A Creed for Free Women by Else Gidlow

 

There are never enough opportunities to reinforce the positive within us and our innate connection as women to the Great Goddess.  One of my favorite poems from a beautiful book – She Rises Like the Sun

I am.
I am from and of The Mother.
I am as I am.
Willfully harming none, none may question me.

As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.
As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,
No plant or blade of grass nor ocean fish,
So I am here to serve or be served.

I am Child of every Mother,
Mother of each Daughter,
Sister of Every Woman,
And Lover of whom I choose or chooses me.

Together or alone we dance Her dance,
We do the work of The Mother,
She we have called Goddess for human comprehension.
She, the Source, never-to-be-grasped Mystery,
Terrible Cauldron, Womb,
Spinning out of her the unimaginably small
And the immeasurably vast- Galaxies, worlds, flaming suns,
And our Earth, fertile with Her beneficence,
Here, offering tenderest flowers.
(Yet flowers whose roots may split rock.)

I, We, Mothers, Sisters, Lovers,
Infinitely small out of Her vastness, Yet our roots too may split rock,
Rock of the rigid, the oppressive in human affairs.

Thus is She. And being of Her, Thus am I.
Powered by Her, As She gives, I may give,
Even of my blood and breath:
But none may require it;
And none may question me.

I am. I am THAT I am.
Else Gidlow, She Rises Like the Sun