I have two things to talk about: My Mom, and men.
Mom
The way I miss her isn't the way I thought I'd miss her. I went to visit her grave tonight for the first time since her memorial............. has it only been three weeks? Damn. It feels... longer. Much longer. And that's the thing. It's like I've entered a new life since her death. Rather than living a singular life in which there is now this gaping, unfilled hole left left behind in the mortal absence of my mother, another lifetime began in which she simply isn't physically present.
It's a little like moving away from home. The memories of home are still with you when you move away, you still love it, it's still the root of everything you do and everything you are and ever will be; but you are in another place now, and in effect, another time. You have another purpose, and while you will always and forever love your home, this new space you're in is the right space to be. There's a feeling of being homesick, of thinking back on the life that was, but being present in the life that is.
I think that's why I haven't been feeling as devastated as I had anticipated. As a family, we released Mom, because it was the right thing to do and the right time for her to go. We told her it was okay. There's no sense of unfinished business: nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone, no injustice in her passing. She completed her purpose on this Earth, and it was okay.
Granted, I am loudly sobbing and crying my eyes out as I'm typing this, but I'm also laughing at myself a little because I am typing while I'm wailing loud enough to make me glad my nearest neighbors are a few hundred yards away. It's just release. I'm super practical when it comes to letting it out, and even though I likely sound to the world like I'm an emotional mess, it's mostly physical. Inside, I'm pretty peaceful. And now I'm done crying. It just needed to get out.
(Tangent: Mom's buried next to a guy that was in my class in high school who died in a car accident between our Junior and Senior years. Always wear your seat belts. Just saying.)
Men
A large part of my reason for being a feminist is a strong belief and hope for equality. When I find this running up against the strong cultural dogma of male superiority in Mormonism (however benevolent its stewardship may supposed to be) it puts me in some dismay about the eternal order of things as we're presented with them.
I have a really big, freaking problem thinking that two equally worthy, covenant-making-and-keeping people, bound together for eternity would be bound to being anything but equivalent to each other for eternity. If it's not so, I have to look forward to eternity as Second in Command, instead of Co-Captain. Eternity. Forever. Without end. Never, ever, ever ending second citizenship.
How is that just? How is that good? How can that be acceptable and justifiable based upon the relative femininity or masculinity of an individual if all are alike unto God and God is no respecter of persons? How can being (a beloved and cherished) Second for the rest of all out-of-time be okay? It cannot. It cannot be okay. A man wouldn't stand for that being his lot, yet it's an implied expectation from the women. Such a concept deeply, deeply disturbs me, to think that I could bust my butt through this super critical mortal probation we're all in, perhaps even out-righteous my Hypothetical Husband, and still end up as the Silent Partner, the Heavenly Mother that never talks to Her children and whom Her children are discouraged from addressing. I find that idea incredibly unappealing, and it puts me in a position to wonder whether the effort is worthwhile if I have no guarantee of autonomy and personal worth outside the man I'm married to, forever. This a big scary question for a woman who has been pretty dang invested in aiming for goddesshood her entire life. So I have to think that we really just don't have the whole picture yet, that there's more, that the equality of the sexes will be seen as a central point of eternal doctrine at some time in the future, may Heaven make it soon.
But what if... what if I'm wrong. What if God moves in (to me) truly mind-boggling and seemingly hypocritical, unjust, mysterious ways and eternity is sexist? What if being more feminine than masculine lands you a spot just behind the shoulder of your more masculine eternal companion, to be protected and shielded and effectively silenced because you're somehow more sacred than anything else? It's an idea that sickens me to my stomach, and the only way I can conceive of it being a tolerable system is if I could find a man who would not treat me as anything but an equal. Where any "head"ship would be in token only, and irrelevant in practice. If he must have the title, he can have the title, but that's all I could tolerate. If I had to. If that's really the eternal order of things.
I don't think it is, though. It just doesn't make sense.
Showing posts with label eternal progression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eternal progression. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
I've been thinking a lot about gays
(Great title, right? Right. Hang with me.)
Granted there has been more direct reason in the past three or so years, and really one could go back to circa 1995, but for me, it has been somewhere in my mind for about 11 or 12 years. That's when the campaign for Prop 14 started, which was the original law passed by California voters in 2000 defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Who remembers that? It kinda sorta hit the back burner from my POV until... what was it, 2004? 2006? When Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco basically said to the majority of the state's voters, "Screw all y'all, I'm authorizing same-sex marriages in this city!" (And the now-famous line "It's gonna happen, whether you like it or not!" Thanks Mr. Mayor. Voters FTW. Oh wait.) Then there was bickering and repeals and appeals and blahblahblah--Prop 8. So for the second time in a decade, we were asked to get involved. And I did.
