slow sips

Some time on Monday Fern somewhat groaned “I don’t know if I can take any more of this lust for life”. It's been that kind of weekend. On Saturday she had her initiation. This was an initiation into “Reclaiming Feri”, tying together what I see as the best of the two traditions, a rite where the initiate is wed to the life force, and vows to serve as priestess of it, working within the Wiccan Rede, to use the power of magic to heal, not hurt. It’s a lusty, intoxicating rite, and this one was especially so.

This was the weekend we tipped over into summer. In San Francisco, summer sometimes lies just outside the fog, revealing itself in brief interludes. We know it’s out there; we need only cross one of our bridges, or drive south to feel it on our skin. We experience summer thru the swirling veils of this city’s ocean mists, savoring it when the sun beats down on us directly, relieved when several days of summer sun are overcast once again by incoming fog.

By midday Saturday, as the rite was about to begin, we moved out of spring. The morning fog was burning off, and all the trees and plants seemed as saturated by sun and light as by water. Thru the veil of mist, summer was slipping in. It also has turned out to be the weekend of Carnaval, a two day festival here in the Mission district. Carnaval is a celebration of Latin-American culture in all its diversity. Besides a big parade, there is a huge street fair only two blocks away. Carnaval is a cacophony of smells, sights and sounds. Like Feri, it is a dose of concentrated life force, with a constant backbeat of sex. Being the two day festival, that back beat was with us until late into Sunday night. Our neighborhood, normally a lively one, became even more so. People filled the sidewalks, charter buses drove down the street, and the air itself seemed to become denser.

Fern had chosen to be initiated by myself and one other person; a woman with the quixotic magical name of “Ivory Fly”. Both of us are eccentric artists and, befitting priestesses of Feri, both of us are devoted ecstatics. We worked well together creating a space of beauty, filled with blossoms, buds, and all manner of food for the senses. By the time the ritual was over, all of us felt suffused by the lusty current of life, intoxicated by the magic. In truth, it was just the beginning of a big binge.

Summer slipping in, the persistent beat of Carnaval, lead to another saturated day on Sunday. Sunday evening found us, with the rest of my future household, in a garden of roses overlooking our psychic seaport of San Francisco. The entire party kept making reference to the precious sunlight. Throughout the party, the sun moved, and the party with it. Feasting on a variety of delicacies, we soaked up the good company, the incredible setting, and the start of summer. Forced to leave, due to my son’s discomfort with my conversation and instant connection with a mask making artist from Bolinas (such is adolescence!), we drove home. My goddess daughter Lyra, resplendent in a new jacket she had scored at a garage sale, drove. It was if the lusty current was propelling us home, the car being full of laughter, love, and the kind of familial warmth that expands hearts.

On Monday, which was Memorial Day, we all tried to recover. Lyra brought home a shopping bag full of an incredible variety of pastries left over from her work. The sweetness of life continued to fill our home, and tempted us at every turn. Going a bit slower, none of us at full throttle, we all seemed to be reeling from weekend that seemed it would never end. Summer is here. Time to sip slowly.

the fifties are the new twenties

Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott



I turned fifty in February. Since that time, it’s occurred to me more than once how this time period parallels my twenties. In talking to friends, I think this may be especially true for those of us who made major life changes in our forties. The last part of that decade I began to seriously take stock of my life and jettison what no longer nourished or challenged me to grow. I broke up a twenty year marriage, faced the fact that the spiritual community I was part of was harmful to my spirit, and started to ask from my relationships that I receive as much as I give. Life provided some hard knocks; I had a major house fire and got my heart broken. Despite it all, in the last half of that decade I fell in love with my life in a way that I could have never imagined, the mid-life “crisis” enriching me in ways I feel I’m only on the precipice of understanding.

So how are the fifties the new twenties? Entering my twenties I felt a sense of exploration, there was a real spaciousness in experiencing life. There were hard knocks in my twenties too, including lots of death and loss. This shaped me and opened me spiritually. There was no push to settle down, to have children, and no desire to make a permanent commitment to anyone. I could feel that off in the distance, which intensified the need to stay free. It was time of sexual experimentation and openness to different forms of relationships. The early fifties are feeling eerily similar.

