Textual Arachne

Samhain sonnet

2008-11-01T23:33:00.000-07:00

Winter caught me unready and wounded.
I'd thought to weather it at home, but now
I barely make it to a frozen cave.
No warmth, no food; but my chest torn open
is spared the wind. How will I last the night?
The cave leads deeper. I make my way down
past gypsum blooms on granite till I come
before the great last threshold; past that point
I would be bones and ash. She, vast enthroned,
takes me, holds me, shows me her face. Down here
I can survive the winter's ice and snow.
From here, I could resurface anywhere.
Perhaps a voice will call me home; perhaps
I'll wander anew. All refuges lead here.

Based on a Samhain meditation and the image of hibernating bears.

Balancing, spinning, moving

2008-09-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

The equinox actually feels like the equinox this year. Although the leaves haven't changed color, there's a crispness in the air and a chill undertone to the breeze that hints of a long, slow descent into autumn. And it's time for the autumnal equinox.

Last week was one of excess for me: too many appointments, too much rushing around, too much joy, too much pain, too much food, too much work, too much to drink. It had kind of a Dionysian wonder to it that I was doing so much and enjoying it so fully, but it also played merry hell with my body and my mind. I trapped these pursuits in defined scheduled times and let excess reign within its allotted period. But I'm tiring of that approach. The summer was unscheduled and loose; the fall has been hyperscheduled and excessive. I want some other kind of balance than the one I've developed through obsessive scheduling and regulation.

I'm not certain what that would mean in practice. So I am turning to the equinox, the balance point, the twitch of oscillation between excess and starvation in my search. I want to find a balance that doesn't come from setting excesses at each other. What would that be like?

When we balance on one foot, we aren't at rest; a thousand tiny muscle corrections are constantly adjusting our posture so we don't fall over. When we walk, we're constantly correcting ourselves, catching each fall and turning it into a step. Even just sitting, as any meditation practitioner will tell you, is an active process. So balance isn't absence of movement, but rather the accumulations of many millions of movements. The equinox point is not just the abundance of summer poised against the absence in winter, but the million tiny changes that shift us from one direction to another.

A million tiny changes, rather than a great struggle between opposites. Yet how can I be sure that these are the right changes? A million tiny changes are also the same things that gradually petrify us, or accustom us to greater and greater pain till we no longer remember what it was like to live without it. How do we know that the tiny corrections we make are helping, not eroding?

What are we given? What do we give? I give my willingness to make a thousand tiny changes, a thousand tiny adjustments in my life, a small smile here, a moment of preserved calm there. More than that, I give my faith and trust that this is the right path; the way I am walking is the way I wish to be. What we are given in return in the sense of the center, the idea of balance as the still point: we cannot become still ourselves, but we can know what it might be and aim towards it.

Beloved Lady, I give you my trust in the unseen path, my daily mindfulness of actions aiming for that unseen center. Beloved Lady, I ask that the path be true, that you bring your touch to my corrections and move with me as I move in balance.

We are given the horizon of our hopes, and we give our tiny steps towards that far horizon. May it be the horizon we seek, or if not quite that, one that brings us joy nonetheless.

Still time

2008-08-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

This marks the third of my Lughnasa posts, and the completion of a theme that I set myself at last year's Samhain: the idea that each of the eight holidays confers a gift upon us, and asks that we give a gift in return. It's odd to have made it through the year with consistent posting on this theme; although my fullmoon posts have dwindled, I've been keeping to this idea for every one of the holidays. Before Samhain I'll post a retrospective, thinking about what that progression has developed into and maybe finding a similar pattern for the next year.

I'm surprised that there's still time; that I've made it through the whole year, with the feeling of still having more to say and more to do. And that makes me think of what Lughnasa means to me as a holiday.

I know little about its roots: loaf-mass, feast of Lugh, second planting, first of the harvest festivals, celebration of the dog days of August...In comparison to the stories of Imbolc or the clouds of myths around the Big Days of Beltane and Samhain, Lughnasa feels like a date without a history. (No doubt a lot of that could be fixed with a little scholarship on my part.)

For me, its place in the wheel of the year is one of wonderful surprise. Like Imbolc, it seems to be about continuance--more winter to go, more summer left. With the turn of the light at the solstice, I tend to start looking ahead to the Equinox and the gradual decline into winter's sleep--and Lughnasa perks up to show me just how far away that time is.

There's still time, it says. Still time for another planting. Still time to enjoy the summer heat and the green growing world. Yes, the nights come earlier, but isn't that nice too? The relief from the hot August days comes in steamy cool nights, stars overhead even through the August humidity, turning from stifling haze into cooling dew as the night goes on. Did you think you'd wasted the summer? There's a whole turn left to go--a month before classes begin, weeks before the equinox, just as much time as before. There is still time to love what is here.

Like a day where I slept in with the alarm clock unplugged, and woke to find I was fully rested but it was still early; like realizing the night is warm enough for a long walk after dinner; like a fortuitous travel delay that grants me an extra day with friends. Lughnasa is the gift of still time, time we hadn't anticipated or banked on in our plans for the summer, when we saw it going from high summer to equinox-point in a blink.

The gift that is called from us in return is to use this time for what we left out before. Still time: did you work hard all summer because you couldn't spare a moment free? Lughnasa grants you long evenings to rest yourself. Still time: did you procrastinate on the work due at Solstice and resigned yourself to panic? Lughnasa grants you the days to rededicate to this work.

Second planting, second resting, second chances. There is more summer than we knew, and it stays longer than we had dreamed. Use this time well, for the things you could not or did not grant yourself in the first part of the summer.

Midsummer gifts

2008-06-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

Midsummer is the high point of the sun, but not of the summer. At least not here, where June can consist entirely of mud and rain, and where hot days last long after Lammas. It's been long, slow, lazy days here, and I keep marveling at how late the light goes. I know that in December I'll be shuffling home in the dark as soon as I leave class, and now the sun is high in the sky even after we've finished dinner.

Midsummer is swimming in light. Unlike the crazy burst of energy I get at Midwinter, Midsummer makes me doze. I want to curl up under trees and listen to sounds in the park. I want to lie down and feel the earth turning. Life--work, school, plans, people--doesn't stop for this, but in Midsummer I can almost make it slow down.

What are the gifts of Midsummer? Beltaine was a great shuddering Yes! and the gift of life. In the days since, we're surrounded with life and light, "drowning in Summer's cauldron," as XTC put it. So what more could Midsummer give us?

The key is the thing I least like to think about at Midsummer: that this is the point where the light begins to lessen. At Midwinter, I'm all to eager to hold onto that reversal, and at Midsummer I can't stand to think of darkness resurging. I want more light, more long evenings and strawberries.

But if the light continued to grow, or even if it stayed at this point, we would soon die. We might love the first month of it, but then we'd start hungering for shade, for night, and even for cold again. We'd suffocate or burn, and what's worse, we might even come to hate the light.

A friend explained to me recently that a heatwave had caused the strawberries in her garden to rot on the vine. For things to ripen well, for crops to grow and animals to thrive, the descent from Midsummer has to start.

Midsummer's gift to us is restraint and limit, the upper boundary of sunlight and warmth. We don't know it yet--for weeks after Midsummer, we'll still be surrounded in green. So our gift in return isn't really a response to that restraint, the way that at Samhain we struggle against the limits of death. Instead, we give love for the gifts of summer. We aren't asked to mourn now. It might even be a little insulting to start crying for the loss of all of this while being so well off.

What we give in return is enjoyment of summer, beyond the acceptance Yes that we gave at Beltaine. Acceptance of the good things that summer brings, made even more important by knowing that they won't last forever. Knowing that each thing has its season isn't the same as being sad that they can't last forever: what's important is to really love them in the finitude of that season.

Learning to say Yes

2008-05-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

The summer holidays have always been hard for me to celebrate well. It's easier to think Deep Religious Thoughts about the world when it's under snow, or struggling through slush, or slowly turning the green into red and gold. During the summer I end up either enjoying myself and forgetting to consecrate the days, or wanting to turn a meditation on warmth and plenty into one warning of cold times to come, hinting at gloom and doom.

I suppose on one hand those are fine responses; the first an embrace of the moment, the second a way of uniting the year the same way that I look ahead to summer during my winter posts. But both somehow seem to miss the point of the summer holidays--the "be here now" of Beltane, Solstice, Lammas. And thinking about the recurring theme of gifts of the holidays that I've been writing about has made me more aware that I'm rarely able to give myself to a summer holiday completely. I'm either entirely inside myself and my own enjoyment (which is fine, but not ideal) or I'm looking back or ahead to colder times (which is also fine, and also not ideal). Considering Beltane in particular has made me confront this.

Every holiday brings a gift, and every holiday calls forth a gift from us. Beltane is about learning to say Yes.

I don't mean acquiescing, allowing someone else's idea of Yes to pull you along with it. I don't mean saying "yes, but..." I don't mean saying Yes to pressure or coercion. A situation where you can't really say No is also one where you can't really say Yes, and vice versa. And it's not about saying Yes to a person or a plan or an idea.

It's about saying Yes to the entire thing.

I'm not good at saying Yes. I'm very skilled at saying "Yes, but...," prone to saying "Okay, if that's what you want," and occasionally good at saying No. None of these things are the Yes that Beltane calls out of us.

Yes in the Molly Bloom sense. Yes in the embrace of life outside and inside. Yes to who you are. Yes to what the Goddess, Universe, Gods, are in you. Yes in the maypole and the blooming apple trees, Yes to evening and morning.

The unconditional Yes terrifies me. And it should--in almost any case, it's a recipe for abuse, for heartbreak, for harm. Even if we know what's coming later in the year or where we came from in the winter, it's still going to hurt when we undergo it. But Beltane isn't asking a permanent Yes, just Yes for today. Tomorrow we'll figure out How and What Next.

In return, Beltane gives us life: life in its birth, blooming, sprouting, joyful springlife. Like the other holidays, I don't know which comes first. Do we respond to the gift of life with Yes, or do we announce our Yes and are given life as a result?

I don't know what your Yes will look like. Morris dancing, lovemaking, feasting, debate, fellowship, enlightenment, meditation, hedonism, charity...all of these and more could be Yes. But let it be Yes, and not "yes, but..." and not "okay, I guess so." I am slowly learning what this might be for my Yes today. May yours be blessed.

Study and spring

2008-04-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

In parallel to the post I made on the day of the first snow, this Full Moon post is about the first spring weekend. Friday, Saturday, and today have been brilliant warm days up here. I spent a surprising amount of them inside, with a brief exception of a few hours yesterday afternoon at a barbeque. Yet I don't feel that I've wasted the time, even as I know we're headed for a chillier week and this sundress I'm wearing now is going to have to wait a little while longer. Because I didn't spend the weekend inside lounging or being depressed (both have been options in the past). Instead I spent it working hard for the final weeks of the semester, and I feel more prepared and more centered than I have in weeks as a result.

Blessed are you, Lady of new green growing,
of the days of sunlight before the leaves unfurl,
of the crocus, the hyacinth, the oak's red flowers.

Blessed are you, Lady of craft,
of grey-eyed scholarship and the slippery word,
of sore wrists, hot tea, red editing pens.

May Your voices be counterpoints in a fugue of spring.

Similar, different

2008-03-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

The in-laws have headed off to Easter Sunday services, leaving the Pagan and her agnostic husband to a quiet morning. My niece is jealous that I don't have to get dressed up and sit for Mass today. Instead, I'm writing my Full Moon post (late, again!) and thinking about how syncretism works.

I'm a big supporter of interfaith activity. My time at the Pluralism Project and my participation in the Progressive Faith Bloggers Convention both emphasize that. And I understand that borrowing from other traditions is common: it's both a hard fact of religious existence and a factor in my own ceremonies and ritual tools such as my Tarot deck. At the same time, I want to draw a sharp line between cooperation, borrowing, and synthesis. I am not a proponent of the idea that "all religions are one, really."

Why not? First of all, it is not necessary for cooperation. The idea that we have to agree on a list of basic tenets has some truth; a kind of social contract is necessary for interfaith work, whether it's dialogue, mutual education, or acting for a shared goal. But agreeing on these 'rules of conduct' does not mean we have to agree on their grounds. We don't have to believe in one god in order to build a house together. We just have to agree not to hammer each other's fingers. The idea that religions, in order to cooperate, have to have some kind of vast underlying agreement, leads either to a stalemate (we'd have to agree on the nature of God in order to work, and we don't agree, so clearly we can't work together) or to an ecumenical reductionism (we'd have to agree on the nature of God in order to work, and we do work together, so clearly we must agree on the nature of God).

That reduction strips traditions of all the things that make them tradition, all the stories about who we are and why we do this. Instead, you end up in search of the "real, true religion" that is supposedly at the heart of every tradition, and you toss all the differences out the window, discarding them as crap that's just been added on to what really matters.

But those differences are what make the rich diversity of humanity. Without them life is a monotone hum; with them, it's occasionally cacophony or chaos, but it's also harmony, polyphony, multivocality.

