Poems for A Flame-Haired Snowdrop Woman

February 1, 2010 at 3:33 pm (Pagany Musings, Seasons and Sabbats)

Every season a season of poetry, beloveds!  But this one especially so.  In honor of the 5th Annual Brigid Poetry Festival, I offer the poems below – three poems by three poets who have stirred my soul in these past months, and one poem by me (written for my beloved Dionysos, who tends to arrive on my doorstep, arms full of hyacinths and dreams, a couple of weeks after Imbolc):

SONG

by Hilda Doolittle

You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain
that merges to gold again,
as white as the white rain
that beats through
the half-opened flowers
of the great flower tufts
thick on the black limbs
of an Illyrian apple bough.

Can honey distill such fragrance
as your bright hair–
for your face is as fair as rain,
yet as rain that lies clear
on white honey-comb,
lends radiance to the white wax,
so your hair on your brow
casts light for a shadow.

———-

The Stranger (La Extranjera)

by Gabriela Mistral

She speaks in her way of her savage seas
With unknown algae and unknown sands;
She prays to a formless, weightless God,
Aged, as if dying.
In our garden now so strange,
She has planted cactus and alien grass.
The desert zephyr fills her with its breath
And she has loved with a fierce, white passion
She never speaks of, for if she were to tell
It would be like the face of unknown stars.
Among us she may live for eighty years,
Yet always as if newly come,
Speaking a tongue that plants and whines
Only by tiny creatures understood.
And she will die here in our midst
One night of utmost suffering,
With only her fate as a pillow,
And death, silent and strange.

——

Briefly it Enters, and Briefly Speaks

by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . .

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner’s plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name. . . .

—————

Iatros
Healer

by Ruby Sara

Beloved,
I saw the new moon.
It rang out like a bell and
it was a new year in my body.

I have started to look
at roads again – appreciate
their form, the snakes
I wish to tattoo on my skin,
are beginning to writhe.

New irises are sly -
we can only see them
if we push our fingers
into the snow.  But you
know they are there already.

Tell me,
Beloved.

Make me
a crocus – the first
in a thousand months of winter.

In exchange – here
is my tongue.  But you
know that already.

————

Blessings and Hope, Beloveds! Grok the Mystery that lies in the heart of a poem. Forever and ever. Pray without ceasing.

1 Comment

Candlemas Meditations / Lilies and Fire

January 28, 2010 at 4:22 am (Pagany Musings, Seasons and Sabbats, Wanderings)

*Appears suddenly from under her sparkly rock*

Hey, Pagani!

So……..I posted on a subject that got folks into a really rockin’ convo and then I split.  I even promised to write more on the subject.  And I shall, I shall.  But not today.

Truth be told, beloveds, my brain is kind of offline this week, with the advent of fantastic, muy inteligente friends from out of town and then some impending deadlines.  Yes, my mind has been super full.  I beg your patience.  SO many good points and interesting subjects came up in the discussion on my last post that I really think they’ll make for a whole slew of interesting thinkings in the future.  I’m just tuckered out.  My intrepid spouse, ostensibly the cowan in this situation, has to remind me to ground and set lights for myself.  I am on one hand grateful beyond belief for this, and also amused that he remembers better than I the efficacy of prayer and spellcraft.

There is much to be pondered and grokked about the world, and I and my magpie eye are settled roost-like today not the question of Pagan threads, but rather on the miracle of Imbolc.  Sudden and sacred, Candlemas is tapping at the door, the seed of spring in the depths of winter.  So I’ve to let the Lady in, beloveds, and that warrants a break from the dialectic.  Good prayer, good light, good poetry.  Hearts aflame.  I grok spring – that ghost in the snow.  Imbolc, the season of milk, and fire.

I think about fire.  Fires I have been.  Fires around which I have made friends for life.  Fires that have frightened me, confused me, hurt me.  And I ponder, easily, the absence of Fire – the roil of snow, oh gorgeous terror.  This morning is freezing after a somewhat mild and lamb-like winter weekend full of soft rain and the wet promise of spring.  The winter says Remember, for she is not through yet.

I visited the inland sea that our midwestern tongues falsely call a lake this week (look, a lake is a heart-deep, dark blue and icy bowl of water tucked into the cupped palm of a mountain, a fist thrust deep into a rocky mystery, and you can see across it easily; this I learned growing up in the west. The Great Immensity that greets me in the mornings now in the urban midwest, the winter sunlight cutting across the ice and the nowhere horizon a swept kiss of fog, the last, vestigial traces of the shattering night…this is not a lake, friends…this is a sea, an expanse, a whole dream, a little ocean, a void, and a fathom).  We walked out to the end of a long concrete pier covered in places with patches of sweet-slick ice, no railing between us and the submerged rocks, the freezing shallows.  At the edge of the pier, the whole of the waters lay out in front of us, and I put my arms out in the wind.  It was a freezing and slate-dark sky – no lake birds wheeling, just the occasional frigid rook against the steel.  The shoreline was forbidding, hostile.  The wind was ugly and hard.  And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. On the tippy toe edge, arms held out and only the water in front of me, I was unmade.  Here is my god, the god of this place.  And here is the winter we stand in, deadly gray, wishing for crocuses and candlelight.  In the face of my god, in the season of flame and freeze, and the aching tease of spring, I thought of hope.

Hope.

There’s a too used and washed up word.  Much of the time, I agree with Derrick Jensen.  Hope is a word we use when we believe we have no agency and that our lives are left to the whims and agendas of others – corporations, politicians, messiahs.  I appreciate his message here – that to put all your political energy into hope is to sacrifice your ability to move, to make things happen, to seize ownership and action.  But I still, despite this useful and critical approach, think that hope has merit and worth as a spiritual concept (and spirituality is not an area Jensen dwells in much – this may be, for me, the greatest lacuna in his otherwise tremendously vital body of work).  I still believe in hope.  And I believe in it because of Imbolc.  Because I celebrate Imbolc in a climate and a geography that teaches this lesson in a personally concrete and embodied way.

For me, Imbolc is the Pagan Season of Hope – as we anticipate the Spring Woman who rises in the green veins of trees and tulips, come to lift us out of our dark night.  (Hey…there’s a whole soteriology waiting to happen…Kore as Pagan Messiah…hmmm…of course, Feraferians have been saying as much for years.)  Some may find, in this story, a metaphor.  But for me it’s deadly literal.  Without the knowing in my body that the ground will melt, that flowers will bloom, and that the wind can be again my friend…well, I simply don’t think I’d make it (I grew up in Texas and Colorado.  And while I thought that my experiences in Denver and Boulder had prepared me for what it meant to live in a winter country, Mother Lake and Brother North Wind learned me right out of that notion).  I imagine my ancestors may have had similar thoughts.  And this movement is, deliciously so, outside of my realm of control.  The earth spins and the seasons turn, and these things are greater than I, and I am a firm believer in the Mystery of Maybe Not Tomorrow – so I do not Make Spring, but I hope, and this Hope is born of my body – both Faith and Fact.

