I started a new venture this month.  If you know me you won’t be surprised.  I like new ventures, the fresh page, a new packet of seeds.  This isn’t something I would have imagined though, not given my history of Christian heritage.  But I can see the signs which brought me here along the way, through the years.

I have started training with Vanessa Sage (www.sagepriestess.com).  We are right at the beginning of the year long programme.  I have days where I’m so excited, where I want to drink it all up and soak in the wonderful teachings and the wisdom of all those I share the circle with.  And there are days when I am afraid, wonder what I’m doing and who on earth I think I am.

I’ve been in that kind of space before though.  What I am beginning to understand is that your path, whatever that looks like, is just that.  Yours.  You can’t learn it from someone else, though they might be the next signpost.  You can’t put on what they do and inhabit it. That would be just like living in an empty shell.  The shell may be beautiful, but it isn’t yours.  Gee but I’ve been going down those roads for forever already.  Seeing how others do their journey and wanting to be in the place of flow.  Imagining that grace can come if I put my feet precisely where they have stood.  That’s a kind of discipleship I suppose, there’s nothing bad in that, we need it for a time.  But there comes a time to dance your own dance, to shine your own light, to sing your own song, to carve out your own shell, unique and crazy with rainbow spirals and all the glitter you can muster (image from #gaiantarot Three of Fire). 

So this is it.  The priestess path.  Beginning to be the “living priestess” and working out what that means exactly here, in this skin, this space.  Emerging into the light, wings damp but growing stronger.

For the longest time I went to church. I remember going as a little girl, walking across the fields for services, the smell of polish and dust when we were seated and staring up at the man in the pulpit.  I remember Sunday School, the plaster cast figures in the nativity scene, the blue robes when I played Mary one Christmas and the stone humps of graves in the churchyard.  As a teenager I grew more evangelical, I read my Bible everyday, I became involved in helping at services and a regular attendee at my school’s Christian Union.  I wanted to be a nun when I was older, to live a life of devoted service, be a bride of Christ.

Instead I married young, it’s important in some kinds of Christian culture where sex outside of marriage is frowned on.  I was a young mum as a result, before I’d worked, or traveled or lived some dreams.  It was my choice and I believed the best one at the time.  I continued going to church, I began working with a spiritual director, explored vocations to ministry, trained in my church to be a lay minister, ran Sunday School, met parents before their children were baptised, led worship, preached.  I attended spirituality days and retreats.  I wanted to be a priest, to serve God with my whole life.  Life swirled around me, children grew, started school.  I began training as a teacher.  I planned to be a self supporting priest so I needed some way to earn a living.

Then came the unexpected.  Plot twist! I began experiencing strange symptoms at the end of my induction year as a teacher.  The doctors identified a minor stroke.  I was thirty five.  It took about six months to recover, but in that time something shifted.  I began asking questions about why I was here.  I came to realise that I didn’t want to sacrifice my life to the church, that I wanted to live free.  I began to seek ways to balance life and work.  That took a long time!  The habits learned as a teenager took almost a decade to break.

After that marriage ended I found my faith less convincing.   The promises that God would see me through, that if I was a good girl I would be rewarded, felt hollow.  I tried to find my way back,  to re-engage with church and that way of believing.  It was in itself like the end of  relationship, years of giving it my best, persevering, but the soul had gone out of it.

For some years I had been aware of a different energy, pulsing like a heart beat underneath daily rhythms.  I had been noticing the seasons, the phases of the moon.  I had been hearing echoes of words I didn’t remember learning.  I felt something calling which I couldn’t name.  At first I felt guilty.  My years of Christian heritage had warned me against the dangers of the pagan path, the unruly chaos that lay outside the church…

One Sunday, while our priest was away, I was leading the service.  There was a seismic shift in my soul as I read the familiar words from the opening of the service.  Where were the women?  Where in my church, my faith, my beliefs was the feminine?  I felt cut off, disconnected, dispossessed.  I began to search out a different path.  I left my ministry role.  I joined virtual circles to explore the wheel of the year.  I began to follow the moon’s cycles with intent.  I find myself on the edge of an adventure – stepping out on a pathway to places I didn’t expect.  I am new made, fresh faced, uncertain.  Yet there is also the sense that I have been here before, something almost remembered, at the edge of consciousness.

So I’m on this journey, for want of a better word.  I don’t know when it began, sometimes I could say last year, or the year before, sometimes I think it was about twenty years ago, or longer.  Whatever.  It’s been about seeking the divine, about searching for a  life purpose, about fulfilling a God given mission.

When I was younger I wanted to be a religious sister, join a convent, live a life devoted to prayer and service.  Then, for the longest time, I followed a vocation to ordained ministry.  I took theology classes and worked as a lay minister.  I read about prayer, took retreats, attended self-development courses, completed personality type indicator profiles.  I had therapy.  I had spiritual direction.  I trained professionally, and then in a different profession.  I was married, and then not, and then married again.  I became a parent.  Years and years of searching, sometimes feeling like I was in the right place, or on the right path, but mostly not so much.  Resting my head for a few months with one form of prayer, then finding it empty and moving on.  A spiritual nomad.

