This

/hat tip: Amanda Marcotte

The Mystical MidAtlantic

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Barbara Starrett said:

I am a secret agent
Of the moon

Ex-centric
Extra-ordinary
Extra-sensory
Extra-terrestrial

Celestial subversive
Con-spiratorial
Spirita Sancta

Holy
Holy
Holy

And then some.

And I have friends.

May you, too, have such friends.

Picture found here

(Almost) First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at heca tedemet ersdat ter@ hotm ail.c om. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me. I'll email you back your reading.

The Month of "Yes, You May!"

Blessed Beltane to you. Wake at dawn and wash your face in the dew. Light the Beltane fires and make a deep wish when you jump them.

Can you make a divine mistake today? What?

Once more, this time with dragons!

Sunday Ballet Blogging

May the Goddess Guard Her; May She Find Her Way to the Summerlands; May Her Friends and Family Know Peace

Hail and Farewell, Joanna Russ. I learned a long time ago not to start one of her books in bed, as that meant that I'd always greet the dawn bleary-eyed and tired. She was an amazing writer. I hope the pens are sharp and well-dipped in the Summerlands. Slip gently away, Lady, just now when the veils are thin.

Picture found here.

Walpurgis Night Ballet Blogging

More on Beltane's Promise

Here's Joanna Macy saying better than I did what I was trying to say yesterday about Beltane's promise.



"That's where we come alive."

May it be so for you.

Beltane's Promise

One of my favorite poems for high summer is Mary Oliver's Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith, where she says:

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green
stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

Oliver's "what should I fear . . . let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine" is all about the Eleusian Mysteries to me.

Yet I was thinking of her poem today, mere hours before Beltane, when I went outside to pick oregano from the still-not-all-planted herb bed (covering my ears not to hear the whining of the eager-to-be-transplanted rosemary) and to water the new gardenia bushes that Landscape Guy just put in. I was thinking of the line "every summer/ I fail as a witness" as I contemplated how much I'm going to have to work at my job to complete a project by Monday (and thus not be in the garden) and how I plan every February that, by Beltane, I'll have every seedling planted, every weed pulled, every bit of the garden absolutely perfect. And how, every Spring, I fail as a priestess and fall short of that worthy goal.

I was also thinking of Oliver's assurance that her failure as a witness (and, I hope, mine as a priestess!) doesn't matter because, one morning, the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there. That's Beltane's promise to us, isn't it? That if we do the best we can, and work as hard as we can, and prioritize well, one morning, come high summer, the herb bed will be full of herbs, and the cottage gardens will have been weeded, and the corn's beautiful body is sure to be there. And so, on Beltane morning, we stop working, and weeding, and worrying. We wake up, wash our faces in the dew, and spend a day with our loves, dancing, feasting, and showing the seedlings just what we want them to do.

The promise can fail, of course. One thing agriculture did for our race, one thing that gardening does for me, is to embed and embody our success or failure into the (seemingly, to us,) random whims of this complicated personality we are pleased to call Gaia or "the Earth." We are co-creating, not acting as prime movers. Hail can destroy fruit. Drought can kill gentle plants. Clouds of voracious grasshoppers can show up and consume everything in a night. And so there is a huge part of gardening that is wrapped up in a willingness to take things on faith, to be willing to fail, to, in Teasdale's words, "buy it and never count the cost," or in Kipling's, to:

make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss.

That doesn't mean that Beltane's promise is false. It means that it's more complicated than we often imagine. Beltane is, of course, directly across the Wheel of the Year from Samhein, when everything is all about death, and loss, and descent. And so the promise of Beltane contains all of Samhein, just as Samhein contains all of the lust and joy and growth of Beltane.

I was thinking especially last night about Beltane's promise that, if we prioritize well, things will work out when I left my urgent project, ignored my needy garden, didn't launder the tablecloth or polish the silver, and spent the evening with G/Son. I read him a story about the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, & Water and then we went outside to spend a bit of time before the sun set. I was showing him how the maple seeds come down spinning away from their parent trees and how that's different from the way that the dandelion seeds (that we blew and made wishes on; Sorry, Son) spread by floating on the wind. And then he said, "Watch, Nonna. I'm a maple seed," and he spun around his twilit yard. And then he said, "Watch, Nonna. I'm a dandelion seed," and then he danced the float of a dandelion seed.

I am a woman who actually loves to weed, but, you know, the weeds will still be there in a few days when things settle down. And I am planting many sorts of seeds, and some of them will be growing long after my rosemary, basil, and parsley are lost to the Halls of Memory. And I will count on Beltane's promise.

Will you?

Picture found here.

Blessed Beltane

The Itch for the Absolute

Maybe, when I die, someone could read the last minute or so of this.

We have to close the distance between pushing buttons and affecting Gaia. We have to touch people.

/kisses Bronowski's forelock

Cups

viaTeacats

Arbor Day: A Uniquely Pagan Holiday

This Friday is Arbor Day, a day set aside in the U.S. and many other places to plant, care for, and honor trees. It comes just after Earth Day and just before Beltane. Must be something in the "air."

If you're Pagan, this is the holiday for you! My little county is asking people to discuss their "favorite" trees. What's yours? Have you ever planted a tree? Hugged one? Worked with one to help you ground?

There was a pine tree deep in the forests of the Rocky Mountains. I sat at its base when I was, I think, four years old and realized that my life was going to be mostly about connecting to nature. My memory's hazy. I was "alone" (mom was inside the nearby rented cabin, dad was off fishing, and, well, there were the trees and, I've always believed, a brownish bear nearby) for maybe one of the first times in my life, and I adored it, I was alone and I expanded out into the Earth and ran what I did not know then to call my roots down into the rocky soil to twine around the pine tree's roots.

In A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book, Ceisiwr Serith writes:

You share the joy of your marriage bed unashamed,
Eternal Lovers, with the whole world.
Each opening flower, each leaf unfolding, is your cry of ecstasy.
Each bird or animal mating, each man and woman making love,
Is not a reflection, pale or otherwise, of your lovemaking,
but your lovemaking itself.
Each hug, each handshake, each smile,
between lovers, or family, or friends, or strangers:
children conceived today on this Beltane,
on this happy Beltane.

