"McVickar-Edwards, Carolyn - The Storytellers Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McVickar-Edwards Carolyn)

Maybe this holding of opposite truths is the basic task of Goddess
worship and of mature adulthood. As adults, we often experience
contradictory feelings and know them both to be true. I recognize your
loveliness and it is not good for me to be with you. I feel alive and
my grief is deep. This brings me pain and it brings me joy.

Just as the Goddess Herself is paradoxical, so is our relationship with
Her. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see Carolyn. At the same
time, I know that Carolyn embodies more than this image. This is me,
and this is not me. I have a similar relationship with the Goddess. On
the one hand, I identify with Her. On the other, I dangerously inflate
myself when I do not simultaneously identify as Her child, Her
worshiper, and as an imperfect human being. Unlike the Goddess, I am a
human being who can cultivate but not create a flower; chart but not
fill a sea; cut and sew but not mend a body.

I kiss the woman on my left in a Full Moon circle and say, "Thou art
Goddess." I mean it; she means it when she passes the kiss and that
wonderful statement to the woman beside her.

We giggle at how daring and accurate we are. In the rest of the
ritual, we might speak in first person as the Goddess in order to feel
Her speaking through us. We identify with Her in order to reclaim the
power of the Feminine that our culture has robbed, shunned, and
exploited. But, at the same time that we find in Her our personal
spiritual identities, we know we are not the All in All.

We are, instead, in relationship with Goddess, internally and
externally. We maintain this relationship by seeing Her power and
beauty in ourselves and others; making our prayers and meditations
tangible through magic; coming together to create sensual theater in
Her honor; staring deep into our souls; and moving slowly enough to
take in Her grace and wonder.

The inner beliefs, attitudes, and values that instruct our religious
path are based on our relationship to the Goddess, within and without.
As we explore and practice this relationship, we recognize that we ebb
and flow in our ability to feel Her presence and respond to Her. During
the heat and flow of relationship, filled with honor and awe for Her
presence, choices for right living are clear. For the ebb times in
relationship, however, our Earth-centered religion offers a rule. The
rule helps us make decisions about behavior even when right attitudes
elude us. The only rule of Goddess spirituality is: That which you do
comes back to you three times.

When I am using this rule, for example, I will not pour my car oil into
the gutter because I do not want to eat petroleum-flavored shrimp in my
won ton soup next month. But when I am able to feel my relationship to
the Goddess, I am able to move deeper than the rule. I do not pour my
oil in the gutter because the sea, the creatures, and I are all One: I