There are some things I have always struggled with. Insecurity and self doubt. Feeling trapped by inhibition. Stage fright. Asking for help. There are plenty more. But all of these are tied together some for me. They're all things I am exploring and working on together.
Delving into shamanism touches on these things. In my insecurty and self doubt I've blocked my own path down this road ever since rounding the metaphorical corner in the motorhome and seeing the starting point of the path. But now I'm walking it. Footsteps short and slow, but a start.
Wen we went to the drum making event I made one large and loud. I painted Wolf on it in the center. No more could I drum quietly at drum circle and avoid notice. Even the act of painting it was a committed step forward. It would not be just another anonymous drum. It would stand out and not hide. People might be more likely to ask questions when they saw it. There would be no easy avoiding that.
Amy's mom died almost thirteen years ago. There was no formal funeral or ceremony. Mari wanted a pizza party as a not-quite wake. Amy got left in charge of it. Everything was a chaotic rush. There wasn't time then for mourning, let alone closure of any kind.
Almost thirteen years and Amy hadn't had the chance to let go. Just recently we saw a reason and a chance to do just that, and we seized it.
Except for in the motorhome, we've had Mari's ashes with us in the jar Amy made. Finally Amy was ready to spread them and let go and finally say goodbye. She asked me to put together a little ceremony.
We knew it was going to need a little more help, which Michael Seuss of Drumming For Peace happily provided when I asked him.
We got there and found the right spot, a nice big oak tree. I was nervous as hell. It was a small audience, but it was such an important thing. Shamans are healers, and Amy and Mari both needed healing. So I took a deep breath. I spoke loudly into the cold air of the falling wintery night. I spoke while drumming, something I had never done before. I had worried about whether I'd really be able to do both at once.
The words came less easily than I had hoped. But I did know them, and they came. There was more punctuation than strictly necesseary. Periods. In place of commas. But my voice did not shake. Or falter. I spoke clearly. With conviction. And intent. I pushed through nervousness and self doubt. Through inhibition and stage fright. And it worked.
I knew Amy needed to be smudged while spreading the ashes. It was a releasing act, letting the rest of Mari's energy out, and the smudging was about letting positive, healing energy fill her back up. I also knew I needed to drum and do some other work at the same time, so that was why I had asked Micheal to do the smudging for me.
The ashes went around the tree more than once. They ended up drawing overlaid lines that reminded me of the puzzle rings Mari and Amy had enjoyed together. An extra little reminder, perhaps, that we're all connected--we are all intertwined.
So yesterday was day one of the Core Shamanism workshop. We went over basic techniques and theory, and did a series of guided and individual journeys.
Is the landscape the realm of a spirit world? Is it a place in my own imagination? It doesn't matter. The answers are just as real.
One exercise was to journey to find an answer for a partner's question. We partnered up with people we don't know. Since I didn't know any of them, that was not a great challenge. There were a couple of couples that came together.
My partner was having difficulty with it. She was starting to get it, but was having a hard time. Her question was what would help her get better at it.
I came back with a number of images and small scenes that had played out. They included her two children, her grandmother's home in Lithuania, recent changes in her son's behavior, her own confusion about her career, and ended with a long needle--she's studying accupuncture, it turns out. She told me what the individual images meant, and I helped her put them together. She needed to use the journeying to help mend people, including her relationship with her children.
The images I came back with would be utterly meaningless to anyon else. I certainly didn't know what they meant until she explained them. But they were part of her answer. I described elements that were exactly right.
The small, square cottage with the garden in the back. The open well with the pitched roof over it and the crank handle to haul up the bucket. -- She had taken her daughter to visit her grandmother's little cottage, complete with garden and well as described. Other parts were equally vivid and no less true to her.
Every indiginous culture has had certain shamanic ideas and techniques in common. There are about 7000 distinct cultures in the world currently (some of them are very small, most are endangered), and about 70% of them are still shamanic in nature (pun only slightly intended).
