The Dream Connection and the Pope

This may be a bit David and Goliath of me, but I'd like to challenge the need for institu-tionalized religion. I'd like to propose that modern day "religions" do much more harm than good; they divide us from one another and fail to deliver on all the Good they claim for themselves.  I'd like to suggest that we each enter this world connected to our Spiritual Source and will exit this world to reunite with the same Loving Source; even as we reside in the physical body, in a physical world, we are spiritual beings living our unique purpose.  The burgeoning exploration of near death experiences, NDE's, out of body experiences, OBE's, and dreaming in general is opening the gates to direct spiritual experience for everyone, not just the chosen prophets of the status quo.

The organic spirituality dreaming offers is like having a spiritual compass through life helping to connect us on a regular basis with inner resources, as it provides us with personalized guides, teachers and angels, messengers of the wisdom beyond embodied reality that delivers us from the trials of waking life, big and small.  We can also gain freedom from judging ourselves by the standards of the physical world only, because we have other experiences to cultivate in other realities that often more than compensate for lack on this plane.  We’ve been brainwashed to believe the physical is the only solid, real reality. Despite a century of exciting developments in the fields of Physics, Consciousness Studies and Dream Studies, a great number of people ignore the dream portals to other worlds that are being offered them on a regular basis.

We've been taught, conventionally, to rely for spiritual nourishment on external reality based religions that give prescribed outlines of dimensions beyond the physical and demand consensus on the grounds of an elite, usually male, group of authorities who alone can decipher what even older all male authorities wrote about the Divine. I'm mostly talking about the big three, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Perhaps some accept constricting religions as our only spiritual option for lack of alternative. These limiting religions, especially as absorbed through the mind of a child, which is when most of us get brainwashed into them, operate on a deeply suggestive psychic level to imprint on us the dire consequences of disbelieving their dogma.  They utilize a simplistic and dualistic punishment and reward system, commonly known as hell and heaven to instill fear and obedience to their projection of the Divine. Yes, they profess that at the core of their teachings is the ultimate reality of Love, but by their deeds, as Jesus put it, you shall know them.  These patriarchal religions have a track record of deeds that belie their preaching of Love, from present warring zealotry in the Middle East to horrendous historical events like the Roman Catholic Inquisition, when claiming any direct revelation from dreams could get you barbecued.

The myths that these for-profit organizations perpetuate can be truly detrimental to the human spirit, especially if you're a woman.  The myths begin by saying that once we were loved and provided for in a wonderful place, but something happened, so we got kicked out.  Humans DISOBEYED and worse, it was HER fault, the woman’s.  The serpent, EVIL, outsmarted her cute little self and she used her wiles to get the smart one, THE MAN, to do what he otherwise would surely not have done.  The rest, most believe, is HIS-STORY.  SHE must be constricted, especially sexually, so she doesn’t again undo all HIS progress,  SHE, whether in human body or as EARTH can also be abused and used, because SHE is but MAN’S servant.  HE AND GOD are on the same level; they are the PATRIARCHS.  The GODDESS is no longer anywhere to be seen, at least not in the CIVILIZED world; yet, since the beginning of human history, archeologists have discovered, the Divine was worshipped as the GREAT MOTHER.

Surely most people can see that religion, at least as much as money, is the root of our accelerating self-destruction.  The great mystic poet, William Blake described our mental chains, our unexamined, constricting paradigms as "mind forged manacles." These patriarchal myths, with different players, are in dangerous and violent competition for supremacy around the world.  If people adhere to these limiting myths for lack of a real alternative, one that satisfies, informs and inspires beyond that old time religion, then the world is ready for the alternative - individual, direct experience of the divine.

