We were creating our own religion, our own rituals, our own prayers and sacred dances. Our own holy days. Our own priestesses. Everything between birth and death was now in our domain. We were saying, in effect, "Move over old man god, your time is up. Take your desert-born religions with you. Take your woman hating-tenets, take your male rule over women and bury it. We are free now. We no longer believe in you. We don't care about your 'good books,' we care about our own souls. We judge you from now on, as you have judged us. We are on to you, and you have lost us forever."
Women's spirituality still has the wonderful headiness of that freedom and creativity. It's one of the things I loved most about this path when I first began to walk it 20 years ago. Today it's something I simply take for granted because it's ingrained in me. But this quotation reminded me of how exhilarating it was when I encountered that freedom and creativity for the first time. How different it felt to be the active author of my own spiritual beliefs and rituals, instead of being the passive recipient of teachings and rituals handed down from one generation to the next!
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When I read that in Sagewoman it brought tears to my eyes. I remember that feeling, that realization that I'm responsible for me and I can have my own relationship with Divine on my own terms.
This sentence really captures it:
"How different it felt to be the active author of my own spiritual beliefs and rituals, instead of being the passive recipient of teachings and rituals handed down from one generation to the next!"
Not only a passive recipient but a disrespected creature who is expected to accept the definition foisted on her. To be told from day one that you are a second class citizen because God said so. It never rang true for me. It never made any sense. I'm so grateful to Z. Budapest and those like her who found another way and left a trail for us.
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