In the market I pass by a clutch of miniature calla lilies, a deep lavender color on thin pencil stems gleaming green.  Their larger cousins are pulsing with a scent that is a rocket fuel for my little aching heart, yearning for grass and warm earth.  I pray:

Mother Lake, Sister Lilies,
I am just two hands, five senses, and one fire,
holding the memory of Spring -

O, let it come – the white bees, snow still in the fine, great night,
they are singing Her name so that I believe She will follow them.

O, let it come – the gunmetal sky may fill with the hard wind,
writing its liturgy in preparation for Her arrival.

O, let it come – I am not afraid, there is a candle burning,
and an iris blooming in my mouth, the trees tremble to receive Her.

I am just a poem, a worshiper of a Red-Haired Smithwoman, blaze
and spark, who announces the coming of the Kore.
I am just a singer, writing hymns to the One with newness in her skin and hyacinths at her feet.
I am just a woman, praying to a star, a lake, a mountain, and a blade of grass.  Listening for birds.

Let it come.

Grok Earth, Pagani.  Pray without ceasing.

6 Comments

Pagan and Plain, Revisited

January 16, 2010 at 11:07 pm (Pagan Plain, Pagany Musings, Theology)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.   -Walt Whitman

Slainte, best beloveds!  The world is ablaze with sunlight today – blinding and brilliant.  It may still be freezing, but I welcome my brother-sister sun with an almost hysterical enthusiasm – hello I love you I love you, I say to that brilliant golden coin in the aching blue!  Stick around, stick around!  I noticed just the other day that it was just a weensy bit lighter than usual at 4:45p, and my heart lifted.  Imbolc is coming (already!), and the seed of spring glory in the depth of winter is upon us – candles and flame in the night.  I am on fire with yearning for crocuses.  But…. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself.  There is much to grok in the deep freeze of January yet.  There is still the hiss and click of the phlegmatic radiator, the blankets over the windows, the smell of coffee in the dark eventide.  It is still a meditation season.

Pagani, once upon a time during PG’s first incarnation, I wrote a post that hesitantly waxed rhapsodic about my thoughts on whether Paganism and plain living were compatible with each other.  Well, it’s been a few years, and that little, nigh contentless musing has received more attention than any other post I’ve ever written, apparently from those with similar yearnings typing some combination of “pagan” and “plain life” into their google searches.  The original post has received a number of comments, prompted various folks to share some fascinating testimonies, and has popped up in some really interesting and unusual places, as small pockets of the Pagani explore their strange and heretofore thought to be singular desire to simplify their lives, and/or radically reduce/rethink their wardrobe.

Clearly, something is going on.

Now, as these are Pagans we’re talking about, there are invariably a number of reasons why someone might have these interests, and a number of angles to Plain Living.  And, as I am one of those Pagani who has had this inclination, and it seems to grow more and more interesting with each passing year, I thought it was high time I should explore some of my own thoughts surrounding the issue of Pagan Plain dress and Plain living here in a bit more detail.  A note of warning, however: Just in the writing of this post I spent a few days in serious contemplation and exploration on the internet, and have found that there is so much more to this issue than I could ever explore in one post, so forgive me if I don’t do the whole tamale justice this first time around, or if my musings lack in elegance – this is a powerful subject for me.

Let’s being with the reason most on my mind as a Pagan considering the Plain life: the matter of ecology and justice.  For those of us practicing a religiosity that is born of a sense of being centered on the Earth, of making the Mama paramount, and of establishing authentic relationship with the myriad Other, choosing a lifestyle in accordance with these theologies is naturally logical.  I won’t rehash the statistics – the plain fact is that for those of us living in countries of excess and privilege such as America, the prime directive is that of the consumer, a directive that has had and continues to have disastrous implications for the planet and for the communities who produce the goods we consume, as well as those who consume them, and while many among the Pagani have made it a part of their lives to fight against this earth-destroying, rights-denying and soul-killing worldview, we cannot deny our culpability as well. Rampant consumerism is no less present among the Pagani – as many have noted, our “community centers” are primarily shops (though, as the market plays itself out in its predictably killing way, these shops are rapidly closing, and we Pagani have better start thinking of alternatives in terms of gathering places before we turn into a religion of virtual worshipers who meet IRL once or twice a year at festivals…why I think this is not the ideal is the subject of a future post), and we make up an entire niche market, with our jewelry/costumery/statuary/ritual tools.  But there is a thriving anti-materialist conversation among the Pagani, and there are many who have implemented or are considering implementing a more ecologically viable and justice-oriented life, conducting personal ecological and ethical audits, and making lifestyle changes that may not save the world by themselves, but will contribute to the hoped-for worldview shift that will.  These kinds of choices include making changes to our diets that involve less processed foods, buying sweatshop free clothes or making our own clothes from natural and organic materials, composting our waste, using less silly gadgetry, cutting down on our reliance on electricity, participating in communal entertainment such as storytelling and group singing, and, of course, simply buying less stuff.  It can be argued that some of these choices are not necessarily “simple,” depending on your definition of that term, but in my mind, any action that brings a person more in concert with the Mama, that brings hir closer to a way of life that suggests a harmony that we may have once possessed, and can possess again, is an action worth pursuing, and one that will engender a simplicity of spirit, the peace that comes of living a life in accordance with authentic relationship and true value.*

Second, there is the matter of aesthetics and practicality.  The longing for a simpler way is often an aesthetic one.  We are bombarded in every waking moment now with advertising and the invasive laser of modern technology.  Yes, I’m biased.  It’s true that I myself am something of a luddite (a hypocritical, blogging luddite…yep), and have strong beliefs about television, the internet, MP3 players, video games, and other technologies that I believe have consequences for us as communal animals, but even beyond the politics of luddism, there is, for some, a deeper yearning towards the (yes, perhaps sometimes romanticized) simple life – a life of clean lines and organic matter.  Real food, made by real hands – the authenticity of grounded experience.  A white bowl filled with deep, night-purple plums.  Homespun vs. plastics.  Handmade vs. processed.  There is something to be said for craft, for work – another seeming contradiction, that the thing that requires more work is the thing that is simpler.  And the practicality angle – that it requires less ridiculous amounts of money and effort to wear simple clothing.  To feel like you’ve made a vote away from hassle and cultural expectations of beauty towards something that is timeless and rich.  This is a hard aspect to define, as aesthetics tend to be, but as Pagans are by nature an extremely aesthetics-focused group, I believe this has much to do with it.

And third, there is the matter of witness.  There can be no doubt that in choosing a certain kind of Plain dress (i.e. simple cotton dresses/shifts, solid colors, aprons, headcoverings), anybody still participating in the dominant cultural world (as opposed to living in separatist communities) is making a countercultural choice, and will draw attention to themselves for it (another fun contradiction – that the goal of being plain is perhaps made obsolete by the excess attention “plain” dress evokes from the panopticon).  Even those who do not choose this kind of Plain dress but radically reduce their wardrobe and make radical choices about their manner of clothing will receive some attention for it.  Thus it becomes a matter of making a statement.  For some, that statement is about obedience to God or Biblical strictures – for others, it is a statement about sweatshop conditions and ecology.  But this witness element cannot be ignored.