Here at fifty, having spent the last two decades creating the template of my life, I’m now free to improvise. The hard work of forging a career and creating a home is over. The biological urge to have a child and get a partner with whom to build a life is no longer driving me. Parenting an adolescent has its challenges, but it is drastically different from the rigor and selflessness of parenting an infant or young child. As in my twenties, I’m curious how life will now unfold, and open to just about anything. In my twenties, I was fully aware of my youth, and that it would soon be over; I was becoming an adult. Strangely, this is mirrored in my fifties. I’m very aware of the preciousness of this middle passage; I am on my way to becoming old. Suddenly, I feel fully awake to the incredible beauty and splendor (thank you, Reya, for giving depth to this word) of being alive. In my early twenties there was a giddy ecstacy of cutting free from my parents, of being on my own. I feel this resonating in me again, only this time I feel I'm truly cutting free from old patterns, patterns that were a result of childhood, that don't serve me. Liberation seems to be a theme of both decades.

Like the thirties, the sixties loom large. And like in my twenties, I know the current decade will end with a Saturn return, the time when Saturn returns to it’s original position it was in when I was born. Saturn strips away illusions and makes limitations visible. For many, it is not an easy time. For me, given I had worked so hard at eking everything I could out of my twenties, my Saturn return was rather triumphant. I’m aiming for this again. At the end of my twenties the return marked the transition into adulthood, testing me on whether I was ready to move from the phase of youth into the phase of maturity. I sailed thru it, knowing what I wanted to do with my life, getting my degree in those years and getting initiated as a witch. Around 57 I will be tested again, transitioning into the next phase of the life cycle, moving from maturity into old age, and hopefully, wisdom. I can feel the value of this time period, how important it is to keep my heart and eyes open, to not only enjoy the popcorn, but to feast on my life.

Yumm.

enjoy the show

Gosh, I love therapy. I like being a therapist, and I really enjoy being back in therapy. Having an engaged and attentive witness is proving to be incredibly valuable at the moment. What dots I can’t seem to connect, my therapist can.

Right now several intense dramas are unfolding around me. I’m not the protagonist in any of them. Even in the ones that I am a part of, I play a supporting character, I’m not in leading role. There’s some grief attached to not being able to control some of the developing storylines of those I love. In the past, I would have tried to intervene, and felt responsible; believing I should be able to say the perfect thing, in the perfect way, at the perfect time to shift things for everybody. As I mulled all this, my therapist said the perfect thing, in the perfect way, at the perfect time. Sometimes therapists can do that. “Time to make popcorn”.

Time to make popcorn. Comedy and tragedy are interwoven this week. Sometimes I’ve played a part, but as far as the big picture, this time I’m not directing the show. Sitting back and watching the show, I’ve laughed, cried, had a hard time bearing the suspense, wondered when the action would pick up, and marveled at the twists and turns of the plot. No matter how bad the picture, I’m making sure to enjoy the popcorn.

signs are good

AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18): You Aquarians have been getting ready for a big change and now it feels much closer, but you'll need to watch for the signals. Everything that happens is a sign. Don't, however, confuse the signs with reality. You still must connect the dots for things to make sense.

Keep your eyes wide open and be ready to rock and roll.

This is my horoscope for today. I’m printing it up and putting it on my altar. “Everything that happens is a sign. Don’t however, confuse the signs with reality” is damn good advice for me. As a child I loved being presented with the exercise of connecting the dots, trying to guess well before my crayon had completed the task what picture was going to appear. For some time I’ve described myself as a “connect the dots” kind of witch, good at making connections between things and ferreting out possible general storylines. Over the years, I’ve worried less and less about what is truly spelled out by all the dots connecting, knowing that often it won’t make real sense, and “reality” has a funny way of shapeshifting.

The big change is much closer, and as usual, what happens in one world is affecting all the worlds. My outer world is on the edge of changing drastically. There’s a major overhaul going on at home and in my workplace. As I prepare for it, my inner world is also being reconstructed. It feels like whole new rooms are being opened up, and there’s a mighty love affair with the world going on. There’s signs everywhere, pointing to a variety of realities. My eyes are wide open. Connecting the dots, I’m taking the crayon and am simultaneously open to being surprised by what is being created and feeling in charge of drawing something out that is my heart’s desire, that will rock my socks off in the best of ways. My iPod spread for today: That’s Amore, by Dean Martin, Rock the Boat, the Hues Corporation, and I Feel Good, James Brown. I’m certainly ready to rock and roll.

