August 20, 2022

I wrote about Mark a few weeks ago. That was before he went into hospice as, according to his medical team, the cancer became overwhelmingly aggressive. It was only a matter of days before he crossed the threshold to, as he said, his next journey. I hope whatever fear he was holding subsided as he approached that crossing. We will never know.

I do know now that his time in Ireland was very impactful for him. I had wondered about that in my last post. But when his wife emailed about Mark’s death she included two photos. One was of him in Ireland as she noted, totally in his element. We had the time of our lives and felt a lot of joy at being with each other in this powerfully meaningful place.

I was so happy to read those words from Carol. Happy to know the time they shared was so important. I am honored to have created held the container for that gift. And I am reminded that we just never know how what we do and who we are will land for people. I am reminded that it’s so important to continue to hold the light without expectation. We just never know when and how that light will touch others.

Blessings on your journey, Mark. You inspire our shining.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

August 19, 2022

I saw the notification land in my email. Ah, someone bought a copy of the Crone book. Wonderful. And then I saw the name and did a double take. Wanda? Could it be? It turns out that yes, it is really the same woman I organized antiwar protests with. The same woman I boycotted grapes with. The same woman who lived with me in the radical political collective on campus fifty years ago. 

After those university years, our lives journeyed off in different directions and we hadn’t been in touch with each other since. Our email and video chat communication in the last few days has brought back a flood of great memories. It’s also brought new frame for an old wisdom. 

In one of her emails, Wanda wrote; I have not changed the core of who I am. I just see what that core is more clearly and I see the obstacles that cling to the core like barnacles on an old ship keeping it from being the best version of itself.

She is indeed so much this same Wanda I knew all those decades ago. The fundamental threads of laughter and joy and social justice shine in her as they always have. Just as the threads of our sacred nature shine in all of us, the sacred threads we are all born with, those sacred threads that are gifts for us to steward in our lives. 

As elders, as Crones, it is ours more than ever to step into that intentional stewardship. It is ours more than ever to scrape off the barnacles and shine the bright light of the sacred women, the wise women, that we are.

Thank you, Wanda, for your amazing insight. Some things never change.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

August 16, 2022

The last time this landed was in 1999. I had just returned from Ireland and my first significant encounter with the ancestral spirits and otherworld energies. Although at that point I had no clue what had happened and no spiritual practice to ground or guide me. My first day back, Dennis went work and I stayed home to unpack, do laundry, and rest. However that’s not exactly what happened.

When I started to unpack and put things away I was overcome by a huge compulsion to get rid of things. By the time Dennis got home, I had my head in the Christmas closet and was surrounded by black trash bags filled with things for our local charity shop. He was concerned. I was curious. Where was this compulsion coming from? 

I would soon find spiritual guidance and understand that the compulsion came from a knowing that it was time to clear out the old to allow space for what was coming. It was time to empty my bowl. While it was a metaphysical clearing, the physical manifestation was in alignment. It felt good and right.

Returning from the extraordinary and powerful time in Ireland, it’s no surprise that this compulsion, this urge to purge, has again landed full force. At least this time Dennis and I are more prepared.

Clearing out so much of what I’ve accumulated in the last twenty years is essential to where I now stand on my spiritual journey. Yet this is also the work of Crone. We are called to lighten our load. We are called to hold in our bowls only what is essential for our elder journey. We are called to prepare for what is coming. 

And perhaps we are called to an urge to purge.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

July 29, 2022

There are many excellent books out there on death and dying. This is among the best of them. Martha is a dear friend, which allows me to speak highly of the depth of her wisdom and spiritual integrity. This is the story of the death of her beloved husband, Charles, beautifully written and a compelling read. Sisters, we navigate these thresholds with more meaning, intention, and power through the wisdom of our elder and crone sisters. This writing will enhance the sacred sovereignty of your journey and those you love. 

Charles’ death, to me, was profound and mystical. I know now that death is, or can be, that for all of us.

And perhaps now I understand that having navigated this most difficult and painful experience, I was given the gift of understanding – the gift of a knowing that will be with me the rest of my days.

