acceptance of the Goddess happens on more than just the conscious, verbal levels (some would call those "masculine" levels) ~ if you have experience with motherhood (& all humans do, to some extent, as we have all been, at least, born) than the Goddess is with you ~ there is no imperative to use specific words and/or to know that you know Her ~ being alive is what She asks, no more

we are never without the Goddess ~ but our minds can think that we are "cut off" & that will affect us to a point ~ a point at which God worshipped as a Him may be the most appropriate method for noticing this as a trick of the mind & nothing more

the 'problem' is in the mind ~ the 'solution' is there, too

love all-ways,
mem

"male" and "female exist on 2 (at least) levels....a physical level and a psychological level. IMHO females were the first humans. Males evolved from females. So, even on a physical level, we all have female inside of us, including the males.

On a psychological level, there is an inner male and inner female. A recent book I read is about this:

___Dance of the Selves: Uniting the Male and Female Within____ by Loretta Ferrier, Ph.D.

All ideas, inventions, creations arise first within the mind. Just as a new born is gestated within the hidden, private, inner, dark, moist, yin place of the womb, so do ideas first gestate and vdevelop in the hidden and private realms of the psyche. Then, when the time is right, the child is born into the public world, into the light of day, which is yang -- and so it is with ideas, inventions, artistic creations, and so forth. So its very parallel.

And it also comes to mind that not all Goddesses give birth in the former sense, then, but also in the latter... such as "Thought Woman" (Paula Gunn Allen's translation of the Keres name for the Creatrix in Laguna Pueblo tradition), who created the cosmos through thought. She gave her two daughters with baskets containing all the still unmanifested forms of people, animals, trees, mountains and so forth which they then brought to life by singing creation songs over them infusing life force into them. Similarly, Saraswati sings as she plays her vina bringing creation into being.

As for the Pope... what a juxtapostion with Matthew Fox, as afterall as I recall he was instrumental in Fox' excommunication and dismissal from the Dominican order. But I couldn't also help but muse that obviously the Pope is no tantrika. (lol) Afterall, were he then he'd know there is not Shiva without Shakti, nor vice versa, no Samantabhadra without Samantahbadri... Brahman without form is all that unmanifest, and with form manifests as duality like the two strands making up the double-helix of the DNA forming the basis of life. It is the dance of life. But what else would we expect of a man accustomed to living in a small, cloistered, and exclusively male country (the Vatican)?

Oh well, he can believe as he may wish, but we know better. :)

We were studying black madonnas today in a goddess curriculum "Rise up and call her name".

In that, we had a long conversation about the madonna figure originating out of africa and through Egypt. Further we discussed how it was adopted and used to promote Mary because many pagans would not convert and leave their goddesses and this got them to come in the door. ( I would like to research it all more)

I think the pope is feeling the power of the women in his own institution rising, as well as seeing more people unabashedly returning to the goddess!

For me it raises the question when is feminism going to embrace men fully. Too many I have run into have scorned men because of decades and on of patriarchal repression- they shoo them away, tell them they dont understand, tell them they are the enemy. Both sexes do need to unite in embracing her.

I see it much here and love that.

I mean - I am glad to have that space with my goddess friends, but it is awesome that there are men whe want to be there and embrace that too. I have known many men raised by single mothers who truly sympathize with womens suffering and completely understand womens power.

My partner really longed to experience the birth more- he was thrilled to do the normal stuff- cutting the cord and what not - but it made his day to be the first one she saw. Women have to stop stereotyping men and learn to listen to them too. mho