Author, Author!

The email notice I’ve been waiting for arrived this morning. It read “Books can now be ordered via the Print Corner tab in the Project section. Thanks!” That meant only one thing. My book is published!

I tell you there were times I thought I’d never write those four words and have them be speaking truth.

The journey from an idea to where I sit now at the end of the day my first book is published has been a circuitous voyage, full of fits and starts and triumphs and lag time. I’ve learned some things; about myself, about technology, about social media, but mostly about faith.  The liar I was as a child pays off now as a storyteller. Computer programs are only difficult until you learn them.  Social media doesn’t have to invade your privacy.  And faith is mysterious. Because at the center of all the uncertainty that swirls through one’s mind, at the core of all the questioning that shakes one’s soul, in the depths of all the doubt that burdens one’s heart during a creative process, there is a quiet place that hangs onto a vision so loyally that nothing touches it.  I say this like I knew it all along. But I only know this now. When I was throwing in the towel, not only on my book, but on myself as an artist, somehow my faith remained. It had to have. Otherwise I would not be where I am right now, having crossed the threshold from being a writer to being an author.

 

This was taken at least ten years ago. Talk about keeping the faith!

It’s been a whirlwind of communication since the moment I read that happy email: phone calls, voice messages, emails, fb and twitter posts and responses, all of them sweetly congratulatory. 

In between I walked in my garden, thanking Mother Earth for all my good fortune. The neighbors' cat came to meet me. She stretched and purred as I scratched behind her ears, both of us getting our fill of kitty and human love in the afternoon sunshine. A very satisfying day all around.

The telephone called me inside. I have a standing date with my mother every Wednesday. I blurted my good news right away and she made me howl with laughter when, after expressing her happiness and pride, she said, “Who would of thought the little baby who used to sit in that cardboard box would end up publishing a book?”

 I guess I am part cat after all. Purrrrrrrr.

A Symphony of Peace Prayers

This morning I was privileged to offer some words of wisdom and a blessing as one of four spiritual leaders at the Symphony of Peace Prayers Ceremony that originated in Japan, and was performed here in Seattle. This beautiful ritual included a procession of flags from one hundred and ninety four countries around the world. Audience members became flag bearers and in doing so, everyone in the room had a role in the ceremony, a true community event. As each flag was carried to the front of the room, a candle was lit and a prayer for peace in that country and peace on Earth was spoken in unison. Flag after flag, prayer after prayer, our hearts opened. Here's the piece I shared with those who had gathered,  and now I share it with you: 

Good morning. I am Rev. Judith Laxer and I am the founding Priestess of Gaia’s Temple, an inclusive ministry that fosters love for the Divine Feminine by honoring nature and the qualities of relatedness and compassion. 


Relatedness and compassion are two qualities that, when active, cannot exist in the same time and space with war and conflict. When we remain mindful that the Earth is our mother and that she is alive and sentient, like our birth mother is or was, and she knows what is happening on her and to her, our treatment of her transforms. We cease to think of her as merely dense matter meant to be used as a resource. And so we stop fighting for those resources. We take better care of her because we recognize her as a conscious being, like ourselves. We are not separate from her. We are not separate from nature. Our callousness about what is happening disappears and our compassion fills in the space where it once lived, because we come to understand that we are also not separate from one another.

To better understand the feminine principle of reverence for nature and the practice of compassion and relatedness, I ask you, if you will, to imagine a world of women leaders. Just for a moment, imagine our world where the leaders of most, if not all, countries are women. 

In this imagined scenario, we might ask ourselves: 

do we think we’d be fracking the earth for more fossil fuel? Do we think we’d keep arming and sending our children into battle? Do we think we’d keep poisoning the land and water and air with pesticides and herbicides and chemicals, simply because they are left over from the last world war?

In our relatedness, in this awareness that we are not separate from one another, we raise our consciousness and come to realize that peaceful ways and means are wise.  The principle of relatedness is beautifully brought to bear here. If the Earth is our mother, than we are all her children. No matter where we live, or what we do for a living, or how much money we make, or who we chose to love, or which Goddess or God we worship. We remember that diversity is not only crucial for the health of the collective, but it brings so much beauty and strength. Not to mention keeping us from becoming bored.

As we gather today in a symphony of peace prayers, the harmony I’d like to add to our collective music is one in which we remember that the living Earth is our Mother, and we are all connected. In remembering this, we know that the best way, the necessary way, the most beautiful way to conduct our thoughts, our actions, and our lives is peacefully. When we strive to become peaceful within ourselves and act from that place of peacefulness, when we release our judgments, and our resentments, and our righteousness, we will be the agents of peace in the world.

So my blessing is simply this: May all of the children of Mother Earth awaken to our relatedness. May compassion for one another fill our hearts to overflowing. May be choose to live wisely in peaceful ways and means. And may we remember that love is always the answer.  To everything. Blessed be.  

Beltane Morning

It’s a simple thing, really. Not hard to do or remember. And yet the effects run deep and contribute to the magick of the day. Wash your face in May Day’s morning dew.

