I just finished re-reading a book I read about 20 years ago. Lynn Andrews during the 80’s published a series of books of women’s spirituality like Medicine Woman, her first, and Wind Horse Woman, about Tibetan spirituality. This one, Crystal Woman: The Sisters of the Dreamtime, was published in 1987, and I’m sure I initially read it soon after. It is about Austalian aboriginal women’s spirituality. I mention that, because the book makes the point that the Australian women in the book feel the males have taken over spirituality, and lost much of Australian women’s wisdom in the process.
I don’t think I noticed so clearly the first time that she is not a good writer. Short simple sentences (can be good) with nothing behind them (not good). Almost like a kindergartner, sometimes. And she’s always telling us how scared she is of this or that. By the time she wrote this book, she had been on this particular spiritual path for nearly 20 years. Why was she always being surprised by her visions, mistrustful, frightened?
Seems to me, if visions are your path, you get used to them. They may always be presenting new images, but she ought to know how the process works, I think. And not be disbelieving and unaccepting with each new picture. I don’t think I noticed the tediousness of this when I first read the book. I was early on my own spiritual path at that time, so probably had more of a sense of unquestioning wonder.
Visions, dreams, miracles are still wonderful. Yet now that I know more about how they manifest for me, I’m more used to them. I’m grateful and happy, not surprised and shocked. I don’t think I ever was scared, though fairly often confused.
But when the book showed up in the Giveaway Basket, I picked it up to savor again. It didn’t turn out quite that way. Now I’ll put it back in the Basket, and let the path unfold for another seeker.