Wind, Sun, Shade

It's a sign of just how simple I am, and, in the days of my youth, it would have been a sign that I needed drugs and shock therapy and "care," but I simply cannot describe the spiritual joy that wind in the leaves gives to me, especially when there's shadow and sun. I am literally in love with the sound and the sights, indeed, with the smells. Dappled shade is, and long has been, one of the greatest joys of my life. Today was predicted to be all rainy. Instead, it's been rainy, misty, sunny, windy, changing -- liminal. I am really happier than I know how to express.

Just One Corner Of A Garden

The Candle Does Nothing

Learning to work magic is a process of neurological repatterning, of changing the way [that] we use our brains. . . . A spell is a symbolic act done in an altered state of consciousness, in order to cause a desired change. To cast a spell is to project energy through a symbol. But the symbols are too often mistaken for the spell. "Burn a green candle to attract money," we are told. The candle itself, however does nothing -- it is merely a lens, an object of focus, a mnemonic device, the "thing" that embodies our idea. Props may be useful, but it is the mind [and the body] that works magic. . . . The primary principle of magic is connection. . . . Of all the disciplines of magic, the art of moving energy is the simplest and most natural. . . . The laws of ecology are the laws of energy. Everything is interconnected; every action, every movement of forces, changes the universe.

Starhawk in The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (20th Anniversary ed.)

Picture found here.

A Richer Relationship

I mean, hey all these investigations into other dimensions are very elegant and sometimes even useful, but in our lust for the Truth with a capital T we forefit our responsibility to the scale at which we live, this ambiguous and uncertain world that moves all around us. We hide ourselves from the most outrageous and mysterious truth of all which is our ongoing immersion in this wild web of relationships -- with other persons and other beings -- all of whom request our awareness and our humble respect. After three full centuries of science in the West, it should be obvious to all that we humans are one little part of one little facet of the cosmos, and so I can't understand how anyone could think that we could ever figure it out in its totality. The most we can really attain, with humility and humor, is a richer relationship, a deeper reciprocity with the persons, beings, and elementals around us.

David Abram quoted in How Shall I Live My Life? On Liberating the Earth from Civilization by Derrick Jensen

Picture found here.

More Like This

Hampton Roads, Virginia has a large and active Pagan community. It's wonderful to see the local paper doing such an upbeat and respectful article on their local Beltane celebration. The slide show makes it clear what an amazing day it was.


Picture found here.

From A Keeper Of The Dark To The Keeper Of The Light

Victoria Slind-Flor, recently named Keeper of the Light at the 8th Annual Pagan Festival in Berkeley, gave an amazing speech. I've copied a few of my favorite bits, but you should go read the whole thing, especially if you're wondering what it really means to be a witch in 2009.


I celebrate the fact that I am a member of the best of all possible religious communities in which to grow old. In mainstream society, aging women are marginalized, despised, and finally invisible. In Paganism, we crones-–and sages, which is what we call aging men—are honored, supported and often invited into the very center of things. How cool it is to be an old woman in a religion that honors the Goddess in her triple aspect of maiden, mother and crone!

Today I want to talk a little bit about who we are, how we got here, and what we do. The Pagan community is as diverse and energetic a religious community as ever could be imagined. Among the Pagans I know personally—many of whom are here today—are scientists, university professors, lawyers, nurses, computer specialists, software designers, poets, dancers, musicians, artists, therapists, stay-at-home parents, college students, entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and even other journalists like me.

We’ve become the subject of interest to a growing body of scholars who have noted we own more books per capita than members of just about any other religion, and who say the Bay Area has become the Athens of the Pagan world. Ours is not the religion of the book, but, you might say, the religion of the whole library, and the kitchen, the meadow, the loom, the potter’s wheel, the vegetable garden, the oven filled with baking bread, and yes, even the compost bin.

. . .

Pagans don’t prosletyze. There are no Pagan missionaries who go door to door, or who hand out leaflets or take to the air waves to urge others to join us. We know that each person has to make the journey by herself or himself. I would guess that the majority of us didn’t suddenly become Pagans, but, rather, finally found in Paganism a name for the religious stirrings and connection to the sacred earth that was always within us. I know that for me, personally, it was a matter of self-discovery, the aha! moment in which I realized I probably always had been a Pagan, despite my years and years of religious education, participation and service in Roman Catholicism. And I know that many many of my former co-religionists are here today and to be found in Pagan communities around the world.

. . .

Many come to us because Paganism is truly the ``big tent’’ with room for all. We’re sex-positive, and those who’ve been discriminated against for their gender or their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or economic status will find room here.

So where will you find us? Pagans can be found turning the compost in their bins, gathering up their bottles and cans for recycling, using public transportation to lessen their carbon impact on the environment. You’ll also find Pagans building houses for Habitat for Humanity, or in New Orleans, helping citizens of that beleagured city rebuild their lives.


