In truth, beauty and goodness.
My atheist mother will be happy to know I’ve found God. I think she’d be even happier to know He came to me through Roman Catholicism, considering she spent a decade of her life sorting out the corruption descended down from the Vatican in the “Royal Commission” that shall not be named (and the following years recovering from PTSD from the experience).
I kid. Sort of.
I’m not actually sure that can be funny?
Ironic, maybe.
But it’s no lie that I found God and it was essentially through Roman Catholicism, though.
Inspired by the Italian Renaissance more specifically.
But not in the “I’m converted” sort of way.
No - I found God through a TV Series.
After some past life readings for my family, and a few months of pondering and integrating, it became clear we have a woven thread through Italy that I wanted to explore deeper.
Which is no surprise really, as my mother has a love affair with it. As do I (which came about individually for both of us in later in life).
My husband and I randomly decided to honeymoon there instead of the usual Hawaii / Seychelles kinds of places we like to go (and ended up being literally one of the most incredible experience of my / our life), and our children even have Italian names Florence and Allegra. Which was kind of randomly / divinely orchestrated too.
In fact, my husbands name is even Rafael. Which is an “exotic” name in his family.
When we decided to become a family, and consecrated it, it was in Italy.
When we called in the souls’ of our children (who we knew were coming together as a pair), we did it in a ceremony, under the full moon in a Tuscan villa.
A villa, it turns out, that was important during the Rennaisance and Medici era. And the only bottle of wine that we brought home with us (still cellared; a reserve chianti) coincidentally came from a Castle, that was linked to the family that lived in this villa.
I found all this out this week.
In fact, I could feel there was another Soul waiting to join our family before we went on our honeymoon. But in Italy, that soul was overridden and cast out. I ended up deathly sick - purging, bleeding, releasing - “out of no where”, what felt like the old soul / path / agreements being surrendered. I was in a deep state of clarity in the moment about this experience. On the other side, I felt a lightness and divinity I hadn’t felt before. Ever. I could feel the new soul(s) and we had recalibrated to a new path and future for our family. One interwoven with something Italian.
This experience was actually extremely potent, but I reconciled in my last post that when I dwell my writing in the past too much, it becomes denser.
My intention with these musings is not density. Matter. Form. Three dimensional weight.
It is essentially the opposite.
God.
Everything + nothing.
I started watching The Medici’s on SBS Online whilst we were away. I’ve surrendered Netflix and I’m still working on removing myself from other screen-related indulgences, the way I removed myself from general TV nearly a decade ago. But I wanted to understand this family, their impact and their role in history, after our past-life readings, and I didn’t have any books I could access, and Wikipedia was only getting me so far without any real context to grasp onto.
A Series felt like the best place all considering to start and launch from.
I’ve come to realise that aside from a really good historical fiction novel (with a female protagonist), a Screen Series is actually a really powerful way for me to learn about history.
The empathy that I build with the characters of another time, enables me to unlock my ability to transport into history and develop a genuine interest in that time.
I’m a 1/3 Human Design profile. If you have a 1 in your profile, you’ll know. I literally have Wikipedia open the entire Series researching every single person, place, politics, environment, detail, so that I can to grasp the entire context of what’s happening. Then I repeat it all to my husband (who does not have a 1 in his profile), as I master the knowledge and make it my own.
By the end of the 3 part Series, of which I had to frustratingly watch the last episode in many small interrupted increments in between data reception hotpsots (including the last 7 minutes which I had to watch in painful ~2minute intervals!!), I was in tears.
Not normal sorts of tears from witnessing the end of something you love, or reading / watching a character die or similar, but deep uncontrollable sobbing that came from somewhere else.
Another time. Another life, perhaps.
I can only capture just a snippet of this conversation here.
But what I found to be most startling, was that my transportation into the lives of powerful families of the Italian Renaissance was an enormous contrast to what I had been experiencing in my “real life”, in the North West of Australia, travelling in the Outback and understanding my role as a White Fella visiting our Indigenous Lands.
Here I am. My physical body born in the lands and culture of modern White Australia, from a bloodline of Germanic, Nordic and European heritage, with a family of Soul lifetimes from other cultures, times and lands interwoven into that.
I truly value re-wilding, reconnecting and re-culturing to these sacred lands and Indigenous wisdom that I live in.
I am committed to learning the old ways and to understand and embody a reverence for Country in a way that only our Elders of this land knew.
That said, I cannot deny myself that part of me that is not truly “from here” or “part of” this culture, and that way of the Elders is not actually my way, or my evolutionary culture. I am somewhat a foreigner here, in the ancient timescale of these lands.
But I am not one, nor I am simply the other.
I am not separate from either. They are both necessary parts of me.
My soul chose this life. It’s timing. It’s location. It’s bloodline.