There are many roads to these direct experiences being explored by a growing number of people, all over the world, through the contemporary Consciousness Movement   My portal of choice is dreaming because it's effortless, natural and organic.  It doesn’t require much of me; all I need is to want to dream, want to remember and to pay attention.  Sharing and playing with dreaming in family groups and community groups can nourish our need for human connection and help us build a better future together.  Through individual and group dream explorations, we arrive at our own certainty, we gain our own authority over our spiritual lives.  For me, dreaming provides access to my spiritual home long before I finally go there; death does lose its sting.  It’s taught me that in thought responsive, non-physical worlds of dreaming, it’s all up to me.  I create my inner world with my intention, desire and imagination, yet in these worlds, I meet others who share similar visions and we create together.

Dreaming has also taught me that “as there, so here.”  The mirror lessons from the dreaming that apply to physical reality are the gifts we receive to carry into our waking lives.  If I can create my dream realities, how much of my waking reality can I create?  If I can conquer my fears in the dreamworlds, can I conquer them in waking? 

Rather than disconnecting us from what’s important and turning us into “dreamers” as is sometimes said with disdain, connecting through our dreaming to our eternal, non-physical self and exploring the resources available to us in those dimensions can anchor us in our authentic lives, despite the “peer pressure” of social consensus.  In waking life, connecting through meditation, mindfulness, open-hearted living are ways to keep spiritual portals open; when we sleep, it can be effortless.

In the frilly aftermath of Saint, I mean, Pope Francis’s whirlwind visit to our land, I heard the fluttering comments about his awesome Presence here. I have nothing against him personally; he seems like a truly sincere and nice guy, but as a Pope, he’s doing the RC Church a great service by gaining so much popularity. Talk is cheap and the fact that he rides by papal Fiat is not the point, or perhaps, on a PR level, it is.  The Vatican alone is a vast empire of wealth and power with deep corruption issues; does he really wield any influence there?  Could he be, perhaps quite unwittingly, the misogynist and power hungry RC church’s best media foot forward?  This is the church of the outrageous child sexual abuse scandals that are still current in the courts and the just as outrageous cover-ups by Church authorities.  This is the church that continues, the only one out of just about all others in “Christendom,” to deny women equal access with men to clerical office, and it’s proud of it!  So, how about that papal fiat to reform all this; will he do it?  Can he do it?  I don't know; but the fact that he just canonized J. Serra, despite all the impassioned pleas for him to consider the man's brutal acts towards the indigenous peoples he savagely forced to build his missions is not a good sign. 

Here’s a wonderful article on papa’s visit by Maureen Dowd in the NYTimes; well worth reading!  In it, I learned that a San Francisco priest was just officially forbidden to say mass, for attending a women's conference on ordination.  This outrageous censure of true pastoral outreach happened under Francis's watch, NOW.  What's changed? For those who might think that women's ordination is a marginal issue, here's a view to consider.


Without the Feminine Divine to balance the Male Deity, the psyche of humanity is completely out of balance.  As Carl Jung famously put it, the fate of humanity hangs on a single thread and that thread is the Human Psyche, the soul of humanity, which is dangerously out of balance.  Restoring that inner-world balance of Feminine/Masculine Divine is the only way to restore outer balance; an internal mythic world where God is Male alone means an external world that reflects this.  But, the Feminine Divine is an energy source just as powerful; to deny Her is to bring on our own destruction.

A dream connection is more important than a pope or a religion.  Organized religions need people to close their minds to other possibilities; dreaming perpetually opens new frontiers with first-hand adventures. One time, when my husband and I attended a friend's religious themed Halloween party as Death (me) and the Devil (he), someone in clerical garb asked us about the religious connection of our costumes,   My mate promptly replied, "Without us, you'd be out of business."  It's much easier to move beyond fear in the actual practice of dreaming than it is in the tomes and regulations of sects, cults and religions.  Organized religion feeds on fear of death and projects evil outward. Our own dream encounters over a lifetime with all aspects of Spirit, helps us weave the personal connections with divinity that makes us strong and helps us not to be afraid.

Religions give us a prefab God with lots of restrictions; one of my favorite jokes is that religions are all guilt with different holidays.  Relying on my own innate ability to connect with Spirit gives me the confidence to know that whatever my strengths or frailties, my successes or failures, I'm essentially a spiritual, whole being, experiencing this physical existence willingly for a purpose.  As long as I stay connected to my own experience in waking and dreaming, I'm free of the fears which make me vulnerable to psychic manipulation.

