Midsummer

I've lived most of my life in the northern United States, so I'm accustomed to the long summer evenings around solstice. (When I was a kid, I lived far, far west in the eastern time zone, so it didn't get dark till around 10 p.m.) Now that I'm pregnant, I'm in bed every night by nine, and the sky is still light. Strange. It feels like being a kid again.

Twice in my life I've spent the summer solstice far north of this, once crossing the Baltic Sea by ferry from Sweden to Russia, and once on the shores of Lithuania. In both places, the sun doesn't fall below the horizon the whole night. I remember waking in the middle of the night to peer from my porthole, to watch the strange northern sun hover high above the horizon. And I remember drinking beer in large groups around bonfires in Lithuania, skinny dipping in the cold water before huddling back into our rough Polish sweaters, and stumbling to bed early in the morning.

This weekend's celebrations include a city-wide festival that begins tonight with a fantastic parade, and my ordination on Saturday. It's cool, damp, and gray here, not much like midsummer, but that means the strawberry season will last longer (unless it's too wet), and I won't sweat through the ceremony this weekend. Maybe it will even be cool enough to have a solstice bonfire in the fireplace.

The liminality of the Beltane season gives way to the fullness of Litha. Gather your herbs, leave out cream for the fairies, build your fires high, and dance the sun to sleep. Merry midsummer!

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.

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.

Merry Beltane!

(Photo from the Lawrence University Pagan Organization)

Blessings of fertility and love to all my friends in the northern hemisphere. (And in case Terri in Johannesburg stops by, Samhain blessings for you!)

This holy day and liminal time honors the quickening of desire, the impulse toward life. We honor all forms of sexual love, as well as the love among friends and family and love for the earth and all her inhabitants. May all beings be happy.

Today find a way to honor your deepest longings, and to rejoice in your abundant blessings. May all beings be loved.

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.)

Desire's end, part II

A couple of months ago, a grumpy old guy named Billy visited this blog and apropos of nothing except the blog's name left this comment:

Hey, there is no end to desire. We have been at that for billions of years.

The whole cosmos is nothing other than sexual energies, it's just in our human forms that it gets all messed up.

So maybe he didn't get the reference to the Charge of the Goddess, or maybe he didn't care, but the thing is, I agree with him. Desire seems to be a fundamental operating principle of the universe. As such, it seems perverse to wish for or anticipate its end.

Feri tradition tells a creation myth in which the Goddess gazes into a mirror and, falling in love with herself, gives birth to the universe. It seems to me at least a lovely metaphor, and I think more than that, to say that longing is what draws us into this world (the parents' desire for each other and for a child, the soul's desire to incarnate). Longing lures us through life, however messy and complicated, and it beckons to us from beyond the veil. How unfortunate it would be, then, to deny the power of this longing, to try to make ourselves, as if we could, beings without desire.

Yet we do just that. We deny ourselves all kinds of pleasure, including the pleasure of simply feeling our desires. Think about the fundamental things humans long for: food, water, shelter, touch, sex, companionship, beauty, comfort, meaning, creativity, expression, and connection to the world around us. Which of these isn't affected by practices of self-denial and wishing things were otherwise? How often do we fear that our wanting something will be too painful, that our desires will languish unfulfilled, and so we cut ourselves off from the wanting? What would it mean if instead we allowed ourselves fully to inhabit our desires, to know them intimately, to know ourselves intimately? Is it too much of a risk? What are we risking? And what do we lose if we don't taste the depths of those things we want?

I know my own litany of fear runs like this. I won't get what I want. I want too much, and that means there's something wrong with me. I don't deserve to want or receive things. I'll be judged. I'll be rejected. My needs can never be met. I'll have to give too much of myself away. It will be too painful. I don't want to be needy. I don't want to risk being disappointed. If I "give in" to my desires, they'll overwhelm me, or someone else. I'm powerless in the face of them. I'll hurt someone. I'll be consumed by them. I'll lose control. I'll feel empty, isolated, alone.

In a puritanical culture, whence come many of these fears, desire is something to be kept under tight control if not altogether annihilated. It's an unseemly artifact of our animal natures. We identify desire with women, in whom it's deemed uncontrollable. Like the feminine, it needs to be mastered. Desire leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We feel its tremors, and we turn away.

What would it be like if instead of trying to master, ignore, or squelch desire, we rode its currents instead? What if we became intimate with not just the contents or objects of our desires, but with the very shape, texture, and taste of desire itself? What if we allowed ourselves to dive deep into the wanting? What if we sat with desire and allowed it to unfold within us, to reveal its layers and secrets, to discover what's underneath the ripples of surface longing?

