Sometimes I wondered about my mother in heaven. I was glad my religion acknowledged her existence, yet it bothered me that we couldn't know anything about her. I thought about thinking more about her, but I "knew" that was wrong and I wanted to be right. Besides, if my relationship with God was patterned on my relationship with my father, my relationship with His wife might parallel my relationship with my mother -- constrained, fraught, difficult. And so I didn't pursue it. And I felt discomfort with those who did.
I spent the weekend at a women's retreat sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist fellowship I have been attending. I went because I had the chance to present a workshop on life histories, my personal specialty, and I was missing teaching. I went excited but soon found myself uncomfortable. I am not a "people person" by any stretch. I worry that my silences not only exclude me from the group, but that they often seem to dampen the sociability of everyone around me. I spent Saturday in a fog of discomfort, from slight to extreme. I felt the awkwardness of my flesh and of my bones, of my smell, of my aloneness, of my speaking and of my not speaking. I felt the awkwardness of my non-place in this circle. As the women around me spoke and hugged and danced and drank and ate I wondered how I ever could fit among them.
And then the "woman sing" began. Dinner was finished and the tables pushed aside. Many women had achieved a glowing state of satisfaction fueled by the company of sisters and the weight of a delicious meal in the belly and the warmth of drink and now to all that was added the joy of song. Guitars and drums and rattles and voices gathered together and sang of Earth and Sky and Woman and Power and Divinity and Joy and Goddesses and Goodness. I sang with them but inside I felt a cringe of displeasure and unease at the way they invoked divinities so different from my Bearded Father.
Outside the wind roared around the retreat center and the rain fell in heavy sheets. Trees bent toward the earth in the wild darkness and inside the women danced and sang and drummed and I sang with them. And still, I held myself aloof.
My bed that night was not in the main building. Down the hill, through the woods, along-side the stream, sits an old farmhouse made of stone and in it I was supposed to sleep. I was so tired when the singing finished, but the rain still fell outside and there was no light. Determined not to expose my weakness, I tried to walk to the farmhouse by myself. I stood at the head of the path, my belongings tied inside a garbage bad, my useless glasses in my hand. In the nearly total darkness I could make out only shadows in front of me. I could imagine, though, the mud and water washing over where my feet would try to step. The path was steep and unpaved. I knew that only a fool would try it. I may be weak and scared, but I am not a fool. I turned back to the dining room where I waited, wet and quiet and foolish-feeling, until I saw I woman, whose name I knew, leaving for the night. I asked and she kindly gave me a ride.
The room was on the second floor, tucked away above the historic kitchen. Ducking my head, I passed through the tiny door and down three steps and stopped to look around me. The floorboards, worn smooth by a thousand footsteps, creaked beneath my feet. Through knots in the wood I could see the room below me. My bed, in a corner between two tiny windows and the huge old chimney, was one of three in the room, but my housemates had not yet left the gathering. It was quiet. A small leak above the chimney let an infrequent drop of water fall, plop, but the wind and rain had quieted. I was alone.
And in my aloneness I began to feel something different.
Among the songs we sang was one that asked, "How can you not see her beauty?" I wondered too why people have such difficulty seeing beauty in our many imperfections. Why, I thought, can they not see her (my) beauty. Then the song shifted and "you" became me. Why can I not see the beauty? Later, in my quiet room I sat (*drip*) and felt my imperfect embodied-ness melt into something new and powerful. My fleshy limbs became, to me, something monumental, something powerful and good. Beautiful.
The road home wound in and over hills and valleys. Everywhere I looked the world was full and brimming over with life and beauty. The fields around me were filled with flowers and animals and the beginnings of plantings and I could not, for a moment, imagine how all that bounty could come from a man. This is the work of a mother. My bearded Father seemed lost in the glory of Spring herself. He seemed so small and impotent -- and arrogant to presume to take the credit.
I am still perplexed by my emotions, by the quiet, almost imperceptible power of this spiritual awakening. I am frightened a little too. And cautious about proceeding. I come from a place where these thoughts and feelings are viewed as evil. I cower even as the peace and light and hope I've felt coax me forward.
I have a secret hope in my heart that my bearded Father and my earthy Mother truly love each other. Could theirs be a collaboration of creativity and delight, of joy and music? Of laughter and healing? Such a family I would want for myself, I would want to be a part of . . . That is what I am looking for . . . a laughing Man and a dancing Woman . . . a universe where they dance and laugh entwined.
