This is lovely

I would guess that the Winter Solstice is important because it combines a moment of poise and stillness--that only the dark can provide--with a real change of direction. Everything goes on but nothing is quite the same again. This echoes our experience of those Solstice moments of life: birth, menarche, leaving home and cleaving to another, death.... Womb moments.

To listen or be truly touched we have to be brought to the point of stillness. Only then can we be truly open to the other. Then we must enter the creative dark where all seems confused and uncertain and anything can happen. Then the light rises. Then all seems the same but there is that deep awareness that things will never be the same again.

--Paul, She changes everything She touches, "Evoking the Goddess"

The temple of Artemis

A year ago I was meditating here.

These are ruins of the temple of Artemis near Ephesus, in present-day Turkey. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was the home of the famous many-breasted (or bull-testicled) statue of Artemis.

On the day I visited, there were several men selling reproductions of the statue, set up on tables near the ruins. Though I'd tried to haggle over prices (it's expected) throughout my time in Turkey, I'd also kept to the practice of not bargaining over the price of magical tools. (I'd purchased a knife to use as an athame and several goddess statues.) I picked up the statue that called to me and asked the man, "how much?" "Dollars, euros, or lira?" "Dollars," I replied, thinking of the $10 bill I had in my pocket. "$10," he said. Done.

The temple grounds were ringed with blessed thistle, which made me think of the epithet Thalia Took assigns to Artemis, "defend your boundaries!" I sat at the foot of the column you see here and meditated, surrounded by a few friends. Someone snapped a photo of us. A friend commented later on how it was the fertile women in our class--those of us still bleeding and hoping to have children--who had meditated in the temple, gathered around the column, while the rest of our class explored the grounds. Artemis is a guardian of children and animals, and She is traditionally invoked by women in labor as a Midwife.

Much has changed in my life since I sat meditating at the temple a year ago. The Mother took our beloved Lugh, something we can't pretend to understand but which we know happened as it should. I invoked Artemis on Lugh's behalf, several times, and I will invoke Her again as we adopt other dogs. I've invoked Her in her Amazon aspect on my sister's behalf, as she faced breast cancer. And in six months it will be my turn to invoke Her in childbirth.

She has accompanied me since before I knew I was a Witch, at least since I was an voracious young feminist, if not since I was a child who loved the wild places. And there is something of Her in me: guardian and fierce protector.

The lioness, 1910-2008

This Beltane season has been beautifully liminal for me, for several reasons. I'm holding that liminal space in my body and breath.

Last night around 9 p.m. my beloved grandmother passed beyond the veil. She was 98 years old. She died holding the hands of both her daughters, my mother and my aunt, who talked her over and beyond. It was a peaceful death.

She had been dying for several weeks. I got to see her two weeks ago, to tell her I loved her and to hear her say that she loved me. My grandma was a formidable woman, someone who taught me unconditional love, the kind of love I can feel in my bones. Dying, she was radiant with light. I held her hands, then her feet. I watched her face. I sensed the presence around her, knew that our ancestors were holding her, waiting for her to join them. I expect she'll be one of the first I see when it's my turn to cross over the threshold again.

About a week ago, she had a vision of the Mother--for her, Mary. She called out, "Mother!" At her bedside, my mom said, "is it your mother?" Grandma shook her head. "Is it Jesus's mother?" Grandma nodded. My mother was slightly appalled, also amused; Lutherans don't believe in the divinity of Mary. But I know Whom she saw.

One of the last things she said was, "life goes by too fast."

Blessings, safe passage, and safe return, beloved one.

What makes us wise

Today is the first day it's been warm--in the high 50s--and sunny. After spending the morning cleaning house, Adonis and I spent two hours walking around the neighborhood: getting mochas at the coffee shop, stopping to talk with friends and neighbors working in yards, assessing the little house for sale that we have our eye on, pausing to love up the neighborhood dogs. It finally feels like spring. (How I long for a garden and dogs! My dad cautions us not to buy a house just because we want dogs, but of course that's exactly why we're buying a house. Oh, and it's a good investment. Unlike most places in the U.S., my little town hasn't been hit by the housing and mortgage crises. Prices continue to climb. Why do people move here? Don't they know winter is six months long?)

Tomorrow is the new moon in Aries. Even as the cold days have lingered here in the north, I've felt the shift in energy that early spring brings. I'm moving more, working off winter's lethargy, and feeling stronger, more vital. I have a renewed taste for raw, bitter, green things. I'm starved for sunshine. Adonis and I seem to occupy the slightest lull, a suspension, before the activity of summer commences. Beginning this week, we're both traveling. Adonis is headed to New York City a couple of times for work; I'm headed to Atlanta to do healing work and visit my good friend; and we're traveling home together at the end of the month to celebrate my grandmother's 98th birthday.