In those cultures, the role of the shaman is part healer, part psychologist, part adviser, part spritual leader. They tell the hunters where to look for food. They help treat and heal the sick and injured. They dole out relationship advice, they interpret dreams. They take people out and help them navigate their paths through life.
Today we try to employ specialists to do those things. And maybe we listen to what those "experts" advise. But those experts are not partners with us. They are highly paid consultants. The shaman partners with his community. There is a subtle resurgence of shamanistic practices. Heck, the instructor for the course has gotten HMO coverage for shamanic work. He works part time at a hospital where his official title is Shamanic Specialist.
What might the world be like if people were a little more open, a little bit more community-oriented, and certainly more earth based?
[Comments are still disabled due to spam, by the way...]
Amy is letting me do something. [She had pointed it out in a newsletter I get. I argued for more than a month that we can't afford it. She all but demanded we find a way to pay for it. She's just about making me go...] Combining Father's Day and my coming (in a bit yet...) birthday, she's sending me go to the Foundation for Shamanic Study's Core Shamanism Basic Principles Workshop.
It's a weekend-long workshop on the basic concepts of Shamanism that aren't rooted in any specific culture. There are several aspects (drumming or rattling to induce altered states of consciousness, the Shamanic journey as a sort of vision quest, etc.) that are common to all indigenous forms of shamanism.
I think it's one of a couple of things I've been waiting for for a long time now. The other won't happen until fall at the soonest. There's probably other things I'm waiting for, but some of them I haven't figured out yet...
I post so infrequently now, I know. It isn't for lack of content. Partly it's lack of time. Partly lack of energy. Sometimes I find myself, shortly before bed, having a little bit of time to myself. All too often by that point, thought, I don't want to have to engage brain any more. So mindless Spider Solitaire for ten minutes or so is easier. There are a lot of things I haven't been getting done, not just blogging.
Earlier today we figured out how we want to celebrate the Solstice this year. The actual solstice is at 6:22pm on the 21st (Thursday). That's the point that the Earth's axis actually points the furthest from the sun.
As the sun appears lower in the sky, the sunlight passes through more atmosphere before reaching the ground, making it colder and creating winter. It also means that each night approaching the Solstice the sun sets a little earlier. Each night gets a little longer (with also each morning coming earlier).
In ancient times this scared primitive people big time. (If it keeps up like this, pretty soon there just won't be ANY day time and we'll all just die!). So ancient people held celebration festivals the night of the solstice, encouraging the sun to come back. Sure enough, days started getting longer. Whew. Of course, we understand things a little better now.
But lengthening days still mean summer will happen again one day. It'll get warmer, and we can plant things and play outside. That's still worth celebrating, right?
So, that brings us around to what does it all mean to us. Here's my half of it:
Thursday the 21st will be the shortest day of the year. That night the longest night of the year. Also kindof the end of one year and the start of the next. Sure, there's the whole January thing, but that's just an arbitrary date with no real meaning.
Our plan is to stay up all night through that longest night. Lots of drumming and happy celebration. We'll share some thoughts about the past year, make some goals for the new one. We'll watch that first sunrise of a new beginning, a new season, a new year. And then we'll feast. A breakfast feast. A new dawn.
Our Solstice is also about sharing with others. Maybe Amy and I will both share some unique personal tidbit on respective blogs. We're both going to go through our wardrobes and find the things we just aren't going to wear any more. Friday those items get donated. We'll help Jareth pick a toy he's done with. We'll donate that toy. He can share, and let someone else play with it. (We're definitely going to be involved in helping him make that decision! Leave it to our kid to try to want to share his favorite toy...)
Heck, staying up all night is just another 4-5 hours longer than normal, right? :-) We'll see if we make it, but the intent is there. With any luck, I can take the day off on Friday. Otherwise I'll at least be late (not to mention close to worthless at that point).
