September 3, 2002
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From the circles...
"Be the change you want to see
happen in the world" -Gandhi
When/How Shall I Begin?
by Aleese Cody
We started to gather, unorganized in our actions, determined in our minds. Different people, different backgrounds, strangers but yet, friends. Connected in our various ways.
Alas. What to do? Where to begin?
One of us knew how to cast a circle. So she did. We lit some candles and smudged. Another of us has been gifted a sacred pipe carved of soapstone. She showed us how to hold it, how to pass it and how to smoke. We prayed to great spirit. I found a small woven seed pot filled with bird seed. We declared it the talking stick. As it was passed from one woman to the next, each one shared what was on her mind or they shared nothing at all. Whatever the case, we respected their time, their space. As the symbolic talking stick was passed on, completing the circle and then begining another round, I felt closer to everyone in the room. We all did. There is a healing that comes with just feeling safe. Sometimes being heard is all the healing we need. In this circle there are no rights or wrongs. There is no judgement. What judgement the world outside would bestow upon us, we have replaced with compassion.
That night was the seed of transformation for many of us. Now we continue to meet; sometimes on the full moon, the new moon, the equinox, or the solstice. We've come together for Beltane & Imbolc. We each carry our own earth based beliefs of honor and celebration. Sometimes we get together and there is very little ritual. Other times it feels more traditional. But with each time there is healing and we've come to understand that when we meet, something very special happens for each of us.
coyotefarms@worldnet.att.net
Letter from a
Priestess in Australia
Hello. My name is Catherine de Garis. My personal affinity with women's spirituality and Goddess worship emerged during my teen years - flowering in my late twenties into a strong calling to find new ways to serve the Goddess as one of her priestesses.
In the absense of an existing tradition or spiritual community, I ritually dedicated my life to her service at dawn on the Summer solstice of 1992, here in Perth, Western Australia, where I live, with my son Robin (aged 7).
Since then I have been on an ongoing path of exploration and dreaming, seeking meaningful expression of my deep love and devotion, and finding a variety of ways to create ritual and otherwise be of service to my community - particularly in the area of childbirth preparation.
I am currently a member of a women's moon circle who meet monthly a the full moon to share our life journeys and invoke ongoing personal growth. My biggest current dream is of creating a Goddess church community here in Perth, to enable me to fully live my vocation. I invite anyone who is interested in learning more about my work to visit my newly created website - http://au.geocities.com/priestess_of_the_mother.
Blessings to all,
Catherine
(Perth, Western Australia)
Things that I notice as I am gathering material for further reflection. . .
by Mnimaka
I notice the value of having lived long enough to have gained a certain perspective that I know is authentically my own.
I notice my awareness of my inner knowing, forged in the crucible of all my experience, of having survived and grown from a lifetime of challenges.
I feel power in my acquired wisdom. I am now a resource upon which I can draw, a well from which I drink and am refreshed. Others may also draw from this well.
I find that I have tested and internalized enough of philosophies, which have been played upon my own experience. I am able to say I am reinvented:
I am whole
I am Mnimaka
I am alive
I am standing
I am holding the field
I pray that this inner knowing, this field of vision, will be the last of me to go when it is my time. . after all loss, after mourning, after sight, after hearing, after movement, after speech, after consciousness. . .
This the is vessel upon which I hope to sail. . . onward.
The Crone Mnimaka
12256 Casero Court, San Diego, California 92128 mnimaka@sprynet.com
BIOGRAPHY
I am a fifth generation San Diegan, part of this land by the sea and my character was as much formed by it and nurtured by its gentle climate as by the family into which I was born. I am of the sea. I am of the shore. I am an open vista where little is hidden. . . and yet I have my secrets. I grew up walking the beaches year round and love living by the Pacific, and being sheltered by the marine layer that creeps in to cover the shoreline, insinuating itself up canyon draws and into the valleys to cover the land in the cool softness after sunset. Once in Alaska, by the waters of the inland sea, I heard the call of Raven, somehow knowing that it was the call of the Old Ones, without understanding why.