There is, also, the matter of gender, which is enormous and also cannot be ignored.  The very fact that the vast majority of conversations surrounding plain dress on the internet are being had by women, and that almost all the web sites devoted to plain dress are comprised solely of clothing for women and girls…not to mention the controversial subject of headcovering and the Pagans who are finding veiling/covering to be a path that fits them…well, doveys, these topics demand a more thorough investigation…..so much so that I feel they deserve their own post, so I will be addressing them later.

Of course there are other reasons I have not addressed, but these few are a good start in parsing my own personal reasons for finding plain dress and plain living to be extremely attractive.  Suffice to say, in light of the above, I believe that a testimony of Plain Living and Plain Dress is absolutely compatible with Pagan ecopolythea/ologies.

So I soldier weirdly even on…the compulsion towards simple dress/lifestyle gripping me on a regular basis, stemming from a combination of the principles outlined above, and in response I have been reducing my wardrobe in the past few months, taking tiny baby steps towards my vision of a simpler life.  I am not anywhere close to what could be construed as plain dress, but I am asking questions of myself, and getting some interesting answers.  The winter wind tugs at my shoestrings…what will the year bring?  Whose side am I on?  What would I give?  I am unsure – I make small vows and light candles and ask the spirits for direction.  I pray.

Yes.  The things I am sure about:

Grok Earth, Pagani.  Pray without ceasing.

*ETA:  Thalia brings up an excellent point – these actions that I specifically listed are choices that involve privilege, and I do not mean to imply that those unable to make these choices are less spiritual/ethical/moral/close to the Mama.  Ever.  Actions that lead one closer to the Mama are myriad and manifold, and cannot and should not be subject to hierarchy.

25 Comments

Haiti

January 13, 2010 at 11:20 pm (Pagany Musings)

The people of Haiti are in my prayers.

Grief, sorrow, horror.  I pray my horror, I pray for all the aid possible, for water and food and medical care.  I pray the why, I pray the incomprehensibility of such devastation.*

I do not know what else to say – I only know to do what I can do, and to pray, for those who have died, for those who are grieving the dead, for all those who are suffering.

Give money.  Do what you can do.  Pray.

*And yes, I also shake with rage in the face of despicable commentary by Pat Robertson.  I tried to find the words to communicate the deep, visceral disgust I have for everything you are, Mr. Robertson, but words, for once, failed me.  ETA: They didn’t, thankfully, fail Jon Stewart.  Or Keith Olbermann.

1 Comment

When Magic Fails

January 13, 2010 at 3:05 am (Pagany Musings)

Mother Holle sends her greetings, beloveds, from the slow dance of the white bees in the urban midwest!  I am grateful for the space heater I have directed at my feet.  And for the continued, astonishing miracle of the Mama’s beauty.  Almost begrudgingly each year I admit that the snow is beautiful.  It turns barren trees into contour studies, and parking lots into heart-melting winter deserts.  And snowflakes under lamplight or moonlight embody almost everything we believe as children about how magic should look.  Mama!  I will never run out of the desire to tell you how beautiful you are.

I have been thinking of magic today, friends, as I light old candles and drop pennies into jars, making wishes, reinventing myself (every day).  I talk about magic often in terms of the spirit that moves through the world – the Beauty, the Mama’s blood…Her Awen, Her breath.  And of course, for me, this is exactly what it is.  It is the raw material of what makes life Worth It.  I rarely talk about magic in terms of spellcraft or personal practice.  But this kind of magic, this Work of the people, is one of the defining feature of our religiosity (most of us Pagani anyway), and it is on this work that I have been ruminating, especially in the context of failure.

Spellcraft works.  I believe this, and I have seen it in action.  I have no need to argue that it works to people who do not believe in it.  I’ll leave complicated explanations of why it works to those who like that sort of analysis.  But I can say without hesitation: magic works.

But, it also fails.  It doesn’t work all the time, or in the ways we expect, or when we expect it too.  This too is a fact.  It may fail for a million reasons, including a thousand of them that we simply will never understand.  Maybe we messed it up – forgot a gesture, chose the wrong combination of materials, missed a step, mispronounced a critical word.  Maybe once upon a time we knew how to Do This, and our minds, drugged by the sleepy lullabies of civilization, have forgotten.  Maybe we weren’t working within the stronger arena of our own talents and knacks.  Maybe it was too large to begin with, throwing one artist with a chisel up against a seventy mile high and thousand mile wide wall made of 45 foot thick concrete…it can’t be done by a single person in one lifetime (i.e. global activist magic works, but it takes time, and a large, fierce people working in concert like some precious, angry and justice-seeking organism).  Maybe the spirits, or the Spirit, or the gods, or the ancestors, or the angels, or any other Powers whose ability to better see and manipulate the vasty and mind-blowing sea of webstrands that sing in the space between this breath and the next decided you needed something else, for your own good, or because they like to see you sweat, or for their amusement, or because you can’t possibly see the larger context of your actions, or for a million reasons we can’t know.  If you don’t believe that (and there are a trillion ideas from a million minds about the hows and whys of magic, and the traditions and teachings are many), then maybe you believe something like: a part of you doubts…the magic or the specific working, or yourself, and your higher mind is sabotaging the work to protect you from something not in your best interest.  Or maybe, sometimes, we don’t know why and there is no greater message for you or for the people – it just didn’t work.  It just didn’t.

So we have a lot of things we could say about the why of failed magic – there are a lot of theories and a lot of traditions.  What we don’t necessarily talk about a whole lot, in my experience, is the fact of failed magic, and the aftermath, the toll it can take on us, on our faith – in ourselves and in our beliefs.  I think this is a byproduct in some ways of the notion that the burden of Change in the world is on our individual shoulders as magic practitioners.  Since we do not postulate a theology of the annihilation of self, or extreme dependency on our deities (i.e. “God has a plan,” and “Give it up to God”), we are responsible for our huge destinies, and we make all the change.  Now, I’m definitely not suggesting that we embrace a theology that robs us of agency as magicians/artists/workers/doers/charm makers, of course (why must it be all or nothing?  why can we not be interdependent/independent/dependent?), but in light of this rejected dependency/worldview, what are we left with when we fail?

Putting an enormous amount of thought, energy, time, effort and possibly materials into something that doesn’t work, no matter if it’s magic or anything else, within a theology of absolute individualism, is hard.  Our spirituality tells us that we are magical beings, but when we can’t seem to make something work over a period of time, we may come to doubt this fact, doubt ourselves.  It can even create crises of faith, or more aptly, crises of magic.  Is this all just a pile of crap after all?  Are we making this up?  Are we living in a fantasy world?  Are we foolish?

Good questions.  I don’t have answers.  I ask myself these things too – I think a hermeneutic of critical suspicion is never a bad thing, and neither is the pursuit of excellence or the learning of new things or the improvement of technique.  However, I think it’s equally important to realize that magic does fail, but even if it fails repeatedly, or if we are going through a period of time when we either a. can’t bring ourselves to perform magic for whatever reason, or b. everything we try doesn’t work, this does not mean that we are failures.

It may be that it comes back to, again, the curse of individualism.  Or even, interestingly, the same kind of dilemma that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her amazing TED talk on creativity – that we made a mistake when we stopped having a genius and started being geniuses, when we internalized the responsibility for our creative output.  In some ways, we’ve done the same thing to our magic – internalized and individualized the responsibility for our magical results, so that failure has turned from a disappointing but in someways ineffable thing that takes into consideration the incredibly complex nature of life/fate/energy/magic/spirits/others/land/relationship, into a failure of our personal selves, the “I” that lives in the body – the ghost in the machine (itself an illusion, a Cartesian hegemony).