In addition, there's a kind of subtle imperialism at work when we claim that all religions are one. It turns differences into costuming and places them on the market, so to speak. If you and I really are celebrating the same thing, then why could you possibly be upset when I start using your stories, traditions, symbols, language, etc. as my own? Or when I claim to understand them better than you do?

Instead of respectfully asking, or borrowing symbols while remaining aware of the web of connections and history in which they originally rest, this kind of syncretism dismisses any protest by claiming a better understanding of the "real, true religion." I don't think we can, or should, avoid the borrowing and sharing that goes on between traditions. But sharing between two groups is different from claiming that the two groups are really one, so what's mine is yours, and what's yours is mine.

(My strong feelings about this are probably related to me being a twin. I constantly have to emphasize that yes, we are very alike; and no, I'm not her, and she's not me. Similarity is not identity.)

This line of thought is particularly close to me at the holidays. For example, my thoughts on the Equinox--that it is a return to life, when what we thought was dead shows life--is pretty close to the Resurrection. Stretch it a bit and you might be able to harmonize it with Passover, too. And there are lots of similarities between my celebration of returning light at Yule and a host of other celebrations. But to reduce them to some single ur-Holiday is lazy thinking, and it misses the point.

The point is that we are different, and that these differences don't keep us from working together. They make it possible.

Bud

2008-03-20T20:37:00.000-07:00

Mmm, harmonious convergences. Tomorrow I'll be making another full-moon post, but tonight is the Equinox, and that means its own post.

Today signals growing momentum. From Imbolc to now, everything has seemed more or less the same: gray skies, occasional snowstorms. Since I'm on an academic calendar, it's also been more or less the same--the first half of a semester, in which everything is still a matter of getting a handle on new subjects and new classes. It can seem like stasis.

But today gives the lie to that feeling--sometimes comfortable, sometimes stagnant--of inertia. The first crocuses of the year have sprung up outside my house, warmed by the southern exposure heating the rock under their thin beds. The oak trees have clusters of red. If I were back in Indiana, there might be redbuds blooming already. Shrubs and trees have long shoots of new growth and tight buds, making their outlines hazy.

The bud (in addition to inspiring this poem, which spells it out better than I could...) is both past and future. Its presence means that what we perceived as stasis has been the coiling of a spring, the germination of a seed. The branch that seemed dead promises life to come. Winter recedes, and what seemed to have been killed by cold is revealed as not only sleeping, but preparing for this moment.

And it also points toward the season to come, promising green leaves and the sunlight through them, grass and vines and blooms. The bud cannot remain a bud, or it gives the lie to the preparation of the previous season and is truly dead. It is beautiful in its own right, but cannot remain only itself, just as none of us can be exactly preserved without ceasing to be. Extended far forward, the promise of the bud is not only leaf, but flower, and the fruit that follows after, and the seed in the fall, and the winter's sleep again. It is caught up in the wheel of the year, made and unmade by it.

In a few weeks the magnolias will begin to bloom. At first, the flowers will resemble thin white flames upright scattered throughout the branches. Then some will open into white and pink waxy blossoms while others stay tightly wrapped. I look at magnolias and think of a Tree of Life; but it is more meaningful, somehow, when I think of a Tree of Life and picture magnolias.

Every holiday brings a gift, and every holiday asks a gift from us. The gift we are asked to give at this Equinox is courage--courage to step into the wheel, not hold still, to grow or bloom or eventually die. Courage to take on the next stages of our lives. What the Spring Equinox brings is the realization that half of the preparations have already been made. Like it or not, we have been readying ourselves to take this step even without realizing it.

Grounding my thoughts

2008-02-21T05:41:00.000-08:00

This is the second of my Yule-resolution posts: writing at/near the full moon on topics about being Pagan publicly, rather than musings on the holidays. (I wish I could find some kind of metaphorical connection to last night's eclipse for this topic, but nothing's coming. On the other hand, I can feel a poem on the word "adumbrate" struggling towards consciousness.)

When I told people I was in Divinity School, I often felt as if I needed to qualify that statement by immediately saying I wasn't there for ministry. Now, when I tell classmates and professors that I'm a Pagan, I often feel a similar disclaimer following: that I'm not interested in studying only Paganism.

The first reason is that there are people out there who do it better than I could hope to: Sarah Pike and Chas Clifton are the first ones that spring to mind, but there are many, and they're excellent. They've got the mix of clarity and closeness that I find elusive. This work is already being done, and done well. I don't feel that I could add a lot to this discussion. And, to be truly honest, it does not interest me as much as learning how multiple religions collide and combine in the American public sphere.

I do feel that I can add a lot as a Pagan scholar studying non-Pagan religions and the interactions between faiths in America. (Of course, this work is also being done--I just think I can add more here than in the field of Pagan studies.)

I feel that it's important in some hard-to-define way that Pagans look back at the religions that look at us. That we act, speak, and think from a Pagan perspective (no, I don't have a good idea what that involves yet) when we perform our research or present our ideas. That we turn the gaze back towards a culture that wants to condemn, ignore, or exoticize us, and take our own stand. What would a Pagan study of Christian theologies look like? (If there are already some out there, by all means let me know--my head's stuffed full of coursework reading right now.)

Along those lines, I started drafting up some "Notes Toward a Pagan Anthropology" last week. Partially, this was a response to ideas about 'false consciousness' in religion--a concept I find very patronizing and prone to abuse. But it is also a way for me to spell out not the theoretical, but the moral grounds for why I want to do my work in the way I want to do it. It's still pretty crude, though I may post sections of it later on. Right now, it involves a constellation of Pagan ideas that should inform the way I work: immanent divinity, polytheism, feminism, interconnection, the fae/spirits/what have you, anti-eschatology, and embodiment. This isn't a matter of setting a research agenda that will blind me to other elements: it is a process of understanding why I do this work, why I believe it's important, and how I can make sure that I act ethically while in the middle of the hustle and bustle of research. More on that at another time.

Mouse

2008-02-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

Imbolc, or Brigid, or whatever name it goes by, is the quarter-day holiday between winter solstice and spring equinox. It's probably closer to the middle of winter than Midwinter, and it usually carries a feeling of continuance for me. Nothing big seems to change around Imbolc; when winter feels like sleep, Imbolc is the snooze alarm that says things will continue to sleep, and when winter seems like a dogged slog through slush, Imbolc is like a half-way signpost. It was cold before, it'll be cold tomorrow. Right?

What this way of looking at Imbolc misses is the important changes under the snow. Last year I did a small ceremony that made me more aware of this meaning to Imbolc: right now, though we can't see it, the first push of growth is starting. We won't see bulbs growing for weeks, flowers not for months, and spring--well, spring depends on the whim of cold snaps and late frosts. But what we don't see is the subtle switch from the dormant seed to the preparations for growth: from mere survival to anticipation.

One of my favorite fables is that of Frederick. I was reminded of it by a few other Pagan bloggers a week or so ago (Chas Clifton, I think, though I've lost the link). It's a wonderful story, but looking at it during Imbolc makes me think that it's a good story for this holiday. The mice go from happy feasting to mere survival--they have more than enough food to live through the winter, but their days are gray and dull. It is the creative spark that Frederick gathered, the colors and words and sunlight, that enlivens the mice again and reminds them of the joy and beauty in the world.

This, I think, is why poetry, creativity, and crafting are honored at this time of year. We've made it through the dark times, and proved to ourselves that we can survive. But if winter is more than just a test, more than something to be endured, then it needs the words and colors and light that creative souls have gathered through the year.

So what is it that Imbolc gives, and what are we giving in return? Imbolc gives us what seems like the biggest gag gift of all: more winter! More snow, more ice, more gray skies and a long time before we'll see green again. But hidden in that is the miracle that continuance is change: that "more winter" is not just extra cold time, but time that wakens things and readies them to grow. What we give in return is our creativity and inspiration, turning "just more winter" into creations of words and images.

It is these gifts that transform winter from a test to be weathered into a season with its own mysteries and strengths.

Yule resolutions

2008-01-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Why yes, it is long past Yule... It is, however, the first full moon afterwards. Give or take a day or two. So I'm putting my Yule resolution into action.

In the last few months, I've participated in a series of New Moon ceremonies through a Reclaiming circle. I like it; it's been full of insight, increased my mindfulness, brought me into contact with several very deep and strong people, and generally brought me closer to the Goddess. One of the things the group has talked about is full moon ceremonies--not circles, but some way of community work, whether it's cleaning up parks or working at a food pantry or so on. I'm interested, but I know my own brain: there's no way I can be deeply involved in the organization of this while I'm still in the midst of coursework. I would not be able to do what is needed to be the point person. On one hand, that's good for me to keep a limit on my commitments and not to agree to something I can't do--on the other, it means that I'm not doing full moon work at all, and that's no good either.

While I can't give myself more hours, more brain, or more arms to take on these tasks, I can do a few things. Arachne here is my public Pagan voice. Therefore, my Yule resolution is that on full moon, I will post to Arachne, not as a substitute for other holiday posts, but as a means of putting myself out in the public realm in even the smallest of ways.

That brings me to other thoughts about Paganism in the public sphere. A long time ago, I wrote about being in a mostly-Abrahamic environment, and figuring out what my role as a Pagan was in that space. One of the conclusions I've reached is that being a Pagan is being the oddity case, the one that forces reevaluation of terms, ideas, and assumptions. Noting the presence of polytheism whenever a monotheistic God is assumed to be the common element. Noting that we don't have a shared scripture or organized clergy, whenever those are used to define "religions." Pointing out the creativity and adaptation and decentralization of all the groups that (mostly) fall under the "Pagan" umbrella term, whenever religions are presumed to be static.

If we're already used as the scare-tactic case ("what if one of those Pagans wants to give a daily prayer at school/hand out pamphlets/preach to our kids?) in cases of religious freedom, we should embrace that role and make it clear that "religious freedom" means including the groups that don't fit with monotheistic, static, scriptural definitions of religion.

This can seem contrarian--we'll be constantly pointing out that the assumed standard doesn't fit us, and that can get frustrating for anyone trying to set a standard--but it is essential for understanding what real religious freedom means in this country. It doesn't mean keeping all of it behind closed doors, or celebrating the religion that *most* people follow. It means seeing us, hearing us, under the exact same protections assigned to the most populous, most powerful, or most orthodox faiths.

Holiday gifts

2007-12-22T04:18:00.000-08:00

Developing last year's theme of fading light...

Nothing can be spared on Solstice night.
Just to survive, I'm going to have to burn
everything within these frozen walls. I learn
that furniture is firewood, that sight
of burning memories is worth the meager light
their flames provide. I can't stop to discern
keepsake from kindling. The sun might not return
And I'd be left to freeze in dark and fright.
Then nothing's left but me. I feebly grope
toward the dying flame; like it, I'll die alone--
and, knowing this, I finally surrender.
But having given up, I'm given hope.
The light and warmth are growing on their own;
The new day dawns in miraculous splendor.

Every holiday brings a gift, and every holiday asks a gift from us. In Midwinter the gifts are hope and surrender; which comes first, and which comes from us and which from the holiday I do not know.

Snow

2007-11-21T11:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning it snowed for a little while--the first snow of the season. "What if," said my professor, staring out the basement window, "we said a blessing for the first snow? We say blessings for food, for waking, for the first fruits of a season...What would be different about our lives if we said a blessing for the first snow?"

What if?

Blessed are You, Lady of white cold, who takes down our autumn colors and brings us to the year's sleep.
Blessed are You, Lady of the hearth, who lights the fires and calls us to warmth and welcome.
May Your first snow circle Your hearth, heralding the season to come.

Puzzling with trinities again

2007-11-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

A companion to my earlier post on three aspects of the Divine.

When She is revealed in all things, she is consolation and comfort. She is the awareness of eternity and continuance, the recognition of no-self or relational-self. She is consolation to the bereaved and comfort to the ill. She is unconditional and eternal.

When She is revealed in individual people, she is challenge. She commands that we care for *this* person; respond to *this* harm; struggle with *this* injustice. The relentless specificity of each person's needs and life. She is judgment when we turn a blind eye to pain, and She is the thrill of desire and love.

When She is revealed in deities, spirits, and powers, she is more and less than these.

What we are given; What we give

2007-10-31T10:22:00.000-07:00

Samhain sometimes strikes me as pre-emptive melancholy. The sky is still blue, the leaves are glorious bundles of flame, there's no frost yet, why are we talking and thinking about death? Why are we not still harvesting and laughing, tossing pumpkin guts at each other and preparing pies by the dozen? Why do we celebrate this now, and not at Midwinter?

Because the holidays are heralds, not immersions.

At Midwinter there is still much winter left; we need to know that the return of light is heralded. At Lammas we're not harvesting just yet, there's more to be brought in. At Beltane, spring has only barely begun (especially in the Northeast, where we might have adventurous daffodils, but the last frost might come that night).

The month of dying isn't October, it's November, whose cold grey skies will preside over the disappearance of green and gold. And Samhain heralds this.

