April 27, 2022

This is Dolly. Or Hello Dolly as the Boulder based puzzle company names her. Yes. She’s a charmer. However, being made in my sister’s home town is not the reason she sent me this puzzle. Our family has a long relationship with puzzles and I have a clear memory of putting my first one together at the age of three, although at perhaps five pieces it was far less complicated. A clown balancing a ball on his nose, if I remember correctly although it was sixty-seven years ago. My sister names me a puzzle savant. We will see about that.

So this puzzle arrives several weeks ago and I put it aside waiting for this week when Dennis is at the coast flying kites. He’s not a huge puzzle fan. This is my last week before I head to Ireland for two-and-a-half months and I’m on Ema watch. This is precious time together, perhaps our last, even if she’s sleeping through most of it. Yes, she’s still with us although barely. She can’t be left alone and spends much time staring off into other spaces and realms and it takes some calling to bring her attention back. And I suppose that her now pooping on the front porch does give us a better opportunity to monitor her feces. But I digress.

I’m ready for Ireland. All the logistics are sorted and the arrangements made. I’m mostly packed. And so this week is one of anticipating this new unfolding. I wasn’t sure about launching into a puzzle. But it turns out this particular jigsaw puzzle is beyond perfect for where I am because this is no ordinary jigsaw puzzle. As you can see from this photo, the pieces are quite extraordinary. Many have unique shapes that alone and in combination tell their own story within the over all story. And there are very few edge pieces so the normal approach of first doing the frame is a strategy that simply doesn’t work. It’s best to just see how the pieces want to group themselves. In this combining they create the edges and even the corners.

What a perfect analogy for this new spiritual unfolding. There is no possibility of creating the frame or structure to contain it. It’s all about seeing how the pieces want to go together and tell their story. 

And so just when I need it, the universe speaks through a llama named Dolly. Hello?

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

Note: Shout out to my sister for sending me this puzzle. Patricia, I’m pretty sure you didn’t anticipate the spiritual lesson in it. But there you have it. Love you loads!!!

April 25, 2022

Back then it was hard to fully absorb the words of her challenge. The sisters gathered were perhaps a decade or two away from elder hood and our spiritual teacher was inviting us to an aspirational consideration of being Crone. We would of course have choices. But being a granny on the front porch rocking and knitting and baking cookies and watching the world go by was clearly not anything she thought we should aspire to. Her attitude was reflective of her warrior spirit and the implicit agreement that in this spiritual community our purpose is to manifest our sacred ideals in action as well as prayer.

Now, decades later, I claim Crone. And while rocking chairs have never been my thing, I had thought my life had settled into a comfortable rhythm of writing and sacred journeys to Ireland and tending an Irish cottage. Apparently not. With this new initiation and threshold I am called to new rhythms and I am called to be uncomfortable as I step into what is unfolding. New vibrations course through my body in anticipation. I am both grounded and totally ungrounded. 

I’m approaching my seventy-first summer and have wondered if I’m totally off my rocker to launch this new sacred adventure. Well. Clearly I am.

I’m reminded of two of my Irish heroines. Augusta Gregory wrote a two-volume study of the folklore of her native area called Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland when she was sixty-eight. She also played the lead role in three performances of her play Cathleen Ni Houlihan, when she was sixty-seven. Maud Gonne was active in Irish politics until she was seventy-three and published her autobiography when she was seventy-one. And they are but two examples of amazing Crone accomplishments. 

So yes. I am off my rocker. And I’m in good company.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

April 24, 2022

In a recent session with my spiritual teachers they confirmed that I am indeed in the energy of initiation. It was good to have the confirmation although I didn’t really need it as this energy has been present for the last many weeks and months. It is beyond powerful.

I had rather thought that my next initiation would be moving through my death gate. At seventy, I didn’t anticipate this new threshold. I thought I would just continue my current sacred life and Ireland journeys. But apparently not. 

This transition, this move toward this threshold, began in Ireland last September and, in case I didn’t get the message, more landed when I was there in March. The ancestors have my full attention. It’s time to step into a new and profoundly deeper relationship with them. It’s too soon to talk or write about that just yet. I need to hear more from them about this unfolding and that will happen in Ireland over the next two months I’m there.

However I’ve been instructed to be prepared to step across that threshold by being very clear about what I am called to carry with me. These instructions include releasing and purging what is not essential. And that work has begun in what seems to be the nature of, as a dear friend names it, a Swedish death purge. The  initial focus has been my books, particularly my Goddess books. So this morning I cleared off those shelves. There will be more. For many of us, and especially for me as a writer, purging books is daunting and perhaps that’s the point. This is a daunting threshold.

I had to laugh because I’ve written and taught about emptying our bowls so we can welcome what is called to fill them. I just didn’t think I would be heeding that advice to this extent. But here it is. And this morning books I have treasured for decades fairly flew off the shelves and others are clearly ready to make that same leap. It feels good. It feels right. I am getting ready and the energy is building.