And it sucked.
California is a pretty blue state, and I can be a very shy person, and the 50+% of voting residents as of 2000 and 2008 still opposed gay marriage do not live in my calling area. There's areas of the state that are fairly red, or at least magenta. The county I live in is maybe half a shade less blue than San Francisco itself. I carried a lingering uncertainty for my safety having a yellow Prop 8 sticker on my bumper... right next to the other yellow one that said, "Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else." (I got into a brief discussion once about the apparent incongruency between the two. I'm still surprised it was only once and that it was brief, because believe me, the difficulty of holding both of those as true did not escape me.) The night of the election, all the bumper stickers in my family came off for that reason. I'm sure many people elsewhere in the state with blue stickers did the same thing for the same reason, and really it's just a tiny taste of the fear LGBT people live with around the world.
Anyway, I did most of the stuff I was asked to do. I made phone calls. (I would have rather eaten escargot. I hate phones and I hate potential confrontation.) I stood on street corners with signs. I may or may not have contributed money; I can't remember. I got a balloon at a street fair in my grandparents' hometown, and walked around with that for a while that night. I had conversations with a few friends that I didn't especially want to have, but I did it out of a feeling of obligation and duty. That didn't mean I was especially happy about it.
The subject was inescapable one way or another. Every.one.was.talking.about.it. It was on the news, on the street, in businesses, at church, in the grocery store, in my college classes. Posters and bumper stickers and banners and mediamediamedia. (This was also the year I got royally fed up with both major political parties--I was raised Republican--and registered as an Independent. I was sick and overwhelmed by the political madness of that year.) And at last, I voted the way I felt I should, while secretly envying my newly baptized friend who told me straight-up she was voting no.
While all of this was going on, my family was estranged from my gay brother and his partner. There had been a series of incidents over the years (actually very few of them directly to do with his orientation) and things just got awkward and silent. Occasionally gifts would go one way or the other but we just didn't really communicate. I wanted to be his friend on Facebook but felt like that was disloyal to my Dad, who was the one particularly mad at him. We saw them at a family wedding and maybe a reunion, but... yeah. He was still my brother, and he was still gay, and nothing was going to change that. I wanted to know him, and his partner. It took two and a half years after the '08 elections for that to happen. Now we're all friends on Facebook and Words With Friends and we comment on statuses and photos and it's a grand ol' time! The family feels whole without this weird gap because they'e not there.
Fast forward to this summer or even the whole past year. We got back in touch with my brother and his partner as mentioned. I became friends with a lovely lesbian couple who are my business neighbors. (I'd link to their store--which is fantastic--but it would destroy what anonymity I maintain.) I attended their wedding reception last month. And beginning to learn about Carol Lynn Pearson and her life story with her gay ex-husand. And the Daughters of Mormonism episodes immediately after mine. And... I don't know, it has just been on my mind. The publicized accounts of people committing suicide because of bullying, the ongoing hullabaloo of post-Prop 8, my friends; all of these things just kept it coming back up, and honestly, I'm not sure exactly where all of my opinions and beliefs sit anymore. However, I do know where a few sit.
No one should be bullied for being LGBT, or any other reason. No one should end up feeling like death is the only way out of their suffering. I've rarely seen two people more in love than my neighbors. I don't think everyone who identifies as LGBT was born that way... but prob-ssibly a lot--maybe most!--were. I don't know why. I don't know how that fits into my view of the purpose of life and eternal progression. I do believe people when they say that they love a person of the same sex, and that they belong together. (At least as much as I'd believe a heterosexual couple. Being one or the other certainly doesn't guarantee good relationship skills or a good match.) I believe people when they do say they've gotten a feeling from God that they are just the way that they're supposed to be. I have no reason or right to doubt another person's spiritual experiences, even when they don't mesh with my own.
