the power of thirteen....again!

In many ways, I’m still recovering from the party that was held here last Saturday night. It turned out, as the best parties usually are, to be a bigger piece of magic than expected. It was a party for prana, a party for the life force, and had a silent auction as a component, raising money for my friend Jeremy, who wants to try some experimental treatments for his cancer.

I live in a huge Victorian with two large flats, the other being owned and occupied by my friend Ilyse. Like Jeremy, she’s worked for an assortment of organizations geared around envisioning and transforming bad things into good things..or at least sustainable things. At the moment, she works for MoveOn. We filled our flats with flowers and greenery, and we both put huge cauldrons on our house altars, which called to be filled with green. Money, that is.

Our goal was to raise $3000. At the end of the party the cauldrons held $10,000, with another $3000 said to be still coming. Thirteen thousand dollars!!! This was magic, this was loaves and fishes, this was truly amazing. The house had been full of food and drink, and still is. How can it be that almost as much seems to be left over than when we started? My girlfriend’s big poached wild salmon was picked to the bone, but there is still chocolate cake on my kitchen table, boxes of cabarnet left over, and Ilyse has a refrigerator full of cheese downstairs.

The house is still reverberating and shimmering with the prana that filled it Saturday night. Could the adjustments I've been getting and the realignment I've been feeling now be rippling out to my home? For the first time ever, my flat was not the locus of the party, the other being overflow. Saturday night, it was the other way around. It felt wonderful. It was a readjustment in the energy body of the house.

Ilyse, the day of the party, found a mighty leak/hole in her back room in the spot the Feng Shuiers call the money spot. The wood was rotten there, and needed to be replaced. That work started that day. My friends who lived there before struggled with money issues and lived for years on the edge of bankruptcy. Ilyse since she’s lived there has been hunting down an elusive leak, which has cost a ridiculous amount of money. On Saturday, this was found, and now it has been fixed.

When you start to do a piece of magic, you never know what will happen.

Party/Prayer for Prana

In the first week or so of my son attending Catholic high school (what better rebellion for a pagan raised teenager!) he said to me; “There’s a lot of people who have cancer, aren’t there?” In quizzing him on why he said this, I found out that there was a daily go-around in one of his classrooms where each student could ask others to support them in their prayers. Casey was struck by how many of them had family or loved ones with cancer, and that this is what most of the prayers were concerned with.

This, along with finding out that every class and event starts with the call of “Let us remember” and the response being “we are in the sacred presence of God”, has softened my resistance to this school he fought so hard to attend. I like him being reminded the sacred is always present. There was a time my feminist witch self would have rankled with the term "God", but Casey has been raised with so much Goddess imagery, I trust that for him, this God that is being invoked is just one among many…half or more which have female form. It helps that Mary is a big presence at Sacred Heart as well. It’s striking that one month of Catholic school provided more awareness of personal suffering than nine years of his progressive elementary school. I think I just might be in favor of prayer in school, but maybe just that - prayer - to any and all gods or spirits that a child finds appealing.

My mother was diagnosed soon after this conversation in September with breast cancer, and she is nearing the end of her chemo treatments. I’m sure Casey has included her in his prayers at school more than once. This week, hopefully he is also asking for prayers for our friend Jeremy. It was a year ago that I was in England when I got the news that Jeremy had cancer. Jeremy has worked on many environmental and social justice campaigns, and has been working for Greenpeace for the last couple of years. He is an incredible photographer, and has documented all his travels, including this current journey as a cancer patient. I met Jeremy before the WTO actions in Seattle, and he helped shape the magic we witches did there. He is an accomplished healer, able to spot where energy is stuck and intuitive as all hell about how to move it. This cancer has been a tremendous challenge.

Dealing with this cancer, Jeremy has kept his focus on healing, on loving, as opposed to outcome. Tomorrow night, we who are his circle of friends and family are going to offer up a mighty spell, a prayer put into action, in service of Jeremy and in service of the life force. My house will host what we are calling “A Party for Prana”. There will be a silent auction and I’m in the process of making altars that have cauldrons on them to hold and stir up donations. In true Jeremy fashion, he has created a foundation to raise money for activists who have life- threatening illnesses or have been injured. This party is a benefit for Jeremy and his “Healing the Roots” Foundation. Even with pain wracking cancer, Jeremy's prana continues to remain a vibrant and beautiful force.

