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?

A little reminder

"Is there a Goddess living in your backyard, watching out for you and only you? What luck! You should be happy."

(Anne Johnson)
(Photo found here.)

The beauty in brokenness

Molly, still recovering from a seriously broken arm, has written a beautiful post inspired by some photos her daughter took to depict life on their farm to a far-away friend. Rather than take picture-postcard photos that try to convey a glossy and complete picture of the farm, Molly's daughter Elizabeth took photos of fragmented imperfection: September tomatoes, a cabbage with torn and bug-eaten outer leaves "reflecting the actual effort required to become a cabbage," her disheveled younger brother asleep on a screened-in porch. The photos and writing capture the beauty of this time of year between Lughnasadh and Mabon.

Elizabeth’s pictures suggest there is no obligation to strive for something other than what is or to strive to explain everything fully. They have an acceptance of transience. the illusive, and the natural processes that break down everything except the loving eye that bears witness to this brokenness.

Most growing seasons, I spend much of my time in the gardens working to bring the plants to their full and ripest point. I love this peak moment when I find it in a Flower, but these pictures reminded me of the beauty of things past their peak, broken, or imperfect.

Flowers never try to hold onto this peak moment, because going to seed is as important to them as their peak moment of beauty. Unlike our culture, they make no effort to hold onto some impossible moment of eternal youth. And this surrender is not a loss. The gardens have a deep beauty and gravitas as they pass into fall and winter. Plant architecture may be broken, but in fall, the gardens have great heart and wisdom.

In previous growing seasons, I too often fixated on “garden problems”, racing from one to another to clean things up. This year, I had to go wabi sabi on myself. In my brokenness, the path of least resistance was to look for the beauty in things just as they were. This proved so much easier than expected. The untended beauty of gorgeous volunteer Flowers as well as weeds reminded me, just as my broken arm reminded me, that sometimes the light shines best through a crack in the vessel.

No matter how much our minds might tell us the glass is half full, when we are forced to stop and really look at it, the glass is always overflowing. Nature always overflows our cup. Life always overflows our cup.

Read the whole post, and see the sweet photographs, here.

Spreading the love

Three Four readers have graciously nominated me for this peer-driven recognition:

And what better compliment is there? Thank you Sabrina of Pagan Dawn (and welcome to the Pagan blogosphere), Diana of Diana's Muse, Terri of Aquila ka Hecate, and Livia Indica of NeoPagan Ink! Thanks especially for the kind things you said on your blogs about mine. Whenever my enthusiasm for blogging wanes, it's kind words from readers that keep me writing. I appreciate every link and email (even if it sometimes takes me forever to answer them).

Here's how to share the love:

1. The winner can put the logo on her/his blog
2. Link the person you received the award from
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Put links of those blogs on yours
5. Leave a message on the blogs nominated

And here are 7 more blogs I love.

Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal: It's no secret to my readers that I adore Joanna Powell Colbert's art and writing. Her tarot deck (still in progress) speaks to my soul more than any deck I've ever known. I read her blog for tastes of her luscious worldview and photos of her magical life. She's a Goddess-sister very close to my heart.

At Brigid's Forge: Lunaea Weatherstone is another Witch whose work I've admired for a long time. Her blogue is so elegant, her ideas so inspiring. She has a fascinating tarot, and she makes gorgeous Goddess rosaries; I'm the proud owner of one. It gets compliments from everyone.

Medusa Coils, with several contributors, is an excellent resource for keeping up on news relevant to the Goddess communities. My favorite feature is their monthly "Buzz Coil," which mines the Pagan blogosphere for treasure; they always come up with a post I've missed or a Pagan blog I haven't heard of yet.

The Wildhunt Blog: Hands-down the best Pagan reporting on the web. Relevant, fresh, insightful, extremely smart. I know you're all already reading him anyway. Huzzah, Jason!

Hecate: A daily read. Love her politics, her commitment, and her stories about her grandson. Unflinching.

Lynda Hill's Sabian Symbols: One of my favorite, trusty blogging resources for astrological news and interpretation. When I forget where the heck the moon is, I go here. (Uh, and I look up in the sky. But often it's cloudy.)

A Basket of Kisses: Not a Pagan blog, but a blog run by two Mad Men-crazy witches, Deborah Lipp and her sister, Roberta. I spend way too much time here.

For your reading pleasure

There is so much good writing happening out there right now by the Pagani of the blogosphere. Here is some of what I've been reading over the past few days.

Dianne Sylvan on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, our own personal mythos

Hecate on how one crone thinks about that maiden-, bunny-, egg-holiday, Ostara

Angela-Eloise on sacred sex--her post is wide-ranging and pulls together a lot of ideas, so that description hardly does it justice, and she links to lots of other good stuff

Hawk on past lives and what he's learned from observing his three children

Lunaea Weatherstone on making the present day, the present moment sacred (also just a great story about Santa Cruz)

Cat Chapin-Bishop gets itchy about Eat, Pray, Love (the comments are excellent, too)

Sia has two excellent posts on the Spitzer scandal, one highlighting the importance of rights and protections for sex workers, the other on sex addiction.