Beloveds, I believe this: we are magical creatures.  We can’t not be.  We are animals, made of skin and muscle and bone – our minds swimming in red salt and electrical shimmy.  This being animal is what makes sympathetic magic possible – we are walking metaphors – blood/sea/river, bone/mountain/rock, skin/moss/grass, words/birdcall/lion roar.  We are in relationship in every moment, and our lives are spent in exercise towards the ability to remember how to perceive even a tenth of the incredibly complexity that moves in and around us in any given moment.  We swim in magic when we create art, when we breathe, when we love, when we dance.  And yes, when we bend our wills and our hearts towards something we need or desire, making charms, working roots, drawing circles, singing enchants, we are working magic – co-creating, conspirateurs.

What I’m not sure about is the the rest of my own theorizing.  But I do know that the conversation is important.  Why continue to throw ourselves against that concrete wall?  Why persist in believing in the efficacy of our workings, in the miracle and in the song – especially when it doesn’t seem to be working?  Might could ask an activist why they persist in fighting when the Machine simply soldiers on, crushing everything good and whole under its dark wheel.  Might could ask a Christian why they still bother believing in God when He seems to ignore their prayers.  And remarkably, the responses may be similar: because I believe in Beauty and wholeness above suffering and inequality; because I see God in every day my eyes are opened; because Magic is in the root of every tree and the smallest fingernail of every person, the petal of every flower.  I do this because it is in my nature, and because I believe that there is such a thing justice, that I am heard, and that the Universe Works.

It borders on cheesy…but that may be the miracle – that activists fight and pray-ers pray and magicians work, all despite the evidence or the odds.  Hey…never tell us the odds. Deep wisdom from a scruffy-looking Nerf herder.

5 Comments

Moth Light, Recycled

January 6, 2010 at 4:55 am (Pagany Musings, Wanderings)

So…in between Pagan Godspell’s former incarnation and this one, I did make a flailing effort or two to start new blogs, though they were both fleeting and their little flames were snuffed within weeks.  In squirreling around through the flotsam and jetsam of my desktop, however (okay, I was procrastinating on another task…), I ran into these few brief posts from those forgotten shooting star projects, and I thought I would repost them here, as I liked what they had to say (and the one below reminded me of my other conversation with the Sand Hornet earlier this year as well).  If you were one of the precious few who read these where they first and briefly appeared, I can only ask your forgiveness for the repetition.

This first was written obviously in and for the summer, and seems initially out of whack with the bone-cracking cold out the window here in the fitful burn and start of January, but at the same time…how much sweeter the swelter seems for just that reason.  This is a lazy way to fill posts, beloveds, I’m aware…but in the crunch of some personal deadlines, it seems a miracle to stumble upon wholly written but mostly unexposed blogstuff.  Praise the beloved gods of procrastination!  Let’s talk liminality:

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold” ) is a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective, conscious state of being on the “threshold” of or between two different existential planes, as defined in neurological psychology (a “liminal state”) and in the anthropological theories of ritual by such writers as Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, and others. In the anthropological theories, a ritual, especially a rite of passage, involves some change to the participants, especially their social status.

The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives.

People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.

—-

To be permanently liminal.  To both suffer and revel in the both/and, the horizon star, the shifting ground.

The travel of the mystic is a life spent in walkabout through, under, and within the liminal.  It is the space between breaths, the step sideways, the looking glass and the hedge.

To be liminal is to be wrapt in a state of the numinous.

The liminal may be reached in a car, barreling down the freeway, above the ground but united with it, the gray tongue of the rough road unfurling out beyond mountains and rock.  But more so, it can be walked.  In the shadowy dread of almost dawn and in the rough corners of rotten buildings, the seed of Something.  A threshold.  Poetry is the language of the liminal.  It is the language of god.  So it lives in the cracks and the moonrise, there mingled with the Spirit that Moves, the Dancing.

A liminal walk is a literal walk, out and about, feet on grass and concrete and moss and steel – it is a physical movement into a state of Between, a state of Grace.  When it works, all encounters become omens and all language becomes art.

This could mean anything.  It could mean poetry.  It could mean theology.  It could mean failure and silence.  It doesn’t matter.  The walking matters.  The ache directs.

—–

At noon this summer I walked in the shadow of heat, my skin slick with sweat and buffeted by the wind, which was loud and mouthy.  It was past midsummer, and the trees were thick with themselves, blowing cotton bits about and sticking them in people’s hair.  The cotton seeds nested themselves along the borders of flower gardens and made the lilies look decked by a flock of very small sheep.  The swelter is the summer’s secret lesson.  In the sticky vacuum, the mind falls asleep, and other senses come out and gather up the color of the grass.

I saw a moth on the sidewalk.  It was as big as my hand, its body a fat thumb covered with dark gold fur, its alien face and sturdy legs likewise ruffled and showy.  And its wings, folded up, looked like fallen leaves.  Clever moths and their costumes.  It was dying.

There was no way to save it.  Its choice was made.  It was waiting.  Somewhere Death, hearing this little body’s peeping breaths, was coming in and bringing the Mystery with it.  If Death is a man with a scythe, a calavera in a cloak, a spectre or a young girl or a woman in white…still we see Her as we see ourselves, a human form.  When Death comes to a moth, how does She look?

Oh, She comes to each blade of grass, each honeybee, each and each and each in every moment when something and someone is meeting Her in one of Her million guises, a minister of racked Fear and unmeasured Peace…there a moment where in the Greatness of Death…God.

I sat on the sidewalk with that golden mother moth, whispering to her fallen body, telling her how beautiful she was, what a life she must have lived, wondering about the blasted wide nature of that master death while the leaves whistled the high, slippery and fatted summer day, and in that moment, in an agonizing and perfect gesture, that dust and sun colored lady laid down her wings and revealed their blaze.  They were light honey, powdered with earth, with eyes that flashed sapphire opalescent and were rimmed with kohl – an owl’s face, the face of the moon, the summer’s mouth.  The world shifted and a door opened.

The wind blew cotton seeds into my hair.  There was a leaf stuck in my shoelaces.

Beauty and Death laying their hands down hard on the table of noon.

This moth light is what I am after.

5 Comments

Rest In Peace, Mary Daly

January 4, 2010 at 9:34 pm (Pagany Musings)

I loved Mary Daly.  Problematic, extreme, difficult, brilliant, magnificently creative, and fierce.  Her voice will be missed.  Thorn Coyle says it all better than I could, and I encourage you to read her excellent eulogy for this incredible thinker.

1 Comment

Breathing In 2010

January 4, 2010 at 3:43 am (Media Craptango, Pagany Musings, Politics)

Well.  I’m worn out.  That, friends, was a hell of a week.

I know, Pagani, my last post makes it sound like all was margaritas and 60 degree nights filled with friends’ laughter and deep green leaves, smoky stars and birdcall.  And there was plenty of that, don’t get me wrong.  And I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to touch that magic that I haven’t the words.

