Stirring

Sap's running. Can you feel it? My pagan heart thrums with the turning of the wheel.

My baby turned 1. I turned 40. Life is very sweet and not at all what I expected. But I'm devoted. To the whole thing, religiously. That is my thealogy.

All's well

All is well. I've just been busy raising a baby these last several months. Very challenging. Sheer bliss.

Available: freelance Pagan priestess

Women are more likely than men to be religious. When women belong to a particular culture, tradition, or faith, they're more likely to be conservative about that culture, tradition, or faith (or so I think I've read; I remember it surprised me). Women--usually mothers--often play the role of cultural conservator: I think of mothers lighting shabbas candles; mothers cooking big holiday meals, sending cards, buying gifts, remembering birthdays; grandmothers attending Mass every day. Women don't often hold positions of power in religious hierarchy (though that started to change with the second wave of feminism), but they most often do the day-to-day religious work in a culture.

In Wicca, of course, especially those strains of Wicca influenced by feminism, women hold spiritual authority. (This is something of a truism, but my own experience suggests a pretty firm divide between feminist-inflected Wicca and other, more traditionally male-centered Wicca; I don't think the public face of Wicca is as feminist or female-friendly as one might expect from a Goddess-centered spirituality.) Also, since Paganisms are relatively new, historically, and often improvisational and ad hoc, and since they seem to attract seekers with anarchist or countercultural sympathies, many Pagans don't set much store by tradition. (Obviously there are exceptions, but even traditionalist Pagans don't have that many years of tradition to uphold; and Reconstructionists are, you know, reconstructing, which involves much faithfully making things up.)

I think a lot about what it means, as a woman and now a mother, to serve the Goddess, and what it means to be called to a kind of clergy-like service in a faith that has no clergy (and that some would argue should have no clergy; please forgive a new mother for not looking up all the links; I think Kerr Cuhulain made an argument to that effect recently). I think about how I want to practice my faith now that I have a child. Can I still slack off on some of the sabbats? (Pagan true confession: I never manage much for Beltane.) How will I get my child a spiritual education? (Join the UU church? Develop a curriculum for Pagan SunDay School, as one non-Pagan friend suggested I do?) Is spiritual community even more important now, and is a specifically Wiccan/Pagan/earthwise community important? How do I rustle up one of those?

In short, what does it mean to be a religious conservator and innovator within my family?

What does it mean to be a freelance priestess in my wider community? For we Pagani a sense of place--of the very earth under our feet--is important, but there aren't a whole lot of Pagans in my place. I image playing a role something like a public monastic; I imagine tending a temple and playing a visible role in a wider community. I'm a solid celebrant, though I usually have to create my own occasions and invite people to celebrate with me. But I imagine that my public role might be more counselor and healer. I'm also an excellent teacher--really, it's one of the things I do best, though I've been several years without a classroom or students.

In short, I have vision, skills, training, and interest, but I don't know how or what to manifest.

I remain open to Her call. The changes in my life in the past year alone have been tremendous. I'm incredibly blessed. I just wonder if I need to be taking more assertive action. I don't want to miss out. Yet the message I get so often is, be patient and wait.

So I turn these ideas over in my mind, I listen, and I wait.

4 years of desire

Just a quick note to celebrate that I've been keeping this blog for four years. So much has changed in my life, but writing about that will have to wait. Happy blogiversary to me!

Early days

Yesterday at the mystery school a friend said to me, "you still look totally shocked--or am I just projecting?" I replied, "nope, I'm still totally shocked." How does one get used to the idea of having a baby? "Getting used to" doesn't even make sense. He's just there, now, this whole new part of my life, who in the early days and weeks feels like all of life. I'm sure at some point I'll once again have a thought that isn't about the baby, but not yet. It's been only two weeks. Mostly, we breastfeed and sleep. We've had some visitors, including my family for a weekend. I'm aimlessly reading some books. We care for Gryphon, who seems to be adjusting well, but whom I worry about anyway; does he still feel important and loved? Does he feel like he has a role? (He's very protective of the baby and me, but I worry he's stressing himself out.) Adonis does household chores and keeps me fed, with the help of friends dropping off meals every other day. On warmer days, when it gets above 20 degrees, we all go for a long walk. But mostly, we're captivated. Held captive.