"community"

Tonight there is a going away party for a priestess in the local Reclaiming community who I initiated, who has been dear to me. When I first wrote that sentence, it read; “my community” as opposed to “the local Reclaiming community”. The “my community” is no longer true or accurate. It hasn’t been for a long time. Coming to that realization has been an arduous and painful process. My acceptance of it is recent. It’s still habit to use “my” in connection to naming the community, and I’m just beginning to catch myself and mindfully change my reference. I’m assuming there will be lots of people from the local Reclaiming community at this party. Some of the people I like, even love. It's been home to me for decades. I joined the mix in 1980. But as a whole, I don’t feel welcomed in that community, and if I hold anyplace at all anymore, it seems to be the place and part of scapegoat.

I know quite intimately what happens if you politely mention, put an item on the agenda, or write an article which addresses that the Emperor has no clothes. Some locally respect me, some have even played the same role in this ongoing story. Some locally cast me as a hero for speaking up, and rely on me to keep doing so. My overwhelming experience is getting hit by the sticks and stones of the general populace, not to mention the minions of the emperor(s). Reclaiming has a constant flow of newcomers, many who first fall in love with the “community”at the local witchcamp, I deal with a steady stream of fresh faces who when introduced to me at public rituals, say “Oh, you’re Oak! And back away carefully, or worse, are downright rude to me. Reya’s reminded me more than once how after going to a non-Reclaiming party a year or so ago I went on and on how it felt to go to a gathering where I was liked, where I was introduced with warmth and enthusiasm to those I didn’t know, where I was held in some esteem by the community at large. This is not my experience in Reclaiming. As I’ve let go of the idea of local Reclaiming being “my” community, I’ve realized that I actually do live and work in community, that I have a web of connection that is sturdy, loving, and nourishing. It turns out that I do have a community I love, and that loves me.

One strand of my true community did and still does originate from local Reclaiming. In the past twenty-five years I’ve met some of my closest friends through that association. Most of them are also on the enemies list (a reference to Richard Nixon – for those of you who don’t know that history, substitute “shit list”) of those who are most invested in keeping the local structures (like California camp) standing and unquestioned. Those most invested are of course those most in power. Those of us who still live locally have felt the bite of that power, being functionally dispossessed in that we are not welcomed/allowed to teach or probably even attend the local gathering of “witchcamp. This an event remarkable in its non-adherence to Reclaiming’s principles of unity, put on differently from almost any other camp in the wider Reclaiming community. One person does have the power to ban others, and I am most certainly banned. Those of us on the enemies list have generally come to the conclusion that we’ve learned every thing we need to know about and from engaging in a long and protracted power struggle, and we’ve moved on. Some of my community, like Rose May Dance, are still in the thick of things in local Reclaiming, but I find myself basing less and less of our ongoing relationship on that connection.

Teaching magic classes has also strengthened my strand of true community. Some of my students are turning into friends, and those who are interested in engaging with the energy body of local Reclaiming have been forewarned. Since I no longer regard it as “my” community, I feel less invested in the parts friends or students play in that arena. The point for me in teaching magic is to teach the art and craft of magic, not to proselytize for more “community” members. As I do this, the stronger my actual community becomes. Letting go of the mirage of Reclaiming being my community has brought into focus what I truly have.

I have been emotionally preparing for going to this party tonight, drawn by my love and respect for the friend who is leaving, dreading feeling the energy body of something that has proved so hurtful to me. As circumstances would have it, it turns out that I’m not going to make it to the party. As I write this, it occurs to me that maybe at this point that energy body would not be so disturbing to me. I no longer am engaged in trying to shift or change it, and my grief over what it is versus what I want it to be is now much more a private matter. I’m sure it will continue to be upsetting to have people treat me rudely, but over time, even this will eventually fade away, and someone else will be the dark sheep of that community, or the local chew toy. I love July, I wish I was at her party.

washing the car

Yesterday Fern and I taught a four hour workshop on divination. I’m finding one of the great gifts of teaching is the figuring out what it is I actually know. It turns out I know a lot about divination, about engaging in an ongoing conversation with the divine. As I prepared for teaching by typing up a long list of methods of divination, I marveled at the ways humans have embarked on decoding the messages of everyday life. This conversation with the divine, listening to the forces of nature, looking for what is being communicated, has been going on throughout human history, in every culture. Listening to the wind, watching the patterns of birds, noticing chance remarks of strangers, all of these have been established practices of divination. This looking at life as a dream, and interpreting it as such, this is as old as the hills.

