tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post1038120820726146198..comments2023-10-24T11:53:12.980-04:00Comments on Meadowsweet & Myrrh: Bemused by Brigid: How I Met My Goddess / What I Did to Keep Her (Part Two)Alihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-77732544839206188662010-06-02T09:27:40.085-04:002010-06-02T09:27:40.085-04:00Gwas, welcome! I've been following your Hedge ...Gwas, welcome! I've been following your Hedge Druid blog for several months now, though I admit sometimes the technical aspects of energy work and dowsing are a bit outside my realm of experience. :) It's nice to see you over here!<br /><br />Your question is a good one, and honestly, I'm not sure I can really answer it yet. There is a reason it's taken me a year or more to be able to articulate what I have so far - believe me, I've been trying to write these posts for weeks and weeks, and it seems they are stubbornly determined to come at their own pace!<br /><br />But to attempt a kind of vague, half-formed answer for you... I have come to understand Brigid as a goddess, a deity, though exactly what that means is still fuzzy in my mind. There are times when she seems very much an aspect of myself, a kind of idealized form, and other times when she seems wholly outside of myself, almost distant but always powerful, almost 'blazing' in nature. Not so much an "energy form," I think I would borrow the terminology of the Catholic trinity and say she seems to me to be a Person. Just as I have a sense of my own personhood, and the personhood of other human beings around me, I get a distinct experience of her Personhood.. but unlike ours, which is inextricably bound up in our physical bodies and a manifestation of those bodies, her Personhood seems... freer, more fluid, so that sometimes it can manifest through physical form, while other times its presence can be felt more... "directly."<br /><br />I'm not sure if any of that makes sense. I'm still working through these experiences! :)Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-91523537468824954192010-05-25T08:59:10.872-04:002010-05-25T08:59:10.872-04:00Hi,
I've just started reading this blog and i...Hi,<br /><br />I've just started reading this blog and it is so wonderfully written that I'll be back regularly to get a dose of this beautiful prose (and well-stated poetry too). Great work<br /><br />A question, if I may. Given that you were reluctant to get involved in this arena of study (and I know that feeling so well) what NOW do you think Brigid is? An energy form? Something inside or outside of you? A guide, or a god?<br /><br />Thanks,<br />Gwas Myrrdyn (The Hedge Druid)Gwas Myrrdynhttp://www.hedgedruid.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-35162843885095488872010-05-20T23:35:40.112-04:002010-05-20T23:35:40.112-04:00It´s done :http://endovelicon.wordpress.com/2010/0...It´s done :http://endovelicon.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/23/<br />(at the end I added a note: "text by Alison Shaffer, written and posted on the blog Meadowsweet & Myrrh on May 18, 2010, translated into Portuguese by Endovelicon on Mau 20, 2010, with permission from the author;reproduction for non-profit purposes ONLY with permission from the author and translator, with all due credits and links to the original post and translated version mandatory" --that´s OK to you?<br />Once more, thanks for the permission!Endoveliconhttp://endovelicon.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-9228464726009561542010-05-19T23:11:24.865-04:002010-05-19T23:11:24.865-04:00Endovelicon, Yes, that would be wonderful! :) Plea...Endovelicon, Yes, that would be wonderful! :) Please do leave a link to your post here once you have. (I don't speak Portuguese, unfortunately, but my partner Jeff is a linguist who might be able to read it. :) It means a lot to me that you found the piece moving enough to translate. Thank you very much, and best of luck with the work! :)Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-13965499287620060652010-05-19T21:01:38.214-04:002010-05-19T21:01:38.214-04:00It´s so inspired and touching, that I can´t help b...It´s so inspired and touching, that I can´t help but ask -- will you give me your permission to translate it into Portuguese and post it in my blog (http://endovelicon.wordpress.com/) with all due credits and a link to the original here?Endoveliconhttp://endovelicon.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-41102829728833409782010-05-19T11:58:27.640-04:002010-05-19T11:58:27.640-04:00Thanks, Jupiter! :) There's more to come... th...Thanks, Jupiter! :) There's more to come... though at the rate I've been going, it may be another few months. In case you haven't already, check out <a href="http://meadowsweet-myrrh.blogspot.com/2010/02/bemused-by-brigid-how-i-met-my-goddess.html" rel="nofollow">Part One</a>, written back in early February! :)Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-78509605678270970022010-05-19T11:52:37.000-04:002010-05-19T11:52:37.000-04:00This is a beautifully written memoir! I really enj...This is a beautifully written memoir! I really enjoyed reading this.Jupiter Greenmoonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08653727346483735592noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-37646081664076344572010-05-18T21:08:48.022-04:002010-05-18T21:08:48.022-04:00Cat! What an awesomely long comment! :)