If you’re in the hospital, chances are one of the nurses or doctors giving you care is wearing a pentacle and will work hard to make sure you receive spiritual as well as medical care. If you need to see a therapist, increasingly you’ll be able to find someone who doesn’t think it peculiar that you honor a polytheistic pantheon.

. . .

What does it mean to be a Pagan in the here and now? I think it means being awake, noticing, paying attention, in Buddhist terms, living mindfully. It means having your eyes open and noting the small changes in our physical universe that herald the turning of the wheel of the year.

Pagans notice when the winter rains upholster the Berkeley Hills with green velvet, or when the full moon means low tide in the Alameda estuary. They stop, filled with wonder, when they’re distracted by the scent of blooming jasmine, or when they hear frogs singing in the marshlands.

Pagans also have good radar for injustice, intolerance, and inhumanity. Pagans make donations to organizations that care for animals, the environment, the elderly, and anything in need of help. They’re also found giving service, trying to create a new and better world.

It’s also my theory that we Pagans are the so-called ``cultural creatives,’’ the leading-edge thinkers and doers. For us, making beautiful things, dancing in the meadow, walking in the rain and singing up the sun are religious acts. The Goddess crooks Her finger at us, and invites us to join Her in the messy, chaotic and joyful process of creation. And every morning when we hop out of bed, we see the world as fresh, ripe with possibilities.

. . .

And today,in our flowing robes, our face paint, our glitter, wearing our pointy hats, and laughing in the sunlight. we are here, we are whole and we are Pagans!

Yes, this is a big feel-good day for us. We can see our sisters and brothers who share space with us inside the big tent that is Paganism.

After all, we are a circle, within a circle, with no beginning and never and never ending. So let’s go dance and sing and have a terrific day.

Image found here.

Woad And Sage

None of them would hold still long enough for me to get a good picture, but the bees are having the maddest party of their lives out in my herb bed.

Black Iris And White Jack In The Pulpit, May 2009

Landscape Guy is coming around to my dream of a black and white garden. It's modern, Goth, and Victorian, all at once.

Rhododendron, Woodland Garden, Mother's Day 2009

This rhodie was here when I moved in, tucked back in the woodland garden. It doesn't fit in my color scheme, but I love it too much to part with it. Rhodies remind me of the mountains. A big white one is going in next to it.

What She Said

Damn. This is so good, it will blow you away.

Picture found here.

Dance

Dancing With Gaia.

Protesters Remind People That The World Is Unjust

Skip the first minute and a half

Mother's Day

NTodd and Ericka brought me flowers from the Code Pink vigil at the White House fence.

G/Son spent last night with me and we watched movies and played on my new rock and fed the squirrels and this morning we went and ran, and I do mean ran, a few miles through Brookside Gardens. G/Son and I got some flowers for him to give to his mom and Son and DiL took us out for brunch. All in all, a good day.

What A Complete And Utter Ass

`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

And, of course, we all know Humpty's answer.

If only there were a word that described people with no religion. It would make Ms. Burleson's job so much easier!

Photo found here.

But Did She Order Elitist Mustard?

Looks as if the Obama's are in the pocket of the American Beef Institute.

Is the White House having a boutique burger taste test? At the end of a week that saw the president and vice president pay a visit to local cult fave Ray's Hell Burger in Virginia, first lady Michelle Obama dropped by Spike Mendelsohn's burger place Good Stuff Eatery on Pennsylvania Avenue over lunch, the White House confirmed.

Local blog DC365 was first to write on the visit, snapping a shot of the casually dressed style icon as she exited the building.

"She whizzed past us, waving and smiling, in a kicky little ponytail and grey capri pants, as the crowd shouted 'We love you!'" wrote the blogger.

The first lady was joined on the outing by her staff, said spokesperson Katie McCormick Lelyveld, who had recommended the place to her. "Our staff had been before and we had told her about it and it was great," she said. The outing was just one of several the first lady and her staff have made to local eateries for lunch, also visiting Five Guys Burgers and Fries and a barbecue place. "Sometimes you just need a burger," said McCormick Lelyveld. "It was her idea."

The group numbered 17-20 in size and sat on the restaurant's second floor, said Good Stuff Eatery spokesperson Micheline Mendelsohn, sister of Chef Spike, a former "Top Chef" contestant. There, they noshed on a selection of the joint's most popular fare. "We just made platters so everybody could taste different burgers," she said.

One of their prize-winning burgers is the Colletti Smokehouse: sliders with applewood bacon, sharp Vermont cheddar, fried Vidalia onions, and chipotle barbecue sauce,

I'll echo DC365: I do really love and admire how the Obamas are making this city their home, and taking part in the life and culture this city has to offer. They are some pretty hot neighbors.


Photo foundhere.

