When Women's Hearts are Open...

Over the years I have had many dreams of the work of the feminine, dreams like seeds that carried an energy, a potential. I found the dreams couldn't remain separate from my life; I had to learn how to live them. This energy pushed on my shoulders, so to speak, insistent that I listen, and then live their wisdom. 

Isn’t this like the tiny acorn that can’t imagine the majestic oak tree that it will someday be, given the right conditions? 

And isn’t this true for each of us? That we keep turning to hold the wholeness of the seed within us, or for another; and also for the earth, even when it isn’t easy to do so. 

I live in Sonoma County where we recently experienced a fire causing thousands to evacuate. On the first day, when the fire was still miles away, I went to the shelter to hold our weekly women’s meeting. We sat in a circle in a small wooden building with the windows wide open to keep the room a little cooler. We began with ten minutes of silent meditation. The sound of traffic and trucks in the industrial site behind the shelter was unusually loud.

Towards the end of the meditation, a mockingbird began to sing! I marveled, how did a mockingbird even live in such tumult? But it was here, in the one tree next to the building, permeating the atmosphere with its singing. 

As the women shared after the meditation, they spoke of how the birdsong touched them with wonder, how it lifted their spirits, and gave them strength. 

I then remembered the words of a dream from years ago in which I was told:

The only importance is that women’s hearts be open,

and then what flows through them can come into life.

There are many ways that we each care for the life around us. There is so much need at this time. And yet, I am drawn, more and more deeply, to live in this way, attuned to an opening of the heart - no matter what I do. 

Our hearts and life are part of each other. If we don’t sing to the water, crops, seeds, how are we going to have a good life? These are the words of the Kogi at a recent gathering about caring for the planet. And this came with a special message to women: Honor your beauty as it is. 

It is a mystery - how we honor this beauty. For me, this sense of honoring is like the bird singing at the shelter. What flows through an open heart is this light, this love, that touches life in its depths. For each of us, to honor our beauty as it is, this is a real offering to life.