Each year on Beltane morning, I go outside in my back yard and find a patch of lawn that the sun has not yet dried.  Crouching down, the dew is cool. I swipe my hands across a swath of grass and moisten my face with it.  If any part of me is still sleeping, this encounter is a sweet and crisp wake-me-up.  The breeze further chills my damp skin and feels astringent. I imagine it does what Pagan lore tells me: I am made beautiful by following this ritual tradition.

Later in the day I get ready to leave for the Beltane ritual. I observe my face in the mirror. The usual critique about how I look begins in my mind's ears, but then I remember this morning and it stops before taking hold. Today I am beautiful because I am cleansed by the magick of morning dew. I still wear lipstick and eye shadow to the event. Color is one of my sensuous delights, after all. But this night I forego the foundation make-up I usually wear to give the illusion that my skin tone is even. The glamour is working and I throw caution to the wind, pin a flower in my hair and give myself a dazzling smile. I have a date with the Goddess!

I gather with others around the Maypole. We are here to celebrate our sensuous natures, to honor the union of our Goddess with Her God, and to weave magick into our lives. Diana's Bow smiles down at us during the after-ritual feast.

It's Her corner now.

Years ago I decided, with permission from the landlord, to take matters into my own hands and create a garden in the little plot of land by the parking lot entrance to my office building. (See my previous blog post from Feb. 14, 2012 to read what happened to it.) Shortly after the nefarious gas meter and limiting stanchions arrived, city workers dug up the adjoining sidewalk for more work.  In doing so they flipped the long, heavy boulder I had placed at the patch’s border over on its side directly onto my four year old and lovely lavender, crushing it. I imagined the sound of her sturdy branches cracking when it happened just like my heart when I first rested my horrified eyes on her.

Not long after, some new tenants contacted me about working the garden. “Have at it”, I said, finished with the fight. That first year, they cleaned it up, pushed the boulder off the lavender (which although a bit worse for wear, with amazing resilience actually came back to life) and added pretty new plantings. They thanked me for my graciousness at letting go of the plot so easily. I told them it was easy only in a heart-broken kind of way. Another lesson in how one thing must die so another can live in the garden. You know. Like in life. 

This year, care for this plot has fallen away completely. No one has done a thing.  The lilac is badly in need of pruning, weeds are thriving among scant perennials. I notice I avert my eyes. I have hardened my heart to protect it. It’s too sad. But on a recent sunny day, I couldn’t help notice the lilac was full of burgeoning buds, some of them beginning to flower. Who can resist the scent of a lilac? So I walked over to get a snoot full. And then I saw it. In the back corner where the boulder used to live. The Thistle.

There she was, spiny and spiky in all her threatening beauty. Already close to two feet tall.  Not yet flowering.  Not the light spring green of the advancing season, but the deep rich green reserved for dinosaur kale and broccoli crowns. The thing is, she is so strong, so present, so defiant that for the first time in many moons, I derived pleasure from this garden.  Perhaps it’s because, when it comes to this particular plot, so rife with my forfeiture and loss, I relate to her prickles. They are similar to the bristles surrounding my guarded heart. Her blatant thorniness in our-have-to-be-polite-world brings relief.  Her unapologetic sharpness broadcasts “Look all you’d like, but touch at your own risk!” 

It could just as easily have been Dandelion that grew in that spot. That Thistle found her way here, that she found this neglected soil hospitable, that she is taking up space as boldly as any showy nursery purchase, repairs my faith in renewal.  And more, shows me how wildness takes root when we give it room to appear.

Moon and I are in relationship. I am in love with her and she follows me wherever I go and especially when I am in the car and someone else is driving and I look out and find her amid the stars. She sails along beside my window, keeping up.

She smiles at me in Diana’s bow, bathes me when she is Full, and asks me what I am doing up so late as to see her in the night sky as a Crone. She used to flow from me, leaving my body on sticky red and heightened everything, but now she has decided to hang around.  I believe this is her way of letting me know she loves me even more as time goes on. Loves me so much she can’t leave me. I hold her inside, feeling her love.

  

Moon and I have been friends for a very long time. We know one another well. She remembers the day I was born and I remember the first time I noticed I could sometimes see her during the day. She watched over me as I grew and I looked upon her buttery beauty in Autumn, her icy stare in Winter, her milky face in Spring and her bright spotlight in Summer. 

I walk her luminous path. Moonlight shows me exactly where to go so I needn’t be unsure. The way always beckons. Sometimes it narrows and I must watch my step. Sometimes it is so broad, it encompasses all I see. Touched by moonglow, my hair looks more silver than it is, my skin like the fairies have kissed it. I chase mystery. I believe magick. I marvel at beauty once hidden in the harsh light of the sun.

Moon and I make great dancing partners. But she always leads. That’s okay. She is one of the few I am so enamored of that I will happily follow. Sometimes the dance is pure romance and I swoon. Sometimes the steps are tricky and fast and I must practice. Often we dance to music only we can hear.