But the nature of these kinds of spiritually rich sojourns – the kind where you have, for the first time in a very long time, the opportunity to take a golden soul-nap, with the windows open and the light flooding the carpet and the mourning doves in the trees and the smell of chicken soup on the stove and the wind literally caressing your face and each cell alive and delicious and perfect and you can barely sleep for all the bliss – well, those kinds of moments tend to crack you open and pull you apart so much that it frankly makes you a bit vulnerable.  And by a bit, I mean…raw as noon.

So I haven’t been surprised by my emotionality this past week, but I admit, it hasn’t been entirely delightful.  The opportunity to spend a week in the landscape of my heart left me more vulnerable to storytelling for example…and it seems like a variety of catalysts for spiritual and emotional upheaval took advantage.  I saw the film Baraka this week, for what might be the fifth time.  A gorgeous film that never fails to move me, both to tears and to wonder.  And I re-read Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing for the umpteenth time, one of the absolute best that Pagan fiction has to offer and certainly one of my favorite pieces of utopian literature that I always find personally galvanizing.  I also found myself on the ride home reading Green Hermeticism for the first time, and it has been thoroughly rocking my world.

And…. I saw the film Avatar (you may have heard of it).

I frankly am not sure I’m up to the challenge of dissecting all my feelings about Avatar.  An exceptionally brief summation would be that I thought it was visually stunning, and wildly, crazily, overwhelmingly problematic.  The exoticizing of the Other, the “gone native” colonizer as messiah, who takes going native to, as Mark Morford so brilliantly points out, an intimate level of colonialist domination by inserting a colonizer’s mind into the indigenous body, etc (I’m not really commenting on the spirituality of the film because I found it to be pretty much a non-issue….a kind of generic monopantheism that is completely lacking in the complex depth and richness of authentic earth-based spiritualities…and frankly I find it more than a bit ridiculous how up in arms conservative theologians seem to be about it).  But what really angered me was the hypocrisy, extant in the creation of the film, its message, my viewing of it, my manipulated emotional reaction to it, and, I imagine, the emotional reaction of others watching it in the audience.  Here is a story of the exploitation and oppression of an indigenous culture and the ecosystem in which it thrives.  The audience knows who the bad guys are, and who the good guys are.  We know how it will end, and how it should end.  The story of justice is hardwired into us, culturally and possibly biologically.  Yet….what?  To be emotionally moved by the destruction of the Na’vi’s TreeHome in the middle of the film…what does this mean?  Does James Cameron intend to give the proceeds of the film to indigenous rights groups, environmentalist groups, ecospiritual groups?  Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that the making of this film was performed without the realtime compromising of our existing landbases on this planet?  James Cameron has made a film that is an obscenely opulent appropriation of a real struggle.  A caricature.  His thoughts about its “message,” when you can find them, are absolutely secondary to his desire to create a science fiction spectacle…critics who are pissed about the mythical “Hollywood pantheist agenda” might want to take a second look: this is Mammon in action here, not Gaia.  Proof?  How about: if McDonalds has a marketing deal with your film, any claim to some pro-Mama message is thoroughly and utterly forfeit.  The End.

So I got a little angry.

And well, the combination of all these experiences, these fierce hopes and despairs and rages, at a time when my heart muscle was at its most open and easily broken, well friends, together they all just thoroughly succeeding in breaking it.  Clean.  Open.  And so I find myself in a rather emotionally raw state, chewing on old questions, still caught in the brief bubble of expectancy for the new year, struggling.

This isn’t a new struggle for me, of course, and it’s not a unique struggle by any means.  But I admit that pressing on through the past year or two of deep emotional dysfunction left me more or less closed.  Depression and anxiety are evil for a multitude of reasons, not the least being that in my experience they deprive the body of experiencing the profound, authentic range of emotion that we are blessed to possess as human animals.   I am just now coming back to the place where I feel I can allow my heart to catch fire.

Whose side am I on?  What would I give?  What can I do?

I am, after all, a forever Sister in the Holy Order of Hystericals, and this week has been something of an exercise in renewing my vows.

Yet I also surprise myself too…by allowing myself hope, even though it seems unwarranted and unwise.  I am moved by the grace of winter branches and the promise of a busy spring.  My brain is overwhelmed and whirling with all the brilliant revolution in the world, all the messy, creative resistance, all the compassion, all the joy.  Paganism sails the anarchic sea, sometimes floundering, sometimes catching the wind and flying across the water.  What will it bring?  What will the year bring?  A year of holy anger, of tears and terror, yes.  A year of remarkable flight, of amazement, yes.  A year, a decade of change.  Grokking earth, making prayers.  Making art.  Speaking in the languages of god.  Friends!  Let’s do something.  Let us be vulnerable singers and dreamers.  Let us eat together and take risks.

This ridiculous, glorious thing, this extravagant experiment, this Gift.  This year.  I say bring it.  Tears and all.  This conspiracy of the Real.

4 Comments

Year of Newness

December 31, 2009 at 7:08 pm (Pagany Musings, Seasons and Sabbats)

Greetings, best beloveds!  I have been thoroughly away from the internets for a bit, doing the holiday thing: driving through storm and nightfall, visiting family, visiting friends, sighing big Texas lungfuls of air.  I miss the light, the limestone, the creeks, the green, the smell.  I miss Texas like a piece of myself.  Friends who are family and family who are friends are in abundance here, and I have found myself more days than not lost in the timeless wonder of moment – no future and no past.

Today though, being on the cusp of a new year and a new decade, I have pulled my enchilada-softened brain back into the whirlwind of anticipated time a little more to ponder on the passing of years.  The Pagani say that our new year starts officially on Samhain, but in the land of Caesar, let’s be honest – the Gregorian calendar holds plenty of sway (and frankly, if I were to pinpoint the Mama’s new year in my own embodied experience, it would be more around Imbolc or Ostara, when the serpent stirs beneath the earth, and the light takes on the new challenge of a world awakening…but that’s me).  In addition, it is a blue moon.  A powerful moment, friends…the opportunity for some potent dreaming, some chance magics.

I have made some resolutions this year, secreted them away inside myself, wrapped in that downy mantle of hope, a risk always.  I do not hold them in stone or iron, knowing they may fail.  For many years I refused to make them, believing that they were exercises in disappointment.  But lately, I feel okay in dreaming.  In the bloom of a southern winter, when the pin oaks are lit up in late day by a light that cannot be described or captured, but only loved and embraced, I admit, I am a woman consumed by life’s tragedies and failings, terrified for the future, possessing regrets from the past, struggling to living in the forever now, but still capable of having her heart turned to smoke and tears by the Mama in some late afternoon.

I have collected some experiences and thoughts on my southern sojourn I want to work out in my rambly fashion here at some point in the coming weeks…but for now, beloveds, I pray:

Spectacular, delicious, Mama, Mother, Wave in the Sea, Rock of Ages.
The clock turns over and we are allowed a moment to stand still.
Water moves in eddies, slow and wintery around the roots of old trees and moss.  The sun, brother and friend, is low in the sky and moves its gentle burning hand against the sleeping ground.  Now the heart beats and turns like the beloved planet, marking time.  This leaping up, this holding on to air, this suspension.  In between this breath and the next there is a universe, peopled with another light and the seeds of trees, the wings of wrens, the matter of rain.

