Wild Goose Festival Reunion with Frances Cutshaw & Joy Celeste Crawford

Tara revisits conversations with two friends from the Wild Goose Festival. First Frances Cutshaw talks about her journey with self-love and the Order of St. Hildegard. She shares her struggle and dedication to caring for herself spiritually and physically, inspired by divine calling and sources like Brene Brown and Enneagram studies. She speaks about the founding principles and goals of the Order of St. Hildegard which seeks to empower and heal individuals through a new, inclusive form of chaplaincy. Then Joy Celeste Crawford joins the conversation to share her story of overcoming breast cancer and the love she received throughout her journey. She discusses her passion for spiritual guidance and the interconnectedness of all life. Both interviews emphasize the importance of self-care, spiritual growth, and the integration of the sacred feminine into one's life and work.

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• 9:39 (Cont.) Wild Goose Festival Reunion with Frances Cutshaw & Joy Celeste Crawford

Transcript

S5 E18 Wild Goose Reunion with Frances Cutshaw & Joy Celeste Crawford

Tara: [00:00:00] Welcome to Holy Shenanigans. I'm your muse, Tara Lamont Eastman, a pastor, a podcaster, and practitioner of Holy Shenanigans. In this neighborhood, we encourage the spiritual practice of looking and listening for the sacred in everyday life. This is what we call Holy Shenanigans. Welcome, dear hearts, to the month of July.

Tara: I'm on the road to the Wild Goose Festival this week. And I'm looking forward to making new friends and catching up with some old ones. As I head to the Wild Goose, my heart is filled with anticipation and joy for the sense of home the festival provides. This feeling of home away from home is something I don't take for granted.

Tara: Isn't it a gift to feel safe and connected [00:01:00] and loved? Madeleine L'Engle says this about that. We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home. But not quite knowing what or where home is, we glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.

Tara: This is a feeling that I associate with going to the Wild Goose Festival, as well as spending time with old friends. Speaking of old friends, On this week's podcast, we're going to revisit some conversations from past festivals. Both interviews emphasize the importance of self care, spiritual growth, and the integration of the sacred feminine into one's life and work.

Tara: They also emphasize friendship. It is my [00:02:00] hope that these conversations will help you feel safe, connected, loved, and at home wherever this summer takes you. A little later on in this episode, we'll be hearing from Joy Celeste Crawford about her calling as an eco spiritualist and spiritual guide. But first, we'll hear from Frances Cutshaw from the Order of St.

Tara: Hildegard. We shared a great conversation about the Order of St. Hildegard that seeks to empower and heal individuals through a new, inclusive form of chaplaincy. So pull up a camp chair and make yourself at home and join Francis Joy and I to catch a glimpse of welcome and home that is intrinsic to the Wild Goose Festival.

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Tara: [00:03:00] It is a beautiful, hot, hot day, 88 degrees here in Union Grove, North Carolina, at the Wild Goose Festival, and I am here with my friend Frances Cutshaw. Frances and I got connected through a love of Hildegard. I am so excited for her to share her story about the Order of St. Hildegard, and I'm going to be asking her those three and a half questions.

Tara: questions about love today. Francis, what do you love about being you? 

Frances Cutshaw: Oh, I love that question. I guess maybe not everybody would love that question, but I really do love being who I am. I love being free spirited and I love being both very spiritual. Strong and warrior like and feminine. So that's a, that's a combination that I love to carry.

Frances Cutshaw: And the free spirit just encompasses so much for me. Spiritually, in the [00:04:00] moment, I love to have fun. I've had a lot of privileges and I acknowledge that. But my free spiritedness is really, really wholehearted. 

Tara: Mmm, wonderful. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. I can attest to those things being true. Ah, great.

Tara: Yes. It's working! Yay! I'm being who I'm supposed to be! You are! It's a beautiful thing when we do that. It's a wonderful thing. So, I'm wondering, um, so in these three and a half questions about love, sometimes folks will tell a story about someone that they love, or they tell a story about the way that love has come into their life.

Tara: and helped them or encouraged them or provided some healing. And so, whether you would like to tell a story about someone else or how love has come into your life and helped you, I would love to hear your perspective on 

Frances Cutshaw: that. Oh, that is, you have wonderful questions. I I know exactly what I'm going to share with you.

