The Universe Is Knocking
Jan. 19th, 2004 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosThe universe has been pinging me lately. Two topics have come up several times, in different contexts, over the last few days, which means I need to pay attention to them.
Sumerian goddess, given the title “Queen of Heaven and Earth.” She is the Goddess of the Descent, making the journey down through the seven gates of the underworld, ritually giving up a piece of clothing/regalia at each point, representing surrender of her powers. At the bottom, “naked and bowed low,” she enters the presence of her sister Ereshkigal, who “fixes her with the eye of death,” and kills her. She hangs on a peg in the underworld for three days until Father Enki, roused to action by Inanna’s friend and officer Ninshubur, sends down two sexless creatures who empathize with Ereshkigal in her birthing pangs and win Innana’s corpse for a reward. They feed her the water of life and restore her. But the underworld must remain in balance, and if Inanna returns to the land of the living, someone else must remain in her place. Demons return with her to her life. She prevents them from taking Ninshubur and her own sons, who have mourned her. But when she finds her husband Dumuzi sitting on her throne, she has the demons take him. But Dumuzi is ransomed by his sister, Geshtinanna, who takes his place in the underworld for six months of the year.
Inanna is also the one who consecrates the human king through the hieros gamos or sacred marriage. She is the one who wins the me, the knowledge of the arts and sciences, from the father god, by winning a drinking contest, and gives them to humanity.
Inanna is my patron goddess, the one whose stories and powers resonate most strongly with my life. It was through studying the story of the Descent, in which she voluntarily surrenders that which identifies her and gives her her powers, that I was able to come to terms with having given my consent to an emotionally abusive relationship that brought me to the lowest point of my own life.
But I haven’t thought much about Inanna during the past few years. My spiritual explorations and energy have been focused in Christianity, working through my relationship with the church in which I’ve found my spiritual home, and the new and complicated theology of Swedenborg.
But late last week I had an exchange with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofhalves that developed into a conversation about Inanna. And then last night, jaynefury showed me her beautiful and unique Inanna necklace. And I begin to think: I need to go back into this part of my spirituality. This is not something I should forget or ignore. What I’m going to do about it isn’t yet clear. It calls for some meditation.
The classic scriptural reference is about how you can not pour new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins will burst.
I’ve been in an awkward place between stages in my spiritual growth. Being in a Christian church again has resurrected a lot of old patterns of worship and meditation. Old childhood patterns, I’m beginning realize – some perhaps not appropriate to where I am now. I was always happy and comfortable in traditional church services, and I’ve been having some tension sometimes with the way my current community likes to worship.
This was brought to my attention most recently through some conversations with two of my closest friends at church, who feel alienated when the services are too traditional and too heavy on scripture. I know they are closer to the majority feeling of our community than I am. One woman spoke of wanting to have a service entirely in poetry. That keeps echoing in my memory. It’s not something I would ever have thought about. And that bothers me.
Then, Doug, visiting from PSR/SHS, talked about his reading of Craddock, one of the modern masters of homiletics (sermon-giving), who writes about using an inductive sermon style: instead of starting with scripture, he advocates starting with life, and only at the end drawing the lesson together and showing how this fits with scripture. I always start the other way: with the text, and work out from there. Not, perhaps, the best method for the community I’m in.
Then, this weekend, Fr. R. pointed out that although Jesus was addressed as “rabbi,” there is no record of him being educated as a rabbi, and he does not teach the way rabbis usually taught. He knew Torah and the prophets, but he didn’t rely on them. He taught from the fabric of everyday life, and the gist of his teaching was that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and a new way of life was called for. He didn’t say anything about church services, rituals, or the importance of forms. Quite the contrary. I felt myself suddenly as having a “default” worship and teaching style that, while not “bad” was not necessarily in tune with the spirit of Jesus’s style and what was important to him.
The phrase “new wine” kept coming up over the weekend in class, and each time it did I felt a personal poke, as if I was being asked to take a new look at myself and my habits, and to dare to step off into a way of being in a church community that is bolder, newer, more free. I may be comfortable with the older, traditional forms, but that doesn’t mean I should stay there.
This is way too much LJ typing for a work morning. I’d better stop here for now.
But it’s so nice to be thinking again!
Update: It took a few minutes for me to register the possible irony of contemplating a richer, newer form of Christian worship simultaneously with a sense of a need to re-connect with a powerful goddess archetype. The two are not necessarily in conflict, but are not immediate and obvious companions for most people -- and even in my own mind. Which is probably part of what I need to address right now.
