The Invitation to Become Grand

Ruby turned six today.  My first grandchild.  Naturally, I've been remembering the day she was born.  All four grandparents-to-be were hanging out all week at a Berkeley bed and breakfast; Emily’s waters had broken and she didn’t go into actual labor for a number of days.  Such a rite of passage, of course for the baby and for her parents, but for all of us.  For Barry and me particularly, being first-time grandparents.  I hadn’t thought about it that way until this morning. Becoming a grandparent is not something we usually ritualize or commemorate; we aren’t the point, after all.  The child and the parents are the point.  I can remember when I visited my parents with Max, my firstborn, for the first time.  I felt that my mother finally treated me as an adult, even though I was 26 years old.

It’s not necessarily about being an elder, either, as many become grandparents at a much younger age than we did. But what becoming a grandparent truly offers is an invitation to become Grand.  My etymology dictionary says that grand comes from the Latin “grandis,” meaning “big, great, full, abundant,” and connoting “noble, sublime, lofty, dignity.”  That’s a lot to live up to.

We all know the benefits of grandparenthood – having the fun without having to be the disciplinarian or having the 24/7 responsibilities.  It’s just a matter of holding a heart full of love 24/7.

Here is my SoulCollage® card I call “The Grand Mother.”  A grandmother is connected to the Grand Mother, She who holds the world in her arms.  This isn’t big news or a fabulous insight on my part; only an acknowledgement of what this precious child (and her little sister and cousin) have given me and a reminder of what my job is.

Shortly after Ruby was born, this poem came.  It makes me happy to remember it today.

Honu* 

Little honu,

swimming her way to shore

on the full moon’s tide.

We have scooped her up

and held her next

to our hearts,

each one of us.

Blessed is the mother

who labors to bear the child.

Blessed is the one

who protects so fiercely.

Blessed is the father

who attends to the mother

and who welcomes his child.

Blessed are the grandparents

who dream the baby

into the world and

add pairs of helping hands.

Blessed are the uncles and aunts

who fall in love

at first sight.

Blessed is the baby

who give us hope.

For a week we

lived in a bubble

outside of time.

Only birth and death

drop us into that place.

The outside world

disappears in

irrelevance.

A long waiting week

it was.

The two, never

losing faith, never

wavering,

surrounded by light,

held in many hearts.

So many hours, so

many long nights.

Then, suddenly,

she is here; the

word came,

she is here.

The world has

waited eons

for her.

Her gifts, yet

to be revealed,

unique on the earth,

may be exactly

what is needed

to save us all -

little honu,

so recently surfacing

from the seas of

the other world.

* honu = the Hawaiian word for sea turtle

Synchronicities

I went to a workshop yesterday called The Heroine’s Journey:  Create Your Own Mythic Story with Margaret Jones.  It was a lot of fun and quite insightful.  The idea was that each participant would create a character and, with her (or as her), embark on an imagined journey. 

Margaret began by placing cards of female figures from various Tarot decks on the circular table in front of our small group.  We were to choose one to be our character.  One of the few that landed right in front of me was the High Priestess card from the Mythic Tarot.  Now, interestingly enough, when I use Tarot (less and less often these days as my SoulCollage® cards are in the forefront for me), I almost always work with the Mythic deck.  Even more interesting is that in this deck, the High Priestess card is Persephone.  Here’s what the card looks like:

Synchronicity!  I love it when I find synchronicities, when I realize that synchronicity is what I’m experiencing.  This one was not at all subtle or hard to get!  

One of things Margaret asked us to do was to write about this character’s flaws or weakness.  What arose in my mind was that Persephone is strongly influenced and impacted by those around Her who have great power.  One of Her tasks is to come into Her own, to become who She is called by Her own soul to be.

I’ve just turned 67.  Surely, I am not still wrestling with this issue, right?  I’m a strong woman.  I can hold my own.  Right?

When leaving on our imagined journey, we were told to bring one thing along with us.  It was clear from my card what mine was to be: a pomegranate.  Okay, so not the most useful or practical object to take on a journey (others brought containers of water, flints to make fire, etc.).  Oh, well….  The image led me.  Better a pomegranate than the card's other choice - a handful of dead flowers.

We experienced various parts of the journey - advice and gifts received – aspects I won’t bother going into here – but one very interesting and difficult aspect for me was the destination.  We each selected a picture of a place, but we chose sight unseen.  When I turned my image over, I was truly taken aback.  Here’s what it was:

Devastation.  Clear-cutting.  Why would a journey lead me here?  Am I being called to witness the damage that men have done, or to heal the earth (well, yes, who isn’t?), or ….?

With a lot of writing and reflecting, I realized that what I saw as Persephone’s flaw came into play here.  I don’t think I’m unusual as a woman, even a strong and sometimes outspoken woman, to have spent much of my life under the influence of the powerful, and especially the patriarchal.  Patriarchy has wounded us all, including the earth.  And I admit that sometimes I still allow those who ought to have no power over me the ability to hurt me. 

But what She/I hold in my hand is the pomegranate, a bold symbol of female power and fecundity.  This is what the devastated world needs.  After all this time and work and awareness, I still need to work for the great healing.  Even more than ever. 

For those who have experienced SoulCollage®, I will be telling Persephone's story at the next session – Sunday, April 24^th.  There is still space.  Please come!  Just RSVP.