Frances Cutshaw: And I [00:05:00] knew as soon as you asked me, but in the past I probably would have answered, uh, with a, with a wonderful story about another person because there have been so many loving people in my life and I love so many of my people so deeply, but. The thing that sticks out for me in this last couple of years, the call on my life from the divine has been to love myself.

Frances Cutshaw: And it isn't a case of, Oh, I didn't like myself. Oh, I didn't, I didn't love myself. It's that there were some ways that I was not actively caring for myself. And I either didn't see it or didn't know how to get past some of the ways that I wasn't intimately loving myself. And what I mean by that is having belonging with myself.

Frances Cutshaw: And so I attribute this love coming into my life to God initiating this through prayer and then working [00:06:00] out the details with me over time. So just that's the love that came from God, but it was also about loving myself. And so an example of that would self care, but not in the popular way. Um, perhaps. in some of the popular ways of describing self care.

Frances Cutshaw: Sure. It, whatever that might mean to someone. I think sometimes people think self care means um, bubble baths and bubble baths are wonderful. But for me it has meant boundaries where my abilities end in any given situation and also what's okay and what's not okay. And that comes from my brain. Brown as well.

Frances Cutshaw: But that's the way that kind of God intersected with my experience in the world to teach me that I was wearing myself out responding to the world. I'm in a neogram two. And so that's what I It's all, that's just a huge part of who I am, which is bonding. A 

Tara: helper. 

Frances Cutshaw: Yes, a 

Tara: helper. Right. Is the common [00:07:00] understanding of that.

Tara: Yes. Yeah. 

Frances Cutshaw: And women are often mistyped as too. So I also wasn't sure whether that was me or just because I've been maybe trained that way. Yeah. By society. 

Tara: Yeah. 

Frances Cutshaw: So, in many different ways in my life, both through Enneagram Studies, prayer, um, my work with Brene Brown's material, this concept of loving myself and having boundaries and caring for myself and saying no, really became prayer.

Frances Cutshaw: And so, I think, If I had to spend more time doing those things, and it, by the way, it did start to include physical self care because I was saying no to more people and I wasn't, not necessarily by saying no, but because I was drawing boundaries around what I could and could not do. What I was responsible for and what I wasn't responsible for, I found myself having energy for those things that maybe seem like just too much to ask, you know, exercise or [00:08:00] making better choices that take care of my health.

Frances Cutshaw: Yeah. And so it started to feel like that was the prayer. I didn't have to build an extra time for prayer because doing those things was prayer. Yeah. An 

Tara: act of divine love. Yeah. I go back to that. Benedictine statement that says everything is prayer. Yes. Oh, you know, everything can be. Um, and so washing the dishes or, um, going and taking a walk or, you know, sitting down and writing in your journal, um, going and working at your vocation.

Tara: Yes. Yes. Those all can be actions. 

Frances Cutshaw: Yes, and the more that I grew in taking care of myself, the more I knew what mattered to me, not just what I felt like I was supposed to do. And so there's a strength that came from that. 

Tara: I'm curious about what you love to do in the world, and I'm sure part of that is Hildegard, but it's your question, the answer.

Tara: So what do you love, [00:09:00] Frances, to do in the world? Well, first and foremost, honestly, I love to have fun. 

Frances Cutshaw: And reclaiming that and owning that is. a 51 year old woman who, you know, is trying to make her way professionally and get back in the swing of things is a little frivolous feeling at first to say, well, I want to have fun, but I do.

Frances Cutshaw: I love to have fun by goofing off with my daughters, um, dancing, singing, cracking jokes that only, you know, they hear, which I think are the best jokes ever said, but they're the only ones who hear them because they're younger. They don't realize how funny they are. I'm just kidding. I know how funny they are.

Frances Cutshaw: That's all that matters. You 

Tara: may have a, like a sideline and stand up. I don't know. Maybe you can tell people here. Actually, if that's the plan. Yeah, I mean, that's actually, well. 

Frances Cutshaw: Funny you should say that. because I love to build things. I love to get ideas and then actually carry them through because I get so many ideas that don't ever seed.

