the grass is greener

I always love returning to San Francisco. This is one of the great reasons for traveling, because no matter how green the field or stunning the city, when I come home, I fall in love all over again. The entire time I was gone, all news from home included a sense of dismay over the constant rainfall. I landed on Monday to a city awash in sunshine, the first in weeks. The last few days have been glorious. Am I being grandiose to feel my city is welcoming me back? Believing there is no coincidence, I can only deduce that I truly live in exactly the right place.

A week ago today I was in a little antique shop in a small village in Wales. I pulled out an old book on West Wales just as a song starting playing about San Francisco…that hippie favorite about wearing a flower in your hair when you come here. Susan, who loves living in West Wales, bought the book, it having information on local holy wells and sacred sites that she hadn’t seen elsewhere. There’s no coincidence that she’d be buying an old book about the place she loves just as I’m enjoying a song which exalts my beloved city

That moment turned out to be the beginning of a shamanic shopping day, with magic abounding in our finds.. Within the hour, I’d found the magical tool I’ve been calling out for months for; my sweet cup. For years, my tool of the west has been a beautiful handcrafted brown glass goblet with etched oak leaves on it. Recently I had the realization that this cup I’ve used ritually to hold the bitter cup of death, which I sip from every Samhain. A shock to realize that I hadn’t been balancing this by drinking a sweet cup at Beltane! We witches do have a bad habit of giving a bit of a stronger nod to the dark and bitter. So funny, I’ve questioned for years the meaning of Bay Area Reclaiming having a big hoodoo event for Samhain which has never found it’s balance in the Beltane celebration, and here I’ve been doing the same thing by not balancing the bitter with the sweet!

Tonight, my beautiful blue sweet cup sits on my altar, a cup made in Wales, a land whose green fields are soaked in magic, and where beauty abounds. I had an incredible time; it was an affair to remember. But I’m home, to my beloved, who just happens to have the greenest grass on her hills that you can imagine, and who appears more beautiful then when I left her. I know it’s because of the rain, but I’m so delighted and amazed that the grass is actually greener. There is no coincidence.

I love that!