Reading if not writing

There has been so much to write about in the last few weeks and no time to sit down to write. Both work and home life have been busy, and as I enter the third trimester of pregnancy I don't have as much energy as I would like to have. (Practicing acceptance...ahem.) I've contented myself with reading your blogs; there has been more writing than usual, it seems to me, in the Pagan blogosphere, so much of it excellent. As always, I delight in the good work regularly issuing forth from Jason, Hecate, Lunaea, Molly, Anne, Sia, and Joanna.

Recently, Hecate has written about calling on the ancestors:

When I call North/Earth/Pentacles, I'm calling ancestors, bears, wolves, foxes, moose, caves, mountains, plains, stones, decomposing bodies, the power to be silent. What I learned, almost by accident, tonight, is that, if you call Obama's ancestors to come protect him, well, they will Show Up. No, really. They. Will. Show. Up. He can be protected from the racist hatred being stirred up against him. His ancestors -- from both sides -- will Show Up and deflect the danger.

I pass this along for others who are doing protective magic for him.

He stays safe through January 20th, when his own Secret Service, loyal to him, can take over. This is my will. So mote it be.

And about the practice of magic more generally:

You can't set out doing magic in order to obtain this feeling, this cellular and organic understanding that you are a vessel for, and an opening into the world of, magic. But at some point -- after half a lifetime of grounding and centering and casting circles and calling the quarters and speaking intentions and chanting and dancing and drumming and visualizing and raising cones and releasing cones and being frustrated and being enchanted and returning daily to your altar, happy, sad, frustrated, disbelieving, coming, as Rumi said, yet again, come, come, even though you have abandoned your vows a thousand times, come, yet again, come, come -- you find the mystery within yourself. And it seems to me, not that I would know, that it's just like what they said about those who experienced the Mysteries of Eleusis: ever after, they had no fear of death. Ever after, you know that you have found within yourself what you could never find without: that which has been with you from the beginning and which is attained at the end of all desire.

And, yet, and here's only one more lovely paradox, you have to get up the next morning and practice again, sit zazen again, ground again, connect again with the mist in the Autumn garden and the squirrels in the trees and the current in the air and the Fifth Sacred Thing.

Lunaea has written about her call to an unestablished priesthood, a call I also hear:

It started when I went looking online for Benedictine monasteries that offer retreats, as I've been feeling that after my big work push is over this year it might be a good idea to get away and center myself for a few days. Perusing these websites, I read about the pattern of the days for the monks and nuns, the hours dedicated to prayer, to silence, to work, to leisure, to study, to collective worship. I read the descriptions of vocation, what to do if you feel the call to such a life, and I was filled with wistfulness, because I am indeed called to such a life, but not to Christianity. I admire the religion, in its best and highest forms, as I do all religions, but it doesn't speak to the core of my being, certainly not in the most passionate way required of a nun. (I like Jesus, but I don't want to marry him.) Clicking through the web pages, my wistfulness grew into deep longing, an ache in my heart. I want that sense of committed community, I want spiritual directors and counselors, I want a home I can count on for life, I want peace, I want time for devotions... I want, I want, I want....

After my ordination this spring, my healer from my first year at the mystery school said to me, "welcome to the life of a freelance minister and healer." What does that look like? What will it mean?