In the past year or so, Reya and I both have realized how for the most part we don’t rely on our tarot decks anymore; just paying attention to how life unfolds is like doing a spread. My iPod divination continues to be a daily practice. (Today’s spread was Hang on to Your Love, by Sade, Fight for Your Right to Party, by the Beastie Boys, and Volunteers, by Jefferson Airplane) One of the books in my training as a psychotherapist that’s had real staying power for me is Viktor Frankel’s Man Search For Meaning. Frankel survived the Holocaust and his book’s premise is that it is the search for meaning that helps us survive the worst of human conditions. Besides helping us survive amidst atrocities and horror, the search for meaning enriches and illuminates life in it’s most mundane of aspects. Divination means actively engaging in this search for meaning.

More important than learning the meaning and correspondences of tarot cards, numbers, planets, and lines on the hands, is opening up to the basic idea that the earth and the life force are constantly revealing their sacredness to us, showing us patterns, whispering mysteries, and transmitting information. Learning to listen, opening our eyes, feeling and sensing what information is being communicated, this is the ongoing work and challenge.

At the end of our workshop we asked the participants to create their own method of divination based on what they know, what they tend to pay attention to, and what they love in life. One woman painted names for parts of the body on rocks. Then she threw the rocks out, doing a divinatory reading by which names were turned up and how they fell out. It was an incredible reading, involving the closeness of the liver, and where the heart, eyes, and kidneys lay. Another, who is a cook, did a deck of cards of foods. She asked me if I wanted to know about my love life. I pulled three cards representing the issue, the challenge and the outcome; lemon, potpie, and yeast. I understood this perfectly, and the way the cook interpreted this was dead on. It appears things will be getting pretty lively, although I'm also thinking my love life might result in a yeast infection of some kind. Another, a bird lover, did a deck of birds, and again, the reading she did for another was clarifying and enlightening. Canary, Cockatoo, Mockingbird; each of these carry as much archtypal information as any card in the tarot, especially for one who knows and loves birds.

Today is gorgeous and sunny. Ilyse suggested we clean out my car. She helped me wash it, vacumn it, and clean out the accumulated junk. I’m getting help and assistance from loved ones to be behind the steering wheel in a new way. I’m going forward carrying no unnecessary baggage, mindful of leaving the garbage behind. Today I thought about how important it is to hang on to the love in my life, to fight for my right to party, to continue to be my ecstatic self, and how this all helps in making me a volunteer in recreating America. As the refrain for that song goes; “gotta revolution, gotta revolution”. Yes, indeed. The revolution is well started.

butch/femme

Last night, just as I was settling comfortably into bed, Tickles the cat strode triumphantly into my room. He had a mouse in his mouth. I found myself trying to figure out who to call out to, who to ask to deal with this. With a start I realized that there was nobody to turn to except myself. Everyone else was asleep, and even if the house was fully awake, the only one who’d readily take on this task is Karl, who will be moving away in a few weeks. Karl has always been reliable in regards to dealing with spiders, mangled birds, rats, rattlesnakes and other assorted unpleasantnesses. He’s also willing to carry heavy objects, no questions asked, or objections made.

As I looked Tickles in the eye, I faced the fact that this was one of the downfalls of not being involved with someone. It’s been a year now that I’ve been single; the longest stretch since I first hooked up with someone at fifteen. Every one of my exes would have readily dealt with this situation, would have assumed instant responsibility for it. I’m no slouch for work; I’ll cheerfully tackle cleaning up the kitchen, whipping up a meal for a slew of unexpected guests, or re-arranging the living room no problem. I am the oldest of three sisters and we grew up out in the country. As such, I dealt with all manner of gross situations. I’ve been in charge of burying a sheep that got attacked by wild dogs, and to keep reburying it when it kept getting dug up by the same said dogs. I was not a coddled girly-girl. I can deal with gross stuff if I have to. I’m capable and I’m strong.