This time of year, almost all of my sex magic goes to the herb bed and the seven magical trees that I've planted since I moved here. Shortly before they moved, the people who sold this cottage to me planted two fig trees. Every summer when I harvest their fruit, I see sex magic manifest in trees. Where does your magic go this time of year? Is there even a single tree that manifests it?

Last Mabon, my wonderful job took me out to San Francisco and I spent (not enough!) time with some of Mamma Gaia's oldest trees, the Redwoods in Muir Woods. Those trees make my lovely oaks, which have only been around since, oh, say, 1711 when Handel was composing, seem juvenile by comparison. In Muir Woods Meditations, Dag Hammerskjold is quoted as saying that:

Here man [sic] is no longer the center of the world, only a witness but a witness who is also a partner in the silent life of nature, bound by secret affinities to the trees.

I think that's about right. Almost not a week goes by that I don't dream of taking G/Son out there some day so that his little Pisces soul can experience those ancient land wights as I did. One of my most mundane goals this year is to bring my physical health to a level where that will be possible. I'll sit down at the end of this month -- one third of the way through this calendar year -- and evaluate my progress on that goal.

In Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, Michael Pollan quotes Russel Page as saying that, "To plant trees is to give body and life to one's dreams of a better world." As Pollan notes:

It's a sobering responsibility, picking the site for a big tree; get it wrong, plant it too close to the house or an electrical line, and you will someday force a terrible decision on someone. [People who lived here before I did, please take heed!] To plant a big tree is to throw a long shadow across the future of a place, and we're obliged to consider its impact carefully.

This shouldn't make you reluctant to plant trees, it should just make you look up and also consider the Element of Air. Where will this tree be in 20, 30, 40 years? Where will it be when you are gone? Surely, it will be making oxygen, giving wildlife a place to thrive, and, maybe, making fruit. But will it also have room to grow?
Pollan goes on to note that:

[T]he etymology of the word true takes us back to the old English word for "tree": a truth, to the Anglo-Saxons, was nothing more than a deeply rooted idea. Just so, my version of a planted tree -- envoy to the future, repository of history, index of our respect for the land, spring of aesthetic pleasures, etc. -- is "true"; it has deep roots in the culture and serves us well.

Pollan notes how important trees have been within the American, and other, landscapes:

The American Indians were not the first or the only people ever to consider trees divine; many, if not most, pre-Christian peoples practices some form of tree worship. Frazer's Golden Bough catalogs dozens of instances, from every corner of Northern Europe as well as from Ancient Greece, Rome, and the East. For most of history, in fact, the woods have been thickly populated by spirits and sprites, demons, elves and fairies, and the trees themselves have been regarded as the habitations of the gods.

Well, yes. I go to work every day through the Spout Run Woods and, I can assure you, the woods still are.

There are, to my mind, two trees famous and important to American history. First, there is a story, and Goddess, does it ever capture American history, of George Washington admitting that he chopped down a cherry tree. I imagine that Pappa Jung would have had a lot to say about this. And, then, there are all those apple trees that John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) planted all over America, providing cider for generations of Americans,. Are there others that I'm forgetting?

One of my most favorite groups is the American Chestnut Foundation, a group working to re-establish chestnut trees, which once covered most of the MidAtlantic, to their landbase. If you ever want to donate to a great cause, I think that theirs is one.

I'm not suggesting that you add an extra holiday to your calendar between Ostara and Beltane. We're all too busy to ground and pay attention as it is. I am suggesting that you talk to your Circle, Coven, Grove, etc. about how you can, next year, incorporate Arbor Day into your rites.

May there be acorns, pine cones, large trees, weeping willows, dogwoods, redwoods, cherries, and figs in your future. May you and the trees spend this incarnation learning how to breathe each other into your cells and how to encode messages to your grandchildren, etc. into each other.

Blessed Arbor Day.

(Yes, that's John Denver. I'm old. It's gotten a whole lot better since then?)

Come Dance Between the Trees on Beltane

Blessed Beltane

May it be so for you.

My New Name for a Blog

What Phaedra Said.

Just gotta understand your shake.

Picture found here.

Oaks and Beltane

My little cottage is surrounded by some (three-to-four-hundred-year) old oaks. They help me to ground; every day I run my roots down into the red Virginia clay where these lovely beings have been thriving since before America was America. They also center me; I know that I am home when I can feel myself surrounded by oaks. They support the squirrel clans who are my closest neighbors and they provide housing for over a half-a-dozen different kinds of birds. They shade my house in the summer, give me more than enough firewood, and provide me with provenance. I'm not embarrassed to announce myself to the Elements or to the Potomac River when I can state that I come from that bit of Earth bounded by all of those old oaks. There are callouses on my hands from raking up oak leaves and acorns; those are my bona fides to the doors between the worlds.

"My" oaks are slowly dying; although oaks can live 400 or 500 years, global climate change is drying out our summers and stressing our oaks, making them subject to oak borers, which kill them within a few years, at the most. Since I moved here almost a decade ago, my neighbor and I have had to take down three of them, and the final few are only going to last another couple of years.

When they go, we will probably replace them with pine trees. No leaves and acorns to rake every Fall. But I am not sure how I will know, without them, that it is Beltane.

Yesterday, I came home from work and sat outside for a long time in the woodland garden. There was not an oak catkin to be seen. Not one. I wandered the whole yard; no oak catkins. Today, I came home from work and there were oak catkins all over my front steps, all over my back deck, all over everywhere. It's as if, at some point in the last 12 hours, the bell sounded and every oak tree in the neighborhood said, "Oh, OK, time for the Great Rite. Here you go!"

There's never been a Beltane here at my little cottage when I haven't gone out, an hour or two before the Witches showed up, and swept mounds of oak catkins off the steps and deck. There's never been a Beltane when I went out at dawn to wash my face in dew and didn't find the dew full of yellow-green oak pollen. How will I know that it's Beltane when all of my old companions are gone?

What tells you, sans doubte, that it's only days until Beltane?