So that's the thinking for right now. I'll have to let Amy know I just posted this. Maybe she'll quickly put up her thoughts, since they won't be 100% the same as mine. And they shouldn't be, either.
Today marks the Summer Solstice. Today marks the first day of summer. The longest day of the year, the sun rises and sets as far north on the horizon as it gets, and gets the highest in the sky.
Summer Solstice was traditionally celebrated with bonfires. Part of the idea was to encourage the sun to stay warm and bright long enough to ensure a good harvest. It's a day to consolidate strength and clear out negativity. Not a day for making new goals, but for rededicating yourself to the ones you already have. It's a time to be joyful for the warmth and energy of life, yet mindful that the light starts waning at this point.
Appropriately enough, yesterday I talked to one of the guys I know at a rival dealership (who used to work there when I was hired). He told me about their pay scale which, unless he benefits somehow from lying about it, is much better than where I'm at. He's talking about leaving in the fall to go start a business with a friend of his (something in another field that fits his passions better anyway), leaving me potentially in prime position to take his spot.
Which means there are a couple of possible combination solutions: Get better at what I do (and possibly demand a raise in the process) and stay where I am, or get better at it and go to a place that'll pay better.
I have a reason to redouble my efforts. How much strength and energy and determination and commitment can I find within myself? These have not been strong points before, but I need things to change.
With the lightning outside, I have a hunch I should get this posted quick.
Happy summer!
(Warning, long post ahead...)
My dad and Amy are having an email discussion about holidays and what they mean to us. Part of it stems from preparation for the winter holidays. We've pretty much stopped with gift giving except for birthdays.
To me, at least, gift giving turns an otherwise happy holiday into a consumeristic stress fest. Does anybody enjoy shopping for Christmas gifts anymore? We've managed to do it a few times, and we're for a couple of years been at the point where watching others open was more fun than the actual opening. There's been a family tradition on my side to make wish lists. Since it was hard to really know people well, having a list to choose from made it easier to shop and know it's something the person wanted. On the other side, it kinda kills the idea of "it's the thought that counts."
When we decided to not do gifts anymore it was a huge weight lifted. With that also comes explaining to others that they shouldn't be going through that whole rigamorole (there's a word I seldom get to use...) with buying for us. All too often (especially with Jareth now) people overdid it. My parents have that tendency in particular.
So, anyway, to the topic at hand... So Amy and Dad are having this email discussion of sorts. Amy copies me on her main response. I think it's time for met to get some ideas down and out. We'll have to explain it all before too long anyway.
So here's some of my perspective:
The year is like a wheel. It goes around and around, and each time the same point comes up it's at another spot down the road. So it turns, but it's never the same. We divide the year into four seasons. There are four major points in the day: Dawn, Noon, Dusk, Midnight. Our lifespans can be broken similarly into four stages: Birth, childhood, adulthood, death. There are even four main phases of the moon...
Each of these are cycles that repeat all around us. Those cycles are an integral part of our experience this time around. So, with that in mind, a little on seasons:
Spring/Dawn/Birth
These are the times of beginnings. At birth we welcome a person into the world. We welcome dawn as the beginning of a new day. We welcome Spring as a season of new growth. Spring is the time to start things anew.
Summer/Noon/Childhood
These are times of growth and joy. Summer is vacations and picnics, childhood is a time for play.
Fall/Evening/Adulthood
These are times for winding down and reflecting. Fall is harvest time. Evening tends to be family time after work. Adulthood is reaping the benefits of a career, achieving the dreams of youth.
Winter/Midnight/Death
These are times of endings and changes. Much of nature rests during winter before waking up again in the spring. We sleep through the night, resting for the next day. And eventually we die and take some time to reflect before another trip around the wheel of life. In old times winter was a time to school children, a time to gather as a community and feast.
So the equinoxes and solstices are obvious things to celebrate. There are other cultural and seasonal holidays spread around the wheel, just as the four main compass directions can all be divided to make four more directions. There are a couple aside from the four seasonal ones. Thanksgiving, Halloween--two easy examples.
