Elements of Style

j/k. If you're looking for Strunk and White, this is not that. At all.

The last class was about The Elements.  I love working with the elements.  We got our rain chains hung in time for the first good rainy day of the fall.  I love listening to the rain on the roof -- I miss it all summer.

I have been burning hot at work.  So much going on.  Today is 'development day' -- I will eventually settle into some work focused skills.  Or not as it turns out.

I need to find my ground again, time has been running away with me!

Refocus and direct my air qualities too.

All the directions and all the elements need balance.  Yes.  Yes, they do.

Such a haphazard post today.  As has life been lately...

Things I Can't Put Elsewhere

Recruitment coffee date to a place of employment other than my own presently, via a friend that works there -- she gave them my personal gmail rather than my professionalname@gmail account.  Very weird to be getting and managing a potential recruitment via the personal account!

Will be interesting to talk with them. I fit in a position that's half of one they have open, and half of a different one they have open.  My skills are super solid in the areas where I fit, but they'd still need folks to cover the other areas.  We'll see.  It's just coffee to gather more info about what exactly it is they're looking for to start with...

Pocket Full of Posie...

Work friend couldn't go out on our scheduled walk today.  She twisted her knee funny coming down the stairs to see me.  So I went out on the scheduled walk by my lonesome.  There's an old feral herb garden along the path.  I decided that since she couldn't go out for a walk in the nice day, a tiny bit of the nice day needed to come into her.  Her little sweet daughter is away at camp right now & she misses her terribly.  Work has been... uninspiring, to say the least... lately for both of us.

So I made her a little posie bouquet with chamomile for calming, mint & rosemary for invigoration to get through the day, and a wild rose to remember that there are beautiful things just outside when we leave work behind for the day.

Ephemeral Darkness

The other evening at dusk, P & I took a walk.  As we walked, we talked about being out in the woods.  I miss having woods that were relatively safe at night (at least with other people, I never venture out alone night or day into the woods, outside of one place and that place may as well be Avalon now for all its accessibility to me).  It was almost a  perfect half moon.

I used to have a group of friends in college, we'd walk through the woods to the beach on full moons... and occasionally new moons.  In retrospect, I'd say it might have been a mile as the crow flies?  Longer as the trails wend.  Full moons were easy -- the path/s so bright and easy to find, with a few densely wooded areas within the woods that were trickier.  New moon was easy -- if you knew what you were doing and how to walk in the dark night.  For me it's easy.  Look up to see where the trees part to help clarify the path.  Feel with my feet, the edges of a wooded path turn up slightly at the edges.  Stay in the middle, and you stay out of the bushes.  Edges of puddles start getting squishy a little further out than one might notice when just eyes are providing the information.

Walking down the last part to the beach was the tricky part for folks not accustomed to walking in the dark.  It was a downhill stretch with a hair pin or two, with roots jutting out from all the trees around.  As I felt the roots, with small, low, careful steps, I'd call them out.  There were a few stumbles, but no one ever fell.  And then we were there, on the beach.  The beach doing its beach thing.  In the dark.

Only once I walked folks out to the organic farm instead of the beach, maybe a mile, the path was fairly direct -- I didn't go out there via the woods very often, and had only been out there a couple of times generally.  I figured the same principles applied as when I walked to the beach though, and stepping carefully, watching the "path" in the trees, and feeling the edges of the path with my feet.  We easily made it out there & back.  As always.

I never really understood why it was a big deal to be able to walk in the dark, it seemed like such common sense to me.  Eventually I came to understand that what made sense to me was because I had learned it -- where I could walk alone safely in the woods.  I would walk way out by myself at night, stepping up against the bushes, rarely seen by those with the flashlights and the lanterns, except occasionally on full moon nights when my pale skin glowed too bright and I didn't cover enough.  This no doubt is a strong influence on my inclination to wear dark colors as well, generally. In the dark, I can always pull up my sleeve, bare my belly, or look up from under my hood -- if I need to be seen.

Even on bright nights, there were people who never ventured out without their flashlights/lanterns.  But there were also always the stories of people missing each other or "hiding" along paths, so it's not like folks didn't know it was possible... or maybe they just were better about remembering their flashlights/lanterns/having batteries/kerosene than I ever was.  Once or twice on the college walks, with just one or two people, I pulled them into a spot just far enough off the path that another more boisterous party passed without seeing us.  They were fairly astounded that it had worked.