Last night's rain has made today's city sparkle. I can feel the energy of Beltane building. Tomorrow's party will be teeming with it. It will be magical. We will dance, drink and be merry, and there will be some tears, too. Lots of money will be raised. We will take care of each other, and we will have fun doing it. Please support us in this spell, this prayer put into action. Too many people have cancer. This party is for prana, for the life force, and for healing. Prayers are powerful, and this party is a prayer. Everyone is invited. Please come.

One of Us

In response to my last blog, the fabulous Aquila questioned if Mary Oliver is “One of Us”. That question in itself opens up all kinds of other questions, ones I’ve been ruminating on, and thankfully, last night those questions were settled. This came due to my great fortune of having tickets to see Mary Oliver in person. She read her poetry for fifty minutes – a time period as a therapist I found amusing – and then she answered questions. Although I wasn’t one of those who raised my hand, she gave me the answers I needed. In essence, all of us are just that - One, and yet, in our infinite variations, Mary Oliver speaks for those of us who worship this green earth above and below anything else.

Years back I was interviewed for the book “Modern Pagans” and asked to give a list of books that I found core to living as a pagan and a witch. It was a short list, and it included most predominately the poetry of Mary Oliver. Her poems resonate with love for the natural world, and always remind me to be thankful. I keep her by my bedside and by my chair in my therapy office. Anyone who sees me for any length of time has probably been read one of her poems at one time or another. And plenty of my clients keep copies of these poems to refer to. “The Summer Day”, “When Death Comes”, “In Blackwater Woods”, and “Wild Geese” - these poems are staples of both my spiritual practice and my practice as a psychotherapist.

In Portland, buying her latest book, “Thirst”, I puzzled at a new thread running thru some of her poems. Mary Oliver recently lost her partner of forty years, Molly Malone Cook. “Thirst” reverberates with this loss, and also documents her seeking comfort in her local church. The poet who reconnects me again and again to the holiness of grass and the splendor of a spider web now has poems which include the word “Lord”.

So I was curious, heading off to the reading, and frankly, a little worried. Would Mary Oliver spout Christian doctrine in a way that I would find alienating? Why the heck couldn’t she have found a circle of witches to work with? There must be some in Provincetown, right? Which poems would she read? The Christian ones? One of the myriad of things I’ve loved about her writing is that the one of us included all of us. Had this changed, was there now a sense that there was only one way of salvation that left many of us behind?

I left elated. The truth is, I still am. She read poems that gave comfort in a time when so many of us are reverberating from the violence that just occurred in Virginia and the bloodbath that is our foreign war. During the question period, a woman as politely as she could asked the famous poet about the new poems of Christian faith, which notably had not been read. From the woman’s tone and the way she phrased her careful words, including “earth-based spirituality” it was clear she held my same fears. The poet told the audience that she went crazy for a year after Molly died, and that although her need for the church she’d found was waning, she had really been impressed with the robes and all the beautiful trappings. Her next book would not be called “Thirst” she said, clearly letting us know that she had taken succor where she found it and was now once again finding the divine in her woods and wild places.

All in all, it comes down to this – the love of this earth and the holding it as sacred and divine. This, and the striving for kindness. If there is line between us and them, this, for me, is it. Mary Oliver’s words root me in awe of this planet and in kindness towards all life. Seeing her last night, I know that she is the woman of her words. I am so grateful.

my work is loving

I love this world! Who could have guessed that this trip to Portland would end with my son and I sitting here for so long at Gate 13? Oakland Airport has no Gate 13, or at least it didn’t on Friday the 13^th. Reality has been so malleable that I wouldn’t be surprised if now a Gate 13 has appeared. Or, maybe here in Portland, bastion of so many earth worshipers, the number 13 is held in good repute. Whatever the case, I’m getting a kick out of the fact that here we sit, waiting for our flight which is delayed, right under a big sign for Gate 13.

