on mystery, revolution and the goddess who mothers

Today I had the privilege of hearing Bess Klassen Landis share about her experience being the daughter of a woman who was brutally murdered before the age of 42.  Bess was thirteen at the time.

Stories like that aren't soon forgotten, especially when they are told by individuals who speak from a deep place of peace and surrender, as Bess did.  As I reflect on Bess's story, the songs with which she accompanied it, and the blessing that led into the silence that followed her sharing, my heart is summoned yet again to heed its job and calling:  to be true to the life I've been given, to let my life speak, to take the business of my humanity seriously and lightly at the same time.

I also had the privilege of sitting face-to-face with my mother this morning after Bess's sermon.  We don't go to church together, so I seldom see her on Sundays.  These days, I'm more mindful than ever of the ways I resemble her:  the gifts I bear that are like hers, the gifts I bear that are different from her own, and the genes within me that came from her.  My way of being in the world is both like hers and different from hers.

Ach!  I'm not remembering the truth of what I wanted to say as accurately now, after the fact, as I was when I was thinking these thoughts of profundity three or more hours ago.  Suffice it to say, as a forty-year-old woman, I take the call to live my life more seriously than I did ten and twenty and twenty-five years ago.  Time is fleeting.  It's true.  Now is the time to live intentionally and do the things I want to do.

And playing magnets with a certain adorable girl (after changing her diaper) is first on the to-do list.

Oh!  And the goddess and revolution thoughts:  I was conscious of a mothering presence--the goddess--sitting near me today as I reflected on Bess's words and my own experience of them.  She is ever-near, and I struggle to find the words to describe her salty, grassy, dry and wet greatness.  So that's the mystery, too.  And the revolution?  Well, it's just trying to claim the days as sacred, recognizing that they certainly, certainly are.