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Spinning

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

The truly brilliant and always-grounded Athenae has up a great weekend post asking people to discuss the most transformative trips they've ever taken. What a great question!

One thing that amazes me is how, for most of her commenters, the important trips were trips into nature. Oddly, one of my most important trips, much as I always push a connection with nature, was a trip from the mountains and woods to a city.

As I answered at Athenae's blog, one of the most transformative trips that I ever took was when I was five and my family moved from rural Colorado ("my city of mountains, stay with me, stay") to Washington, D.C. For that little, impressionable Pisces, walking off of the train into a city of marble monuments and heroic statues was completely transformative. My entire conception of what the world was and could be changed when I moved from wooded mountainsides to a city full of architecture and gardens devoted to an heroic archetype of democracy. I fell madly in love (and fifty years later, I am only that much more devoted) with every carved marble wheat sheaf and arrow, every faux-Grecian column, every naked woman representing some high-minded ideal (bite me, John Ashcroft, no, really), every amazing painting calling to me from the walls of a museum. I gave myself all the way to the United States Botanical Garden, to the National Arboretum, to the fountains (Lit! At night! I'd never seen a fountain before, not to mention imagined that they could be lit up at night! Kennedy was in the WH, it was Camelot in DC, the entire city seemed, to me, full of sparkling fountains that shone all night long. And there were ladies in pillbox hats and amazingly-constructed dresses w/ princess seams, wearing 3/4 length gloves! 3/4 length!).

I still love to retreat to the mountains, although, now, for me, five decades later, it is the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains that soothe my soul. I haven't been to the Rockies for forty years. And I've been v happy during some long, long trips to the California coast. But in my dreams, I am still, most often, in a very wet city on the edge of a river, a city full of marble monuments and archetypical statues.

Just last night, I dreamed that there was a wonderful arts program inside the Capitol, run by a brilliant and energetic young woman. I was hosting a young teen-age woman interested in government and art and, finding ourselves downtown with a bit of extra time, I decided to drive her to the Capitol to check out the arts program. We drove past statues that, while they do not exist in the "mundane" D.C., most certainly do exist in the archetypical DC: statues of heras, and feminine beasts, and deep principles. My (long dead) mother and I walked our guest into the Capitol which turned out to be, as only the not-so-"mundane" Capitol really is, full of open skylights that a young woman might step through and hurt herself and large bookshelves that she could climb on and pull over on herself. And, yet, we got our guest up to the front to meet the young hera running the history and arts program and, when I awoke to put myself magically back into the dream and started to soothe over the dangers, my young guest showed up in my not-awake-not-asleep dream and said, "Please, don't. I like it better like that." She's right. So do I. I love this city best with all of its dangers and pitfalls. Especially the ones that people mean when they sneer about "inside the Beltway."

I opened up and embraced them half a century ago when I was five. One of the first dreams that I ever had of this city was when I was six and dreamed that I was swimming in a fountain at the pool of Blessed Mary's feet, just outside Union Station, looking up and watching her nod to me. (There is no such "real" place in the "mundane" city, not even at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which somehow transposed itself with Union Station in my dream.) When I was six, Mary was the only image that I had for the divine feminine. Today, I see that ancient dream as my first attempt to connect to (swim in the water of) Columbia's symbolic city. May I swim here until I die. May you dream yourself into your own most important landscape.

How would you answer Athenae?

When you bring a child to a magical place, you can't be surprised if she spends half a century or so living there, both physically and in her dreams. Where will you take the most important child in your life?

Picture found here.

Daily Practice

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

May the Goddess Guard Her; May She Find Her Way to the Summerlands; May Her Friends and Family Know Peace

Thank you, Hazel Dickens. I miss those mountains, too.

Cottage Garden

It's an almost impossibly perfect day here on the banks of the overfull Potomac River. I'm doing work that I'm good at and that I love. My garden is taking off. My dreams keep telling me interesting things. G/Son is thriving and I'm having dinner w/ Son tomorrow at a new French place in D.C. And while the world goes to hell in a handbasket and Obama (who got elected because that evil woman voted for the war) is now sending drones into Libya, I'm still filled with gratitude for the chance to help re-weave the web every morning that the Goddess wakes me up to do this interesting thing all over again. One of these times, I'm bound to get it right. I live in a city that gives me a chance almost every day to quickly ground, center, throw a web of intent across a motorcade or helicopter or government official and raise energy from the Earth to guide those involved to open to goodness, mercy, compassion. No matter what else, I can go to bed every night in my little cottage and be grateful for that.

I'm off now to sit at my altar, to which I'm bringing the first gardenia bloom of the season as on offering. They say that the Summerlands smell of apples. That will be nice, but I hope that they have gardenias there, too, because I may love that smell better than almost anything else -- well, except for the smell of Son's head when he was a baby -- ever. What's your favorite smell?

There's some great writing out there on the internets (as W used to say).

As always, if you only read one blog all week, it should be The Arch Druid Report.

Literata makes a great point here.

Thalia shows what it's really like to work with all you've got to be in relationship with a bit of Earth.

Beth Owl's Daughter talks about changing your home in order to change your life. Magic, indeed.

Medusa has a list of events from Wisconsin to the Netherlands. They will keep on speaking her name.

Patti Winginton adds to my comments about how Christians should (not) talk to Pagans.

Byron Ballard reminds us that in the midst of life, we are in death and the veils can thin at any time.

The always erudite and sensible Makarios links to Swidler's Dialogue Decalogue.

Teacats points out in comments that the divine S.J. Tucker already explained everything in song to Christians who want pointers on how to talk to Pagans.

And, on Twitter, Cary Rockland asks a question that's had me thinking all afternoon. What "success rituals" do you use to achieve peak performance? I keep wondering if I even have any? Best I've come up with is: lean protein at breakfast and remembering my "why," but I feel as if this is a question I need to work on a lot more. How would you answer it?

Picture found here.

