how we shine!

It is Lammas, the cross-quarter point between solstice and equinox. The reign of the Sun King is on the wane. The clients I see at 7pm I now need to turn on the lights for and I’m no longer waking early with the sun. This week, for the first time, I can sense the dark waiting just off stage.

Here, right before summer begins its descent into autumn, I am grieving. In every life, there are key people who, like points of stars making up the zodiac, help create the story of our lives. I’ve had many of these, and I am blessed with a complicated and sparkling tale of a life. One of these stars died in the past week, but just like real stars, her light will still shine long past her death.

I graduated high school early, desperately wanting to escape the confines of my family and Morgan Hill, just south of San Jose, California. Immediately I set out with my friend Diane in her VW van to discover America. I didn’t get very far, just up to the top of the Oregon Coast. In that short trip that took a long time, I discovered one of the people that has shaped my life and one of the places on the planet that helped forge me.

Diane had a phone number and address of one of her mother’s old friends that we planned to look up as we drove up the coast. Diane couldn't remember her, but we had hopes of a free meal and maybe a place to shower. We did eat, we did shower, and we stayed. Diane stayed for over a week and traveled on, I stayed for months. I left to start college in the fall, and I came back during school breaks and in the summer. I was home.

My wonder at meeting Jan was akin to how Harold felt when he met Maude. She was older than my mother, with four children and a Russian husband who’d been Igor in his homeland, but was Harry to all of us. They’d been beatniks in San Francisco, the real thing, and had fled when Ronald Reagan became governor of California. They settled in Cannon Beach, a small sleepy haven made up of people who’d been raised there and the assorted artists, writers, and other riff-raff that come to small beachside towns escaping something. Meeting her, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Alive.

Jan taught me how to cook a big meal in the midst of chaos, the magic of fresh and local produce, the value of a raging and laughing debate over dinner, and how to always cook more than you need in case a hungry artist suddenly stops by. She taught me the value of having a home where friends feel welcomed and where the art of the spontaneous party is constantly being improved upon.

Living with Jan I learned the movement of the tides ,when to go out digging for clams and where to find the hand-blown glass floats the Japanese current brings in. Over the sink there was always some cuttings taking root, and nature never stopped at her doorway. Her house was full of art, books, garage sale treasures, rocks, feathers, shells, and other assorted found objects. At any point in time at least one room was torn apart in some kind of long-term remodeling project, and evenings were just as likely to end up with a living room of people dancing wildly to a record of African or Cuban drumming as end up with a dinner party taking crowbars to the tiles in the bathroom.

Jan died of congestive heart failure a few days ago. I am flying to Portland on Friday and driving out to Cannon Beach for the weekend. I left a message for her daughter Teter this morning saying that I would help with the memorial if she wanted me to. She called an hour or so later saying she had just listened to the message after deciding with her brothers that they needed help coming up with a ceremony. She laughed, saying how wonderful it was to hear my message and know we are all on the same page.

We are. Jan is gone, but her star shines brightly. Dying at Lammas seems right and fitting for this force of nature I was blessed to know. There are so many incredible friends and family members that have been part of the constellation of my life, that shine on and through me. Some, like Jan, are dead. Some I have lost contact with, or moved out of my life for a myriad of reasons. But still, how they shine! We are made up of our relationships to other beings - out of the same carbon as stars. Soon I will be in Cannon Beach, saying good-bye to Jan, and toasting to her memory with people I haven't seen in decades. You bet I will be looking to the night sky while I am there. We shine, especially in the darkest of times. Oh, how we shine!

Portal into Gratitude: For Me, It's Gnome and Strawberries

I've been spending a lot of time on my rooftop garden. For me, it's the best place to get quiet and to listen. And to pray. For many years, as a witch, I felt funny using the "P" word. But praying is something I've always done. Doesn't everybody who has any sort of a relationship to the Divine pray? How could you not? Annie Lamott says there are essentially two kind of prayers; "Help me, Help me" and "Thank you, Thank you". I think there is actually a third, which is the blend of the two. This is the kind of praying I've been doing recently.

Gnome Chomsky has been a great addition to the garden and has become the Protector and Guardian of Strawberries. I think it has something to do with his red hat.

Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this beautiful poem.

Praying - by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

priestess of place

Things have been moving around in my house, so of course, things are moving around in me. Over the past years, I’ve come to accept that a core part of my priestessing is tending to this house built right before the turn of the last century. This means being actively involved with listening to it.

The bones of the house come from what use to be ancient redwood forests to the North, and as a youth, the house survived the 1906 earthquake and the fires that raged for days. Sometime in the 1920’s the second floor was lifted from the first floor and another flat inserted like sandwich filling and a stucco front was slapped on over the wood in front.

In the backyard there is the original stable, which was emptied last weekend of over a hundred years of assorted junk. Empty of the stuff, the spirits of the house have stretched out and there is a pleasant spaciousness to the energy here. For the first time, I can recognize the old wallpaper that was put in on the walls of the hayloft, and the particulars of the old workbench that must have been built sometime in the 1930’s in the area that a horse use to occupy.

