This time as the bright solstice approaches, so many forces are resounding. This time, I wasn’t able to reach to Nature for insight, not at the depth of wildness I crave, only what can be snatched in the urban margins. There’s no leisure to reflect, no distance of view.

In this time, with everything whirling at accelerated speed, I’m naked. The only real option is to be authentic, at whatever cost or risk. To act, in the midst of the torrent, responding to the demands of the moment. I am under pressure — economically, physically and emotionally stretched – and yet rejoicing because, this time, my body seems to be holding up. That’s a gift I give thanks for, no small thing. In the past six years, this body was often the only part of Nature I could contact, contracted and wasted as it had become, confined to indoors as I often was. That was a far journey of its own.

This time, the sun approaches her apex in the cycle as Martia and Saturna conjoin — tonight, as I write this at the last possible moment. The classic malefic aspects of that joining are in abundant evidence, with the warmongers and greedy corporate lords running amok and threatening worse vengeful havoc. And yet there is something blessed and great coming into alignment in this powerful, pivotal moment: connections firing, ideas bubbling up, resolves solidifying in a far-reaching collective moment of recognition. New things are coming into manifestation.

We were ushered into this inspirational moment with a grand trine of Mercuria, Urania, and Uni. (With all the dominator baggage, I can’t bring myself to feminize Jupiter / Deus-Piter even for purposes of mutual intelligibility, and Juno already has an asteroid named for her, so I go instead with her old Etruscan name.) And then came the full moon conjunct Kali (nah, Pluto doesn’t work for me either) at galactic center. Even as I see some meltdowns going on, there also have been powerful elements of grace, transformative flashes, and huge loads of baggage being dropped. (Including in the meltdowns, or even because of them.) Women are communicating about all kinds of revelations and turning points. Synchronicities abound, in a way that affirms the profound connections we have with each other, and the rapidly mounting wave of women’s spiritual resurgence.

Meetings and experiences are potent in this time: I felt joy welling up while reading a paper written by a student on the Goddess path, a woman who has lived through hardships and sometimes isolation, who expressed beautiful understandings and affirmations that resound in my being also. A letter came last week from an old lesbian friend I haven’t seen in years, brimming with love as she recalled our connecting around Goddess visions back in 1972. I was so touched, and kept laughing at her wry note that she had enclosed a “tool of the patriarchy” as a donation. Tonight, my wife came home from work and built a fire in the portable fireplace that a friend just gave us. The look of pure joy on her face as she sat feeding the fire, longed-for across all the years without a fireplace, was like balm to my eyes. So was the fire itself: the unmodified Nature I have been longing to gaze upon had arrived on my patio.

And there was the heightened profile of feminist spirituality at the National Women’s Studies conference, which ended today here in Oakland. For the first time, there were several panels at the conference by women who practice as well as teach embodied spiritual feminism. There was a ritual, draped with Lynn Carol Henderson’s Wheel of the Year banners to create sacred space inside the generic corporate hotel space. The subject also came out in unexpected places, breaking through the High Theory. There was a bit of controversy over Second Wave and Third Wave feminism, but that polarization seems to have shifted in some important way. My sense was that women have grown weary of harshness, and are feeling the limitations of this type of categorization. Recognition of the spiritual Wave is just beginning to dawn.

Another synchronicity: a woman I exchanged maybe two sentences with while boarding a plane handed me a novel she had just finished by the flight’s end. The Hummingbird’s Daughter turned out to be based on the life of the visionary curandera Teresa Urrea, “La de Cabora,” written by her great grand-nephew. Not only was it inspirational to read her story and to learn about Indian history in Sonora, but the book came into my hands as I was preparing a new show on female shamans who lead liberation movements.

Teresa de Cabora was born of an Indian mother in Sinaloa, Mexico, and taught by the healer-midwife la Huila (María Sonora). A brutal rape put Teresa into an extended coma, during which she encountered divine beings and received a healing gift as well as clairvoyance. She was given up for dead and nearly buried before sitting up in her coffin. After her return to the land of the living, she exuded a fragrance of roses, and the healings she performed were so dramatic that many thousands of Indian people flocked to the rancho where she lived. Teresa became known as la Santa de Cabora, though the priesthood denounced her as a heretic, and Queen of the Yaquis. She spoke out for Indian rights and was imprisoned and eventually deported for sedition by the Mexican dictator. This exile did not stop several rebellions in the 1880s by Indian people who called themselves “los Teresitas.” Teresa continued her practice of healing all who came to her in Arizona, New Mexico, and other parts of the US, until her death.

How do we function under duress? We are pushed to discover ways of regenerating, of deepening our connection, through breath, sound, movement, dance, yoga, qigong, incantation, crying out to the Source. A meditation brought me counsel in this saying: “Breathe, remember, attune.” The intention is to release fixation, unfreeze the breath and diaphragm, remember the Center, and harmonize with the divine qualities of the real self. To keep returning to remembrance of the Sacred, to calm our lesser minds and draw back into the greater awareness at Core Being, and to repeat this as many times as necessary.

Another resolve that came out of healing movement, deep in a sleepless night, was this: Open the flow. I know we don’t like to talk about the negative, but so many feminists and lesbians have experienced illness, loss, and discouragement. The pounding against feminism, and economics too, has caused our spaces, the women’s bookstores and papers, to shrink. Limitation and blows to the spirit have their effect, and often this is contraction. The circulation of Chi becomes occluded, stagnant, blocked. Many of us have spent years trying to understand how to restore it.

That’s a large subject, but one thing I found is that healing means release of caught energies, negativities, trapped and hidden emotions buried in our bodies. There are diverse ways of sensing and accessing and opening so that release can happen, but all true paths will reach for the Origin within. There they connect with the Source of every kind of healing, wisdom, creativity, and life transformation.

And what shifts occur as awareness of that inner Wisdom deepens; how longing for Goddess opens the flow of nectar within our Being, revitalizes and heals and inspires. In that union is where dilemmas are resolved and bondage is dissolved, and where the tides of love are ceaselessly rolling. Nothing is fixed here. We reach deeper and deeper into this Truth, the ultimate Essence from which we spring, whose power and wisdom and grace is essential for us to pass through the eye of this needle, of this storm.

Everything is in flux, and decisive pathways lie before us. There’s no time left, and yet there is still time. It is Time. Change is upon us, huge and unimaginable. Ready or not, here it comes. I see huge openings happening, in myself and women around me, as we sense its arrival. All these years we have been preparing ourselves, for this. May we grow in understanding and spread blessing everywhere.