Whew! Happy reading!

Paganism and color

(Painting by Kazuya Akimoto)


Yvonne Aburrow has a fine article about the uses of color in Paganism. It's a nice primer on Pagan religions: their variety, mythology, symbolism, and holy days. I contributed some ideas for the article, about the importance of the color black for Wiccans. My own ideas about this were shaped by the work of Audre Lorde. Thanks, Yvonne!

The Land, a sense of place, community, and home

Part of my spiritual practice is to pay attention to the patterns that arise as I move through my life. The idea of community has been “up” for me for several months. My third year of the mystery school has been about learning how I am in community: what roles do I play? Where do I show up or fail to show up? How important do I believe my presence in the lives of others is? What defenses do I use to keep myself out of relationship? What role does community play in my larger life story? (I’m thinking of all those planets in the 11^th house in my natal chart.)

Lately Pagan bloggers have been writing about community and place, and a friend has been writing me long emails about the concept of home. This morning, Garrison Keillor devoted The Writer's Almanac to Emily Dickinson, that poet who famously left home but rarely. He spoke about a time in Dickinson’s life when her community was disintegrating and she reached out, by letter, to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asking him to be her mentor and friend. (It was clear from the way Keillor told the story that this guy had little appreciation for the kind of person who was reaching out to him, though their letters continued for the rest of her life. He didn’t like her poetry; he found her exhausting.)

As I pulled into work after dropping off Lugh at doggy daycare, I heard a song on the radio, a song that took on meaning for me first when I was 16 and my family moved from Michigan – where I had friends and community and a sense of place, however flawed – to southern Ohio, which felt foreign and hostile to me: Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here.

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

How I wish you were here.

--

I observe that Pagans as a people (the Pagani, as Sara Sutterfield Winn would say) attend to the question of community. Many of us practice as solitaries, and there’s the old joke that organizing Pagans is like herding cats. Many of us long for more, or better, community. We may chafe against the Pagan community we know. There are Witch Wars. Pagans get excluded from their communities. Our problems with building community – and I do think we have some serious problems with it – stem both from our novelty as a religious movement and our location within cultures like the U.S. where community is breaking down. We occupy a unique cultural moment in which community can’t be taken for granted as the place where you’re stuck and the people you’re stuck with. Community needs to be built intentionally – and I think that’s a good thing – but I also think that most of us don’t know how to do that.

When we talk about community-building in a general way, we’re probably talking about building relationships with people. But as Pagans, we also care about building relationships with the land and its inhabitants (material and immaterial). Feeling connected to the land is important to many of us, and many of our other values emerge from that feeling - or the desire for a feeling - of connection to the land.

Hecate writes about a connection between pacifism, the Land, and having a sense of place.

Kim Antieau writes about her longing for community and how freakin’ hard it is to build community. She expresses a bewilderment that I often feel.

Molly has made connection with her land and its inhabitants central to her life, and she seems to have a knack for building community.

Updates: Sara adds her giddy voice to the brew. Executive Pagan talks about choosing to be a local.

(The photo is of the entrance to the gorge four blocks from my house.)

Heima (Othila) and Essais

Two of my favorite Pagan bloggers haven't been blogging nearly enough for my taste, but yesterday brings a post from each of them. Sonja writes about her spiritual growth and the year she's spent in Alberta; one line in particular resonates with me:

Perhaps willpower is the arrogance of the ego and now the natural strength of the soul takes over and provides a truer voice.

Jenavira explains that she's writing posts but not posting them to her blog (thus depriving her readers of her interesting ideas, I'd like to point out). She's been creating complicated symbols for magic:

I bought Christopher Penczak's City Magick and was inspired with the genius idea to create sigils out of the sudoku puzzles I do on the bus, via a complicated numerology system involving ogam and fractions.

Both young women, both interesting minds. I hope they don't stop blogging!

Home sick

(Painting by Kate Merriman)

I've been home from work the last two days with a stomach virus. Yesterday I mostly slept; today I've done some web and book reading and am starting to feel restless, though without the energy to do much. Lugh stayed on the bed with me yesterday - guarding the weakest member of the pack, no doubt - but today he's snoozing on the couch in the living room. It's good to be home with him, even if we're both just lying about. He's snoring emphatically!

The Pagan web is preparing for Imbolc this Friday. If you'd like to participate in the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace silent poetry reading, you can sign up at Oak's blog. All you have to do is post a poem on Friday.

Hecate's gotten a head start with this gorgeous meditation on Imbolc as deep midwinter and a time to take a leap of faith. Read what she has to say and you might feel up to the challenge.

Chavala's sharing time home sick with me, but I'm inspired to read this description of her last week's activities. Her life sounds so full. She training for a half-marathon! She also describes a fine baby shower with none of that sentimental bullshit.

Joanna has posted a sketch of the three of earth (pentacles), and it's devastating! I adore it!

Both Jason and Sara have some good fun with, as well as show serious reservations about, witches on a daytime talk show. Oy! I just think of my relatives watching these shows and taking that crap seriously.