Yes, in g...Cat! What an awesomely long comment! :)<br /><br />Yes, in general I think I share your reaction to this claim that seeking personal, intimate relationship with deity is "too Christian" - it made me wonder, well, what's the point then? I have had some Pagans tell me that they do not see themselves "in relationship" to the gods because relationship implies mutuality or exchange, and the gods are so wholly beyond us that we cannot possibly offer them anything... which also seems... not quite right to me. If this is true, if the gods couldn't care less about us, then aren't we indulging in worship as a kind of feel-good self-help routine with little deeper purpose or meaning to it?<br /><br />It seems to me that, whatever else is true, <i>relationship</i> must be at the heart of worship and practice, and it must be a relationship that changes us or shapes us in substantive, meaningful ways. What can I possibly offer to a rock, or the wind? And yet I began to realize, when I finally started to allow myself to engage in the experience authentically, that even seeking relationship with such mundane, ordinary things had profound effects. I'm not sure I can talk about them very well (yet.... but then, I have lots of years still to figure out how to say it well ;), but I certainly experience them. It's taken me more than a year to even begin to tell this story, and what I'm experiencing now as part of my ritual and worship might not make it into this blog for another year or so at least... But I'll keep working at it, anyway.<br /><br />When you wrote, <i>I fell in love with Peter and with the god we both love at the same time. Like we were set up on a blind date, or something...</i> I just had to laugh! And Jeff, who was busy reading your comment over on his computer, read that line out loud when he got to it. :) Yes, we feel the same way, like some mutual friends got together and decided it was about time us two silly love-birds got together. ;) Since then, I have to say, there are aspects of my life (not just worship and ritual, but whole swathes that might reasonably fall under the heading of "Life Purpose") that seem to have fallen into place since we began our relationship. It's strange, and amazing, and unpredictable, and I love it! :)<br /><br />There is more to come with this series, if Brigid will have some patience with me. Part Three is where things finally fall into place and become something that other Pagans might reasonably recognize as "polytheism," though still only the soft kind. Those events took place almost a year ago now, and it's strange looking back and remembering how different things were! But anyway, glad you're enjoying the series. :)Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01738190874181111086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1883567827950405204.post-2523077492878675272010-05-18T20:48:21.395-04:002010-05-18T20:48:21.395-04:00Oh, dear, sweet fountains of Spirit! You've be...Oh, dear, sweet fountains of Spirit! You've been told that "the expectation of intimate, personal relationship with deity is merely a unshakable bad habit of a Christian childhood and that it was better to move on, finding other ways to be meaningfully 'religious.'"???<br /><br />OK, I know there are Pagans for whom the gods do not speak, who feel forever distant from them. I know Pagans who have no use for gods, because they are too busy engaging in the kind of every-minute attending to the spirit of simple, real things that you've just described so well--the attending to the ordinary sacred in individual living and non-living things.<br /><br />But to be told that there is something <i>wrong</i> with craving that personal and intimate relationship with our gods? <br /><br />I'm sitting in front of my keyboard with my mouth agape.<br /><br />And I'm damned glad I came into Paganism surrounded by joyfully ecstatic Pagans, immersed in personal relationships with deity.<br /><br />Are there ever moments of self-delusion, of wishful thinking? Well, duh. Aren't there in all human relationships?<br /><br />But still... it's not for their fashion sense that I've hung around the Pagan community for so many years, and it's not because I love hearing the same bad drum circles.<br /><br />It's because I love the gods, and I need to be with other people who <i>get</i> that.<br /><br />If I didn't have personal relationships--with the god and goddess I work with most often, with the spirit animal who flies with me sometimes, with the Light I am flooded with in Quaker worship... well, would there be a point? I don't know. I'm grateful as can be I don't have to answer that question; I admire the Mother Teresa's who go on being faithful to their idea of god long after she lost her sense of his reality... but I don't envy her.<br /><br />It is interesting that your goddess story is also a love story. I've said for years that the one "proof" I have--and it's a personal one, not one I can offer to others convincingly--of the miraculous, is my own love story. <br /><br />(Then there's the fact that I fell in love with Peter and with the god we both love, Herne, at the same time. Like we were set up on a blind date, or something...)<br /><br />Resonances. Your story is not mine, of course, Ali. You and Jeff are very different people from Peter and me. But there are resonances, surprising ones, delicious ones...<br /><br />Go on telling the story. It's a wonderful story. *very happy listening face!*Cat C-B (and/or Peter B)https://www.blogger.com/profile/10002916434676859262noreply@blogger.com