Available on Amazon.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

July 26, 2022

We had just finished dinner at my favorite restaurant in Doolin when Mark (not his real name) decided to order dessert. After a few minutes he decided the tort had not arrived in a timely manner and called over one of the wait staff to loudly berate her, demanding immediate attention. Moments later the owner appeared with an apology and the tort which he placed in front of Mark with three extra forks in case he would want to share with the ladies. “It’s my goddamned tort!”, Mark shouted. As the owner backed away, the restaurant went silent. Before I got up and left the table saying I would not stay in that energy, Mark’s wife Carol (not her real name) apologized that sometimes he gets angry. By this time in our Ireland journey together, I was very aware of that.

Mark is eighty and has cancer. There was an understanding that the longing to be in Ireland was to have the time and space to set an intention for how he would navigate this journey to his death gate. This is the work of elders, to prepare ourselves for becoming ancestors and spending time with the ancestral energies in Ireland could inform and support that intention. 

I was not aware that he was also deep into dementia. He is navigating a journey to both a mental and physical death gate. Huge thresholds. It was an honor, if at the same time a challenge, to support this journey. The challenge was in the anger and I kept reminding myself that anger is generally not the first emotion but one born of fear. 

I’ve thought deeply about writing this post in part because I know Carol will read it. But the gifts of our time together are too significant. We are all going to approach these thresholds. For elders it’s likely that time will be sooner rather than later. And we have choices to make on how we will navigate this journey. We have the power and we hold the wisdom to set our intentions, to welcome the opportunity to decide how we will walk that threshold journey. For in facing and welcoming that opportunity we can step around the fear that leads to anger. 

That time with Mark was a gift. It was a wonderful reminder that I choose not to encounter fear at the threshold.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

May 30, 2022

Blood to Bone we wrote these words
Soul to Soul we wove them

First, thank you. Many of you have contacted me to ask how things are going and if I’m okay. Also wondering when I would blog again. I am very well. Still much in the process of integrating the unfolding of the last few weeks. 

Am also in process of getting ready for the next journey which begins on Thursday. And doing laundry. And scraping old paint off walls and patching holes to get ready for painting. As is often said, after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Or as Rory mentioned, chop water, carry wood. In one sense everything has changed. In another sense life goes on unchanged in many ways.

Yet this shift in energies if fundamental. The words above are part of an invocation one of the sisters wrote echoing the many beautiful and spontaneous invocations that were spoken when we were in ceremony. For what we know is that lifetimes ago, alone and together, we spoke promises to hold sacred knowing and energies through all time. This is written in our bones, passed down through generations, and woven in our souls. The remembering and reclaiming is both beyond powerful and a bit daunting.

So it is for us who journeyed together here in Ireland. So is it also for you. Through the blood and bone of generations in your heritage there was likely a similar promise made. As we all come to this and every life with a soul promise, a higher calling, so is it also for you. In each life we have free will and the choice to remember and reweave. In the banquet that is our lives we have the choice of whether our spiritual nature will be the main course or a side dish … or perhaps no dish at all. 

Blood to bone. Soul to soul. The choice is ours. The choice is yours.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

May 25, 2022

Our being in charge
stops at the gates of ritual.
Malidoma Patrice Somé

We had just begun our sacred journey when my husband sent me a graphic with these words. It was amazing on several levels. Dennis has always been supportive of my journey but has rarely engaged. These words he sent were prophetic. And I’ve been told that Malidoma has appeared among the ancestors at the portal at MossTerra and also at the portal here at HazelWood Cottage. Some of the sisters saw and sensed him during our time here. Stunning.

I’ve adapted Somé’s words for this graphic to capture some of the essence of our journey.  For indeed we were not in charge. We were not in control. Yet we didn’t lose control, we surrendered it.

Each of us set this intention by saying ‘yes’. Yes to what would unfold. Yes to remembering the mystic energies we held lifetimes ago, many of those together here in Ireland. Yes to embracing those energies in this lifetime. We said ‘yes’ and we surrendered any notion of being in charge.

