The feminine divine has been wooing me for the past number of years, and the concept of divine, period, a lot longer than that. Since I was a child, I was curious about and loved god/spirit/the holy/choose-your-favorite-sacred-name . . . but I didn't know quite what to do with that.
Of course, there were lots of people to tell me what they thought I should do with that. The Catholics, and then the evangelicals, not to mention all of the internet. And while some of that was helpful for a time, or even a lot of time, it was never fit me quite right.
Because it wasn't mine.
It was theirs.
I had built my spirituality on the wrestlings and investigations and translations of others, of millennia of others. All the while neglecting what my own soul had to say about it.
There are lots of folks ready, I know, to tell me that that's how it's got to be, that my heart is black with deceit, not to be trusted.
In reply, I say -- my heart is black, but not with deceit, I think. Black as the dark night of the soul, potent with power. Dark as the earth's innards, moist and fertile, form whence so much life emanates. Deep as the star-marked eons of space, rich as the evening that shows us the moon, mysterious as the womb, the soul, the tomb.
And it has things to say. Things that are important for me, even while I accept that they may mean nothing to you. That is okay. You have your own heart for that.
It's been speaking up lately, and -- even more miraculous -- after three decades, I'm really starting to listen to it instead of the voices from the past that whisper of not good enough. Lots of messages get lost in translation, but I'm still learning my heart's dialect. I hope to be fluent by the time it stops.
When it speaks, my heart speaks of she. Of She. The feminine aspect of the divine that has been seared from our world's lens -- almost. Of a spirituality that goes inward as well as outward, down as well as up, that finds holiness in the spilling of menstrual blood as much as it does in the eucharist wine.
Of the sacredness of wildness and wilderness.
I finger the curls sprouting like chaos from my scalp, the ones I tried to straighten and subdue for so many years, the ones that delight me most when I let them dance as they wish, and I know that this is the kind of theology I'm meant for. For now, anyway.
Invite me to dance in your churches, but know that my heart needs the feel of grass against bare soles, of sweat pouring off me at the gym like a baptism. Show me your stained glass windows, and understand that the sight of the sky stretching like a cerulean dome overhead is just as holy to me. Play me your hymns, and be at peace with my soul's cry for silence and howling, too.
And so -- welcome. Welcome to She of the Wild. It is a place of questioning, of seeking, and of sometimes finding. It is a place where we can howl our wild heart-cries together, and let their dissonance slip into an odd and excellent harmony.
Welcome.
*minor housekeeping note: this is the first official post here on She of the Wild (huzzah!). however, you will notice that there are older posts. these were imported from my other blog, which will now be more oriented solely toward creativity.