I’d looked down the long hall of the room towards the older children. I wanted them to see something. I had the toddler by the hand, standing directly in front of me. For that brief moment when I called out to the older kids and turned in their direction, the two year old lifted a foot, brought it over the rope, and put her little shoe near the edge of a bowl.

Not just any bowl. One bowl of hundreds more, set up in an extending rows and representing the average debt taken on for a college education.

If you haven’t guessed already, we were at Mass MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. And this was an exhibit. And I didn’t see or feel my little one reaching around the exhibit rope to touch the art with her shoe until the woman assigned to monitor the room cried out in sheer horror, “Stop! Get your foot away! Get your foot away!”

I turned as quickly as I could and pulled her back, mortified.

But then. I began to think. Like weaving, strands of thought, contemplation, ideas and desires, wove themselves through my mind as we walked around the museum. Sparked by the thought, what is it like for someone who understands the world through touch–a young child–to be in a space where you cannot touch?

And what is it like to be trying to teach people–through art–about what it means to be alive, without embodiment, without touch?

And what was it like to see the museum the way my little one saw it?

And what is it like to live in a world that is not set up for you?

Something about her little frame in those giant warehouses, spoke to me so truly about the birth of my new work in the world. In a world where we hear “STOP!” from voices both within us and outside of us.

Though it was only a metaphor (and, of course, it’s a wonderful museum), the images I took began to come alive for me as visual depictions of the longing for a space of belonging.

Who does the world belong to? Where do we see ourselves reflected? In this patriarchy, a culture of division and hierarchy, aflame with violence, under the rule of a Father God who has failed us, a Mother God whose name we do not hear, a culture out of balance with itself, oppressing and defining the lives of so many with the abrupt “STOP!” that inscribes our choices, our movements, our hearts and days, inside of that, I have been searching, studying, laboring, praying, exploring, and realizing.

“And where there is great violence in the world you will have the archetype of the Great Mother that has gone underground or been violated.” —Alice Walker

I have also been creating. Creating a space of belonging, a place of restoration. A place where we see ourselves reflected. A place for the restoration of the Great Mother archetype, without whom the healing of our world simply cannot happen.

This place, The Sacred Order of the Great Mother  is a revolutionary community, a living monastery, a place of infinite aliveness and belonging. The Sacred Order (SOOGM) had already been created when I visited the museum. Already I knew what it could do and bring and be. It was the prefect way to share my own work–with monthly session-subscriptions full of original content and curated resources–but it was also an answer to a deep longing inside so many of us. The restoration of the archetype of the Great Mother to our collective consciousness is at once personal and political, potent and powerful, healing and transformative.

 

The Sacred Order is not at all a museum. It is in fact a place where we stop being the objects–the art on the walls, as some of us have been forced to become–and we become the creators, not merely of our own worlds, but of the space of life itself. A world in which we belong, that draws us near, holds us close, embraces us, brings us alive.

The Sacred Order of the Great Mother is the doorway to a powerful, heart-feeding, world-changing way of life.

You are invited to join this healing, playful, amazing community. Learn more and become a member here. Membership closes on September 26 of this month so please join on or before the 26th.