Back to the Goddess

Are you feeling it? That connection to the universe, the goddess, the god, the divine? That unexplainable shift in consciousness that takes your heart and soul away from every day life into a realm wherein you feel SO much. It is deep, weepy, emotional, sensitive, expansive and quiet. I t is the darkness and the warmth of the earth. The deep night skies and the flowing waters.

In my every day life I do not feel it most times but sometimes, some days, I feel it intensely and this is one of those days.

Love, passion, inexplicable energy. I miss the days when I was unattached and unencumbered so that I could just go out and touch this and hang out with others who felt the same and do ritual. I miss those times.

This depth of feeling can cause me to be out of touch with my daily requirements and the shift to that otherness makes it hard to be real in the here and now.

In "the Mists of Avalon" the character expresses that longing she has when she is separated from Avalon and the Goddess. I miss those times back when I was in my 20's and I could just go with a group of women and dance; spiraling in ecstasy and joy as one with the universe. Marriage and children have kept me busy and I live in my Virgo rising mostly so I usually remain efficient, rational, the worker. Today, with the cloudy, rainy skies I am feeling that shift, that calling again and it weighs on my heart.

Those who have felt that calling know the heaviness, the deep feelings that are so much they well over and spill out in tears and reverence. I feel Her and She calls to me for the first time in YEARS. I had forgotten this feeling. In the rush of life, the responsibilities of family and marriage I had forgotten Her touch but today She calls me and I am overwhelmed. I am, again, one with the universe and all is well.

9-11 thoughts.....

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It is 9-11. While most of the time I abhor the constant rhetoric about this day and the barrage of news reports that whip us into that fearful place; I also remember.

I remember being pregnant with my only son and being awakened by my husband only to see the awful pictures. I remember a feeling of stunned horror stealing over me. I remember sending the kids to school (we lived across from their school back then) in a kind of daze. I remember the clips shown over and over again.

I sat there in shock, feeling a horrible numbness and a feeling that everything I ever knew had changed but I couldn't imagine how it had changed. I wondered why I felt that stunned numbness.

Then the guy from Cantor Fitzgerald came on. He was the face of grief for me. His was the voice of all the anguish and fear and horror and deep grief I could not feel because of the shock. It was when he shakenly talked about the 700 families of the people who were in that building; the  wives, husbands, children, siblings, parents, grandparents who would be affected by the loss...that's when the grief slammed into me and I began to cry in huge, gasping, wrenching sobs. This man could see beyond just the victims (and I don't say "just" to belittle them) to the hundreds of families and friends who would suffer as a result of the horrific death of all those people. The motherless and fatherless children; the spouses missing their mates, the parents missing their grown children; he could see all of them and their collective grief and I FELT that deep within me. It was so horrible, the magnitude of the losses.

Months later I had my son and when he was around 3 or 4 years old, I read an obscure article about the babies born to mothers who were pregnant on 9-11. Physicians and preschool teachers and parents noticed that these children have  unnatural and often times irrational  fears that they have no explanation for. My son fears everything far more than his sisters ever did. Physicians attributed this hyper-fearfulness to the wash of hormones from the constant fear and grief that the then-pregnant mothers experienced; these hormones actually altered the brain chemistry of these babies.

My son is 10 years old now and he still fears things that other kids not born after 9-11 seem to take in stride.

That day changed so much and not for the better. The freedoms we have given up out of the fear of that day have enormous repercussions. We have allowed surveillance into our personal lives like never before.  We have spent billions on unnecessary wars that could have instead gone to build infrastructure and educate and help our population's children and the less fortunate among us.  We have tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people for greed because of the 9-11 excuse. All for an attack we are not even certain was actually from an outside terrorist force.  It might have been done by our own government leaders to whip us up into a fearful frenzy; ready to accept any manner of loss of freedom and murderous intent.  We really don't know and it is this deep  uncertainty that  is making it very difficult to heal and move on.  There's been no real justice. 

 

The karmic reparation for all the innocent lives lost here and abroad will come.

We must honor the losses of that day and remind ourselves that for those people who died that day  and afterward  to have a purpose, to have honor, we must fight for the freedoms we have lost and work to bring back the country they once knew.  We must work to prevent the killing and wars.  We must rise up in peace and love  and change our world.

