we need not avoid our active lives, but simply bring to them a new vision and shift of gravity. for in the center we are rooted in god's love. in such a place there is no need for striving and impatience and dashing about seeking approval.

We need Goddess consciousness to reveal earth's holiness. Divine feminine imagery opens up the notion that the earth is the body of the Divine, and when that happens, the Divine cannot be contained solely in a book, church, dogma, liturgy, theological system, or transcendent spirituality. The earth is no longer a mere backdrop until we get to heaven, something secondary and expendable. Mater becomes inspirited; it breathes divinity. Earth comes alive and sacred. And we find ourselves alive in the midst of her and forever altered.

Finally, I began to write about becoming an older woman and the trepidation it stirred. The small, telling "betrayals" of my body. The stalled, eerie stillness in my writing, accompanied by an ache for some unlived destiny. I wrote about the raw, unsettled feelings coursing through me, the need to divest and relocate, the urge to radically simplify and distill life into a new, unknown meaning.

When a woman starts to disentangle herself from patriarchy, ultimately she is abandoned to her own self.

What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.

It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.

Elizabeth A. Johnson explains that including divine female symbols and images not only challenges the dominance of male images but also calls into question the structure of patriarchy itself.