Yule!

It’s 11:36 on this cold Winter Solstice morning. At the Summer Solstice the sun would be reaching His zenith in the sky right about now, reaching the reason we call it ‘high noon.’ But it’s the other Solstice today, the one where the sun barely skips over the tops of the old pine trees in my neighborhood, slanting His light into my window. Should we call it ‘low noon?’

The frost has not melted on the grass still in shadow. Sunlight will not vanquish that shadow today. He is too weak. At twilight, only about five hours from now, He will sink below the horizon into the realm of the unborn, for the longest night of the solar year. And in that lengthy darkness the Cosmic Mother will labor to bring the new born Sun King to birth. She will journey to the edge of death to bring life. And we will gather in circles of loving community to hold vigil, to rekindle our own light, to mark this earthly holy day.

Tomorrow will seem just as short a day, really. But we will know in our hearts that daylight will linger for a few moments longer. We will nurture and protect our rekindled flames as we would any newborn, with tenderness and love and welcome, dreaming of the future, grateful for beginnings.

A Trip To Faeryland

I spent Thanksgiving with dear friends in sunny California. A welcome respite from soggy Seattle. Friday after the feast, I met their friends about whom I have heard many fabulous stories, and it was good to put names with faces after all this time. It was also good to sit with more artists, even ones I had just met, and feel such an unspoken kinship.

Beyond the dead end of their street, a sign at the entrance of a narrow boardwalk says “Welcome to The Elvin Forest”. Of course, there was a picture of a small, open-handed Elf with pointy ears and shoes. I felt a familiar tug in the center of my palms, a sensation I have come to understand that alerts me to the proximity of a numinous experience. I had been told about the Faery Oaks that lived in this forest, some for at least a hundred years, and I was excited to meet them.

The boardwalk turned this way and that at a slight decline toward the water, and at times it felt as if I was walking through a labyrinth, unable to see where I had been or where I was going next. Which did much to confirm the presence of the Fae for me; who doesn’t know that their realm is one in which time runs differently and disorientation is the lay of the land?

A cool breeze blew through the tunnels the boardwalk created and as I walked, I kept searching the vegetation that grew on either side for oak leaves. Artemesia, some kind of sagebrushy kind of shrub and even poison oak, but not an oak leaf was to be found. I did see some of the most amazing spider webs; dimensional, like gossamer cubes with odd angles shimmering in the sunlight. They made me stop and stare. I wanted to see what kind of spiders had spun these into being but none were to be found. Maybe they only come out at night.

Around one corner, the boardwalk stopped and the banister on either side joined together to form a barricade. And beyond it, there they were. A grove of the Faery oaks! Their tops formed an umbrella above their long and winding, low growing limbs, some of which barely skimmed the soft looking forest floor, beckoning as a comfy sofa. How clever of the Faeries to grow them without leaves mortals would recognize as oak!

I couldn’t help myself! I climbed through what was intended to keep me out, drawn beyond my capacity to resist. The light inside was truly otherworldly. The air was easy to breathe. Spanish moss hung everywhere softening the already curved lines of the flora. I could sense the sentience of the old oaks. I could feel the presence of magick throbbing like my joyous heart. It was all soft green and dove grey above a carpet of faded yellow, sweet smelling leaves.

Then, that weird way of spying fleeting things out of the corner of your eyes began to happen, where no matter how quickly you turn to look, there is nothing to see. The itch in my palms threw currents to my shoulder blades, right where my wings used to be. I knew I was among Them. I felt I had come home. I didn’t need to close my eyes to pray to the Fae. I sat perfectly still, feeling tiny and grand, and softening my gaze, prayed with my smile. Thanksgiving, indeed.

My friends back on the boardwalk wanted to move on. Tearing myself out of the grove felt physically painful. Achy like. With a pang of sorrow. And a side of dizzy.

The triumphant destination of the boardwalk was a vista of the estuary that snakes through the mud flats toward Morro Bay. Where the late afternoon sun sparkles on the mirror of the water. Where hawks circle silently, the edges of their wings like the graceful hands of ballerinas. Where, off in the distance, long legged birds peck at the damp and delicious earth.