Me, In a Bad Mood

Jason Pitzl-Waters, at the Wild Hunt links to this interesting post by a Christian telling other Christians "how to talk to Pagans." It's not as creepy as the recent book on the same subject, but, well-intentioned as I am sure that its author is, it's still insulting and creepy. (The odious John Morehead in comments only makes it that much worse.) In the end, this entire post is all about "othering" Pagans under the guise of "no, really, try to treat them as if they were humans; they're so dumb, they'll really appreciate it!"

First, though, and I mean this, kudos for getting the capitalization mostly correct. It's more than most do.

As several people note in the comments to the post, the unspoken "elephant in the room" in any Christian discussion about "how to talk to Pagans" is that the advice isn't given to help you to have, say, a nice chat about the weather or your local neighborhood zoning issue, nor is it given to help you to convey to the Pagan in your workplace when you need to get their report. Oddly, most people wouldn't need a guide to help them talk to Pagans about those topics; believe it or not, we're pretty easy to talk to about zoning issues and when reports are due. (See also, e.g., your kids, my garden, the weather, today's traffic, where to go for lunch, taxes, whether to go into detail on a subtopic in our legal memo, who's going to play bad cop on the conference call, and the funny thing that happened to me this weekend. Difficult as you may find it to believe, I had conversations today on all of those topics with Christians who're unaware that I'm a Pagan and who have no need for a special guide to figure out how to talk to me. OK, they did have to e-nun-ci-ate very clearly, because, you know, it's difficult for Pagans to keep up with modern English.) No, this kind of advice is all about the need of most Christians to at least lay the groundwork (aka "begin to 'dialogue'" or "develop a 'relationship'") to convert the Pagan to the "one true religion," aka, whatever brand of Christianity said Christian practices. It gives the whole thing that skin-crawling, what-is-this-huckster-trying-to-sell-me vibe that makes most of us feel exploited and in need of a shower. Look, I've been a Pentecostal Catholic. I know you're desperate to convert me. (Points! I got points! Now Jebuz will surely let me into heaven; I've contributed to his Ponzi scheme!) Playing How to Win Friends and Influence People, by acting as if, "Oh, hell, no, who me?, No I just want to talk to you, [Insert Pagan's first name]; I'm not trying to convert you! [Smile and use Pagan's first name again]" insults my intelligence, which, in spite of what you appear to believe, is actually my one strong suit.

Second, thanks for the slide show. No, really. Maybe I can put together a bunch of random slides showing stereotypes of Christians to illustrate the post I'm not going to write called: How to Talk to Christians for Fun and Profit. I spent today in a business suit, Hermes scarf, and Ferragamo shoes, and, oddly, none of those show up in your illustrative slide show of modern Pagans. Maybe you can put together a slide show of Hispanics in low-riders? Irish Catholics drinking too much? Christians handling snakes and denying their children needed medical care?

I can't get over the notion that, in a different context, this same post could be called "How to Talk to Black People" or "How to Get a Women's Libber to Date You." So we get gems such as:

Pagans are people, just like us, and they appreciate a personable approach.

Thanks. No, really, thanks. Nice of you to let me into the Human Club. Bite me. And, it's "just as we are," not "just like us."

And:

[B]e mindful that 80% of communication is nonverbal and the average Pagan is far more sensitive and attuned to symbolic communications than the average Evangelical.

And black people all like basketball and they're a lot more sensitive to rhythm than you are, so be sure to snap your fingers and groove while you chat them up. Women are much more in tune with emotions, so be sure to use "feeling" words when you talk to them. Jews love money, so if you're talking to them, be sure to mention that you got your suit wholesale. I guess that you have to have been on the receiving end of some of these "dialogue" tactics to understand how truly insulting they are. Hispanics? More excitable. Chinese? Inscrutable. And every single old white man must want to discuss golf, right? Look, I'm as Pagan as they come and I LIVE in my left brain. I'm literally learning disabled when it comes to "right brain" skills (see e.g., nonverbal communication). What I understand is what I can read in a well-written legal brief. Sorry to fail to live up to your stereotype of me. See why I think you only want to sell me shit? See why you piss me off?

Or:

Do … focus on Jesus.

Right. Because, first, most Pagans have never heard of him and are just dying to have even more Jesus stuffed down their throats. Kali fuck, you can't live in this society for 5 minutes without having Jebuz, Jebuz, Jebuz rammed down your gullet, so for sure a great way to have a conversation with most Pagans is to focus on Jesus. (When talking to the mark, er, um, customer, keep referring to the product.) Look, while the number of "cradle Pagans" is growing, the majority of Pagans living in America today were raised in Christian families. Like many of us, I, for one, got more Jesus growing up than I got fluoride, physical education, exposure to classical music, or history of the Americas before Columbus. I've forgotten more about Jesus than most Christians ever learn. I know Jesus; I had, for years, an intimate relationship with Jesus, and I left him. "Focusing" on him is as respectful to me as it would be for you to focus every conversation with me on my ex. I don't feel a need to spend my conversations with every Christian "focusing" on Hecate or Columbia. My relationship with those Goddesses is personal and I can't think of a single reason why you'd care. Accord me the same respect. I realize that leaves you with no reason to talk to me, since apparently the only reason for you to talk to me, even though I am "people, just like you," is to convert me to Jesus. That's ok. Keep on moving.

And:

Not only should you not expect Pagans to take the bible as authoritative as you do, you should not expect them to take any scripture as authoritative as you do.

Sigh. You know, this isn't a bad point, if you accept the premise that the Christian's only real goal is to convert the Pagan. Telling me that I have to accept Jesus as my personal savior because your holy book says that I have to do that to get into your heaven is pretty silly, given that I don't accept your holy book. But, Kali Fuck: "take the bible as authoritative as you do"? Again, I live in my left brain. If you can't write English (hint: Buy an "ly" or revise the sentence), you're not going to have a very good conversation with me. And my Book of Shadows sure doesn't look anything like the Book of Common Prayer (one of the great products of the English language, BTW) or a Catholic missal. But keep on misconstruing.

Finally, there's:

Don't … be afraid to challenge, as long as you’re respectful
Through many years of experience I’ve found Pagans aren’t beyond being challenged, provided the challenge is respectful, and preferably within the context of relationship. . . . With such a history of bad blood between Pagans and Christians[,] I can’t promise you won’t have a bad experience, that you won’t ever experience rejection, even following these tips. But I can say that most the time, if you approach Pagans with the right attitude, you’ll find them quite open to conversation about things of the Spirit.