What I'm reading

Worthy reads from around the Pagan web:

At beliefnet, a fine interview with the founder of the Asatru Folk Assembly, Stephen McNallen. He's an eloquent voice for this little-known, oft-misunderstood Pagan faith. I think Wiccans could learn from the explicit honoring of ancestors that we find in Asatru, Yoruba, and Druidry. I don't hear many Wiccans speak of the ancestors except, of course, at Samhain.

Update (11/17/06): Please see Al Billings's comment, below, about McNallen's tacit acceptance of racism in Asatru. If McNallen is to be taken at his word in the beliefnet article, he doesn't condone racism and doesn't see it as having any place in Asatru. Billings, who has personal history in Asatru, says otherwise. I in no way accept, condone, or tolerate racism or anti-Semitism. They aren't part of any "faith" I recognize. I actively support and work toward the end of oppression and discrimination of all kinds.

Molly of Green Hope Farm offers a lovely essay about this year's flower essence from her Venus Garden.

Is it ethical to not worry and be happy? What binds us to worry and unhappiness? Illusion or truth? Can we unravel this dynamic and find a freedom to love ourselves just the way we are, accept the world just as it is, and know that happiness is a moral as well as joyful choice?
[...]
The Alignment Garden helps us know our precise work in world. It helps us align with our divinity so that we can live this purpose. It is not about mind ideas of life purpose but soul truth. It sorts this wheat from this chaff so that we are clear about what is and isn’t our life work and who we are. Don’t Worry- Bee Happy [the essence] supports us to let go of that which is not our work. It helps us let go of the self judgment and guilt that would make us feel responsible for most of the planet’s woes. It helps us to know that being who we are, living the life divinity created just for us, and enjoying this life is not just enough, it is what is meant to be. The concept of judgment is left behind in an experience of grace. And happiness.

Kim Antieau has published the first page of her new, in-the-works novel, Ruby's Imagine, on her site.

Dianne Sylvan has two excellent posts, one on "Advanced Wicca" and the state of Wiccan writing (more of my thoughts on that later) and another on personal spiritual practice and priorities. Dianne's long, intelligent posts are gifts to the thinking Witch and other intellectually curious sorts.

And finally, what do you call a fourth-degree Gardnerian? A Buddhist. For a personal story about the journey from Wicca to Buddhism, read Al's post about his pursuit of mystery.

Happy surfing!

Venus Bee is back

The lovely Lisa Espenmiller emailed me to announce that Venus Bee is back and accepting new customers. (She was so popular that she had to stave people off for a while.) She's got a blog, too. How can you resist the Fierce Feminist Warrior Balm? I know I can't.

Ambassadors of the earth

I love Pagans, and I love Pagan bloggers. I've tired of the blogosphere as of late - my other blogs lie fallow - but I keep reading (a) the gossip blogs, which somehow relax me, and (b) the Pagan blogs, which fill me and connect me to like minds.

You know what I love about Pagans? I love our connection to the natural world and the cycles of nature. Kim and Joanna, like me, write about their perfect summers days. Joanna and Sonja, like me, write about the nearly-full moon. Kim and Molly write about fairy medicine, and Sonja writes, too, about her work with the elementals. (Don't miss Kim's magical post about listening to bees.) Reya's a city girl, but she feels the need to commune with green things (check out her fabulous new photo and gray hair, too - and if you really want to be jealous, read her posts about her trip to Rome).

A dear friend of mine, someone who, constitutionally, is all air and otherworlds, and who is learning how not to flee the present when things scare her, calls me her ambassador to the earth. I love that. It's remarkable how, although we are earth's creatures, we humans try to spend so much time away from the earth - in our heads, in the mall, in denial of the "soft animals of our bodies," as Mary Oliver says. "Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." We Pagans are ambassadors of the earth, and that, I believe, is a special role we play among our fellow earth-travelers. For keeping me connected, even in cyberspace, I thank you, Pagan sisters. Dark earthy blessings to you.

You’ve heard me say that I think we're hardwired for ecstasy. Our bodies are designed for it. I have never questioned that. So many religions and belief systems have us up in our heads all the time trying to get away from our precious, beautiful bodies. Suffering and ecstasy dwell in the same place: in our bodacious bodies. If you give up one, you have to give up the other. As one of the Old Mermaids said, "Laugh or weep. We swim in your tears." (Kim Antieau)

[The painting is "Latvian Green Woman" by Larissa Shellar.]

Additions to the blogroll

The Pagan blogosphere continues to grow, and I continue to discover new parts of it. I'm expanding the blogroll accordingly. Here are a few new (and new-to-me) blogs I recommend:

This new blog by a smart young Pagan woman called Jenavira is worth reading from the beginning - and it's new enough that it won't take you too long to do so: Essais.

Cypress Nemeton is the new name of a blog that's been around for a while, kept by a Louisiana Druid. (A nemeton is a Celtic sacred grove.)

Lynda Hill's Sabian Symbols is a wonderfully rich resource for those interested in astrology. Recently she read parts of George W. Bush's birth and progressed charts, which contain such symbolism as "a furious storm in a canyon filled with valuable homes," "a gang of robbers in hiding," "two men placed under arrest," and "a large white cross dominates the landscape."

Happy reading!