The net widened. I explored meditation, Reiki and its principles,  I began following the wheel of the year and the cycles of the moon, connecting to rhythms beyond liturgical calendars.  I discovered divination, began studying the tarot.  I took Hay House courses on angels and crystals and space clearing.  Still hungry to know, still hungry to connect with God, with that which is beyond, to find the path, my path.

What I am coming to realise, maybe you’ve found this too, is that for all the books and courses and studies and wisdom out there at the end of the day it is just about God and me.  I have tried to follow the patterns set down by formal religion, or by particular spiritual gurus.  Often I end up feeling like something is missing.  It can be like following a recipe but the end result looking nothing like the glossy image in the book.  Unexpected in spite of best efforts.

I am wondering if that missing link is God herself; if I have been so busy trying to find her that I am failing to notice  she is right here.  The truth I have been seeking might, after all, under my nose. Which is not at all what I was expecting.  Or looking for.  But is, perhaps, what is. Not someone else’s truth, not wisdom from a book or a doctrine… the truth of divine love and light breathing quietly beside me, holding me in the dark and whispering in my ear as I sleep.

For the longest time she was looking for the coat.  She learned about it first as a child.  “When you’re older,” her mother said, “You’ll find your coat, it’s unique, yours alone.  Look carefully because it could be anywhere.  When you find it don’t let it go, it will be your way.”

She looked for the coat diligently.  Throughout her teenage years she watched as others found their coats, their ways to be.  She saw girls grabbing at velvets and brocade, striding out in confidence.  She envied the rich colours;  ruby red, emerald green, shameless purple.  One day, she thought, mine will be there one day, and then I’ll know and I’ll finally be.

Years passed, she searched and searched; among thrift stores, in the high streets, rummaging through jumble sales tables, searching catalogues and in pattern files.  Still no coat.

She found some, yes, very beautiful in vibrant, gorgeous fabrics.  She even tried them, for a while.  But they were too tight, or the fabric irritated, one even choked her when she did up the top button and she discarded it quickly.

After a while she gave up, she had searched for so long.  She still envied others their coats, still admired them from afar, but knew hers was just a dream.  She returned to the generic mac of her youth and her step lost its spring.

And then came the rain.  It rained for weeks.  After one particularly bad shower she staggered into the house and began peeling off her layers.  She set aside the dull, damp mac, she peeled off her jeans and her sweater, removed her sodden, squelchy shoes and socks.  She brushed her fingers over her damp skin.  And gasped.

Her coat.  Soft and supple. Protecting her daily from cold and damp. Fitting her perfectly.    She flexed her arms and legs, stretched up and outwards, beginning an awkward dance of celebration as she realised the gift.  After decades of searching,  finding the journey’s end closer than imagining.  Unique. Priceless. Her own skin.

I was asked the other day if sacred space was important to me; I don’t know what prompted the question, maybe the large picture of our local, medieval parish church which hangs on my wall.  Anyway it got me to thinking about what that means.  More often than not for me I experience the sacred out of doors, in the garden or forest, or on a wind swept cliff top.  But there are other moments too.  Tonight, with both teenagers out at the same time for the first time in months, I find myself alone in the house.  Eventually I faced up to the pile of ironing that’s been growing apace.  Standing in the kitchen listening to some jazz, alone with my thoughts, suddenly the mundane moment became my sacred space, an uninterrupted pause, a patterned rhythm of activity.  I was calmed and soothed, rocked by the action of my arms as they smoothed the fabric and my hips as I danced from side to side.  This time alone is so rare and precious.  It is the powerhouse which fuels me, the space to be alone with my thoughts, to allow them to drift and blend, meld and meander.  It is the space that  Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.speaks of in her talk “Crones Don’t Whine” (http://jungchicago.org/blog/), the rare time when a woman can be alone and think.  It is a precious gap in the every day,  longed for and, when found, treasured and protected.  It is in these moments that I am restored to myself.

I’m going to be working through Lizzy Worth’s Enter the Oracle challenge this month (see http://www.lizworth.com/ ).  This is part of continuing work to reconnect with my creative/ intuitive self.  Lizzy suggested a new moon reading with a few key questions and this is what came up. I used The Wildwood Tarot  (http://thewildwoodtarot.com/) :

My reading –
You are at the start of a new phase of life’s journey, the path is before your feet. Trust your inner guide to lead you by safe paths. You will find a new life and energy to enable you to work creatively, in tune with the natural flow of life. To do this you need to learn from the joyous, blessed Earth, living from your truest self. Preparing the ground by clearing the old will allow for new growth. Welcome this as part of life’s cycle and let it bring healing.

So may it be.

