A woman gathering for Beltane

 

A comfortable Sunday afternoon... and a lovely center of our circle...with Goddesses and flowers galore!

I gave my pottery "Elements" pot to Linda, for her to have a portable altar for the 4 directions, the 4 elements of fire (shown here) water, air and earth.  I may have other photos of it, but I'm not sure. I didn't read any of  the Amulets of the Goddesses book, but it looks interesting. Linda leads lots of groups/circles, with 4 of them held yearly at the UU church here in Black Mountain. Of course we missed them in the last year.

I also brought the basil plant to share how wonderful it smells. I'm so glad to be able to deeply inhale the fragrence! 

Today's quote:

If you are stone, be magnetic;

if a plant, be sensitive;

if you are human, be love.

—Victor Hugo
Les Miserables

My mother's lineage

I'm part of a loose group of women in our community.  They are pretty liberal minded, and liberated definitely.  Many of us have white hairs, but not all.  After our business meetings we sing a nice song, and recite our female lineage.

I used to be proud to go back 5 generations.  Many women, especially us elders, missed the chance of finding out who the mother's mother's mother might have been.

But since I've been blessed to have Ancestry.com in my pocket (well laptop anyway) I've got more mother's than before.

The other day I proudly gave...
I'm Barbara
daughter of Mataley
daughter of Mozelle
daughter of Eugenia
daughter of Eugenia
daughter of Hannah
daughter of Polly
daughter of Hannah

It takes a while.  And now I feel like I know these women a bit better, having pieced together some of their lives with the little information I've found.  Each of them had a different last name, until me because I changed mine back to my maiden name.

They made homes.  But they also were travelers.  Only a few were born in the same place their mothers had been born.  They started in Virginia in the 18th century, and here I sit in North Carolina in the 21st century...though the loop led them through Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Texas where I was born.

And don't forget today is Women's Equality Day.
Here's a blog I read frequently telling lots about it...
http://medusacoils.blogspot.com/2013/08/womens-equality-day-challenges.html

Foggy morning thoughts

Our ritual in honor of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers included three levels of setting intentions.  We asked for the level of our personal lives first...then for our family/community, and then for healing the earth.

We may not be Indigenous, nor grandmothers, but we honor the land, the web of indeterdependent life, and have a sense of how real power is shared between all aspects of life.

Our ideas for our future group meetings include perhaps welcoming men into the group, and maybe having a "goddess of the month" topic to share with each other.  But for now we are releasing the monthly meeting, and will have a last gathering to have a closing celebration of the past 5 years of the Women's Spirituality Group.

I know I will miss this regular sharing of spiritual ideas of the divine feminine.  It will certainly be included in my book.