Yesterday we spent the day at the mystery school with Adonis's class. That was very good. So much love. I wouldn't have had Lucian without the hope my years in the school have given me. We can change. We can heal. We can risk love. We nourish ourselves in the darkness and reach out toward the light.

Birthdays and presents

Happy birthday wishes to two men who have long delighted me: John Crowley and Woody Allen. (Who knew they shared a birthday, and with my little friend Iðunn, too?)

Last night was our last childbirth class, and the man who delights me the most gave me an excellent footbath and foot massage and a very cool present. (Let's hear it for retro-aesthetic sexuality, postmodern femininity, and pit bulls.)

Where we're at

That's Gryphon with my baby belly. Four weeks till our due date.

Our birth team came over for the home visit yesterday: our midwife, her apprentice, and their nurse. They'd been up the night before at a birth. We showed them around our house and sat down with them to envision the birth. They described their different roles and asked what we needed from them. While they'll be there throughout the labor to offer support and monitor how the labor goes, they also described themselves as working quietly in tandem, largely in the background, meditating and holding space for us and the baby. I'll give birth in a space created by Adonis, my sister, and me, held by these three women with tons of experience (I have none, after all) who respect the instinctual, animal wisdom of my body, who will support Adonis and me but not interfere with us, who will offer us care and love throughout the birthing. In my wider community, word will go out via the mystery school's listservs that I'm in labor, and we'll be held by all of that love and energy, too.

I'm very excited. I feel so lucky that we've been able to create sacred space and intention around the birth; no matter what happens in terms of events, we've created a vessel to hold us.

I'm slowing waaaay down. My brain is enjoying more spaciousness, less pointed analysis. This morning as we walked home from brunch, Adonis delighted me with a high-flying exposition on capitalism, saving the earth, and Shiva. My response? "I need to pee, and then I need to lie down."

That's where we're at these days.

iPhone

Life has been far too busy the last couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to things slowing down.

I was snapping photos of Gryphon today, to email to Adonis, who's out of town. There's my handsome boy. Photos on my new iPhone, I should add. Adonis is a hardcore iPhone fanatic, and I put off getting one for a long time, because I thought I could never love it the way he does, and hence couldn't justify the expense. After laundering my much despised cell phone last weekend--it was an accident, I swear!--and my verizon contract having just run out, it was time to take the plunge. I'm quite happy with my gorgeously designed, sexy, intuitive little machine. Using it is a total pleasure.

If only there were a nice Blogger interface application so I could blog easily from the iPhone.

Hope

My sister just sent me this email:

I called [my friend, who is African-American] this morning and she told me that when her stepson woke up and found out who won, he was so excited, he told her "Mommy, now I can be president, too." And her girlfriend called her to tell her that her seven year old son dressed himself in his Sunday suit for school telling his mother that if he was going to be president he'd better start dressing like it.

There are a lot of people this morning dreaming of a much better and more equitable world. The power of that inspiration can't be underestimated.

I voted...

...and then I went to a Rotary club pancake breakfast. People are so excited; it feels like a national holiday. Friends and new friends, hugs and blueberry pancakes all around! Blessed be.

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.

Pagan church 2

When your lover makes you brunch: organic pancakes with butter and maple syrup; bacon from local, humanely-raised pigs; local apple cider, unpasteurized! (If you're from an apple-growing state, you probably drank it as a kid, but it's nearly impossible to find now.)

Moving

We're packing. And painting at the new house. Well, I'm not supposed to be painting, low-VOC paints or no. I did a lot of the taping around molding and doors, prior to the painting. Adonis and a friend primed the walls in two bedrooms and the upstairs hallway in our new house. I packed all afternoon back at the apartment. I pack in a very organized, methodical manner, and it takes me forever to get anything done. I'm also easily overwhelmed. Adonis blitzes; he's very efficient and doesn't worry too much about organization. He unloaded dozens of boxes from the attic this evening; I sorted through them and decided what to keep, recycle, trash, send to the library book sale. I'd say that we make a good team, but he gets way more done than I do. For this post, I asked him whether I was actually contributing anything. He replied, "you're doing a lot, and you're gestating." So there's that.