As Tickles dropped the mouse, I sighed with self-realization. Despite my childhood, and my feminism, I am a girly-girl, a real femme. I’d rather do just about anything than deal with a dead mouse. And thankfully, the mouse was indeed dead. It lay there not moving.

I shooed Tickles away and got some paper towels. Overcoming some deep resistance and fighting my inner girly-girl, I picked up the mouse, feeling the warmth of the departing life-force thru the paper, and I carried it down the backstairs and left it in the garden.

How strange and mysterious this life-force is! What makes me cringe at such a task and others assume it? I thought of Friday night when Fern and I went to the Butch-Femme Social. When our table was jostled and a glass broke, Jude jumped up immediately, admonishing me to be careful, and gathered up the shards quickly. She, of course, is butch. In my book, butch is not male, and certainly not macho. Karl is not macho, but he is damn butch. Butch is protective and nurturing in just the way I like it. Not just willing to carry out the dead mouse or carry up the heavy box, but doing it with the spirit of caretaking. A few of my male partners would do such tasks with a macho sensibility, which always seems to contain a dash of resentment and hostility. Butch is different. I love it.

I talked to my best friend about this today and we both laughed heartily. We are both queer as queer can be, true Aquarians. She is gorgeous, sexy, and I love her so much sometimes I can feel my heart stretching. We’d make excellent partners except for this small and mighty matter of the mouse. What a wonder it is this spirit, this energy of butch and femme! I’ve been a therapist and human long enough to know that it’s innate, something natural, not just cultural programming or socialization.

Who knows what the coming years will bring? I may fall in love with a woman, or I may fall in love with a man. Male or female, I’m guessing my next partner will be butch. It’s a quality I love. Especially when I’m facing a dead mouse.

the saving grace

It’s raining. It’s been raining now for a few hours. The reservoirs all around California are full to the brim, and the snow hasn’t even completely melted. It’s a banner year for water. I learned today (I heard it on the radio) that this makes the probability of summer fires even higher, as the grasses are thicker, more abundant than usual. By midsummer they will be a fire hazard. The knowledge of this has really thrown me. I’m a Californian. I’ve lived thru many drought years, and have those years inextricably linked to fear of fires. How strange to learn at this juncture that heavy rainfall is as much a harbinger of summer fire as a winter of drought.

Hearing this news today, I recalled the summer of my childhood when grass fires were a constant fear and threat. My family lived in the country, in the rolling hills south of San Jose. That summer there were several fires in the hills, and my parents had impressed on me the danger of fire hitting our large propane tank. It was out in the field in back of the house, and we kept the grass mowed down around it. I remembered today seeing the fire spreading down the hill towards our house, towards the propane tank. I remembered calling the fire department and my father at his work. The fire department got there just minutes before the fire would have reached the propane tank. My father roared up to find me in the gravel yard in front of our house, sitting on his locked metal box of important papers, holding my mother’s prettiest dress and my Barbie doll. I knew what was important to save. I can still sense my father walking towards me, how he inhabited his suit, his laughter at seeing what I chose to save, my sense of safety with his presence.

I don’t remember where my mother was, or my siblings. For years, I assumed the fire was a result of the drought. My sister Stacy eventually put me straight that the fires of that summer were set by my disturbed foster brother, who would eventually be taken out of our home after raping the mentally retarded sister of our neighbor. Stacy has filled me in on lots of missing gaps from my childhood, not being as disassociative as I, and serving well as the family’s historian.

This all rushed back today as I drove to work. All day it’s been tugging at me, this new knowledge that excessive rain brings the danger of summer fire. My father’s desire to have a son, my parent’s yearning to help out an abused child, this resulted in me and my sisters being put in danger. The lack of water, the lack of love, these lead to thirst, dryness, and the possibility of scorched earth. Today, I thought about the fires, the burning, the immolation that have occurred in my life as a result of Aphrodite's torrential rains. The swollen heart of falling in love, soaking up the wild wetness of this kind of downpour, sets you up for wild fires as well. The saving grace, which of course, nature is full of, is that scorched earth is fertile ground for regeneration. It’s been crazy winter and spring. Looks like it may be one hell of a summer.

my beautiful office

I’m loving being in my office. Morgaine, my office partner of twenty years is leaving her practice. She has a new business selling yarn and spinning wheels. As a result I’ve inherited some of her furniture. The new sand tray shelves and bookcase inspired me to move everything around and clean up my clutter. I’ve cleared out all the old papers and all the objects and books that no longer hold interest. Everything that is left is there because I want it to be there. Thus, it all gives me pleasure. It’s making me look at my space with new eyes, and to be more present in my work.

