Wonderful Wise Women

The wonderful wise women of Women Etceterea have touched my heart, lifted me up and straightened me out over and over again these past few years. A brilliant kaleidoscope of love and caring has shown its light on my path without fear or hesitation. It reminds me in so many ways of what I would have considered “church” so many years ago. A church is a “community of believers” and what are we if not that. Our beliefs may not be in the same deity or supported by a carefully articulated doctrine, but we are a community of believers – believers in each other and in the inherent goodness that comes from connecting with one another. 

Women Etcetera has a life of its own, quite apart from anything anyone devises or intends. It is a living,, breathing thing that if you listen carefully might just resemble the whisper of that very Being that kept the quarreling traditional religious structures afloat for so long.

I miss going to church each Sunday. I gave it up long ago and yet I miss the opportunity in always offered to step outside of myself and the day to day world and take in the opportunity for goodness and the call to be better than I usually am. Those quiet reflective moments when settling in on my knees behind a wooden pew feels like home. There is no other time that I fall to my knees in supplication and relinquish a bit of control for the opportunity to say “thank you” and “I’m here – trying to hear”. 

The church as I once knew it has fallen out of step with the masses or we have fallen out of step with it. There has been nothing to come along to replace it – just yet. I fear there may never be.

Perhaps it is now up to each of us to find a church in our day to day lives in a different sort of way; to find a community where we can give the best of what we are and accept the best in others. WE might just be such a place, and precisely because it doesn't pretend to be.