off the deep end: a way overdue analysis of what feminine spirituality means to me
"Where she runs, where she runs to now
Where she runs, where she runs to feel
Where she runs, where she runs
Nobody seems to mind
Nobody
Nobody told me, no one told me it was her
No one told me, no one told me I could see her
Where she runs
No one told me but her
Well see her, feel her
Where she runs to now
Where she feels to now
Where she runs to now
Never have I learned to love her before
Never have I seen her
Where she runs
It's a simple thing, simple thing
Well to love once again, to love;
Although it feels like --
Never like this before
Come and feel your hands on my side
Although it feels like
Never like this before
Wash your hands
Wash your hands on the crystal shore
It's a simple thing, a simple thing
Where she runs
-- Rusted Root, "Where She Runs"
I am in love with this song. I've always loved Rusted Root, but this song in particular is uniquely special to me. It's one of the only songs I've ever heard that manages to articulate my concept of "Goddess." Given that I seem am a certifiable pagan "Daddy's girl," this is a big feat.
I have long struggled to find some spiritual balance by re-connecting with the "feminine divine," but for some reason I cannot seem to build lasting relationships with female deities. Perhaps this because I am fickle with them and/or perceive that they are fickle with me. I also tend to associate them with romance and love, two issues that I for some stubborn reason am VERY unlikely to pray about. It seems almost unethical to me, like asking for money or a new car. It seems like I should be able to find love and win it myself without divine intervention, rather than self-consciously muttering a watered-down and paraphrased love spell in front of my altar. I realize that seventh-grade "love spells" and love prayers are not the same thing, but I can't shake this association. I have a very powerful independence complex: I cannot stand asking for help in areas I think I should be able to figure out on my own.
: I myself am female and therefore hold myself accountable for achieving all things "feminine." I think that I should embody female principles and be able to work with nothing more than the potential I already innately have.
As you can see, my habit of having unrealistically high expectations is once again at work, demanding that I do my best to embody aspects of the feminine divine without asking for help. Pride and a fierce need for independence prevent me from showing female deities my humble side or otherwise expressing a genuine willingness to listen. It seems weak to me, for example, to ask a mother figure to help me learn to be gentler; I should be able to become that way on my own through a combination of hard work and innate feminine qualities. I should not need a mother figure to nurture me, either, because I should be able to take care of myself. I should be able to protect myself and give myself rest and reassure myself when I am down. But of course I can't do all of these things on my own... I just for some reason expect that I can. I demand it of myself and it rankles when I have to go to Someone Else for help.
Partially this could be due to the way I was raised and the difficulties I've had with my own mother, who is fiercely nurturing when her babies are threatened but is otherwise one of the worst sources of comfort, empathy, and female role modeling in my life. That's perhaps too harsh to say, as I love her dearly and she really can make me feel loved and protected... she also preaches empowerment, fiery independence, and confidence. But she undermines these things even as she teaches them. She is also usually the one who relies on ME to make her feel protected and comforted, reversing the roles of mother and daughter. She is mean and too impatient to listen to problems. Recently that's been changing a little, thanks to the terrible family melt-down that happened fall of last year... but still.
Physical comfort she'll provide, but emotional comfort is nonexistent. She'll respond to the phrase "I'm feeling sort of stressed..." with a snapped retort of "Do I have to hear this? I have enough problems now and you're just going to depress me" or something extremely similar. Attempts to share problems about love, loneliness, confusion, or ANYTHING provoke an angry response bristling with accusations of my own weakness, stupidity, or general inability to handle anything. I love her, but she has certainly not made it easy for me to want a "mother figure" goddess in my life... or at least, she has made me very cynical about even the warm-and-fuzzy stereotype she isn't.