Abstinence As Birth Control: Fail! U R Doing It Wrong!

During the campaign, I was pretty adamant about not going after Sarah Palin for her parenting choices, nor after her pregnant, teen-age daughter, Bristol. I've been a pregnant teen-ager and a teen-age mom, and, under the best of circumstances, it's no bed of roses in this culture. But Bristol's decided to make the rounds of various talk shows; at least, I assume she, not her parents, made that decision. So I do intend to comment on one point. A few weeks ago, Bristol was interviewed and said, that telling young people to be abstinent is "not realistic at all."

That may not have gone over too well with someone, because, earlier this week, Bristol was back on the talk show circuit and this time, she kept repeating, bot-like, that "abstinence is the only way that you can effectively, 100%, foolproof way, to prevent pregnancy." The talking head in the first video says, "It is."

In the final video, the talking head interviewing the father of Bristol's child, says to him that Bristol now says that abstinence is the only "surefire way to prevent teen pregnancy. Which is true."

No, it's not.

Abstinence, as a method of birth control, has an horrific fail rate. Bristol Palin herself was using abstinence and got pregnant. There are thousands of people who were practicing abstinence until that method of birth control failed. So it is absolutely not a way to "effectively, 100%, foolproof, surefire prevent pregnancy." My guess is that the failure rate is so high that, if it were being sold at drugstores, rather than through propaganda and the press, it wouldn't be able to call itself an effective method of birth control.

And if there's a population for whom abstinence is more likely to fail than for any other population, my guess is that it's teenagers and very young adults. This is a population charged with hormones, as well as a population that still hasn't gotten (and yes, these are generalizations) the notion that "it" can happen to them, whether "it" is losing control of a car after a few beers or getting pregnant after a few "abstinence failures." And, because they're practicing abstinence, which they've been told is 100% effective and foolproof, they're less likely to have a condom or some other method of birth control around "just in case."

It's one thing for Bristol Palin, who, as far as I can tell, never really got much education beyond junior high school and who has been raised in an extreme fundie church, to go around spreading misinformation about the effectiveness of abstinence as a method of birth control. But it's another thing for adult interviewers on television to agree with her. Kali on a cracker, how difficult would it be to say, "You say it's 100% effective. It's not. You used it and you got pregnant. You said a few weeks ago that it's not a realistic method of birth control for young people. Why have you changed your message?"

Picture found here.

Hat tip: watertiger.

Obama Restaurant Watch

So it turns out that, while he likes burgers for lunch, the President goes a bit more upscale when it's date night. This weekend The first couple had their first date . . . since Barack and Michelle Obama took up residence at the White House.

The couple enjoyed drinks, dinner and dessert in a private room at the posh French restaurant, Michel Richard Citronelle, on Saturday.

. . .

Obama had salad nicoise and braised short ribs, a house specialty. Michelle Obama made a special request, ordering the lobster sandwich appetizer to be upsized to an entree.

. . .

Citronelle bills itself on its Web site as a "a reprieve from traditional East Coast-style dining ... as fresh and bright as the cuisine that graces its tables."

Citronelle's amazing, one of the top ten places I've ever eaten. It's great to see the Obamas out and about in DC; the Bushes acted as if the city didn't exist.

Photo found here.

Obama Clearly Listens To What I Say

So, for weeks, I've been begging Obama to come eat in Arlington. Today he and Biden did just that.

ARLINGTON, Va.

- It's like this: When you want a burger, you have to have a burger.

In this state of mind, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden took a short — but wholly noticeable — motorcade ride from the White House to Virginia and pulled into a small, independent burger joint called Ray's Hell Burger.

The two leaders went right up to the counter where the meat was being grilled and ordered.

The restaurant, which prides itself on premium aged 10-ounce burgers, sits in a small strip plaza. The burgers sell for $6.95

Medium well? What's wrong with these guys? And, dijon mustard? That's your effete, liberal, East Coast, out of touch, communists, right there.

Seriously, though, Obama, come back with Michelle and the girls and Michelle's mom and have Mother's Day brunch at Willow. Arlington has a lot to offer.

A Very Fine Cat, Indeed

Early Beltane morning, when they were very thin, Miss Thing, my good grey cat, slipped between the veils. Just before she went, she climbed onto my bed, shoved me over, stretched one front leg out in her typical elegant pose, and we had a lovely snuggle. I pet her, she purred, life was good. Her purr was always amazing; I never once ceased to be amazed by the active grace of so much pleasure.

She was a very private cat, not too fond of strangers, but in the final years of her life, she opened her heart to the noisy, little, blonde boy who came careening into the place, tolerating him with supreme gentleness as he was learning to let her smell his hand before he began to pet her and gleefully announcing, "She's my buddy!"

Good bye, for now, dear friend.

View From The Porch, Two Days After Beltane