But I knew the triumphant vista was one that can’t be seen with our determinate eyes. It was back in a thunderously silent grove, thick with magick, and luminous from an invisible moon.

This Little Light of Mine

Winter is in. If I didn’t know it by the dropping temperatures and holiday trappings everywhere, I was sure of it when I checked email the other day and found this:

What Holiday Is That?

T’was the month before Christmas, when all through our land,
Not a Christian was praying nor taking a stand.

See the PC Police had taken away
The reason for Christmas - no one could say.

The children were told by their schools not to sing
About Shepherds and Wise Men and Angels and things.

It might hurt people's feelings, the teachers would say
December 25th is just a ' Holiday'.

Yet the shoppers were ready with cash, checks and credit
Pushing folks down to the floor just to get it!

CDs from Madonna, an X BOX, an I-Pod
Something was changing, something quite odd!

Retailers promoted Ramadan and Kwanzaa
In hopes to sell books by Franken & Fonda.

As Targets were hanging their trees upside down
At Lowe's the word Christmas - was no where to be found.

At K-Mart and Staples and Penny's and Sears
You won't hear the word Christmas; it won't touch your ears.

Inclusive, sensitive, Di-ver-si-ty
Are words that were used to intimidate me.

Now Daschle, Now Darden, Now Sharpton, Wolf Blitzen
On Boxer, on Rather, on Kerry, on Clinton!

At the top of the Senate, there arose such a clatter
To eliminate Jesus, in all public matter.

And we spoke not a word, as they took away our faith
Forbidden to speak of salvation and grace

The true Gift of Christmas was exchanged and discarded
The reason for the season, stopped before it started.

So as you celebrate 'Winter Break' under your 'Dream Tree'
Sipping your Starbucks, listen to me.

Choose your words carefully, choose what you say
Shout MERRY CHRISTMAS, not Happy Holiday!


Please, all Christians join together and wish everyone you meet
MERRY CHRISTMAS

Christ is The Reason' for the Christ-mas Season!



Wow.



I am not a Christian, so the call to action at the end of this poorly written rhyme is not intended for me. But in addition to making the mental correction that Mother Nature is the reason for the season, it made me wonder. Is our faith really taken away if we don’t hear it spoken about or exalted in public? Is our spirit so uneasy that it must trump all others in order to feel secure? I thought faith resides in our hearts and souls. And why does being inclusive and sensitive and honoring diversity intimidating?

Lest we forget, “Yule” means Wheel, and refers to the Wheel of the Year, a Pagan model for the passing of time. That tree hanging upside down at Target derives from an old Pagan practice of associative magick: the evergreen brought into the home at midwinter is a metaphor for life surviving through the fallow season. Amulets for protection to ward off illness and hunger were hung on this tree, much later becoming Christmas ornaments. The trees' branches would be used to keep the home fires burning through the long, dark coldness, its trunk becoming the Yule Log to start next year's midwinter fire. Why, even the wreath on the door was a representation of the Wheel of the Year, the portal through which all life enters into the world. In my faith, the story goes that at the Solstice, the Great Cosmic Mother gives birth to the sun. We can easily see how that story morphed into Mother Mary giving birth to Her son.

But I don’t expect that school children everywhere, no matter what faith they were raised in, to sing about it. And it doesn’t take one tiny bit away from my faith that everyone doesn’t walk the same path as I do. I love that the Solstice and Christmas and Hanukah and Kwanzaa are all celebrated close to one another in time (by the way, Ramadan is observed in the Summer!) because at the foundation of all of them is the celebration of the returning light!

Perhaps allowing this little light of mine to shine is the best way to observe Christmas. Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t it Jesus who said love thy enemies as thyself?

A Silent Supper

For years I have included the tradition of the Silent Supper in my teachings about Samhain. The idea is to partake of a feast of old family recipes, without talking, as a way to honor your Beloved Dead. The closest I have ever come to participating in this tradition is to ask my congregation to hold a few moments of silence at the end of the October service, offering prayers in their hearts instead of making them verbally. But that is a far cry from the true silent supper I experienced on Samhain this year.