I'll end with one of my favorite quotes from a great dream explorer, Carl G. Jung:

“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”

Mother's Day Homily at MUUS

I'd like to share with you the homily I gave this Mother's Day at the Mattatuck Unitarian Univer-
salist Society in Woodbury, CT, titled: "The Feminine Divine on Mother's Day." 

Today is Mother’s Day, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you about Mother. Actually, today in particular is the centennial of Mother’s Day in the US, first declared officially as the second Sunday in May by Pres. Woodrow Wilson in 1914.  This holiday, which probably has its roots in ancient Mother Goddess Spring festivals of Greece and Rome, was championed in the US by Anna Jarvis, who beginning in 1905, campaigned vigorously to establish a day where each family would honor their personal mothers in a special way at home and with church services.  Unfortunately, it took no time at all for the holiday to become so commercialized that she actually spent the rest of her life fighting to have the holiday removed from the official national roster.  Thanks, Hallmark.

What Anna Jarvis wanted was that on Mother’s Day we be reminded to celebrate the unconditional love, sacrifice, untiring care and selfless devotion of our personal mothers.    To give thanks to our mothers for having the courage to give birth to us, and thanks to every woman who after taking on that heroic biological task, in the majority of cases, did her very best to take on the moral/spiritual task of nurturing her children, as well. 

Moving from the personal to the collective, on this centennial of our national celebration of Mother’s Day, I’d like to invite you to remember with me not the personal mother of our own experience, but the archetypal mother of our collective experience as a human race, the Great Mother, the Feminine Divine. 

At the very core of our collective psyche as a human race on this beautiful, bountiful planet is the Great Mother, known throughout antiquity and across indigenous cultures as the Creator of all that is. Thanks to the work of exceptional scholars like archeologist Marija Gimbutas, we know that: “The Goddess is the most potent and persistent feature in the archeological records of the ancient world, a symbol of the unity of life in nature and the personification of all that was sacred and mysterious on earth.”

I was completely delighted to learn that Unitarian Universalists have for many years offered a very sophisticated curriculum about the ancient and indigenous Goddesses from history and diverse cultures, “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven”. I was going to spend some time with you sharing slides of many of these pre-historic and multi-cultural images of the goddess, until I realized I’d be preaching to the choir, many of you already know about HER.

Whether God as Mother is a familiar concept or a new one to you today, I’d like to invite all of us to reflect on the status of the Divine Feminine in our psyches, both personally and collectively.  Because for the last five thousand years or so, She has been persecuted, obscured, neglected and finally banished. This has had dire consequences for humanity.  The elevation of the masculine to exclusive divine status and the denigration of the feminine to subservient and inferior status has grave implications for our personal psychic health, whether we are male or female, for our cultures and for the well being of our endangered planet.

The Wisdom of the Feminine, personified in the many forms of the goddess, is essentially the understanding that Divine Light is not separate from creation, but inherent in creation, embodied and birthed over and over again by women.  For ancient peoples, woman was the matrix of creation, both literally and metaphysically. Moreover, to ancient and indigenous peoples even today, the Earth is our Mother, alive, sentient and interactive with our every thought, word and deed.  We are part of a physical and mystical web of life that is inter-dependent and inter-connected.  

History is the story as told by the conqueror and the stories we have learned are about the triumph of the masculine sky gods, giving birth without women, from Adam’s rib, the head of Zeus or even the spoken word.  Patriarchal mythologies have divorced divinity from nature, exhorting conquering, dominating and exploitive ideologies that have brought us to the very brink of our own annihilation.  It has placed divinity outside of matter and reduced matter to a mechanical science, devoid of soul. All ancient and indigenous peoples even today know this is a grave error.

