The coming winter looms ahead of me and I feel that it is bound to be a strange season. I don't know exactly why I feel this way. It settled on me at the end of summer while the days were still hot. I've felt something coming down the pipe for several months now. It hasn't arrived yet but I can see the dark edges of it on the horizon. I can only hope that whatever it turns out to be and whatever changes it works in me it spits me out the other side a better person.
The weather has turned now, thank goodness. October started out hot but it is finally starting to feel like Autumn and I couldn't be happier about it. Nothing gets me going like a crisp breeze and the smell of burning leaves in the air. I saw my first jack-o-lantern the other night grinning at me from a neighbor's window and I find myself excited for the first time in a long time. It was a slow and painful summer. I had to work through a lot of issues and doubt threatened to steal my spiritual center away from me on several occasions. I prayed nightly for the strength to hang on and the gods answered . . .eventually. Took me a while to hear them, though.
I find myself asking for signs all the time now -- a dangerous practice. I'm afraid I am only seeing what I want to see instead of what's really there and it smacks of insecurity. I guess I'm not completely free of doubt after all.
I wonder where this path is leading me. I am jealous of my Christian friends and family who get to gather in fellowship whenever they wish. I've always felt comfortable as a solitary neopagan but I'm starting to feel as if I need to be around others now.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Just Testing
Testing out a new blog client (Semagic) to see how it works. Using Windows and no Vim, sadface.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Who Won Tonight?
The Ravens won, lovelies! Forgive the excitement. I've had a few beers and my team did well. I like to think I am above the shallowness of team sports but it turns out I'm not. So there. Woo!
*drunken fist pump*
*drunken fist pump*
Geese!
I heard the geese overhead tonight. First of the season! There is something about the sound of geese on the wing that strikes me so deeply. I think it probably has a lot to do with my dad. When I was very young my father would always take time to point out the geese to me. No matter what time it was, even if I was fast asleep, if he heard the geese he would wake me up and we would sit at the window and listen until they had passed. To this day when I spy Canada Geese in the wetlands on the shore I think of my father and of fall rapidly approaching.
Such a beautiful sound!
Such a beautiful sound!
What Druids?
This is something I have thought a lot about. I belong to ADF and I find the tenets of modern neo-druidry appealing but I was always uncomfortable with idea of actually calling myself a Druid. There is just too much we don't know about them and what we DO know tells us that the amount of lore and knowledge they were required to learn puts the title completely out of reach for most modern pagans.
Friday, September 5, 2008
The Blight of Air Conditioning
I have a love/hate relationship with my air conditioner. I don't particularly like to be hot unless I am exercising and I cannot sleep hot to save me but man do I hate the AC otherwise. It stuffs up my nose and dries out my skin and I hate not feeling the breeze through the window or hearing the birds sing in the morning.
Autumn cannot come fast enough. I'm ready for you jacket weather!
Autumn cannot come fast enough. I'm ready for you jacket weather!
Finding My Way Back
It makes sense that I coming back to blogging just as the hot months are drawing to a close. Summer is hard for me. While I love certain aspects of it (the sound of the crickets and cicadas outside my window as I drift off to sleep; coming home from a nice long walk covered in sweat and downing water straight from the icebox; ice cream trucks) it is in autumn that I truly come alive. As the year winds to a close I find myself looking forward to new beginnings.
That is what this blog is for me, in a way -- a new beginning. I haven't written regularly in over a year. I had a crisis of faith; a dark night of the soul. I lost touch with those things that had once meant so much to me. I abandoned my regular spiritual practices and washed my hands of the whole deal. I declared myself a non-believer. That wasn't really true. I still believed in Them but I was convinced They no longer believed in me. And my heart broke right in two.
Looking back I think that I ended up trying too hard to make myself fit into a pre-defined package. I had somehow gotten it into my head that it wasn't enough to say, "I identify as a pagan. I have these beliefs. Some I have picked up along the way because they resonated so deeply and some are completely my own. And that is enough." I became convinced that somewhere out there there was a specific religion, a specific pantheon, a specific God/dess that I belonged to and until I found it -- until I named it -- I couldn't be truly fulfilled. I'm not very good with ambiguity sometimes. As much as I abhor seeing others boxed in by labels I don't always allow myself the same freedom. I have spent the last fifteen years of my life researching paganism and neo-paganism. I have followed my bloodline as far back as I can trace it and learned what it was my most ancient ancestors might have believed (assuming that my ancestors even were where I think they were from -- something else I have overthought and worried into the ground.) I thought if I just read enough -- if I just learned enough -- it would all fall into place and the light bulb would go off. "A-ha," I would think, "here is where I belong! This is what I was looking for. This is what I should be doing!" But, you know, that never happened.
So I let it all go. I was making myself more and more confused with every book I read, every prayer I said, every candle I lit. What had seemed so simple at one time had become horrendously complicated and the answers I begged for just wouldn't come. I thought that maybe I would be better off just calling myself an agnostic with mystical leanings and have done with it. Or maybe, I thought, I should just abandon belief altogether and go about the business of living in the "real world."
