Showing posts with label Ritual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ritual. Show all posts

27 May 2010

Maiden-Mother-Crone

This morning my momma started an email with the following sentence, "Bec, since the day you were born, you have stolen my heart--just like your sister did-- and I have wanted you to have a perfect life." It was in this new day that I (not having yet birthed any children, yet witnessing many births) had an
ah-haa moment knowing that every mother I know wants the same thing for their sons and daughters that my mother wants for us.

In old traditions, the cycles of women were known as "Maiden-Mother-Crone." We enter times, now, where not every woman becomes a mother, physically. But energetically, there are many ways to tend to children and become a mother. We all have something in our lives that 'on the day it was born' our hearts broke wide open and our souls poured out, and whomphhh, we hope and pray that little thing has a perfect life. Yet, who gets a perfect life?

Maiden, we are, from birth until we start to swell and gestate. If you are a woman who choose not to gestate a baby, what in life have you been gestating, nourishing and caring for over time? What are you gestating today? What have you mothered to creation and continued to love, just like a child? Here in this place, we play, we create a mess and start over again, we experience joy, we fall in love, and we find ourselves.

Mother...Your body swollen, life force running through you, you caring for one thing like you've never cared for yourself. During gestation, what has inspired you creatively? What do you fear about the transition and how is this fear eased? How will this maiden transform into a mother? My mother has been a constant blessing, even when challenging, to the progression of my life. She is the only woman who believes in me with such strength and yet challenges me until I push off...She is probably like this because I "pushed off" from her womb in about 4 minutes once she actually began to push in labor. After the birth of becoming Mother, we grow up. Even if you become a mother later in life, you get to grow up AGAIN. Can you see the joy? Every birth, we grow into motherhood further and further. We get wrapped up in our "seeds" and tend to them, as we tend to ourselves, our commitments and to life. Age comes to us and our wised souls watch as our families evolve, our children(metaphoric or physical) leave us and begin their own lives; and as Mother, as woman, we begin again.

The wise woman, the Crone, the auntie, the grandmother, this woman passes on the wisdom, the lessons and the unconditional love that she has experienced throughout life. She holds her daughter as she births her babies, life dreams, goals and losses. She endures the magic that is passed through our ancestors and generations, hoping to pass it on to a "seed" that will carry this wisdom into the wind. Her hair is gray, lines show in her face, and after years of watching her mother's and aunt's hold the wisdom she begins to carry the torch.

With my birth sister about to have a baby, we three women represent Maiden-Mother-Crone and what a profound time it is in our lives. Midwives "mother" women into motherhood all the time. Today, I write this as a new mother sits at home with her week old baby girl and to me revels in the love she feels. Today, I write this for all of you exploring your phases in womanhood. May you find light in your transformation.

Blessed be!


25 October 2009

ecology of a sunday


where i wake with a call to attend a birth, i come home clean and know this assignment lie ahead. an assignment of ritual and everyday an intention in my life so that I, by choice, can live a life of spirituality, love and peace. settling into a practice today takes a little energy, as there are tomatos roasting in the oven and 2 antsy dogs sit by my feet. the sky was purple as I left the house this morning and there were low clouds over the mountains, a magical and mystical day for a baby to be born and a new mother and father to birth into parenthood. Ravens were flying low in the sky and as if the clouds were trying to break, moisture seeps in and replaced those spaces. The sun broke mid-morning or maybe around noon, just as this baby came onto the planet and into the arms of it's mom and dad. As I finish my practice, rise from my seat and come to this screen my feet are cold and I have to sit by the fire even though my internal oven is on...my external oven needs stimulation. In my practice today, I left for a moment but the dogs decided when the spirits came into the house that they'd start barking just to let them know who's protecting the house. Well Bob started barking, me knowing he can pick up on those present energies around my house when I practice. home. open flow, thoughts coming into awareness and then letting them release. I have this ability after enough practice to recognize my mind versus awareness. I know that in awareness I am me and that even if my heart is broken that this place is warm, comforting and love abundant love from the universe flows here and reminds me I will heal, I am healing. I am healed. Fresh snow hit the mountains today and that clean protective energy is what surrounds me right now. Today I did most everything I love for an autumn sunday, but instead of me being the teacher of awareness I practice my sober journey to a mind and body and spirit and heart that embraces that vast expanse that is my awareness...as if the stars were shining and filling the nights sky, there I know I breathe, there I know I heal, there I know I rest, there I know I can enter it crazy, and there I know I can leave that crazy and come back peace. Buzzed. high. Flying. Sometimes in my practice, I visit with my teachers even if I haven't seen them in a long time. They give me a lesson, give me a hymn to my own sacred body, and I do this on my own. How did I get to this place? Why was I drawn to know another part of my mind, the part where my magic is held. A part of my mind where shamanism grows, like a seed, and it's always been inside of me.

The ecology of my magic today started by taking some breaths, driving to a birth, having quiet and peace of mind, and watching as the landscape and environment that is my home moved and swirled and inhaled and exhaled and touched. Like a rise and fall, it reminded me it's just a sunday and I am just a normal girl, living in a vast valley that could be the center of the universe wherever that really is.