The initiate

I feel tremendously blessed.

Last year during the full moon in Cancer, I gave birth. Last night saw the return of that full moon (though my son's solar birthday is still nine days away). These past twelve lunar cycles have been a year-long intensive, an initiation, a breathtaking journey down into myself--a self who is now two, in that strange human way that flesh begets flesh and produces another who is of oneself but not oneself. From breastfeeding, and sharing attachment parenting with my partner, has emerged the most intimate relationship of my life, we three. Being a mother challenges me in ways I never anticipated and brings me into bliss.

One of the most striking things, to me, about motherhood is how it's brought my values into sharp focus. I'm someone who cares about value--moral, aesthetic, etc.--a lot. Becoming a mother, with the relentless demands on my energy and attention, has burned away a lot of bullshit. Here is what matters to me: family, spirituality, creativity. I can flesh that out again--my spirituality encompasses my devotion to the earth, for example--but those are the clean bones.

So I return to this space, where for many years I've written about spirituality, my winding, earth-based path. My passion is still here. If you're reading--and especially if you've been reading for years--I'm grateful.

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"

Everything about love is a mystery

(This photo was taken at my local farmers' market, but not by me.)

The earth spends herself with wild extravagance here at the height of Lammastide, and I thrill with gratitude.

I give thanks for the three friends with whom I've had intimate conversations over the last few days: for their love, insight, openness; for reflecting back to me my own beauty and worth; for shared meals and goddess art and a sunny afternoon dog-walk.

I give thanks for my sweet puppy, keeping me company all weekend while Adonis is away; the puppy who woke me this morning by snuggling right up to my body and who stayed to cuddle; the puppy who with little struggle submitted to the indignity of a bath this afternoon and now sleeps, a clean dog on a clean quilt on the bed.

I give thanks for my lover; for the photos he's sent from California via iPhone, because he wants me to see what he sees; for wonderful phone conversations; for his willingness to face his demons and mine; for our adventurous partnership and abiding love.

I give thanks for the abundance of the earth and for the local farmers who feed me, for their commitment to our community, for the sweet, generous land. Yesterday I came home from market with tomatoes and peaches and eggplant, sheep cheese and freshly baked bread, spinach and kale, raw milk, yogurt, and butter, freshly-prepared macrobiotic food, and an armful of flowers.

Everything has felt delicious this weekend: cleaning out the entryway to my home and scrubbing the stairs, laundering bedding, arranging flowers, rewatching Frida, wandering my favorite local art gallery, sitting on the grass outside the laundromat drinking an iced mocha from my neighborhood coffee shop, talking with friends, walking in the sunshine.

Aphrodite calls to me, she who guards the mysteries of love, passion, creativity, beauty, and pleasure. She calls to me, and I open.

The wisdom of old mermaids

Kim is writing a novel about the Church of the Old Mermaids, and she's started a blog sanctuary to introduce us to their stories. She's also encouraging people to create or find old mermaid sanctuaries in their communities and let her know about them, even send her photos.

I would like to see Old Mermaid Sanctuaries everywhere. They already exist in some places. In other places, we need to rearrange things a bit so they can come into existence—or so they can truly be seen, like wiping film off of an old window. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where we care for ourselves and each other. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where the sun comes up and the sun goes down. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where the heart opens and love flows in and out. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where cynicism does not exist. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where compassion is a verb. Old Mermaid Sanctuaries are places where you and I live. (Read the whole thing here.)

(Art by Joanna Powell Colbert)

The stylish witch

I've been thinking about style, or aesthetics - the way we dress the world around us. It's one of those areas of life that's trivialized as feminine (or is that feminized as trivial?), but an appreciation for beauty and the cultivation of taste have been regarded as virtuous pursuits since at least the Greeks. I don't confuse taste with expense; I think extreme wealth is in very bad taste. Indeed, I prefer the creativity evoked by economic limitations (but not poverty; poverty is just harmful - it ain't romantic). Sonja inspires me in her fervent commitment to busting people's preconceived notions about witches' aesthetic (although she may be more heathen than witch these days, but never mind - heathens probably have a worse image problem than witches). We're not all living in country cottages surrounded by herb gardens, or gothic industrial lofts, or our parents' basements. If you're a Pagan and at all interested in this stuff, leave a comment describing your own aesthetic.