But it didn't work. I believe what I believe not because I want to but because I have been shown that it is true. And eventually I realized that I would be betraying Those who revealed these things to me by turning my back on that truth. No matter how complicated it might feel I had to find my way back to honoring Those who never turned Their backs on me even though I had turned my back on Them.
So I put the books away for a while. I stepped away from the internet and the communities and the mailing lists and the bookmarks and the mythology and I went back to what I used to do before I knew that what I felt had any name at all. I went for long walks outside. I sat in front of a candle and let whatever might come flow through me without trying to pin it down. I kissed my hand to the new Moon when I caught sight of Her without demanding to know Her name. I let the Sun fall on my face in the morning and gave thanks to Him for all of His gifts. I sat with the shadows and prayed to my Grandmothers and Grandfathers. I listened with patience to what they had to say and when they said nothing at all I simply thanked them for the blood running through my veins. And eventually I found my way back to a spiritual place that was even stronger and brighter than it had been before.
Because before I had struggled with the concept of deities that I could not see. What I realized when I was quiet enought to allow it to penetrate was that I could see them everywhere. My earth goddess is the Earth herself. She is every tree, every blade of grass, every firm path under my feet. The Moon was right there in the sky above me, the Sun around every corner. I realize now that this is enough. It is so much more than enough.
I cannot guarantee that I will never have another crisis of faith again. But if I remember to stop and see and not overthink every little thing I think I'll be OK. Because I know that They are there even when it feels that They are not and that is I who creates the distance between us, not Them.
That is what this blog is for me, in a way -- a new beginning. I haven't written regularly in over a year. I had a crisis of faith; a dark night of the soul. I lost touch with those things that had once meant so much to me. I abandoned my regular spiritual practices and washed my hands of the whole deal. I declared myself a non-believer. That wasn't really true. I still believed in Them but I was convinced They no longer believed in me. And my heart broke right in two.
Looking back I think that I ended up trying too hard to make myself fit into a pre-defined package. I had somehow gotten it into my head that it wasn't enough to say, "I identify as a pagan. I have these beliefs. Some I have picked up along the way because they resonated so deeply and some are completely my own. And that is enough." I became convinced that somewhere out there there was a specific religion, a specific pantheon, a specific God/dess that I belonged to and until I found it -- until I named it -- I couldn't be truly fulfilled. I'm not very good with ambiguity sometimes. As much as I abhor seeing others boxed in by labels I don't always allow myself the same freedom. I have spent the last fifteen years of my life researching paganism and neo-paganism. I have followed my bloodline as far back as I can trace it and learned what it was my most ancient ancestors might have believed (assuming that my ancestors even were where I think they were from -- something else I have overthought and worried into the ground.) I thought if I just read enough -- if I just learned enough -- it would all fall into place and the light bulb would go off. "A-ha," I would think, "here is where I belong! This is what I was looking for. This is what I should be doing!" But, you know, that never happened.
So I let it all go. I was making myself more and more confused with every book I read, every prayer I said, every candle I lit. What had seemed so simple at one time had become horrendously complicated and the answers I begged for just wouldn't come. I thought that maybe I would be better off just calling myself an agnostic with mystical leanings and have done with it. Or maybe, I thought, I should just abandon belief altogether and go about the business of living in the "real world."
But it didn't work. I believe what I believe not because I want to but because I have been shown that it is true. And eventually I realized that I would be betraying Those who revealed these things to me by turning my back on that truth. No matter how complicated it might feel I had to find my way back to honoring Those who never turned Their backs on me even though I had turned my back on Them.
So I put the books away for a while. I stepped away from the internet and the communities and the mailing lists and the bookmarks and the mythology and I went back to what I used to do before I knew that what I felt had any name at all. I went for long walks outside. I sat in front of a candle and let whatever might come flow through me without trying to pin it down. I kissed my hand to the new Moon when I caught sight of Her without demanding to know Her name. I let the Sun fall on my face in the morning and gave thanks to Him for all of His gifts. I sat with the shadows and prayed to my Grandmothers and Grandfathers. I listened with patience to what they had to say and when they said nothing at all I simply thanked them for the blood running through my veins. And eventually I found my way back to a spiritual place that was even stronger and brighter than it had been before.
Because before I had struggled with the concept of deities that I could not see. What I realized when I was quiet enought to allow it to penetrate was that I could see them everywhere. My earth goddess is the Earth herself. She is every tree, every blade of grass, every firm path under my feet. The Moon was right there in the sky above me, the Sun around every corner. I realize now that this is enough. It is so much more than enough.
I cannot guarantee that I will never have another crisis of faith again. But if I remember to stop and see and not overthink every little thing I think I'll be OK. Because I know that They are there even when it feels that They are not and that is I who creates the distance between us, not Them.
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