This year, our eyes are opened.
This year, our hands make bread and do the work.
This year, our mouths make amends and prayers and poems.
This year, our feet walk a justice road.

This year, our hearts are full.

Mama, in the fire of blessing desert,
in the salt of the blessing sea.

Happy New Year!

6 Comments

Sol Invictus – Midwinter Blessings!

December 21, 2009 at 3:16 pm (Pagany Musings, Seasons and Sabbats)

There are seasons, Pagani, that fill me with words, brimming like a full cup, threatening to spill over into the sacred day.  And then there are seasons that leave me breathless, wordless, shining and buzzing full of something rich and sweet, unnameable and perfect.  Solstice is one of these latter seasons, when words lie fallow beneath snow and buttery sun, and I struggle to articulate the incandescent images of this long night and brief, exquisite day: beeswax candles, evergreens.  Bright paper, music.  Bread.  Fire.

The human animal, fillling the winter nights with stories, with voices, with color.  The ancient numen, breath of god, intimate wonder, dancing in snowy footprints, in the wet streets, in the yellow windows and the faraway.  The Queen of the White Bees tapping at the glass.  Cloves.  Sleep.  Down through the dark to the smallest point, the winter moment.

Dawn – the gray ghost, a flock of blackbirds wings away in the iron morning.  The expectant hush, the Land holds its breath, the Mama trembles.

The sun cracks over the horizon.

Marked with bells and drums, saffron and light, the sun comes up in streamers and amber singing, throwing its yellow scarves of air over the seamless field, white and interrupted only by the deep, long, blue and hollow shadows of sentinel trees.  You feel it, beloveds, the crisp flood of icy joy, the trumpets blazing Beyond the Fields We Know, the Master in the Woods rejoicing, his pack of white dogs with their breath steaming in the sharp new day, the high holy winter ascends.

The blessed sun returns, the light in the teeth of darkness!  The lamp of the world!  Its heart aflame, our closest star, our beloved!

Blessings, blessings, friends!  To you, doveys, a Midwinter filled with warmth and delight, the unconquerable sun, the shadow and the glory, blazing.  That this day the Mama place her blessing hand on yours, and rock you with her beauty.  That the beloved sun unfurl its jeweled armfuls of Great Cosmos Dancing down upon you, and that you grok the secret shining in its heart.  Annunciation, celebration, glory, this coming forth by day,this hallelujah, this amazement, this solar miracle, this wheeling of stars and planet, this marvel.  This.  This.  This.

Grok Earth!  Grok Sun!  Pray without ceasing!

9 Comments

And Then There’s This….

December 17, 2009 at 2:10 am (Pagany Musings)

Taken from Poetry Chaikana Blog:

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

by Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives –
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

— from West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver

2 Comments

Great Kerfuffalo Rising

December 17, 2009 at 1:09 am (Pagany Musings)

Hey!  Guess what?  The Pagani went to the Parliament of World Religions!

If you’ve been within spitting distance of the Pagan internets for the past three weeks, then you know all about it.* And hey, not a single semantic dust-up in the entire process!  Huzzah!

Oh wait.

I know, I know, Pagani.  There’s a kerfuffle afoot.  I have actually been kind of paying attention, I swear.  I just….well….frankly, I’m having trouble mustering any indignation.  Or…any…opinions on the matter even.  And why is that?  Well, maybe it’s because I’ve been going through my own identity crisis…by nature a self-absorbed affair.  Or maybe it’s because I’m not feeling particularly pedantic.  Stop the presses – I’m normally up for all kinds of semantics.  Something might be wrong with me.

But really, if you wanna twist my arm about it, I do get that it’s a mighty important kerfuffle on some levels.  And the fact is that I generally agree that some redefinition is in order.  I mean, in my mind, it’s become more than a little apparent that Wiccans and traditional witches and Asatruar and Hellenes and Feraferians and Druids and Canaanites and the Kemetic Orthodoxy and Reclaiming and Thelemites and Chaotes and Church of the Subgenius and nondenominational eclectics and what have yous (not to mention African Diasporic Religionists, Satanists, Indigenous peoples, some Gnostics, and all manner of folks who may or may not be identified as under the Pagan umbrella depending on who you ask) are doing some radically different things.  What do they all have in common?  Sometimes it seems like very little.  Not all are polytheist, not all are earth-centered, not all acknowledge a divine Feminine, and certainly not all share the same political sensibility or ethical system.  The eco-feminist neo-ancient dada mindfuck + radical anarcho-gnostic christian mysticism + land-based witchcraft + dionysian ecstasis + folk magic + poetrypoetrypoetry whatever-mashup-extravaganza (a shorter name may be: a living earth-based syncretism) that I might pursue in my religious life is pretty much guaranteed to make some of the Pagani’s hair turn white and prompt them to claw at their faces in insane horror…for different reasons, even.  The things that I find universal (and I do find some things to be so), are SO universal that frankly, they aren’t exclusively Pagan at all. Things like Love and Beauty and Earth/Body and Food and Relationship.  These universalisms are useful, especially when thinking about how one wants to live one’s unique religiosity in authentic relationship with a dynamic world, but there’s no reason to think that just because a Feraferian, a Thelemite and a member of the Kemetic Orthodoxy all eat, that their religions are the same, or even have anything really much in common, at least not so much so that it makes any sense to lump them together under the same flawed rubric.  I do take umbrage with the notion that we ought to adopt the term “indigenous,” which, as Chas Clifton pointed out in one of the many long discussions on The Wild Hunt, has deeply political ramifications, but that’s a very scaly kettle of fish I’m not willing to dive into right now.  Point is, I get that it’s messy, and I get that our identities and labels are not perfect (or even useful in lots of ways).  And I think there is worth in the semantic wrastling.

But also….well….you know friends Pagani, mostly I’m interested in people living authentic lives.  I identify with the Pagani, whatever that *means,* because, well, I guess it’s still convenient.  Because my friends do, and we all are living in a general agreement that mostly we’re pursuing something similar in some way.  I call it Paganism because I associate Paganism, since the first moment the word blossomed in my brain, with two things:  Magic, and the Earth.  The Mama is paramount to me, and She always will be.  Bar none.  The Glorious End.  Amen amen.  And Magic is just a fancy word for the Beauty we swim in like many colored and bespangled fishes, and therefore I remain who I remain, hit up with the same adhesive sticker that says “Hello, My Name is PAGAN,” despite the semantics and despite any creative (and probably unrecognizable to most Christians) Christologies to which I adhere.   Because it is out of Magic/Beauty, and out of the Earth, that spring all my notions about authentic community, a devotional life of meaning and depth, a sense of justice that arises out of deep Mama truths of conviction, and a commitment to radical, sensual theologies that view all beings as inherently valuable and possessing Spirit.

But mostly, I want those things in that last sentence there, and if I have to call myself a Cayenne Pepper or a Teapot in order to get them, well I’m almost willing to do it.  Culture.  Community.  Resistance.  People having dinner around a good table.  People singing.  People laughing and shouting.  Birds.  Moths.  Elk.  Fire.  Mountain.  Wind.  Words are beautiful fingers but they are not always the moon.  To see the moon, go out into the freezing night and look up.  To see yourself, look at your hands.  To see religion, look at your neighbor.