Chief Sealth is famous for the wisdom of knowing that we did not create this web of life. We are but one thread within it. We are not in charge. We are not in control. It’s not about losing control because we never had it, which is hard for us humans to accept. But when we embrace that knowing and surrender being in charge, the magic unfolds. 

When we stepped through that gateway to sacred encounter, the magic surrounded us every day. Although most on that journey are now home, it still does. And we are profoundly changed in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

May 23, 2022

The world is full
of magic things,
patiently waiting
for our senses
to grow sharper.
W.B. Yeats

A final dinner here last night as the sisters are today beginning to fly home. We ordered water and, with the water restrictions currently in place here in Gort, this bottle arrived. We have come to expect such synchronicity. 

While there are many ways to reflect on this time together, two come to mind. Either this was a fourteen day shared hallucination among nine people. Or it was real.

It was not a hallucination.

I have never experienced such a sustained and profoundly deep connection with Earth, otherworld, and ancestral energies. Every single day. Were I to consider creating this experience I would allow months for it. But we had days. And it all landed, as I alluded to in my last post, like a tsunami. Now we are all in process of integration. I was tempted to write that I have never experienced this and likely never will again. But clearly this is just the beginning. Our senses continue to grow sharper and the magic continues to flow to us. There has been patience for a long time, even through many lifetimes. And now it is here.

It is also very clear that much if not most of this will not be shared. At least in the near future. But, as I also mentioned in my last post, I will be writing from this experience. And those writings are beginning to land.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

May 10, 2022

Alison emailed me to ask how things are going in Ireland. Yes, prior posts have intimated a huge unfolding. Now that I am in it, the metaphor of drinking out of a fire hose has become one of drinking from a tsunami. At this point, there is no writing about this experience. There are no words and clearly at this point there should be none. So I will just offer a few questions that reflect this journey.

What would unfold if I remember a sacred vow made life times ago?

What would unfold if I stood in this sacred landscape with sisters who were with me all those lifetimes ago and made that same sacred promise?

What would unfold if we stepped fully into the energy of those vows once again, connected through so many other realms and supported by so many ancestral and cosmic energies?

For that is what’s unfolding. I will likely not be writing on this platform about the depth of this but will be writing from the depth of this. And that might take a bit more time. 

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

May 3, 2022

Politics.
Relating to the government or
the public affairs of a country.

I generally try to avoid politics on my blogs. Yet at one level everything is political as it relates to the affairs and conditions of this public space we all inhabit. And today, the pending decision by the US Supreme Court portends a dramatic and horrific impact on these affairs and conditions. And it seems a slippery slope to contraception and, as some Republicans have alluded to, even interracial marriage. These are dark times. Specters of The Handmaid’s Tale loom large.

As elders and Crones, we remember when this right was affirmed fifty years ago. Our daughters and granddaughters and nieces have grown up with this and now there will be a sea change in their worlds. And ours.

For we are now called more than ever to step off the front porch and into the fray. And here we are again. I’m reminded that I still have a women’s liberation t-shirt from the seventies which I thought would remain a relic. Apparently not. Of course it doesn’t fit anymore but the sentiment is one I will wear with passion.

What we are seeing in the nation on so many levels is what many of us have named and hoped would be the last gasp of the patriarchy. We’ve told ourselves it would not go quietly however I’m still stunned by the vitriolic language and action we are witnessing.

At the same time, we are witnessing something else. The image above by artist Bennett was published today in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Chattanooga’s only daily newspaper. Tennessee, a southern state that voted for Trump in the last election by a substantial margin. A red state. Yet we are beginning to read and hear similar reactions from across the nation. And for me it is an indication that for the majority of our people this right, along with the right to contraceptives and choice of whom to marry, is so embedded in our culture that this last gasp of the patriarchy, as horrific as it will be to endure, will not ultimately prevail. 

Yes. I admit I tend to skew to the optimistic. But optimism and hope are the foundation of my aging warrior self. I honestly didn’t imagine we would be fighting these battles again. But here we are. And here we are, Crones with strong convictions that this will not be allowed to stand. Now. Where did I put that t-shirt?

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

And yes. As I fly to Ireland, a Catholic country with abortion rights, tomorrow I know I will be asked yet again what the hell is going on in our country.