. We develop a container that can respond to the beauty of the other. We enter into resonance with the radiance of the universe, and that is the primary form of prayer. You become the radiance that is flooding the world.
awakening to the sacred feminine presence in our lives
Awakening to Humanity’s Sacred Mission Session 3 and 4 are now
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