Happy Hour

  A few months ago I made myself a perfect martini on a Tuesday night and posted a photo of it on Facebook.  It flew mostly under the radar except for my drinky friend Colleen who lives in Seattle, who commented she was relieved that my priestess thing did not exclude Happy Hour.  I replied that priestesses like to be happy.  This small exchange has been rolling around in my brain ever since, mainly because it was kind of shocking to me to think that friends might surmise that a spiritual path was not compatible with an occasional martini.  Those who know me well know that me and martinis go way back and red wine is my friend for life, as in til death do us part.  I simply can't imagine denying myself the pleasure of sharing a really killer bottle of red with great friends and great food.  So I've been sitting with this idea of how friends and acquaintances may be perceiving my 'priestess' path.  I know that word is charged, although just how charged is only now beginning to take a discernible form.

One weekend in Montecito, where the Modern Day Priestess trainings are held, we were sharing the beautiful grounds of Casa De Maria with a Catholic church group from Southern California.  There were many priests and nuns accompanied by a small group of fairly buttoned up lay women.  This group was clearly uncomfortable with us - we, as priestesses in training, in yoga clothes and groovy shoes, flowy scarves and stone necklaces, medicine pouches and feathers.  And love - a ton of it, worn whole-heartedly on our sleeves.  One day at lunch as my friend Aliyah and I were busing our dishes, a woman from the group engaged her in conversation while I chatted with the cutie-pie who was taking my dishes through the kitchen window.  Aliyah shared with me when we left that the woman had asked her "So what do Modern Day Priestesses do, sacrifice cats?"  Hahaha and she wasn't kidding.  In that moment, I was intensely mad and then intensely glad that I did not hear her question.  Aliyah had the grace to navigate that moment with calm assurance.  My response would likely have been much more charged, with an invitation for this woman to shut it  gather information and perhaps even think before speaking.  And then I would have reminded her of her responsibility as a "religious" person to seek and spread the truth rather than propagate preposterous, fear-based fantasies.

After this encounter, it became very obvious how uncomfortable we made this group and I must admit the smaller part of me took every opportunity to be as close to them as possible, to catch their eyes and flash them giant smiles, to really press their buttons  give them numerous opportunities to see the error of their first impressions.  One night as we moved through the dinner line, one poor priest  marooned himself between me and another priestess as we moved through the line filling our plates.  His discomfort was palpable and of course I wanted to help him grow so I kept leaning around him to speak to the priestess on the other side.  After a few moments, he became so uncomfortable he began singing hymns.  In the dinner line.  Seriously.

What really bummed me out about that weekend was that here was a religious group that came up against something really uncomfortable for them and rather than approaching us in an effort to speak to the chasm between us, they widened it.  We priestesses are incredibly approachable individually and collectively; how beautiful it would have been to have found each other in our common ground, in our shared love of the sacred.  We could have spoken to the truth that despite outward appearance and affectation, we are all the same, with the same hearts, the same needs.  We are simply taking different paths to the same place.  Instead of feeling the love that we are, they felt fear.  It makes me sad that these "people of God' are so cut off from their own hearts that they don't recognize love when they see it.

What I took away from that weekend was that my path is to be authentic, no matter what.  Even if it makes others uncomfortable.  My authenticity is in service to them even more so in those moments of discomfort, when they get to bump up against their own selves and maybe even examine what's eliciting their response.  And if they recoil (or attack) in fear, with no self-examination whatsoever, that's their business, not mine.  I get to keep being authentic.  And the good news is, authentic to me means living fully in my human experience.  Drinking, cursing, even making bad choices sometimes.  Sometimes being a less-than-stellar mother and telling my almost teen-aged daughter to shut it  keep her opinions to herself and maybe even go to bed.  Right now.

This notion of living a monastic life in service to the divine has never sat right with me.  Growing up Catholic, I could always feel the underlying anger of the priests and nuns and did not understand it until I was older and realized the implications of taking a vow of celibacy.  For all but a very small percentage of humans, celibacy is against our biological and innate nature; this is clearly being played out in the horrifying drama of abuse amongst Catholic priests.  In Judaism, no such vow is required.  In fact, Rabbi's are encouraged to be married so that they can better attend to the lives and needs of their married congregants.  Rabbis are also - along with all adult Jews - essentially required to drink wine on Friday night to usher in Shabbat. Drinking wine is a mitzvah (good deed) in Judaism.  Wine is considered holy in Jewish tradition and is used to sanctify most special moments and celebrations.  At the Purim holiday, which just passed, we are encouraged to drink so much wine that we can no longer distinguish the good guys from the bad guys.  What a beautiful teaching - to acknowledge that through the course of a lifetime, we will all inhabit both sides of that equation.  And once a year, with the help of the sacred fruit of the vine, we get to actually see that.  The Purim story is rife with references to excessive drinking and throughout the Torah we are instructed to "drink and celebrate".  This is one of the many reasons Judaism works for me - it acknowledges again and again that life is rich and full and fantastic and awful - and ultimately, unspeakably beautiful.  This is how I want to live - embracing the whole bloody, beautiful mess.

So what does being a Priestess really mean?  It means that I am more myself, martinis and flaws and all.  I acknowledge and honor the energies of the planets and the totality of their influence.  I honor the energies of the Earth and all that encompasses.  I actively engage with many realms and dimensions and integrate them here in the 3D.  If you take a walk with me, I might climb up on a big rock so I can lean against the stone and feel it.  So I can give it permission to teach me what it knows.  I listen to the wind and the trees and the birds and even the sound of cars.  There is wisdom in all of it. I watch the stars and the moon and live according to earth's rhythms.  I pay attention.  I watch and I listen.  And I love.  Every single particle of it, every human, all life, I love. (This includes martinis).