Everything Comes To An End

“I found out yesterday that Jerry Falwell had died and I felt this sense of ebullience. I hate to admit it, but I felt excited. I know it’s not very spiritual, but it kind of made my day.”

This is what another therapist, a close friend and colleague of mine, said to me today. He is by no means alone in his sentiments, many are feeling the same way, myself included.

Jerry Falwell has been the voice of hate and vitriol for the religious right for many years. I am the epitome of everything he despised. I am queer, feminist, left wing, and a witch. My colleague is a tranny, a gentle gender outlaw that Reverend Falwell would have abhorred. To him, we were both to blame for what happened on September 11^th, 2001. He would be happy, excited, and somewhat ebullient to hear of people like ourselves dying, preferably in ways where we suffered greatly. He certainly believed if we didn’t suffer in this life, we’d be damned unhappy in the next.

It makes sense that so many of us are feeling happy he is dead. In Freak Nation, and amongst progressive folks, there is a mighty cry equaling the Munchkin’s joyous “Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead”. There is relief that one less powerful hatemonger is among us. But, it also feels uncomfortable to some, and like my colleague said, not “spiritual” to be so relieved.

Retaliation has always been part of the human experience. “An eye for an eye” is much more the human condition than “turn the other cheek”. This is why I’ve perversely found “Have another pretzel, motherfucker” one of my all time favorite signs at a protest. I would never carry such a sign, but I sure enjoyed seeing it. We may preach love, peace, and non-violence, but there is something in most of us that rejoices when someone who has caused pain gets theirs. There is a place for acknowledging it, and especially with humor, that magic elixir.

And yet. It is also part of the human condition to try to rise above this, to attempt to come from love. The god Rev. Falwell worshipped may be skilled in the ability to smote and jealous as all get out, but his son was all about forgiveness. He was the King of Peace, and our Goddess charges us that love is the law. What does it mean to obey this law, and to also own the authenticity of our relief? Almost all of those I know who are savoring the passing of this hatemonger are people who try their best to be kind, who value love over hate. How do we embrace the complexities of our feelings at such a passing?

We hate Jerry Falwell because he hates so much, because his litany is not about kindness and acceptance, but about retaliation and revenge. The paradox of this is also part of being human. Paradox is the heart of the Craft, it is what lies in the center of every cast circle. Holding both light and shadow as sacred is an integral part of being a witch. Embracing and loving both is the work of a lifetime. In loving both, we rise to the Goddess's charge. Throw in a little mirth, and our reverence increases.

For me, this death serves to remind that everything passes. Regimes fall, and powerful hatemongers die. Everything comes to an end. Even wars. Today I am breathing into that, and knowing on both the biggest scale, and the smallest, the turn of the wheel can bring comfort. Turn wheel, turn!

Postscript and on another paradoxical note: My friend Japhet recently blogged about the strange fact that He Who Should Eat More Pretzels just decreed May 1st "National Loyalty Day". How bizarre is that? The one day of the year that it's almost sacred to break vows of monogamy and get wild...it's now our National Day of Loyalty. The head is shaking with disbelief. Can things get any weirder?

a blot in every way

It's wild! It's gay!
A blot in ev'ry way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.

More lyrics from the musical “Camelot”

When you live in San Francisco, you have to be ready for the weather to change drastically on a dime. Yesterday was warm and bright, but today was windy and bone-chillingly cold. I’ve been going along in my May reverie, enjoying the tra la ness of the month, the lustiness of the roses blossoming on my deck, trusting the sunny feeling that’s been steadily growing, but today I find myself caught without the layers needed to warm me up with the chill that is in the air.

My mother is in the hospital with a fever that won’t come down. The place where her breast once was is infected and full of fluid. I talked to her at length yesterday, wishing her a happy Mother’s Day, and telling her what we were up to here in the city. Talking to my stepfather today, we pieced together that she had thought I was my sister, and that she had talked to my nephew, Zane, instead of my son. She thought I hadn’t called, and was touched that Deanna had called twice. The fever has me cold with dread.

This afternoon my other sister Stacy called crying and miserable. Her partner’s niece has been a fixture at her house for the past year, coming over with her baby for comfort and coddling since her husband has been in Iraq with the Army. The niece recently had a mental breakdown, which appears to be the dramatic onset of a bipolar disorder. She’s fighting the diagnosis and refusing to be treated. The husband is back from Iraq on leave, and yesterday the niece violently attacked him and is now in jail. This has cast a mighty dark cloud over the planning of my sister and her partner’s wedding in June.