I tell everyone I know about her. Can’t keep quiet. Her rhythms are too seductive, too wise, too important to keep to myself. I was one of those women they called Lunatic dancing in her light. I was one of those women who refused the call to worship the sun and stole away at night to do its opposite. I was one of those women who honored her bodies’ ebb and flow as a holy thing. I am still.

When I die, I want to float up there to be closer. Dance over to the other side and check it out. Dive into her craters and snuggle in for the ride. Get drunk on her milkshake and tell jokes that make her laugh so hard, she can barely catch her breath. And those still on the earth will perceive it as the music of the spheres. 

Homecoming.

I believe it is more than a drop of Faery in my soul that keeps serving up my luck! This time it was a retreat that combined the comforts of home with the splendor of nature at a time when I dearly needed it. The intention was to excavate through Soul Craft (Bill Plotkin's extraordinary work) for some answers to pervading questions; what are my soul gifts, what is the best way to bring my work to the world, how shall I find my way back into healthy relationship with my body, this preciousl vessel of my soul? For three days and nights I did not interact with anyone but myself and creatures of the avian, insect and flora variety. Hearing only their voices amid only my own delivered solace such as I don't ever remember. I followed each impulse as it arose leading me progressively deeper inside myself.

My eyes flew open as dawn broke the first morning I awakened there. This is unusual as I am not a morning person. Wearing only my skin, I stepped outside to greet the land. Immediately, the shining, waning crescent of the Crone Moon stopped me in my tracks as if She suddenly called my name! I stood spellbound in this encounter for a while, drinking Her in, until the chill persuaded me to return inside and slip back into the still warm luxury of my bed and the safety of slumber.

Just past the garden, fenced against the deer, and before the beckoning forest, is a huge, green meadow. That afternoon, when the sun had burned the clouds away, gold flooded every grassy blade. Within seconds the winged ones came to life. Between the hummingbirds and the butterflies and the dragonflies and the bees, I stood rapt, watching this vector ballet danced to the symphony of nature's deep silence. They swooped and meandered and circled me and one another, and before I knew what was happening, I joined in.

I used to dance ballet when I was young. And now the steps were dancing through me as if I'd never stopped, my body remembering choreography I had long forgotten. I felt free and graceful and beautiful and I couldn't remember the last time I had danced like this, with such abandon, allowing the memory of my muscles to move me, unabashed, undaunted and with complete joy. The spirits of the flora in the garden, and the orchard, and the forest gave audience, all of us delighting in the proceedings. The vectors flew closer and closer past me as I danced, and I curtsied and bowed to them all. And when the dance was through, I felt as if a part of me who had been missing for a very long time had returned; a spontaneous Soul Retrieval, a welcome reunion, a recollection of a long forgotten treasure.

I've been moving from one thing to the next with a dancer's ease since then. The low flying resentment I didn't even know I was feeling for all the work there is to do has evaporated like that afternoon cloud cover. My renewed appreciation for the beauty and the harmony I strive to create and bring to life's party has blossomed. And despite all the bells and whistles of our noise polluted world, I can still hear that symphony's deep and beautiful silence within me.

Bumblebee Slumber

I wait till twilight to harvest the fragrant lavender because of the bees. I am not afraid of them like some people, although I do have a rather traumatic childhood memory of my arm completely swollen and hot to the touch after I got stung by two of them at once; one on my thumb and one on my forearm. I have come to find that bees will leave you be if you return the favor. But during the sunshine hours, the long, graceful lavender stalks bob up and down as the bumblebees move from one to another. It’s more that I don’t want to disturb them as they gather pollen. Bees being so precious and all.

This lavender is over 13 years old. She used to grow in the small apartment garden I tended. I dug her up and moved her here with me and she was one of the first things to go in the ground. She transplanted well and now she is woody with age and prolific in production. Each year at this time I watch the purple of the blossoms and the golden yellow and fuzzy black of the bees in their drowsy dance together.

But now the air chills with evening and the scant light remains. The lavender is motionless. The bees are gone. So I take my clippers and begin. I grab a handful of the stalks and cut. I breathe in the familiar fragrance that soothes me. I take them to the garden table and arrange them for my drying wrack, cutting the stalks the same length, securing them with a rubber band and hang them with a bit of wire. On the next round, I notice something. Two bumblebees are clinging to their own lavender blooms. They are sleeping. I cut some more. Pulling the loose stalks free causes the ones holding them to move, but the bees don’t. Still they cling, regardless of swinging through the air.

Soon I have six bunches drying and just one more to harvest. I have to cut these one by one so I don’t mistakenly take the bee beds. I have to get closer to see in the growing dark and my face comes nearer to the bees than I would ever allow during daylight. But there is nothing to worry about because they are out. They look so cute. I sing them a lullaby as I snip the few remaining stalks. When I am finished, only those two remain. The bees have found their bed for the night. Their perfumed beds in my garden. I imagine they have passed out from too much nectar, and wisely decided the hive was just too far to fly to this intoxicated. I imagine I can hear them snoring.