ALL THE WORDS

I have had ALL THE WORDS lately. It's been sort of awkward.  I go from not having words, to having so many that it overwhelms me and is possibly sort of overwhelming to be on the receiving end of.  I'm writing everywhere. Here, my old blog, my journal, a reflection practice, a gratitude practice, a side-project I'm working on, a couple paper and pen journals...

The need to prioritize all the words, so that I convey the most important information first, so I convey only what is necessary because there is not time for it all, is hard -- I don't always know what the most important things are until after I've started emptying my teacup.  My teapot is spilling all over the floor -- no mere teacup can hold it.  Again I hear the echoes of any number of people -- 'you're too much!  What am I going to do with/about you?'

I need to learn to step into and own my multitudes.  If I am to be too much, then accept my bigness and don't try to cut me down into something manageable for your tiny minds!  I AM LARGE, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES.  And yet... and yet, I don't wish to overwhelm.   It is a conundrum, no?

“Trust me, I'm telling you stories. ... I can change the story. I am the story.” ― Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

The End of the World

At the end of November, I am doing the End of the World event with the Wyrd Sisters. "Workshops on storytelling and the Tarot will be part of the festival experience." I received an email yesterday saying,

To start getting ready, if you so desire, in your meditations start contemplating the world’s end and (optionally) rebeginning. Contemplate legends and myths about the beginning and end of the world, and how those relate to your life. What are your own stories around the end of the world?

Worlds are ending and beginning every day right now, new æons beginning.  Each death brings with it the realization that each day brings the need to define a new "normal" -- and with quiet reflection of loss, there are some holes that simply can't be filled.  Space. New space to breath into.  And even the universes collide, the spiral dance twists in on itself, then out again.

Redefinition of self, no longer the hot destructive flame of burn out, but the long slow simmer of transformation, picking things one or two at a time from the crucible of personal alchemy and examining it -- is it part of the crucible, or is it part of the stuff the crucible contains?  What happens at the end of the world, which world?  Am I the container? Is the world the container? Or is the world the stuff in the container?  Does the crucible itself come to an end?

Abide - dissolve - continue.  

Calcinate - dissolve - separate - conjunct - ferment - distill - coagulate.

Teacher, in compassion, bless me. Bless me that I may cut the illusory visions of the bardo. Bless me that I may reconnect to emptiness and awareness.

The end of the world is now. And now. And now. And now.  And the beginning of the world is now. And now. And now.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts to come.  This is just what I'm thinking about this morning...

Collecting My Thoughts

Aaaaaand Bast came and fetched her home. 19.5 years was a very good run. 

Her actual full name was Vespula Beltane, as we got her at 4 weeks, which would have made her birthday around May 1.  So it's fitting that she come in as a witchy kitty & go out seasonally appropriately as well. 

I did my closing ritual with her this morning and put Bast in the West (Athena was like, yeah, not my trip, man, it's cool), and just as I was finishing, the sky lightened, the clouds broke in the west and there was blue sky for a little bit. It went back to grey after a bit, but that was a nice way for her to be welcomed home.

As a physicist somewhere would remind us, her energy is not gone, just less well organized. I will miss that weird little cat glowering at me every night during my bath.  It's so so so quiet tonight without this tiny, deaf, half blind, senile old lady cat who ruled our pride for nearly 20 years yelling about something randomly.  So quiet.

And I am both tremendously relieved that she's gone and miss her tremendously.  It was time, but nearly 20 years is such a time marker.  I look back at pictures of when she was young, and we were so young.  A lot happens in 20 years.  Truly the end of an era.  

Thank you for blessing us, little cat.

The Grand Dame during better times.

Wilderness

This post on Wild Gods has been rattling around my brain-cage since I read it. The last paragraphs resonate so so so strongly. Consider this a placeholder -- I have thoughts that are coagulating and coalescing but nothing structured enough to articulate coherently *quite* yet...

The whole point of wilderness is that it’s a place we don’t know, because we have never been there no matter how many times we enter the forest... wilderness is the way. Not knowing is the way. The act of seeking is the way. The way is not made for us, it simply is, and it is up to us to follow it or not.

Go read the whole article.

The wilderness can be not only 'out there' in the forest and woods and trees and desserts, but also 'welcome to the jungle' GnR style of the craziness of entering the polis like Gilgamesh too -- the place we don't know. I often feel somewhat feral, left too long to my own devices and the inside of my own head. The familiarities and abject dangers of "nature" equally wild as the cognitive dissonance it takes me, too often, to process the jungle of humanity.

Where does your wilderness lie?
Where does your way lie?