But fortunately or unfortunately there IS one aspect of the feminine divine that really resonates with me: the "Maiden," as she is known in Wiccan terms. This vision of the feminine divine is playful, luminous, breathlessly exhilarated by her own potential; she embodies the necessary revolution of spring and the simultaneous vulnerability and joy that comes from tumultuous personal growth. She is carefree and healthy and possessed of an innocence so deep that even her hungry sexuality cannot taint it. Nothing taints her innocence. She remains unjaded and pure even as she dirties her feet, seeks lovers, acknowledges the power of her paradoxical frailty. Others are drawn to her light and intoxicated by her freedom, a freedom that radiates around her like sunlight and sings out in all she does. She is active, clean, athletic, fresh, joyfully physical. She is irresistible. She has a rejuvenating effect on everything around her. And she does though despite being uncertain and overwhelmed: she inspired me to quote this haiku in my LJ info page.
"Bewildered. Breathless.
A bird... weightless in the sky.
Will I ever fall?"
Sometimes I see her as Artio, Diana, young unnamed goddesses from Greek or Roman times. I envision her surrounded by bounding deer and wolves, flocks of white birds and scrappy chickadees. Sometimes she is accompanied by hares and hunting hounrs, birds of prey and silvery lizards: all of them free. I associate with her the moon, with dawn, with with the noon-day sun. My images of her always full of Nature, of bounding energy and clean, cool air. I sometimes see her as a Warrior too, brave and athletic and unexpectedly disciplined despite all the wild impatience of her youth. Her focused ferocity is surprising, powerful. She is swift and decisive and optimistic: in short, everything I want to be.
Obviously this aspect of the feminine divine is a role model to me because it speaks of who I am now. I want to be all of the things I describe, can think of nothing more flattering than to be seen that way. I want to inspire, to draw people to me with warmth and energy and uninhibited hope, to run without tiring and sing without words, to be innocent no matter how many mistakes I make and how difficult it is to keep true to myself amid all of this tumultuous change. I want to be a good Warrior who can only get better. I want to be a good Lover who revels in love but does not let it enslave her. The poem I sometimes quote her, "Atalanta to Her Father," perfectly embodies the kind of love I want: do you remember that poem? Since I seem to have pulled all stoppers out, I will remind you that it goes like this:
my love must be like
the birch groves
where I run
like moss that spreads
under me and springs
up as I pass so
will I yield to
the right lover
oh I love
the sky as I run the sky
against my chest the wind
when I run everywhere
there are flowers and
in winter everywhere
are promises
I do not want
so much, I want
someone I can-
not outrun
why should I not
stretch and spring
my mind my
heart my legs
stronger
why not
swifter
why
should I
ever be
bounded
bound --
the mind leaps like a deer --
why should I not be free
It shouldn't take much effort to see why that resonates with me. It's sort of a personal theme, an articulation of the immense desire I have for freedom and why I equate it with good physical health and joyous physical expression. I think of this poem when I am running or vigorously learning something interest and new, both of which make me feel incredibly independent and feminine because of that.
I realize it's very narrow, but this view of the feminine divine is the one that has kept me hanging on, the one that has acted as a compass to me when all other things seemed confusing and lost.
This is my deep (or shallow) soul-searching tonight: read it as you will.
I will leave you with another Monaghan excerpt on the Maiden, which may help explain some of the Warrior comments that I made:
"It is easy to forget the rawness of her rage.
She is young, and sweet as all young things are, tender in her own way, soft and yielding when she chooses, playful and winsome. She is a puppy or a fawn, she is coltish and kittenish, she's a vixen, an eaglet, a lion's cub.
And it is so easy to forget the rawness of her rage.
... She is the conscience of our race, this fury who protects the sacredness of Earth, whose lean dogs fly at the throats of those who would profane te beauty she holds dear. She is mighty in her rage, knowing justice and its absence, knowing respect for life and its absence, knowing spirited love and its absence. She rages inside each of us, commanding us to live freely in the present in way's that narrow the future.
The maiden's arrow is swift and sharp and true. She herself is swift and sharp and true. Ignore her at your peril."