What if we were honest with each other about our desires? What if, instead of furtively confessing, we boldly stated, explored, investigated, and celebrated them? What if we stopped being coy and embarrassed? What would it mean to take responsibility for desire in the full context of that desire? To work skillfully with it? What if we acknowledged and accepted that we're desirous beings and got to know ourselves as such?

Buddhism on desire

Buddhist meditation launches an individual headlong into a curious yet rigorous examination of desire. Overly simplistic formulations of Buddhist philosophy make many folks think that desire is a bad thing, plain and simple. But the true Buddhist perspective on the all-too-human experience called desire--whether it's hunger for a slice of pepperoni pizza, longing for world peace, or just some good old-fashioned lust--is much more nuanced. Ultimately speaking, Buddhism takes the perspective that desire is 100 percent natural and incredibly positive. The problem, however, is that unchecked fear and unexamined habit can pervert desire into addictive tendencies--habits which are destructive for an individual, harmful for a community, and disastrous for our planet. What Buddhist meditation necessarily reveals to us, moment by moment, is the problematic nature of our impulse for instant gratification.

(Ethan Nichtern)

An interlude on desire and coming back

I.

I'm bound by the fire.
I'm bound by the beauty.
I'm bound by desire.
I'm bound by the duty.

I'm coming back in 500 years,
and the first thing I'm gonna do
when I get back here
is to see these things I love.
And they'd better be here.

First I'm going to find a forest,
and stand there in the trees,
and kiss the fragrant forest floor,
and lie down in the leaves,
and listen to the birds sing
the sweetest song you'll ever hear.

And everything the dappled,
everything the birds,
everything the earthness,
everything the verdant,
the verdant green.
(Jane Siberry)

II.

A thousand years from now, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There'll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we're living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.

(Rob Brezny)

Desire's end, part I

In Atlanta this past weekend, visiting my friend Scrivener for his birthday, I met Rahim and his partner, both of whom I took to immediately. Rahim asked me about the name of this blog. While I wrote a bit about it way back in the beginning, I've been meaning to revisit the concept of desire. My belief in the goodness of human desire is one thing that drew me to Wicca. So it may seem strange, on the face of it, that (what I take to be) a central and singular text of our thealogy, the Charge of the Goddess, declares that the divine is that which is attained at desire's end. It sounds a little like a common misunderstanding about Buddhism: that to be holy, to reach enlightenment, we must rid ourselves of our desires. I don't think Buddhism teaches that, and I don't think the Charge does, either. But it does pose a puzzle--perhaps a Wiccan koan--and I'd like to worry it a little.

The Charge of the Goddess is a poem written, or channeled, by Doreen Valiente. (The text I quote here is Starhawk's adaptation.) The Charge has much to say about the primacy of desire in human experience. For example,

Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in my Presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and Mine also is joy on earth. For My love is law unto all beings.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

The Pagani tend to like a good time: feasting, drinking, dancing naked around bonfires, singing, drumming, dressing in costume, joking, pulling pranks. Oh, and the sex. Pagans, generally speaking, have sex-positive, libertarian, and libertine values around sex. Sex, like other expressions and experiences of embodiment, is a sacred part of our spirituality (sacred, that is, when it's not profane, if that's what turns you on).

But while we often emphasize the fun aspects of human embodiment--the acts of pleasure--a well-developed Wiccan thealogy, I believe, would also express the sacraments of our bodies sick and in pain; scarred from trauma or abuse; aging, dying. What matters is being present in our bodies, and that can be as difficult during acts of pleasure as it can be when we're in pain. A worthwhile practice for any Pagan, and really anyone at all, I believe, is to practice being present in one's own body. Such presence can be cultivated in various ways: breath work, body work, meditation, yoga, and ritual.

Sickness, pain, and death aren't signs of our fallen nature, as at least some versions of Christianity would have it. From a thealogical perspective, it doesn't make sense to long to be free from our bodies anymore than we long to be free of this earth. (And part of being Pagan, I believe, is to take pleasure in the earth, really to love it, know it, treat it with respect, and give thanks for its abundant gifts.) Reincarnation makes a lot of sense to me as an expression of Pagan thealogy; hey, we get to come back. Reincarnation with the hopeful goal of finally getting off the wheel, of being free from incarnation, makes no sense to me at all.

What then do we make of the final line of the Charge?

For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire.

Where is the end of desire? Does it happen in death? When we get to heaven? When we reunite with the oneness of the universe? When we reach enlightenment? When we're really lucky...and thank goddess we don't have to feel the tug of these human bodies anymore? Is the end of desire a desirable state, something we should pursue or at least look forward to? Desire seems essential to being human, in a body, and that is something we Pagani hold sacred. So why is the end something to be attained?

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.