Frances Cutshaw: I mean, I'm an idea person. It's always driven [00:10:00] me insane. But then there's those ones that take seed and grow. And the order of ST Hildegard is one of those. 

And 

Frances Cutshaw: with the order of ST Hildegard, I think I'll get to do another thing that I really love besides just have an idea and build something. And that is to collaborate.

Frances Cutshaw: And then, most importantly for me to Do this thing where I see somebody and I see their gifts and there's other people around me who do the same and we just I don't want to say speak life into them, but it's not just speaking It's attending to their presence, attending to their call, to their fire and just kindling it and watching it grow Hmm, I think that's it.

Frances Cutshaw: I think kindling other people's flames And when I was younger what that looked like for me was I would see And then they would take off and have this like wonderful musical career or wonderful writing career. And I think I remember how much they were struggling and how much I was honored to be a part of that process of [00:11:00] helping them gain their footing.

Frances Cutshaw: And I used to get a little frustrated because I was thinking, but I'm not going anywhere, but I keep meeting all these people and they're going places. And then I started to realize, no, that's just part of what I'm called to do is just kindle people's fire. 

Tara: Yeah. And we're not. Talking about Brigid, but Brigid for me is one of those, um, voices of wisdom that I listen to because of that hearth tending call, like, that you go about in the world and you, you know, stoke the fires of love in the world.

Tara: And whether that's true or not. You know, making a great big pot of soup and sharing it or literally, you know, going out and encouraging someone in their vocation or their dreams like you just said. So I think that's, that's a wonderful thing. 

Frances Cutshaw: Thank you. I really want the Order of St. Hildegard to be that for people.

Frances Cutshaw: I want it to be a fire that kindles their fire. And then we just see all these folks who were just kind of flickering and now they're blazing. Yeah. So yeah, 

Tara: it was just a little tiny campfire. Now it's blazing. Yeah. Yeah. I want to see [00:12:00] that. Yeah. For folks who aren't familiar with Hildegard or the Order of Hildegard, could you give us some more information about that?

Tara: Yes. The 

Frances Cutshaw: Order of St. Hildegard is about two years old. We wanted to create a space in the world today where the church is literally crumbling around us, right? The structures of the church, the painful realities of abuse, the hierarchical nonsense that holds so many people back. from feeling affirmed in their all, and also the segmentation of the church into like, Lord, you can only fit this stereotype, all of those things that we don't like.

Frances Cutshaw: Um, we wanted to create an entity that could handle all these fires outside the church doors and still call it church. Still call it the faith community of all different expressions, all different And we wanted to do this based on a theology of original blessing, earth based practices because [00:13:00] we want to be intimate with the earth again and with our own sense of belonging.

Frances Cutshaw: And we really wanted to bring St. Hildegard into the mix because she did so many powerful things in her life. She was like a renaissance woman before the renaissance. She might have ushered in the renaissance for all we know. The thing that drew us in to her was that she did this myriad of beautiful, expressive arts and sciences she participated in and created and propelled in all these areas beyond where they were.

Frances Cutshaw: So she was a doctor of the church after fighting with church authorities. She was very outspoken. She was allowed to preach when other women weren't allowed to preach. She broke the law. all the rules of music. You weren't supposed to go like this high up on the scale up here or they're sore. You know, you weren't literally supposed to soar in the music because that was too scandalous.

Frances Cutshaw: And Hildegard wrote pieces of music that went up into the ethers and, uh, scandalized the church. But we're so beautiful today. She painted things that look like [00:14:00] they don't come from her time. She was a healer, an herbalist, a doctor. Oh my goodness. You can't talk about her without leaving something out.

Frances Cutshaw: She wrote the first opera. She was an incredible theologian. In any case, she had this just wheel of life around her. She was excommunicated. And then I guess maybe invited back in. It's a little unclear, but she nurtured a lot of women in community after she was excommunicated. Yeah. She spoke truth to power.

Frances Cutshaw: She's just a great example. We didn't really have to be an order. We didn't really have to have a saint, right? But we didn't want to create a church. We didn't want to create an agency and we wanted to be free range and organic. Yeah, and so it just made sense to say an order of something and St.

