Winter Solstice - Maybe the Angry Women - 3

Today the sun starts shining more hours each day in the northern hemisphere. It is considered the birth of new light.

"In this tradition since pre-Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God, and in Christian tradition as the birth of the Saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is...

Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: It is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention and focus of the mother, and courage to be of the new young one.

Birthgiving is the original place of “heroics” … many cultures of the world have never forgotten that: Perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics”. Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely – pre-occupied as they often are with the “virgin” nature of the Mother being interpreted as an “intact hymen”, and the focus being the Child as “saviour”: Even the Mother gazes at the Child in Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within."

-Glenys Livingstone, PhD, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion

 

Tlazolteotl *

Birthing.

Any woman who has given vaginal birth (as opposed to Cesarian Sections) knows the incredible energies she had to find to push another human being into life.

When the nurse says you are 10 centimeters dilatated, that's how big your cervix must expand for you to give birth.

Every human being has experienced being born.

And every mother who gave birth has experienced the incredible forces of her womb to do this act. Us who had C-Sections (2 out of my 3 births) still had much similar feelings both emotionally and physically in the process and recovery from an abdominal surgical incision.

There are lots of photos on the internet of expectant mothers pushing, grimacing, breathing but no photos of actual birth. The babies are shown right after birth, being examined, or having the umbilical cord cut. The babies are shown with the moms holding them right after birth.

But though thousands of doctors and nurses and many fathers have seen a baby's head crown, the actual birth isn't shown. Perhaps the prudish society says we can't see a woman's vagina giving birth, or her anus, or somehow these are taboo still. OK, I don't want my privates spread all over the internet...but really, millions of births take place all over the world every day! They are invisible to the mothers, however. Just saying...

The only photo of an actual birth that I found.

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We celebrate (almost everybody) birthdays each year, to mark how many years we've accomplished of life so far.

And nobody sings to the mothers!

Well, I'm just saying, it kind of is mixed up, isn't it? The mothers did all the work, risked their lives and spent many hungry hours during labor, practicing different kinds of breathing while birth was about to finally happen, after waddling around with this extra weight hanging from their very centers for so long.

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Today's goddess is any mother.

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Winter Solstice, the rebirth of light, is today at 10:03 am ET.

''god is a mother

and with that

sentence

the world stops

the world always stops

when woman and

divine

commingle

as if the

feminine

dilutes the

miraculous

when in reality

it embodies it

when jesus turns water

to wine

they clap

but when women turn breasts

to milk

they cringe

a broken man’s body

is celebrated each sunday

while a broken woman’s body

is just hidden away

and it’s no wonder

that mother is a word

used by men

to demonize those

who don’t claim the name

and weaponized to shame

those who step out of line

because

their ideal

woman

plays the role of nurturer

and silencer

in pews

built and led by them

but

when god

becomes mother

she is neither quiet

or compliant

she leads confidently

she questions authority

she commands respect

which might be the problem

for mother god

did not gather us up

carelessly

but took her time with it

she fed us milk

birthed our souls

and broke her body

and the permanence

can be uncomfortable

and to disentangle god

from motherhood

is impossible

but

to disentangle god

from womanhood

is sinful

because seeing god as mother

is one step closer

to seeing god in me

and it’s in that

i am truly

born again''

~ Kaitlin Hardy Shetler @kaitlinshetlerpoetry

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My personal wishes are that the returning light, the seasonal rebirth as the earth starts to have longer daylight hours (northern hemisphere), will bring you bright healing, abundance, love, comfort and joy! And for those of you beginning the shortening days in the southern hemisphere, you are also wished the exact same things!

Bright Healing

Abundance

Love

Comfort

Joy

As the light reaches its lowest point here in the northern hemisphere we tuck ourselves into our warm homes, and even amidst the holiday gatherings it is valuable to find a bit of time to slow down enough to feel ourselves germinating, or even incubating. This is the time to nurture what wants to be born in us and in our communities—to protect and nurture our seeds until the time comes to send out our first tentative roots. When we reach deeply into the dark and embrace it, we find that what we need to know is inside of us already.

Mary Porter Kerns

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The last of 8 nights of Hanukkah

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Four more days till Christmas.

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And of course a woman has to have a choice whether or not to give birth!

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* This statue of Tlazolteotl is now one of the best-known sculptures in the Robert Woods Bliss pre-Columbian Collection at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Many scholars consider it to be a masterpiece of pre-Columbian art, highly sophisticated in design and execution (Kelemen 1943; Covarrubias 1957; Mason 1958; Coe 1993; Quilter 2002). Others question its stylistic and iconographic features, and are disturbed by its lack of provenience (Baudez 1998; Pasztory 2002). They believe it is a misattributed, more modern creation. What has been written in support of the sculpture’s authenticity since the early years of the 20th century is almost entirely subjective, interpretive and speculative, endlessly repeated, occasionally elaborated. It is axiomatic, unfortunately, that whatever is repeated often enough is eventually taken as fact.

Jenny Mendes Ceramics FB site