Every holiday brings a gift, and every holiday calls a gift from us. In Samhain we are given death.

Not our immediate, physical deaths, but our limitation and finite nature; the knowledge that we will die, that all things will die, that all things decay. That we are incomplete, and our works are incomplete, and will not last. We don't want it--not in the pale form of 'knowledge of death', and certainly not the actual fact of dying. But it is a gift as surely as life itself. Samhain brings this gift to us, the awareness of our mortality, of the loss of those we've loved, of the tomb of all our hopes, and thus it heralds the dying of the year.

But we also have a gift in return. Out of that very finitude, out of that same impermanent life, we give our refusal to be content with limitations. We give our striving and yearning for something beyond death back to Samhain. In our memories and calls to those who have passed on, in our ghouls and ghosts carrying Skittles and Tootsie Pops from house to house, in our stubborn building and rebuilding of works that will decay, in constantly aiming for the things that will last beyond the moment, we make this gift, and give it to the turning year.

Autumn sestina

2007-10-26T05:19:00.000-07:00

The keen blue wind heralds the start of fall
and I blow words to try and find a story,
a worthy frame, an offering of faith.
My Lady's patronage requires this price
to justify a blessing on my studies
and so I write, to pray, to settle fear.

It binds my chest like bandages, this fear
of missed potential, lost in the trickling fall
of sand within the glass. Outside my study
life laughs at being taken for mere story.
Does not each ignored moment bear a price?
How can I speak--or not speak--of my faith?

And She who is the home of all my faith
sends no false comfort: "Life is made of fear,
anxiety for future, regretting action's price."
In every choice, a misstep. And from the falling
grains of time, a half-seen bit of story--
a mandala? Or trash heap. This, I study.

Again: can there be shape, divorced from study?
No form can be discerned without the faith
that something's present--someone tells this story.
I oscillate between these polar fears:
absence of sense in the events that fall,
or wrong sense, carrying an equal price.

So miserly. I cringe at every price--
dithered seconds could be spent in study--
She stops me; and she thus transforms my fall
Into a step. Fall, catch. I walk by faith;
how is unknown. It's not for lack of fear
but through it, that I can form this story

and no other. I have to live my story,
to leave the cliff, prepared to pay the price:
both kneeling to, and yet rejecting, fear.
Accept that only questions come from study,
but every wisdom glorifies Her faith.
To withdraw--not to wither--is the work of fall.

Lady of fall, help me to pay the given price
of taking stories as my course of study,
to walk, faith catching at my stumbling fear.

Three faces

2007-08-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

This year at Midsummer I found myself invoking three aspects of the Goddess. They are still bouncing around in my head.

The first of these was Goddess as Divine Transcendance. This is the universal divine, the response of "God is in everything." All-encompassing and omnipresent, this is divinity at its utmost. It includes evil, suffering, joy, loss, ecstasy, fulfillment, and all of history and all that is to come. Shrinking it into words diminishes it; it's enlightenment and Nirvana and the perception of no-self.

The third of these was Goddess as Divine Immanence. This is relentlessly specific. This is "Goddess in the person next to me, this guy right here, with this color hair and this way of laughing and this past and these quirks and these glories." This is no less divine than the transcendant, and it's the thrills and frustrations of the everyday, of recognizing how my own life and yours, not some generalized "humanity", is part of divinity. This calls out for the immediate emotions of loving *this* person or *this* place, here and now, rather than the perfect equanimity of the transcendant that sees all as one.

The second one, which for some reason I found most confusing, is Goddesses. Deities, plural. More general than specific humans, and generalizable to some extent (such as the many different representations of Athena or Ceridwen), but not universal and definitely not interchangeable.

I don't know how to link these three, but I feel that they are somehow linked. Perhaps I'm just wanting to have it all--pantheism, immanence, polytheism--but each of these makes some sense alone. When brought together, do these aspects just dissolve into contradictions, or do they support and strengthen each other?

Late for Lughnasa

2007-08-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

Like last year, I'm slow to celebrate Lughnasa. But unlike last year, I can see what came of my second planting, and can feel the changes that have come about. The wedding? Beautiful and bright and loving. The applications? Starting the PhD program in a month. The quilt? Designed and partly built (the sky, land, and green are attached and await stitching).

But today, celebrating Lughnasa, I am not planting a second harvest. Instead, I am tending.

Let's see how I can extend this agricultural metaphor. Some of what I pray for, work rituals for, and work towards is an annual crop: it nourishes me, it's necessary for survival, it requires renewing every year. The day-to-day work of getting my assignments done, accomplishing short-term goals, and finishing my projects is this kind of crop. It sustains me when I get that boost of a good grade or a project completed.

The results of my second planting last year, however, are more akin to starting an orchard.These are not things that finish neatly with tidy evaluations: "Congrats, you got an A on this wedding!" Tended carefully and treated well, they are long-term, life-long endeavors: love, family, career. Even the quilt, which has a definable endpoint for me (when it goes, eventually, to Ramallah), is a long-term project, one that I hope will reach its full growth far away from me, as people see it and, hopefully, respond to it.

Blessings to you in your second planting, no matter what your crop may be.

Rain blessing

2007-07-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

I had planned to write about the changes in my life; about the three divine aspects I celebrated at midsummer; about community and family; about apprenticeship and enjoyment; and about returning to everyday from heightened celebrations.

But then the breeze blew in from the open window, and the smell of rain on warm asphalt came up from the street, and the cool air traveled over the nape of my neck like a caress.

All those things I could write about, and someday I will, but for now I see cool rain on the leaves, a finch on the tree, and blessings that will not be contained in my words.

May you share them.

New clothes for old

2007-05-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

Joyful Beltane!

The summer holidays always creep up on me unawares. It wasn't until I changed my T-pass from April to May, after my morning practice and after blinking groggily at the calendar, that I remembered today is Beltane. (By semi-conventional understanding, anyway. Reckoning by the sun, the quarter-day is later this week, I think. But today is the day I celebrate!)

Beltane, today, is about cultivating joy. In the coming part of the year, I'll be having some major life shifts; I graduate from my Masters' program in a month, and I'll be married not long after the solstice. It's easy for me to become overwhelmed and depressed by the work ahead, or by the feeling that I'm still not accomplishing everything I should in order to be the person I want to be. So Beltane is about yanking myself out of that rut to see the growing world around me and actually celebrate, not just exist in my own mental fog.

To actually recognize that the world is blooming, sprouting, greening all over again. Things have exploded into color here in the last two weeks: cherry blossoms, daffodils, hyacinths, and the thick sweet scent of the occasional magnolia tree.

(There's a line of tulips in front of the William James house that I remembered as being like cups of flame. This year, they've come up and seem to be only yellow...and then I saw more cup-of-fire tulips out in front of the bus stop today. Ah, everywhere You are...)

How will I celebrate? In verse and gift, in sunlight. Tonight I will meditate, beginning a project of reading one of Four Quartets at the four quarter-days. I'm going to a poetry reading in the evening. I'll even write one myself--haven't figured out the form yet--as an offering. I'm tracking down gifts to give a few friends. I've spent the morning working on a paper, and I'll work outside on another one this afternoon. In other words, I'll be integrating my loves that easily fly apart: love of the Divine, love of lover and friends, love of work, love of words.

When I meditate tonight, I'll exchange new clothes for old. Beltane is a kind of "new year," Samhain's bright twin. In other meditations over the last year, I've stripped off old armors and protections that were harming more than helping; but I've also learned that I need some kind of structure and shaping to my life. There's something silly about a 'spiritual summer wardrobe', I won't deny that--but it's also meaningful and helpful to me.

New clothes for old! New voices for the new season! Welcome summer, and joyful Beltane to you all!

Requiem

2007-04-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today in class, we talked about Virginia Tech.

My head was full and reeling afterwards; the questions that I expect are going around in many other minds were making the same circuit in mine. Why, why them, how did he, how could he, how could You, what now, what policy, what ethic, what act, what change will fix it, what will keep it from ever happening again, what's it mean, what do I do, why don't I feel more, why do I feel so much, what do we do, what can anybody do...

Then I stopped and pulled me out of it. This is not, should not be, about me and my sorrow or fear or anger or hate.

Lady, bring them back to You. As we come from you in birth, we return in death; bring them home and lay them to rest, all of them, and walk with them wherever they may go. May your peace be with all those who have lost and who mourn.

Blogging miscellanea

2007-04-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

*I need to update my blog links! Several people have browsed by and left wonderfully encouraging comments; I'd like to add them to the blogroll, and I need to take a little time to rearrange my blog a bit.

*That got me thinking about something Sojourner had mentioned a while ago: the concept of Gastblogschaft, which includes some responsibilities of bloggers. I haven't been living up to that standard, and although it'd be easy to blame my busy life, I would bet that many bloggers out there are even busier.

*Which also got me thinking about the difference in my tone between speaking as Arachne and speaking on my personal blog. Here, I adopt a much more philosophical (and pompous) tone; there, I do the usual complaining about work, sharing silly links, bouncing about good news, and so on. I'm not certain why I felt I had to split the two, and to give Arachne a different environment, but the result has been good for me overall. Like the freedom of adopting a costume or a role, I can present a part of me more fully this way. The unfortunate side effect is that, as Arachne, I don't have the same kind of full, friendly engagement with the blog as I do in my personal journal.

In order to let part of myself speak, I have to deliberately set out a space for it. And...to bring this line of thinking back around to the topic of this blog...that makes me think of delineating ritual space. Without Arachne, an aspect of myself that tends to be lost under the day-to-day amusements, irritants, and encounters would be too quiet to speak, and would never get stronger. Without ritual, I tend to think "Sure, I'm aware of the divine! Now, what was I going to get for lunch? And where did I put that assignment? And...and...and..." Setting out ritual space is like clearing the weeds away from a fragile plant and giving it the sunshine it needs.

Of course, there are side effects. If I split Arachne and everyday too sharply, it becomes nothing more than a role, not an opportunity. Likewise, there's the danger that ritual and everyday space may come to have nothing in common with each other, nothing that carries over from one realm to the next. And there's the danger of treating others differently when we're in different roles, so much so that we lose our self-consistency.

Hence, Gastblogschaft. And, once finals are over, updating the blogroll.

Still my strongest tool

2007-03-30T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last night I held a "Tarot Night" for several friends. It was meant to be very informal, a situation where we could talk about and think about readings, reading styles, and different ways of interpreting cards of the Major Arcana. And it went very, very well.

We discussed the Empress, Temperance/Alchemy/Art (number 14), and Judgment/Aeon. I especially loved the comparisons between the Cosmic Tribe deck and the Rider-Waite. There was also a Stick Figure Tarot, which made everyone giggle, and a deck entirely drawn by a friend of one of the people there. I wish I'd had a chance to look at that one a little more.

The vagaries of Tarot etiquette came up: do other people get to touch the deck you use? To read with it? To borrow it? Do you wrap it in silk or keep it in the box? Buy a deck or receive it as a gift? I recognize my own restrictions as idiosyncratic: I don't let other people use it, though I do let them look at it; I don't read for myself, and I don't read for someone else if I start getting uneasy during the preparation stage. I also restrict myself from spending time with other decks, anything more than a quick browse. There's no philosophy underlying these restrictions, just a feeling that this deck is My Deck, and needs to be treated as such.

I think the only thing I'd want to improve is the number of people doing the readings--even those who owned and used decks were very shy about reading for others. I wonder if this is one of those skills where you always feel like an amateur, no matter how many years you've been doing it.

Perhaps this summer I'll undertake the full progression--go through the deck, one card per day, meditating and thinking about it and inviting its presence in my life.

Nature-based

2007-03-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

(Phew! Glad I wrote that previous entry...it seems like it always takes a self-referential musing before I can dig back into real topics.)

One of my deepest loves about Pagan practice is the wheel of the year. I love the feeling of constant movement and the conflation of the circular time (Equinox coming up again) with linear time (last Vernal Equinox, I was doing such and such...) . I suppose it must be similar for any religion with a strong liturgical year, but there's also a feeling of being in rhythm with the earth that comes from the wheel.

(Aside: One of the Pagan groups that holds public rituals is nontheistic in their celebrations of the year, and I really appreciate that. It reminds me that there's far more to the world, and consequently more to the divine, than the semianthropomorphic figures I pray to.)

So what does it do to the wheel of the year when the weather's as bizarre as it was this winter?

January was unseasonably warm, in an almost scary way. When snow finally came, it was primarily a coat of ice that lingered in yards and on roofs, heavy and slick. Friday's snowstorm was something of a relief to me, even as I'm craving more crocuses. How do you think about the return of the light in February when you could have been wearing shorts the week before? Or, for that matter, how do you celebrate the Summer Solstice when June has been nothing but chilly rain? If these changes are simply the unpredictability of weather, that's one matter--but if this is the effect of global warming, what then?

Nature doesn't recognize the boundaries we put on it with our holidays and with the ideas we develop about what each holiday means and "ought to be like." The year progresses outside of the conventions of the wheel of the year, and snows and thaws will hit regardless of human plans.