The day dawned with perfect weather for Samhain; cool, crisp and most of all and especially here in the northwest, dry! My circle had planned to partake of a true Silent Supper as part of our ritual and I spent the day preparing for it, cleaning the house and setting the table with all my Witch Ware and linens. Each of us were to bring some family favorite to contribute to the meal. I made my first ever 'Grandma Fay Salad'.

Grandma Fay's salad has been a staple in my family for as long as I can remember. It appears at just about every family gathering in the big silver bowl, and in all these years I had never made one myself. I think that is because once I grew up and went out on my own, I looked down my nose at iceberg lettuce as something deplorable and Miracle Whip never entered my fridge. Funny how my judgments never stopped me from eating it whenever someone else made it! Well, it's just so damned tasty.

Nothing all that special really. A basic garden salad complete with tomato, cucumber, radish, celery, red bell pepper, onion. But it must be iceberg lettuce. Romain just won't do. Iceberg! Hard boiled eggs. Miracle Whip, (not plain mayonnaise), kosher salt and a little bit of garlic powder. Unusual ingredient for a salad but there it is.

I called my mother for a review and was delighted with her specific pointers about her Mother-in-law's dish. Push the eggs through the grater we use for potatoes when we make latkes, use a little Miracle Whip at a time (you can always add more but too much will ruin it), same with the kosher salt, and "use your hands. Get in there and mix it up!" Use my hands? Oh! Ok.

When I asked her if she knew where the original recipe came from and when, I thought for sure she would tell me that Grandma Fay found it in a cookbook in the 1960's or something. But although my mother wasn't sure where the recipe originated, she said Grandma Fay was already serving it when my father took her home to meet his family in the 40's! I didn't know that Miracle Whip was around that long!

My guests arrived and we did a simple ceremony of creating sacred space, naming our Beloved Dead, explaining the dish we each brought and why, and then a bell was rung to signal the beginning of holding ritual silence. Next, we bundled up and journeyed outside my back door to the magick of my garden, where my big cast iron cauldron had been set up, ready to go. Earlier the week before, I had created the Samhain 'portal' using cast iron torches wrapped with mullein stalks and poppy heads in the northwest of the circle. Now, we each ate a few pomegranate seeds there before walking through to the realm of our Ancestors.

The night was clear and cold, the stars sharp, Diana's bow low and bright in the sky. Once the fire was lit, we threw handful after handful of dried lavendar, rosemary, and sage into the cauldron, watching the smoke take our prayers of love to our Beloved Dead. When all the herbs were burned, we stood close to warm ourselves, holding hands, watching the embers for a while. Keeping the silence, we walked back through the gate and inside the house to fill our plates and take our seats. I made an extra plate with a bit of all the dishes and placed it in the center of the table for our Ancestors. When everyone was served, we began our silent supper.

I have eaten this way before; not talking or distracted by a book or the TV, mindful of each bite, conscious of my gratitude. But this was different. Each morsel was acutely delicious; the carrots sweet and soft, the chicken and pork tender and flavorful, the mashed potatoes creamy and comforting. Eyes met and smiled across plates. The clink of silverware, music. I felt an unexpected bubble of laughter rise and then fall in me and somehow I knew it was the delight of those on the other side.

I took a forkful of the salad. It was Grandma Fay's all right! Needed a bit more salt but that was easily remedied. I thought of her eyes that always looked at me with love. I touched her earrings in my lobes, the necklace she gave me on my thirteenth birthday around my neck. I will always miss her honey voice and unconditional love. But sitting there in silence at the table, she felt so close I just couldn't be sad.

When all the plates were empty and all the forks laid down, I rang the bell once more and as agreed, we took a deep breath together and let out a collective sigh to bring our voices back from the thick deep. We closed the sacred space and then consumed coffee and dessert amid great conversation and lovely laughter.

This beautiful tradition is not one to be missed! How magnificent to sit at a table with those you love and trust, nourishing yourself on family favorites, not having to utter a word to feel a deep and intimate connection, even across the mystery to those who have gone before us.