But today, we are in the midst of a spiritual revolution. Enlightenedl teachers from all over the world, across cultures and disciplines are pointing to a new/old paradigm for understanding our world and our purpose in it.   From subatomic physics to new metaphysics we are hearing that we are essentially energy; we are spiritual beings participating in a physical manifestation and each of us has chosen this manifestation with a purpose in mind.  Today’s spiritual teachers point to the need to bring balance back into our psyches by once again honoring the Feminine aspects of Divinity and recognizing the sacredness of the Earth as the embodiment of the Feminine Divine.

They’re telling us that our world is in serious trouble and at the root of what ails us is the terrible psychic imbalance caused by the inflation of masculine principles and the devaluation of the feminine.  In Chinese Taoist philosophy, these principles are known as the Yin, the Feminine and the Yang, the Masculine.  Taoism teaches that these opposites are in a continual dance, an ebb and flow that results in balance; neither is superior or inferior, each has its time and its purpose.  When one becomes too pronounced, the entire system is thrown out of balance to the detriment of the whole.

Mother’s Day is a fine time to consider what the consequences of shutting the Feminine out of divinity are.  I recently wrote here about the new, celebrated Pope Francis who has firmly stated that he won’t consider finally ordaining women as priests, although he is very concerned about their level of poverty and exploitation in the world.

But it’s a Catch22; the majority of the world's poor are women because women have no status in patriarchal government, patriarchal religion nor as the Divine Archetype.  In patriarchy men rule, make all the decisions concerning women and children and God looks like one of them. In patriarchal paradigms, woman's power is stripped from her and to the degree that it’s justified by “the image of god” her situation can’t and won’t change.  You’ve only to look at the status and experience of women in the most orthodox patriarchal cultures.  As Jimmy Carter recently put it:

“The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women.  They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.  Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world.”

To change the status of women, we have to change the paradigm that devalues women by excluding the Feminine from divinity. This work begins at the level of the individual psyche, as psychiatrist Carl Jung taught.  The fate of humanity, he said, hangs by a thread, and that thread is the psyche.  As the mystical poet, William Blake, wrote, “mind forged manacles” imprison us.  What we believe at our deepest unconscious level is what really drives our behavior.

Like most of you, I grew up with the psychic imprint of God as male, God as Father.  Jesus, though his teachings espoused rather feminine values, was also a male representation of the divine and all his earthly ministers, up until the mid 1980s, were male, as well. As an on again, off again Catholic, Mother Mary did factor in, but definitely as an obedient helpmate, not a divine equal to His Holiness, Father God, and always a Virgin, despite marriage and motherhood, because another artificial separation of this paradigm is sexuality from the sacred.

I first met the Great Mother in a dream when I was 21, way before I knew anything about Her in waking reality. She came to me as “Howling Mary”; I talk about this dream here.

I woke from seeing Mary howling in anger and pain, heart pounding and completely baffled.  I didn’t know then the value of recording my dreams, but I’ve never forgotten this one. It was a Big Dream with a Big Message for my life that proved prophetic. In a manner I’ve come to recognize from following my dreams, my waking life unfolded in a series of one meaningful coincidence after another, until the Great Mother embodied in my Psyche, out of the shadows and into the Divine Light.

Though my original plan was to go to graduate school to study literature, I went to seminary instead, campaigned to be ordained a priest in the catholic church and when I realized that wouldn’t happen, despite the many other denominations opening the ministry to women, I abandoned Catholicism for psychotherapy and Women’s Spirituality and came full circle to marry my love of HER to my love of dreaming, where I first met Her. From my perspective today, I see what Mary was howling about.

On this day of Honoring the Mother, I invite all of us to examine our paradigms, our deeply held, knee jerk beliefs inherited from our parents, family systems, cultures and belief systems.  Knowing about the Queen of Heaven is an intellectual exercise; healing the Wounded Archetypal Feminine, the Anima and the Feminine relegated to Shadow is the soul-searching challenge of our time that each of us has to accomplish individually. Recovering a reverence for the earth and all life based on a deep, intuitive understanding of our Oneness with Gaia is the test we face.