Sumerian goddess, given the title “Queen of Heaven and Earth.” She is the Goddess of the Descent, making the journey down through the seven gates of the underworld, ritually giving up a piece of clothing/regalia at each point, representing surrender of her powers. At the bottom, “naked and bowed low,” she enters the presence of her sister Ereshkigal, who “fixes her with the eye of death,” and kills her. She hangs on a peg in the underworld for three days until Father Enki, roused to action by Inanna’s friend and officer Ninshubur, sends down two sexless creatures who empathize with Ereshkigal in her birthing pangs and win Innana’s corpse for a reward. They feed her the water of life and restore her. But the underworld must remain in balance, and if Inanna returns to the land of the living, someone else must remain in her place. Demons return with her to her life. She prevents them from taking Ninshubur and her own sons, who have mourned her. But when she finds her husband Dumuzi sitting on her throne, she has the demons take him. But Dumuzi is ransomed by his sister, Geshtinanna, who takes his place in the underworld for six months of the year.
Inanna is also the one who consecrates the human king through the hieros gamos or sacred marriage. She is the one who wins the me, the knowledge of the arts and sciences, from the father god, by winning a drinking contest, and gives them to humanity.
Inanna is my patron goddess, the one whose stories and powers resonate most strongly with my life. It was through studying the story of the Descent, in which she voluntarily surrenders that which identifies her and gives her her powers, that I was able to come to terms with having given my consent to an emotionally abusive relationship that brought me to the lowest point of my own life.
But I haven’t thought much about Inanna during the past few years. My spiritual explorations and energy have been focused in Christianity, working through my relationship with the church in which I’ve found my spiritual home, and the new and complicated theology of Swedenborg.
But late last week I had an exchange with
queenofhalves that developed into a conversation about Inanna. And then last night, jaynefury showed me her beautiful and unique Inanna necklace. And I begin to think: I need to go back into this part of my spirituality. This is not something I should forget or ignore. What I’m going to do about it isn’t yet clear. It calls for some meditation. The classic scriptural reference is about how you can not pour new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins will burst.
I’ve been in an awkward place between stages in my spiritual growth. Being in a Christian church again has resurrected a lot of old patterns of worship and meditation. Old childhood patterns, I’m beginning realize – some perhaps not appropriate to where I am now. I was always happy and comfortable in traditional church services, and I’ve been having some tension sometimes with the way my current community likes to worship.
This was brought to my attention most recently through some conversations with two of my closest friends at church, who feel alienated when the services are too traditional and too heavy on scripture. I know they are closer to the majority feeling of our community than I am. One woman spoke of wanting to have a service entirely in poetry. That keeps echoing in my memory. It’s not something I would ever have thought about. And that bothers me.
Then, Doug, visiting from PSR/SHS, talked about his reading of Craddock, one of the modern masters of homiletics (sermon-giving), who writes about using an inductive sermon style: instead of starting with scripture, he advocates starting with life, and only at the end drawing the lesson together and showing how this fits with scripture. I always start the other way: with the text, and work out from there. Not, perhaps, the best method for the community I’m in.
Then, this weekend, Fr. R. pointed out that although Jesus was addressed as “rabbi,” there is no record of him being educated as a rabbi, and he does not teach the way rabbis usually taught. He knew Torah and the prophets, but he didn’t rely on them. He taught from the fabric of everyday life, and the gist of his teaching was that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and a new way of life was called for. He didn’t say anything about church services, rituals, or the importance of forms. Quite the contrary. I felt myself suddenly as having a “default” worship and teaching style that, while not “bad” was not necessarily in tune with the spirit of Jesus’s style and what was important to him.
The phrase “new wine” kept coming up over the weekend in class, and each time it did I felt a personal poke, as if I was being asked to take a new look at myself and my habits, and to dare to step off into a way of being in a church community that is bolder, newer, more free. I may be comfortable with the older, traditional forms, but that doesn’t mean I should stay there.
This is way too much LJ typing for a work morning. I’d better stop here for now.
But it’s so nice to be thinking again!
Update: It took a few minutes for me to register the possible irony of contemplating a richer, newer form of Christian worship simultaneously with a sense of a need to re-connect with a powerful goddess archetype. The two are not necessarily in conflict, but are not immediate and obvious companions for most people -- and even in my own mind. Which is probably part of what I need to address right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 01:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 01:52 pm (UTC)Do you still have my email address?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-19 06:51 pm (UTC)and of course the book recommendations i can make here, though not now because i have to do my dante homework. :>