We live in a world where the old religious forms crumble and die. Much as we try to re-antimate these forms, they cannot hold our deepest truths anymore. The labor is well begun for a new way to hold all that is most sacred and true. We do not yet know the containers this new life will hold, but we feel its coming birth.

If we do not find an inner stillness, the birth pangs leave us anxious about this time of formlessness, the falling apart of things we have tried to glue together, the death pangs of the old without a visible new product. We seek temporary containers, tupperware that cannot hold; compulsive exercise, too much or too little food, alcohol, the pursuit of material things, a myriad of addictions that cannot fill us up.

If we find a stillpoint within ourselves, we can stay present during the emptiness that precedes the birth. In stillness, in being present in our hearts, we can hold a space of joyful anticipation, of hope not fear, so that this new container, this new way of experiencing our divinity in form during the next millenium can be born and the birth itself can be an illumination.

Our Sacred Feminine is the abode of the stillpoint, the temple of the impending birth. But she is so much more. She is the creative being as well as the vessel of this new life.

We are in that wild stage of labor, the transition stage, when the cervix is opening very fast. Birth is imminent though it feels like it will never happen. We cannot DO at this stage. We must let go. Our tired cardboard idea of mother is a dragon resisting all change, prefering death to the letting go into new life. Simultaneously, our culture embraces the opposite extreme of all change with no stillness, a cardboard father that never lets us rest or refuel. By inhabiting our Sacred Feminine we find the middle ground with a balancing inner masculine that has the strength to make a space for the birth. The cardboard man that would bully us in a ceaseless round of meaningless activity is dissolved away.

The Sacred Feminine is both the mother and the child. She is present in this now, rooted in herself. To be present in her body is to trust the process without trying to control it. The Sacred Feminine surrenders to divine will without promise of what this means. She does this because in her fullness, her NOWness, she accepts and embraces life and knows it to be good.

She knows here and now is where she is supposed to be. The chatter of worry mind holds no sway. Birth is upon her. Like water which is her element, she is receptive. She will receive and embrace the world and her experience in it. She will give forth a new life.

A process of receiving, giving forth and reflecting are necessary to her psyche and her process of creation. In holding up a mirror to her experience, meaning is found. Her reflective nature enriches her experience. Her body is fully known. All is touched and tasted, felt and seen. Her reflection deepens an awareness of the significance of the birth. The divine and the mortal meet in meaningful embrace.

Whatever form is to be birthed for the consciousness of mankind, it is birthed through the individual births of each of us, each Sacred Feminine. Every birth is profound. Every birth is vital to the whole. There is agony in each individual birth just as there is agony in the collective birth of the new consciousness. It is painful to bring the new into consciousness. But it will be our joy if we bring the mirror close during this birth for there is the very juice of life in all our births; our truest self to be found and embraced and delivered in joyful wetness. The stranger who arrives with each birth is both the container of the new consciousness and the familiar beloved returned once more to us.

Last summer we built at our door a reflecting pool. It stands above ground, encircled by a stone wall, an archetypal well. It speaks of our journey inward to our own Sacred Feminine. It speaks to our bringing forth the waters of her life into the world, of our own journey of sharing our deepest truest self in the world, our part in birthing a new world.

As ice came to this pool last fall, its presence in our midst remained a pregnant mystery. Birth pangs began in the dark night of January. This Essence came forth as a blend of many Flowers that know how to embody their Sacred Feminine. May this Essence of the Sacred Feminine support you in lifting up the bucket from your well, so you can be and birth your own Sacred Feminine.

The Sacred Feminine contains the following Flowers: Agathe Incarnata Rose, Agnes Rose, Dombeya Wallichii, Dracaena, Eden Rose, Eyes of Mary, Ixora, La Belle Sultane Rose, Lady's Mantle, Lady Penzance Rose, The Mary Rose, Medinilla Magnifica, Mehera, One Flowered Wintergreen, Orange Iris, Orange Amaryllis, Pomegranate, Raspberry, Rosa Banksia, Rosa Gallica, Sansevieria, Scarlet Cordia, Sceptre of Power Flower, Sea Lavender, Tuberose, Tuscany Rose, Vanda Rothschildiana, Wood Sage from the Burren

Molly Sheehan
Green Hope Farm
January 2004