Wild and Precious Life

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious Life?” - Mary Oliver

 

          This summer, my daughter, Claire, painted each night after working a full eight hours at the bookstore. I watched this in awe each as each night she worked and reworked a canvas, music on, playing with color and light. On and on she went until ten canvases were done. And then she stopped, rested. Saw her friends, exercised, rested more.

I paint. I paint for four hours on vacation. I paint when I am on seclusion. Sometimes, I steal time from numerous duties on a day off.  But I don’t paint with wild abandon, with total absorption. And I still hunger  to paint.

         

           Each generation gets better at being free in their creativity. Working all day and then creating for several hours into the night. Then rest. It is the Divine Play of Shiva and Shakti-integrating  the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine.

Marion Woodman, renowned Jungian analyst and author, has spent her life exploring the integration of the Sacred Feminine. In the DVD, Dancing In The Flames, She states her life mission as helping others, women and men to find their genuine femininity. The inner marriage of true masculinity and the Divine Feminine is essential to healing ourself and the Planet..

     

            Marion talks about the “two Marions”, who were most obvious when she was a small child. During the week, Marion the wild gypsy child was barefoot, hair uncombed, running free in the woods, and always feeling protected and unafraid. Then on Sunday, she appeared in a pretty dress, fretful tangles unleashed, going to church, rising high in Spirit, and loving her father’s sermons. She loved being both Marions but was a little nervous in church always clutching her dress.

Then again in her early adulthood, the gypsy appears but is not acknowledged, not allowed. Marion sinks into perfectionism that turns into a dangerous anorexia. Many times through Marion’s life, she goes through this pattern where she loses her sense of self, only to surrender, or to stand up with courage, or to be open to the Divine Protector. Her path is intense and passionate. Her body and emotions become the canvas where she creates her metaphors to teach. She is always searching, her soul yearning for the unknown.     

 

           The unknown becomes manifest in her dreams. Her dreams become her Gold. She dreams of a Black Goddess who is noble but she cannot see her face. The Goddess tells her to bow down lower and lower until she lies flat on the soil and feels the living pulse of the Earth.

 

           Then at almost 40, Marion reaches a destiny point. The Gypsy returns. She again “feels wild and determined to live” or to die. She goes to India by her self. There in India is the Divine Feminine in the people, the heat, the poverty, the traffic, the spirituality, the animals, and the chaos. She is terrified but equally excited. She has met the “Goddess India.”

But then she crashes, totally exhausted and sick with dysentery. After many days of high fever, she forces herself to go down to the lobby of her hotel. There on a couch, a large dark woman sits by her and her arm meets Marion’s arm and she seems to push Marion. Then with her whole body next to Marion’s, she seems to push Marion gently to the other side of the sofa. Complete silence, no words. Every day the same scenario until one day her husband comes and says ‘you will not die and my wife will not have to come to you any more. I saw that you were dying and I sent her to you.” Marion had met her Black Madonna and the Sacred Masculine that had sent her.

 

            With beauty and grace, Marion tells her story. Andrew Harvey, brilliant mystic and author, is a great counterbalance as her interviewer and friend. There is wonderful animation helping us to understand how denial of the feminine can lead to sadness, depression, and addiction. One electrifying story moved me to tears. You will want to see and buy this film. It opens you with hope and love to a new healing and wholeness, that will ultimately feed the planet and ourselves.

 

Namaste, Darlene