Work.  This is all there truly is.  The Work.  Relationship.  Genesis.

Dawn.

*ETA: You know what….reading over this, I realized that this post could be read as dismissive of the Pagani’s visit to the Parliament, and for that I sincerely apologize.  That was definitely NOT my intent.  I am thrilled that so many were able to go and represent our faith traditions at this incredibly important interfaith event, and that there was important work done at this event is unquestionable…I think our communities will be parsing the details of the Parliament for a long time…I’m still not completely up to speed on all the information that has been shared online so far.  This post is in response to a single debate in the blogosphere.

2 Comments

Wanderer / Night Jewel / Meditations in Winter

December 10, 2009 at 5:15 am (Pagany Musings, Random Thoughts, Seasons and Sabbats, Wanderings)

What the soul does for the body, the poet does for her people.
-Gabriela Mistral

Pagani.  The snow falls and the wind sacks the naked trees.  It is only the beginning, and already I can feel my bones creak as I trundle like an overburdened buffalo through the streets of the pretty-wild urban midwest.  My intrepid spouse wisely directs me towards the vitamin aisle, where I stock up on D, pebbles of light.  In the winter, I often think of Demeter, lying on the hard frozen ground, her best beloved, her own body, pressing her glorious, tear-streaked cheek against the dirt, wishing and praying until there was nothing left but bone.  I make my way in the kitchen, baking out my restlessness and transforming it into warmth, sunlight.  Crocuses seem so far away that I cannot even imagine spring, so I make Saint Lucia buns and braided breads and pick my way through recipes for pain au levain and wonder at yeast.  Really, really, really.  There is so much wonder, there is so much beauty.  Even in the terrible wind there is this epic amazement, like the crazy world is laughing.

Last night before bed I started to read a wonderful book on interfaith relationship.  My recent wrestlings have invaded my thoughts for weeks now, but something in the book’s candor and simplicity soothed me.  I looked around the room – its flotsam and jetsam, its altars and precious things.  I am convinced we own too much stuff, but for that moment, it was all beautiful…the mess.  The veil of struggle fell some away, and I breathed.  I thought about truth.  I thought about poetry.  I thought about poetry so much that I had trouble falling asleep.  But I did sleep, and in that dreaming some little stone and glass wall inside me broke, and I woke up shining.

Last week, I stumbled upon the poetry of Gabriela Mistral.  I was already familiar with her in some capacity: the first Latin American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the first woman poet to do so as well….and it was she who told a young Pablo Neruda to keep writing, but, like many things, it wasn’t until now that her work struck me hard and fast in the chest and quickened my breath.  Those moments where you knew but you didn’t Know, and something familiar lies in wait for you to be ready to receive it?  That was one of those moments.

Poetry!  An ancient hymn to Inanna, fragments by Sappho (oh Leda and her egg the color of hyacinths…..marry me, Sappho!), a gorgeous passage by Alan Watts regarding the rite of communion, a few poems by Mirabai.  Words, carefully chosen and glorious, rise out of the lamplit books and hover, gilded, in the air.  Spirits and angels prick the sheets with their sharp fingers.  The room is washed with honey.  This is its power.

But yes, I repeat myself.  Beauty beauty beauty, poetry, Mama, bread, Beloved, wonder, death, god.  I know that.  I think this is because revelations fade so quickly and have need of refreshment.  Clocks and currency – civilization strives to make us forget, and does a bang up job it seems.  I forget the reality of things – I forget that life is enormous and can be grand.  So the Word (god/poetry/breath/dream/living water/night jewel/sparrow/cradle/shadow/radiant wanderer/god) extends a hand, a grace, to my cheek at night and reminds me – here at the apex of winter, down down down towards the seething, the longest night, the Wild Hunt’s shattering ride…I catalog what I think may be true, what eddies in the lines of that Hand against my sleeping brow:

Everything is alive.  Everything has a name, and a will, and a spirit.  And everything dies, which makes everything precious.  Even you.  Even me.

Beauty is the first and best thing there is.  And poetry is the language of god.

Religion – to have compassion at its core.  Religion – to push its believers to give, to live authentically, to be in relationship, to see the Other with open hearts, to hurl oneself against injustice.  Religion – to heal.  To challenge.  To bind the tongue to the Real, to radical generosity, to honesty, to the kind of ethical vetting that puts mirrors of truth up to the faces of sleeping angels and shows them their demon skins (or vice versa).  Gritty, difficult, wonderful.

And, also and just now, that Identity does mean something, but not as much as we think it does, or maybe just differently so.  If I call myself of the Pagani, or if I call myself a follower of Christ, or if I call myself a Christo-Pagan or an anarchomystic or a Mediterranean syncretist or a member of the dvoeverie….ultimately, it doesn’t matter much.  I love the Mama.  I love the Beloved.  I shout and laugh in community, several of them.  So it is.  I will of course get mired in the fun sandtrap of label-making again, because we are a Naming and Storytelling people, and it is the way we live in the world, and I don’t happen to believe that this is a bad thing, and of course there are political angles to consider that are important… but for now, oh this moment right now, with no future and no past and only my nose cold and my fingers warm, I am happy to be sitting by an evergreen tree at midwinter, smelling its smells and loving its lights.  I have a cat, and she likes her chin scratched.  And snow, that dreadful, delightful bane, is a physical enchantment over the sidewalk and the grate….walking home in it, tasting it on my tongue and feeling my face frozen and happy…inside me there is a little hearthfire burning.  Long, long, that shape, that lavender sky, that wild song of light.

I’m on a meditative kick, beloveds.  Winter it seems has robbed me of clarity or purpose.  This post, the last post….I’m not sure they’re saying anything right different from each other….or anything new…or anything at all.  Maybe I should zip it and let things be things until my brain is ready to shake a different tailfeather.  I think the dragon in my brain longs for sleep, mirroring its bigger sister, that Lovely Beast curled up in the heart of the land, dozing out big dreams of sassy coats and cozy hats, and voices ricocheting off of winter brick in the city – people laughing in spite of the freeze.  The adaptability of the gorgeous.

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own….

Etcetera, etcetera…in the storm and in the midnight, friends.

4 Comments

The Light Over the Hill

December 9, 2009 at 1:30 am (Pagany Musings, Seasons and Sabbats, Syncretic Bumblings, Wanderings)

Best beloveds!  I have been away from the blogosphere the past week or so….battening down the hatches, watching the white bees in the lamplight.  The solstice comes.  I’ve many a buzz in my brain – contemplating saffron buns (little suns, filling the apartment with their honey-hay sweetness), the decoration of trees with little sparkling lights, feast foods, travels, work to be done before rest.  And all the little aggravating badgers of life popping up seemingly miraculously all right in the beginning of December, those cackling mischief-makers in the shadows knowing this is the worst possible time for a root canal.

I find pockets of love and new songs in the gloaming anyhow.  Dinners with glowing, amazing people, the new sun rising in their faces, bursting with brainy, creative life.  I am blessed.  But the season of misrule plunders on, full of horror and bliss and difficult things, and I wait with breathless anticipation for the shattering slice of day to crackle over the dark hill on Solstice Day.  I am a woman 33 years old, and angel-wrestling is my work.  This time of year is no exception.  I have been in the wool of it, friends.

