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sacred

sacred, spirituality, The Seeker

Knowing Sacred

August 3, 2010

“Love’s greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches sacred.” – Barbara DeAngelis

 

BBC window 2I promised you definitions, and instead I am going to give you half an explanation.  It has been a little while since I wrote the last post.  This is partly because I have been working on getting my book ready to send out, but mostly it is because I had to sit with Sacred Feminine for a little while before I knew what to say.

Thinking back to the moment I found those words, I remember that I knew that sacred just felt right.  It felt like my cells sighed; like my constant search had been temporarily suspended.  Other times that I have felt like this have always involved a moment of pure connection: being with dear friends or family, standing at the edge of the sea or a beautiful lake, experiencing something exquisite, reading the right words, meeting a remarkable tree, or being somewhere beloved by others.  It stands to reason then that sacred for me is that point of connection where I and something or someone else truly meet.

Yesterday Mark and I spent some time in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Its collection spans time and the globe, and walking around any corner, you find yourself face-to-face with something wonderful.  In many of the galleries, my heart beat with appreciation and connection and it didn’t matter that I did not share a time or a religion or even a continent with the people who had created the treasures in front of me: we were connected by the beautiful object between us.

One of Style Statements explanations of sacred is: “anything goes if it is deemed cherished.”  I like that, but I have realized that it doesn’t have to be cherished by me for it to be sacred.  I can hold a place for someone else’s cherished in my heart.  Sacred is that space.  It is the space where meaning lives, where understanding lies and where we meet in the middle.  It is the place where I feel the most connected and the most free.

Does that make sense?  If it does, I’d love to meet you there. (I’ll bring the tea.)

xo

emerge, sacred, Sacred Feminine, spirituality

Reclaiming Sacred

July 19, 2010

“What is it that I deeply know, but have been afraid to live like it is so?” Neale Donald Walsch

 


Picture by hippy urban girl

This summer I am part of something called, “Circe’s Circle” run by life coach Jamie Ridler.  In the call last week I was talking about how hard it was for me to be proud of the work that I am doing.  One of the other women suggested to me that I needed to come up with a new word to use to describe myself, since when I used the phrase, ‘woo woo’ I had lots of trouble owning it.

As soon as I let myself process that, the word sacred popped into my head like a big Las Vegas casino sign, and I was drawn to get the book Style Statement off of my shelf.  It is a workbook aimed at helping you to define your authentic self.  I thought when I worked through the exercises a couple of years ago that I had come up with mine, but as it hadn’t stuck, I thought it was just another thing I had failed at.  As it turns out, I simply hadn’t got it right the first time.

Reading the definition of sacred, I felt like it was finally right.  Woo woo doesn’t convey the depth of connection or feeling that I have when I am working or feeling or noticing who I am.  Sacred feels richer and heavier and more… well… sacred somehow.  But that wasn’t the end of it.  As I read through the definitions of the other words, I got stuck on feminine.  Now I would usually have skipped right over that word, but that night something clicked deep in my core.

“Sacred Feminine,” I whispered, actually wondering why it felt so familiar before realizing that it is only the thing that I have written a whole book about.  The two words hum together in my head, equal parts who I am, what I believe and what I most need to embrace.

Most staggeringly of all, I explored all of this in my journal on my trip to Bath yesterday, and ended up rushing to finish in time to get off of the train.  When I sat down in Starbucks to wait for my girlfriends to arrive, I opened up my journal again and read the last thing I had written on the train: “… because now I know who I am.”  I don’t even remember remember writing it, but it gives me goosebumps to read.

So there it is.  I’ve given up woo woo for its deeper, richer cousin.  For better or for worse, I am officially reclaiming sacred, and you know what? It feels really, really good.

(This post got too long to go into what Sacred and Feminine mean to me – thank you for reading this far, I’ll tell you more another time!)

xo

Sacred Feminine, spirituality, The Seeker

How woo woo is too woo woo?

June 27, 2010

Human spirituality is to seek an answer to the question: ‘how can you make sense out of a world which does not seem to be intrinsically reasonable?’ – John D. Morgan

daisy and trees

Spirituality and creativity and nature have always been wrapped up in a tight package for me.  My first church was in the trees at a summer camp, my first memories of a proper built church are full of sitting on my Grandpa’s knee drawing.  Praying and playing and being surrounded by love were one and the same.  As I grew up and found out that that was not other people’s experience, I started to hide mine.  I never really showed myself again.

So although I know that woo woo means different things to different people, I see it as showing overt non traditional beliefs.  When I get to some blogs and I see how free they are with sharing their beliefs, I am either exhilarated or nervous and that rattles me.  So how much do I share on mine? I don’t want to scare you away.  Do I tell you that I have been googling shamanic healing or that I own Faerie Cards or that I have had reiki or that when I am home I like going to church with my Mom?  Do I talk about whether or not I pray or what I believe or that my favorite thing in the world is to find the spirituality section of a big bookstore?

At times I find myself censoring what I write because I am not sure that I am ready to share, but often the bloggers that talk about this part of their lives are the ones to whom I am most drawn.  I know that everyone is different, but what are the lines that you won’t cross?  What makes you stay and read more and what makes you click away immediately?  Is there room for questions of spirituality in a blog or does it put you off?

How woo woo is too woo woo?