Yes, it's true. There are a few of us who won't melt if you challenge us. Weird, huh? And if you just approach those Negroes in a nice way, you can talk to them about almost anything. Well, OK, speak slowly, cuz they do, and be sure to say how articulate that Dr. King was. Be nice, and don't use the "N-Word," cuz even the ones who aren't too techy will go off on that, for some odd reason. But you can challenge some of them, for sure, if you do it nicely. And even those women's libbers can be calmed down and appeased to the point where you can often get their phone number; can't promise that some aren't so bitter that they won't reject you, but, hey, just use "feeling words," and keep trying! If you keep your sentences short and just speak loudly, even your Hispanic gardener can understand what you're saying.

I'm not even going to discuss the "Don't dump on women, gays, and the environment." Patriarchy; soaking in it; all I'm saying.

Here's an idea. Stop approaching every human being on the planet as a "customer" and see how that changes you. Spend some time talking to your Jesus about that. Meanwhile, you can ask me about the Nats' latest game without a guide book.

Picture found here.

And We Are Living in the Material World . . . .

Richard Louv notes:

For decades, our culture has struggled with two addictions: to oil and to despair. But what if our lives were as immersed in nature as in technology every day? What if we not only conserved nature, but created it where we live, work, learn and play? The filmmaker Camilla Rockwell recently sent me a clip from her film Mother Nature’s Child: Growing Outdoors in the Media Age.

Here's Rockwell's interview of Louv:

Richard Louv: Human Energy Through Nature Connection from Camilla Rockwell on Vimeo.

Here's Louv discussing easy ways that you can help the child (daughter, son, niece, nephew, grandchild, godchild, neighbor's child, student, etc.) in your life spend time out in nature -- now, in your neighborhood, town, suburb. I like method No. 7:

Find a guide book. Consider “I Love Dirt,”; Joseph Cornell’s classic “Sharing Nature With Children”; and “Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature.”

I'm going to buy Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature for me and G/Son.

I'm also planning to read Louv's new book: The Nature Principal. One, and it's just one, of the things that I love about Louv is his ability to convey the need for a relationship with the material, natural world in a way that anyone, even non-Pagans (and you know how difficult they can be to talk to!) can get. I gave his last book, Last Child in the Woods to everyone in my family last year at Winter Solstice.

How did you connect with nature today?

This

Elements: Fire

Rima:

Sometimes occasions just collect goodness to them, and the minutes settle themselves into the fire like sticks, tessellating into the perfection of the night, and you recognise that clear familiar joy under the stars of being outside by a fire with the edge-folk you love so.

May it be so for you.

Read the whole post here.

Find Rima's art here

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Last Spring
BY GOTTFRIED BENN
TRANSLATED BY MICHAEL HOFMANN

Fill yourself up with the forsythias
and when the lilacs flower, stir them in too
with your blood and happiness and wretchedness,
the dark ground that seems to come with you.

Sluggish days. All obstacles overcome.
And if you say: ending or beginning, who knows,
then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you
into June, when the roses blow.
Source: Poetry (March 2011).

PIcture found here.

I'm In

Elements: Water

[I]n order to see when the correct proportions and balances have been achieved, the [garden] designer must look with eyes conditioned by meditation. Creating the right feel of water is a contemplative experience arising from a certain state of mind, not something arbitrary or something achieved by application of standard rules. The relationship with water should be personal and intimate. On both a practical and metaphorical level, in the West we have relegated water to a diminished role. We should instead offer water the respect and understanding that it deserves. When we create a waterfall, a stream, or pond, think of it as expressing enlightenment, and always try to convey that energy. The water is not simply one possible physical part of the garden; it is the connection between all the parts.

Martin Hakuba iMosko, Asla, and Alxe Noden in Landscape as Spirit; Creating a Contemplative Garden

Is your relationship with water personal and intimate? How do you incorporate water into your home, bit of Earth, daily life? Do you know from which body of water your drinking water comes? How could you find out? If you knew, how would you invoke Water differently?

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

My lilacs have big, purple buds. I've loved lilacs since I was a little girl.

Co-Creation with the Landbase Requires Deep Attention

Here's a great post by artist Sally J. Smith that shows what it's like to pay deep attention to your landbase. In a recent interview, Smith described how her art reached a turning point when she realized that she wanted to be out in nature, co-creating art with it, rather than inside a studio, making pictures of it. You can see in her post how this requires her to enter into relationship with her landbase, rather than simply live on it.

I don't know what it has been like where you live, but here it seemed winter would last forever. It was just last week that I was bundled up and huddled along the ice-bound shores of the lake waiting for the sun to rise. I still had the chance to make ice sculptures it was so cold here. The snow was deep in the woods, but it was crystallized and granular. The delicate flakes long gone, but now a coarse sugary texture. Difficult to make sculptures with as it does not stick together well. So this time of year is tricky in terms of making sculptures. But the sun is so strong now that the snows do melt, even if the temperatures can only rise to the low 40s which was all that could be managed last week. But the emerald green mosses are emerging and letting me know that soon, very soon it will be time to play with this exquisite green once more.

The combination of melting snow and icy nights makes for some fascinating sculptures to be found however! One day, while walking in a nearby field, I found these delicate polka dot creations creating an exquisite lace effect at the edge of the snow. The day was grey and the wind was cold, but the day before had been sunny. Just warm enough to create the droplets on the underside of the paper thin ice... which re-froze in the chill and still night air.

You should read the whole post for great discussions of her close connection to some local birds and the control that nature exercises over her work.

How deep is your attention to your landbase? How deep is your landbase's attention to you? Who's leading the dance?

Picture found here.

V Early Morning Saturday Poetry Blogging

Poem
BY MURIEL RUKEYSER
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

Friday Night Poetry Blogging

FULL MOON ON K STREET

The moon has your face tonight,
hiding behind black-violet veils
of clouds, coy, intimating nothing.