I believe that God is love, and that love is a fruit of the Spirit and when you feel love (or peace, kindness, long-suffering, etc.) that's a sign of the Spirit's presence. (Once I put that idea together in that manner--thanks to a Sunday School lesson no less--it blew a gigantic hole in my ideas about homosexual relationships.) I believe everyone deserves at least a chance at love and happiness in life, even if some of us never find it. I believe every soul has great intrinsic value, no matter what shape it's in. I believe everyone should be treated with fairness, kindness, and respect. I believe we all have our sins and our struggles and things that other people don't like about us: some of them we can change in this life, some of them we can't. I don't believe being homosexual in and of itself is a sin; I don't know where I think it goes from there, especially in context of things I've already said about love and happiness.
I wish no one would ever feel like they could not come unto Christ, partake of the Atonement and the blessings and ordinances of the Gospel, be washed clean, and believe and worship in full fellowship with all the saints because of their sexual orientation. I wish something--whatever it is--would come to be so that no one would ever have to leave again in order to live with integrity about who they are and whom they love. I've personally known three people (maybe four but I lost contact with him years ago) in my life who have left the LDS church at least in part because they are gay. They've all gone on to continue being God-loving, spiritual, religious people... just not in the Church. I wish it wouldn't be that way. I hope someday it won't be.
I think there must be enough room in all eternity for our LGBT brothers and sisters. I hope someday we'll find it.
Granted there has been more direct reason in the past three or so years, and really one could go back to circa 1995, but for me, it has been somewhere in my mind for about 11 or 12 years. That's when the campaign for Prop 14 started, which was the original law passed by California voters in 2000 defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Who remembers that? It kinda sorta hit the back burner from my POV until... what was it, 2004? 2006? When Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco basically said to the majority of the state's voters, "Screw all y'all, I'm authorizing same-sex marriages in this city!" (And the now-famous line "It's gonna happen, whether you like it or not!" Thanks Mr. Mayor. Voters FTW. Oh wait.) Then there was bickering and repeals and appeals and blahblahblah--Prop 8. So for the second time in a decade, we were asked to get involved. And I did.
And it sucked.
California is a pretty blue state, and I can be a very shy person, and the 50+% of voting residents as of 2000 and 2008 still opposed gay marriage do not live in my calling area. There's areas of the state that are fairly red, or at least magenta. The county I live in is maybe half a shade less blue than San Francisco itself. I carried a lingering uncertainty for my safety having a yellow Prop 8 sticker on my bumper... right next to the other yellow one that said, "Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else." (I got into a brief discussion once about the apparent incongruency between the two. I'm still surprised it was only once and that it was brief, because believe me, the difficulty of holding both of those as true did not escape me.) The night of the election, all the bumper stickers in my family came off for that reason. I'm sure many people elsewhere in the state with blue stickers did the same thing for the same reason, and really it's just a tiny taste of the fear LGBT people live with around the world.
Anyway, I did most of the stuff I was asked to do. I made phone calls. (I would have rather eaten escargot. I hate phones and I hate potential confrontation.) I stood on street corners with signs. I may or may not have contributed money; I can't remember. I got a balloon at a street fair in my grandparents' hometown, and walked around with that for a while that night. I had conversations with a few friends that I didn't especially want to have, but I did it out of a feeling of obligation and duty. That didn't mean I was especially happy about it.
The subject was inescapable one way or another. Every.one.was.talking.about.it. It was on the news, on the street, in businesses, at church, in the grocery store, in my college classes. Posters and bumper stickers and banners and mediamediamedia. (This was also the year I got royally fed up with both major political parties--I was raised Republican--and registered as an Independent. I was sick and overwhelmed by the political madness of that year.) And at last, I voted the way I felt I should, while secretly envying my newly baptized friend who told me straight-up she was voting no.
While all of this was going on, my family was estranged from my gay brother and his partner. There had been a series of incidents over the years (actually very few of them directly to do with his orientation) and things just got awkward and silent. Occasionally gifts would go one way or the other but we just didn't really communicate. I wanted to be his friend on Facebook but felt like that was disloyal to my Dad, who was the one particularly mad at him. We saw them at a family wedding and maybe a reunion, but... yeah. He was still my brother, and he was still gay, and nothing was going to change that. I wanted to know him, and his partner. It took two and a half years after the '08 elections for that to happen. Now we're all friends on Facebook and Words With Friends and we comment on statuses and photos and it's a grand ol' time! The family feels whole without this weird gap because they'e not there.
