#goddessnurturer

[weareveritans-blog]

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

John Muir

[weareveritans-blog]

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Mary Oliver

[weareveritans-blog]

Meet Yemaya, mother goddess of the ocean. Her roots are in the Yoruba culture of Nigeria, and her worship has been carried to Brazil, the Carribbean, and into the Americas through the Gulf of Mexico as her practice spread with Santeria.

She was said to comfort her worshipers in the holds of the slave ships, and to rule the ocean with with the goddess Olokun, as her daughter Oya (wind) carried evaporated water to land to grow the crops.

Yemaya is the goddess of the home, fertility, love and family. The ocean is seen as her womb of creation.