Muldoon - The Spiritual Vixens Guide to an Unapologetic Life

the Spiritual Vixens Guide
to an Unapologetic Life

Copyright 2018 Maureen Muldoon

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Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-447-9
ISBN: 978-1-63152-448-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948228

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Cover and interior design by Tabitha Lahr

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Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

To Will for asking twice.

Epigraph

W hat we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.

Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

Contents

Foreword

D ear Divine,

I tuck my chin, bow my head, and surrender all that I am to all You will have me be. I bow my head, my heart, my desires, and my agendas to Your will. I trust that You know me and love me as I continue to make my way home to peace. I trust that Your agents of love go with me. I trust that I will see miracles where I once saw lack and limitations, and that I will be assisted in solutions where I once saw dead ends. I commit to remembering that I am immersed in Your holy ecstasy and audaciousness where all things are possible, plentiful, and perfect.

I thank you for this day of miraculous encounters. May I always remember that this Grace is offered to me not just for my own good, but so that I may be a fearless extension of Your Love.

Amen!

Maureen Muldoon

Preface

My first memory fades in like morning sun through a sheer curtain, and I cant see the importance at first. I am three or four, standing on tippy toes on a church kneeler. My little hands holding tight to the pew in front of me I strain to peek and capture a glance. My senses are flooded with stained glass and womens perfume.

I pull my nose over the pew; it holds a mystical, old scent, of wood, wax polish and incense of crushed cloves and rosary beads. I open my mouth to taste it then draw back disappointed, scraping my tongue of the pungent taste. My tired arms release my grip as I slip down to sit on the kneeler. I wipe my mouth of the wretched taste that holds the odd combination of the bitterness of soap and the earthiness of fingernail dirt.

Still, I love church. Its a place of color and beauty. The men all smile and the ladies wear lipstick and everyone sings together and wears hats. You have to be quiet and sit still in church, but I dont mind. There is so much to take in that I am struck still anyway.

I am five when I begin to feel like something is missing. Something is tremendously off balance. My sisters sit silently as the priest drones on and I wonder where their voices have gone. At home they hum and bubble and prattle. They spill over with sounds and songs, sentences and sermons. But here in the church they are silenced. I see my younger brothers up on the altar, carrying the gifts and ringing the bell, I see the old men passing baskets for the collection. I search the pews and the rafters. I find not even an echo of the feminine Divine.

In second grade, I learn the prayers Glory be to the Father and to the Son. Where are the mother and the daughter? Where are the priests that look like me, and why have they been exiled?

Although I knew that my sisters voices could never truly be silenced. I witnessed them systematically turned down and buried. As a child, I was helpless. As a woman, I am responsible and that is why I have written this book.

I can no longer tolerate the second-hand roles and the bitter injustice pressed upon us under what should have been a holy sanctuary. I stand in my commitment to unearth the voice of female spiritual authority. I will ruffle the feathers and shake the roots till a healing is heard and heralded. For until the desecration of the Divine feminine is put to rest, the world will go on warring and weeping.

Today I am called not just to wipe the bad taste from my lips, but to spit truth. To free my mother tongue and speak of, as, and for the feminine Divine.

Until we heal the illusion of a widowed father God, we will not have peace. It is time to lift the veil and break the gag order, banish the self-doubt and reclaim our spiritual authority. We cant start with men. We need to empower women from inside the sacred tribe, through recognition and celebration.

Our bodies, which have been used to condemn, are innocent. Now is the time to strip down to our most holy self and come naked and empowered to the temples. Freed of all the blame and shame that is not ours to carry, and was never authored by God.

Dear Divine

It offers you its flowers and its snow,
in thankfulness for your benevolence.
A Course in Miracles

The end is an odd way to start a story, but it was actually the end where it all began. Its funny now, because I didnt know it was the beginning. I would have bet all I had that it was the end.

It had all the markings of the end: the silence, the pain, the separation, the secrets, the terrible tumble down feeling of it all. I stood with my young son in the midst of a New York winter storm, snowflakes melting on our upturned faces as we gazed toward the moon over Central Park. The year was closing out with the patchwork of other peoples conversations as they passed by with boxes and bags and bottles. The urban orchestra of cabs and car horns and the trotting of horses, the jiggle of car keys, the rattle of tin can change, and the enthusiastic bells of the Army of Salvation Santas collecting coins for the less fortunate. All of this music playing against the crackle of snow falling. It wrapped its way around me but did little to eliminate the deep dread I felt as I contemplated the New Year on the horizon.

Owen was three. His eyes were filled with wonderment; his cheeks had ripened to the sweetest shade of pink. I watched him take in the magic of his first time seeing snow. He lifted his little hands, palms up and open to the stars, celebrating the beauty of something falling down.

Falling, falling, falling down, he whispered like a prayer. His words formed soft clouds that drifted from his lips and swirled around me. I looked for something to hold on to. I felt sick, like crazy-carnie-carnival-ride sick. The world was spinning and smiling back at me in a twisted toothless smirk. I wanted to get off this ride and was searching for the escape route. My marriage was falling, fading, failing, and I had no idea why.