So the answer for me, then, is to take it as a reminder to shrug off my preconceptions about the year, while having faith and trust in the return of light and warmth. The plants will grow and summer will come, even if the process isn't "pretty" or "normal." And what seems like bizarre weather is how the wheel continues turning, integrating the human damage of global warming into its constant movement.

The spring will come, but it may not be the spring we are wanting or expecting--it may include destruction, flooding, caterpillar infestations, hurricanes. All that is guaranteed is that spring will come, over and over, year after year. The rest--what the holiday brings, what it promises, what we can make out of what happens--is up to us.

Resurgam

2007-03-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

Again, another long hiatus. "Write on Arachne" has lingered on my to-do list every day for two months now. But as a wise woman says, you're not a failed writer till you stop writing. Or something like that.

This hiatus be connected to a recent feeling that despite years of thinking hard and writing hard about it, despite years of individual practice, I'm still not able to articulate what it means for me to be a Pagan. An authority figure asked me the other day, and I wasn't especially eloquent in my response. There's also the awareness that I'm not the most *literate* of Pagans when it comes to Pagan texts and rites. I'm kind of unschooled, probably as a side effect of being a solitary--and being stupidly busy.

If Heathenism is "Paganism with homework," I've been skipping class entirely.

I'm not a 'bad Pagan,' I think; I worship and pray and cast and suchlike, and as long as I'm studying religion I'll be facing all the questions thrown up by another's faith into my own. It's just sometimes overwhelming how much there is to learn, whether I'm looking at the All or one goddess among many in a pantheon, among many more in a pantheon. There are so many books, ideas, techniques, rituals that I'm unskilled in. (Note to self: Study Hellenism.) My lover's recently taken up a new instrument, and he feels "like a neanderthal" when plucking out melodies that usually simply flow off his fingers. I feel similarly stumped and slow when facing the deep mysteries of Paganism, even as I know it to be my home.

Perhaps the best offering I can give is that learning curve, and the willingness to speak of my own uncertainty and encounters on that path.

I picture a learning curve graph, with a wiggly line swooping all over, showing how hard and easy it will be. I picture myself like Calvin, ready at the top of the curve with my sled and trusty tiger companion, about to go hurtling down it...

Fading light

2006-12-18T18:24:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. The time between Samhain and Solstice has tumbled by in a frantic rush, full of productivity--but not of writing. I feel as if I've let a month evade me, somehow...or been trampled by it. Despite attending the AAR, finishing all my applications, and (mostly) completing a semester, I still feel as if the beginning of winter has slipped out of my hands. (The unseasonable weather probably helped.)

And facing the upcoming Solstice feels like the natural outcome of this tumbling rush. While I find it easier to celebrate the winter holidays, they are darker and less "holiday" than "holy day," in the "fear and trembling" sense. They're easier to celebrate because in the grey months, some sign of the year turning is desperately needed, and they don't get drowned out by the shouting joys of summer. But they happen during thin times, cold times, draining times, and the celebration of them doesn't make that less true.

Last year, I was studying Tisha B'Av in the week preceding the Winter Solstice, and the pairing of its sorrow and loss with the chill grey light seemed very apt. It's probably due to reading lots of the Velveteen Rabbi among other Jewish bloggers, but this year thinking about Solstice has me thinking about Hanukkah.

In the weeks directly preceding the Winter Solstice, I'm often frantic. I scurry around, trying to get everything done while there's still light. I burn the midnight oil--and this year, I ended up with a nasty head cold as a result of pushing my body. All I can think is that time is running out. Maybe for buying Christmas presents (my family celebrates a secular Christmas; I celebrate Solstice on my own or with my lover), or for writing papers, or for just getting my life in order, but there's no time left. I have to use everything I have left to get through the remaining tasks.

It is as if I am trying to build up the fire against the darkness. I think of horror movies when the electric light flickers and fails, and the dark comes rushing in. Or the moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the torch, the only thing holding off all those snakes, goes out in Marian's hands. I'm tossing everything on the fire, hoping to keep the dark time away, desperately trying to stave off the inevitable turning of the seasons.

And on the Solstice, there's no more fuel left. The darkest, longest night is here. All that remains is this tiny flame. We look at it and think, there's no way this flame will last. There's no way this single light will do anything other than die.

Thinking that--accepting that--changes something. All we have left is this tiny light; it's not up to us anymore, not dependent on our ability to burn ourselves out or toss everything on the fire. And we watch that tiny light, sure that it won't last, and yet somehow, that's enough.

The miracle of Hanukkah, the miracle of the Solstice is what happens next. The light gets bigger. Brighter, stronger. It's not much--two candles instead of one, two more minutes of daylight--but it's there. The wondrous lamp oil that should barely have lasted a single night lasts for eight. The signs that say that winter will last forever and the sun will never return are gently, quietly contradicted.

Once the Solstice is past, we will still have to live through winter; we will have to accept the dark and grey months, accept our part in them, and love them as part of the year. And until the Solstice is here, I will continue to fuss and fret against the dying of the light, frantic to get things done before the sleep of the winter overtakes me. But on Solstice itself, there is that always familiar, always uncertain moment when the last bit of light does not diminish, but grows.

Pinned

2006-10-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

One of the moments I love most and understand least in Genesis is the moment when Jacob wrestles with the angel. I love it for its physical nature: divine beings who can be pinned and held, who dislocate hips and say "uncle"--I will not let thee go except thou bless me. I love it for its metaphorical nature: how this wrestling with God is part of Genesis, where Abram sometimes argues and sometimes acquiesces, where humans keep struggling with God's commands.

I love to think of wrestling with the Divine. When I think of the way I puzzle out my thealogy, I think of Jacob and the angel.

Sometimes it's a competition, friendly and good-hearted, in which we test each other, push on each other's holds, defend against weak moves and make quick attacks. When I'm teasing out the implications of a belief or theorizing about ritual, this is how we wrestle.

Sometimes it turns angry. Fingers turn into claws and go for throat, eyes, groin, demanding some kind of answer or some dominance. Low blows. Sucker-punches. Where my faith hits the realities of suffering and an ugly world, or where I hit the limits of my own abilities.

Sometimes there's this incredible flirtation within the struggle, like lovers tussling on a bed, teasing and pinning each other back and forth, just on the point of kisses or lovemaking. Ecstasy and wordless emotion.

And sometimes--in fact, most of the time--it's one big confused mess, where I'm not certain if the leg I'm grabbing is my own, or just how many people are in this match, or what the limits ever were.

My hope, my aim, is to always be wrestling with Her; never to walk away from the contest, never to imagine that I've won, never to simply submit. I offer my doubts and my confusion in this struggle, knowing that there won't be a resolution as long as I live.

Ceremony

2006-10-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

Between classes and applications (and the occasional freak-out from being overcommitted), I've let the blogwriting slide. I will not let that happen--at least not permanently. My friend Current Conductor deals with the same "law of blog procrastinating," where the desire to write an entry is inversely proportionate to the number of things you want to write about plus the time since your last post.

In early October, I attended a Pagan wedding ceremony. It was lovely and moving, drawing largely off the Feri tradition. There were invocations of the Fey, the Boatman, the Star Goddess (with the full Charge, I think), and the whole ceremony was opened and closed with the sanctification of the directions. A spiral dance in the middle of the ceremony charged the rings; the bride and groom drew Tarot cards. The whole thing was filled with spirit, from music to fire to the strong wind and the crisp weather.

(Side note: I should really get to know more about Feri. All I know about it is from reading an interview with Victor Anderson and a little casual conversation.)

Curiously, though, it made me consider how much I wanted to integrate Paganism into our wedding next summer. And the answer was a little surprising to me: Not very much. I can see creating the space with the directions, asking for Her blessing, or sharing cakes and wine together. But my lover is not Pagan, and any ceremony we share is a partnership between us.

I've asked myself a few times if my desire to 'tone down' any Pagan aspects is an urge to hide my faith, or a need to conform. It's likely that those elements are present, but what's more central to my reasoning is a need to span different faiths--possibly even to introduce what Pagans have in common with other faiths. My lover and I are an interfaith couple; the community of friends and family that we call on is made up of many different faiths. The meaning that we create together will draw on all of those, and be filtered through his agnostic-Daoist-humanist view, and my Paganism.

The other reason is almost the reverse: if I want to share my faith in a way that all the different people in the community can understand and accept, I also feel that my faith is too intimate to be displayed to the whole community. (I know, I know, contradiction. Pfah!) I'll 'tone down' some aspects for the ceremony, but other ones--the most important ones--I'll reserve for the intimacy of me and him, without an audience, with only the universe listening.

When I worship on the equinoxes and solstices, I am naked, vulnerable, and alone. Only one other person besides Her sees me in this state; only one other person receives me like this. That sheltered moment together isn't something that can be put into words at a ceremony, even if it is part of the heart of my faith and of my love.

That thing at the heart of love--it was visible in the October bride and groom, in all the weddings I've been honored to attend.

It's too early for existentialism.

2006-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

10am on Sunday is always too early for existentialism. Nevertheless...

...One of my classes this semester involves existential anthropology. Without a background in philosophy, I'm limping along somewhat. In an early lecture, the professor quoted Sartre's "soundbite": existence precedes essence. He then started talking about what this means for an anthropological viewpoint: don't study Communism, study how people who call themselves Communist behave. Don't posit some kind of "eternal essence", whether it's "the eternal feminine" or the "eternal religiosity"--at least, not when you start. If a pattern, a set of similarities and similar conditions, shows up from what you're studying, then you can talk about that, but not as if it were some kind of Platonic ideal that exists apart from the people who make it.

I like this approach. I'm oversimplifying it a bit here, of course. Now, although I do not plan to make Paganism my main topic of study, I ended up relating the lecture to my faith. And it seemed to provide some insight into a question that I'm often asked at the Div School: "What is Paganism, anyway?"

The glib answer suddenly doesn't seem so glib. Paganism is what Pagans do. That is, there isn't a litmus test for Paganism, nor an easy set of five major characteristics. The existence of people who announce that they are practicing Paganism defines what the patterns of Paganism will be. Social action? Sure, there are Pagans for whom that is central. Ritual magic? Same answer. Reconstruction? Same answer.

To some of you, this will be extremely obvious. For me, it served as another way to reaffirm that what we believe isn't--and doesn't have to be--simple; that our beliefs can best be discerned by looking at the pattern of the weave formed by our actions. All our actions, whether they're purchasing groceries, working for a living, casting circles, or journeying inward.

And moving from that idea, I came again to the concept of looking at the world--all the world, all its injustices and cruelties and beauties and hopes--in order to discern the pattern of the Divinity within it.

Autumnal Equinox

2006-09-23T05:36:00.001-07:00

As a solitary, my celebration of the equinox is, of course, idiosyncratic. There are two main parts to my celebration of the quarter days; lately, I've been able to spread that into the half-quarter days as well, as I get more conscientious and dedicated.

The first part is meditation and ritual. I put down a favorite cloth, wash myself, and strip. (I've done these while clothed, too, but I prefer the vulnerability and change in nudity.) I set a circle and invoke the directions, reflecting on each with the appropriate tool. Then I sit and either pray aloud, offering thanks for the things I've been given, happiness in the joys that I have, and praise for the start of this next quarter.

(One thing I don't do is talk about things I've done wrong or faults I want to overcome. Though after reading Velveteen Rabbi's teshuvah poem and discussion of the Days of Awe, I think that needs to change.)

Then I move to silent meditation. Most often this is an internal trance, tending my internal landscape; sometimes it takes me out of myself and into the larger world, into the black earth or the sky. Finish, offer thanks and honor, hug myself, and open the circle.

The second part of my equinox celebration is something like sympathetic magic, and it takes place over the whole course of the day. Each quarter is a new beginning, even as it is a return to an old familiar cycle, and the first day thereof marks a change in tone. I want my actions during that day to be the setting for the rest of the quarter, and try to change what I do to make that day an exemplar.

Today, for example, I'll be doing academic work once I finish my meditation. Working on the grad school applications, reading more commentary on Genesis, setting up my calendar for the fall semester. Then I spend time with my lover planning our wedding. Then we spend time with the family. And before I go to bed, I'll meditate again, briefly. Throughout the day, I'll try to be clear and concise, but not harsh, to keep my emotions under control while making sure I show those close to me how much I love them, and to remain focused on whatever task is at hand.

In contrast, I spent Midsummer and Lughnasa on entirely different projects: creative and hand-work, most often, but also loving and self-care. This bit of sympathetic magic (the small affects the whole, the first affects the later) has worked well for me.

So what does the Equinox mean, other than its position as one of four splits in the year? Sojourner has an evocative post about food (harvest time) and balance. The Wild Hunt has collected a great array of writing about it. And for a lovely visual take on it, Hoarded Ordinaries has some pictures that make me want to go leaf-peeping.

This year the holiday has another set of associations, because it overlaps with Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year and the Days of Awe, and the beginning of the Muslim month of Ramadan. All of which, in a way, describe a new start. (And it makes for good interfaith blogposting!)