Frances Cutshaw: Hildegard just popped up in the midst and said, 

Tara: here I am. In that sense of an order, you know, the things that draw these various diverse groups of people. Yes. And then to have her be [00:15:00] essentially the patron saint of this, you know, and the vast things that you've just expressed that she was engaged in. I believe that shows up in your intention with this, this community and, and the programs that you're hoping that you are offering.

Frances Cutshaw: Yes. Thank you for helping me. Cause it's so easy to go off into Hildegard land and then all the belonging and all the beautiful theology, but what we're actually practically going to do. is make chaplains out of people. 

Tara: So, and not necessarily chaplains the way that we understand that word. 

Frances Cutshaw: Right, exactly.

Frances Cutshaw: In fact, we struggled for a word because we didn't want to either step on anyone's toes or give presuppositions, but chaplains seemed like a community based word that fit what we wanted to do. We just want to take people who have been sidelined by the church, who are either intentionally on the outside of those structures right now, or perhaps they're operating on the inside for change, but especially those who have been marginalized, hurt, abused [00:16:00] by traditional religious systems and say, you are a leader.

Frances Cutshaw: You are a, you are a, well, first of all, I keep going back to the image of the fire, but practically speaking, we want to draw out their gifts. We want to put them through training. They would help them. prevent them from replicating harm, because even though, like, for example, I have suffered church abuse, I am that much more likely to inflict that on someone else, right?

Frances Cutshaw: That's just the way abuse works, right? So we want to really provide a place for healing, for spiritual direction, counseling, and this is a co created chaplaincy program. So the candidate will name areas in which they want to grow. We have certain things we want to see our chaplains do, and then we'll tailor it to their vocation.

Frances Cutshaw: Great. So if it's an herbalist, we're going to help you find the people who are professionals in your field. Yeah. If you're a yoga practitioner, if you're an artist, those are elements that we will help you piece [00:17:00] into your chaplaincy program. In addition to that, we're also going to ask you to go through some tailored processes of healing and some leadership training.

Frances Cutshaw: We're going to include 

Tara: Brene Brown's work. Great. So, yeah. Wonderful. So if folks. Want to get more information? Mm-Hmm. . How can they learn about this cohort? Order of 

Frances Cutshaw: hildegard.org. And you can contact me atFrancis@orderofhildegard.org. Our presence on social media is mostly Facebook at this point. Okay. So you can interact with some of our contact.

Frances Cutshaw: We're also looking for some feedback. So if you're interested in the cohort, and becoming a chaplain, and you want to be a part of the first one, tell us what kinds of things you're interested in. Because you can really help us in this stage of development as well. So, looking for other practitioners to help in this process, right?

Frances Cutshaw: Right now, we're looking for folks who have experience teaching progressive theology, earth based theology or spirituality. [00:18:00] We want counselors, spiritual directors. Anyone who feels like they might have a gift that fits this type of program, reach out to us, we'll tell you, because we are looking for those folks right now.

Frances Cutshaw: Wonderful. And we're looking for volunteers just for the first cohort, and then we're hoping the finances will kick in enough to really, you know, honor people's professions. 

Tara: Yeah, and this is how we start new things, right? Exactly. You try and experiment and share those gifts of the community in hopes that that will also nurture the folks of the community.

Tara: It's beautiful. And I have a portion of a poem by T. S. Eliot that I came across this morning and it just seems to be the right thing to share with you. And so, here it is. At the end of all of our exploring, we'll be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. And I'll read that one more time.

Tara: T. S. Eliot wrote, [00:19:00] At the end of all our exploring, we'll be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time. With T. S. Eliot's help today. Question is this, if you were to give a blessing to those folks that are listening, or if you would want to say a word of love, what would you say to them where they are today?

Frances Cutshaw: When you close your eyes and you imagine who you are at the best core of yourself, at the most beautiful essence. you are. That is how you imagine returning to your purpose. Then you will be in the right place for your vocation. The vocation part will just take care of itself. So may you know that you are made from original [00:20:00] blessing and may everything you are meant to do flow out of that deep knowing.

Frances Cutshaw: So be it. So be it.

Tara: That was Francis Khaw. For more information about the order of St Hildegard, go to www.orderofsthildegard.org. Next up is Joy Celeste Crawford. Joy is a beekeeper. spiritual director and eco spiritual guide. It's a great conversation about her passions for spiritual guidance and the interconnectedness of all life.