We're so happy about the new house. I have a gazillion ideas for it.

Now it's night and we're sitting side-by-side on the couch amidst the boxes, him playing poker on his iPhone, me typing away on my iBook, eating blueberries.

Movers come on Tuesday.

Your typical pregnant, Pagan summer

I've finally emerged from the exhaustion and nausea that accompanied my first trimester. It feels so good to be able to stay awake after work, do things on the weekends, and even enjoy a meal! The last few weekends have been lovely idylls with Adonis--the farmers' market, brunches with friends, swimming in the gorges, going to the movies, Saturday night picnics and outdoor concerts. We've also begun packing our apartment; movers are scheduled to come in three weeks to move us into our new house. I'm glad we're enjoying the beautiful summer, even with all the change swirling around us.

I've been reading Kim Antieau's novels and, on Joanna's suggestion, I've begun reading Charles de Lint. Adonis and I have become big fans of "Mad Men," and I was delighted to find a couple of familiar Witches keeping an obsessive blog about the show. And of course, we're watching and rewatching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (fan blog here). Aren't you?

Blessings

It has been an inward season for me, even as the world has burst forth in bud, bloom, and green. I'm astonished that it's almost Midsummer, and almost my ordination day. I'm pressing my dress and shawl (the one John brought from India this winter), and polishing my silver pentacle (the one Adonis brought me from Arcata) in preparation for the day. My ordination as a minister of healing arts is strictly speaking non-sectarian, but I'm pledged to the Goddess, and this is another rite of passage on that journey. I'm terribly proud of myself, and tremendously grateful.

There is an old poem that speaks of blessings raining down like blossoms. That is what life has felt like. I'm pregnant; our baby is due at the winter solstice. We conceived six months to the day after our beloved Lugh crossed over. And we've finally found our house: a sweet old house with beautiful gardens that border those of a friend--she's already suggested that we build a stone circle where our yards meet--four blocks from where we live now, in a vibrant downtown neighborhood. We move in August. Adonis is making plans for the birthing room; so far my contribution has been to order prayer flags to hang over the altar.

I've been spending a lot of time in bed, as much as I'm able, and I've been drawn to reread novels that are spiritually important to me: so far, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and The Mists of Avalon (though I can never bear to read the last 200 pages, after Arthur's duel in the realm of fairy). If you have suggestions for novels that have been importantly to you spiritually as a Pagan, please leave them here.

Got Bit - the memoir meme

Stewgad is my very good friend in real life, which means I never read her blog. It turns out that sometimes she reads my blog, so I feel a little bit bad about not reading hers. If she hadn't told me last night when I was over at her house that she'd tagged me for this meme, I'd never have heard about it.

The meme is the "six-word memoir," which as you may know by now is a challenge to write your life's story in six words. This meme is inspired by a recent book that collects people's six-word memoirs, called Not Quite What I Was Planning. I actually like that as my six-word memoir, but I'll try to exercise a little more creativity here.

But I'm still going to cheat. My memoir comes in two volumes, each with its own six-word title.

Volume I is Tried to Be Someone Else Entirely. Volume II is Gave Up, Followed My Heart Instead.

(Feel inspired? Haven't done this yet? Then consider yourself tagged.)

Good things

(1) By all indicators, my sister is now cancer-free for a second time. If you knew my sister, you'd know that cancer picked the wrong girl to fuck with.

(2) Adonis and I have a house under contract. We're keeping our fingers crossed until after the inspection this weekend. The house didn't pass inspection, so it's back to house-hunting.

(3) I fly south tomorrow and back on Monday, and I'm not booked with American Airlines.