Some of it is balance: equal day, equal night. It is also a change from starting things--planting, watering, giving birth--to drawing back in. That means feasting (woo! pumpkin pie!), but also recognizing that some of what we loved so much in the summer, thick green leaves and bright flowers, are on their way out. We draw our own strength back in to direct it toward the things that will survive the winter, and in the process we will lose things that brought us joy. But they're not lost yet! The summer is waning but not gone: this makes them sweeter, like the last picnic or the last walk-on-a-warm-evening. We start hoarding for the skinnier times we know will come, but they're so far away; it's worth celebrating what we have now, knowing that "nothing gold can stay."

Of course, as my Australian friends remind me, this view of the wheel of the year is only good in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Over there, they are tipping into spring, looking ahead to a hot Christmas season and thinking about when swimming might be possible. And it bears mentioning that the feeling of September as a start to the year is a by-product of 16+ years of school, during which the year really began in September and ended in June, leaving summer outside of time. The language of harvest and leaves turning looks a little arbitrary.

Why, then, do I use nature terms to describe how I feel about the turn of the equinox? Does this mean that my Paganism, as far as it gets defined at all, a nature-based religion? I'm not the first one to ask whether Paganism is nature-based, and I won't be the first to say "sort of." If you dropped me alone in the woods, I'd probably panic and do something unpleasant. I live in a built-up city, not surrounded by nature. I walk on concrete and watch inclement weather from inside my study with a mug of cocoa. How does this count as nature-based?

Even though the full variety of the seasons doesn't penetrate the city, they do change, and force us to change to adapt to them. Even though the cycles of the seasons are different from place to place (monsoons, anyone?) , the cycles of nature are bigger, stronger than us. They are the clearest place to look for Her, who is everywhere, because they are both constant and constantly changing, because they don't have the distractions that human-created things and human beings sometimes have when we look for Her in them. The cycles of the year are different in every place, but they are present, and they are shared among us and among all things.

Blessings on you and those you love, in harvest and in abundance. May you celebrate the things among you that will sustain you, and the things that will soon depart.

Immanence and separation

2006-09-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.

Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to him and walk by his side,
(I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips.)

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, section 37. From Leaves of Grass, 2001 Modern Library paperback edition, p.91.

Song of Myself often makes me think about the concept of immanent divinity. This is a song about every one--but not about Everyman. The language Whitman uses in the entirety of the poem is often very specific: a runaway slave, a cart-driver, a dying commander. A prisoner. A mutineer and his jailer.

The 'I' here, to me, is not a vague Everyman, bland and able to take on every possible trait, but something else. Something able to be both young man bathing in the river and cholera patient dying alone, without turning them into the same person. Someone that is both mutineer and jailer, without stripping away their differences.

That paradox is central to my ideas about immanence. God is everywhere and everything. But everything is different. We are both divine, you and I: but I am not you. The things that make me who I am make me something separate from my neighbor, experience, thoughts, and so on. I am necessarily separate from you, from the world, from someone long dead or someone far away. And yet there is something in me that is also in others, or is part of others (something related but not the same as the capacity for empathy and imagination).

The finitude of our lives is something to give thanks for. It allows us to be not Everyman, so hugely inclusive as to be featureless, but ourselves, bounded in time and space and understanding, the product of this memory and this experience and this gene.

The immanence is something else to love, for it lets us connect to each other and recognize familiarity in each other, to reach that common ground between us. It means that the specificity of our experiences need not be isolation.

And God, or Goddess, or Divinity, is the combination of both that wondrous specificity and the great generality. Watching the sparrow and the spiral nebula together.

I know that this combination, this separation and immanence, is somehow related to why justice and mercy become necessary. But I do not yet know how to say that.

Start the web

2006-09-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

When I began this blog, I intended to use the model of a lection for sermons or Torah reading for the week. I would choose a quote or a block of text that appealed to me or teased my thoughts on a subject related to faith, religion, or Paganism. Then I’d write about it, what it meant to me, what its context might mean, what it might mean for others, and so on. I’d draw it out into a possible line of thinking; a thread. I’d compare them as I brought in more and more, and start putting one line of thought next to or against another.

Hence the title: textual arachne. Weaver of threads drawn off of texts.

(Perhaps a metaphor of silkworms is more accurate: the tiny bundle, with the threads that can be pulled and pulled for yards and yards out of something no bigger than a thimble. But, continuing the metaphor, that means the silkworm is dead in there somewhere, and…nah. I prefer Arachne. Spiders have shown up in my trances, anyway.)

But I haven’t done much of that on Arachne in the last few months. I’m fine with what I’ve written here already, and I’ll probably keep going with that style. There’s an entry in particular waiting to be written about my sense of vertigo about where the country is heading. However, I think I want to add more of the ‘lection’ style, too.

I hope, as my classes begin, to start pulling quotations from my readings and using them as starting points. Fiction, nonfiction, research on religion, prose, poetry, plays, stuff that just catches my eye, even misreadings that fascinate me.

Time to fire up the spinnerets.

Pentacle update

2006-09-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

Nevada state veterans officials have approved the placing of the Wiccan Pentacle on the grave marker of Sgt. Patrick Stewart.

The VA continues to stall, stonewall, and otherwise obstruct the recognition of this symbol. According to Circle Sanctuary in the nine years that the pentacle has been "under consideration," symbols for six other religions and philosophies have been approved.

You can read more about this at Circle Sanctuary's history of the veteran pentacle movement.

Tools

2006-09-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

I am fairly attached to the tools I use in my rituals and in my prayers. All of them are battered or banged up: no shiny-bright athame or pretty crystal stuff, no nice pentacle and polished goblet. Half of that's carelessness, and the other half is a weird reverse vanity. My Tarot deck is one of these tools, and my morning shrine another.

There are four directional-elemental tools, adaptations from the Tarot suits and some Starhawk/Scott Cunningham reading from long ago. A grey cup, probably an aluminum alloy, that always gets dented out of its sleek chalice-style lines. A black-handled knife, the kind made by a blacksmith at the Engine and Tractor Show in my hometown. A piece of driftwood, smoothed by the lake, straight and sleek, about eight inches long. A black cast-iron cauldron, only about 4" in diameter, which I picked up at a shop in Salem about six years ago, stuffed full of things I keep meaning to burn away. Cup, knife, rod, cauldron.

(I've never quite figured out how to sharpen the knife. Since it can represent the intellect, this isn't a good sign for a wannabe academic!)

The leftover Calvinist in me is appalled that I'm so attached to my tools. You must rely on your faith alone! she cries. What is this ritualistic fooferaw? Can't you be a Pagan without these?

Well, yes; and then again, no. Of course my beliefs and my faith exist outside of this particular set of items. Of course She's bigger than a bit of steel and wood. But although the tools themselves are subject to change, the use of tools isn't. They represent the concrete face of a belief, the connection between the will and the physical.

That's why I call them tools, not ritual objects or holy things. They are functional, like a pen or a hammer. You could do the same work without them, but it would be much harder and much more clumsy, like writing or hammering without the proper tools.

And these, in particular, are tools that I have come to know, to invest with additional meanings and strengths. Like a loom that you've used long enough to know where the thread catches, or a computer that you've customized.

Prayers and rituals and tools serve this purpose. Yes, we can love Her without them, we can reach out to each other and act upon the world without them. But they make it so much easier, as long as we don't mistake the tool for the intention, the ability to accomplish something with ease for the ability to accomplish something at all.

Focus on the rollercoaster

2006-09-01T05:07:00.000-07:00

Classes start very soon, and I'm not ready. I mentioned to my boss yesterday that I wasn't yet up to facing the semester, and--she stopped me. "Facing the semester?" she said. As if it were an ordeal to be overcome or an unpleasant chore!

Yes, it's been those things at times, but I want to respond to it with the same glee that overtakes me when I pick up academic books at the library. (Oo! "The Ethnography of Reading"! Oo! "Faith and Narrative!" Oo! Oo!) After thinking about it, crying a little with my lover last night, and talking for most of the evening, I came to a few realizations.

It's not that I dread the classes. When I think about taking classes this fall, I'm excited and curious--I can't wait for the first week, to sort through syllabi and see what comes up, to check out reading lists and start poking at the topics. Whenever I think just about what's coming up, I'm eager to start.

What is upsetting me is my current work, or rather, my inability to get it all done and ready. My Second Planting isn't ready yet! I want to be the fool in the field, and yank up the seedlings to help them grow...I want to have it all done and ready by equinox, and that's simply not possible.
It reminds me of the same dreariness that tends to overtake me in my second year of a job. I don't manifest anticipation and joy for the future, because I'm so aware of the undone work of the past.

But life doesn't fall into neat parcels, with each new event tidily packaged and all loose ends tied up in between. There are no chapter breaks, as much as I love narrative. And therefore, one of my hardest lessons is to keep at a good work, even under the weight of unfinished projects or past mistakes.

It is the second day of the long walk: muscles complaining about yesterday's travel and the landscape losing its novelty--but never its beauty. There will soon be the second wind and the rush of momentum. I have to be a Janus, looking forward and hungry for the new semester, and looking backward to accept and continue the work that isn't yet ready.

Perpetuum Mobile

2006-08-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to hold still.

Some of that is the force of business and busywork overtaking me, the constant momentum of tasks. At its worst, it feels like a hamsterwheel. A series of Things To Do that swarms down the list and refuses to ever grow shorter, let alone clear away.

But more of that is a desire to move. Not always physically; mental motion, activity, the buzzing of my monkey-mind (no wonder meditation was such a struggle!) and its constant exploration.

Some time ago I swore myself to the half-moon. No, I don't know what that means; I didn't then, I don't really know now, either its theoretical or practical implications. I used to think that the half-moon meant the calm of a balance: six of one, half a dozen of the other. That it was the stasis and simplicity of the scales of Justice, or the soothing artistry of a yin-yang design. It seemed like a safe harbor and a position of stability, which my unstable emotional and rational highs and lows desperately craved.

As I'm getting a little older (if not wiser), I see things differently. The only way that the half-moon can be perceived as balance is if you freeze time, if you take a snapshot at that fragile moment of fifty-fifty divide. The only time we reach that stasis is when we stop moving, and maybe not even then. But a kind of stability can be achieved through oscillating--through being prepared for the oscillation, ready to adapt and shift as necessary. Like a structure built with some give in the beams. Not so much that it collapses, but enough so that it moves with the shifting earth and doesn't tumble when the tremor hits.

The half moon is no longer a sign to me of balance and calm, but a reminder that the urge to cobble a Middle Way between two paths is sometimes best achieved by moving back and forth between the two, a zigzag path that takes longer but sees more. I swing back and forth between certainty and doubt, neither one being a safe harbor; back and forth between eagerness and calm, neither one being a good attitude to take on permanently. Back and forth between self-doubt and pride, counting on one to balance the other; between hope and fear.

In these oscillations I have found a kind of meta-calm; made a jagged pattern of highs and lows into a sine wave, knowing that even when I'm despairing, I'll feel happy again, and vice versa.

On being in a predominantly Abrahamic environment

2006-08-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

Nio commented to my last post that she'd like to see me writing from my Pagan perspective on the BlogCon, and she's getting her request. Sort of.

The atmosphere at the Blog Con didn't strike me as unusual--and I have figured out why. Spending a lot of time around socially active, predominantly Christian people is not all that different from my daily atmosphere at the Divinity School. So I barely registered that I was reacting to it as a Pagan; I was just reacting to my normal state of affairs.

That state of affairs, though, is not a default state for Pagans, even if I'm immersed in it. And so, I need to puzzle out what that means, whether in the context of the Blog Con, the Pluralism Project, or the Divinity School, and how that's affecting my own faith. (So Nio, your response is a bit more general than you might have wished!)

There are the basic situations. The standard assumption that I'm a Christian ("Funny, you don't look Pagan...") is the first: Unless I bring it up, I am 'Christian by default.' My faith just doesn't register as one of the first options.

The awareness that any time I do mention my faith, I'll need to answer the followup of "what's that mean?" I've got the ten-second reply, the one-minute reply, and the "let's sit down over lunch and talk it over" response.

The expectation of shared context--that I'll know what's being talked about when someone quotes Scripture. Since we're in a culturally-established Christian nation, I do get a lot of these references--but not all, and it occasionally bugs me that I'm expected to know their faith as the default.

I sometimes feel that I have to prove, or defend, or guard my faith. Most of the people around me have centuries of tradition to draw on; Paganism has a lot of debate about whether and how far back our tradition goes. This leaves me feeling a little groundless at times, as if I have to make my arguments that much more secure because I can't refer to history.

One nice thing at both places, I don't experience a constant reference to God as He. Michelle Murrain's closing of the Sunday service, in particular, knocked me off my feet when she addressed God as Her.

Another good feeling that came from the con and HDS is the awareness that people around me take this seriously. I'd rather be engaged in an argument about why I believe something, than have it constantly brushed off as "ok, whatever" or "we don't really talk about that."

