(The Goddess for Men)
Should it surprise anybody that the ways of Shekinah — of Indwelling Presence, of Sacred Specialness, and the Ceasing from All that is not Love — should run opposite to the ways of our world, of this culture?
We are told (especially we men) that only power and product matter, that these ends justify all means.
We are force-fed externality from a very early age, that image is everything, and appearance is reality. Taught to beat our chests and roar, rather than open our hearts and feel.
Our neighborhoods, schools, and too often our homes evangelize us in the religion of sameness, where there is no greater sin than to be different, and that the wages of sin are death.
And we are deeply conditioned into a life which is a constant struggle, a never-ending job commitment, a blur. To stop working, on any day of any week, is to betray our masculinity.
Shekinah will have no part of this. And to be Loved by the Goddess, to embrace Goddess-centeredness in a masculine life, is to likewise turn from all this mirror-madness (a state where we live in the reverse of what is True and Real), and to allow ourselves to fall (not run, not fight our way towards, not be pressured) into the Loving arms of the Goddess.
But then, we were always there in the first place. We just didn’t know who She was. What any of this was called. And that it had been calling us from the start.
Here is how it (un)works for Shekinah’s paramour:
the fruit
comes first
here
We have had hammered into us (figuratively and literally) that reward comes only after long and bitter struggle, so much so that the work, the struggle itself becomes its own reward. So much so that that reward can mean next to nothing when it finally arrives, as we are already off and running to the next “goal.”
But with The Goddess, the fruit comes first — as you yourself are this fruit. You already are everything you need; this is why the Goddess has fallen so deeply for you. You hear her Voice, and always have.
e e cummings has a marvelous poem which reads:
seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here
e e cummings was beloved of the Goddess.
and shekinah
hurries through
the orchard
snapping
quivering orbs
that turn from
gold to beet
red to gill
green
ripelessly
Shekinah favors arranged marriages. And arranged far in advance. She chooses you as Her own, takes you to Herself. Slowly, Lovingly, Shabbatishly, she heals whatever hurt you have endured for Her sake and your own. In the intimacy of mishkan, you return to the land of your soul, that Soul which is She; you call on the Light of that Soul, and all that is not Home falls away.
she pinches
the stem-spots
like nipple tips
sap shudders
Your Love Life is your Love for Life. Her Indwelling Intimacy in all Reality becomes your own, as well. The Goddess and you are Lovers; the World is your marriage bed. Through You Both, the Sabbath makes love to the week. Ah.
and then the
blossoms
appear and
the bees come
and maybe
birds as well
In traditional-male world, we are taught that if flowers come first (brief and unimportant), it is solely for the sake of the fruit, the product, the gain upon gain.
To be Beloved of the Goddess is to know (intimately, experientially) different.
It is all for the sake of the Flowering. Yours and Hers.
My friend, the poet Deborah Leipziger, writes of this reality, this way of being in the world:
The flamboyant tree is my sign
turn toward the path
hidden by jasmine.
A black bird accompanies me
past fronds
and thorns
the gates of mosaic longing.
Peeling trees
Reveal layers of green maroon bark
Yes, this is the path.
To be Shekinah’s Paramour and She yours is not only to answer the question, “Through what is life made worthwhile?” but to accept as a love token, as wedding gift, as dower an entirely new vision of worth. And a redeeming sense of the “while” it took to see Her.
bougainvillea
spills out and over the roof
lush and wild in its joy.
Alien Buddha Press 