[By] Mystical writer Marabai Star [who] was invited to contribute her answer to the question, “What might a new, inclusive, spiritual order contribute to our world?” and we share a portion of her essay here.
I had a significant dream when I was endeavoring to write this essay and asked my Beloved for guidance. I dreamed that I was being forced to sleep with a man’s dead body in my loft bed. Three days had gone by and it was starting to stink. A young woman lived with me, but she was not strong enough to help me remove the cadaver. I managed to roll the body off the bed and lift it into my arms.
I lurched out of the house with the putrid face pressed against my face, and was swept up in a line of people walking down the road. A young man walking ahead of me must have noticed my struggle and turned to ask if I needed any help. My eyes filled with tears and I nodded. He lifted the corpse from my arms and easily carried it for me.
When I woke I realized that the man’s dead body represented the religious patriarchy I have inherited, which is devoid of life. But my younger sisters and I cannot dismantle this system by ourselves. We need the emerging family of men—who also know that the existing religious institutions are obsolete and toxic—to lend their strength and assist us in shifting the paradigm toward the feminine model of cooperation, compassion, and creativity. It is, of course, the balance of the Sacred Feminine and the Holy Masculine that will restore wholeness to the soul of the world. We may hope to strike this harmonious chord by placing special emphasis for now on the feminine attributes that emanate from the goddesses and women mystics of all spiritual traditions.
It is with great joy that I discover this vision of an Order of the Sacred Earth, flowering from Matthew Fox’s decades of spiritual activism and groundbreaking theology, nourished by the fresh insight and extraordinary dedication of the youth who are drawn into his sphere. Everywhere I go now, as I travel and teach, I am seeing these seeds bursting through the ravaged landscape. The youth I meet are hungry for meaningful spiritual practice and are wary of organized religion. They embody a beautiful blend of intellectual rigor and openhearted vulnerability that fills me with hope. I want to be part of this revolutionary effort to build a holy container in which to access and express the deepest truths of love echoing from the heart of the world’s wisdom communities in honor of “Our Sister, Mother Earth,” who sustains us.
(In this clip from CONSPIRE 2018 clip, acclaimed author and final CONSPIRE presenter Mirabai Starr explores what contemplative acceptance really means. Originally posted to YouTube by Center for Action and Contemplation.)