I've been thinking a lot about happiness. This past year has been challenging for me: lots of intense growth and new life emerging, but also, and perhaps not coincidentally nor paradoxically, stark confrontations with mortality and grief. It's been just six months since I lost my beloved Lugh. On that very six month date, last week, my sister had cancer surgery (and is doing well). I'm learning something about the kind of happiness that depends on things going my way, and about the kind of happiness that can arise independently of felicitous circumstances. I'm thinking about happiness as a spiritual practice and what that entails for me. I often dream of that lyric from Sinead O'Connor's song "What Doesn't Belong to Me;" I take this to be a profound thealogical truth:

And the goddess meant for me only joy.

In the presence of Santa Muerte

(The painting is "La Ofrenda" by Patrick Murillo, found at Adorn)













I remember that when all is said and done...there remains the moss-covered, secret shining truth...of Samhain in the core of my heart, and within that truth is the fact that this season has always held something precious, gorgeous and mysterious for me, since before I had a name for it. And I have always felt that the veneration of my ancestors is crucial to the practice of my spiritual being. And I am ever in awe of the power of Death. And I am ever grateful for the outstanding and overwhelming explosion of Life that comes through and between and in spite of and because of Death....

My people [have] a theology, books of rituals/practices/meditations, beautiful stories, a veneration and a deep abiding love, all centered around this gorgeous, delicious time of year.

~ Sara Sutterfield Winn

I've been feeling deep appreciation for my Wiccan faith in the weeks since Lugh died. It has provided me with sustenance and comfort. I know that death is but one phase in an ever-revolving cycle, that Lugh's soul is on a journey, that he chose to incarnate in that sweet body and to live as he did because he had his soul's work to do, and because incarnation provides its own teachings, as well as the delicious joys and pleasures of living in a body. When it was time for him to leave, he did. Adonis says that Lugh always knew exactly what he wanted and what he had to do. He lived wholeheartedly, always in the present, without fear or hesitation. He lived in joy.

My faith teaches that death is normal and not to be feared, though of course we grieve and mourn and remember our dead. These things, too, are part of the cycles. My faith teaches that every winter is followed by spring, every death by rebirth. I don't feign to understand that in any rational way, but I know it. My faith teaches that there is great beauty in death, that there are blessings and gifts, even here. The dark is a place of comfort, of gestation and regeneration. The earth and her creatures turn inward in this season, but we will emerge anew in the spring. We take heart in the turning of the wheel ever onward.

On dying

A week ago Adonis and I left quickly and unexpectedly for home. My grandmother was back in the hospital, and dying. Surprisingly, she hasn't passed over yet, but she's 96, and while her mind is clear, her heart is failing. I spent time with her in the hospital, sitting by her bed, making her laugh, watching her sleep. She had the shimmering, luminous look of someone on the threshold. She was beautiful. One night as I kept vigil at her bedside, I felt the fullness of presence in her room, as if an invisible host were standing around her, waiting to welcome her. I imagined her parents and siblings, her husband, my ancestors, were there in the room with us. It was sacred space.

I believe that death is a beautiful, holy, and necessary thing. I thank Witchcraft for teaching me that. In the hospital, in that small midwestern town, how I wished for a temple where I could light incense and candles and gaze upon the symbols of my faith! How I longed for a priestess of the Goddess, someone who shared my spiritual beliefs and who could listen to me. I read and wrote prayers, but I was hungry for tangible, shared, communal spiritual solace. My desire has made me think more about Pagan chaplaincy as a role I could play for others. I also think that Witches, and Pagans more generally, have a lot to offer the public discourse on death. I'm thinking about how we can make ourselves heard and take part in shared, interfaith conversation.

Hekate, wise crone
You who haunt the thresholds, the crossroads
With gentle hands you midwife the passage
from life to death.
You part the veil and usher us into
the next life.
Patient and watchful,
You know there is no hurry
and no delay.
There is only the turning wheel.
And the dive into the deep waters of mystery.

Beloved Hekate, Moira, Fate -
Hold my grandma in your velvet embrace.
Soothe her throat,
Billow her lungs,
Temper her heart,
Take her in peace.
When the time comes -
the immense rush of freedom -
She will run like a girl -She will move into joy -
I know.
The earth is so dear -
And then it's not.
Desire transforms at daybreak.

(Painting by Hrana Janto)

Afterlife

There is an excellent trio of posts over at A Pagan Sojourn discussing beliefs about the afterlife from Buddhist, Heathen, and more general Pagan perspectives. Well-researched and intelligent; definitely worth a look (and a cup of tea - it will take a few minutes to read through the pieces).

I myself am inclined toward the view quoted last in Nixie's entry, a view that seems to me expressly Pagan: We choose to incarnate so we can enjoy the pleasures of earthly life, or, "I came back for a good cup of coffee."