When I walked in today, I felt like a kid at Christmas, every object giving me a sense of wonder, all feeling like gifts. A woman I once went to for consultation, who was brilliant in regards to the theory I was interested in, would go on at length how the “clinical container” (the therapy office) should be devoid of personality. I took a lot of what she said to heart, but not this. Never this. I could no more work in an office devoid of personality, devoid of beauty, than I could work in a mall. It’s not healthy. It’s not human, or it’s not the kind of humanity I want to endorse. Plus, her space said a lot about her personality, for what we think is personality free actually speaks volumes about us.

My office is full of color and texture. There are shells, rocks, feathers, tarot cards, runes, statues of beloved deities, books of poetry, plants, and art everywhere. It is an office of therapist who is also a witch. It is an office of a witch who happens to be a therapist. The majority of my clients may never know that I’m a witch, but most eventually learn that this office is a place of magic, of changing consciousness at will. Today, I felt the spirits of the office recharged and renewed, mine as well, fully alert and interested in each client and what change can be wrought within the fifty minutes.

Something about my room today made me more mindful of my attunement to how the elements flow thru (or don’t!) each session. I pay attention to air by watching the breathe, the thought patterns, how boundaries are navigated, how beginnings and endings are experienced, all of these things I notice. Fire makes itself known by the energy of the person, how they experience their will and their sexuality, what pride and shame mean to them, understanding their passions, and their anger. By tuning into this, I tune into fire. I gage waters presence by examining the fluidity of the session, dreams, emotions, how the heart opens and closes. Earth shows up by attending to the body, watching how my clients inhabit their flesh, asking where things are felt as we talk, exploring their relationship to the physical world, and how they physically take care of themselves. My notes today reflected this, most say things like “fire went out when talking about work” and “things shifted when breathe focused on”.

Therapy by its very nature is magic. By committing to the sacred space (the clinical container!) of the therapy office and its fifty minute hour, we open to a shift in our consciousness. Part of therapy is to figure out what we want to shift and why, thus making our intent transparent and invoking it. The key to any magical working is clear intent. Once that intent is made, the elements of life have a funny way of jumping in to assist this coming into being. In my beautiful office, today I felt this happening. How lucky I am to do this work.

magic mirror

The last few days have been so chock full I’ve had barely time to catch up with myself, much less write. The weather has been a magic mirror to my internal state, one minute the sky is bright and clear, the next overcast and tearing up. And every day I am struck by what a festival of fertility this month truly is. It is crazy beautiful in this city by the sea.

While the city is aglow in blossoms and greenery, so many things that have been in the works personally have finally come to fruition. Today the last of the divorce papers got notarized. Yesterday the contract on the house was finally signed. There’s so many beginnings and endings right now I can’t keep up with them. It all seems in the spirit of May, and tuning into that spirit is what is helping me go with the flow and not get scared. It feels a little like going downhill on a bike, one part of me wanting to put my feet down or brake, the other loving the feeling of the air rushing past, trusting my ability to steer and stay upright. The latter continues to be in the lead.

The night before last I awoke with a start. Somewhere between 1 and 2 am, I lay there trying to remember what I had been dreaming. Then there was a sudden strong jolt, as if a large animal had jumped on the bed. An earthquake. I laughed out loud. Everything is moving, everything is shifting. As I lay there and felt the reverberations in this old house from the strong shake, I realized I was anything but afraid. I was happy.

love poems from god

Last June I picked up Love Poems from God at the bookstore on the corner near my office. It was an impulse buy, one of those impulses that turns out to be close to life saving. It helped me make it thru that terrible summer, went to witchcamp with me, and even still, like my well thumbed Mary Oliver collection of poetry, it tends to fall open to just the right poem. This is my favorite of the moment:

IT’S RIGGED

It’s rigged – everything, in your favor.