But we can’t create the new order we need using the old logic that got us into the mess we’re in.  We need to use the principles we’ve been told are inferior, heart, intuition and instinct.

Here’s an example of what I mean; close your eyes and imagine a prehistoric time, cave people, cave man, cave woman.  How do they relate to one another? Is it hard to dispel the caricature of the caveman with the club, dragging the cave woman by the hair, dominating her way back then?  At an intellectual level, we know it’s not politically correct, but is it a knee-jerk visual?  Can we imagine a pre-historic culture where women were revered for their personal magic?  A culture that deduced the Creator of humanity from observing the creator of the personal world, a culture that finds no problem in revering a Divine Mother as ultimate Creator?  In this culture, people exercise their talents for the good of the group; knowing that sticking together and loving one another is the way to survive?  Oh, and a people who are constantly in and out of psychic experience, one to whom dreaming and dream adventures meld seamlessly with waking and waking adventures?  A culture far more advanced in spiritual practices than we are today.

We are plagued by the tunnel vision of interpreting all of history, at least 40 thousand years back, through the lens of the last six thousand years.  We have a patriarchal, war obsessed mindset that tells us it always had to be this way; human nature is naturally contentious, greedy and selfish, anything else is wishful thinking.

Amazonian and Mayan shamans teach that “the world is as you dream it.”  We create the realities we live through our communal expectations. We created this paradigm when we banished the Sacred Feminine, and in order to break free of its unconscious hold on our psyche, we need to re-instate the Great Mother as she is embodied in the earth and in all feminine characteristics we have devalued.

Here’s another example of how knee jerk our denial of the Feminine Divine can be.  I taught theology in an all girls’ RC high school, back when there were enough progressive religious communities, especially among nuns, to allow me to teach a course I called, “Christian Feminism.”  On the first day of class, I asked the students; “Is God male or female?”  They were prepared, and gave me the bonafide answer from the catechism.  "God is neither, God is Spirit."  "Fine", I said, "In this classroom, for this semester, when we pray, we’re going to say, Our Mother, and when we refer to God, we’ll use the feminine pronoun, She."  They were horrified; "We can’t do that!"  "Why?" I asked; "Because God is Father," they replied. The masculine divine has been imprinted in our psyches, both personally and collectively; it’s hard to reshape that image.

Until we heal our personal psyche, we can’t heal the collective.  Until we heal the collective, we remain alienated from the resources we need to create balance.  Here’s the good news as taught by Llewellyn Vaughan Lee, a contemporary Sufi master who wrote “The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul.”

“The mystery of the divine feminine speaks to us from within her creation.  She is not a distant god in heaven, but a presence that is here with us, needing our response.  She is the divine returning to claim her creation, the real wonder of what it means to be alive.  We have forgotten her, just as we have forgotten so much of what is sacred, and yet she is always part of us.  But now she needs to be known again, not just as a myth, as a spiritual image, but as something that belongs to the blood and the breath.  She can awaken us to an expectancy in the air, to an ancient memory coming alive in a new way.  She can help us to give birth to the divine that is within us, to the oneness that is all around us.  She can help us to remember our real nature.”

How do we reconnect with the Feminine Divine?  Turn off the TV and step out into Nature. Listen deeply to what you hear within you.  Be still and know that She is Divine, alive in the beauty of the simplest flower.  Follow the counsel of your heart over your head.  Listen to your dreams, your own organic spirituality, your connection to revelation and trust that you are part of the One, you are not separate and you are not Alone. 

I wish you all a very blessed Divine Mother’s Day.

On the Cover of the Rolling Stone

In a "USA Today" story recently, a woman reporter relates the Pope's opinion on women priests, which is No. She concludes:

"Women priests may not top his list, but perhaps Francis is serving women through his focus on global poverty and hunger. Is that enough?" Uh, no; it's not enough.

Theology professor Alice L. Laffey makes a similar point in her op-ed, saying: "Throughout the world, women and their children make up the greatest percentage of human beings living in destitution. Their main concern is not women priests but food, health, education and physical safety. Francis' genuine concern for the real lives of the poor and suffering warmly embraces women."