I always preferred the dark though, the near invisibility it brought me, allowing me to slide from place to place, choosing when to be seen, when to interact and be social, and when to continue on my way unperceived, often lost in my own thoughts, or just preferring to allow the introvert some peace and recovery.  This is how I came to understand The Dark as an old and deeply comforting friend.

More Thoughts on Priest/ess & Witch

OH!  These things so much!

priest/ess 5: priest/ess at large by Yeshe Rabbit
Premonitions of Melissa on the Wild Hunt by Alley Valkyrie

To be honest, I would have put those things in category witch, for myself, but if others perceive these things as priest/ess 'at large' or other priest/ess work, I can certainly roll with that.

Perhaps it is that 'witch' is what I practice, priest/ess is in the how I express that practice.  It's definitely an 'at large' situation, and most people don't recognize it as it's happening.  When The Rainbow Lady was still alive, she approached my husband, me, and a very young M1 in the co-op my husband would soon run and told us we had a very special child and asked to bless her right there in the store.  Of course she could!  The Rainbow Lady, after all!  I suppose that's her acting as priest/ess for us.  Many people talk to me about the things they can't tell their families -- the grocery store cashier who tells me about the dolphin tattoo she wants because of the deep spiritual resonance she feels with them, but her family is super evangelical Christian and she could never do it and she doesn't know why she just shared that with me.  The people who sense the librarian, 'ready reference' source of knowledge who ask me where things are, how to get places, etc.  Librarians joke that it's a librarian thing, but we're all sort of priest/esses of access to knowledge -- people know we either know the answer or can find the answer, and as a service role, that we are near compelled to provide assistance by our nature.

The birds either tell me things, or bring me the intuition I need to interpret things, often via crow, raven, robin, or hummingbird.  The plentiful finches & jays, sparrows & swallows tend not to for whatever reason.  The last thing the crows brought me was impending news that N would not survive.  One flew up close and landed on a nearby perch while I was out in the hammock, looked at me, croaked, nodded, and I knew.  Sometimes the bees share as well, but mostly they bring me calm.

I suppose I should tell P at some point that his bff's father (and P's cousin) stopped by a day or two after he crossed over, in the middle of the night, to see where P ended up living.  I was putting the old lady cat food away, stepped into the dark kitchen and could see him out in the street, smoking a cigarette.  The silhouette was unmistakable, the logger boots, & everything.  Just standing, smoking, looking at the house, I could sense the wry, quiet grin he had when he was content that things were right.  I suppose it could have been someone else, but...  I suppose I haven't told this story because I don't really do 'ghosts', but in the moment, it was so clear.

I have helped a lot of kids learn to respect nettles (and thistles too, but this is the nettle story) -- "THEY HURT ME!" (thwacking away at the nettles with a stick). "You must be gentle with nettles, they are asking you to respect them, they are very good for you! -- look, I can pet them and they don't hurt me!"  "How!?"  "Gently, across the leaf with your finger tips, like you're petting a cat ever so softly!  Try it!"  "Noooo!  O-okay... oh!"  "They'll still demand your respect, but if you recognize them and treat them with respect, you'll get stung much less!"  I'm rarely stung by nettles now, even when I accidentally brush against them.

Many other examples, but these sorts of things are part and parcel of the way I explore and experience existence.  How I interact within the world.  So many things to revisit, restore, reclaim, remember.

Intention v. Motivation

Have been thinking a lot about the two lately, as gyro teacher updates on Orcas draws near, and as yet another year has passed and I have done no classes since last year, and not gone to Florida to get my certification taken care of.

As I was on my way to class yesterday -- to take, not teach, obviously -- it dawned on me that often I have plenty of motivation to do things, but I don't always have a clear intention that guides that motivation.  I know my motivation behind doing the teacher training:  I like learning, and  I like moving at a deep level, and I like sharing learning, and hearing what other folks who are learning and moving deep are learning/experiencing.  I have great motivation!  Curiosity!  But what I am doing, what I want to do, what I am going to do with all that once the motivation has carried me for a while, what my intention is in getting teacher training is... not clear.  I don't have the kind of space I would need in my head to take on teaching classes, much less realistically in my schedule.  So... curiosity is driving, and I guess my intention is simply the exploration and sharing of that curiosity.