It chose it all before I came here, delicately woven, in specific proportions.
No mistakes made.
I often try to seek understanding, place and belonging in Culture. But in modern Australia it can feel hard to do that, because we don’t have a very strong “culture” per se. Yes, there is the whole “mateship” thing developed from war times and early colonialism here which, yes, is also part of me. Our multiculturalism is part of our culture. Our freedom-loving, nature-loving, beach-going ways are a culture of sorts There are many aspects that are unique to life in Australia, and one might try to define as “culture”.
But this is not exactly what I’m talking about.
My soul craves devotion.
It craves belonging.
Being part of something greater than me. Being part of the Whole.
So I’ve been in the exploration of how all the cultures that I am (and have been) connected to in my evolution, and can be integrated. And I can be whole, within myself, with all parts honoured.
Those defined within, and those defined from without.
The era of Renaissance Aristocracy is about as far away from Australian Indigenous culture as you can get.
So this has not been a straightforward integration, making sense of my inner pushes and pulls.
Whilst also honouring my unique timing here in this Earth. Where everything and anything we once knew is being dismantled at rapid speed, globally, as we enter an unprecedented “blurring” of Truth and belonging for all, in the race towards transhumanism and new world orders.
* * *
In the Anthroposical philosophies of child development, which I mostly subscribe to for my own parenting, there is the belief that all little children really need, is a life exposed to the devotion of Truth, Beauty and Goodness. They most importantly need this in their home and for their parents to be models of this.
It’s quite simple, really.
It sings in my body when I feel that’s the simplicity of my current role as a mother - to create and be Truth, Beauty and Goodness - for the purity of my children.
In the story that unfolded in The Medici’s (TV series), this theme also came about.
Except that it was Truth, Beauty and God.
God and Goodness, are quite similar when you think about it.
I came to learn and understand so much about myself and the World as I learnt about that unique time in History.
Not only the historical timelines and relationships of the other noble families, the politics of the Papal States, the wars that raged Europe, Henry VIII’s English Reformation, Martin Luther King’s Protestant Reformation and all the other new or previously held knowledge I was able to interwine together about the “history” of this time (and also how it related to my own life / lineage).
But also understanding the Godly pursuits of Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Machiavelli, Galileo and Francesco Redi, who were all Patrons of the Medici. A family that also funded the invention of the piano and opera.
I mean, what a time?
Never before, and never since, has there been such an explosion and revolution of “beauty” in history as the Renaissance. Perhaps some devout history buffs will challenge me on that, but it’s what I’ve come to understand through my relentless curiosity.
Another one of those aha-moments for me, was witnessing the way families created dynasties because family and legacy was always first, and the ultimate pursuit.
Even if it manifested through individualistic pursuits of power, greed, status and all that, there was always an inherent “higher” vision and desire to further the next generation. Further, even though the Papacy of the time was riddled with corruption and the most “ungodly” of men, behaviours and politics, it was still ultimately a time of making God manifest. Something we have lost in our current era of science, business and society, governed by the rise of the The Materialists.
I don’t put these time gone on a pedestal and fall for the romanticism of a TV show.
There was much about this time that I am grateful we have evolved past and transcended beyond (cough, Patriarchy, cough).
But as I connected to what was birthed during the Renaissance, I felt reconnected to the importance of living as an expression of Truth, Beauty and God / Goodness, and how this is really the ultimate pursuit of life in our current times.
The word God has always been clouded for me by the social realities, politics, shadow and corruption of The Church.
Some of my best friends are deeply devoted to God.
Devoted through Mormonism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Catholicism.
Sometimes people use words like The Universe, Holy Spirit, The Divine, Unified Field, instead of God.
Sometimes they use the word God.
I respect all of their experiences. I actually admire and love to learn from those whom are devoted. But I’ve consciously avoided (and even at times outright rejected) God-specific language most of my life.
But there He was.
God.
My tension with this word reconciled.
My tension with The Church, the Holy Roman Empire, and its history and its purpose and it’s part in our evolution, reconciled.
And whilst there is still a good 1500 years before the Renaissance that I’ve been making sense of over the years, over the last week or two, potentially for the first time, I unlocked the beauty inherent in both of those tensions I held.
When I seek God in the Earthly world, I innately seek it by finding beauty.
The beauty of the sunlit leaves dancing on a tree in the afternoon sun, as the birds and bees dance in their perfect little world from flower to flower. The beauty of the wind blowing ripples along a river. The beauty of art painted by Bottecilli’s devoted brush strokes. The beauty of my children dancing and singing and expressing their little bodies and souls on a Sunday morning as I sip my coffee.
The revolution of the city of Florence into a heaven of art, poetry, music and beauty has moved me.