Like an orange outside the grasp
of a starving child, you stab my heart.
All longing is the same.

No natural light penetrates
this street; the lampposts rule.
The high-rises have mothered

them from their concrete wombs,
bidding us rejoice in coldness,
disdaining the celestial tease.

The moon has phases. Though I pray
not, you might be one. The clouds
pull tight, tight around your mouth.
~ Miles David Moore

Picture (from a different part of DC) found here.

This

By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Picture found here.

Violet and Jack

It's been a cold, wet Spring so far, here in the mercurial MidAtlantic. That weather pattern has its own gifts, but does make sunshine extra special. Which made today really wonderful: sunny, warm, cloudless. I had to take a break from my work and sit out in the woodland garden. It's amazing how fast things change from one day to the next, this time of year. Yesterday, the jack-in-the-pulpits were all still curled up like an odd oragami experiment.

This afternoon, many of them are open in all their secretive, spiral, cobra-headed glory. Landscape Guy and I put these in several years ago and it's wonderful to see them thriving and spreading on their shady, little hill.

And, just as suddenly, the violets are in bloom. When I was growing up, we had a truly huge, decades-old mass of them in our yard and I loved to pick great big violet nosegays. The thing about violets is, they're going to grow where they're going to grow (the ones here seem to especially love mulched spots, oh well) and you're not going to stop them. So you might as well say, "Look! Aren't my violets doing well?" and enjoy.

Is there a bit of Earth that's special to you, a space with which you cultivate a regular relationship? What's happening in it just now? What are you doing there just now?

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

Republicans Are Liars

Kali fuck, would it have killed Kyl to say, "Sorry; I made a mistake"?

How It's Done

Sweet Mother, Sweet Mother.

This Is What Republican Rule Looks Like

Betltane's Coming (NSFW)

BTW, if you haven't read Dancing in the Streets, A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich, you really need to add it to your list.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Why Did You Do That?

I've gone on and on and on about the need for Pagans to be prepared before they speak to the media. I'm really encouraged to see a recent
trend of Pagans engaging in some self-reflective criticism of their media appearances. That can only help the rest of the community. Rather than repeat the points that I've made many times before, let me emphasize a few maybe-more-subtle points.

First, the reporter from your local paper or tv station doesn't have a contacts list full of prominent Pagans. Really. As in, they may never have heard of Starhawk. If you were listed as the contact person for last Fall's Pagan Pride Day or if your name shows up in a Google search for, say, "D.C. Pagans," then there's a chance you may get a phone call when a local cemetery is desecrated or there's a controversy over putting a pentacle on town hall grounds along with a Christian nativity scene. So it's a good idea to decide ahead of time, aka, now how you want to respond to a phone call asking you for an interview.

Second, when making that decision, here are just a few questions you can consider. Are you a good public speaker? Are you willing to do the preparation required (often on short notice) for a media appearance? What would you wear for that interview (this will be determined by your answer to the question: Which objectives of yours will an interview meet)? Where will you insist that the interview be conducted and are you prepared to set up, for example, your altar, desk, book display wherever? Are you willing to develop a basic handout with information about yourself ("Willa Witch is a member of a Celtic Reconstructionist coven in Our Town. She is a nurse practitioner and a graduate of Our Town U, where she received her MS in Nursing. Willa lives with her family in an historic home in Our Town, originally built by her great grandfather, William Witch. She can be reached at wandawitch@internet.net.") Have you developed a short (two or three sentence) statement (for yourself) of your own objectives that you can consult when approached by the media? This can be crucial in helping you to decide whether or not to talk to this reporter on this topic. It's always OK to say, "Thank you for the request, but I'm not interested." If you can, you may always add, "Let me refer you to X, who is an expert on this topic." (This is followed up with an email to X telling hir, "I just got a call from media person Y looking for an interview on topic Z. I referred hir to you. Please let me know if you have any questions.")

Third, and this is the point I want to emphasize, it is completely OK -- and quite important -- for you to ask the reporter questions and to negotiate the terms of the interview. Really. They'll complain, but they'll respect you far more in the morning. Trust me. Most Pagans have, as have most Americans, little experience in dealing directly with members of the media. The reporter calling you, on the other hand, deals with people like you every day. The reporter knows that those people are flustered, flattered, eager to help, and already imagining themselves calling their mom to tell her to watch them on the evening news.

In other words, there's a big power differential here, something with which Witches and magic workers are, if they'll stop for a moment and think about it, familiar. We have techniques for dealing with that. In the case of dealing with the media, those techniques involve beginning to even out the disparity. Keep in mind that your ultimate power is the power to say, "No thanks," which will send the reporter back to Google and under even more time pressure. Don't imagine that if you don't talk to the reporter, no Pagan will. If they want a Pagan, they'll find one. The entire burden of representing modern Pagandom is not entirely upon your shoulders. Honest. At the very least, say you'll call back in 10 minutes. Ground and center. Consult Tarot. Find that still, quiet point within you that does not need media attention to be important. Call back acting from your power.

Ask the reporter about hir background in religion, reporting on Paganism, interest in esoteric subjects, etc. Can they send you links to other articles they've written/interviews they've done? This might, as Markarios pointed out in comments to one of my earlier posts, have been helpful to Star, when she was asked to appear before a phalanx of ultra-Christian interviewers. Most of them have done other interviews and have enough of an on-line presence to give an indication of their biases. There's no reason to walk into the arena unaware of who's asking you to go there. And there's no reason to take on insurmountable odds. (See also the excellent comments by Medusa and Teacats.)

If they're calling you because of a recent incident, get enough information about that incident to determine whether you have anything worthwhile to add. This would have been helpful to Rev. Heron, who, when she was interviewed:

was not told that the person was a Santero, or the nature of what [the police found, allegedly human remains, during a search of a home], only that there were "occult or pagan symbols" associated with an arrest, and that they were seeking someone with knowledge of the occult. The footage that you saw of me seeing the photos was my first glance at the photo evidence. I did not claim to be an expert on anything, and only agreed to be interviewed so that I could MAYBE shed some non-freakout light over the situation, whatever it was.