For now, the books are flying. I know it won’t stop there. It’s what happens when we say yes. It’s what happens when we surrender to the sacred.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

April 10, 2022

Pithy.
Concise and
forcefully expressive.

It’s said that when Emperor Joseph II heard a performance of Mozart’s latest creation he said, too many notes, dear Mozart, too many notes. To which Mozart replied, just as many as necessary, Your Majesty.

At this point in my journey it feels like my life song has too many notes. And, unlike Mozart’s masterpiece, there is no harmony in it. More like cacophony as they all seem to collide without the grace of space between them. 

Before I left for Ireland several weeks ago, I was compelled to step away from social media which for me is FaceBook. No huge declaration as others seem to make when they step away. I just stopped visiting. And in the weeks since I’ve been back in the States I’ve not been called to visit again. Too many notes, Mozart. Too many notes raining down on my head and heart and soul. 

And even without all that social media noise, it seems there are still too many notes that distract me from the ones I want to hear. The ones I need to hear. The ones that shine the brightest light of sacred intention and purpose.

Since September, there have been significant changes in my spiritual path and presence. The ancestral messages I received in September were reinforced with power and clarity at some of the sacred sites I visited in March. As if I hadn’t heard them the first time and perhaps a 2×6 was necessary. It wasn’t. I heard them the first time. And those shifts have been moving in me for months. 

But now there is a sense of urgency. Now there is the strong call to purge my life song of all the colliding cacophony and attend only what is in alignment with this unfolding. Which is a bit tricky as this unfolding is very much in process and I’m not in charge – which yes, is very hard for me – and it’s too soon to know the shape and substance of it. Too soon to name it or write the story. Yet while much is still unknown, the call to purge and clear is undeniable. The call to give this unfolding the silence and gracious space it wants, in fact demands, is beyond compelling. 

I don’t see myself back on social media. I don’t see myself engaging with many of the messages and writings that come streaming through my email. Well, the truth is I haven’t been engaging these last months. I just felt guilty about that. Now I don’t. 

The call is to attend to the sacred, especially with the sacred sisterhood and ancestral wisdom. The call is to engage with what will offer insight and inspiration on this new journey and the nature of that engagement is becoming clear. 

The call is to attend the pithy bits and find just the notes necessary. There is power here and I am urgently called to it.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

April 9, 2022

To weaponize silence is to squander the sacred power and potential of it. 

A long time colleague is very adept at using silence as a weapon. He’s done this before and is doing it again, not responding to any communication from me. In the past I’ve eventually understood his rationale for this. Not this time. In the past his silence has deeply impacted me. Not this time. Clearly our relationship is over and I let that go with, frankly, more equanimity than I anticipated. His loss. His power play going nowhere.

More than likely we’ve all experienced and perhaps even participated in using silence as a weapon, as a tool for asserting some kind of power in a relationship. It’s not pretty and it’s generally not hugely successful in the long run. It generally doesn’t end well. 

Silence can also be used as shroud of protection when we are feeling hurt and vulnerable. But in that shrouding isolation our focus on our pain leaves little opportunity for healing. 

When we welcome and work with the energy of silence, our intention shapes the power and potential of it. If we hold an intention to exact pain or control in a relationship we squander that power and potential. We lose the possibility of receiving the wisdom that comes from deep listening at a soul level. We lose the opportunity to manifest that sacred wisdom in healing and wholeness. 

As Crones and wise women, we know this. I know this. Yet it seems this life journey keeps offering opportunities to know it again. Opportunities to avoid squandering the sacred.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

March 25, 2022

The bowl of silence
in which we stand.

When we step into silence we open to other ways of hearing and knowing. We connect with universal consciousness and the wisdom to be found there. I will write more about silence but wanted to first share this writing of David Abram from his amazing book The Spell Of The Sensuous. Spend some time savouring this, perhaps in silence.

Perception…is precisely this reciprocity, the ongoing interchange between my body and the entities that surround it. It is a sort of silent conversation that I carry on with things, a continuous dialogue that unfolds far below my verbal awareness – and often, even, independent of my verbal awareness…. Whenever I quiet the persistent chatter of words within my head, I find this silent or wordless dance always already going on – this improvised duet between my animal body and the fluid, breathing landscape that it inhabits.

This continuous dialogue that unfolds far below our verbal awareness is the gift of silence. It is the sound of silence. And we breathe into that landscape to find wisdom.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

March 15, 2022

Elders and ancestors hand in hand
A bowl of silence in which we stand

With death at my shoulder

One of the gifts of breast cancer was deepening my relationship with death. No. I didn’t sense that I was going to die and I’ve been cancer free for seven years now. But it was a possibility. When the diagnosis landed it was time to turn and face death, to acknowledge that death was now at my shoulder both from the cancer and being Crone. Of course death always walks with us but I had been happy to journey through life ignoring that.

As elders, as Crones, we know that we are now on the path to becoming ancestor. We accept that we will walk with them and we open to that most sacred of transitions. In this opening we begin to step through the threshold and enter the landscape of cosmic and sacred communion. And we begin to walk in both worlds.

