Oh, Joanna, I'm Jealous!!!!!
Last weekend, I traveled with my mermaid sisters to Orcas Island for our annual Imbolc/Brigids Day retreat. We are a circle of women who first gathered together during the Goddess classes I taught in the 90's. They went on to complete the priestess training program I created. I have long since stepped down as "leader" and am glad to be one of a circle of equals. I have many other dear friends locally and around the country — but there is something very special about sharing your soul with a group of women that you have known intimately in sacred space for nearly fifteen years.
We spent most of the weekend talking and listening, cooking and eating, walking and laughing. This year we chose topics for our rounds — Health, Finances, Work/Career, Relationships, Spiritual Path, What We Care About the Most. And at the end, we set goals for the coming year. We would go around the circle by topic and each woman had a chance to speak as briefly or as long as she liked about that issue in her life. Then the rest jumped in with feedback or questions. The process becomes a cauldron for self-discovery and reflection, and I believe we all emerge from the Retreat with new energy and new clarity about our lives.
Joanna's right; no matter what else happens to you, there's something very special about doing magic with women whom you've known a long time, with whom you're used to doing magic, with whom you've entered sacred space enough times to flow comfortably into it. A college of priestesses. And, at least for me, it's empowering to know that there are women who will show up when you need help, tell you to try one more time, enjoy your victories, listen to you bitch about your job/lover/life, bathe your body when you die, call your name at Samhein.
My circle has been doing an annual retreat for several years, but, reading about the Mermaid's weekend, I'm wondering if we could think thing about a longer period of time.
Photo found here.
2 comments:
Yes, what would be do without our women friends, our sister priestesses? I just don't know.
The Power of Creation:
-One of a circle of equals.
-Sharing your soul with a group of women
-Talking and listening, cooking and eating, walking and laughing.
-This year we chose topics for our rounds — Health, Finances, Work/Career, Relationships, Spiritual Path, What We Care About the Most.
-We set goals for the coming year.
-We would go around the circle by topic and each woman had a chance to speak as briefly or as long as she liked about that issue in her life.
-Then the rest jumped in with feedback or questions.
-The process becomes a cauldron for self-discovery and reflection
-We all emerge from the Retreat with new energy and new clarity about our lives.
Great to know that in a multiverse of possibilities, this combination exists and thrives. The other combinations, modeled after the past 8 years of social engineering tactics play out as:
Women aligning with technothugs to invade the privacy of other women, coming up with an agenda for making over other women without their input, and use of teach/punishment to coerce conformity; all for the sake of some illusory sense of 'security,' importance and maintainence of power-over social arrangements.
May all those women lucky enough to experience the multiverse possibility manifested by Joanna and her circle of Mermaids wish for women everywhere to eschew power-over paradigms and enjoy the creativity, support, discovery and self-unfoldment that occurs in a circle of equals.
May the economic stimulus (spending!) package just passed by our leadership and representatives and carried out by our citizenry model the same.
BB,
UUgal
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