Letting go...again

Once upon a time, there was a little baby.  He was round and sweet with ten fingers and ten toes.  He had huge brown eyes and dark, long eyelashes.  His baby soft hair was curly with those springy open curls that wrap around your fingers when you touch them.  He was smart and so adorable.  His skin was a light brown and soft as only a baby's skin can be.  He had the most lilting laugh, bubbly and wonderful to hear.  I loved him, cared for him, fed him, changed his diapers, held him, kissed his toes and fell in love with him so deeply.  I was twelve years old.  


As he grew, I took his little hand and showed him the world.  I watched him, protected him, and defended him.  When the typhoon raged at night, I would steal into his room, which was the farthest from everyone's,  and carry him to mine and place him into my double bed so he could be with me; in case he awoke in fear.  I held him close and comforted him when he was afraid.  I played with him and his little friends and dressed him up and took him trick-or-treating on Halloweens.  I made tents for him and helped him play.  I washed his clothes and cleaned his  room.  I made his lunch and ate with him.  When he was six years old, I carried him on my back up and down the hills of Jerusalem because his little feet were too tired to go as far as he wanted to go.  When he was in school, I baked and decorated cookies and cupcakes for Halloween and Christmas and brought them to his class.  I drove him to concerts and made banners for us to hold so we could scream our lungs out;  I didn't know who the bands were but he did.  I drove him out in the forest to get him out of the house after his accident because he hated being cooped up.  I played "spoons" with him and his friends and made him designer look-alike shirts.
I drove him and his friends to midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show and did all the fun stuff with the squirt guns and rice.  Then I drove them to late-night fast food places so they could squirt the window cashiers.  We laughed and laughed and had so much fun.  When other grown sisters would have been off doing their own thing; I spent time with him and his friends so he could go places because he couldn't drive yet.  I treated him  to movies, lunch out, and concerts.  


I loved watching  him grow and change.  I remember him calling the storm "roughy funder" and seeing his eyes light up at Christmas time.  I remember him laughing and running outside and  his  amazing eloquence.  I remember his jokes and his freckles.  I remember his playfulness and caring.  I remember his intelligence; he was so smart and insightful.  I remember how sweet he was when  I tucked him in for nap time or bed time; he didn't want to go but he was so good he would do it anyway.  He was always so well behaved and a good friend to his buddies.  His loyalty and generosity were wonderful to see. 




I got married when he was six years old and went away but I came back a year later and stayed for several years.  I moved out again with a boyfriend but came back again when that didn't work out.  I took care of him when our mother went to Texas and took him camping with me because he liked camping.  The one day, I married again, he was 15 and gave me away.  After that, we rarely saw each other because I moved away and began raising my own family.  


Yet I never forgot that little boy, my baby brother, deep in my heart.  He has a place, a him-shaped place in my heart that no one else can ever fill.  



Now we are both grown and we cannot relate to one another.  Our mother has damaged us both and has tried ( and succeeded) to stir dissention between us.  He has a wife and children but he thinks I am the wrong one, the overreacting one.  We grew up in a dysfunctional home, our mother was a narcissist who wove her web of harm to me and favoritism to him.  Despite this, I always loved him, I never begrudged him his successes or felt jealous of his money or his life.  I just want him to be happy because he is the first child I ever loved and cared for and I cannot imagine wanting to be (or have)  better than him. He feels like my first child but not.


But now we are apart;  he is still in the dysfunction while I have been through therapy and can  no longer tolerate being hurt by him or our mother so I have had to walk away.  This year seems full of walking-aways.    I feel deep grief and sadness;  I have loved him as long as he has lived, almost 40 years,  and there is a hole in my heart still shaped like him that cannot be filled.  He brushes off  my deep feelings for him and only when we relate on a superficial level does he show a softness to me  when he looks at me and even more when he looks at my children.  Yet when I mention the dysfunction; he grows hard and condescending.  This reaction is not his fault (because of the dysfunction)  but it feels like a knife is turning in a fresh and unhealed wound.  