A Harvest of Red

The full moon in October is called the Blood Moon because it was the month when the Ancients would give death to and preserve some of the animals in their herds, ensuring the survival of the clan through the cold and dark months of fallow. Over time, I have come to believe that since it is also the month when the veil grows thin between the living and our Beloved Dead, that the name Blood Moon also refers to our bloodline, our lineage, the legacy we carry in our veins from all those who have gone before us.

October is a bountiful month. Even this year, when so much of what I planted did not bear, I still found myself eager to gather the last of whatever graced my garden as the days grew shorter and colder. Luck brought a quintessential Autumn day last weekend and I went blissfully out in the cool, crisp, dry and breezy weather, my garden clippers at the ready in my back pocket, a big basket under my arm, ready to see what was what.

Before long I found that everything I was gathering fell somewhere in the color spectrum of red; burgundy blackberries, deep garnet beets, voluptuous tomatoes -cerise cherries, pink heirlooms and the crimson romas-, ruby hawthorn berries and the one and only scarlet cayenne pepper. Even the carrots I grew this year are the kind that were supposed to have dark purple skin, but mine came out of the ground red, red, Blood Moon red!

It might seem silly to make meaning like I do. Yet I stay happily connected to the world I am living in this way. And while I am here, while I am not yet an Ancestor, I want the cardinal life force coursing through my veins to support a purposeful life. I like to think my Beloved Dead are watching from between the worlds, proud of how I have picked up the thread of long ago farmers and herbalists somewhere back along the fractured lineage of my family history. That I am reclaiming and healing the lost story of my perhaps great, great, great grandparents who lost their land to the conqueror of their day, and that as I pull up each blood red beet, my ancestors are savoring another spirit bowl of borscht.

A Naked Moment

I was enamored and enchanted and somehow reminded, when I read in Marian Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, how the cycles of nature coursed through the very blood of the Priestesses on that holy isle because they were so magickally tuned in. It filled me with longing to return to that deep a relationship with nature as fervently as one yearns for a lover; to feel the silent rush of energy that signals the exact moment when the moon flips from dark to new, the exact moment of an equinox or a solstice.

But I am a modern day Priestess, who relies on her alarm clock to wake her, her calendar to track the passing of her days, her ephemeris to note the planetary changes. I live in a time when electricity keeps our world illuminated long after dark, cooks our food in seconds and brings the madness of the entire globe into our homes on television and the internet. Still, I get my hands in the earth as often as I can in my urban garden, I keep the Sabbats holy, I worship the Moon. I make do.

Between the last of late summer’s heat carrying on into the night and my own hot flashes, uninterrupted sleep has become a thing of the past. Usually I awaken between three and four in the morning and get up to drink a cold glass of water to bring down my internal heat in order to fall back to sleep. But on this September Full Moon night, my eyes flew open at 2 a.m. exactly, a trickle of sweat sliding down the side of my face. I tossed and turned for about 20 minutes, trying to still my mind, to think cool thoughts, to slow my breathing, anything to seduce slumber. Alas, it would not be won.

So I arose, and when I stepped over the threshold of my bedroom door, the dining room was flooded with moonlight! She was so high in the sky, I had to crane my neck to see her through the window; a luminous spotlight in the cloudless, inky blackness, beckoning.

I could not resist. Opening my back door, I gazed at the Faery land I have sensed my yard to be, now made visible to any watchful eye under the Moon. Each blade of grass, each petunia in her pot, each pear on her tree, bathed in luminescent shimmer. It was otherworldly quiet- no barking dogs, no playful shouting from the neighbor’s children, no distant hum of a lawnmower- just me and the Goddess. So quiet I could hear the nightshades singing. Their song carried me between the worlds and with the bravery found only in extraordinary moments, I stood, the cool breeze caressing my body in that naked moment of eternity, drawing down the Moon.

In the solar light of day hours later, I checked said ephemeris to learn that the Moon had reached Her fullness at exactly 2:27 that morning. She woke me up to come out and play! Apparently, the tides of the Moon still course through my veins despite electricity, despite menopause, despite sleep. The Goddess is alive, and magick is afoot!