Communion

I didn't plan to usher in Lughnasad in my hot kitchen at midnight, wrestling with a chicken.

Take and eat...

The chicken grew up healthily, running around on a farm near here. I hope she had a good chicken-life. Goddess knows most of her sisters don't. If Pagans talked about sin, then I would say that the way we treat other animals is one of our gravest sins.

This is my body...

For 11 years I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Meat wasn't necessary to sustain life, I reasoned, and so it was wrong to kill for matters of convenience or taste. Furthermore, the meat industry is cruel to animals - human and non-human - and to earth, polluting, poisoning, and otherwise squandering natural resources.

A few things happened to change my diet. Addicted to sugar, I visited a nutritionst who told me to start by doubling my protein intake. Then my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, and all the soy protein I was eating became verboten. And I read a remarkable book by Kathryn Paxton George, who argues that the vegan ideal is sexist, racist, ageist, and classist - that it relegates all but the most robust, healthy, privileged to a position of moral inferiority.

Given for you...

To live in accord – that, I believe, is a key Pagan value. We seek to find and honor our place on the earth and in the family of beings. The dominant culture doesn’t honor this ideal in the least. Our treatment of animals makes this clear. It’s an enormous violation to raise animals for food in factory farms, and in numbers to support the fast food industry. The animals suffer, the people working in the meat industry suffer, the earth suffers, and we suffer because we consume them. We create, full-cloth, a cycle of suffering as only human beings can.

When you do this...

To live in accord, and to eat meat, means to eat animals that were raised locally and humanely. Kathryn Paxton George argues persuasively that many people need meat in their diets. She also defends ethical, aesthetic semi-vegetarianism – eating meat and plants grown locally and healthfully, in moderation, and taking pleasure in food. Being closer to the source of my food makes it more difficult to deny what I’m doing when I eat an animal. I become more intimate with the cycles of life and death. And because I love my dog so deeply, and think every day about what it means to give him a good life, I also think about what it means for other animals to have a good life.

Remember...

Beings and plants die so that you and I can live and flourish. This is one of the mysteries, and it’s difficult to face. We must take care not to pervert or deny the cycles of life and death - whether by killing people in war or labor, polluting rivers and seas, taking more than we need. Indeed, given what humans have wrought, we have a special responsibility to heal the cycles. Witches and other Pagans may have a special role to play. Our spiritual values place us in a position to articulate much-needed visions for healing. The work that Common Ground is doing in Louisiana seems to me a perfect example of Pagan vision and action.

Remember me...

The earth provides everything we need, including death. She recycles and renews, provides our breath, food, water, and endless inspiration. At Lughnasad we’re still in the height of the growing season, but we harvest the first grains, taking life, to sustain us through the winter. Thus does death come in the midst of life.

And remember yourself...

I stayed up late on a hot night to roast a chicken so I could eat good protein this week. I thanked that chicken as I prepared it for the oven and as I tore the cooked flesh from its bones; I thanked it for providing its life so I could eat. It’s a complex thing; I’m not convinced I deserve that chicken’s life, though I need it. I saved the bones for soup stock and the pan drippings for my dog. I wanted to take that life consciously, in as full an awareness as I could muster, and use every bit of the gift. On this, the first of our harvest festivals, let us give thanks for She who provides and vow to honor Her ways to the best of our abilities. So mote it be.

Permit me my death

Pagans have various views on death, but I think many agree that it's a great mystery and a natural part of life. Many pagans see death as a transition rather than an ending. While it's natural for our animal selves to fear death, and while it's important for us to mourn and remember our dead, death isn't something we need to fear for ourselves. We have been given the gifts of embodiment and consciousness for a span of years and, in the words of an older man at the mystery school I attend, "death is what's next."

What's next for Terry Schiavo? Her consciousness is long dead, and the brain and body continue to deteriorate, although the body is still alive in a minimal sense (the heart beats and nutrition sustains this). Since I believe death is an important transition, an exchange of energy, and a journey back to the Mother, I think it's possible that Terry Schiavo - whoever she was or will be - is being grievously harmed. She's not alive on the earth in any meaningful sense, but neither has she been set free. It's as if she's suspended between life and death - as if fortune's wheel has gotten stuck.

If the materialists are right, and I'm sympathetic to the view, then Terry Schiavo is simply dead. She cannot be harmed anymore by opportunistic bastard Republicans. If the Christians are right, then what is the state of Schiavo's soul: has it passed on to heaven, or is it still stuck in her body? And if it's passed on, what's the point of keeping her body alive?

But if it's true, instead, that death is a transition we need to honor along its way, and that the death of consciousness and the body may provide a gateway to something new - whatever's "next" - then it's breathtakingly cruel to bar that door. For myself, I want to die with enthusiasm and grace. Not anytime soon, mind you, but when it's time. I want to go singing into the next world. When I die, permit me my death.