So while the Jews have their festival of light, and the Christians can celebrate Jesus, we honor the winter end of the cycle at Winter Solstice. It's the shortest day of the year and the longest night. It's a time to gather with family and share. It's a time to come together as a community, to bury grudges, and to purge physically and mentally to be able to start the new year fresh.
We plan on donating clothes and some other stuff we won't be using. When Jareth is bigger we're hoping to donate time by helping at places like local soup kitchens.
There will probably be more than just four holidays a year for us. We're still defining what they should be. But this is enough for tonight. Amy's home. :-)
This was one of those emails going around, but this one I like:
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door! He slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown.The angry driver then jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That's a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?" The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister...please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do," he pleaded. "I threw the brick because no one else would stop..."With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother, "he said. "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up."
Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me."
Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen hand kerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home.
It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door. He kept the dent there to remind him of this message: "Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention!"
Yep, meme time. Hey, I submitted the questions, I oughta answer 'em, eh?
Everything has a spirit, and to some degree they're all connected. Each human spirit (soul) is part of a group spirit that's basically the spirit of humanity. A cat has a spirit that's part of the greater Cat group soul/group consciousness. There was a group Ape consciousness, but humanity moved away from that and became something separate. The group spirit evolved, so the physical form adapted to follow.
Now, those group souls/group consciousness is part of a larger whole, which is basically the group consciousness of being. That's what I think of as "god".
Although I understand the idea of calling upon aspects of that group strength, and using names/"gods" to represent aspects of it, I've never felt the need to personify it. I don't see a divine divided into masculine and femine aspects. Masculine and feminine are qualities, not defining characteristics, and anyone/anything can show those qualities.
As the whole? Not in current memory. But in part? Yes.
While I was in Canada I felt and communed with the spirit of the river there (I was at a cabin on an island in a river). I very much felt as if we were both aware of each other, and there was a shared understanding that wasn't about communicating with words, almost more straight to the heart than that.
Sometimes I joke to people that I go to church every day, that everywhere outside is my church. Sometimes I'm not joking when I say it. When I've got a quiet moment outside I sit and listen. When I'm done, before I get up, I offer a silent thank you. I pray by appreciating it all, and not taking it for granted. I do it by remembering that I'm a part of it all, and it's all a part of me.
I'm reminded of a Native American saying I saw at the Elgin Public Museum yesterday (we were there for BubbleFest...):
We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.
Over at the Cauldron there's a discussion over at what point a person is dead.
My favorite answer:
I'm a fan of *the body as vehicle for the soul. When the vehicle no longer serves the driver, then its time to trade in, or (hopefully) trade up.
(Questions courtesy of Witches Weekly)
What are your thoughts on what happens after you die?
I believe we are all part of a larger spirit than we know right now. We manifest here to experience a physical world and to learn and grow and experience (Amy calls it "Learn, Grow, Be.). Afterwards, we regroup and review, seeing if we learned what we expected to. Then we decide what's next, and choose some of the starting conditions that'll lead to more. We need to experience both hurting and being hurt to really grasp forgiveness, for example. So I believe we choose our parents, for example.
Has this belief changed at some point in your life from a different theory? If so, how?
I was raised going to church, believing in Heaven. I never really bought into Hell, though. I couldn't reconcile a forgiving god who loves us unconditionally turning around and going for eternal punishment for screwing up.
Around high school I drifted towards the more "rational" scientific just nothing after death. But that was cold and not reassuring. It didn't help, in other words.
It was mostly during college that the current beliefs started forming.
Do you belief in any sort of karma and reincarnation?
Maybe not the conventional karma, but basically. To me, the concept of karma is more that whatever you do you're going to have to live with--forever. Somewhere along the line you'll eventually learn to forgive yourself for all the bad things. On top of that, at a higher level we're all connected. We're all part of a higher, unified whole. So what we do to others, what we do to the planet, we do to ourselves.