In other words, Francis is serving women through his focus on global poverty and hunger, because for some obscure reason, the majority of the world's poor are women and children.  So look how much he likes women; he's going to talk more about what they need and maybe see if he can get them some management positions in the Vatican, (although most Vatican positions of authority require high ranking clerical ordination).

Here's my take on Francis' position: The majority of the world's poor are women because women have no status in patriarchal government, in patriarchal religion nor as the Divine Archetype.  Patriarchy is an old fashioned word for men rule, make all the decisions concerning women and children and God looks like one of them, an old white guy.  In patriarchal paradigms, woman's power is stripped from her; consider that it's been less than 100 years since American women got the right to vote  If you wonder what it took to get the 19th Amendment passed, watch Hillary Swank's portrayal of Suffragist leader, Alice Paul in "Iron Jawed Angels."  You may have to close your eyes during the part where jailers force feed the prisoners on a hunger strike; it's gruesome.  But that's what our grandmothers had to do to get us the vote in this great country.  Now when do you think women in some Muslim nations, or in Orthodox Hebrew communities or in the Catholic Church will get equal rights? By the way, American women are not guaranteed equal rights under our constitution, as we somehow couldn't manage to pass the ERA.  

Women are poor because women are on a sliding scale of denigration in patriarchal cults around the world, so don't tell me that the head of one of the big 3 global patriarchal cults is doing enough for women by talking about how they are poor and need help.  By the way, I think he talks in general, about poor people, not poor women, but we all know how inclusive patriarchal language can be.

So then comes an interview in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Ash Wednesday, (the infamous time of penitence for Catholics that kicks off, wisely enough with Mardi Gras) with the Jesuit editor of the Catholic magazine, "America", James Martin.  Headline: "Women Could Have Greater Role in Church, Pope says." (Sorry, it's a little hard to watch with a straight face because he has a big black cross smudged in ashes on his bald pate.)

Gee whiz, I wonder what Pope Francis has in mind for our new roles in the church?  Ordination?  Making Pope Joan known to the world or apologizing and asking the church to do penance for the millions of victims. the majority women, of the bloody Medieval and Renaissance Roman Catholic Inquisition? Gee, what could the Pope have in mind, because he already said ordination is off the table because he doesn't want to see women "clericalized," huh?  Now that's sweet; he doesn't want to see us bothered with those long black robes and stiff white collars, but maybe we can run the Vatican equivalent of the PTA or go help the poor like Mother Teresa.  Besides, he says, we've talked about ordaining women in the Church before and decided against it; there's no need to revisit this pesky little subject.

Now, according to Father Martin, the Church has already said no because...(No, not because we don't have a penis like Jesus did, that wasn't the reason he gave), because if Jesus had wanted women to be priests, he would have started off picking one as an Apostle, which he didn't; so there, women can't be priests now.

OMG!  Did he just say that?  Despite the volumes of scholarly exegesis on John 20:11-21, in which Jesus appears first to Mary of Magdala on the third day after he's crucified? She doesn't recognize him  (most departed appear looking terrific and I'm sure that's not what she was expecting), until he says her name, and she knew him.  (Did they embrace?) "Don't cling to me" he says,  "because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the brothers and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my god and your god."  Jerusalem Bible