I am a planner.  I love organising, lists, schedules.  I’m good at it too.  When faced with a challenge I never want to sit back and see what happens next, I want to plot a course out.  This requires some reflection, coloured pens, paper. Then I scribble and write, plan, cross out, throw it away, start again.  Usually within a week I know where I’m going next and how and why.  I could explain it to anyone who asks in clear, logical steps.

Right now though that isn’t really working.  I had a great plan.  It followed logical next steps.  There was career progression, tied to a good income, there was the possibility of finally getting my name on some property.  I had a sense, as the plan fell into place, of a journey ending.  I could see this situation stretching out, over the next three, five, ten years.  I could see myself driving the route to work in each season, as my children fly the nest and I  move towards my crone-hood.

Or maybe not.  Over the past two months my health has been unusual, to put it mildly.  I can’t drive at present.  This means when my holiday ends, I may not be able to get into work.  There is a sense of suspension, of not quite knowing where I am or how I got here.  Of disbelief and shock.

This is the energy of The Tower . A sudden, unexpected change; the collapse of our carefully set plans and projects.  The crash of blocks as we add the final, too-much piece.  And the inevitable cry of “it’s not fair”.

Maybe not.  But maybe it isn’t fair anyway.  Maybe it is nature’s way of saying, too much already.  Stop.  This is too tall, what you’re building, too shaky to stand.  Maybe it is a way of shocking me awake.  Of reminding me of where I really wanted to be, when I wasn’t trying to follow a “logical” path, or the kind of life that would “make sense” when I laid it out for other people.

Maybe now is the time for crayon scribbling brilliance; for clashing, crazy colours.  The time for breaking apart, like ivy through stone, for unblocking the stream.  For giving up the safety of my tower, leaving the ruins behind and seeing what’s out there in the forests and wild moors.

 

As part of work on Beth Maiden’s “The Alternative Tarot” course ( see  http://tarotcourse.littleredtarot.com/) I’m currently drawing a card a day and working with a journal to reflect on this.  Sometimes my question is along the lines of “What do I need to know today?”  today it was “What do I need to hear today?” I woke up feeling really poorly and unsettled and sad for no obvious reason so I wasn’t sure what would come up.  Maybe something fun like a four of bows, with flames and dancing?  Maybe something to reassure or console?

I am using The Wildwood Tarot this week, which is beautiful and timeless and I am fast falling in love with (http://thewildwoodtarot.com/).  I shuffled the cards, split the deck and paused for a moment to see where I should draw from.  This is the card.

Which is somewhat dramatic but made me laugh too.  The figure here looks to me, today, very woebegone.  She is struggling literally against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  Not only is she wounded many times, she is also tangled in powerful brambles which tie her down and restrict her.  She stands on a rock where the image of a skull is carved suggesting loss.

This reflects exactly where I find myself today.  The sense of insecurity and fear are powerful, both due to physical health and changes in my personal and professional life.  I am reading, presently, about the cycle of life/ death / life we experience (see Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, chapter 5) and am deeply aware of my own desire to avoid the “ebb” times in life, those times when I need to let go, or step back to allow for new growth in future.

The guide suggests that we need to forgive ourselves ( and sometimes others) for past mistakes in order to help us heal from our unfounded fears and insecurities so that we are ready for new growth.  I find myself thinking about a situation where I am in a job which I know is no longer right, about how this has been the case on and off in different jobs for several years as I seek a work pattern which enables good health and balance and how often I am critical of myself for this.  This is a timely message, reflecting the mood of the day and indicating a healing next step.

I have had many thoughts of late about crossing boundaries, the kind of boundaries that exist in society and our institutions. The kinds that we create for ourselves; the lines we don’t want to cross, the taboos we don’t want to break in case of rejection, or worse.

I wrote this piece at the start of July and it reflects on this theme:

It is there to protect us.  The barrier between civilisation and the wild.  Since childhood, at my mother’s knee, I was taught; you don’t cross the hedge.

It lies at the edge of the forest.  In younger years I would peer through gaps in the thorny branches and watch the  creatures and birds.  I could smell the deep, musty scent of fertile earth; the musk of the wild.

I found a gap one day. It beckoned me onward, an almost perfect tunnel through the thorns, low down and hidden from view.  But I was afraid, hearing my mother’s warnings and the fearful whisperings of the village women.  I knew the stories…the girls who dared to cross.  Those who vanished forever, and those who returned, changed; the ones we feared, rejected, burned.Years passed.  I wed. My own children grew.  I forgot the hedge, drawn into the everyday.

And then one morning, outside fetching water, I follow a low beam of early sunlight and find it again.  My feet take me closer with dream-like steps, towards the gap.  Peering through I see the dappled light fall between the trees beyond.  I can hear the wild ones calling me, feel the bloom of joy and hope in my heart.

Yet I hold back.

To cross the hedge is to leave the known and choose strange paths.  To be changed.  To risk getting lost.  There may be no way back; which I fear.  I fear even more that I won’t want one.