One of the coolest paragraphs I've read in a while, describing balance, taken from a Witches' Voice article:
Though we struggle to understand and accept them, grief, anger, and sorrow cannot be prevented. We are supposed to experience these emotions and learn from them, just as we learn from joy, love, and compassion. Pagans honor the concept of balance; envision the yin-yang: two entwining forms of contrast, each bearing a trace of its companion. Without grief we would not fully appreciate and cherish our happiness. Without the hope or remembrance of joy, sorrow would be unbearable to the spirit. Thus, even in the dark times, we know there is light - and we can be that light for those who are going through a time of darkness.
We were all curious how the year would start off at work. So many people had today off, but for us it was a normal day. Fully staffed. Well, except for three out sick. And one whose two-week vacation in Italy got...lengthened by a flight cancellation.
But still, relatively fully staffed. Today was either going to be slow because people were taking the day off or nasty because they'd be home to call on a product recall. It ended up bouncing back and forth between both.
And then I got my first caller of the year. And he was a self-centered asshole. Rude, yelling, interrupting every sentence. We get a lot of them. I get my share. My co-workers enjoy reading the particular way I document those calls. We all have our own style of documenting what gets discussed. Oh, to be able to blog some of them!
Fortunately, he didn't set the standard for the day. He was the only one for the day. I get three or four a week.
But earlier this evening I got to thinking about how arbitrary the new year feels to me. There doesn't really seem much unique about the day other than the spot on the calendar. I wondered whether I'd do a resolution or not. The pagan in me can see the magical significance of taking a special time of the year to make a commitment for the future.
But I think that New Year's isn't really the time for it. Winter isn't about new beginnings, is it? No, that's spring. Winter is more a time for cleaning out. For getting the mental and spiritual cobwebs out. And from a calendar perspective winter is still pretty fresh upon us.
So there will be a Resolution. I don't know what yet. But I know when: the spring equinox. Hey, I'm an ecclectic pagan, after all... so it's my path. Get your own. :-)
So yesterday was the Winter Solstice. Yuletime is here again. Last night I did the Christmas shopping for Amy. Fitting, I suppose. Things just fell into place for me. Traffic was light. I had a couple of ideas, but figured I'd stop at one place first to price check something. I wanted to see how expensive it would be before I probably discounted it.
Ah, but the rebate! In budget=bingo! That saved the really challenging hunting and guessing. One of the things I had been considering were some nice leather driving gloves. She has great-big "Muppet hands" gloves for warm, but not as much for nice to drive in. Last night after I got home I helped her find the thinner gloves she has, but they're just knit and won't stop wind. But I admitted to her that she almost got cool gloves.
So, I grabbed my find, waited in the tolerable line in a good mood. I actually left the store whistling a Christmas tune. I forget now which one it was. Shopping for stocking stuffers was fun and not too hard, although the selection on one item was poor.
But back to the subject.
Steph at Was it the Pagan Remark? posted an explanation of when the longest nights are.
December 20 to 21 will have 15:04 hours of darkness (sunset to sunrise) the 21-22 will also have 15:04 the 22-23 will have 15:03 hours but then 23-24 will be back up to 15:04 hours again24-25: 15:03
25-26: 15:04
26-27: 15:03
27-28: 15:02
28-29: 15:01
So, to clarify: The (winter) solstice is the point where the Earth's axis is tilted as far away from the sun as it gets. The sun stays at the southern end of its travel. The further north you live the more extreme the southeast to southwest travel across the sky. Mind you, those darkness times will vary some by location. Northern Alaska is seeing a lot more dark that that! But the idea's the same, okay?
So a couple of days after Christmas it starts getting lighter again. Seasonal Affective Disorder, anyone? Tell me we aren't all at least a little in tune to the cycles of the Earth, eh?
No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.
