If Not Now, When?

Matter Is Not Fallen

Sons and Daughters of the Earth, steep yourself in the sea of matter, bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life and your youthfulness.

You thought you could do without it because the power of thought has been kindled in you? You hoped that the more thoroughly you rejected the tangible, the closer you would be to spirit: that you would be more divine if you lived in the world of pure thought, or at least more angelic if you fled the corporeal? Well, you were like to have perished of hunger.

You must have oil for your limbs, blood for your veins, water for your soul, the world of reality for your intellect: do you not see that the very law of your own nature makes these a necessity for you?

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon

Obama Restaurant Watch

Richard Nixon loved cottage cheese and catsup. Ronald Reagan liked jelly beans. Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer. Bush I hated broccoli and Bill Clinton, well, that man just liked to eat. Bush II choked on pretzels. I'm guessing that Obama's going to go down in history as the president who loved burgers.

BOZEMAN, Mont. — A Bozeman, Mont., restaurant is saluting the president's fondness for cheeseburgers by offering a "Barack Obama Burger" Friday to honor his visit to the area.
The $10 bison meat burger at Ted's Montana Grill has three types of cheese: American, cheddar and Monterey Jack. The burger comes with a side of spicy mustard along with lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles, french fries and a small American flag.

The man does like his spicy mustard.

More here on bison burgers.

Picture found here.

From: The Invocation To Kali

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.
Violence, destruction, receive our homage.
Help us to bring darkness into the light,
To lift out the pain, the anger,
Where it can be seen for what it is—
The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love.
Put the wild hunger where it belongs,
Within the act of creation,
Crude power that forges a balance
Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind,
You, the dark one, Kali,
Awesome power.

~May Sarton

Picture found here.

Encounters With The Divine

Seeing god isn't just a cute name between Allison and me for having sex, like for some people it might be "catching the train" or "docking the ship" or "visiting the thatched cottage." It's literally true. Of course in some ways that's not a big deal: the divine is everywhere, and if you can't see it you're probably tryig hrd not to look. Naturally it's easier to experienc the divine in some circumstances than others. I see it more clearly, for example, in a pond, with the badkstriders and tadpoles, the gnats who spiral above the surface and the newts who come up for big gulps of air, than I do in a shopping center, airport, or skyscraper.

The former are encounters, however slight, with some others, while the latter are cathedrals honoring nothing more than ourselves. It's back to that same old masturbatory relationship.

I also don't want to say that all sex leads to experiences of the divine. . . .

~Derrick Jensen in Songs of the Dead

Picture found here.

To Be Of The Earth

To be of the Earth is to know
the restlessness of being a seed
the darkness of being planted
the struggle toward the light
the pain of growth into the light
the joy of bursting and bearing fruit
the love of being food for someone
the scattering of your seeds
the decay of the seasons
the mystery of death
and the miracle of birth


~John Soos in Earth Prayers From Around the World edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

Photo by the author. If you copy, please link back.

My Very Favorite Yoga Pose, Ever, Of All Time

I had some good doctors and some crappy doctors when I was being treated for breast cancer. Dr. M., I am looking at you.

My radiologist, the guy responsible for shooting me with not-quite-lethal doses of x-rays, was one of the good ones. He explained to me that they needed to tattoo me to show the technicians where to shoot the x-rays. I explained to him that no way was I going to carry a reminder of my time as a "cancer victim" with me for the rest of my life. He came up with some good alternatives. I don't have any tats.

He also told me, all unasked, that, v close to my apartment, there was a great yoga studio that had a class for breast cancer survivors, taught by a woman who had survived breast cancer, and that between the surgery and the radiation, my muscles were tight and rigid and, well, I should go. Oddly, since I HATE stuff for "survivors," I went. And, the class was v good and it healed my lymphodema and made me more flexible and helped me to relax.

I don't do a lot of yoga, these days, although I should. But one pose that I learned was so amazing that I'm doing it again, all these many years later. I call it, because it's what my teacher called it, Legs Up Against the Wall. OK, it's true. I also love the revolutionary sound of it.

Picture found here

A Blessing

Not with my hands
But with my heart I bless you
May peace forever dwell
Within your breast!

May Truth's white light
Move with you and possess you --
And may your thoughts and words
Wear her bright crest!

May Time move down
Its endless path of beauty
Conscious of you
And better for your being!

Spring after Spring
Array itself in splendor
Seeking the favor
Of your sentinent seeing!