Tara: This is Tara Lamont Eastman, and I am here live at the wild goose festival. And I'm sitting at my campsite on a beautiful evening with [00:21:00] my new dear friend, joy, Celeste Crawford. I'm so happy that you are willing to have a conversation about three and a half questions about love tonight. 

Joy Crawford: I am really excited and delighted to be here.

Tara: Thank you. I know we're going to have a good time. I'll start with the first question. What do you love, Joy, about being you? 

Joy Crawford: I love being a mom. I have these two incredible daughters. I love being married to my husband, who is just an amazing person. I also love that I love people. If somebody will tell me their story, I will listen for days.

Joy Crawford: I just don't get tired of hearing people's stories. And the fact that people will tell me their stories is really special to me. In, you know, 30 second encounters, people will tell me who they are, and what's on their hearts, and where they're headed to, or what's just happened to them. So, um, [00:22:00] I've always felt like that's kind of a special thing.

Tara: I would agree. I think that's a really sacred space, or a place of trust, that not everybody has that opportunity. Tell me a story of how someone expressed love to you. At a time that really made 

Joy Crawford: a difference. 

Joy Crawford: Hmm. On March 30th of this year, I was told that I had breast cancer. Wow. Yeah. Um, and the really good news is that it was stage one. We caught it really early. So I had surgery and I had radiation. And here I am. And I'm, I'm okay. Um, and I have every reason to think that I will continue to be okay. Yeah. You're welcome. In the midst of that, I mean, just the people who stood with me through that, um, obviously my husband, who just was there through all of it and was there as I was talking to my daughters about [00:23:00] it, because I think that that's the hardest part.

Joy Crawford: It was such a surprise, first of all, because it's so blindsiding. Nobody really ever really knew. At least I certainly never expected to be told, right? Oh, your biopsy came back positive. It's so hard to tell people, especially people who love you to sit and say, okay, I got something to say and I got to tell you this.

Joy Crawford: And it was harder on them than it was on me, I think. But he made it really clear that he was just going to stay right by myself throughout the whole time. And he really did. And I was really. Didn't talk about it with a lot of people because I was so overwhelmed by it. I mean, I, you don't even know how to tell people, talk about it.

Joy Crawford: And plus that. Like I said, it's really hard to tell people, right? So who wants to do that? 

Joy Crawford: And 

Tara: then you almost have to carry other people's grief or anxiety about it, as well as your own. 

Joy Crawford: Yes, that's exactly what happens. So When I got done with radiation and I had [00:24:00] 21 sessions of radiation, I put it on Facebook that I had just finished and I had a little video of me ringing the bell because you get to ring it three times.

Joy Crawford: Yes. 

Joy Crawford: Right. 

Tara: I know that story. 

Tara: Okay. Yeah. The love. 

Joy Crawford: I mean, the love that came back and the people who had been through it. Yeah. And I had no idea. I mean, people from my high school. I mean, I graduated decades ago, and they were commenting and saying, Oh, Joy, I had no idea you went through this, but So did I. And it was just this beautiful exchange of love. 

Joy Crawford: How 

Tara: love shows up in that space is something we all can be grateful for. 

Joy Crawford: I think it also opened me up to being loved. Because I'm the one who does the loving, right? Well, you're nurturing 

Tara: people all the time. All the time. With your children, with your work.

Tara: I had to, I [00:25:00] 

Joy Crawford: had to let people love me in a whole new, different way. To receive that nurturing 

Tara: love. Yeah. Mmm, yeah. That's a really important lesson. Yeah. Yep. A hard one sometimes, but an important one. Yeah. Could you tell me about what you love to do? In the world and with 

Joy Crawford: people. I love to be with people as they explore things.

Joy Crawford: So, as a spiritual guide, I love to be with people as they explore their relationship to God, to the holy, to the sacred. As they start to understand, um, for themselves, where they find their sense of purpose. And I really love to be. with people as they come into an understanding. Of how interconnected they are, how we are all so interconnected.

Joy Crawford: And so a big part of that [00:26:00] is being outside with people and having them explore what is right here. The kind of love that can be present for people just by walking outside because of the gifts of the natural world. And to have people really just all of a sudden realize wow, I'm loved by more than just people or my dog.

