Ah well...so much for a snazzy title graphic. Paint Shop is being finiky for some reason. All I get are a few dots here and there...

Well, things have been...interesting between C.M. and I lately. He's been unusually reflective since his dad died and there have been attempts at more meaningful conversation as of late. However - they come off as sounding as if he's giving me permission for all sorts of things...as if I need it. Let's see, there's been 'permission' for moving on with my life and seeing someone else if he should die and the permission to ask any question I may have lingering wonderment about. Gee...he has such a high opinion of himself - or a low one of me. Dearie me, how will I ever get along without his permission? Bwahahahahahahaha.....

Forgive me for not writing these last days...I've honestly forgotten about it. I've even forgotten to eat until my belly rumbles so loud it seems to be able to wake the dead. (LOL- what a freudian slip...I originally typed 'to wake the dad' how true...how true...) Anyway, the creativity muse has been a constant visitor lately. I've been sculpting with paper - I've nearly finished one that I call 'Queen of the Black Sun'. She'll have doll hair and lashes when I'm done with painting her. I've also done a goddess figure done in the style of the Venus of Willendorf as well as a huge bowl covered with stylized pentacles. All this along with a total re-working of this website - the journal is getting so large that I'm giving it it's own 11 meg and putting everything else on another site. It's been a busy 11 or so days.

All of this creativity has been very nearly spiritual - I've been touching something within myself that hasn't been touched in a long time. (..and no, I don't mean in the head...) I don't realize until much later how quiet my mind is while I'm involved in the construction of the piece.

Speaking of spiritual, I ran across this question on the ? du jour website - Define 'spiritual experience'. Write about a spiritual experience you have had outside of a church setting. Well...for one thing - they are all outside a church setting for me. Couldn't have guessed that, huh?

A spiritual experience, in my own experience, is something that lets you touch something that is greater than yourself yet it ever so much a part of you. It takes you outside of previous boundaries that have been set about what 'spirit' is.

Own of my own experiences occurred during a shamanic journey. The question I began with was this: "What is it to be a woman?" I was taken through several processes. I was in a womblike enclosure (perhaps it was the womb itself). I was safe, warm and protected. Later, I was the womb itself - I went through the entire pregnancy process in a matter of minutes. I felt every change to my body. I felt the baby kick. I felt the contractions begin. During it all, I was told that Woman doesn't have to have a baby in order to give birth - it could be anything. Woman is the only being who is truly able to take two disparate things and make a new, completely different thing from them. Only She is able to make this out of the chaos that is conception. This is Her power and Hers alone.

Words cannot do justice at all to the experience. It was truly awesome.