Discussions about interfaith collaboration, especially around social action, has another effect. I'm aware that, in some interfaith settings, Pagans and Paganism can become a deal-breaker for the collaborative work between faiths.

I think that our presence--Pagans in particular, but also minority faiths in general--forces a reevaluation of what faithfulness and religion have to mean. An interfaith group can't just keep widening the circle from "ecumenical" to "Judeo-Christian" to "Abrahamic" in the face of a culture full of Sikhs, Asatruar, Buddhists, Swaminarayan Hindus. They have to do something bigger than basing criteria on scripture or history--they have to entirely rethink what constitutes faith. What counts as religion. And that is a scary discussion to have, but a sorely needed one.

Perhaps what most struck me is this: Several times, both at the Divinity School and at the con, people have referred to the "brokenness" of the world. And I don't believe in that concept.

"Brokenness" isn't the same as being finite, or being riddled with hate and fear. Brokenness, to me, implies that the world is just wrong in some fundamental fashion. I look at the world--even with all the terror, the pain, the suffering--and I don't think it's perfect, all sweet and nice, but I don't think it's broken. It is, what it is. Our task isn't to fix it, which seems to imply some final perfected state, but to make it better, which is an ongoing process. Social action, social justice, peace work, in this context is not an attempt to correct our sins or fix our flaws, but to counter our tendency towards harm with increased kindness, and make the world a better place for the next round.

Summary of the ProgFaithBlogCon

2006-08-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

The summary of the convention which I wrote for the Pluralism Project is available!

As you can see here, I left it fairly simple: a summary of the workshops, pulled from my notes and others, with a brief 'what are blogs?' and a short 'where do we go now?' section. Lots and lots of links, though I barely scratched the surface in many ways.

Some other reports that might interest you:
Minority faith involvement in the 2006 debates
Chicago's diversity training for police
Women in US Buddhism
And a collection of articles on the VA Pentacle debate.

(Also, if I've gotten something wrong in the article, please let me know and I'll fix it right away!)

On uncertainty

2006-08-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

Met with my advisor today. Among other things, we talked about his skepticism and my belief. He seemed to think that because I am 'religious', I'm assured that what I think is the truth and can't, as a result, really reckon with the contingency and uncertainty that my truth rests on.

Is that really true for people who have faith? Many, I'm sure. Perhaps I'm just more wishy-washy than others, but I don't have the feeling that I've reached the Truth; I'm assured that it's there, but I'm also aware that everything I know about it is prone to error.

See, I'm finite. This is a good thing; it lets me be surprised, be forgetful, be many things. But She's infinite, and any attempt to understand Her gets filtered through my finite perceptions. I'm bound to miss something. Even in the moments when I most feel part of Her, or connected to the infinite, I have to eventually process that through language and memory. And we all know how reliable those are. Now, I don't believe that there's an unbridgeable absolute separation between humanity and Divinity...but humans still have limitations, even when we are most Divine.

Somewhere among the things I think are true about Her, I'm probably wrong. I can't tell where I'm wrong, though; all I can do is try and test them against experience. And, because my Paganism finds Her in all things--and especially in all people--testing them means acting in the world, not holing up in a cave.

I wonder if it's possible to walk this middle ground, part certainty and part doubt, for long. It does make pluralism and acceptance of other faiths easier: She's bigger than I can possibly understand; have you seen a part of Her that I've never been able to encounter?

This reminds me of Bruce Prescott's qualities of progressive faith--namely, humility. "While some interpreters of religious traditions may be considered authoritative, infallibility is an attribute that is best reserved for the Divine."

I looked up and I was surrounded by giants.

2006-08-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

When I attended the ProgFaithBlog Con, I wasn't really a blogger. Two weeks worth of posting does not make one. So when I was supposed to give a talk about the Pagan blogosphere, I didn't really know what to say. I named a few that I'd encountered, pointed people toward Witchvox and Circle Sanctuary. The discussion ended up being about Paganism in general anyway, so I didn't feel too bad.

Now that I've gotten a little time to start browsing the blogworld, I've encountered some amazing, articulate, thoughtful Pagan blogs that I wanted to share.

First is Niobium, who was the first Pagan to comment here and whose blog inspires me with its creativity and honesty.

Next is Chas Clifton's Letter from Hardscrabble Creek.

Next is A Pagan Sojourn. I especially like the "Pagan Misconception" posts, 1-5 so far.

Finally is the Wild Hunt.

And this is just a tiny bit of what I've encountered.

Part of me is just going OoooOOOOooo over all this fascinating, intelligent writing; a tiny bit is intimidated to be writing alongside them, but I say a profound humbug to that tiny bit.

Given that I started this blog roughly six weeks ago, I don't feel too bad about being clumsy with my interface. I hope to have the bars customized enough to show links to these blogs (as well as start using a blog aggregator, put RDN headlines from my workplace on the site, and generally make the site more useful to me and any passers-by) in the next few weeks.

Generational silver

2006-08-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I lost a silver bangle. This doesn't upset me the way that it might if I had lost it on the street or at a friend's home, because of who made it and where I lost it.

My grandmother was an art teacher in a Midwestern high school. She drew Christmas cards for the family for over thirty years; she painted in oils and watercolor. She sculpted; there is a bronze bust of my grandfather that I remember seeing the clay maquette for. She also was a jewelry maker. One of my best memories from visiting her is sitting at the kitchen table next to her with a tiny blowtorch and bits of copper, enameling them with tiny bits of colored glass. She made us rings and pendants, and she made a silver bangle for me.

Originally, it was circular. I bent it to an oval so it wouldn't slip off easily, and it got banged and bent in the years I've worn it since. I stopped wearing a watch so I could wear both my old silver bracelet and this one. It's a gift she made out of love for her granddaughters.

This is one of the keys I have to remember her with, one of the signifiers that shows her hand on my life. It is either in the cabin or at the bottom of the lake. Had I lost it anywhere else, I would still be sniffling.

My grandmother's great-aunt Alta built this cabin. This woman, who introduced her art-student niece to one of her own students (upon returning from meeting my grandfather for the first time, she said "He has a nice laugh."), came to the lake in the early years of last century and decided she wanted a cottage in this spot. She had the cabin built and spent summers there; then, my grandmother brought her family here almost every summer after Papa returned from the war. And my mother and her sister have continued it; and their daughters as well.

This is a place built by women, handed down through women, even as men come with us and feast and chop firewood and play with the children and read. This is Tante's cabin, where my grandmother's jewelry-making tools are kept--the same ones she used for the bangle. This is a place of great safety and sanctuary, where I come to recharge every year.

I hope to find it again, but it is in the place where it was made. If it rests at the bottom of the lake, then it is offered from all the line of women as thank you to the spirit of this place. If it rests in the cabin, it is home.

Second Planting

2006-08-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

The letters are sent and the donation given, and a project begun. I may, if things work out, be starting a large collaborative quilt intended to both illustrate desire for peace and, possibly, serve as a point for discussion here in the States. I need to check on a few things first, but I think I can do this.

My idea for the design right now is a tree, where anyone can add a leaf, and a border of hands, where anyone can add a hand.

I never remember to celebrate Lughnasa. It's here; it's already crept up on me, and I find I am celebrating it unawares. One of my writerly friends called August 1 the day when everything starts over, halfway through the year--when we can begin again. And today, I ran into a mention that Lughnasa has survived as a date in the almanac for Second Planting.

In the current heat wave, everything feels overripe--we're at the opposite of February chill, and the burned-brown grass seems as infertile as the frost. But this is a restarting point: new endeavors, undertaken while we're in the flush of growth from summer.

On one hand, it's a nudge not to rest on our laurels, but to keep planting and keep working. On the other, it's a new beginning, hyper-aware as opposed to the sleepiness of Imbolc. So this must be a twofold celebration: praising the brillant ripeness of the summer and hoping for the new endeavors we begin today.

New endeavors; like a quilt that will likely take a year, like applying to graduate schools, like planning a wedding. Today's heat and heavy air can't prevent us from the second planting.

A small paradox

2006-08-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

When it comes to matters of the existence of God, I rarely think of the word faith. Instead I think know, or feel, or love; I don't have to provide proofs of Her to myself.

But believing that any action I can take will have an effect upon so great a crisis? That requires a great act of faith, of stretching my hope against despair and confusion and counterevidence.

Lady, I believe; help thou my unbelief.

2006-07-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

Turning the lens outward. Lebanon. Israel. Hezbollah.

The voice of my tempter whispers again: What does this have to do with you? You’re not part of an Abrahamic faith. This doesn’t belong on a Paganism blog.

I do not have a solution. But on both sides—on all sides, really—of the conflict, there is suffering that cannot be countenanced. Aggression going under the name of defense. Unjustifiable death and destruction. The constant snuffing out of lives.

Again: So you’re going to what, blog about it? Oh, that’ll help a lot. Shush. I listen to you, I submit to despair--not even rational despair, just apathy. So stuff it.

The people dying, and the people killing, are part of this same world as I; my brothers and sisters. Part of the Goddess. And this is that which is in us that is capable of causing misery.

If I do not do something now, my children and my grandchildren will have just cause to look at my generation and my time with horror. What did you do to stop it? Did you do anything at all?

The little actions seem so feeble. A pittance sent to an organization calling for peace, a tiny work of art or charity surrounded by a sea of indifference and loss. And the big actions seem beyond my capacity to act; I'm not a mediator, nor a diplomat, and I don't have the power to back up any big action.

But this much I do know: None of the big-scale solutions--none of the messy diplomacy and negotiations that need to take place--can occur without a cease-fire. As long as the killing goes on, there is no room for the debate and mediation that needs to happen. Nothing but bloodshed and posturing will be accomplished on any side by more death.

So I will start my call here. There must be a cease-fire, enforced, on all sides.

Tonight I start taking the little steps, no matter what the tempter says about their usefulness. A letter to the editor. A letter to my representative. A donation to a group with a louder voice. A quilt of a thousand hands reaching for peace.

I do not have a solution. I only have the conviction that this must somehow stop--and thin, thin threads to weave toward an answer.

Ministry

2006-07-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

Continuing, albeit slowly, on the theme of translating faith into action...

On the personal level, rather than the activist level, there is the action of reaching out to someone who needs reassurance, or strength, or hope, or simply to hear that they are loved. I tend to call this "ministry" to emphasize its roots in faith. This reminds me to extend it beyond friendship or acquaintance, beyond the initial tribe.

Because the majority of people I interact with aren't Pagan, I feel that I have to translate my beliefs to some extent when I offer to help, or minister to someone. Lately, I've been clearer in expressing that many these acts come from my beliefs about the world, and about the Divine.

My ministry most often takes the form of Tarot readings. That's why I took the time to go through the Major Arcana, to become better at what I do. I try to give people this space to think about their lives and what's affecting them. I present these strange symbols, with their many meanings, and the few insights I can offer, as possible ways to rework their problems. And, sometimes, someone whispers a few words inside me, and I pass them on.

In a way, it's like a reading of Scripture. I take something that can be interpreted many ways, and offer a reading of it that reflects their situation.

But ministry can also be the sympathetic ear, the letter of hope and friendship at the right time. (This is another place where I should work to become better at what I do...but this entry shouldn't be about guilt!) It can be the good food, the tea and conversation, the gentle push or the swift kick in the behind.

Pagans who work in groups--how does ministry work for you?

When these acts of care are done on the more-than-personal level, it isn't ministry anymore; it can't have the same degree of individual love and personal attention and still have a large-scale change. But it does just as much good, if not more.

We need both kinds of action, and we need to be devoted to them.

Green Faith

2006-07-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

An example of ways in which faith and environmental activism can come together. Reverend Fletcher Harper, the director of GreenFaith, let me interview him for my work recently. I am greatly encouraged and inspired by the work he does.

Morning practices

2006-07-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

Every morning, when I enter my study, I take a moment and kneel in front of the little card-table shrine. I say a few words of thanks, or of praise, or of requests ("today is going to need a lot of patience/drive; please help me find that in myself"), and move on to the rest of the day.

I started this about four months ago, when I'd been sneaking into the Divinity Hall chapel weekly to pray. The kneeling isn't about submission, but about moving into a different posture than usual--making this time different and sacred. The prayers are variations on what I've heard described as the universal prayer: "thank you, thank you; help me, help me." When I'm conscientious about it, it becomes more than a morning routine, turning into a way to sanctify my day and remember Her presence.

The shrine is made from a shoebox. It's based off of one from the APT costume shop, the little 'costumer goddess' we built one summer, partly joking and partly serious. There are little offerings in the tray: shells, dried flowers; rings, stones, coins, bits of fabric and ribbon, thorns from a bouquet of roses, cord from a ritual. The silver collar I used to wear. A matchbox.

There's no central icon here, though, because there's nothing that could really fully represent her. On the other hand, above the shrine hangs a ceramic face--to remind me that She is fully represented in everyone.

Trance excerpt

2006-07-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

...When I made it to the top of the cliffs, I was panting, and sweaty, and sore, with skinned knees and broken or bruised fingers. Beyond the small ledge stretched an entire world, hidden by fog and the weakness of my eyes.