Rock My World!

I have a theory about rocks. I believe they can move from one place to another on their own. How else can you explain the appearance of stones where none existed before? Squirrels don't carry and bury stones like they do bulbs and acorns. I believe the rocks move when they know we are not looking.

I love them and began keeping a rock collection as a child. I remember finding the perfectly hamburger shaped stone that I kept in a box in the basement, the square box of a rock with the white stripe through it, the sparkly piece that made my heart stand still, whose beautiful name I learned was Mica. Next to English, Earth Science was my favorite class. At the word 'igneous', I was hooked. Over the years I have collected stones from all the more distant places I have been, and then began asking folks who were traveling to bring just any little stone off the street back for me. I have stones from as far away as Australia, Greenland, Russia. Baskets of rocks adorn my home, my office, my deck. I've never met a rock I didn't like.

Eight years ago when I moved into this home and began to cultivate a garden, my shovel found rock after rock. As each garden bed was created, I painstakingly removed them knowing that they might obstruct what I wanted to grow. I piled them here and there making sedentary designs. It seemed no matter how many I picked from the soil, there were always more. I am sure this area was a river bed thousands of years ago and these dense minerals are evidence of that. And even though I have worked these garden beds over and over, it amazes me that I still find them in places I am sure I have filtered through.

One day I found a sizable stone in the middle of my compost pile. Now, wait a minute! That pile had been created from nothing but food scraps, leaf mulch and grass clippings! How did it get there? I started to think that just as plants have consciousness, the rocks must too and they must want to relocate from time to time. After all, they don't have roots like plants. There is nothing to keep them in any particular place except, of course, that they don't have legs or wings. But curiouser things have happened.

This theory of mine began to solidify in my mind when I found one about a foot deep in a raised bed that I had filled with nothing but compost! I can see a stone perhaps falling on the surface somehow, but a foot deep? Come on. It must have made it's stony little way there.

And then a few days ago I had a mystical experience that has proven to me that my 'rocks can move' theory is true. There I was, innocently and finally weeding the overgrown garden beds in the front yard. In the bed under my huge, old lilac tree (the one who gifts me such fragrant, dark purple blossoms in early Summer that are so big they border obscene), the weeds were just about taking over. It had been so long since I'd given any attention to this area that the daffodil, tulip and grape hyacinth skeletons from early Spring still splayed out, life and colorless on the soil.

I set the empty wheelbarrow nearby and began happily pulling weeds, tossing them in, filling it up. I find weeding very therapeutic. I remove the useless thoughts that can take up too much space in my mind as I remove the biomass that steals the nutrients from plants I want to thrive.

And then it happened. I walked toward the wheelbarrow with my hands full, and I saw something small and grey move. Jump, really, from the top of the weed pile down into it. I had the fleeting thought "is that a mouse?" but then just as quickly I saw that it was a rock! A small grey rock. And it jumped down and in and out of sight!

I stood staring, trying to make sense of it, telling myself that I was not crazy, I really had seen a rock jump. Then the questions: how did it get in that pile of weeds to begin with? I hadn't been digging up the soil, just pulling from the surface, and I had encountered no rocks. And then, and more importantly, what made it move? I had been no where near the wheelbarrow when I saw the rock jump. Before I concluded that I had truly lost my mind, I decided to relay to my friends in the back yard that I had seen a rock move of it's own volition. As I turned to do so, WHUMP! The wheelbarrow fell over on it's side, spilling its contents on the grass, and I just about jumped out of my skin!

This is not the first time I have pondered whether my sanity is intact. But I saw what I saw! Whose to say what is sane and what is not? Maybe rocks do perambulate. Maybe it wanted me to see it move because my strong belief in its ability to do so warranted the gift of witnessing it with my own eyes.

When I righted the wheelbarrow again, I found the rock. It looks like it might be granite. You bet it's in my collection. In fact, this one sits right on my desk at which I am writing this piece. I keep glancing over to see if it is still in the same place as the last time I looked at it. It is.