My bond with this house has been as deep and as confounding as just about any other intimate relationship. Like good ones, it holds me in a loving way while also challenging me and making me think. In it, I find the reflection of myself, in both shadow and light. Sometimes it takes me months to figure out what it’s saying to me, or what it wants. But, relentlessly, it keeps on communicating. The house both demands that history be honored and that change keeps occurring. Juggling the two is a lifetime endeavor, one the house has made me more adept at. There are spirits and ghosts with more tenants’ rights than a Berkeleyite , that will be here long past myself, and there are those the house wants tossed out. Listening to the house, I’ve learned to differentiate between the two.

The stable is cleared out, some furniture is being let go of, even more of it is being rearranged, and this weekend I will be culling thru my many books. Space is being made. This moving of things is mirrored in my jumbled feelings right now, a general sense of things being not quite sorted out, a disarray that promises to result in new perspective on things.

During this time, I'm finding comfort on my rooftop garden amongst the ripening strawberries and peas. It's here that the simple sight of a ladybug on a rose leaf brings joy. It’s here that the house tells me everything is really alright, that letting go eventually leads to letting in, and that despite the turmoil and work of change, I've actually never been happier. Could that possibly be true of you, old house? I think it is.

Coming Back

Oh, my. I’m still recovering from my visit to New Orleans with my girlfriend, my son and his best friend. I went to priestess my sister’s wedding. It was one of those long weekends which seem to stretch for weeks. We left late on a Thursday, coming back on Monday. How could so much have happened?

My girlfriend was able to blog about it right away, but I’m still processing it. There’s so much to say, and no words seem really right to express it. I loved New Orleans the first time I laid eyes upon her. It was on that trip that I understood how the elements are embodied in our great cities. The four directions and their elemental correspondences play out in our nation’s landscape and our cities serve as great Guardians of the Directions. New York in the east has the power of intellect, with Air holding reign there. Chicago, that mighty meatpacking city in the north, holds the power of Earth. On the west coast, Water rules the city of dreamers that is San Francisco. And in the south, in New Orleans, sex and death are always dancing a hot tango, paying tribute to Fire’s power.

With Hurricane Katrina, I worried that the spark of this great city might be forever dampened. Returning, I was immediately struck by all the signs on restaurants, hotels, and other business’s which stated “WE’RE BACK!” I live in a city that came back too, that rose from similar devastation. New Orleans, city of Fire, was devastated by Water, as a result of levees breaking in the great hurricane. San Francisco, city of Water, was ruined by the Fire as result of the great earthquake of 1906. Both cities are psychic ports, places that people feel compelled to come back to, places that demand to be rebuilt and populated.

We chocked a lot into the few days we were there, including a harrowing ride thru the lower 9^th Ward. Seeing the X's painted on the houses reminded me of all the X’s I had seen the last time I was in New Orleans. These were the X’s scratched and painted on Marie Leveau’s tomb, a Vodoun sign of respect for this great priestess. The X’s that now predominate in New Orleans are the X’s done by rescue workers on the ruined homes. In the upper middle quadrant of the X is the date the house was gotten to, most which happened a good week or two after the storm hit. In the bottom section of the X there is a number. This is the number of dead who were found. Too many X’s remain on houses that are not rebuilt. And way too many have numbers in that lower quadrant.

Seeing what we saw, including the poverty that has existed well before Katrina, made this ride difficult, but one I’m glad my son, his friend, and cousins bore witness to. My cousin having a full blown seizure in the midst of it made the ride truly surreal. “Don’t stop here!”, one of the kids implored, and luckily the seizure stopped and we drove on. Don’t stop here. Isn’t that the incantation so many of us utter when storms approach or we are journeying thru dangerous territory?

My sister and her new husband are people who have had storms blow apart their lives, who have had death stop at their door and take people they loved. The epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was practically underneath her house in the Santa Cruz mountains. It took her months to rebuild. Like New Orleans, she and her groom come back from disaster and heartbreak full of lust for life, ready to party into the night and wake the next day laughing about it. Officiating at their wedding was some of the best magic I’ve done in years. Minutes before the wedding started, the manager of the hotel told me about her own wedding. It was the night before Katrina hit, when she was focused on nothing but the ceremony and irritated by the photographer and caterers wanting it to end early so they could evacuate. As I officiated, I saw her beaming from the back of the courtyard, her tears being testimony to love’s ability to keep us afloat in dark waters.

I’m back now in my city of dreams, one that the seismologists predict will see another great quake in the next decades to come. This weekend there were house parties and concerts all over the globe to raise awareness about climate change. I know there will be many more catastrophes and disasters of all types in this lifetime, some I may personally experience, and one I may even die in. There will be unkindness, selfishness, and even cruelty. And yet, there also will be resilience, and people reaching a hand out to help. How can we not marvel on how great cities and regular people come back, again and again and again?