We often speak of "Honoring the Goddess", but what exactly does that mean? Is it about wearing ritual and magical garb? Is it about wearing Goddess jewelry? Is it about using the Goddesses name all the time? No, it is not just about these showy, superficial things. .
Ritual is important, wearing symbols that honor the Goddess is good and comforting, speaking the name of the Goddess is a powerful affirmation, but all of these things are secondary to the true meaning of honoring the Goddess.
Honoring the Goddess is about the way we lead our everyday lives. It is about the care we take when making decisions, It is about learning to walk gently on the Earth. It is about caring enough to recycle, and use resources wisely and without waste. It is about respect for ourselves and others, simply because we are all children of the Earth.
All of us are learning to live in ways that show respect for the great abundance that is around us. The world has changed, and to honor the Goddess, we must also change. For a long time, many humans have used the Earth's bounty without giving proper thanks or respect. We as a species have plundered and moved on to plunder again, elsewhere.
Honoring the Goddess about learning to live in harmony with all other life on this planet, not in some "healey feeley" way, but in a real and practical way. Often caring for the earth is ridiculed by those who think human's greatest accomplishment is the gas guzzling Hummer. Pay them no mind, there are always foot draggers who defend the status quo. We can have progress, comfort, technology and still be respectful of the Earth, and be good stewards.
Honoring the Goddess is about acknowledging the sacred life giving role of women. It is understanding that the Mothers of our cultures must have a say in the major decisions that are made for the human family. Unless you acknowledge and understand the "Wisdom of the Mothers", you will never really understand the Goddess.
No one has more of an understanding of life, or more reverence for life than those who grow life in their bodies. No society can be considered civilized tor sane, that ignores the voices, wisdom and judgment of its Mothers and Grandmothers.
Honoring the Goddess is about reverence for our ancestors for their courage and survival which made our lives possible. It is about understanding that we are each a link in the human journey that stretches from the distant past and into the distant future.
The wisdom and learned skills of your ancestors is alive today, deep within every cell of your body. The esence of your ancestors' journeys and skills are encoded in your DNA. Through evolution, we retain essential skills and knowings which may lay dormant within us for our entire lives. You can tap into this information that is encoded within you, and have access to it.
The closer your contact with Nature, the more easily these encoded bits of wisdom will come into your consciousness. Ritual and meditating on the ancestors will also make these parts of yourself more accessible. It really is true, that we are the legacy of our ancestors, and in a very real sense, we ARE our ancestors. It is also important to remember that your ancestors have been of many, many ethnicities and races, it is only our most recent ancestors that define the race we see in the mirror.
Once we move our focus from ourselves as isolated individuals, to seeing ourselves as links in a chain that stretches back to the beginnings of human time, we begin to understand who we really are and what is most important. Our relationship to the Goddess as Mother and Preotectress of all life comes into clearer focus.
Just as we are links in the chain of humanity, all of humanity is a strand, along with strands from all other life, in the DNA of Gaia, the Earth.
As the song says, "We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return, like a drop of rain, flowing to the Ocean. . ."
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