The Immanence of Sekhmet

[thetatiana]

Lately a feeling has been growing on me, partly from watching the Mormon Stories interview with Carol Lynn Pearson, that we all are amazing, that we all have enormous talents that we never develop. We're all singers, just like when we were kids. We're all writers and storytellers, artists, builders, makers, chefs, athletes, musicians. We all have talents at empathy, healing, listening, noticing. We have boundless curiosity. We're all scientists and inventors. We're horse whisperers, cat and dog whisperers and parseltongues. We're ecologists, naturalists, paleontologists, oceanographers. We all have the capacity to be explorers, or tender lovers, or powerful protectors of the weak, mentors, parents, epicures. And right now most of us aren't able to develop those capacities due to time and money constraints, and limitations on the access to knowledge. I wonder what society is going to be like when all of us have the ability to develop our full potential. And not just those of us in the rich world, either, but all those billion or so people who now lack the essentials for life. When all those bright beautiful kids grow up with good sound food, clothing, shelter, medical care, clean water, and an excellent 21st century education, what won't we be able to achieve as a species? What marvels are in store for us that are now scarcely imaginable?

I like to believe we're all prophets in our way, that we channel the divine and give it embodiment in the mortal world. Sometimes I feel the immanence in me of that which is holy, sacred, exalted, powerful, pure, and true. I feel I could embody different gods moment by moment. Once when I was on a music high at our yearly summer festival downtown, I stepped in between two guys who were just starting to fight. I put my hand on the shoulder of the one who was shaking with rage, and said to him softly, "Listen to me." He looked at me with wild, crazy eyes and I said "it's okay, it's gonna be okay." Incomprehension took over his face, then he relaxed and he laughed, and it was okay. I passed merrily along to my car to go home, feeling amazing, feeling exalted, like Athena had used me to grab this latter-day Achilles by the beard and say to him "Listen to me".

When I read Paul Farmer's book Pathologies of Power, similarly I felt this vast feeling rise in me as of a protective wrath for all the children who are even now growing up in poverty, a feeling too big for a human heart, a feeling that the weight of a million million millstones is dragging us down because of what we've allowed to happen to those little ones. That there's a force about to be set free in this world, maybe from the billions of women who are slowly becoming empowered, or maybe in the hearts of all parents, or maybe just in a few wild-eyed dreamers. I don't know where it's going to make its entrance, but this vast power is going to reshape the world, it's going to see that we protect and care for the little ones, that we no longer remain oblivious to their plight, that we don't pass by on the other side of the road from them anymore.

Sekhmet, the goddess of protective wrath, is immanent. Christ is immanent. We are all conduits of this power. We are all gods.