The Lady in Our Midst

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More and more of us are experiencing the Lady in our midst, as Clarissa Pinkola Estes attests in her new book, Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul. Many of you BH women will remember Estes as the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves, a long-standing NY Times bestseller.

In this excerpt from her book, Estes speaks to those who seek her advice about their personal experiences of the Lady:

"The old-fashioned words [for experiences of the Lady] are appearances and apparitions. But I offer to you and advise you to call them by simpler words. They are visits, as from a great and beloved sister-mother, who comes because of long-standing love and familiarity with you. She comes through the door without knocking in order to deliver some sweet or strong dulces or carnes, sweet bread or meaty nourishments, to you….

"Our Lady grows her strongest roses in the earthy ground where she is most needed -- amongst horns honking, ambulances careening, children crying out alternatively in joy and in pain, all the people groaning and dancing and making love, the complete trochimochi, every which way, of humanity whose singings, sounds, works and actions are part of the exact basis for the harmonious cacophony -- the music of the cosmos.

"You ask, since your visits from her were not calm or decorous like those at Fatima or Lourdes…are your experiences somehow wrong?

"No. No, my hearts, they are not wrong. They are completely righteous. I assure you most definitively that the Beloved One comes in complete calmness to some. … in my experience, more often, she appears in times that are not calm and in clouds of dust that are not particularly picturesque. She comes skidding to a sudden stop in dark cars on even darker gravel roads. She stands in the midst of broken glass at curbs. She walks in every street, stands at every street corner, even those where it seems that, as my grandmother Querida used to say, 'Maybe even God Herself ought be cautious'

"To be a contemplative and follower of Holy Mother, I believe, for you she will appear in myriad ways. She will appear to you as much in the midst of noise, upheaval and times when we feel the sky is falling as when there is peace all around, at least in one's own little universe -- for she is often most present whenever there is most need for order, strength, endurance, a new idea, fierceness, hope and vitality.

"Now, you write that all around you seems often in complete mayhem, and this causes you great sadness. I would agree completely. Our own sorrows seem heavy enough, even when lifted by certain long-term joys. But watching others hurt is the breaker of most any heart. Yet, She is clearly with you, for the kinds of lives we have led would lead many to become thick with cynicism and biting -- and yet, we are still here with our hearts still unruined.

"This is a very good sign.

"Too, I would like to say to you that there is great power in the broken heart. Unlike many aspects of psyche that might close or hide when hurt, the heart broken open stays open.

"Though painful for certain, the heart broken open can be a blessing beyond compare. It not only allows you to see others, it allows you to constantly see her."


Chickee Atalla, author of Conversations with the Goddess: Encounter at Petra, Place of Power
www.conversationswiththegoddess.net
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