Hanging Out with Hecate and Visiting with Hel

So, if I’m one who hangs out with Hecate, what was I doing visiting Hel?

Interestingly, both goddesses have been pictured as having three faces, so they are associated with the triple goddess.  But both are generally viewed as crones.  Clearly they are close kin, but they dwell in different domains.

Hecate stands at the crossroads.  She oversees choices and the paths we embark on.  She is a liminal goddess of edges and borderlands.  She is the patron of midwives.  In the oldest version of the Persephone story, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she becomes Persephone’s guide and companion.  In the middle ages, she became known as Queen of Witches.  People respected and feared her.  She dealt in magic, divination, and consulting the dead.

Borderlands and edges have always both attracted and terrified me.  They are the areas where creativity happens, where one is at least a little uncomfortable.  They are places for catching visions.  For me, getting too close to the edge is dicey, as I always tend towards the fearful and acrophobic, but I can work at shouting distance from it.  Though I love the comforts and safety of the center regions, I find the edges compelling.  My lifelong love of Persephone points to my desire to be able to move between realms, to live in (or with) the tension of the opposites.   In other words, to dwell in the borderlands.

From time to time, my dream group works with Jeremy Taylor.  He visited us over a year ago, and I was fortunate enough to have him work on one of my dreams.  Because he is both so experienced in dream work and also very intuitive, he pointed out things I would never have seen.  He said my dream was a borderlands dream and an invitation to visit the land of the dead.  This is a metaphorical place, not a literal one, a place where priorities get recognized.  When I told him about my relationship to Persephone, he said it made perfect sense.

Now, Hel, like Persephone, is the Norse goddess of the underworld.  Her realm is not the hell we usually envision, although it is the land of the dead.  Hel’s realm is a place of regeneration.  She is said to have a great cauldron of fire for this purpose.  When shamans decided to visit her, they put on masks or helmets called helkappes, which rendered them invisible and able to visit the underworld.  Most people do not choose to go to Hel. In a literal sense, they go when they die.  In a metaphorical sense, we often get pushed, driven or dragged down.  To what end?  To deepen our souls, perhaps.  To be transformed.  To regenerate.  It is sometimes a shamanic call, to go down. 

It’s not unusual to spend time in the dark regions in the dark of the year.  I’ve had my times of wandering around down there.  This time I endeavored to put on a helkappe and visit by intention. 

I recently read an article by Martin Shaw who says, “The deepest position is the taking of that underworld information and allowing it to gestate into a lived wisdom that, by its expression, contains something generative.”

Yes!  I was looking for something generative.  I would dearly love for my elder years to be generative years.  I believe my Going to Hel event was my attempt to encourage this in myself, and hopefully for others. 

Hecate and Hel are neighbors.  I’m glad to mostly hang out with Hecate, Persephone’s guide and companion, at the crossroads and the edgy places.

Although they are both queens of the dead, there is a big difference between Hel and Persephone; Hel remains in the underworld and is associated with rebirth.  Persephone’s task is to move between realms, to navigate the high and low places, to gracefully shift gears in order to both deepen soul and enliven spirit.  She is the one I follow, though I offer my gratitude to Hel for my recent attempt to visit and meet her. 

Who is a goddess of the heights?  Hmm…. Maybe I could try visiting those borderlands, too.

The Stages of Cronedom

I've been working on my event for women on aging and the crone archetype (there are still a few spaces - see my previous posts or Facebook event called Going to Hel: Aging and the Crone Archetype), and I've discovered a few poems I'd forgotten that I'd written.  One of the reasons I started blogging was to put these poems out so that they wouldn't get lost in deep storage.  So, here is one I dug out:

First,

you are a novice elder.

Monthly bleeding 

finally ends, 

bringing both relief 

and sadness.

If you are fortunate,

you receive

a crone initiation,

and a welcoming.

You begin to look

at older friends

in a new way.

You study

how they move,

how they rest,

how they persist

in their arts.

Then,

you move into

early cronehood.

You stop coloring

your hair.

You grandparent.

If you are lucky,

you retire from

your day job.

Because you live

within youth culture,

you become invisible

to many.

You wince

at your image

in the mirror,

hating the new lines

etched into your face and

your sagging skin.

Then,

you breathe deeply

and promise yourself

to accept it all.

Next,

you discover

that there is  

a middle-elder phase.

You begin

to identify yourself

as old. 

Sometimes.

Weaknesses in the body

begin to clarify themselves

into symptoms.

It is easy

to get lost and

discouraged now.

You realize

that you will never

go backpacking again.

You visit

your acupuncturist and

chiropractor. 

Often.

If you are even

a little wise,

you turn inward

and to whatever gods or spirits

tug at your soul.

You allow

your gifts

to flow

unobstructed.

You care

less and less

what others

think of you.

You begin

to lose (or lose more)

people.

You understand

how much grief

there will be

from now on .

You wonder

how you will manage

to bless and serve

the young.

Later,

you move into

true old age.

Not yet having 

arrived there, 

I cannot speak of it 

with any authority.

I suspect

that the work

will be to learn more

about acceptance

and about staying

open-hearted.

That opening

to the life-force

and also the death-force

will be

what is required.

I hope

that I live long enough

to hold all things –

to love my beloveds -

to bless the youngers –

and to meld

into the earth.

Maya Spector