I have, however, been busy with the kinds of things that don't make for good blogging. Okay, I've been busy working. There hasn't been a lot of news I've heard that garnered the "Oh, I so have to blog that" response.
Work is... well, it is. It pays and doesn't suck. There's this wide gray area between good and suck. It's hard to measure. This job has a lot of aggravations, but it's still in that gray area, so it's tolerable.
I've had a second belligerant caller, and one guy who said he couldn't afford to wait ten weeks for the good gas valves. So he'll probably sell the defective, potentially dangerous ones to his customers before then. There's a caring guy for you. I noted what he said in his call record. If someone gets hurt it's on him.
I nearly had to blog an article about PETA protesting fishing as cruel. Um... yeah.
Now, don't get me wrong, I support compassion to animals, and disapprove of cruelty to them. But is it up to me to decide what experiences those animals need? No. In my belief system they chose that life and the experiences that come with it. They need those experiences to grow. In later lives they may be the people that campaign for animal and human rights. Maybe the people working with those animals need to see certain things to grow themselves.
On top of that, I have never been to any of those commercial food farms. I don't know first hand what conditions they live in, and I tend to doubt at least some of the alarmist claims. PETA in particular doesn't bear a lot of credibility with me.
Yes, I'm a pagan who eats meat. I have a leather jacket. And a suede coat. And leather boots. I have some vague ideas about just how many other things are made from animal products. I appreciate and am thankful for the things we get from animals. I believe that how we treat the world is how we treat ourselves. Some of that is the pantheist in me. We shape our own future by how we treat the world around us. There is good and there is bad. But you can't really appreciate one without the other. There has to be balance.
I'm reminded of a shirt I've seen.
People for the Eating of Tasty Animals
There's two new links in a new section on my side bar. Worthy Causes. These are places I'll be donating to when I've got the money. Actually, one of them I already do.
But they're all good causes, in my opinion. My blog, my opinions. That's fair.
So check them out, huh? They all at least warrant looking over. Maybe I can't send them money today, so free advertising is the best I can offer them right now.
Maybe later I'll post a bit about each one. Work hasn't been all that blog-worthy lately, which is really just fine with me. Samhain/Halloween is coming, so if I finish deciding exactly what it means to me I can share that, too.
There's a lot of Wiccan material out there for Samhain, and some acedemically historical information, and then there's the common information. But my own slant on life doesn't quite mesh up with the Wiccans, and even other pagan sources haven't quite had my slant on it. We'll see.
I wanted to leave a comment for Brain Crayons on her post The Uncomfortable Truth, but for some reason I get an error message every time. In the past I've had to have Amy post them for me, but she's asleep.
Here's what I wanted to say. Maybe she'll see it here.
Life is not too short. It's exactly the right length. It goes all the way to the end.I have to say that I think you need to reconsider your definitions of both making it and success.
There are no bad experiences. There are lessons in all of them. There are uncomfortable experiences, but that does not make them bad.
Beltain/Beltane/Beltaine is coming. May Eve and May Day mark, amongst other things, the final end of winter, and the arrival of summer.
Witchvox.com has a collection of essays about the holiday, as well as several links to more information. There's a lot out there, and I can't say I've read it all.
In (very) short, in days ancient mankind was not confident that the wheel of the seasons would keep turning without some pushing here and there. Beltain is at the opposite end of the wheel from Samhain/Halloween. So, while Samhain is a time to think of death and the dead, Beltain is a time of life and joy. Ancient people celebrated, danced, and lit fires to encourage the sun now that its journey across the sky was lengthening. It's a time of fertility, lovemaking, becoming engaged (to be married the following year if it goes well), of washing yourself and your life, and of blessings things (home, crops, gardens, etc.). A time of joy and gaiety
I'd love it If anyone who celebrates it (or has) would leave a comment about your experiences. If you'd like to read more, the Witches' Voice essays and links look like good places to start. The web is full of other sources…
My mind was racing this morning. Running thoughts, repeating music, all were busy things. I needed calm, centering. I finished my sandwich and grabbed my jacket to go for a walk outside during my lunch break. I needed outside air.