May hills lean toward you,
Hills and windswept mountains,
And trees be happy
That have seen you pass --

Your eyes dark kinsmen
To the starts above you --
Your feet remembered
By the blades of grass.

~Donald Jeffrey Hayes in Earth Prayers from Around the World, edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon

Picture found here.

We All Need A Caledonia

My New Name For A Blog

What Diane Sylvan Said.

I, personally, am a panentheist. I believe that God exists within the manifest world, and also beyond it. God is in every molecule and in the space between, as well as all that lies outside of reality. God is the potter and the pot, as well as the wheel and the specs of dust on the floor.

To me, it does not matter what name or face you put on the divine, or how many gods you worship. What matters is that your religion, whatever its name or trappings, makes you a better person and helps you to leave the world better than you found it.

Does your spiritual path help you navigate the emotional waters of life? Does it support your growth and encourage you to think for yourself? Does your god/gods/goddess/whatever lift you up, or leave you feeling guilty and ashamed? Would your god ever ask you to harm someone in his or her name? Would you really want to worship a god who did?

The vocabulary, the altars, the Sunday dresses, the candles and incense, don't matter one lick if at the end of the day your life is not enriched by your spirituality.

Religion and spirituality should be about communion, not separation; connection, not rigid categories and rote. It should bring you closer to spirit, your own soul, and other people.

PIcture found here.

The Family That Eats Burgers Together, Stays Together

Someone in the White House obviously had a hankering for an Obama burger.

First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters, Malia and Sasha, stepped out of the Executive Mansion on Thursday for a hearty lunch of burgers, fries, onion rings and milkshakes at Good Stuff Eatery, a restaurant near Capitol Hill. It was Mrs. Obama’s second trip to the restaurant – she dined there in May — and a first for her girls.

The restaurant, which specializes in burgers, served the first family cheeseburgers and its President Obama burger, which comes with horseradish mayo, red onion marmalade, crumbled blue cheese and bacon. (Several members of Mrs. Obama’s staff also joined the Obamas for lunch.)

They also sipped milkshakes – including vanilla, chocolate, toasted marshmallow and the decadent Milky Way malt (with butterscotch, hot fudge, malt balls, custard and whipped cream).

Startled patrons snapped photos and called friends to report the news and the first lady shook hands on her way out, said Felice Robinson, the restaurant’s administrative coordinator.

“It’s really nice to see the girls,’’ said Ms. Robinson, who described the Obama girls as “very well-mannered.” “People are really enchanted by having such young children in the White House.’’

The restaurant’s chef, Spike Mendelsohn, of Top Chef fame, cooked turkey burgers during a child-friendly cooking demonstration at the White House Easter Egg roll in April. He said he was honored to have the first lady as a repeat customer. “I’m part of the family now, what can I say?” he joked.

More here.

Picture found here.

A Witch Takes Responsibility

Wicca is a mystical religious system. . . . Wiccan spirituality . . . requires the practitioner to develop a secure awareness of . . . how choices are connected to consequences. . . . Wicca has autonomy at its core, too. Even in group work[,] each participant is responsible for doing [her] own very [difficult] work to gain understanding and seek appropriate balance in order to be effective. We learn that[,] in Wicca, as in many other spiritual traditions, all the teachers and books and lessons taught by others mean nothing if we don't do our own work and take responsibility for our own progress. Others can't do the work for us and hand us spiritual awakening as something for us to consume. They can show us how they do things [and] talk about the insights they've had, but[,] in the end[,] we must have the realizations ourselves and discover and strengthen our own individual relationships with the Divine and with our inner selves.

~Ben Gruagach in The Wiccan Mystic

Which is a long way to say: And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.

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

Picture found here.

Smudge

There's a full moon today and at the beginning of the full moon (in Aquarius, while the sun is in Leo -- talk about powerful) we had a lunar eclipse. I came home early today to harvest sage and thyme from the herb bed to make bundles for smudging. This weekend, I'll buy cotton embroidery thread in 4 colors: Green (Earth), Yellow (Air), Red (Fire), and Blue (Water) and will make about three sage smudge sticks and three thyme smudge sticks (yes, sage is more traditional, but thyme is more special to me). I like to make the bundles a bit loose, so that they can catch fire more easily. I'll hang the bundles in my ritual room to dry.