My baby brother.  I miss you, I love you, why do you have to suffer and why does that suffering mean I cannot relate to you?  Why can't I help you?  This hurts so badly; as though he has died.   Why can't we be close?  Why can't we be friends?  And will the pain  ever go away? 

A snapshot moment of discovery

I said I would write a bit about my life.  This is because everyone I know seems to tell me "you should write your life story."  So here is an exerpt of the day after my "first time"  with a 17 year old Palestinian in Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine:

Awakened by a knock at my door, I called “Just a minute.“ I dashed to the bathroom. His smell was on me;  the scent of his leavings mingled with my own was new to me. I looked into the mirror as I washed my hands, searching my face to see if somehow the night’s revelry would show. I looked the same. That was a surprise; I expected to look different. I had done something so deeply primal in my complete submission to him that I felt the profound change within should be mirrored without. 



Every nerve ending on my body was sensitive now. I combed my hair and put on my robe. When I opened the door, he was standing there;  his dark curly hair still wet and his beautiful eyes still merry. “Good morning, love,” he said, and kissed me on the lips, his tongue probing with familiarity and  his hand on my breast. My heart fell so hard; I could feel it, like a stone in my breast that flopped to my stomach. We broke apart. “Come in,” I said, shakily.  He had the longest, darkest eyelashes I had ever seen.  His dimpled smile was radiant and devastating.


“Do you want some tea?” he asked, as we sat on the bed, facing each other.


“No, I am not hungry just now.” I sounded stupid. I was shy, and didn’t know what to say. Facing him in the light of day was different, and difficult. I was embarrassed about my boldness of the night before. Would he think badly of me?


“What’s wrong in you?” he asked, sensing my reticence. He was touching my cheek gently. I looked into his beautiful huge brown eyes. I was gone, then. I could feel my soul falling, falling to a place it had wanted all my life but had never been. I could feel so much.

I was sure that it was not the same for him. I felt so vulnerable, foolish, small, and embarrassed all at once. Worst of all, having had him; the need was not gone............it was deeper, stronger, more intense as though every nerve and cell in my body cried out for his. I felt chained to him, invisible chains from my heart and body, even my soul. Yet I was sure he didn’t feel the same.



“Come, Cassandra,” he said. “Get dressed; you can come with me today.” His tone was gentle, sweet, laughing.  My name was a caress from his lips.


“Ok, but you have to wait outside, I have to shower and dress.”


“Why? I have seen you, touched you.” Amusement showed on his face. What was for me a shattering experience seemed to sit lightly with him. He didn’t seem as moved at all.


“Because I am not ready to shower and dress in front of you. It was dark last night. I can’t, .....I can’t...” I stopped and dropped my eyes.



He got up and with a smile went out. His eyes as he left told me he somehow understood. I felt weird. Here I was, so much more sophisticated than he, well traveled, a year older, and yet I felt like an untried girl around him. I got up, showered and dressed. I cried, hot tears burning my face, washed away with cool water. Somehow, I would not let my fears overwhelm me. I couldn’t think with his touch still so fresh on me.


We spent the day together, talking, laughing kissing. We shared an orange, he taking a slice in his mouth and then passing it to mine with a kiss. We were so young. I felt like lovers, newly in love and shut out my rational mind completely. I felt like we had a secret, shared only between us. Succumbing to the feelings of the moment, I rode a wave of happiness I had never felt before. He loves me! Even after! I was astounded, humbled, warm, validated. I felt young, innocent still, and so in love. I wanted to go anywhere with him, be his forever, live in his pocket, and know his thoughts. I wanted to be his posession, his slave even.  All those rationalizations of before melted away;  I was finally allowed to just feel and feel and feel and be. I could allow my passion and deep feelings full rein at last, without them being trivialized or feared. This was serious and sharp, an unbearable sweetness. I deliberately blocked out the fact that I would have to leave in a few days.


That night, he took me to Jaffa gate, in the dark. He sat me on a bench some way from the gate and bent to kiss me. It was a long, passionate kiss, stirring us both. He placed my hand on the bulge of his pants.


“You make me want you,” he whispered against my lips.

My hand felt the heat of him, the hardness of him and I wanted to lie back right there and open my legs right then under the moonlight by the old stone walls of Jerusalem.