"...thank God, a wedding!"

 The R/evolution Is Love (2011)

It was 2011 and things simply felt different. There was a buoyancy to the world’s energy. Even with disruption and strife, when I really listened in, there seemed a harmony inside it all, as though something else was becoming available, life being retuned. It felt true, like a sacred portal opening.

…………………….

I don’t remember when I first heard of the ancient Mayan calendar with its revelations that move beyond our sense of time, space, and beliefs, but I was intrigued by its historical accuracy. Developed by the highly advanced thinkers of Mexico’s Olmec civilization from the fifth century BCE, the calendar system is a complicated series of inscriptions, codes and glyphs. As Dr. Carl J. Calleman explained, it is a timeline marking the evolution of consciousness, in nine “waves,” from the beginning of time, 16.4 billion years ago, into the future.

The last phase of that future, the “Ninth Wave of Consciousness,” was activated in 2011 according to Dr. Calleman’s calculations. It marked the end of “old time,” signaling the age of new beginnings and based on this ancient almanac of sacred time, we are now living in that long-awaited future. And this “new time” arrived riding on a wave of dynamic energy — boisterous, open-hearted, and centered in unity.

In addition to major Earth events in 2011 (including a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, Japan), “a massive protest movement began against the ruling order all over the world,” Dr. Calleman wrote, creating a tumultuous push for liberty, self-determination and freedom of expression. “The Arab Spring began with protests erupting over the globe, including the Occupy Movement in the United States and other countries.”

And there was a royal wedding! Or as Allison Pearson wrote in Newsweek that year: “In a world gone to hell, thank God, a wedding!”

Throughout history, royal weddings have often been harbingers of change, seen as a unifying moment of coming together in gratitude and appreciation. But this royal wedding in Great Britain in 2011 marked a break in dutiful tradition with a message for the future: a future king of a thousand-year-old monarchy married for love. Instead of a business arrangement to acquire property, power, and prestige (and historically women were considered part of the property), this marriage was about a man and woman making a choice together — through love.

Even so, in these changing modern times, what was the big deal about a royal wedding in an outdated monarchy? The world was roiled in conflict between those attempting to bring a peaceful message of equality and those committed to a hierarchy of haves and have nots. And because we were all connected through a vast digital hook-up, discontent had a global voice. Therefore, some thought the universal excitement of a royal wedding seemed the year’s biggest anachronism.

Nevertheless, since royalty can be archetypal in nature, affecting change for the masses, the wedding and the relationship that emerged was revolutionary in its own right. As over two billion of us witnessed this grand yet intimate event celebrating the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the wedding rite of passage acted as an opening to bring people together, to feel more connected to each other in a divided world.

[...the article continues on Medium]

 

Interweaving...

 

Interweaving a New Future Together

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The weave of unity is infinite, ever flowing & creative. 

-Patricia Albere

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Words related to the ancient art of weaving are often used as metaphors, especially when expressing the deep, intricate nature of life and human awareness. My curiosity was peaked regarding that relationship of words when reading about the history of weaving — and learning that women were the first weavers. “The facts of women’s experience of life are primordial,” poet and author Barbara Mor wrote.

“The first God, Mother Earth, was the sign of a human response to an experienced fact,” Mor explained in The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth. “The first arts and religions, the first crafts and social patterns, were designed in recognition and celebration of her.” From earliest times — giving birth, sustaining life, and nurturing that life — women recognized themselves in Mother Earth. And women told their stories (were women also the first storytellers?) by communicating that innate, fertile connection to life through art — creating clay vessels, weaving fabric, making paint, and painting on rocks and structures around them — linking their experiences to the Divine. And they recognized themselves in Her reflection.  

Barbara Mor shares that “religious rites were combined with industry. Women’s religions were organic, a unity of body and spirit, of daily life tasks and cosmic meaning.” All of life was sacred, interconnected, shared. “The sacred is the emotional force which connects the part to the whole,” philosopher and poet William Irwin Thompson wrote.

 “Cosmic mind and human mind are not essentially different, or separate, nor are cosmic body and human body,” Mor emphasized. “Everything is interconnected in a vast webwork of cosmic being — a universal weaving — in which each individual thing, or life-form, is a kind of energy knot, or interlock, in the overall vibrating pattern.” The intimacy in Barbara Mor’s words here conjures the essence of nature’s magic. I stare into a spider’s web and lose myself in the interrelated universe she has woven, clearly guided by a Divine source. Following their own instinctual nature, did the women who invented spinning and weaving — twisting something raw into filament-like threads, then weaving them into something whole — do the same? Beyond the practical attributes of string and cloth for early humans, was there a desire to express something ‘sensed’ within themselves?

 (Click here to continue reading on Medium) 

In the Presence of Remarkable Women

In the autumn of 2000, as the world was adjusting to the evolving energies of a new millennium, I traveled to China with my Qi Gong teachers and fellow students to explore an ancient and mysterious part of the world, including deep in the heart of the Daoist mountains. I had the sense of taking the spirit of my mother and grandmothers with me—wrapping myself in their strength; their sense of humor and wonder; their love and appreciation of nature; and their ability to see beauty in everything great and small.  

So, it was no accident that I was greeted and embraced by remarkable women along the way. And as something shifted in me, like a calling to write down remembrances of our time together, mystical stories emerged of women's lives...and of mine.  

Two of my stories, "Mirrored Encounters" and "A Thousand Years Telling," are included in the Common Sentience series of books published by Sacred Stories this year: Goddess: Blessed Reunions with the Feminine Face of the Divine by Anodea Judith and Portals: Energetic Doorways to Mystical Experiences Between Worlds by Freddy Silva. And there are many intriguing stories by other journeyers in both books. Enjoy!

...whatever the question...

 

My Duty Is to Love

 Through the years of reading biographies and books focused on Princess Diana—in my studies of women’s history and royal archetypes—I always held royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith as a fair and trustworthy voice. So I was surprised and disappointed recently when she appeared to join misogynistic and patriarchal-leaning writers by referring to strong women as “domineering” and deeply feeling men as “weak.”

On a promotional tour for her new book, another about the British royal family, Bedell Smith compared King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Calling Harry “weak” like the Duke of Windsor—because, if I’m understanding her reasoning, both men fell in love with strong women—and saying that “in some respects Meghan and the Duchess of Windsor have similar qualities: very narcissistic, very controlling, very dominating”—because, again, if I’m understanding her premise, that they were/are strong women. (Et tu…even you, Sally?)

However, people who know Meghan Markle—and those more inclined to take the high road— would describe her qualities as “confident, assured, and being a leader.” And she was vilified for that—like other women who dared to step outside the narrow Windsor box. As I see it, Meghan, this accomplished, heart-guided woman, fell in love with a man of great heart—compassionate, caring, sensitive, courageous—a man who was a fellow activist motivated by creating a kinder world, all in the name of love. (And a man who inherited his mother’s “exquisite sensitivity of feeling,” in the words of Jungian analyst Jim Fitzgerald, and is committed to continuing her humanitarian vision.)

[Click here to read the entire article posted on MEDIUM]

...of feminine design.