This is the sermon I offered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Charlottesville, VA on February 25. 2018
This is the 8th year I have had the pleasure of visiting Charlottesville to present the Women’s Dream Quest and the 2nd year I’ve spoken to you all. I take this as an honor, an opportunity to tell the story of what the women have been up to over the weekend and an opportunity to tell the story of the themes that are often mysterious and only experiential. I believe that it is a time when the experiences of the inner heart should be proclaimed in the service of understanding and healing. It is certainly time when all that is feminine is rising.
As I prepare this sermon, it is days after the last unspeakable school shooting, it is months after I watched your beloved community—one of my homes in the the world—become the target of brutal, cynical white supremacists and Nazis. We all know how this has happened. And we know that we need something to move us from despair to action– something to engender hope.
My work is about the interior life, the world of archetypes, of labyrinth walks, of gathering women and men together to enter into their hearts. Over the past year and a bit, it has also been about helping to order the increased chaos we are all living in. It is the dark opportunity of this time, to plumb the depths of the human shadow in each of our individual psyches as we watch the enactment of the national shadow on the political stage. It is an opportunity to heal what needs to be healed.
The theme of this year’s cycle of Quests has been Dreaming the Spiral. The theme came to me from the dream time as it always does in December 2016. I immediately thought that we would need this sort of perspective in the Questing season, 2017-18 . Looking at the world as a linear progression just wasn’t appropriate. Even Dr. King’s arc of history didn’t supply the correct geometry. One of the ways that can help us keep hope alive is to consider the spiral.
Spirals live everywhere in life, from our inner ears to the unfurling of ferns, from nautilus shells to the shape of galaxies. They are seen in art from as far back as 10.000 BCE and are an important focus in Celtic Culture and the Indigenous cultures of the Americas. Our own beautiful labyrinth has a spiraling theme. We know in personal growth work that we revisit issues again and again through life, but if we are aware, we notice that we might be on the next rung of an ascending spiral of our soul’s life.
Spirals also describe descent and often the vertiginous feeling we have when life flows out of control. If we notice where we are on our personal spiral at any given moment, we will have the gift of context and perspective and the deeply intuitive knowing that we are still part of the whole dancing cosmos.
Spirials describe the wheel of life, the ongoing flow of the seasons, the movement that characterizes life as we know it . For that reason it seems archetypally feminine, intuitive, changeable .
I took that sense along with another notion I have of the sacred feminine– that it is both particle and wave. Not only is the sacred feminine embodied in the hundreds of female deities of the world traditions. It is also a wave through history of the values of receptivity, inclusivity, nurturance etc– a wave that exists in the consciousness of men as well as women.
So when it came time to create a ritual for Dreaming the Spiral, it occurred to me to bring both the wave and the particle to the party.
Imagine this: First in the nave of Grace Cathedral on the stone labyrinth and then on the canvas labyrinth in your hall, we laid out a spiral of rainbow scarves tied to each other. We looked at the spiral as representing the wave of the sacred feminine. And then we called the particles– 5 archetypal deities and one surprise to dance on the spiral, music carrying their message. We chanted to them, sending our prayers.. It is a feature of several of the traditional deities that they come swiftly when they are called. And we all know that in these extraordinary times, we need their help.
We are all going to enact this part of the ritual in a few minutes, but first I would like to introduce the archetypal goddesses and tell their stories.
I must say the first line of this chant came to me when I was doing a labyrinth ceremony on the beach in Pt. Reyes CA while the air was still full of the smoke from the Santa Rosa Fires. This plea kept running in my mind: Mary, turn the hearts who’ve turned to Hatred…… This is my beloved Mother Mary, Guadalupe, Black Madonna of Chartres, the most revered female in Christianity and Islam. For over 1000 years people have called her name in the mantra like prayer, the Hail Mary.
Second, Great Mother Calm the fires, winds and seas-— this archetypal goddess precedes the patriarchy and is how humans related to the Divine throughout most of our history. Many of us tune in to this ancient manifestation of the female godhead. Pause for a moment and see who comes to mind and how you feel about her.
Third, Tara teach us wisdom and Compassion... Tara, the Boddhisatva of Compassion, refused her own enlightenment until all beings were liberated is known as the female Buddha. Like Mary, people in the East call to her for everyday prayers. She is common place and revered.
Then we chanted 3 times: Hear our Pleas, Hear our Pleas,
Opening ourselves to supplication opens our hearts to our needs.
Next, Kali speak our Sacred Truth to Power-– and here I am reminded of young Emma Gonzales who called out the hypocrisy of politicians beholden to the gun lobby with her fierce and tearful speech captured by CNN after the horrific school shootings. Kali, the Hindu Goddess sometimes known as the goddess of destruction embodies clear rage and the ability to stand against demons for the ideals of truth. She is fearless.
Next is Shechinah– the mystical indwelling presence of God from mystical Judaism. We chanted. Shechinah, dwell within the hearts of men. Certianly each man holds the feminine anima within him, just as each woman holds her animus
Then as I was searching for the 6th, it came to me to honor the innocent maiden who often accompanies the strongest woman on her inner journey.
We chanted, Sweet Maiden, hold us safe and strong and tender.
And then Love without End, love without End.
I’d like to offer up the chant to each of these archetypal beings in call and response fashion, but first I would invite you to close your eyes. ( Here I lead the congregation in a relaxation exercise to visualized the goddesses and to come into a contemplative mood)
Mary turn the hearts who’ve turned to Hatred
Great Mother, calm the fires, winds and seas
Tara. Teach us wisdom and compassion
Hear our pleas, hear our pleas, hear our pleas, hear our pleas, hear our pleas, hear out pleas
Kali, speak our sacred truth to power
Shechinah, dwell within the hearts of men
Sweet maiden, Hold us safe and strong and tender
Love without end, Love without end, love without end, love without end,
Love without end, love without end.
May we reach out as we need to into the Great mystery and all to whom we pray to and may we continue to remember the spiral when it looks like we may be headed over the cliff or when we find ourselves contracted in despair.
Next year, I hope that I’ll be speaking in a new world, with progressive legislators in place – with the feminine rising. I pray that the nation follows your lead here in VA in electing people of diverse and progressive perspectives. Aho, Blessed Be, Amen, Namaste.