After obtaining my Mrs. degree upon completion of just the first year of university (as was the custom in the 1950s) I settled into the domestic life accepted during that decade. Soon with a brood of four children, I began a life of community service, art studies and the social life dictated by my husband's career as field service engineer for a major player in the industrial military complex of that Cold War era. McCarthyism, Eisenhower's administration, The Berlin Wall, The Kennedy era, John Glen in orbit, the first Moon Walk were all part of my young womanhood.
My work history began as a clerk in the Motion Picture production unit for General Dynamics Astronautics Division, builders of the Atlas booster that put John Glen into orbit. I was proud to be productive in an industry that was on the cutting edge of space technology. I was proud to be an American! Then, ten years later, as the single mother of four children, I moved to a sales assistant position in the local office of a Wall Street brokerage firm; then office management, client service, and copy writing in a small local ad agency; on to administrative assistance work for a commercial television production company; and then back to the medical and financial benefits of General Dynamics and administration and production assistance in the Motion Picture & Television and Community Relations units until my retirement in 1992. As the company for whom I was working began to disintegrate, my perception (the first call of the Crone) was that that the company was dying because of a spiritual sickness, after 50 years and three generations of vital production, it had lost its spiritual core.
In retirement, I never looked back. I had been very involved in helping my grandmother manage her elder years. When she died at 98, I conceptualized a family wilderness lodge in Alaska, which led to a renaissance of family feeling between myself, my two sisters and our father, as we worked together.
Upon retirement my first experience was the six months of care for my dying father-in-law in our home, an experience which I considered a privilege touching something deep within me (again, the call of the Crone). I began developing a daily meditative practice (during which the raven - symbol of the crone began appearing), along with yoga, walking and exercise program, which helped center me daily and enhance my mental, physical and spiritual flexibility and balance.
Creative expression began to bubble up from within. I began meeting increasing numbers of spirited mature women. I was changed, detached from the hold of family or corporate loyalty immediately dependent on me. I felt called to began my own work; to write and to dialogue; first creating a monthly salon for creative people to share their work, then (as the Crone called even more strongly) creating Gifts of Age a weekly group meeting for elders taking part in a pro-active preventative medicine program at a local hospital. Then I began supporting and creating women's circles for the validation and empowerment of older women. I‚m now sixty five and can wear those years with dignity.
I have discovered that women with PMZ (Post Menopausal Zest), those I have come to call Women of Spirit, who (unlike so many of the men who had always been my associates, best friends, and lovers) continue to grow and increase in spiritual awareness and attunement to the flow of time and the rhythms of the earth that sustains all life, are my natural companions. I have found that working with elder women is my calling.
I envisioned a life to support and honor women of age. Therefore I began to model forming a conscious spiritual group of women directing crone energy, taking responsibility for our own lives, our own bodies and the care of our own souls, promoting crone circles in our community, mentoring and developing crone leadership. I began inviting Women of Spirit to meet in my home.
I joined a gathering of women to begin a monthly crone circle called Women of Ancient Wisdom, existing to create, support and nurture a community of women, to provide diverse positive programs for women, to explore and express women‚s spirituality and foster empowerment and healing in a safe environment. I started an intimate Goddess circle in my home which is about to have its 103 meeting.
I feel so privileged, to have lived the life I have lived. I want to give back to the society and culture, to give it its due, and I try to do that: Think of what it gives me and what I have to give back. As a mature woman I chose something that I believe in, that isn't a lie. . . something that is life affirming, that is meaningful and worthwhile, that is not spiritually diminishing. . .This is how I contribute. I can't solve the homeless problem or cure a disease, but if I can give people hope, if I can make people laugh, if I can make people feel, if I can humanize our dehumanized condition for a couple of hours, that's how I contribute.
An outgrowth of all the work that has come before, was my role with a group of San Diego women in developing and supporting the coming of 260 women to the 5th annual National Crones Council, and its workshops to San Diego in 1997. I am now on the national board planning the tenth Crones Counsel. Our website is cronescounsel.net This community of women and the workshops and circles I facilitate are my primary focus and are a vital connection for the inner work I continue to do in my own journey to wholeness.
Mnimaka
Woman of Spirit
Spirit Walker Explorations
Gifts of Aging
mnimaka@sprynet.com
For news of the progress of The Millionth Circle, please visit our Millionth Circle Page.