So there is nothing to worry about

Is there some position you want,

some office, some acclaim, some award, some con, some lover,

maybe two, maybe three, maybe four – all at once,

maybe a relationship

with

God?

I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it

the wonderment of the earth’s gifts you will lay

aside as naturally as does

a child a

doll

But, dear, how sweet you look to me kissing the unreal;

comfort, fill yourself in any way possible – do that until

you ache, until you ache,

then come to me

again

Rumi

queasy

I’m not doing well.

Tonight was the spring concert for my son’s school. Being paradoxically a progressive school that is rather conservative, usually the musical selections are limited to expanding our cultural awareness of folkways around the world. Tonight started out no different. There was some African dancing, Chinese melodies, Peruvian songs, and then my son’s class played the theme from The Exorcist. Casey started out on some weird instrument called a Thurman where you wave your hands near it and it makes sound. It wasn’t working at first, so the concert came to a halt while two people kept trying plugs in various holes in the thing while my kid waved his arms around. The audience was laughing nervously, and I got progressively more hysterical. It was weird, funny, and downright odd. Eventually it started working, and Casey “played” it, then did some drumming and then went on to a keyboard.


I’m queasy. Why the hell is my son playing the theme from The Exorcist?

eyes open

My son is a Beltane baby, and as such, he’s amazed me with his magical gifts.In the last week I realized with a start that I am a child of Beltane too, and so is my beloved friend Reya. Reya and I are both born in early Feburary, meaning that our conception was in early May. My ex’s birthday is the same as my son’s, January 30^th, and my son was conceived on May 1^st. Sharing the birthday was somthiing that was problematic in our relationship, but now in retrospect explains some of why I have had such a deep connection to her. She was born smack dab in the middle of nine kids in a Mormon family, and her birthday was one day when she got special attention. To share her birthday with her lover’s son, whew…talk about triggering. Nevertheless, thinking about this now, of course they have the same birthday; of course I would not only have a child of Beltane, but fall in love with one.

Conceived at the height of spring, when the earth is luminous with the life force, when the lusty current is almost visible, when the veil is thin between the worlds, and the fey are meddling in our affairs, we all are ecstatics, lovers of this green world, . Reya, Casey, Denise and I share a similar spirit, are all blessed by the fey and their kind. And we all are a bit touched. We are touched by the current, by the intoxication of the life force, by the incredible bender that nature goes on in May. Knowing about this connection makes me understand on another level why I’ve felt such pain, anguish, and confusion over my break-up with my ex. We have an affinity in the spirit world of May, riding into this world on the same energetic wave.

Reya and my friend Fern are both astrologers, and I recognized long ago my affinity for other Aquarians. Breathing in this strong spring air, with my house full of flowers, I’m realizing it’s so much more than just the stars we were born under; it’s also the scent of the earth at our conception. Being a therapist and a witch more interested in the green earth than the starry heavens, I realize I resonate more with understanding people’s natures by thinking of where they began, and what the earth was like as they took spark.

My friend Jill, when I was talking about this, figured out that she was conceived at Samhain. She is born under the sign of Cancer. It makes much more sense to me is to think of her as that small spark of life that decided to catch right when the dead were swirling. I’ve had two lovers who were Cancers, and with them too, there was a puzzling affinity that went beyond mundane interests. The dead and the fey get along, and both have pacts with the living. They give a eccentric jolt to those conceptions which take place when the veil is thin, working thru us in mysterious ways.

Conceived in May, conceiving my child on Beltane, breaking up with my husband on Beltane five years ago, my heart getting broken a year ago in May, and this May filling out the divorce papers, filling out the new mortgage papers with my friend Ilyse, and looking Denise in the eyes again, clearly May is a banner month for me, a magic month. I’m still mulling on my Brigid challenge. For me, it’s clear that in May, what is dead, what is alive, and what lives in between does come into sharp focus. My eyes are open.

it works

IT WORKS

Would you come if someone called you

by the wrong name?

I wept, because for years He did not enter my arms;

then one night I was told a

secret:

Perhaps the name you call God is

not really His, maybe it

is just an

alias.

I thought about this, and came up with a pet name

for my Beloved I never mention

to others.

All I can say is –

it works.