To emphasize, when told that she was to be interviewed about occult or Pagan symbols associated with an arrest, Rev. Heron could have said, "I'm unfamiliar with this incident. If you'll send me a few links, I'll call you back in 15 minutes and tell you whether I think I can do an interview or if I can refer you to someone who can." When she realized that the incident involved a Pagan religion with which she was unfamiliar, Rev. Heron could have said, "Sorry. Interviewing me about that would be like interviewing a Baptist about a Catholic rite. I'm not qualified to discuss that." If she had a good referral, she could have offered it. THAT'S OK. You don't have to talk to every reporter who calls you.

You can (and should) also negotiate whether you'll get a transcript of the interview, whether you'll get editing rights, etc. Even when appearing remotely, as Star was, you can negotiate over whether they'll film you in a studio or your home. And you should always say that you plan to tape the interview yourself on your own handheld tape recorder. If you don't have one, you're not ready to do the interview. If the reporter objects, you don't want to deal with hir. Say, "Sorry, I'd prefer not to do this interview. Thanks for calling me. Have a very nice day." Having your own record of the interview will, at the very least, allow you to post your own accurate version of the conversation and to demand corrections for blatant misquotes. I've never known a credible reporter to object to this negotiation point. All you're saying is you will make an recording of the interview. If the reporter is uncomfortable about that, you need to ask yourself why.

Even in the middle of the interview, it's ok to say, "I don't know enough about this topic to answer your question." You can add that you'll be happy to get back to the reporter after you've done some research or if you can locate a person who is an expert, but it's not the case that your only choice is to say, "No comment" or to try and answer a question that you're not ready to answer. Saying, "No comment," can sound defensive, but saying, "I don't know enough about this topic to answer your question," is always an option and can only make you look honest and sincere. When talking to the media, you need to be constantly aware that if you answer a question by saying, "I'm not really an expert on this subject, but my best guess is that . . . ." your disclaimer is likely to get cut off and all that you'll see on the evening news is your speculation. That's why it's important to say, "I don't know enough about this topic to answer your question," and to then shut up and wait for the next question. You can practice this over and over with a friend who has video on hir iPhone. And you should. Get comfortable with the practice of allowing even several minutes of silence to pass; if you can't do this, you shouldn't be doing interviews. Letting silence build up is a reporter's most basic tool for getting you to start blathering.

Finally, while there is a difference between lobbying and speaking to the media, I think that the points that Literata makes here concerning the need for preparation when lobbying can be applied, pretty easily, to talking to the media. Her experience is definitely worth a read.

I'm going to keep posting about this topic because it matters. (And because, apparently, my frequent posts on framing aren't getting through. Check the final paragraph of this article.)

Picture found here

Where I Stand

There's something incredibly comforting to me, as a lawyer, about seeing your opponent unable -- finally -- to hide hir objective. I welcome what's happened all day today in DC as Republicans have made clear that, no, preventing abortion is NOT their main goal. Their main goal is hurting women. Women who've been daring for decades now to not act as second-class citizens. In their world, that MUST be punished. In mine, it MUST go on. Come on out in the open, my enemy. Come on out into the light.

hat tip/ Thorn Coyle on Twitter.

Staying in One Place

I have friends who are world travelers; there's so much that's wonderful about ranging all over this perfect planet and experiencing as much of it as possible. I used to wish that I were a better traveler, that I'd managed to travel to more places, that I enjoyed travel as much as I enjoy hearing about my friends' expeditions. And, then, finally, in my forties, I realized that, with the defenses that travel requires my boundary-challenged Sun in Pisces to maintain, and with my Moon in lazy-comfort-loving Taurus, I'm never going to be much of a traveler and that's just going to have to be ok this incarnation.

There are also many rewards of staying in one place, and I've been thinking about one of those this Spring. When you live in one place for a number of years, you develop a relationship with that place. I've lived in this tiny cottage for almost eight years, and nearly all of the plants here are ones that I put into the ground myself. When the snowdrops show up in February, I think that I have a glimmer of understanding of the statement that those who had experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries had no fear of death. It's as if the very ground beneath my feet conspired to send up tiny white messages to me saying, "We will keep our pact. Winter will not last forever. All that dies is reborn." And I breathe in, and I breathe out, and my very being expands a little into the sunlight and down into the warming soil, the soil full of the roots of plants that I have planted.

I had another reminder yesterday when I caught a glimpse of my beloved, old brown rabbit. I absolutely did not expect her to survive the Winter, but there she was, and I know that it's her by that big chunk missing from her ear. Miracle of miracles, the local hawk didn't get her, and my fox didn't sup on her, and the cold and hunger didn't do her in. She's long in the haunch, but still able to show up and enjoy the newly-mown grass and, unless I miss my guess, she's managed one last priestessing of Great Rite and is now gravid with the results.

And immediately I am in that place that we Witches call "Between the World," although, for me, it's often more a case of being "Deep Within This World, The One That's Crammed With Mystical Myst." All Winter while I huddled inside, not wanting to slip and re-break the old ankle -- while I bundled up in sweaters, socks, afghans, and gloves, while I lit fires and glanced out at early sunsets, and fed myself with soups and stews -- all that time my dear friend was cowering inside her form, slowly burning the carrot tops I'd given her and waiting, as I waited, for Spring. And then, one old woman setting an example for another, she emerged as soon as possible and gave herself to the Great Rite, as simply as I give myself to the task of starting seedlings, of clearing the herb bed for new seedlings, of cleaning my altar for Spring. Well, really, her surrender to Life is larger and more unstinting than mine -- and she and I both know that. And this morning, adding my coffee grounds to the soil around the Kleim's Hardy Gardenia jasminoides, I scan the yard for her, grateful to have lived here long enough to have received her lesson of participation and surrender. I am who I am because I am in relationship with her. She is who she is because she allows herself to be fed by me. We are both who we are because our roots are here, in this bit of Earth. She is the old rabbit of this place; I am the Witch of this place. We are both each other.

Picture found here.