Fast forward to this summer or even the whole past year. We got back in touch with my brother and his partner as mentioned. I became friends with a lovely lesbian couple who are my business neighbors. (I'd link to their store--which is fantastic--but it would destroy what anonymity I maintain.) I attended their wedding reception last month. And beginning to learn about Carol Lynn Pearson and her life story with her gay ex-husand. And the Daughters of Mormonism episodes immediately after mine. And... I don't know, it has just been on my mind. The publicized accounts of people committing suicide because of bullying, the ongoing hullabaloo of post-Prop 8, my friends; all of these things just kept it coming back up, and honestly, I'm not sure exactly where all of my opinions and beliefs sit anymore. However, I do know where a few sit.
No one should be bullied for being LGBT, or any other reason. No one should end up feeling like death is the only way out of their suffering. I've rarely seen two people more in love than my neighbors. I don't think everyone who identifies as LGBT was born that way... but prob-ssibly a lot--maybe most!--were. I don't know why. I don't know how that fits into my view of the purpose of life and eternal progression. I do believe people when they say that they love a person of the same sex, and that they belong together. (At least as much as I'd believe a heterosexual couple. Being one or the other certainly doesn't guarantee good relationship skills or a good match.) I believe people when they do say they've gotten a feeling from God that they are just the way that they're supposed to be. I have no reason or right to doubt another person's spiritual experiences, even when they don't mesh with my own.
I believe that God is love, and that love is a fruit of the Spirit and when you feel love (or peace, kindness, long-suffering, etc.) that's a sign of the Spirit's presence. (Once I put that idea together in that manner--thanks to a Sunday School lesson no less--it blew a gigantic hole in my ideas about homosexual relationships.) I believe everyone deserves at least a chance at love and happiness in life, even if some of us never find it. I believe every soul has great intrinsic value, no matter what shape it's in. I believe everyone should be treated with fairness, kindness, and respect. I believe we all have our sins and our struggles and things that other people don't like about us: some of them we can change in this life, some of them we can't. I don't believe being homosexual in and of itself is a sin; I don't know where I think it goes from there, especially in context of things I've already said about love and happiness.
I wish no one would ever feel like they could not come unto Christ, partake of the Atonement and the blessings and ordinances of the Gospel, be washed clean, and believe and worship in full fellowship with all the saints because of their sexual orientation. I wish something--whatever it is--would come to be so that no one would ever have to leave again in order to live with integrity about who they are and whom they love. I've personally known three people (maybe four but I lost contact with him years ago) in my life who have left the LDS church at least in part because they are gay. They've all gone on to continue being God-loving, spiritual, religious people... just not in the Church. I wish it wouldn't be that way. I hope someday it won't be.
I think there must be enough room in all eternity for our LGBT brothers and sisters. I hope someday we'll find it.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Perceptions of Deity
I'll be the first person to confess that what I'm about to say is probably not at all original in that I know there are many books out there about how we perceive Deity. I also have to confess that I have read all of... possibly none of those books. I keep meaning to pick up Mother Wove the Morning and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter at the recommendations of people whose opinions I respect (if only I could get them on my Kindle app...) but I just haven't, and I can't recall ever having picked up anything really but scripture and maybe Church manuals, so I'm coming here from a place of intellectually knowing I'm not alone, but never having formally seen "Oh hey, we're thinking the same thing." I don't know why I feel the need to qualify what I'm posting with all that, but moving onward.
Growing up, I knew God was my Father and Christ was my Brother, and I knew there was a Mother in there somewhere but I didn't know anything about her except that She existed, but we're not supposed to pray to Her or really talk about her--at least those are the messages I got. I was nine in 1991 when a particular talk was given by then-First Counselor President Hinckley regarding Heavenly Mother, so I wasn't really at an age where I was thinking too deeply about things, and certainly not up for exploring or challenging anything; it simply wasn't a manifested part of my personality at that time. I really longed for Her, but I didn't really feel that I had any way of exploring or pushing that, and I accepted for years that I'd just have to wait to learn more, always having the belief and the faith that I would learn more as time went on. I knew She was there, even without any idea of what to do with that knowledge. I knew God had a physical body. I knew God loved me. I knew God was there for me, had expectations of me, wanted me to be obedient, but had also provided a way to make it right when I wasn't.
In spite of the intellectual knowledge, in my mind, God was somewhere up in the sky, invisible, vaporous, without any facial expression besides benevolent approval and kindliness or disappointment and disapproval. My imagination really failed me there, coupled with a... well, a somewhat frightened unwillingness to actively entertain anything that wasn't (to me) straight down the middle of the strait and narrow. Insert a comment about faith vs. fear here.