You see, the word "apostle" is derived from the Greek, "apostolos"; John wrote in Greek. It means messenger  or ambassador.  Now whom did the Lord choose as his first "messenger"?  To whom did He first appear, though Peter and the Beloved Apostle were duly fetched by Mary when she found the tomb empty.  Yeah, they searched around, found the linens and went running back to establish a religion based on artifacts.  Mary stuck around and was rewarded with the real thing; she was first to see the Risen Christ and the first to "take the message to the brethren, "Jesus is Alive.  He is Risen;" Mary of Magdala was first to proclaim this message.  The first Apostle to the Apostles was a woman, selected as his ambassador by Jesus himself.  She was also made a disciple by Jesus, (Luke 10: 38-42; since I know the good Father Martin might argue that one can't be an Apostle without first having been a disciple) the day she and her sister Martha were supposed to serve the food for the hungry dozen, but Mary was sitting there at Jesus' feet listening to Jesus teach.  Martha complained, but Jesus replied, "Mary has chosen what is better and it won't be taken away from her."  Did I mention that the word disciple is derived from the Greek word that means "to sit at the feet of a teacher" and that it was a crime punishable by death to defile the Torah (the holy Hebrew laws Jesus was purportedly teaching) by teaching it to a woman?  

Jesus was a Feminist; his treatment of women with respect and compassion probably contributed greatly to his condemnation by the religious authorities of his day. If he was running the RC today, we wouldn't be having this conversation, but he probably never intended the institutions that came after his death; he taught that "the kingdom of God is within you."  What's more, according to many ancient but non-canonical (meaning the RC won't credit their authenticity) texts, women had lots of authority in the early Church. Just one century into the "Christian Era, not so much.  How did that happen; ask Paul, a great proponent of keeping women silent and veiled.  

There are lots of skewed reasons for not ordaining women, beginning with the mythical fact that women are guilty from the get go; if it wasn't for Eve, we'd all still be living in paradise.   In reality, women threaten the very bedrock of the patriarchal RC church, that God is Male.  When I was a divinity graduate student and a candidate for priesthood in the RC through the "Women's Ordination Movement" of the 70's and early 80's, our motto was "New Women, New Church."  We weren't going to lie; you have sexist repressive dogma and we're here to take ink to that parchment and make some alterations.  For one, we will call God "Mother" as well as "Father" in recognition of the great historical and ancient Goddess traditions that were all but silenced by patriarchal brutality; we will bring back the full Divinity of the Feminine Archetype and represent that archetype in our priesthood. 

Okay, so it's no surprise we didn't get ordained; we were and are an open threat to the misogyny that has reigned too long. 

I can understand the Pope-u-larity of this pontiff; he's definitely a relief after the tight ass party line toters we've had recently, but he's got to walk the walk, not talk it.  Religious theater like foot and baby kissing doesn't do it; neither does unexpected papal humility, charm or ordering your own pizza. Francis says he can't change what Pope John Paul II (J2P2) said on the subject of Women's Ordination, despite that he's been contradicting that particular predecessor on other matters, like Gay inclusivity and letting divorced Catholics take communion.

"For now, though" the news reports, "Catholics have to settle for slow, subtle shifts, which, to give Francis credit, are already occurring."  

Really?  Why do women and men who support women's ordination have to settle for anything?  It's crucial I think to speak out now; there is no reason not to ordain women and every reason, including historical precedent to ordain them.  If Pope Francis wants to earn his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone ("the thrill that will getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone." playing in the Vatican?), he needs to act to bring real balance not just to the Roman Catholic Church, but to the Modern Collective Psyche that cannot function, as Carl Jung warned, in such a state of disequilibrium without creating the collective psychosis we are clearly experiencing today.  Raise women to equal status with men, physically by ordaining them and psychically, by restoring the Divine Feminine.  If there was ever a Pope who could accomplish this, outside of John XXIII, it's Francis; I hope he wants to.  Let's all focus on sending him the message: "Ordain Women, Hail Mary, Save Humanity"

Awesome Correlations

This is priceless! Today I spoke long-distance with a dear friend who shared in the adventures I described in my previous post earlier today. (Here are those adventures portrayed in these pictures I dug up taken at an early 80s Women's Ordination Conference held in Baltimore.)

She said she had lunch with a mutual friend, a sister of St. Joseph, who turned her on to the current RCWP movement, (Roman Catholic Womenpriests) and gave her the website:

Check it out: The rogues are out there, the movement is alive and well and everything is possible!