I'm torn between a Japanese-inflected Scandanavian modern - wood, leather, and other natural (appearing) fibers, and clean lines - made accessible to a plebe like me by Ikea, and a more magpie, colorful, eclectic, somewhat kitschy, but never twee, style. (I couldn't begin to find a photo on the internet.) I think these styles capture different parts of my personality perfectly, and taken together - not that they work together - express my tastes pretty well. I like handmade things - quilts, clay plates and cups, paintings by local artists. I like bright color, and I like quirky.

And of course, there absolutely must be stacks of books.

Creativity as sacred intention

In her book, The Earth Path, Starhawk asks us to meditate on the question, What is sacred to you? The answer to that question is your sacred intention, a touchstone for making your way in the world. My answer is the freedom and creative energy of women.

Freedom is sacred because the psyche needs to be free to create. The great South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko said that "the greatest weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Imagination born of psychic freedom is crucial for changing the world. Also, we must be free in a physical sense. Creativity relies on nourishing external circumstances. Thus my conception of freedom isn't just negative - e.g. keep your laws off my body - it's also robustly positive: give me the things I need to create. Support women's creative lives. Our salvation lies in our creativity - the free run of our creativity, unhindered by fear, lusciously supported. Thus my sacred intention is to foster and defend the freedom and creative energy of women. Is that too abstract? I see that intention in much that I do: creating my own life as a work of art, teaching, financially supporting women artists and collecting their art, encouraging and inspiring others, defending women's reproductive (creative) freedom.

What would the world be like if our social, political, and economic systems all cherished what is most sacred to you?

There would be programs in the schools to foster girls' creativity. There would be all kinds of social supports for people so they could follow a creative path. Information would be easy to obtain. Women's art would be valued. There would be money for art and other creative endeavors. There would be other standards for value. Women's reproductive needs would be met. We would see women as the powerful, wise, creative, and sacred people that we are. There would be gorgeous, well-funded, free lending libraries for books, but also for other materials used to make art. Skills would be openly shared. There would be ample time to dream. There would be vital connection with nature, community, and one another. We would all pursue work we love and the world we want; yet all our needs would be provided for, and there would be some luxuries, too. Women would be changing the world all the time, and there would be plenty of funding.

Children would be cherished. Life would begin, not end, at birth. (For right wingers, life begins at conception and ends at birth.) Work would be shared. Emotions would be valued, and we would be educated in emotions. For example, we would learn when our emotions are true guides for us and when they lead us astray. We would learn to be grounded in our bodies and our communities, because creativity requires self-knowledge and context. We would encourage each other in all kinds of creative expression. No one would learn perfectionism. Everyone would dress however they liked, to express themselves or not, as they chose. Vitality would be encouraged, in our bodies - food and exercise and rest, plus good health care; in our minds - activated or quiet (we would learn both); in our work. Health would never be sacrificed to other ends - well, except sometimes pleasure. We would value rest. We would value dreams. We would love and comfort one another. Women's sexual pleasure would be honored and protected as sacred. We wouldn't have to work for mere subsistence; we would have enough. We would applaud and encourage new ways of thinking, rather than fearing them. We would not live in fear. We would recognize our moral duty to care for the least among us and not to kill one another. Prisons, too, could foster creativity and groundedness. No one would have a child unless she wanted one, and she would never be left to raise her children alone. Girls wouldn't become pregnant unless they really wanted to be, unless they conceived of that pregnancy and child as an integral part of their lives.

Does any part of the world already value these things? There are pockets of resistance. There are people like Heather Corinna and Margaret Cho creating this world. There are creative anarchists. There are political movements. There are women defending the front lines and women dreaming new dreams.

1. There are librarians fighting for our rights to knowledge, information, art, and privacy.
2. There are women writing (including bloggers).
3. There are women practicing magic.
4. There are women leading political movements, like RAWA and Code Pink and Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement.
5. There are anarchist health collectives, like the Ithaca Health Alliance.
6. There is the women's sexuality movement.
7. There are women publishing magazines and on-line journals.
8. There are women seeking the Goddess.
9. There are women organizing in their own communities.
10. There are women making art and music on their own terms, industries be damned.
11. Women are developing new, democratic ways of gaining access to creativity: Deena Metzger, Natalie Goldberg, and Julia Cameron.