Baptism By Waterfall

I keep going back. Despite the fact that it is now December, I can’t resist the waterfall. Especially after a two day storm which brought torrential rain which is now flowing vociferously down the mountainside toward Penobscot Bay.

AJ and I were both wearing coats to ward off the cold, yet the water called me in. So, down I stripped to my birthday suit and waded in up to my hips. The cascading torrent showered my upper body with cold droplets while the winter sun dappled my shoulders in return. There’s nothing more invigorating than being naked in a waterfall in the woods on a cold day. In my October post on the subject, I said it even had the potential to rival sex for its wet, juicy, delicious, sensuality especially when one has gone so long without the pleasure of another person’s physical companionship.

But I chickened out on sharing another part of the experience…the most important part of the experience….And given that I am now an ordained interfaith chaplain, it’s interesting what I chose to conceal: in the midst of that October plunge, I found myself declaring love and fidelity to The Goddess. It was a spontaneous vow proclaimed out loud and unabashedly. As I repeated it to the heavens, “Great Goddess I pledge myself to you,” I felt more and more alive and more and more right with myself like a part of my soul which had been missing for years had finally come home. When I got back to the house and was reflecting on what had happened, I realized that I’d finally been baptized.

You see, I never had been before…baptized. As a child growing up in Pat Robertson country I’d often been told by my peers that I would be going to hell since I’d never been baptized or taken a vow of devotion to Jesus Christ. “Even if I’m a really really good person?” “Nope. Still going to hell.” Maybe this is part of the reason God as Father never quite sat right with me. He, a bit like my own earthly father, wanted blind allegiance without being able to take the time to really get to know me and what I was about in the world. My loving actions didn’t matter, only my respect and obedience.

But God and Spirit and the Divine were all things that called to me from a very young age. I read Goddesses in Everywoman in college and understood that the divine Mother had been torn into pieces long ago and now women were allowed to be Wives and Mothers or Warriors or Seductresses….but never all at the same time. And, certainly, she was not allowed to preside at the head of the table or have a say in how the world was run. Mother Earth was allowed to be the heart of the planet but God the Father was in charge of making it and keeping it running.

Shortly after my father died, when I was 33, I drove across country and stopped in Sedona where a young woman spontaneously asked me, “What form of the Goddess do you worship?” I said, “I don’t. Why do you ask?” She said, “Because she is very strong with you.” And thus, a stranger, planted the seed that has been growing in me ever since. A seed that blossomed in October when I took my vow. Makes sense….the mother is all about planting things that take time to grow, letting a soul find one’s way, and gently illuminating the path. And the path here has been filled with magical and undeniable beauty. I doubt it was a coincidence that that seed dropped after my father died.

This is bound to be a frustrating post. It is, for today’s purposes, only a public declaration of where my spiritual fealty lies. The back story is secondary, maybe even tertiary at just this moment in time, though I recognize if anyone is reading this you may have questions or curiosities which arise from little seeds of my own which I have sprinkled in this post. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll answer as I can. But, for now, I’ll get back to what brought me here today, a return to the waterfall and the exuberant joy of finding the divine Goddess in the sun, water, and trees of a cold December day. To strip bare and step in is, after baptism, my version of holy communion. What a blessing, truly, to bathe in the waters of the Divine and know one is home.