I feel that this frequency of beauty and devotion was what I was channelling when we called in Florence’s soul, in that beautiful countryside villa.
For a little while now, every morning my family and I read a little “prayer” from Marianne Williamson, who sends out one every day via this Substack platform.
Today’s was:
I am not a body. I am a child of God.
Not my body, but my spirit, is who I truly am. My mortal self is not my ultimate Self, but rather a fraction of my being. I accept today that I am part of God, therefore a part of the immortal world.
My body is but a temple space. May it serve me well in extending light from my spirit into the world. My body is blessed when I see it correctly, as a device for giving love.
Dear God,
May my body serve Your purposes
As a conduit of love.
Deliver my cells
From darkness
To light,
And my being
From false to true.
AmenI am not a body. I am a child of God.
And yesterday’s was:
Today I hear the call of the ages
I hear the call of the ages today, to make of this world a glorious place. I pray to be used in the precious task of healing a wounded world. May all that I am and all that I do be a harbinger of good.
May I not be deceived by temporal appearances, but live instead in the realm of the eternal. May I be a conduit of greater possibility, for myself and others, now and always. Surely the future will be abundantly blessed if we envision it now as a beautiful thing.
Dear God,
I surrender the future to you.
I pray to be in service to its most
Beautiful manifestation.
May my ears be filled with the call of the ages,
And please give me the power to heed it.
AmenToday I hear the call of the ages
***
This last week I’ve put my SIM card back into my smart phone (many of you may know I’ve been using my “Dumb Phone” instead for some time). We went to concert that had a lot of moving parts (a mid-concert airport pick-up etc), and I needed GPS, messaging features and all those sorts of things to make life easier. But I was lazy taking the SIM back out.
My 4 year old daughter, Florence, asked me —
Mummy, whose phone is that?
I said, It’s mine, darling.
What happened to your dumb phone? Your smart phone takes away your beauty…
She was right.
Beauty to her is presence. It’s not having a device be an extension of me. It’s not holding a damned screen in my hand, and having her witness me stare at it blankly.
She asks me - Why are you making that face? when I use it.
A face of blankness. Staring. Lifelessness. Devoid of beauty.
Devoid of God.
I get on my knees, stare her in the eyes and apologise.
She deserves Truth, Beauty and Goodness.
We landed back in our new home in the South West last night. It’s been a whirlwind of a journey since we left the Kimberley. It has been a somewhat life-force draining fortnight. With much beauty, of course, but also much distraction. I lacked devotion to my mission, everything and nothing, and I got swept up in old ways, old patterns, old behaviours and old indulgences. I am at peace with this. It felt right and true for the moment.
But I am aware that it is not an expression of my Highest experience of life, and I can feel how it has impacted my life-force.
It’s been a beautiful reminder to me.
Timely, for us to land into this next season.
The season of light, joy and celebration, from Spring to Autumn Equinox. Ending with our darling girl Florence’s birthday as the final celebration of this season. Also reminiscing how we called in her soul at the beginning of this season, in the opposite Hemisphere.
Timely, for me to turn my dumb phone back on, my smart phone off, and return wholly in devotion to the beauty of the life that I have chosen and that I am creating.
In Truth, Beauty and God / Goodness xx
VERITAS, DECORUS, BONITAS
(Wow… turns out choosing the right latin words is really hard to find accurate representations of these essences - open to suggestions).
P.S. I have to share with you one last reflection that doesn’t fit into this post, but is just too funny not to share. Raf and I, not Renaissance buffs at the time, travelling through Italy were “artworked out” by the time we got to Florence. We had been absorbing as much as we could, and had done all the Vatican tours in Rome and learnt about the painting of the Sistine Chapel and all that. Which was pretty amazing, but didn’t have much context for us at the time (remember - we were mostly Hawaii / Seychelle visiting kind of people before this). We had booked a little apartment in the heart of Florence and followed the GPS Navigation to our parking garage. Naive as we were, we ended up driving past the incredibly stunning and famous Florence Cathedral (that the Medici commissioned Brunelleschi to build the “Dome” of - another amazing story about how previous generations entrusted future generations to conceive the solution of a problem that their generation couldn’t solve - i.e. the building of the dome). The Duomo is literally in the middle of Florence, with about 30,000 pedestrians around it on any given day. Here we are, driving through the Piazza, next to the Duomo in our little black Mercedes matchbox car, blindly following the GPS, when suddenly we are surrounded by thousands of pedestrians and I look up and out the window to the most enormous and magnificent cathedral next to us. We had to embarrassingly drive 5km an hour through the swathes of pedestrians (because I’m pretty sure it’s just a rule that in the mostly car traffic-free city, cars don’t take the “Duomo route” through Florence). Anyway, we made it to our hotel and then popped down to an Espresso bar on our way to check out David’s willy. We had no idea.