There is a hill near our office building. It's maybe ten or fifteen feet high, and provides lookout over some distance. Some times last summer I would sit on that hill and meditate to clear my mind. I realized that was what I had come out for, so that was where I went.
My left knee hurt a little, I noticed as I walked across the parking lot on my way there.
It was windy today, and the wind blew in my face as I sat and let myself reconnect with the earth beneath me. The wind brought me several gifts as I sat. For one, it carried away the chaos in my mind. It brought me the scent of dandelions, and with it a reminder. I remembered an article I had read once. In it, a man got tired of fighting to remove the dandelions from his yard. He decided to embrace them and planted them in his garden. He watered them and fed them, and treated them as well as he could. Yet try as he might, they kept dying.
I thought about wind. I thought about how it relates to the ego, about how both are invisible things, but both will remind you inexorably of their presence. Yet wind is also life. You can have the wind knocked out of you, and something can take your breath away.
And, sitting on the cool earth, with the warm sun on my face, the wind brought me a memory I too seldom remember to enjoy.
When I was younger, in junior high or late grade school, our neighbor had a small sail boat. It was maybe eight feet long. He took me out on it a few times in the little lake we lived near. There was nothing but happiness—the wind in our faces, the spray of the water, the laughter. When he died of melanoma, I got to keep using the boat for a while, before it developed a leak that never got repaired. I can remember one time balancing it on my little wagon to push to the lake, or maybe I was taking it back from the lake. But when I sailed that little fiberglass boat around, John was always with me, and the wind carried his gentle, patient laughter.
Today, as I started walking down off that hill, the wind brought me that laughter again, a little gift in return for the acknowledgement I had made on the hill. I spared the wind a moment of silent appreciation, my own little silent prayer, thanking it for just being. In return I was gifted with that reminder, but more. The wind healed my mood for the day, washing away the morning cynicism. Walking back across that same parking lot I realized that my knee no longer hurt.
Life does not always give you what you expect. But the best gifts are the ones not asked for.
Today is Oestra/Ostara/(and some other names, too), also known as the Spring Equinox. Religioustolerance.org has a good article about how the pagan spring festivals influenced modern Easter. That'll irk the Lambuel crowd.
Today is a day for renewals and new beginnings. Today should be the day we make new years resolutions. My own plans for the day are a bit subdued today. We have company, so driving off to a forest preserve isn't part of the plan.
Tonight is also the new moon, also generally a potent time for new beginnings. That makes today doubly potent, no?
But that leads me to what I think I wanted to remind people of. Every day is a new day, every day is a day of change. Every day we wake up a slightly different person than we were the day before. It's part of our nature—part of our experience—to label things, and to schedule things. We celebrate the anniversaries of things, and that lets us feel better about mostly forgetting those things throughout the year. We have a day to be thankful about things, and 364 days to take them for granted.
Look at the sheer number of resolutions that don't last through January. We don't commit to things on a daily basis. I'm just as guilty, and I can admit it. Commitment is hard for me, I've never been good at it. Almost seven years into a marriage and I can say I don't always fail, but Jareth is helping me on a daily basis. Commitment, and every day he reminds me. And at least once a day I think to myself, I'm a daddy! and make a silent promise to him.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that people make decisions all the time, I'll do this, I'll stop doing that. But simply making a declaration doesn't change anything. You have to be the thing you want to become. You have to own it.
"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."
That's my challenge for this year. Today I choose to begin committing myself to it on a daily basis.
I was in church yesterday for a baptism for a friend. For most of it I felt as if I did not belong there. The message was not for me, but I sat and lent my own support silently.
