Goddess Centered Practice
In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as "theapoetics"—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.”
Embrace Possibility
Usually when I create a new design for a pendant or figurine, I know who I’m making when I begin. Last 
spring, I created a new design who emerged as a mystery. When she was finished, I loved her. But, I didn’t know her name or what she represented. I asked on my facebook page for input and I got some suggestions…
Druid priestess. Seraphine. High Priestess. Tri-Goddess. Mother. Celtic goddess.
I took her to the woods and held her in my hand and spoke in a little sing-song of emergence…
She who unites body, mind and spirit. She who calls upon earth, sky, and river. She who speaks to oaks and mountains. She who sings with the ocean. She who opens arms to the sky and feels raindrops bless her brow. She who circles in the moonlight. She who gathers with her sisters. She who hears the drumbeat of the earth. She who tunes her heartbeat to this call. She who steps in time with the wind.
Of this earth, for this earth, on this earth.
She holds the vision. She holds the space. She holds an ancient wisdom.
Encoded in her cells, written on her bones…
The mantle settles around her shoulders.
Sinking into belly, bones, and blood,
until she knows,
without a doubt,
that this is who,
she really is.
The next afternoon, a friend who had a prototype version of the new pendant sent me a message suggesting a title: Embrace Possibility. I thought about what I’d written in the woods. I thought about how different women saw different names for her and I knew that THIS was it. Embrace Possibility. What message does she hold for you?
This experience returns to me as we greet a new year with all its potential. After the reflective mood of fall and the celebratory spirit of the holiday, I find that January has entered my life with a frosty attitude. When I was preparing to give birth to my new baby in October, I'd mentally prepared to be "off" until January, which felt far away at the time. Now that it actually is January, I recognize a tautness in my chest and mind at the return to "real life." My body feels tight and constricted and I am increasingly irritable and frustrated, like an animal emerging from hibernation. At the same time, I have a lot of plans, visions, and ideas for the new year. I feel a brightness and aliveness and a deep excitement about the birth of a new year, but I notice myself struggling with a sensation of needing or wanting all of these things to be done right now, at this very moment. Hurry up! I suspect this is because at another level, I still actually want to hibernate in my rocking chair with my baby. The call of the hermit self remains strong, the call of the outside world is clamoring with increasing intensity for my attention, and the buzzing sparks of energy and vision in my mind say, set us free. Let us ignite! Can I allow myself to continue to sit for just a while longer, embracing possibility?
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