Mothers & Mothering
Suppose someone, let’s say your mother, offers you a cup of tea and in the process of giving it to you, spills it over you.
How do you react? With anger – or with love? Do you go with the result – or the intention?
Don’t ignore the scalding – that would be only the hypocritical denial
When I was young, there was a daily radio program in which, as previously arranged by each mother, the children whose birthdays were on that day would be instructed to follow the string tied to the back of the radio to find their present.
Follow, follow the string – Golden, of course – and There you
To quicken: to give life, to vivify. The anthropologist Margaret Murray at the age of ninety-nine declared in her "The Genesis of Religion" that the origin of the religious feeling occurred long, long ago when a woman first felt the mysterious quickening and attributed it to an unseen Power.
The essence of the Japanese tea ceremony is the acceptance of the As Is: to attain a state of detachment transcending judgement, when things, people, all events, all of existence, are accepted just as they are.
And this is through the recognition of the unique, yet universal, Thusness of every thing, of every person. Starting with
Without a deep, full, sense of personal identity, we are lost, and at the mercy of all those, equally lost, who choose to steal whatever there is of us so as to fashion a false identity of themselves. As we choose to be stolen hoping to find an identity as them.
But there is only one
Everyone, everything, is, to me, but one aspect or another of my mother. Enlightenment is coming to Know that all of her aspects are basically one – the Mother of Love.
(2002)
It’s said that the basic intention behind all spiritual endeavors is reconciliation with God.
I can’t directly reconcile you with God – but I can with your mother.
And to us all, our mother is God – as God on earth. For she was, and still is, our holiest intimation of the Divine.
The way to God is
The most interesting recurrent image is the ambivalence of so many of the goddesses: they could help or harm, cure or curse, promote life or destroy it.
“What more do you want out of life?” she asked quite unexpectedly, looking straight into my eyes.
“I don’t know…not much,” I replied, turning away from her, taken aback, “I am really pretty happy with things as they are.”
I was superficially pleased with my answer, by my (apparent) acceptance of my Way – and yet underneath,