Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Good-bye to Gods and Goddesses

Nothing angers me more than the people who take for granted that my daughter will watch me die as they simply sign checks for my medical care. My daughter studies long and hard to be a professional, award-winning teacher of children, not a nurse's aid. She will not give up her vocation to tend my body as it turns to earth's fertilizing ash.

I hate goddess mythology almost more than I hate god mythology. The problem, as I see it, is that both women and men refuse to be fully understood, so they are always seen as something other than human. I want to be neither adored nor enslaved; I want to be known and loved as I really am.

My husband used to complain that all the neighbors who had lived beside him for years when I met him never even invited him in for a cup of coffee, though they all came to tell me what a hero he was as a doctor. It occurred to me that this was because they saw him as above them, a god, not a flesh and blood human being. Gods really don't need anything, and what we have to offer would surely be too inferior to be accepted.

Gods and goddesses have no needs. They are magic beings that can pull fulfillment of the wishes of others out of the air. It is so much easier to believe this myth than to watch for what a person really hungers for in his or her life and seek to partner with him or her in filling the most basic desires.

I have had husbands who treated me as each, within different marriages; I will not settle for either way of treatment in this last partnership in my life. I want my husband to be my life partner, as I have been to him, in every way humanly possible, including the shit, piss, and blood of my illnesses and old age.

We have convinced ourselves that there are gods and goddesses outside of us that need our sacrifices and adoration, while ignoring the cries of those who carry The Sacred Spirit in their earthly bodies. How convenient it is to imagine that there are births without blood and god babies without dirty diapers! Only a bunch of celibates and royalty with slaves to serve their real bodily needs could dream up such drivel.

I never saw my menstrual blood as sacred, as I'm sure any women who don't deeply desire motherhood would not. Neither do I see semen as sacred, where wasting a drop is sacrilege. We are all simply animals with the choice to be more than creatures of our genetics and histories. Making these choices is what turns homo sapiens into full humans

I want nothing more than to be treated as an equal in relationships, balancing my weaknesses and strengths with those of my partners. Is this too much to ask while I remain on this physical plane called our earth?