I have been thinking of doing a 40 day yoga practice (might go longer, might not), and I've been procrastinating starting it.  Too tired or too many potential interruptions or am/can I mix in gyro & PT (yes, of course I can!) or lazy don't wannas or can't find something I want to do/or plan out a little ahead... Silliness.  But there it is.  In this case, I have intention, but not motivation.  Well, I even have motivation, it's just not yet sufficiently compelling, apparently.

Things will eventually sort themselves out. Or not.

Various Thoughts on Homework Questions

1.) Coven size -- benefits of a large coven is that the likelihood that you'll have enough people to make for a nice sized gathering for any particular even is better.  Also, folks can break into smaller 'affinity' groups for the smaller group experience (men/women, folks interested in specific areas, etc).  In my experience, a certain number of people are required to get and maintain a certain level of community momentum as well.  Drawbacks can be that it's more difficult to get to know everyone (sometimes even find conflicts with some).  With really huge groups, there is the possibility of getting lost in the crowd as well.

2.)  Jaina Bee and I have been friends since we were 16 and I'd been following along with her process here and elsewhere.  For a long time, this aspect of my life had slipped under.  We moved into new space and it's... there's a lot going on here, and I started feeling like it was time to dig out.  I was sort of mucking through a reintroduction, having lots of thoughts and questions, and when Jaina said, "hey, we're going to give distance aspirant a try", it seemed like the perfect thing to give the digging out a sense of focus and process.  Honestly, the distance  piece was a big piece of the draw for me.  Between kids and work, I haven't got a lot of social energy or going out and doing things space, but I'm a night owl and tend to find that when I have space for thinking and through stuff is after most reasonable people are asleep.  Also, initial forays into not nearly as well established attempts similarly made me think perhaps I would like to keep the 'safety net' of interaction online, at least initially.  Now I sort of wish y'all lived a lot nearer, but I like feeling connected to people all over the place too, so it's all good.  :)

3.)  I schedule my time commitments as soon as have confirmation, and often significantly ahead of that if I think something might be coming up.  Two kids with school events and swim team makes this imperative.  I am pretty rigid about keeping scheduled events -- I flex my weekly gyrokinesis class  once or more a month in part because I have teacher training and can (and should more regularly) do it on my own, and in order to fit CAYA in, that's the only way it was going to happen.  In the absence of pretty compelling reason, I will be where I say I'm going to be, if it makes it on to my calendar though.

4.)  Ritual -- Chrystal mentioned as part of ritual a potlatch that we both experienced at different times.  Potlatch in the big house was SUCH a formative experience for me. And listening to Bill and Carla and Karen's stories around the campfire, and the big canoes. I miss them all so much. Jaina and I bonded at sixteen on the Indian canoe trip, the canoe that was taken out by the ancient madrona branch a few years ago. I still sing a mangled version of either a canoeing song or it might be a lullaby that Karen taught us. Such a tremendous honor that Bill was given these dances to share with us all. Such an amazing experience.   I watched on the sidelines from 10-16, then participated in a couple when I was older.  Cedar burning still triggers really strong, good memories for me.  Deep soul food.  And the art of the coastal tribes too.  But ritual.  That was a huge summer ritual, between the dances, the canoes, the salmon baked traditionally staked up around pits of cedar bark.  There was the Sunday ritual of going to church (Lutheran) with my parents where I learned some sense of structured religious ritual, both in complex ritual, as well as how simple and stripped down the ritual could be and still be fairly profoundly meaningful.  Now I have my daily practice, parts done in the morning as soon as I'm coherent enough to remember where I am in the recitation and parts done in the evening as part of my getting ready for bed, cleaning off the day, sending love, best wishes and gratitude out, and checking in/grounding.  I do the Mothers of the New Time at full moon.  I clean and sweep with intent at new, and burn down the remains of candles that are too far gone for their candle holders in a big ceramic plant dish.  Sometimes I plan rituals, sometimes they happen spontaneously.  Sometimes daily acts (cooking, cleaning, etc) are ritual acts, and sometimes they're just getting stuff done...  Ritual is such a state of mind thing -- it sometimes seems anything in the right mind set can be ritual.