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Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 1 (Part 2)
By KWiz | February 19, 2007
Running Toward The Wild Woman - Pt. 2
We are continuing our quest of discovering who we truly are as women as we study Women Who Run with the Wolves
With that in mind, let’s complete our study of Chapter 1 - “The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman.” In last week’s study, we discussed how we are entering into a miracle work of resurrection of the soul. Moreover, there are various ways we can enter into that miracle work - through prayer, meditation, journaling, dancing, creating music, or any number of creative and/or solitary activities. Hopefully, you had an opportunity to enter into the activity or activities which work well for you. Or, if you’re unsure of what works, try several of the activities Dr. Estes suggests in this chapter.
Nevertheless, Dr. Estes cautions us about how we enter in. If I may lend my interpretation of what she’s saying as she explains the story “The Four Rabbinim,” it seems she is saying this: approach your inner work reverently, knowing that the revelations you may receive will lead to different reactions in different people. Upon experiencing a great “a-ha” moment (many regard this as authentic religious experience), one can respond in one of the following ways:
- With too much fascination, where one will completely “overaestheticize” their “religious” experience
- With too little regard, where “some will undervalue” their experience
- With too much regard or emphasis, where one becomes obsessesed with what they experience
- Some not ready for the experience are injured by it
- With a healthy living out of what we experience; in other words, as Dr. Estes explains Carl Jung’s phraseology,
“Our work is to show we have been breathed upon - to show it, give it out, sing it out, to live out in the topside world what we have received through our sudden knowings, from body, from dreams and journeys of all sorts.”
Surely, since we now know in advance, let us have a healthy outlook about our work here. Let us not get so high and mighty in our “revelations,” shouting from the rooftops that what we’ve discovered is the answer for all. What works for you may not work for someone else. Provide your perspectives and leave room for the insights of others. Share with the understanding that you may be helping another in her journey without confining others to your way of apprehending the matter. And read other’s experiences with reverence. Understand that a major element of healing means we require a safe space to share. I intend to provide that here.
My hope is that we all would approach this study of ourselves with awe. Being a Christian, the awe that I feel comes from knowing that God created me with a purpose. He first created me in His image (this has nothing to do with gender - but everything to do with my role and calling as one who is to help care for the world in my own unique way). I then understand that He created me uniquely as a woman, and that as women, we’re equipped with gifts that men do not have. We are inherently nurturing, for example. Sometimes we live out of our emotions. And it’s all good.
But sometimes, what God created to be good becomes buried. And so, as Dr. Estes describes it, just as “Christ raised Lazarus, who had been dead so long he ’stinketh’…our meditation practice as women [is] calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of life itself.” It is participating in the miracle of resurrection in which we regain that intuition we once had, that instinct upon which we could once rely. It is once again developing that discernment with which we were born. And the good news is that no matter what you’ve been through, how many times you’ve fallen and found yourself in a hole you’ve not found yourself able to dig out of, all of the wonderful aspects of who we are can be reclaimed. That is good news!
However, as Dr. Estes states, “Like the dry bones, we so often start out in a desert.” This desert is “the place of divine revelation.” It’s okay, then, if you feel empty, dried up, and dried out. Embrace the desert for now. It is the place from where much of our growth will come. Because “[l]ife in the desert is small but brilliant…very intense…but precious things…can come from [that desert life].”
The issue is now this: “Today the old one inside you is collecting bones. What is she remaking…for you?”
Next week, we’ll move on to discuss Chapter 2 - Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation.” This is a phenomenal chapter in which Dr. Estes examines the importance and meaning of “the predator” of our souls we may dream find ourselves dreaming about - and taking control of that which tries to squash who we are.
Have a great week! And run toward that Wild Woman inside!!!
Article Series - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Reflections
- Reclaiming Ourselves - Women Who Run With The Wolves
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - “Singing Over The Bones” (Introduction)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 1 (Part 1)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 1 (Part 2)
- That Wild Woman! Well…
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 2 (Part 1)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 2 (Part 2)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 2 (Part 3)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 3 (Part 1)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 3 (Part 2)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 3 (Part 3)
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Topics: "Women Who Run With The Wolves", Health and Wellness, Personal Development, Spiritual Growth |
Related Articles
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 1 (Part 1)
- Reclaiming Ourselves - Women Who Run With The Wolves
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - “Singing Over The Bones” (Introduction)
- Women Who Run With The Wolves - Chapter 3 (Part 3)
- That Wild Woman! Well…
April 9th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
what i took away from this particular story is that in experiencing divine revelation, the alchemy of the soul, we are given the chance to look to the ordinary, the prosaic everyday things and see new beauty and wonder in them, that divine enlightenment gives us the ability to experience and enjoy our lives fully, “suck out the marrow of life” as Thoreau puts it. that’s true enlightenment, the divine miracle. and it’s something that just cannot be communicated more clearly than by the poetic heart. it’s a mystery of the highest order, something that cannot be clearly explained or diagramed or broken down analytically.
what’s she making for/of me? a wolf, of course, loyal, maternal, fierce, and sure.