My friend Kay is the official folklorist of Brooklyn. This winter she organized a month long Arab music festival. One of the evenings was a belly dance extravaganza, which I attended with my entire Goddess Group.
I was still on my cane following my fall a few months earlier, but that didn’t prevent me from getting up to swing my hips with everyone else during the participatory dance jam sessions in between the performer’s sets.
How could I stay in my seat? The music was so mesmerizing and the dancers so alluring. A sea of swaying, undulating arms, breasts and bellies, moving to the rhythms of the ages. That room was filled with fiery female energy. We were all, men and women alike, enveloped in the embrace of the Goddess.
“I want to learn how to belly dance,” I announced and Suzanne immediately said that she would take lessons with me. But I was hesitant about attending a class full of twenty-something skinny girls.
I really didn’t want to be the only zaftig mama old enough to almost be their grandmother in the bunch. But then, again, the Queen doesn’t deign to think such petty thoughts. Or does she?
Andrea, one of the women in one of my spirit support groups, a long time belly dancer who is twenty-something, lovely and lithe, directed me to the perfect class. A beginner’s class with women from their twenties to their sixties, every shape, size, color and aptitude.
And so, at the age of 62 I have taken up belly dance. Or perhaps I should say it has taken me up and held me in its thrall. It feels so natural, somehow. Sensual, earthy. elemental. Slightly sinful and delicious. It got my juices flowing big time.
I first saw belly dancing in Morocco thirty years ago. The women were
much older than me, mature and fleshy. Real women who had seen a lot of life and who knew a lot of things. Secure in their own power, they danced with assurance, and emanated an authoritative energy rather like Gypsy flamenco dancers.
Belly dancing gets better with age. My friend Serpentessa is an extraordinary belly dancer who performs with her snakes, She moves like the serpents who are her familiars. She is no spring chicken, but a luscious juicy autumn hen. My teacher’s teacher is coming to New York this fall to give classes in double veil technique. She is in her 80’s.
Last summer I gave a keynote address and workshop about The Queen at the International Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. On the last day there was celebration to honor the 90th birthday of Grand Dame Lady Olivia Robertson, founder of the Fellowship of Isis.
She appeared in a transparent gossamer toga-like garment, trailing veils and her long flowing white hair behind her. She danced slowly, with a concentrated reverence. Every movement was a prayer — in touch, intense and internal. Essential. Archetypal.
A ceremony to crown the Queens and the Crones followed Lady Olivia’s awesome dance. The mature women at the conference chose whether they were Queens or Crones.
There were maybe a hundred Queens sitting in a large circle and about a dozen Crones in a small circle inside of that royal round of Queens. The Maidens and Mothers sat outside of the circle and bore witness to the crownings. Nonagenarian Lady Olivia, Goddess bless her soul, insisted on being crowned a Queen. And so she is! It’s got to be the dancing.
With blessings of supple grace and grandeur,
xxQMD
Monday, July 28, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: AN ANGEL PASSES
Last weekend I spent three days and nights with four very old friends in a lovely country house in Connecticut. We were there to help Sarah prepare for the annual fair on the village green that she directs - a huge endeavor with zillions of details to attend to. Just like my public ritual events.
On the night before the fair we stayed up to all hours preparing the descriptive cards for the silent auction. There we were, five midlife women up way after our bedtime, drinking white wine and trying to come up with snappy slogans for all 90 lots in the auction. Well I tell you!
We were completely slaphappy. Shouting out these ridiculous phrases in praise of Dottie’s Donuts, The Well Manicured Pet, and the Agway. Punning around shamelessly. We just laughed and laughed. Huge, full, deep belly laughs. “When was the last time,” I thought to myself, “that I have laughed so hard for so long?”
I actually remember when. It was at a wonderful brunch that I gave for six friends. Diane, who is always funny, was on a roll that day and kept us in stitches for hours. We laughed the entire afternoon away. It was last fall. Totally wonderful, but entirely too long ago.
I have known Sarah, Erica, Daile, and Kay for decades. They are beloved family for me. Yet I see them for food and fun so rarely. We live in different places and we are all always so busy. It was such a delicious joy to have so much uninterrupted quality time together. Being in their company was like being in the embrace of the Goddess, Herself.
My all time favorite film is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut. There is a beautiful scene in it where these two men, a woman and a child, a loving chosen family, are sitting around after a meal. They are sated and happy, comfortably quiet and content. Safe with each other. Out of the sweet silence Oscar Werner says, “An angel is passing.”
That is exactly how I felt in Connecticut. It was a perfect time. Nothing could ever feel better. An angel definitely passed that night.
Yours for love and laughter,
xxQMD
On the night before the fair we stayed up to all hours preparing the descriptive cards for the silent auction. There we were, five midlife women up way after our bedtime, drinking white wine and trying to come up with snappy slogans for all 90 lots in the auction. Well I tell you!
We were completely slaphappy. Shouting out these ridiculous phrases in praise of Dottie’s Donuts, The Well Manicured Pet, and the Agway. Punning around shamelessly. We just laughed and laughed. Huge, full, deep belly laughs. “When was the last time,” I thought to myself, “that I have laughed so hard for so long?”
I actually remember when. It was at a wonderful brunch that I gave for six friends. Diane, who is always funny, was on a roll that day and kept us in stitches for hours. We laughed the entire afternoon away. It was last fall. Totally wonderful, but entirely too long ago.