Since starting this blog and joining in discussions with friends about Heavenly Mother, exposure to the work of Shiloh Sophia McCloud and several other things that have come along in the past few months, I've started thinking more about our eternal and divine natures as children of deity. Given how prominent assurances are in our teachings that we have potential to become like God ourselves, does it not seem strange that very rarely--possibly never--do I hear anyone in a Sunday School of Relief Society lesson extend that idea into "What will we be like as gods and goddesses?" and then turn it back to "Now, what do you think God is like?" (And I know I've never heard Goddess included in a sentence like that in a lesson.) But why not? Indeed, if a man cannot be exalted outside the everlasting covenant of marriage, would not the whole thing collapse without her? That's kind of important, don't you think?
I know some would come back with the gem "It's not critical to your salvation." Yeah, well neither is emergency preparedness or homemaking and we spend plenty of time on expounding upon the virtues of those. Neither is serving a full-time mission when you really break it down. There are a lot of things that aren't "critical" to our salvation; in fact everything outside of making baptismal covenants and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost by proper authority, repentance, and enduring to the end is outside of that "critical" realm of salvation from sin (see here, fourth paragraph.) I would say even temple covenants aren't critical to salvation. However, they are critical to eternal exaltation (as mentioned in the final paragraph of the previous link, and which I am separating as a concept; though they're often used interchangeably, they are not the same) and exaltation is a much broader topic than salvation, and isn't it really what we have in mind when we talk about everything else of an eternal nature in the Gospel? So yes, I would say that knowledge of who my Mother is, what she is, and what she's like is critical to my exaltation, because She is who I am going to be. She is my example I deeply and sincerely love my elder Brother, Jesus, and I am grateful every day for the Atonement, and he is an excellent example in living life and serving others and getting back Home, but I am unaware of any instance of Him turning to the women, and directly saying, "Thus saith the Lady, your Mother, what kind of women ought ye to be? Verily, even as She is." I will follow the principles I've been given of love/charity, faith, honor, virtue, honesty, integrity, and all the rest to the ends of the Earth, but I'm aiming higher than leading a good enough life not to go to Hell, and I'd like a little more information on what I'm going to become. Yes, there will be ample time to learn in the eternities, but "if a [woman] gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through [her] diligence and obedience than another, [she] will have so much the advantage in the world to come." (D&C 130:19)
I'm getting side-tracked: back on topic. Perceptions of Deity. So we don't get a lot of direction or even discussion about this topic of "What are Father and Mother actually like?" and I was left with this flowing glare of white in place of bodied deities. Problematic, to say the least. How does one relate to that as being one's Parent? As I've pondered the matter over the past few days, the following came to my mind.
How deeply I wish this post wasn't so unusual. How I wish we talked about this more.
Growing up, I knew God was my Father and Christ was my Brother, and I knew there was a Mother in there somewhere but I didn't know anything about her except that She existed, but we're not supposed to pray to Her or really talk about her--at least those are the messages I got. I was nine in 1991 when a particular talk was given by then-First Counselor President Hinckley regarding Heavenly Mother, so I wasn't really at an age where I was thinking too deeply about things, and certainly not up for exploring or challenging anything; it simply wasn't a manifested part of my personality at that time. I really longed for Her, but I didn't really feel that I had any way of exploring or pushing that, and I accepted for years that I'd just have to wait to learn more, always having the belief and the faith that I would learn more as time went on. I knew She was there, even without any idea of what to do with that knowledge. I knew God had a physical body. I knew God loved me. I knew God was there for me, had expectations of me, wanted me to be obedient, but had also provided a way to make it right when I wasn't.
In spite of the intellectual knowledge, in my mind, God was somewhere up in the sky, invisible, vaporous, without any facial expression besides benevolent approval and kindliness or disappointment and disapproval. My imagination really failed me there, coupled with a... well, a somewhat frightened unwillingness to actively entertain anything that wasn't (to me) straight down the middle of the strait and narrow. Insert a comment about faith vs. fear here.