And then I opened an email bearing the news that a lovely woman in my extended pagan family lost her 26 year old son this week to viral pneumonia. The loss of this son brought home for me the sickening number of mothers who are grieving and will be grieving young sons and daughters killed in this evil war.

I wish I could say that bad things come in three, and that was it. If only. Sometimes when it rains it actually does really pour. It’s pouring today, although the sky is clear. I am sad and I can't warm up. Tonight I will let myself feel it and pile on the blankets. Maybe tomorrow the sun will be out in force, and the lustiness of May will assert itself once again. Weather changes suddenly here, but tonight, I'm not counting on it.

The Lusty Month of May

Tra la! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev'ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
Tra la! It's here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear!
It's May! It's May!
That gorgeous holiday
When ev'ry maiden prays that her lad
Will be a cad!
It's mad! It's gay!
A libelous display!
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!

From the musical Camelot – “The Lusty Month of May”

May is lusty, there is no doubt about it. There’s a movement afoot to consider it “National Masturbation Month”, but I think that's thinking too small. It’s Sex Month, at least in this hemisphere. I guess for my Southern Hemisphere blog sister Aquila, Sex Month is in November. But here, it’s indisputably May.

This year, perhaps due to the initiation ritual I did on Beltane, the lustiness of this month is making itself apparent to me with great force. The day after the ritual, I found myself at the Brooklyn Museum, which was surrounded by trees in full bloom, viewing Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. I was worried that the vulva-like images of the plates might be dated. I am a survivor of 1970’s feminism, after all, when passing out speculums and viewing friend’s cervixes was common-place. Although my vulva has been sufficiently reclaimed, I was awed by The Dinner Party and got that tingle up the spine that happens in the presence of the Divine. It was lusty and roaring with life force. It was sexy.

The following days in New York were filled with sensual treats and the steady backbeat of sex. Of course, it helps to be with a lover who has the same tastes for exploration as I do. From checking out Toys in Babeland to having soul food in Harlem, together we savored our love affair with New York, as well as with each other. The perfect ménage-a- trois. On one of the last days of our trip, we stood together in front of a vibrator from the 1920’s in a junk store and considered bringing it back to the Vibrator Museum at Good Vibrations. We decided against it, as our luggage was at full capacity, but laughed heartily at the May perfection of an antique vibrator being one of our “finds”.

I came home to a San Francisco sultry with heat and enjoyed several warm nights fragrant with May bloom. It was in the heat of those first few days back when this blog elicited a request for me to write for a top-notch on-line sex toy site, EdenFantasys.com. I’d start out reviewing sex toys and other products, but could end up writing articles and/or a column. Given that it is May, I can’t refuse. My girlfriend laughingly suggested we first try out a ball gag, but my sense is that this has nothing to do with sex, but more about other ways my tongue has been used recently.

We are about halfway thru the lusty month of May, and tonight we go to the NCLR Gala, otherwise known as the Lesbian Prom. There will be over three thousand women, dressed to the nines, and three stages of music. Sex will be in the air. Why on earth would anyone pick May for National Masturbation Month? Wouldn’t lonely January be so much better? May is a time of connection, the month of hook-ups and going blissfully astray. Guinevere, as played by Julie Andrews, and generations of northern hemisphere pagans have it right. May is Sex Month. Tra la!

May Day, May Day!!!!

It's Beltane, and I am in the West Village in New York City. The air is thrumming with life and
everywhere there are tulips, hyacinths, and blooming dogwoods. Soon I will be priestessing a ritual for a friend who has for many years tended the dead and the dying. She was chaplain on the burn unit in the hospital closest to ground zero on that day that still reverberates throughout this city. She had one initiation years back into the Craft that focused on death and rebirth but was long on death, short on rebirth. For too long she's had one hand thru the veil, helping others pass. It has taken a toll.

Today, the focus is on life, on that green fuse that runs thru the flower, that runs thru everything. Today, I've asked her to put her hand on the pole and feel the power as the ribbons wind, that vibration of the joy of connection, the current in the colorful tangle and pattern of life.

Here in New York City, the earth is alive. Death is a current that can be felt, and everywhere there are signs of its power. There is a corner nearby where there is a wire fence completely covered in painted tiles dedicated to the dead of September 11th. Today a conceptual artist, Adrian Piper, has hundreds of people moving around the city with the words "everything will be taken away" written backwards on their foreheads in henna. They will leave it there until it fades.

Everything will be taken away. Yes, that is true. But on Beltane, on May 1st, the earth shouts, whispers, and yodels that relentlessly and consistently there is rebirth. Life's power and beauty is on full display and parade. Today, we bloom. And it feels good.