Like a Tree

Adding Like a Tree by Jean Shinoda Bolen to my "must read" list.

hat tip: Weiser Books

Spell of the Sensous

It's As If He Wants to Lose

On, Wisconsin!

Yesterday, it was sunny and warm here in Columbia's district and I raced home from work, past the beautiful Potomac and the fey-thronged Spout Run, to sit in my woodland garden and on my porch. One of my friends who's been center-front in the struggle for workers' rights in Wisconsin called me on his cell phone so I could hear the crowd around Jesse Jackson singing Amazing Grace. We had a great chat (he, on the front lines and I on my porch, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) and then I went to my ritual room and lit incense for today's election. I'm so proud of D and S and R and J and all of my other friends in Wisconsin. I feel gifted to know them.

I had a "complicated" relationship with my dad, who, much as he wanted to be a man of words, was seldom able to articulate why he loved the things that he loved. And that made him (inexplicably, to a kid) angry. I was sitting directly behind him, in the family station wagon, when the radio announced that Dr. King had been killed advocating the rights of union workers. My dad, who spent his life in the union movement, slumped in the front seat and then yelled at me for something; I don't remember what. What I do remember was knowing that he felt an unrecoverable loss at that moment. I think he understood why it was that Dr. King could challenge almost anything except the refusal to pay Americans a living wage. One of my most treasured pictures is one of him -- a few days later, trying hard to recover himself, outside a neon-sign Memphis church -- taken when he went to cover Dr. King's funeral for his union. Whenever I'm tempted to be angry at him for the way that he raised me, I remember that picture and focus on what was great about him. He came from almost nothing and spent a lot of his life doing what he could for the highest cause he'd found. I don't think that cause was fathering a feminist, but that's (many years later, after a lot of shadow work, turned out to be kind of) ok.

So maybe it's understandable that this video, which brings together my present and my past, through the lens of my dad and my friends, makes me cry.

When I grew up and moved away from home, one of the few ways that my dad and I managed to connect was through my critiques of his writing (and his grudging support of mine). He was still editing a lot of union magazines and newsletters at that point, and I kept pushing him to make them less sexist. (Me: Dad, would this joke be funny if it were about black people? Dad: Well, no. Me: Ok, then why is it funny about women? Dad: OK, you write a better joke. Me: OK . . . .) So the irony of the sexist signs carried in this video, often above a logo that Dad designed, isn't lost on me.

To balance that, and just for my dad, who would have cried at reading it, I'll add this:

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman? ~S. Truth

Women and men need a victory tonight in Wisconsin.

hat tip/ First Draft

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

To a Skylark
~Wm. Wordsworth

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Listening to the Land

In the district dedicated to Columbia, the weather can turn on a dime. (OK, you have to go back to the 1800s to find Columbia on a dime and, even then, she's called by her nickname: Freedom. But you know what I mean.) Just last week, I was out in the bitter cold, covering up tender plants; today we had sunny weather and temps in the 80s. I've known it to pretty much skip Spring weather here and go directly from Winter to Summer.

Today's sun and warmth have literally been working magic on my tiny bit of Earth. Jack-in-the-pulpits that were not there yesterday evening when I took Hecate's deipnon out to the altar are now several inches high. My neighbor's deciduous magnolia is a waving magnificence of creamy pink. The tiny horns of hosta have poked through the Earth, looking for all the world like an invasion of some underground alien species.

I've known Witches who don't feel the need for a daily practice, but I find that I really need one. And a big part of my practice is communing with my bit of Earth, with Spout Run and the Potomac River, with my landbase and watershed. I need to be in touch with them to help me understand who I am. Because I am not separate from them. I am all wrapped up in the water level of the Potomac, the migrating birds hanging out on the Three Sisters as the sculling teams from Georgetown skim by. A part of who I am is the day upon which the fiddleheads (today, in the sunnier spots!) emerge from the soil and begin to gently dance open, a reverse Spiral Dance that moves within my own soul as much as it moves out in the woodland garden. I find out how trustworthy and gentle I am from the squirrels, and peanut-eating crows, and bluejays; I learn how much I truly believe in both the light and the dark when I watch the giant hawk perusing the morning doves at my feeder the way a hungry teen eyes the all-you-can-eat buffet. I need my fox to show up once in a while to re-enchant my garden. My own health is somehow bound up in the health of "my" homeless vet at the TR Bridge. And the weather that moves through Columbia's district moves through my moods and into my thoughts.

What speaks most to you in your landbase? How do you connect with it? How have you learned to listen to yourself by listening to it? If not today, when?

Invoking Air.

Video clips at Ustream
How does this change us? How does it change the eagles? How does it change the very element of Air, itself?

I know that I will never invoke it in exactly the same way, ever again.

I sent the link to G/Son via email.

Mercury may be retrograde, but this is v cool.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Hail, Kore!

(Almost) First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at heca tedemet ersdat ter@ hotm ail.c om. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me. I'll email you back your reading.

I Have So Had It With the Patriarchy Today

Know who's really an asshole? The unseen, male (of course) voice telling this woman to "take a minute and collect" herself because it's an "emotional" topic. I am willing to bet no man in the history of this body has been instructed to do the same thing. Fuck you. Let her talk. Her emotions aren't going to kill you or make your dick fall off.

Sexism. We're soaking in it.

hat tip: watertiger.

Views Unfold Along Paths

Views unfold along paths. A common pond shape in Japanese gardens, for example, is roughly in the shape of the character for "heart." There are few places along the shore where the entire pond's edge can be seen, because of the way that land intrudes. Thus with each step along the path, hidden views are revealed, and other views hidden. This "concealing and revealing" technique is one way to make small spaces seem larger, since there are always new views to see. Going up and down along topography does the same thing, since it generally forces you to look down for most of the time. Then when you reach the top or the bottom, a view can spread out before you as a little surprise. The gaze, which has been down, is suddenly open to something elementally beautiful, like sunlight on a rose.

~Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden by Mosko, A. & A. Noden

It seems to me that much the same could be written about daily practice.

Picture found here.

Witch's Bottle

hat tip to Teacats in comments.

Other episodes at YouTube

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Since There Is No Escape
~Sara Teasdale

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

Picture found here.