Observations

On a less personal and more observational note ~ So aside from being in the front row and a little bit nervous about that because the majority of the appropriate congregation ritual response was happening behind me, having a front row observation point for the (very Catholic) ceremony was really interesting from a theoretical perspective (brought up Lutheran, have identified as witch since the mid/late 80s).  Very hard, of course, from the personal perspective, I ended up sitting where it felt like the giant photo of my nephew at the front was looking right at me, which was very eery.  

But back to the theoreticals -- since we're talking about elements, in an effort to keep somewhat grounded, I was looking for how the elements appear in the ritual.  

Fire is obvious in the candles. And it being the Catholic church, of course they had the little place that probably has a name I don't know where you can light a candle.  Outside, there was a huge 'cave' with Mary, and there were candles you could light out there too.  M2 lit one out there, but was too nervous/teary eyed in the church to leave my side.  For context, this is all happening on the campus of a Jesuit university and everything that goes along with that.  So, there's fire.   

Fire and air mix with the charcoal and incense.  So, counting that as air, but the church was ginormous, so it also had a very airy feeling generally.  Lots of space.

Water too was relatively easy to find, in the water shaker thing, that probably has a name I don't know, as well as the holy water at the back of the church, baptismal font, etc.  

Earth stumped me for a bit, but then I saw all kinds of earth.  Marble, flowers (so many flowers)... Not so much "earthy" earth stuff as solid forms.  The altar was very solid appearing.  The architecture was very solid around the edges.  So that was a fascinating exercise. 

The priest did a good job of recognizing that there were a lot of non-Catholics present and explaining parts of the ceremony in a way that was both informative but that melded beautifully with the service itself. He did a really nice job of 'here is why and how we do this' providing context and meaning to something that might have been otherwise empty ritual.  "In the Catholic funerary tradition we bless the remains because all humans are special and sacred in God's eyes," etc. 

There is a deep deep beauty about much of it, but the layers of patriarchy & 'you are sinful and you should feel really really bad about it' that are present almost overwhelms any of the potential for joy around the life everlasting, the generosity of willing sacrifice and love, and the grace and appreciation of having those sins absolved.  It's quite a conflict to hold in oneself.  Two such disparate spaces to maintain -- 'I am not good enough, but I am so deeply loved that... I'm good enough'?   And perhaps that's a fundamentally necessary part of the mystery component of the personal gnosis of the Christian faith, the transformative core.  

I will likely be an observer of the Christian church for the rest of my life as the dominant religious paradigm of the larger social networks within which I live.  I cannot subscribe to the faith in good faith for more reasons than I wish to go into here.  I feel like my thoughts here are being left unresolved, like I should have a summary about what it means to be observing these things from the outside.  But I don't have the words to articulate it right now. Perhaps another time.

....

Perhaps it is this:  our challenge as spiritual people, whatever our non/denomonation, whatever our personal and community practice is, our challenge as priest/ess/ex (or dedicant, or aspirant), is to identify what is good, what is right, what is beautiful and with care and love incorporate the *essence* of what works (care and love preclude inappropriate appropriation -- the difference as the Dali Lama notes is that you *pick* a flower you like, you *water* a flower you love.  Just because you like something doesn't mean it's yours to practice...).  It may be beyond my capability to articulate this message of inclusion of The Good, while making clear the boundaries where Good becomes Bad -- but they're there.  There is a deep spiritual yearning, and it is the role of the priest/ess/ex to help guide people to and through that yearning.  

Loss & Grief

My nephew (husband's side of the family) committed suicide a week ago.  Almost 24 years to the date my aunt (my side of the family) did the same.

Here is what I'm thinking right now around things relevant to this particular blog.  

I think memorials and setting aside time for grieving with family and friends (blood, chosen, or otherwise) is critical for recognizing grief, celebrating a life even if it was too short, and processing loss.  

And I think it's important for our kids as I... I want them to see and experience the rip in the fabric of the universe that a suicide leaves as a preventive measure.  You never take that lightly again after you've seen a shattered community after something like this.  As much as I hate that this is a real thing that has happened, goddamn it, I think we should absorb the result as much as humanly possible and make the repercussions and difficulties of coping as human as possible because to do otherwise is to deny the full experience of the pain of losing someone in such an untimely way.  It's ok to show that this is difficult because it *is* fucking difficult.  And to see people appropriately grieving in the different ways that people grieve is also important.  It takes many forms and each person experiences it differently and that's also ok. 

I want them to understand that healing begins with us all coming together to alleviate the alone-ness: of what we feel in the moment of hearing the news. Of what he must have felt to not be able to reach out and find the help he needed.  Of the hole left in the universe where he used to be. 