I have known Sarah, Erica, Daile, and Kay for decades. They are beloved family for me. Yet I see them for food and fun so rarely. We live in different places and we are all always so busy. It was such a delicious joy to have so much uninterrupted quality time together. Being in their company was like being in the embrace of the Goddess, Herself.
My all time favorite film is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut. There is a beautiful scene in it where these two men, a woman and a child, a loving chosen family, are sitting around after a meal. They are sated and happy, comfortably quiet and content. Safe with each other. Out of the sweet silence Oscar Werner says, “An angel is passing.”
That is exactly how I felt in Connecticut. It was a perfect time. Nothing could ever feel better. An angel definitely passed that night.
Yours for love and laughter,
xxQMD
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Queen’s Chronicles: INTERDEPENDENCE DAY
I was recently invited to address a gathering of clergy who are being trained to serve as resident chaplains in the pastoral care department of a major urban medical center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.
What a fascinating assignment. I immediately sat myself down to give some serious thought to the substance of their request. After much rifling through of books and files as well as several sessions of deep meditation on the topic at hand, I realized that there is no such thing.
From a shamanic point of view (as well as quantum scientific thought) separation is a false concept. It is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, since we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. The fact is there is no such thing as opposing sides.
There is only one side: just us folks, all of us everywhere, trying to live life as best we can, much more alike than different. There is no us and them. There is only us. We — all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future — are the world.
We come from our Mother Earth and return to Her belly. We are made of the same substance as the sea, the soil, the stars. There are, and ever have been, only so many molecules in existence, and all the rest — birth, growth, death, decay, development, change, evolution, transformation — is really just about recycling.
We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors, continually inhaling and exhaling, trading carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millennia. And the same holds true for water. We drink the tears of crocodiles and elephants. We wash in the drainage of the ages. It rains, it pools, it evaporates, it rains. We drink, we pee, we drink, we pee. Again and again and again in a grand scale cosmic round robin.
All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone we leave some of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones in an intimate epidermal exchange. Thus we merge, quite literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we. We are all in this together, inextricably bound, riding on our beautiful blue planet through space and time. We are one team, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity. And the sooner we realize it, the happier, safer, and saner we will be.
Today we are surrounded by artificial division, manipulated resentment and fear-mongered anxiety. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about conflicting religious, economic or nationalistic factions. It is not even about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of contrast, of black and white opposition — good or evil, right or wrong, war or peace, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more harmonious, holistic and congruent manner.
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who perceive the big picture to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity, support, and empathetic embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Let us come out of the cocoon closets of our isolated, separate selves and set our intentions on unity. Let us come together to make connections. To make friends. To make sense. To make art. To make amends. To make whoopy. To make time. To make magic. To make love. To make change. To make peace in our hearts and on the planet.
Let us project ourselves outward as cooperative partners; as interconnected members of our families, communities, species and world; as consciously coexistent inhabitants of our planet, and as conscientious co-creators of our combined future. Life on Earth depends upon our interdependent efforts.
Yours for a fabulous fourth of July,
xxMama Donna
What a fascinating assignment. I immediately sat myself down to give some serious thought to the substance of their request. After much rifling through of books and files as well as several sessions of deep meditation on the topic at hand, I realized that there is no such thing.
From a shamanic point of view (as well as quantum scientific thought) separation is a false concept. It is redundant to think of reaching out to build teams, alliances, and communities, since we are already all connected, allied, joined together as one. The fact is there is no such thing as opposing sides.
There is only one side: just us folks, all of us everywhere, trying to live life as best we can, much more alike than different. There is no us and them. There is only us. We — all of us who occupy this planet: organic and inorganic; living and not; past, present, and future — are the world.
We come from our Mother Earth and return to Her belly. We are made of the same substance as the sea, the soil, the stars. There are, and ever have been, only so many molecules in existence, and all the rest — birth, growth, death, decay, development, change, evolution, transformation — is really just about recycling.
We breathe the same air as our cave-dwelling ancestors, continually inhaling and exhaling, trading carbon dioxide and oxygen with our plant relatives untold billions of times over the millennia. And the same holds true for water. We drink the tears of crocodiles and elephants. We wash in the drainage of the ages. It rains, it pools, it evaporates, it rains. We drink, we pee, we drink, we pee. Again and again and again in a grand scale cosmic round robin.
All borders and boundaries and separations are pure illusion. Each time we touch someone we leave some of our skin atoms behind and pick up a parcel of new ones in an intimate epidermal exchange. Thus we merge, quite literally becoming part of each other. I am you and you are me and we are we. We are all in this together, inextricably bound, riding on our beautiful blue planet through space and time. We are one team, one community, one world, one living, breathing entity. And the sooner we realize it, the happier, safer, and saner we will be.
Today we are surrounded by artificial division, manipulated resentment and fear-mongered anxiety. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about conflicting religious, economic or nationalistic factions. It is not even about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of contrast, of black and white opposition — good or evil, right or wrong, war or peace, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more harmonious, holistic and congruent manner.
These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who perceive the big picture to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity, support, and empathetic embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate.
Let us come out of the cocoon closets of our isolated, separate selves and set our intentions on unity. Let us come together to make connections. To make friends. To make sense. To make art. To make amends. To make whoopy. To make time. To make magic. To make love. To make change. To make peace in our hearts and on the planet.
Let us project ourselves outward as cooperative partners; as interconnected members of our families, communities, species and world; as consciously coexistent inhabitants of our planet, and as conscientious co-creators of our combined future. Life on Earth depends upon our interdependent efforts.
Yours for a fabulous fourth of July,
xxMama Donna
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