Alone In Her Presence
Recently, a man said “HE is the life bringer!” And I thought, well sure, if it pleases you, but I know that I am born of woman. Just over a year ago I would have argued with him, and maybe my knowledge and locutions would have won the argument; I am at times a skilled debater. But I was bemused to let it be. He or She, it simply didn’t matter. All Goddess.
I am not ashamed to admit that when I look into the night sky, I get all warm and think of Starhawk, “Alone, awesome, complete within Herself, the Goddess, She whose name cannot be spoken, floated in the abyss of the outer darkness, before the beginning of all things. As She looked into the curved mirror of black space, She saw by her own light her radiant reflection, and fell in love with it. She drew it forth by the power that was in Her and made love to Herself.” That is where the Feri story ends for me. Feri, Wicca, Ceremonial, it simply does’t matter to me. All Goddess.
Christina G. Rossetti wrote, “Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, a love divine. Love was born at Christmas, star and angels gave sign.” Surely, you know… if that works for you, wonderful. But that’s not my God… and yet still, All Goddess.
It has always been All Goddess. I recently published a small book from a series of writings about my solitary work with the Goddess. In truth, I do not worship with others. I prefer to go it alone. And while I might use the word witch conversationally, I rarely cast spells, I’m not very ‘crafty’ and for many years I was reluctantly Pagan. Yet, one thing led to another and my writing and voice grew and here I am, writing Alone In Her Presence, my once tiny blog, turned book, turned column.
I am so honored to be here because I am an ecstatic monist, and I know there are many like me who are something like “spiritual but not religious” and not quite Wiccan, who are not Neo Goddess Feminist but are living in the lap of the Great Mother. Like me, these men and women are “all Goddess all the time” and are Alone In Her Presence. For us, the ecstatic monist Goddess is the immanent vessel that dwells within each of us and that is us, She that is the totality of everything and nothing. I give this resonating, pulsation of energy the gender ‘She’, even though this is greater than gender because science has proven that all life is born of the female.
I decided to bring Alone In Her Presence to Patheos and cast this widest net because the Goddess is the great joy and the great sorrow of our fullest human experience. She is the shadow and the light that comes when we live life in Presence. And it is through knowing ourselves that we come to know Her, know the Earth, and know the interdependence of what magic truly is.
This is what makes Her ecstatic. When we are Alone In Her Presence we have worship, we have ritual, we have life. We have Goddess as the indwelling totality that at times we will explore here, but mostly the writings here will explore Goddess as transcendent as She appears in front of us. However, different than idols worshipped for centuries, this Goddess is you and I, this Goddess is even you even I. This is the Goddess who is the love divine, who looked into the vast void of consciousness and fell in love with herself and created the totality.
Welcome to Alone In Her Presence. Welcome Home.
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