And I found myself listening to the candles. There were two of them on the altar. Tall, proud yellow tapers. In the still air, they never wavered, never flickered. They stood strong, and they burned. In direct contribution their light was nothing, drowned out by the cold, unfeeling electric lights flooding the room. But the candles didn't mind. I felt the candles, and for a time, felt what it was like to be a candle. Sitting in their presence, communing with them in my own way, I was no longer tired, as I had been before. There was a life to them, and it touched me from across the room. It was a very spiritual movement. If anyone had turned to see my expression, I don't think any would have found it out of place there.
If you sit and listen to a candle, and are ready to hear, it will tell you. It will tell you that a candle does not care what its light is used for, or even if it is used at all. Candles are happy to burn. They are not lit by accident, but through will and intention. Someone asks them to burn, and they do so willingly. They don't care why, they just do. Why does not matter. They harbor no resentment if their light or warmth is not used. Resentment and squandering are human terms for human ideas. And unlike us, candles do not fear being blown out, or burning out. Candles are made to burn, and then they burn, and after that they have burned and are gone. And that is all. And its enough.
But people have a harder time living in the moment. We are too busy fearing the end of the moment that we let it slip by us. We worry over whether we'll make a difference, or what people will think of us. Candles know only joy, which they find through service, by fulfilling what they were meant to be.
There is no joy in electric light. Torturing a filament until it screams and makes light, all because we want to have a sound to fill the silence. The awkward silence that must be broken, the painful moment. Next time hit the person next to you. Hit them as hard as you can, and keep hitting them until they cry out. Then you can explain, "I was just breaking the silence." I've never heard anyone suggest, "stare into the heart of the lightbulb in meditation."
In contrast, the voice of the candle is best heard in the silence. Its light is most beautiful in the dark. Do not fear the dark, do not fear silence. Instead, listen.
We are accustomed to linear time. Cause and effect. One thing happens which causes the next thing. This is one-thing-after-another time. It is how we see the world, not how the world is. There is also everything-at-once time, which might be how the world really is. Past, present, future-all the same thing.
I'm not as certain about the future, but I can tell you that the past is still happening. Think of a major event from your past. Maybe something from your childhood. That event still shapes who you are. It still affects, to a degree, every decision you make. You still learn new lessons from it.
In 1993 I was in the Army briefly before a bad knee led me to leave. At the time I learned certain lessons. Five years later I realized I was still learning lessons from those experiences. To this day I'm still learning new lessons from them. Those times are still happening. The events of your childhood are still happening to you.
If you are a smoker, then somewhere along the line you decided to be one. With every cigarette after that you were still making that decision. If you've quit, it's because you changed that decision, but those decisions are still with you. You might have decided a thousand times to be a smoker before deciding otherwise. Of course quitting is hard.
And this also gives us the basis for karma, for any Law of Return. Because every decision, every action you make, will be with you for the rest of your life. You will live with it forever. If you're in doubt about a decision, think about that.
If you believe in reincarnation (in any form), then the picture gets bigger. Now you're really going to live with each action forever. But now it's also a lot easier to understand why we are the way we are as a people. Because, even if you aren't aware of it directly, you're still being affected by everything that's happened to you, ever. Back to the cave, or back to the beginning of the earth, depending on your belief. Humanity has held certain beliefs for a very long time. Now you can see that greed is just a bad habit we've always been doing. The same goes for war, or for any prejudices, or stereotyping. Look at all the irrational fears people have. Now they can make sense. Just another old habit—no longer irrational at all.
I think people have at some level been aware of this for some time now. Look at the interest in genealogy. There's another instance where past events are still affecting you. I'm still affected by my grandmother growing up during the Depression.
Our society is changing faster than it ever has. The roles people play in it have to change, and some people don't deal well with change. Looking back, it's easy to see why.
Equality means that women should be able to serve in combat. There isn't any physical reason why they can't. But men are generally protective of women. A male officer would have a harder time sending women to die than men. We understand that that needs to change, but we've been doing this for a very, very, very, very long time. Pretty much forever. Please be patient with us.