Plain fact is, it is in this time of year you can find me at church.  It’s a crusty, churchy season – bread and wine and candlelyte n’ all.  Snow on a stone building, the light through the stained glass….beauty is as beauty does, and I’ve a healthy dose of respect for creches and a season that delights in the birth of light-seeds, no matter their names.

This year though, more so than ever, I find myself enjoying the conversation with new Christian friends, emergent and interesting, fermenting their own revolution around tables and in coffeeshops, and I am thinking heavily about my own relationship to this religion…this wildly diverse group of both friends and enemies (for make no mistake – there are those among the ranks of Christian-identity that are my enemies…..Christ may entreat me to love them, and maybe on some deep, equalizing, cells and skin level I do, and out of my belief in hospitality I will feed them when they are hungry….but it is not possible for me to ignore that they stand against me and those I love and the things I believe are true and good, and I will not call them friend when they are simply not so).  You might have noticed that I have an ongoing relationship with that oft misheard and ineffable fellow Jesus, the people who follow him, and the religion that grew in the passage of his footprints (whether he’d give it his debateably Divine-or-Human-or-HumanoDivine stamp of approval or not).  I don’t yet know what all that means for me, but I can tell you true, Pagani, there are things I like.  Compassion, radical justice, forgiveness, community, love, sacrament.  Can and do we do these things?  Certainly.  Could we do them better?  Most definitely.  Do Christians get them right all the time?  Certainly not.  But the conversation, duckies….the conversation.  I think, and I will boldly say, here in this season of lights and human traffic, that both the followers of Christ and the firefly-shod Pagani have much to say to me, if not to each other (and I think they do).

Naturally, I gravitate towards those crunchy, complicated and dynamic groups within the Christian umbrella that are in love with Jesus’ radical temperament – his bold as brass calling out of moneylenders in the temple, his thumbing his nose at empire.  Ironic, isn’t it, that in his name, empires were then built and expanded over entire continents?  Deliver unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, he said.  To which I wonder – what *is* Caesar’s?  If empire and civilization are the owners of oppression and suffering, then happily I give these up to them.  In fact, I cheerfully submit that I am happy to see them take these to their graves.  The sooner the better.  But I digress.

There is much to dislike still in the history halls and the contemporary corridors of Christian theology, praxis, and institution, sure.  And where is the Mama in all of that mess – not many places I’ve seen, and come hell or high water I will not under any circumstance be leaving Her wing.  And I’ve no inclination to turn my back on my Beloved, or invite a narrow orthodoxy into my home.  I’ve no inclination to swallow whole any idea.  And I’ve no real purpose to this post, I think.  I guess I’m just a hot mess, beloveds, as ever; full of rumination, shaking out my scarf covered in a heavy, wet snow, listening to sweet Solstice music on one hand and fiery, lefty sermons on the other, balancing on this uncomfortable ledge.  Might could fall one way.  Might could fall the other.  Might could stay here for the rest of my life.

Not so bad I suppose….especially if there are saffron buns and eggnog.  Maybe the point is, warmth in the winter, and the blessing of friends, and the fire of conversation.  The nights are long and seemingly endless, and there is smoke and wet in them, and they sing.

Grok earth, friends Pagani.  Pray without ceasing.

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Poetry, Process, and an Old Coat

November 26, 2009 at 6:39 am (Pagany Musings, Personal Practice, Theology)

Hey hey friends Pagani!  How’s you?  I’m right dandy, thank you – after all, I’m making pie.  And raspberry cream cheese braided bread.  Yowza!

Right…I said I’d present something coherent this time, didn’t I?  Well, that was silly of me.  It’s nigh misrule, darlings – what was I thinking?  The winter is a cumin’ in, and the poor wren sings – time for nonsense and non-time stories instead of treatises.  Stories get told in winter, and fire and laughter and friends is the ticket.  It’s as maybe that the mood will strike me to get ranty again sometime soon….but not today.  Today, I wanna talk a bit about a friend of mine.

This year, I made acquaintance with someone who comes to me when life is ridiculous.  As you can imagine, then, he’s here with me a lot.  He wears a tattered old overcoat.  He rolls smoke in his fingers.  He laughs and the world dances.  I will not speak his crazy name, because you know it already.  After all, you’ve already met.  Remember?

Down in the muddy bank, he played spoons while you slept and dreamed of spring.  He sat with you at a fire in May and sang rain songs.  He was there when you dreamed of hidden treasure in the dovecote.  He is writing limericks with your name in them.  Right now.  We’ll call him Old Coat.  It suits him.

Get it?  Suits him!

Old Coat arrived on my doorstep this morning after a couple months of being away.  My life had gotten too sane for him, I guess (I mean, I didn’t think it had….but he’s the connoisseur of barking mad, not moi).  That sort of thing bores him.  But I had spent the evening before with hands a-fire writing poetry, and like a rat to garbage, voila! he appears (colorful, don’t you think?  Well, my poetry may be garbage, and Old Coat may be a rat, but let’s just take all that on the metaphorical level for now, ‘kay?).  He’s not the Muse, mind, he just likes the madness in the process.

Process:  Catalyst.  Pentecost.  Write.  Despair.  Edit.  Despair.  Edit.  Read out loud.  Despair.  Edit.  Read out loud.  Laugh.  Make Tea.

Edit.

Edit again.

Stop and pray: “There but for the grace of God goes this poem…for it is finished!”

Wait three weeks.

Edit.

Point is – it’s not really a process with an end.

Hey…have you seen this?  Well, if you haven’t, you should.  And if you have, watch it again.  Anyone who creates or performs (and that’s…..everybody) should see this, repeatedly.  Olé to you, beloveds!  Set a trap for a wandering poem-monster thundering across the landscape.  Show up, nod to your genius, and get to work.  But see, the thing for me is, after the genius fills you with awe, sometimes you’re plain old all burned up, and that’s when Old Coat shows up to dance in your ashes.  Luckily, he has a knack for broken things….yep, he’s a fixer.  When you’re plum worn out from dreaming and sick with ecstasy, and the sack of your body is tired, Old Coat plays flute for you from the treetops.  It’s a trade – he gets to hoot and holler, doin’ the two-step in your crazy, and you get to let go of the fire for a minute and eat yer frozen blueberries.  Let him tell the story, and you listen.  He’s good at it, Old Coat is…he is The Storyteller, after all.

So for this new winter, friends, creeping close and kindling in you star-fire and all the gifts of prophecy in the dark, I wish you a visit from Old Coat, master and friend, tricky and wise, to eat your food and tell you stories that make your sides hurt with laughing…cuz all us serious human artist-animals, sometimes we need the break.

Grok Story, best beloveds.

Olé!

…..Oh, right.  Thanksgiving.  Well, y’all might know how I feel about that already, and this year is no different, excepting that I’ve decided to relegate it to this tiny, dismissive footnote.  So I’ll just say: food, friends, family?  Lovely and good.  Give thanks, eat food, love people.  But do it everyday, because Thanksgiving Day, friends, is a sham.  A shame and a sham.

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