The trip has been a good one. I met Archer, the six week old son of my friends Lilith and Scott. Lilith and Scott are the kind of people who whatever they engage in, they do it well. Thank goddess their extreme competence is leavened with a great sense of humor. Going out to dim sum with them along with my friend Dawn’s and my teenage son, I found myself savoring the feeling of the movement of time, of new and upcoming generations. How will these children pass on what they’ve gotten from us? All of us have done a better job at parenting than our parents. What will these boys be like as fathers? And I said the inevitable prayer that their children’s children will have a future, and one in which there is still the beauty of this spring in Portland.

Portland was ablaze with color. Tulips, lilacs, and dogwood trees dazzled. Driving back from lunch, I exclaimed on how gorgeous the world is, on what an amazing planet we live on. Quinn, Dawn’s son, said, in the way only a teenager can say this, “But do you want to marry it?” “I already did”, I replied. And I have. For isn’t this what initiation is in an earth based spirituality? A life long commitment to this beautiful world, to this force we call life?

A few hours later, I found a new Mary Oliver book of poetry in a bookstore, with exactly the right poem. I bought it. Today, this purchase was outdone by my purchase of garden gnome in the likeness of Noam Chomsky, made by someone in Portland who also makes garden gnomes who resemble the green man. Made in a basement laundry room, Gnome Chomsky will be a perfect addition to my rooftop garden. I love this world!

Messenger

My work is loving this world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird –

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

Mary Oliver

friday the thirteenth

Standing in line to get on a plane, there was a brief flurry of conversation between strangers about the date. I was traveling by myself up to Portland, happy to end a very hard week with a change of location. I really don’t remember how the conversation started, but suddenly several people were talking about the fact we were flying on a date that is seen as unlucky.

Part of me loves that there are still pockets of superstition in the fabric of modern life. As one woman pointed out, we were at gate fourteen, between gate twelve and fifteen. At the Oakland airport, there is no gate thirteen. I like that the power of the number thirteen is somehow still recognized, if even thru a dark mirror. I sensed that launching into why thirteen came to be so maligned and how Freya is connected to Friday would take this casual conversation to a place these nervous strangers wouldn't really want to go. Instead, I smiled and said “For me, thirteen has always been a lucky number, I like it”. A guy with a baseball cap said “Yeah, for me too”. And then we were boarding the plane.

It’s been a long week, a week of looking at projections, my own and others, and a week of delineating between normal gossip and words calculated to do damage. It has been a week of looking in a dark mirror, and seeing how power and energy can be twisted into shapes that cause pain, and of asking "why?". It’s been a week of taking responsibility and holding myself and others accountable. Of course this week ended with a Friday the thirteenth. This week, nothing has been simple.

I’m glad to get out of town.

sacred chocolate cows

The outrage over the chocolate Jesus is being discussed all over the blogosphere. Meanwhile, the full moon is shining down and I’m full of gratitude for being part of a tradition where the only blasphemy is in the degradation of the life giving elements of this green planet. Toxins in a river, clearcutting a forest, this is sacrilege. There is nothing a pagan could make in chocolate that would be profane, thank Goddess!

Chocolate Gods and Goddesses, the only response is YUMM….even if unrobed and buck naked. Reading about the hubbub I took even more pleasure in Steward passing on the work of the )APAUSICOTS(. This apparently stands for the All Powerful and Ultra Secret Inner Circle of the Spiralheart. There’s one of these in every community, but count on those east coasters to make it official and produce documents.

And what a document they have produced!!! Proudly, the document us west coasters produced was and is the Reclaiming Principles of Unity. I love these principles. In fact, I adore them, am devoted to them.

And yet, I almost peed my pants laughing in delight to read the )APAUSICOTS(‘s Disclaiming Principles of Conformity. It’s a chocolate Jesus if I ever saw one. Delicious, dark, and damn funny. I don’t think I’ll every pass out copies of the principles of unity without also passing out their shadow sister, the principles of conformity.

Thank you, All Powerful and Ultra Secret Inner Circle of the Spiralheart. If you reveal yourselves, I'll send you a chocolate Sheela Na Gig. Vulva and all. I promise.