He said: Look at yourself. Are you content? And I looked, and was ashamed and bitter at the shape I had made myself into. I was neither beautiful nor awesome nor strong, but misshapen and awkward. I was not suited for the climbing I had done, nor the traveling I had yet to do, nor whatever tasks would happen along the way. I looked at my shape and despised it.

I said: I can do better. I know better now. I can start over.

He said: I tell you now, what you are, you have made; and what you have made, you cannot unmake. That time is past when you might have shaped yourself differently. You have made yourself, and you have made yourself flawed. And this is true of all that I have led to this place.

He said: But I also tell you this: What you have made is enough to move you, to bring you where you need to go, and to do that which is waiting for you. You have made yourself, and it is enough to carry you over this land. And this is true of all that I have led to this place.

He said this, and moved to stand against the mountainside. The wind raced by us, and I stepped forward, to the edge of the rock...

Faith, action, confession

2006-07-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Attending the Prog Faith Blog Con, as well as studying these matters and watching the current status quo, has kept me thinking about how our beliefs express themselves in action--especially in ethical action. (In particular, Hoarded Ordinaries’ post on embodied faith, which“insists that believers get their hands dirty in the real world doing the work of compassionate service”, and Mik Moore of Jspot asking "How do we inject our personal morality in the public debate AND translate our concerns into universal values?" Thus, I've tried to write about how my Pagan faith translates into action.

I've tried to write it for this post about five times. And each time, I hit a block strong enough that it keeps me from continuing to write, enough that I just want to trash the post and walk away entirely. Which, if you'll note from my earlier post, is exactly what I can't have happen within this blog. I have to keep writing...and I can't dodge the issue by posting some other topic, not for long, anyway.

In the spirit of the old Girl Scout "Bear Hunt" game, then, I decided to take a sideways approach, and write about why it's giving me trouble. "Can't go through it, can't go away from it...Gotta go Over it!"

The first reason, I think, is that there's no clear derivation of action from the beliefs. I agree to the Threefold Rule, as do many (but far from all) Pagans: what you do comes back to you threefold. Help or harm, good or ill, you can expect to receive it with interest. But that's not a clear injunction to go do good--it's more of a statement that "if you want good, do good; if you do harm, be prepared to accept the consequences."

The second is that there is an overabundance of action. I also believe in the interconnection (intersubjectivity, web of life, etc) of humanity with itself, humanity with nature, and both with whatever else exists that doesn't fall under either category. But does that mean environmentalism? Anti-poverty? Animal rescue? Women's rights? Anti-globalization? The closest thing I can think of is sarvodaya, uplift of all, but I don't know how the concept translates into specific works--or rather, it can translate into so many different things that I have no idea where to start.

Writing out the first two problems has brought me closer to understanding that it matters less where I start acting, as long as I do act; it's similar to the mental block that worried (worries) about what this blog is supposed to be, rather than simply doing it. The action is the important part, taken in mindfulness of Her presence in myself and others.

My Paganism, in understanding the interconnection of all things, the presence of the Divine in all things, and in hoping for the action of the Threefold Rule, means: peacemaking. Protection. Preservation of beauty and kindness, and defiance of cruelty. Strengthening self and others to stand up for their dignity, hope, and love--and making a world in which it is easier to be kind, harder to be cruel.

But there is a third reason why I struggle with these questions. And...Well, I'm ashamed of it. The third thing that's keeping me from writing on this topic, facing it honestly, is a desperate need to cling to what I have. A shameful hope that by never spelling out what translating Pagan beliefs into social action means, I can avoid having to act on them.

A little voice in my head says, "Give time? You have no time! You starve your friendships and relationships already, and you feel like your life is spinning out of control with the commitments you've already made. Send money? You're a student, you have no money to spare, especially not if you're hoping to someday raise a family! Short projects? Which of the thirty different causes that only take an hour will you do? Besides, any effort that makes any kind of difference will need a lot more time and energy than you have to give, because face it. You don't have anything to spare."

When this voice makes itself heard, I am never certain whether it is my selfishness, grasping and clinging miserly to money, time, emotion; or whether it is my self-preservation, trying to keep me from spreading myself so thin that I tear.

Fighting this voice--and sometimes, finding myself unable to fight it--is the first, last, everpresent thing I do when I try to figure out how to translate faith into action.

I do not yet know how to answer it. Perhaps confessing it here is the first step. Perhaps, if I go farther in my studies, I'll make my mission as a teacher and researcher one of bringing people to understanding each other.

Self-Proclaimed

2006-07-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, a news article covering a conference I was at referred to me as "at least one self-proclaimed pagan." There are a couple things in here that are pretty irritating; Niobium has remarked on them already, and sent a good letter to the interviewer. You wouldn't say "self-proclaimed Jew", would you?

Then there's the Pagan/pagan/Neo-pagan debate over terminology. Normally, it doesn't make much difference to me; though upon reflection, what I'm okay with in interpersonal dialogue is a completely inadequate standard for public representation. In this case, the author of the article uses it as a generic adjective--not as a name for a legitimate, recognized religious group. Thus, I am irked. (And thus, I will be shifting my terminology from pagan to Pagan in the blog. Because this is a public face of my religious practice, it ought to be held to similar standards.)

But obnoxious usage aside, the word "Self-Proclaimed" makes me thoughtful. And after a little Whitman-esque moment of singing "Meeeeee!" in the car at the convention, I decided to accept the term, on my own terms.

I proclaim myself
sister, daughter, lover;
confess myself
to be Hers as She is mine, as I am a part of all;
declare myself
finite, yearning for infinite, delighting in the limited;
announce myself
uncertain and assured, on a new path that is yet familiar;
sing myself, Pagan.

I have to be self-proclaimed, where other faiths can take it for granted that their affiliation will be clear. I have to sing myself, shout myself as a Pagan, because otherwise...well, who will?

Meditation, monkey-mind, trancing

2006-07-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

I'll be writing about the shared worship services at the Blog Con before I can really wrap my brain around the action/connection part. Although the latter have more potential for immediate world-change action, the former are both easier for me to write about in my Arachne voice (rather than my researcher or friend tone) and possibly may have a longer lasting effect.

On Saturday morning, Lorianne of Hoarded Ordinaries led us in a Buddhist Zen meditation. I found it...exciting. Which, as Lorianne mentioned to me, is not a word she has often heard related to meditation.

When I've "meditated" as a Pagan, it's been something of a guided visualization. Loosely based on some Starhawk rituals, it involves semi-controlled trance states, in which I act and interact with things that may be projections from my subconscious or may be masks for aspects of divinity. (I think they're both.) It's highly imaginative and requires that faculty to work; I have to "not be here", but be "elsewhere". In that elsewhere, aided by my imagery, I face fears, tend to fields, hold arguments, fight, wander, and so on, using these imaginative journeys to understand, heal, and strengthen myself.

(There are trances and "meditations" that I've used for outward work, especially as I've come to feel more stable and less in need of constant tune-ups of the soul. Those fall into a different category and are less imaginative and more active, and lead to action in the world rather than simply helping fix my troubles. Different category, for another time.)

This kind of imaginative trance is pretty far from the Zen work we did: be here now. And I could feel myself rebelling against it! I wanted to use the silent time to pray, or talk, or trance...but instead I kept thinking my mantra ("beloved Lady/be with us" to call on her positive face, but not to invoke a specific aspect) and kept bringing myself back to the moment.

This won't be news to meditators, but it was incredibly difficult. Every breath my mind would run off after something--the monkey-mind, racing around looking at every new thing until it got distracted again--and had to be yanked into the present. I'd set the mantra on autopilot and start noticing how my eyesight drifts to the right. I'd catch myself, return to the mantra, and start thinking meta-thoughts about whether this was something I wanted to do in the future, how I'd tell a friend about it, was I doing this right...and then yank myself back again.

Lorianne said that it's those yanks, that returning to the present, that is the aha! of meditation and enlightenment. She also referred to the idea of the six senses--the sixth being "mind".

Why was it exciting? Because it was something new. Something difficult, that revealed a tendency towards distraction much deeper than I knew. And possibly most, because this kind of meditation felt like training. Training to focus myself on the moment...perhaps I can use that to focus myself on one thought, one ritual, one trance. In short, if I learn to meditate more, it will be a skill that changes all my other skills--and one more thing to offer in my prayers.

Out of the broom closet

2006-07-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've outed myself.

Until last night, only the Velveteen Rabbi knew that this blog existed. Up until this morning, only she and my partner knew. Now I've given her permission to let others know, and I've told him, and I've put it on the back of a few business cards.

Time to get over that fear of publicity!

Time, perhaps, to put up the disclaimer. Most blog readers should be aware of this, but as a gentleman asked me today, I can't let the sole responsibility rest on the reader. Therefore:
This is not meant to speak for all pagans, for all paganism. This is me and my opinion and my explorations.

Just in case that wasn't clear.

Setting the tone

2006-07-13T04:05:00.000-07:00

FAQ bit: Pagans who follow a semi-Celtic calendar have eight holidays; solstices, equinoxes, and the 'quarter-days', which roughly split the time between solstice/equinox. Those often go by Imbolc (February), Beltain (May), Lammas (August), and Samhain (October).

The solstices and equinoxes are the holidays that I remember to celebrate even when I'm slacking off. There are a few years where I've been a "Beltain and Solstice pagan", a la Christmas and Easter Christians. But in the last three years, I've begun taking them more seriously and finding ways to celebrate and ponder their place in the wheel of the year.

One of these ways is half-charm, half-resolution. I believe that the manner in which I conduct the day of the equinox/solstice sets the tone for the next quarter of the year. It's not a matter of foreseeing, or even of casting a ritual for the time to come. It's closer to a resolution; a new beginning; a "getting up on the right side of the bed" for the next three months.

So I'll plan to be productive, or caring, or silent, or academic, or self-pampering for the day, and consciously invoke that side of me for the near future. I construct the way I want the next three months to be, and spend the day acting as the 'condensed version' of that time.

However, it's starting to apply to things that I don't plan. One Winter Solstice I fasted all day, planning to feast in the evening...but absentmindedly snacked on some chocolate about half an hour before the fast would have been complete. And the next quarter was very much defined by being very self-disciplined...except when I forgot. Or the equinox I planned to be superproductive and instead got sick, but fought it off by the end of the night. A kind of instant lesson in self-care.

Why am I thinking of this now? It's high summer, and the Summer Solstice is a holiday I always end up forgetting or paying less attention to. Winter, Spring, no problem. Summer? Things are big and growing! Why sit still and meditate? And it's sunny, and warm, how about if we just rest? Thus, my summer solstice dedication is often cut short to spend time enjoying myself. And true to form, my summer is often full of comfy, unproductive but pleasant lazing around.

This has me thinking. The summer holidays, the summer points on the wheel, are the hardest ones to remember to celebrate. Every day seems like a celebration, and remembering the wheel of the year is to remember that we will fall back into cold again. I've never celebrated Lammas, for example. In the middle of joy, it's tough to remember not only that it won't last forever, but that it is a natural gift of the world.

Lady, let me be able to praise you in the time of plenty as well as in the darkness.

Just the faq, ma'am.

2006-07-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

Now that I made it through the Major Arcana once, and since we're in-between the quarter days, I feel as if I have far less to say on this blog. But I can't let that happen. It's not that the world needs more blogginess, but that I need to keep writing--and most of all, to keep writing about paganism.

The problem is, I feel as if I should be trying to put together some vast Pagan FAQ for this phantom audience. Since I don't have readers right now, I've been fairly free in just jumping in...but if I were to introduce this to any kind of audience, I feel as if I would need to provide long explanations.

But I don't want to write that FAQ. I want to write about why rituals to help oneself are both necessary and potentially harmful, why I tend to be sluggish in the summer, fables about interfaith cooperation or about looking for Goddess, observations on touch and stone. I want to write on the ethics of doing rituals for others, on why I'm no longer certain about naming the Goddess, on mucking around with Protestant theologians.

I don't want to have to mount an elaborate apologetics of paganism or an explanation on what magic is or means or stuff like that. I don't want to present a carefully thought-out thealogy or theoilogy. I just want to talk about my way of being a pagan.

This entry itself seems to imply that I find that act of talking scary. Convinced, perhaps, that my faith needs constant justification and rationalization, or that any readers will be approaching with hardcore skepticism.

Maybe they will. But I took that risk when I began this; in a way, I took that risk when I decided to first name myself a pagan.

I think there are a few answers that I could use to allay my fears without capitulating and freezing. I'll put up fragments of the FAQ that I worked onlast fall and lost momentum for finishing, and intersperse with other ideas. I could even do kind of a glossary, so that when I eventually post about trancing and approaching Persephone, I don't have to pause and digress about what "trancing" or "meeting" or even "goddess" mean. I can just say that she was there; I was there; and she smiles.

I don't even know what this blog is supposed to be, cries the confused and frightened part of me. But, following in the path of the paganism I love, I'm going to start doing...and let that become the being.