Joy Crawford: Right. That everything that is here and living and breathing is actually breathing love. Towards me. And it just opens people up to a different understanding of their belonging. There's 

Tara: a Benedictine phrase that explains prayer or tries to explain prayer. But it says that everything is prayer. And when [00:27:00] I came across it, that I was like, Oh, thank goodness, because prayer doesn't look like the same thing for everybody earlier today.

Tara: Um, you gave such a beautiful conversation, um, around the work that you do. And I remember you saying, you know, how each footstep is a blessing on the earth or the path. Right. And that the earth is returning that blessing supporting us. Yeah. And that was such a simple, but like beautiful way to think about You know, when you go to take out the mail, right?

Tara: Um, things that we think are so mundane are not. 

Joy Crawford: They're not at all. And, and just walking outside, if we approach it from that place, and thank you for bringing that into the conversation, if we can walk outside our door and know that when we step, On earth that we are stepping into a relationship. I'm just not walking to the mailbox.

Joy Crawford: I'm actually in relationship to the earth as I walk. To [00:28:00] the mailbox, and it's not just a one way street. It's not just me appreciating Earth. It's Earth loving me back and holding me up. And then if you can get to know what it is that you're actually stepping on, right? Like, the chickweed, and the dandelion weeds, and the dock, and the plantain, and the wood sorrel, and the clover, and everything that's there.

Joy Crawford: It becomes this beautiful experience of, come to call it the shaman's roll call. Okay. If we can get to know the names of everything, they become beautiful. Part of our lived experience, it's always so exciting when one of them shows up to say good morning. Yes. Right? Yes. It's like they've come to say, oh, hi.

Joy Crawford: So, yeah. 

Tara: As a funny aside, um, one day I was running along the road and I was running down this, you know, this road right by a school and there's a little, like, hobby farm [00:29:00] there. Um. And I'm running along and running along and the goats in the pen took one look at me and they like raced with me. And that was the most fun thing ever.

Tara: And then they looked so disappointed when they ran out of area to run. Like, wait for us. 

Joy Crawford: Yes, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. That's just incredible. I got goosebumps 

Tara: when you said that. And I remember telling people that story and some people were like, it was just good. I'm like, no, this was really a beautiful moment.

Tara: Like we were having this joyful race. This thing like you would have done, like I would have done when I was a child, right? It took me back to that space. Yeah. But what a gift for those, for those goats, right? They 

Joy Crawford: didn't run away from you. They entered into what you were doing with you. Let's go for a jog.

Joy Crawford: That's just beautiful. With the human. And see, I think that that happens so much more often than we are even aware. [00:30:00] Yeah. I think, I think, you know, Butterfly comes to visit. I really do. 

Tara: So I think it would be fun for you to give our listeners an assignment, maybe something similar to what you shared with us earlier today here at Wild Goose.

Tara: Sure. 

Joy Crawford: Go outside and just walk in greeting to Earth. And allow whatever wants to, um, find you to find you. Don't judge it because it really can be a blade of grass. It could be a, you know, a pebble. It could be, um, a dead leaf. Something wants to be in relationship with you. And if you can trust that, What it is that we can learn is phenomenal.

Joy Crawford: And we saw that today. I think [00:31:00] we saw a little bit of that was that people came back with a simple leaf and it turned into, what was it? Grandmother's devil. Yeah. The devil's grandmother is what it, right. It was the plant is, um, but, but that plant had called to that person and then a relationship was established and It was the same kind of love, I think, it was the same kind of opening, that I think that I was experiencing with, um, with the cancer.

Tara: It's 

Joy Crawford: this different quality to being seen, to be witnessed, and there aren't really even any words. There's just, there's an exchange. There's some kind of energetic exchange that happens. And if we can be open to that, allow that and sink [00:32:00] into that place of the deep imaginal where it's not just in your imagination.

Joy Crawford: That's, there is a place of deep, deep imagination where we meet, where the holy, the sacred feminine, um, that is a part of all of us, meets creation. And so I would say that if you're going to go out and do something, that would be the assignment, would be to go out, allow whatever wants to be with you, whatever is calling you, and to just spend some time, um, And to ask, you know, why, why did you want to be with me today?