Spiritual teachers

I consider myself lucky to have had many spiritual teachers in my life so far. I joke that if it weren't for the Jews and the lesbians, I'd be nowhere, spiritually speaking. Most of my teachers have been Jewish, queer women, or both. Of course, there are the exceptions. The Lutheran pastors of my youth were straight, male, and, well, Lutheran midwesterners, of German or Scandinavian descent. Wonderful, compassionate men, they really were spiritual teachers. (Note to evangelical Christians: I'm not one of those alleged Pagans who was alienated from the church thanks to the failings of its people.) One of the finest teachers I've ever had was Lugh, who as far as I could ascertain was neither Jewish nor lesbian, those being human classifications, and he being a pit bull.

I live in a town with a sizable population of Tibetan Buddhists (both Tibetan and American, and many of the Americans are also, uh, Jewish). Thus Tibetan Buddhism has had a significant impact on my spiritual life. I began studying Buddhism, eclectically and largely on my own, around the time I turned 30 and was preparing for my Ph.D. qualifying exams, i.e., going through hell. I also began studying yoga, and the attendant Hinduism, while I was in graduate school, a few years before I commenced my study of Buddhism. Yoga renewed my spiritual alliance to my body, thus laying some of the groundwork for Wicca.

One of my current teachers is a white, Italian-American Buddhist who grew up working-class and Roman Catholic in the South, a very spiritual, feminist woman with a mouth on her like a sailor. Goddess bless America.

None of my "real life" spiritual teachers have been Wiccans or Pagans. I consider some Pagan writers also to be my teachers, Starhawk--yeah, Jewish--most notably among them, but those aren't people I have relationships with in my day-to-day life. I sometimes worry that as a young group of faiths, we lack spiritual depth or maturity--I'm not sure what the correct term is, and I'm not sure really how to express my point. I know Pagan writers whose thinking I admire, but where are our role models for spiritual maturity? I'm not saying they don't exist, just that I don't really know who they are. Some Pagan writers, a couple of decades older than I--people whose work, I stress, has been important to me--don't strike me as the kind of people I want to be. I'm not saying that a teacher has to be perfect at all. Indeed, I believe perfection is antithetical to any genuine spiritual path. But I want my teachers to have qualities that I admire and want to cultivate in myself. I want to see a journey that compels me to follow suit in my own way. I suspect that some of our finest spiritual role models aren't public figures, and that I just don't have the good fortune to know them.

I treasure my eclectic, syncretic, American spiritual upbringing, and I have a happy spiritual home in Wicca. I would like for some of my spiritual teachers or role models to have a room in that same home.

Who are your spiritual teachers and role models? Who are the people from your faith tradition whom you admire?

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.

Rising up out of the ocean*

I had a wonderful, amazing, powerful weekend at the mystery school. I'm only three months away from my ordination! (Or, a quarter turn of the wheel away--this week is Ostara, and I get ordained at the summer solstice.) My class meets officially as a group only one more weekend between now and then. I can't believe how close we are.

There are still several weekends to assist, plus a weekend-long astrology class (optional, so not all my classmates will be there), and a weekend-long integral anatomy class (also optional for my class, since we had anatomy in our second year, but the format for the anatomy class changes a lot each year, so it's always worth going). I'm also traveling in April to work with a "healee" who lives far from here.

My friend John brought me a beautiful orange silk scarf back from India (and a cd of the Gayatri mantra); I intend to wear the scarf for my ordination. John has been a true friend on my journey; a "tree guy" and a radical faerie, he encouraged my interest in Paganism back when I thought I was nuts, gave me my first deck of tarot cards, and has taught me a lot about dog-love.

I've been thinking a lot about "next steps," since this is my fourth and final year as a student at the mystery school. (I will continue to assist for at least another year.) I've almost made the decision to enroll in a six-month apprenticeship program in herbalism, pending financial discussion with my sweet and generous partner. That would begin in May. And I'm seriously considering applying to Cherry Hill for the fall.

I'm so excited by new plans and opportunities. Aries must be right around the corner!

(*The title for this post comes from the Sabian symbol for 1 degree Aries.)