The Universe

2006-07-03T07:40:00.000-07:00

Number 21, closing the Major Arcana. End of this road.

The snake of the early pages has become the World Serpent, Midgard-esque, circling through the whole solar system. The dream-bubbles are recalled by the planets and moons that hover all around, and the Sun, bigger than our imagined yellow ball on #19, takes up the very top of the card in a huge arc of orange. The serpent's head is crowned with stone formations, as if the earth itself grows out of it, and it is either breathing fire or inhaling it.

It is unsettling and vast, and gives a feeling that whatever we are part of, it is far more vast than we can comprehend. Although we've made it through the previous cards, this serves to remind us that we've only made one step. To make the next, we'll have to become the Fool again and be willing to see everything with new eyes...without losing what we already learned.

Aeon

2006-07-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is why the Sun isn't the completion. After all that hardship, we don't just get happy endings. The sun coming up the next morning doesn't make everything okay and fine again. Aeon is the card of integrating everything that's gone before; the realization, as the Sun is going down, that we still have memories of the Tower, of Justice, of Death; that we are not the Fool anymore, and that we have the weight of everything we've done and learned on our shoulders.

The Sun enlivens us and reminds us to stand up again, and that there is joy. It is not negated by Aeon. It gains something by not being the placid happy ending, but the active presence of joy in the world--in a world that includes pain and loss and confusions and self-destruction.

Aeon is becoming. Water falls from the sky, fire from the earth; the clouds have echoes of bone and stone, and the weary eye of what may be God or the Magician looks out over the landscape. In the far distance, great white mountains rise up, brighter than anything we've seen before; the undiscovered country? the next step for the Fool? In the center of it all is a nine-months child, ready to be born.

Unlike the Chariot, we aren't yoking two different forces; unlike Alchemy, we're not throwing them together for a big boom; unlike the Lovers, we aren't compromising between them. In Aeon, things that seem different are in the process of becoming--or being recognized as--whole.

The ethics of enchantment, part 1

2006-07-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

Working a ritual on behalf of someone can be a little tricky. Apparently there are several conflicting schools of thought, two of which caught my eye. One: if someone needs to have ritual done on them, you do it. Even if they don't ask. Two: Assuming that you know what they need is wrong, so don't do a ritual for them. Even if they do ask, you can't help, because their current suffering might be karma, or Threefold Rule coming down on them, or suchlike..

Both these positions are wrong. (Or rather, the straw-man exaggerated versions I've constructed here are wrong.) As usual, the answer lies in hacking out a middle path and using every new action to reevaluate standards.

For example: Doing a ritual or casting a spell on someone without their permission runs the risk of being akin to bullying. Haven't you had friends or family who tried to "fix" your life? Even if it was broken at the time, sometimes what they did was exactly the wrong thing--introducing you to a new potential lover right when you've broken up, tried to snap you out of it when you needed hugging, or hugged when you needed a good kick in the ass. This can be another form of superiority complex, a kind of "Pagan Knows Best" hubris.

On the other hand, refusing someone in need? No good. You get asked to help, you should help. You are being called on by someone who is in pain, and refusing that call is sinning by omission (nb: I couldn't come up with a better word than "sin", even though I don't believe in the conventional idea of sinning). Especially if your counter-argument involves "perhaps they need to suffer." The point of karma, as far as I understand it, isn't some kind of payback system, it's education. And there are other ways to learn without going through horrific pain.

But, on the third hand, there are times when doing something for someone else without them knowing it is important--maybe they'd never agree to help, or they're too far away, or they're too stubborn. And on the fourth hand, there are times when struggling through difficulties may serve to strengthen someone rather than destroy them.

The problem is, we don't know which is which. We can't; we're finite and stuck in time, and even those moments when we come close to transcending it get filtered through our brains and senses--and we're masters of hearing only what we want to hear.

So I tend to put a "safety catch" on my rituals for others, both those done with and without the other's knowledge. I state my intent, cast, form power, and then ask for the aid of those wiser than me. Help this go where it is needed, I ask. You are wiser than I, you are not bound by my limits. You know my wish for this spell; but let this be what (she/he) needs, more than what I want or what (she/he) wants. It keeps me from thinking I know exactly what needs to happen, and it frees the ritual somewhat.

Next time, thoughts about casting rituals for sex, money, love, power for oneself.

The Sun

2006-07-01T05:18:00.000-07:00

This card is a riot of color. It seems to be the Summer Country, the Promised Land, the home of joy. A huge rose, possibly a peony, fills the foreground and a great yellow sun hangs in the sky. Dawn is here and we are growing again. It isn't a return to the start but an achievement of the imagined goal. The rose is fleshy and full, and sometimes makes me think of cabbages instead of flowers. It's almost indecent...it's as round as a breast or an ass, and lobed and ruffled like labia. It's a ball of sensuality. The sun lights everything--there are bright colors on the earth, sharp shadows, and highlights.

What fascinates me about the Sun today is that it seems to be the end of the journey, but I know there are two cards left...

Moving into the sky

2006-06-30T04:08:00.000-07:00

The Tower crashes everything down. The Star is the clearing away of the debris. Cleansing, though not in a "hide it all" or even "get rid of it" sense. Wash it till it's clean. The Star is sad, and withdrawn, but also the first sign of hope.

The Moon is more than hope but not as unequivocally good as hope is. The Moon is possibilities bigger than any previously dreamed. The water glows with color, and two planets hang in the sky, and the little dream-spheres that litter the Minor Arcana bubble up here in huge numbers. Those dreams where the planets were huge, covering half the sky? This is it. This is going on after you've fallen and mourned and cleansed--it's the Big Sky that dreams lead to, and it's the midnight vigil.

The Devil

2006-06-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

I've studied this card out of context, and it's seemed to mean the Voice of our Adversary. Whether that's the external hating oppressive force or the internal self-loathing that takes over and would corrupt and destroy every aim, that's how the Devil has manifested.

I have placed less focus on the standard notion of enslavement by material things, material desires. It seems to be less spoken to by the card's image. However, there is a link between the idea of the "loose chains" and the voluntary enslavement and this card's idea of wrongness. The three-eyed (ram? goat) is either stupidly cruel or happily unaware of the third eye that has been placed upon it in a jeweled pile. The snake is malevolent and all-too-human in its eye, but the snake has been on many cards before and hasn't had a malicious reading.

Death, then Alchemy; then the Devil and the Tower. Why does Alchemy sit in that string of darkness, enslavement, eruption, and misfortune? Is it more negative than it seems? Is it not just a reaction but a catalyst?

From hiatus: Justice, Hanged Man, Death

2006-06-25T18:37:00.000-07:00

While on vacation, I worked my way through those three. They are at the center of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, and yet they're some of the hardest for me to parse. The Hanged Man especially; even more because Haindl's version isn't suffering or ascetic but embracing and bright (possibly the brightest card--colorwheelwise--in the Majors).

What I did come up with was a small progression. Justice is the weighing of two alternatives, neither of which is obviously better or worse than the other. The Hanged Man is the process of embracing one of those paths or choices, including the initial sacrifices (typo: "scarifices") and shifts of perspective. Death, though, is the cataclysmic shift that comes from choosing that path. You might anticipate it, but it is more than you reckoned with. The choice of an action, preparation for the action, and action--action that leaves you forever changed. Like a marriage, or lovemaking, or moving: even if you regret it or annul it, you will forever be marked by it-- an ex-spouse or an old lover or a former inhabitant.

Death comes so early in the Majors, for those of us who perceive it as the end of all. Perhaps I am wrong.

The Wheel

2006-06-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

A little ironic that I'm doing this one today. My first entry, and last night's that parallels it, are so focused on the wheel of the year that in a way I feel like I've "done" the Wheel.

But not quite, of course. Haindl's illustrations don't let us rest with simplicity or with familiar interpretations.

A man's face above; a woman's below. Upon the wheel we don't have king and peasant, death and baby. Instead we have a tortoise and a unicorn, a bearded man, a snake (an indistinct snake, compared to Strength), water dripping, bubbles rising, stone and air. And in the center is a hand, that may be trying to spin the wheel or to stop it, but seems to be failing in its attempt to grasp. In the hand's center, a tiny golden flame.

The wheel doesn't give us what we expect. It's framed by us, and we think we can control it, but it eludes us and moves or halts as it will. It's not a card of whim but of change--and the fundamental thing of the Wheel's version of change is unpredictability. Merchant does not lead naturally to king, leading naturally to deposed noble. Rather, the motion that continues is necessary but unknowable.

Midsummer night

2006-06-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

We've ended the longest day of the year. The last bits of light are gone.

Now is the high point of the wheel. Take the things you've been holding onto, building momentum through the rush of spring, and launch them like a discus out on their own. This isn't the time to lament that from here on out it just gets darker. That might be accurate, but it's not important. What's important is using this top of the arc to send our lights outward.

Sparks that fly off us as we spin.

Send them out, and spend the summer watching them glow, as some learn to spin on their own and others mark the sky with streaks, accelerating away from our sight. Be warmed by them in the next quarter of the year.

In midwinter, you will remember: The echo of the note struck today, and the promise that it will be sounded again, will call us back from death in the long nights.

Hermit

2006-06-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

The fuzziest card in terms of images, even if the Chariot and the Empress were more confusing. He walks away from a shape that I am interpreting as a city. Faces throughout the rock and the sand--owls with part-human eyes, predatory birds that seem to grow out of the stone. He didn't come out here to judge the city. He came out here seeking.

Hence the shepherd's crook and the lantern; also, the eyes turned upward not down in world-weary sadness. The Hermit might be old but he is not weary. Would a weary man, an exhausted man, who carries the knowledge of the world and has seen all there is to see--would he pick up and go out into the wilderness, seeking that great white light? Not to escape the city, but to see what is normally obscured by it. The stars. The light. The wild things in the rocks.

Why am I here?

2006-06-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Here, as in online--not here, as in on this planet.

This blog is not known (yet). As a result, I feel more able to be expressive in my spiritual writings than I do in my personal journal. I do not have an audience of friends. Yet I am also not talking to my shadowbox, or writing in a locked diary. These thoughts are available to others, even if noone knows to look for them.

I'm not shouting into the void, or acting out for my friends; I'm singing to myself, hoping that over time I get better at it. I am attempting to write out my thoughts on my paganism without the pressure of producing it for people who know the rest of me, and also without the luxury of privacy.

I want to be more consistent in my beliefs; more aware of my strengths and weaknesses, more in tune with my rhythms and systems and practices. I also want to end up creating a liturgy, as I explore some of the existing systems--the Tarot deck, the wheel of the year, and so on.

Part liturgy, part homily, part exploration.

Strength

2006-06-20T03:41:00.000-07:00

Theoretically, this is one of the easy ones. Strength, right? Simple meaning. Name of card equals meaning of card.

Except...
She's not controlling the snake, barely even grasping it. She is indistinct compared to its bright green and red. The sky is dark with a crescent moon, but the sky reflected in the pool at her feet is light blue, even silvery.

It is not the vivid, immediate thing of the world (the snake) that has the greater strength. It is the indistinct, faint force guiding it, leading it. How does she lead this? I shifted my legs into the same position as in the card and discovered two things: It's uncomfortable, and it demands movement. It's not a pose of repose, a rest by the riverside while she toys with this three-yard-long reptile.

It's a moment in a dance. Strength is not forcing through the difficulties or bludgeoning themt, nor is it stubbornness. Strength is dancing with them.

Called up to the majors

2006-06-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Day eight. Still don't get The Chariot. Harnessing differences, yes; hurtling out of control, yes. But why does my deck's version have a boat? With wheels? Why the burning figure on the deck--why the screaming boar, the moon-and-star, the gold blocks? What is the chariot carrying, and what draws it?

Working my way through the Major Arcana is more confusing than I had anticipated. We're past the easy ones, and not yet to the ones that get the most thought (Tower, Moon, Alchemy).

Beginnings

2006-06-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

All things are beginning. If the wheel of the year seems like a constant returning, retreading the same paths, then we must also be aware that this spinning wheel is always throwing off sparks. New starts, shooting off at a tangent and beginning to spin on their own.

It is appropriate that I am beginning this while approaching the summer solstice. It never feels like midsummer, or the point where everything starts to get dark again. It feels like the high point of velocity; like the peak of the roller coaster before you start the fantastic plummet toward the ground.

Midsummer is not the top of the wheel, where from here on out it's all woe and dark and ah, life is ending and shrinking again. No more than midwinter means an end to the death and the silence of snow. Midsummer is the escape-velocity moment of the year. This is when we take the things that have been spinning with us, getting ready to go--the flowers waiting to be pollinated, the year's work, the fledglings, the projects--and fling them out, using all the momentum of the frantic bursty growth of spring to heave them skyward. From there they find their own orbits, or continue on into the distance, burning brightly, and through all the rest of summer we watch them grow and fly. We bask in the ripening fruit and the glow of the sun, even as we're aware that the rest of the descent is waiting.

The note struck at midsummer is the echo that calls us back from the dead lands in midwinter.