Reading Women & Spirituality I noticed that Carol P Christ runs what she calls ‘Goddess Pilgrimages’ in the Greek islands. This seems to be an opportunity to travel to one of the great centres of spiritual religion since time immemorial, to drink in a little of the sacred air and to take time amongst like-minded women to feel your strength as a woman, and to explore issues and ideas. It looks, frankly, wonderful stuff.
Since I’ve begun using the net, becoming a regular on sites and blogging, I’ve met so many unique and amazing people, women particularly; and to me this is immensely special, because I generally find women very difficult. I wonder if I will be misunderstood for saying that.
Women embody all that is difficult for me in my relationships. With a very few exceptions men are not so problematic to me; I do not mean to imply that I have the species cracked or anything so shallow! Simply that I relate far, far better on a daily basis with men than I do with women. I feel collaborative with most men, competitive with most women. I think this to be a childish and ingrained reaction.
What being out there blogging, talking and learning has taught me, over and above facts, is that there is a type of woman I am attracted to intellectually and emotionally, who thinks, who talks and can elucidate an argument, who feels and is able to express the feelings she has. Recently Seshat’s Voice has been holding a discussion on compassion and empathy; neither of these are solely a woman’s province, but those with this gift in my experience seem to be uniquely successful at taking in difficult feelings from others, holding them and reflecting them helpfully to the person who has projected them, without first, absorbing them themselves and second, without altering or in any way seeking to mitigate the feelings, to diffuse them or make them ’safer’.
Men have this gift, and some of the best counsellors I know are men. However, I’m finding the experience of discovering this gift among the women I’m meeting a thrilling and inspiring one.
There are several courses I want to attend, several places I want to visit and stay at. I’m already booked on Mercian 2008, hooray. Tess’s Enneagram course looks fascinating. Dillington House always has something for the likes of us! And these organised courses apart, there are visits to be made to friends, mini pilgrimages if you like, for learning and sharing and just having fun.
Essentially, what I mean to emphasise is that I want to be out there more, not sitting in my ivory tower blogging and reading. I love doing this, it’s the peace and serenity in my day in many respects, but there’s more out there.
It occurs to me that we don’t need to go all the way to Greece to perform essentially the same offices as Carol P Christ’s Goddess Pilgrimage; in fact, it would be better for many of us if we stayed right where we were, at home with our lives and our distractions, and our worries, and our daily minutiae, and tried to learn how to do the separation of mundane and spiritual life. Being able to go away and effect a physical separation from all the distractions is a great luxury; I simply don’t know that it wouldn’t be better to grit our teeth and try to get the same results from the home patch.