Many people who write about making smudge sticks recommend making a sacrifice to the land in return for the herbs. I harvested these without the assistance of my normal summer anointment of the sacred oil of the Goddess DEET. So I made a serious blood offering to the land (in the form of the tiger mosquitoes who live here) and I have the welts on my leg to prove it.

There's a Wiccan "rule" that one should never use one's athame for "mundane" things such as cutting herbs. I completely disagree, especially with the notion that there are some things that are magical and some that are mundane. For me, it's all real, it's all metaphor, there's always more. (That's from Adler, somewhere). So I use my athame for the first cut, although, afterwards, I use my more effective garden shears.

Later tonight, I'll do some ecstatic dance with a few other witches and eat a magical meal. Then I have a few witch bottles to bury on my Southern boundary. I don't often blog about these "basics" of witchcraft, but they are what make up the day-to-day turning of the wheel.

Resist, Do Not Comply

Just Saying -- They're Going After Witchvox

Just Saying

I Am A Stag Of Seven Tines, I Am A Wide Flood On A Plain

Jensen who's never, as far as I know, studied any kind of witchcraft, provides a pretty good description of what happens to mystics, what happens at the beginning of shamanic experiences. The veils are now perceptibly thinner. What do you see when you open yourself?


I see Indians dancing. I see fires. I see days and nights and years of celebrations and mournings. I see people making love. I see the same for all kinds of animals, all kinds of plants. I see them living, dying, loving, hating. I see generation after generation of human, generation after generation of cedar, generation after generation of porcupine, generation after generation of ant, generation after generation of grasses, mosses, generation after generation of fire.

And suddenly I see even more. I see generation after generation of muse, dreamgiver, demon, walking back and forth between worlds. I see geese and martens and wrentits moving between worlds. I see fires moving between worlds. I see humans moving between worlds. I see the living and the dead.

I see all these worlds being renewed by this intercourse, this movement across borders porous and impenetrable and permeable and impermeable and breathing and alive as skin. I see these worlds winding and unwinding, tangling and untangling like the lovers they are, and I see moments in time, too, winding and unwinding, tangling and untangling like the lovers that they are, too. These worlds, moments, they are not one, they are not two. They are lovers, like any other.

Derrick Jensen in Songs of the Dead.

Picture found here.

Bouquet Of Lilies By The Poetry

Face In The Rain

Appropriate for the weather:

Extra Points For The Cute Title, Though. Bet You Wouldn't Do That In An Article About Xian Prisoners.

While xians far outnumber Pagans in United Kingdom jails (as they do in the UK population), the UK prison service is trying to find ways to accommodate some Pagans. These efforts are important because recognition by the military and prison systems are, maybe sadly, some of the first "official" ways that Paganism gets recognized as a "real" religion by governments. That matters because "real" religions get a host of rights in the US and the UK, from tax exemptions to days off from work for practitioners.

nmates practising paganism are allowed among their possessions a hoodless robe, a flexible twig for a wand, incense and a piece of jewellery. Pagans are also allowed to have “rune stones (wood, stone or clay tablets with the symbols of the ancient Norse-German alphabet) and a bag or box to carry them”. The Prison Service has made clear that the hoodless robe can be used only during private worship in an inmate’s cell or when a number of pagans in one prison gather for worship.

Pagan prisoners are also allowed to have tarot cards but staff say they cannot be used to tell the fortunes of other inmates. Guidance issued to prison staff said: “Some pagans use tarot cards for meditation and guidance. This may be allowed under the supervision of the pagan chaplain. If a prisoner requests to be allowed to retain a part or full pack, this may be allowed, but only following a local risk assessment to determine whether there is any reason to preclude cards. The cards are for personal use only and may be withdrawn if used inappropriately.”

Skyclad, or naked worship, is not allowed under Prison Service rules. Inmates are allowed to select two dates from a list of festivals when they are excused from work. They include Samhain, as Hallowe’en is know in paganism, the vernal equinox and the midsummer solstice. The guidance to governors also says that pagans can use wine in their worship, but “individual consumption will be one sip only”.

Yet while paganism is recognised as a religion by the prison service, Rastafarianism, which has 340 members in English and Welsh jails, and the Nation of Islam, with six members, are not. Anglicans remain the largest denomination, with 23,000 inmates, followed by 14,000 Roman Catholics.

A part of my religious practice is to read tarot for those who ask me to do so; I don't have two religious holidays; I have 34. Being skyclad is often an important part of my ritual. It's odd the things that terrify those trying to "keep order" in our societies.

Picture found here.