I know our oldest has had some exposure to suicide by students attending her school in the last couple years, but this is new for our youngest and... to see and grieve and understand the repercussions to family and community and for them both to tell people they love that they love them and to hear that back and to take part in some of the only shared rituals that happen in this mostly secular society and a family that doesn't share ritual space often is...  It's really important.  It's part of what it means to be a part of a community, to have a connection to people.  You take part in the rituals that mark passage of both time and life both joyous and devastating.

-----------------------------

And so, for those reading along, say it out loud, right now:

"I promise to seek and find help if I feel like dying or killing myself.  I will find resources that bring me back from the brink, no matter how awkward it feels.  I will call one of these numbers:

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline -- 1 (800) 273-8255
• Hopeline -- 1 (800) SUICIDE
•  Trans Lifeline -- US: (877) 565-8860 Canada: (877) 330-6366
•  My therapist
•  *A* therapist
•  My spiritual/pastoral advisor or other resource 
• Or any number of other resources, even if I have to Google them."

*Yes, I do not have comments open on this one. I appreciate your thoughts and prayers at this time, but for my own self-care, recognize I don't  feel like I can appropriately respond here at this time. Thanks for your understanding.

Traveling Reflections

So, trying to process what just happened, as well as intermittent quiet moments on the bus thoughts, as well as tomorrow's re-entry to work world.  I feel like I need a 2-3 month sabbatical to get my thoughts and life sorted out.  
I'm back from Ireland.  We did a Rick Steves tour around the island. It hit so much, and there seemed to be more and more packed into each day until at the end, there was sometimes three or four days worth of things to do packed into a single day.  It was good, but somewhat intense.  E.g., Giant's Causeway, Bushmills, Carrick-A-Rede ropebridge, *and* Dunluce Castle all in one day?  And then there were days where we only did a few things (stop by Yeats' grave, walking tour of Derry's medieval wall & brief explanation of Northern Irelands "Troubles" OR the day we did both Titanic and had a quick drive past the "peace" wall in Belfast and through those areas), but which demanded more processing and reflection.  

Things that stand out in reflection -- 

• How close all the buildings are together.  And how close all the graves are too.  Sometimes things seem to be practically on top of each other, they're so close together.  
• How rocky and desolate the western part is.  There are places where people were building stone walls, just to put the rocks somewhere so they can clear some useful space.  And yet -- not lifeless-- there is life in those cracks.  In the Burren, in the grikes, the cracks between the rocks, there are plants happily growing away.  What at first glance seems to be totally barren, supports all kinds of life. It stretches so far that as you drive through, it's easy to forget that it isn't all rock and rock fences, so it's a bit of a surprise when it starts ending and hedgerows start appearing again.  
• And how the green is so green after the grey of the limestone.
• That people are ingenious in their ability & drive to find solutions that will allow them to live.  That they are likewise so ruthless in their drive to overcome both nature and people who might stand in their way in both the name of survival as well as in the name of ideology.
• ...

So much more to contemplate.  I went, sort of secretly hoping for an obvious message bringing clarity to come to me. I was so immersed in the ingestion of everything new and very close quarters (and little time for reflection) that openings for receiving clarifications and direction were not as available as I had hoped.  Still in the quieter moments, things did come through.  

I feel as though I have been on the brink of needed change for some time.  It is still unclear to me as to the nature of this change except that it concerns the need to find a way to be comfortable in my skin, a sense of economy of effort, at work.  My stress and focus is so high around my present way of being in relation to the work I do, that it cannot be sustained.  My ratio of effort to outcome is way too high.  And although on the surface, it may appear to be "the perfect job for me", I have a growing sense that it is not a good fit.  The complications start, as they do, when I try to identify what 'better fit' looks like.  

I (mostly) felt in my skin with a balanced economy of effort on vacation.  There were, of course, moments of tension, but five introverts living in close proximity will tend to generate some of that with the days going as they did. All things considered, it was remarkably smooth. 

How to keep beginner's mind, while assuming the mantle of authority?  How to create space for reflection and consideration in the face of immediacy?  How to accurately name and acknowledge emerging issues in such a way that they can be resolved without adding additional layers of complexity?  How many more questions in my head?

If I could make a living for a while with spinning & weaving, I would.  Alas, that math has not been conducive given my relatively slow pace of production (although ritual cord spun according to astrological and other specifications, with specific intent during the spinning, plying, and potential coloring? Prayer shawls woven similarly? Is an entertaining idea to consider on occasion).  But that's neither here nor there.   

Cannot process all things today... but looking for something that I can grasp as I return to the world of routine that has been less than optimal.   For today I take these things:

• Economy of effort.  Do not burn too hot, little fire, burn steady. 
• *Make* space for reflection and consideration, even in the face of immediacy.  
• Ask the beginner questions.  Beginner's mind is to be treasured.