We are called to a space of silence that we might hear the wisdom offered in this communion. 

We are called to a deeper understanding of the power of silence in the ancestral landscape and in our lives.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

March 14, 2022

Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom

Wisdom. Sometimes it arrives like rolling thunder in a storm. Sometimes it arrives, to borrow the words of mystic Hildegard Von Bingen, like a feather on the breath of God. It rarely arrives as a consequence of longing for it. It has its own agency. 

Wisdom finds us when we set an intention of hospitality and set the welcoming conditions of gracious space. A precious gift, ours to honour and cherish. We gather wisdom in the days and decades of our lives and indeed some, the old souls, arrive in this life with a deep and ancient knowing. 

Women of all ages can be wise yet within the many textures of wisdom, there is wisdom that only comes through accumulated experience. Within wisdom’s tapestry, the vibrant thread of Crone wisdom is a weaving of this experience. Decades of experience. And there is no substitute for it, no amount of aspiration will accelerate the arrival of Crone wisdom. Crone wisdom has its own agency. 

Crone wisdom calls us to be patient, for there is wisdom in patience. It calls us to cherish the wisdom we hold as a solid foundation for it. It calls us to root deeply in the wisdom of maiden and mother in preparation for its arrival and breathe into the knowing that it will find us in right time. It has its own agency.

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

March 9, 2022

It always arises when the Crone cauldron is stirred, this question of age. How old is a Crone? As old as this image would suggest? Well, no. But age is important.

Women often ask me for an answer to this question. As if there is some definitive age. My spiritual teacher has suggested seventy five which is not the answer most women want and one that would preclude me from being Crone at seventy. 

I’m always stuck by this longing to be Crone and find myself wondering why. What is it in our culture that creates this aspiration to name ourselves Crone at fifty…and even forty? I will admit that I cringe when I hear of Croning ceremonies as a turning-forty birthday celebration. While the age may not be seventy five, it’s certainly not forty and from my observation it’s not fifty either. And yes, I know these words will not land well with some who are reading them. 

Yet while age is a factor, it’s more about the energies we hold. Consider this. A maiden is other defined and self focused. A mother is other defined and other focused. A Crone is self defined and other focused. 

Other defined and self focused. Although it can be frustrating to live with and seems a bit negatively judgmental, it is the role of a young woman to come into her own sense of self within community. So she takes her cues from others and is fairly self absorbed by the process. As it should be.

Other defined and other focused. As we know so well, mothers step into roles that are absolutely defined by others, especially spouses and children. And they are focused on the care of others over themselves. For many women this includes roles in the workplace. As it should be.

Self defined and other focused. When we step away from those roles in the family and workplace, we are able to reflect on who we are and sift through the accumulated years of experience to find the wisdom of knowing who we are independent of others. We find a new purpose in our lives and, within the global and ancient knowing of elder hood, understand that we are here to be of service to our community – service that arises from a renewed sense of self, a sense of self in right relationship with the sacred, the Earth, and community. Yes, we are self defined. But it’s not about us. As it should be.

There are no definitive answers to when we become Crone. But there are questions I would ask of those who aspire to be Crone. We accumulate wisdom throughout our lives, through being maiden and mother, so what in that accumulation puts us through the threshold of Crone wisdom? Have we stepped away from our roles in family and workplace to experience the freedom to claim our elder sovereignty? Are we ready to see ourselves on the final journey of life and approaching the death gate? This last question may land hard, but it’s perhaps the most important question as this is the landscape of elder, of Crone and this perspective is essential wisdom in crossing the Crone threshold. 

Elders ask questions that bring clarity. Perhaps these questions will bring a bit of clarity to the age old Crone question. 

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith

March 6, 2022

Elders ask questions that bring clarity
Seek cooperation and sacred unity

We are all watching the news of what’s unfolding in Ukraine and around the globe. I find myself navigating between those stories of both horror and solidarity, and prayer. For I am praying throughout the day for the Ukrainian people. I can’t open our home to the refugees but I can open my heart.

As we watch the news, it is filled with answers. Answers about how the Ukrainian people are going to survive. Answers about how the Russian people are going to survive the sanctions. Answers about how this horror will end. The information is, as would be expected, constantly changing and the answers are elusive.

But are those answers to the right questions? The most important questions?

As an elders, as Crones, we are called to give less agency to the answers than the questions. Answers can be like opinions, everyone has one and they tend to lead us to a contest of which is the ‘right one’. But questions, carefully considered and crafted, hold much more possibility. They call us to engage. They dance through our imagination. They hold the power to lead us to cooperation and unity.

We know the value of the long view and the cosmic perspective. There is clarity here that reflects wisdom of the past and offers wisdom for the future. This is the cauldron of the Crone question. As so from that cauldron, what are the questions for this time?

What are the questions that will inspire a shift in how we are, as a global community, in right relationship with the sacred, the Earth, each other? What are the questions that will inspire harmony and peace within and without? What are the questions that will inspire cooperation and sacred unity?

Blessings of Crone Wisdom,
Judith