Since starting this blog and joining in discussions with friends about Heavenly Mother, exposure to the work of Shiloh Sophia McCloud and several other things that have come along in the past few months, I've started thinking more about our eternal and divine natures as children of deity. Given how prominent assurances are in our teachings that we have potential to become like God ourselves, does it not seem strange that very rarely--possibly never--do I hear anyone in a Sunday School of Relief Society lesson extend that idea into "What will we be like as gods and goddesses?" and then turn it back to "Now, what do you think God is like?" (And I know I've never heard Goddess included in a sentence like that in a lesson.) But why not? Indeed, if a man cannot be exalted outside the everlasting covenant of marriage, would not the whole thing collapse without her? That's kind of important, don't you think?
I know some would come back with the gem "It's not critical to your salvation." Yeah, well neither is emergency preparedness or homemaking and we spend plenty of time on expounding upon the virtues of those. Neither is serving a full-time mission when you really break it down. There are a lot of things that aren't "critical" to our salvation; in fact everything outside of making baptismal covenants and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost by proper authority, repentance, and enduring to the end is outside of that "critical" realm of salvation from sin (see here, fourth paragraph.) I would say even temple covenants aren't critical to salvation. However, they are critical to eternal exaltation (as mentioned in the final paragraph of the previous link, and which I am separating as a concept; though they're often used interchangeably, they are not the same) and exaltation is a much broader topic than salvation, and isn't it really what we have in mind when we talk about everything else of an eternal nature in the Gospel? So yes, I would say that knowledge of who my Mother is, what she is, and what she's like is critical to my exaltation, because She is who I am going to be. She is my example I deeply and sincerely love my elder Brother, Jesus, and I am grateful every day for the Atonement, and he is an excellent example in living life and serving others and getting back Home, but I am unaware of any instance of Him turning to the women, and directly saying, "Thus saith the Lady, your Mother, what kind of women ought ye to be? Verily, even as She is." I will follow the principles I've been given of love/charity, faith, honor, virtue, honesty, integrity, and all the rest to the ends of the Earth, but I'm aiming higher than leading a good enough life not to go to Hell, and I'd like a little more information on what I'm going to become. Yes, there will be ample time to learn in the eternities, but "if a [woman] gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through [her] diligence and obedience than another, [she] will have so much the advantage in the world to come." (D&C 130:19)
I'm getting side-tracked: back on topic. Perceptions of Deity. So we don't get a lot of direction or even discussion about this topic of "What are Father and Mother actually like?" and I was left with this flowing glare of white in place of bodied deities. Problematic, to say the least. How does one relate to that as being one's Parent? As I've pondered the matter over the past few days, the following came to my mind.
The Gods are not blanks of "justice and/or mercy", only dealing out blessings and curses as They see fit. Nor are they featureless or without expression, a monotone and monochromatic field of dogma-made-flesh. They are Father and Mother, with individualities, personalities, each with their own, separate eternities of life experience, and a unified purpose to glorify and exalt their children. Each is mighty, omnipotent, and full of love for their children and all creations Their hands have formed. They are living, loving, intelligent beings of perfect wisdom and understanding.This knowledge helps bring Her home for me. I can imagine her face, I can imagine her smile, I can hope I'll look like her someday. It also brings Him home. He loves me. He speaks to and instructs me. They relate to me. They are related to me. Their very human reality informs my testimony and my destiny, and gives me some perspective on this matter.
I believe when they left their own mortal spheres, they yet had many things to learn, with much growth to achieve before they were prepared to be who they are now. I infer this from the certainty that there is no one, however well-educated, who died knowing everything. Even a Millenium of righteousness may not be sufficient to teach me how to solve Calculus, as well as to juggle (and it is my understanding that we will be otherwise engaged in proxy work, anyway) or any number of other things that I feel certain the Gods know and understand. Improvement and progression are a process of change, a process our Parents have experienced and one through which they will guide us.
Our God, our Father has a name and a face. Our Goddess, our Mother, has a name and a face. Their eyes have colors, their lips have shape, their bodies have height and weight. They have voices and favorite turns of phrase. They each have a laugh, as glorious as the sound of sunrise. There was a time, when they were mortal, when they had specific gifts and talents that they strove to improve and perfect. They were us, and we can be them.
When I become Mother, when I am Lady Wisdom, when I am co-creator with my love, I will still have a name and a face. I will still have a voice and a laugh, and ambitions and dreams. I will still have vision of my own. I will still be me, exalted, perfected, the achievement of my immortal potential. I will be Goddess, too.
How deeply I wish this post wasn't so unusual. How I wish we talked about this more.
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