Tara: And then just see what happens. So I can say from my perspective, it was a wonderful assignment. So I encourage everyone who's listening to just take that walk of gratitude and notice what that thing in nature draws your eye or your [00:33:00] attention and what it has to teach all of us. If folks want to connect with you on the interwebs, 

Joy Crawford: how can they do that?

Joy Crawford: You can find me at spirituallifecenterva. org. Thank you so much. Or you can just email me at joy. spirituallifecenterva. org. 

Tara: Wonderful. Because I have a feeling folks are going to want to connect with you and maybe bring their homework assignments and say, what does this mean, Joy? Oh my gosh. I would so 

Joy Crawford: love that.

Joy Crawford: Do that. Bring, bring that. Bring your dreams. Oh, I love dreams. I love to work through dreams. Bring, um, your images of the, of the sacred feminine, of the goddess. Bring, um, bring all of the things that you're not familiar with. usually allowed to talk about, or that you feel weird talking about sometimes, 

Tara: bring those.

Tara: Well, and to speak to that, there are examples in scripture of both masculine and feminine representations of God, of the divine. And I know that that [00:34:00] might not be something that everybody is comfortable thinking about or talking about, but it's an important thing for us to think about and talk about because our efforts to try to understand the divine are going to be off balance.

Joy Crawford: Exactly, and for me, that's the root of the disease that we have across the board is imbalance. We are so out of balance, and I believe that the bedrock of that comes from our understanding of what is holy and what is sacred, and if all we have are masculine images of that, It's going to be unbalanced.

Joy Crawford: And so it's not about removing the masculine images. It's about bringing in, it's about the rising of the goddess actually, which is a scary word for a lot of people. Most people just don't want to talk about it. There's 

Tara: a book that I just finished again and [00:35:00] Dissonant Daughter. If folks are looking for resources, that's one that I know that they could investigate if they're looking for feminine, divine.

Tara: Is there any other resources you might suggest? Sure. 

Joy Crawford: Oh, absolutely. Mirabai Star, um, Wild Mercy is a beautiful exploration of the divine feminine across different faith traditions. And Sharon Blackie. Um, has written several things. The one I really like is If Women Rose Rooted. That's a beautiful book. Um, one of the gold standard really is, um, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves.

Joy Crawford: That's been around for forever, but that is just filled with images of the sacred feminine, especially as she arrives in myth. Which is one of the places that we find a very strong expression of the holy and the sacred feminine is in myth. If we could turn to that, [00:36:00] um, we'd be in 

Tara: good shape. That's wonderful.

Tara: So we have lots of homework to do, but it's worth it. Oh, 

Joy Crawford: I think it's urgent. Whether we're able to continue as a species on this planet is more and more in doubt. But if we're gonna walk that walk, we need to do it in a way that's balanced. We've got to find ways to embrace the wholeness of who we are so that we can walk together.

Tara: And 

Joy Crawford: we can be together. 

Tara: So on that thought of balance, And, and being a blessing to one another and to the world and to the earth, I was wondering if you could give us a benediction or a blessing or a message of love that you would like to share with our listeners. 

Joy Crawford: May we all live with an understanding and an awareness and a deep foundation [00:37:00] of how interconnected we all are and how we are all a part of the one great love.

Joy Crawford: May we find the story. That we all can contribute to and that we can understand that it's not just us.

Tara: For more information about the work of Joy Celeste Crawford, visit her at www. joycrawford. net. I am your holy shenanigans muse. Tara Lamont Eastman. Thank you for joining me this week for Holy Shenanigans that surprise, encourage, redirect, and turn life upside down all in the name of love. This is an unpredictable spiritual adventure that is always sacred, [00:38:00] but never stuffy.

Tara: Thanks to Ian Eastman for sound editing and HSP listeners who support our work by way of www. buymeacoffee. com.

Tara: Until next time, may your summer give you a glimpse of welcome and home. May your heart be renewed by sunshine and rest. May love meet you where you are, and may you share God's love with all the people you meet along the way. Blessings on your summer journey. And if you're coming to the Wild Goose Festival, be sure to come and say hello.

Tara: You are welcome.