Rabia of Basra (c.717-801)

female Islamic saint who influenced Rumi

In these months of working on integrating my two traditions into one, of becoming a Reclaiming Feri witch, I became clear I had to find my own names for the elemental guardians and goddesses. I've been working on it, and telling those I know who are interested in Reclaiming Feri to do the same. Fern found this poem in the fabulous collection love poems from god , and
it's makes my heart sing to know that an ecstatic poet from way back when was on the same page.

It works. It really does. Feri tradition is partly based on this, the power of names rarely said, held private, names of the elemental guardians and the god and goddess. The names hold power, but they also hold a dark energy of he who first began to pass them on. They are his names for the beloveds, not mine. I’ll always hold the names I received as sacred, and keep my vow to pass them on as part of Feri initiation, but it’s become clear to me that I need my own names to call the gods and guardians, that most of the names I received are indeed just an alias. My own pet names work. They really do.

beltane hangover

I’m hungover from Beltane. Liquid spirits were not involved in this hangover. The other kinds certainly were. This was some party. It seems this Beltane was about reconnecting and remembering ribbons/relationships from the past, of looking at the web of connection in my life in a new way and giving value to strands that had gone overlooked, or I’d let go of, but now show up later in the weft and weave. Mostly I got intoxicated with the wonder of how the story line of my life continues to be spun in ways that I never could have expected. Patterns continue to be woven, but this Beltane, the design really does seem to have changed.

I was not alone in the magic of this Beltane. Jeremy was dancing the maypole and came face to face with an ex-love that had ended several years ago. It was one of those passionate breakups where not seeing or talking to each other is the only way to stay out of the fiery pit. Time to re-visit that! Fern saw two people she’d gone to high school with in Fresno at the ritual and someone she’s known since she was eight. Ilyse had a run-in with a guy she’d dated awhile back who showed up where she was eating breakfast. It resulted in e finally resolving a major weirdness between them. Elizabeth lost her shoes, prompting her to notice how she really does need to feel the ground beneath her feet.

My son was conceived on Beltane fourteen years ago. His biological father, my first love at fifteen, brought him to the ritual. Jay has only been in his life for the past few years. Beltane eve Casey spent the night at his house for the second time. This was the first ritual that Jay has come to. A circle has come around. And I ended up in my living room watching The L Word with a room full of lesbians, including my first girlfriend of 30 years ago and my last one who at spring equinox I was considering dead to me. I delighted in both, felt rich with the changes, and savored the strange brew that this weekend has served up.

So now, today, I sober up. It’s time to clean the house, get my papers together for the next big set of changes (Ilyse buying into the house, my divorce finally happening) and drink lots of water. Unlike many other hangovers, this one involves absolutely no remorse.

what a wonderful world

On the morning of Beltane Eve, I turned to my iPod for my daily dose of divination. The first three songs were; Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Ring of Fire and What a Wonderful World, as covered by K.D. Lang and Tony Bennett. Once again, when I heard the third song, tears began dribbling down my face. Girls having fun, the going down and the fiery heat, well, that makes sense at Beltane. Those songs had me smiling, as it was looking like that was exactly were the day would be headed. Back in the fall, I was talking to my sister about the possibility of invoking a long celibacy. I'd had the incredible realization that three months had been my limit on not having sex since the age of 15. There was short silence and Stacy said; “Yeah, but we’re just not the celibate type.”

What a Wonderful World put me immediately in touch with why I’m not the celibate type, and why sex is such a magical act. At Beltane, with spring at it’s fullest, with the fecundity of nature showing off with grand gestures, we are called to participate, to chime in on the great song of love being sung. Sex is an affirmation, a spell, an ode to the life force. It truly is a form of prayer, a form that has always agreed with me. Every lyric in What a Wonderful World is what the prayer of the give and take of orgasms is aimed at. Sex can be about power, about habit, about degradation, about pain, and about desperation. Life can be about these too. Both are sacred, in all their aspects, the trick is to remember we have options. Even in the worst of times, it's possible to tune into the miracle of life on this planet, and not forget the downright pleasure of being a sexual being. I'm working on being open to both, trusting both will play out in exactly the way they are meant to be, with me participating, but not clutching or too invested in outcome. This openess is one way to worship this beautiful green planet. I want this world. I love this world. It’s wonderful.