Story of the Month: January
Discover The Transformative Powers of the Feminine Divine
Paula Slovenki, an artist and mother of two girls, had always found solace in religion and the beautiful rituals it held. Listening week after to week to a male priest preach about a male God, she began to notice something missing in her Catholic church and other religions as well. And it began to bother her. “Where’s the other half?” she asked herself. “You can’t have life without male and female. If God is the image of man, what does this say about women? Why don’t we hear anything about the women in the history of the church?” One time while sitting through Mass, the priest said, ‘the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever” and something snapped in Paula. “It’s like they just conquered someone else’s land!I felt physically ill. I had to get out of there.” That moment started a cycle of Paula leaving the church and returning, then leaving it again. She tried different churches but none of them satisfied her spiritual needs.
One spring day she went for a walk in the park. Watching the wind blow through the trees and the light dance on the budding leaves, she felt a sacred presence all around her and within her. The spiritual experience she was looking for and couldn’t find in a church, she found in nature. As she approached a playground, to her amazement, in the middle of the ball field was a circle of stones. She stepped into the center and stood there. “I felt this energy coming up from the ground,” she recalled. “It shot out through the top of my head. I felt the spirit in me. All those fears and doubts, those feelings of being separate and alienated evaporated. In that circle, I experienced that we are all one. I realized I never was separate.”
As she walked home, she tried to make sense of her experience. She had this sense of a deep knowing, that the Feminine Divine was coming back, not only in her life but in the world. Feeling invigorated, alive, and awake she asked herself, “What am I going to do with this energy?”
She decided she would gather some women together. One meeting led to another that developed into a core group of sisters who met monthly to celebrate the Feminine Divine. Although the group was supportive, it wasn’t a support group where the intent was to solve their personal problems, although sometimes they did do that. Instead their focus was on awakening the Feminine Divine in themselves. They would dance, drum and chant under the full and new moon. They had evenings of deep sharing; sometimes they didn’t speak. They always blessed each other and always had something related to the earth and nature, like meeting on a beach or by a river. They celebrated the fertility of the feminine with sensual feasts, belly dancing, wine, fire light or candle light, water, oils, and together created a sense of celebration and spaciousness. They shared visions, dreams, and wishes that were kept in confidence within their circle. Any time something happened to one of them, they got on the Goddess hot line and together they would pray. They had created a sacred circle for themselves. “We would blow into the group from our busy lives, distracted, preoccupied, hassled,” said Paula. “But once in the group we were immediately reminded that now is our time to get centered and connect to the spirit.”
Meeting in this way uncovered a magic, a transformative power that moved them into a new consciousness and way of being “We found ourselves thinking outside of the box. We transcended cultural boundaries where we were no longer a mother, a wife, a daughter or whatever your job title was. We were female in the purest sense, and we were free. It’s an ecstacy that nobody teaches you or talks about. It’s an ancient feeling that ties us to all the women who celebrated in this way before us.
The transformative power of the Feminine Divine left no woman untouched. Women found themselves talking about things they hadn’t told any other person. One woman, who had never trusted women, began to trust the women in the group. For one woman, the nurturing she felt in the group spilled over into her work. Work became personal as she supported younger women in their struggle to find a balance in their lives. Another women finally made herself the priority and created the garden she had always wanted but never had time for.
As the women began to change, the husbands began to notice. At first they were leery about these gatherings until they began to reap benefits themselves. With their wives encouragement, they thought about their own priorities. One husband left a high paying but stressful job for a job he loved that paid less. As Paula said “We can all break free.”
The children too felt the impact of their mother’s transformation. For example, Paula runs a Goddess camp for her daughters and nieces, teaching them to feel good about themselves and their bodies, connecting them to nature and the cycles. When I asked Paula’s 7 year old daughter Anya how she experienced the goddess she said this. “I feel the goddess in the trees, the flowers, when the wind blows my hair. She’s very powerful. When I’m feeling shy and I want to say something, she makes me feel powerful so I can say it. I feel her spirit gives me strength to stand up for myself. I always feel she’s inside me, even if I’m crying she’s inside me. Everybody has the Goddess inside them, but they don’t know that. At goddess camp, we belly danced, got dressed up in pretty skirts. We didn’t have to be taught to dance; we just knew how.” The wisdom of young Anya—she just knows how to belly dance, she just knows the Goddess is in her.
When Iron Butterflies connect to the Feminine Divine they discover a strength to stand up for themselves rooted in their feminine essence, a power that can transform them and all those close to them. We don’t need to pursue or search outside of ourselves to find the Feminine Divine. She is already in all of us. It is just a matter of unearthing her in the company of women.