See why I love dreams? If I'd dismissed this dream (refer to previous post) as yet another off the wall, peculiar night time nonsense, I may never have uncovered this exciting new to me info. At any rate, my dream fueled the actions I took that are now cascading into bright new epiphanies. There is nothing boring about dream play.

Remember Who You Are

My dreams help me remember who I am. I love that experience, that aha moment, when an image or a scenario or something I say in a dream brings home to me the feeling of being at peace in my own core, my center.

Recently, my dream self brought home some core personal truths. It was my waking dream at one time to be a spiritual teacher via the route of ordination in the Catholic Church. Some of you may remember those heady times when women stood up even to the Pope in public and said, we want to be ordained.

In a recent Sisters of Mercy Newletter which I discovered on their website, they recount an event from Pope John Paul II's visit to the US in 1979:

"In 1979, Theresa Kane, a Sister of Mercy, was denied a conversation with Pope John Paul II in her official capacity as the then-president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. At the official welcome ceremony at the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington, D.C., Sister Theresa beseeched Pope John Paul to include women as equal members of the Body of Christ. Had her request been heeded, the Church would surely be a healthier, holier institution than it is today and, more importantly, the pastoral and sacramental needs of Catholics around the world be better served today. It is time to again raise that issue."

I remember watching Sister Theresa stand up and address the pope, knowing it would be broadcast around the world on TV. I remember thinking, you go, sister! That took cojones! (Or brass breasts, as I'm fond of saying).

All this great stuff was happening during my post-grad studies in Scripture and Pastoral Counseling at Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, NY., including the successful and courageous campaign that ended in official Episcopalian ordination for women in 1976. We in the Catholic church believed! Yes, we can!

Then, not so much. It took a decade but by banishing the rogue bishops who supported women's ordination and replacing them with papal clones, the RC managed to beat back the tide.

You know, I don't regret a second of that good fight, and maybe it is time, as the Sister's of Mercy are suggesting, to take it up in earnest again. But for me, what happened was a major transformation of paradigm, initiated by a dream I titled, Howling Mary, and fueled by the writings of some incredible theologians like Mary Daly with her bombshell "Beyond God the Father". The door opened for me to alternative spirituality, primarily women's spirituality. It's been a lovely trip since then; my spiritual life is rich, diverse and anchored in dreamplay.

Still, anytime you choose to live outside the primary social paradigm, you're going to feel the pull of normalcy a bit. In the western culture in which I reside, the norm is to be Christian, Jew or Muslim because these are the three big established patriarchal religions of the world. What bothers me about these religions is that they often put women outside their circle of trust. What's up with that? Even after all these years, to suggest that it's important to also see god as Mother, that we abandon the Feminine Divine to our own very great detriment is, at the least, controversial.

Here's the dream that's led me down this alley of contemplation:

Episcopal Aspirations 3-3-2010

I'm talking with a woman Episcopal priest about my application to be an Episcopal priest. She's telling me that she submitted Jim's name (my husband) thinking that it was a good idea and the committee decided that he was their choice. I'm dismayed, disappointed; I say to her; "You submitted his name? Why?" Then I started to change my mind and get behind supporting him: 1. because I really don't want the pressure of answering to the committee in an interview; 2. because I really don't want to be an Episcopal priest, or a Christian for that matter. I say to her that Jim will be a good candidate because he'll be honest, blunt and frank. She modifies it saying, "but he would never say anything inappropriate." I say I'm not so sure, rolling my eyes like, are you kidding me? At some point, she gives me an example of a question that would be asked that is about a place or historical event that is pretty obscure. I realize with relief that I won't have to answer questions like that, but Jim pops into the conversation with a lovely, accurate answer that confirms my sense that better him than me.

This dream had me laughing about what I said about Jim; anyone who knows Jim will probably find it funny, as well. I really love how my dream self is helping me center on what I want and who I am. My spiritual role as teacher is outside mainstream religious offices; teaching people to listen to dream messages is what I love to do and do best. Yet, I fully support those who in truth and courage fill those official positions, like those lovely rogue bishops, priests and women religious of the 70s; bless them every one.