goddessing
cosmology, consciousness, contrarinessgoddess religion: pagan blog
www.goddessmystic.com
goddess religion: pagan blog
www.goddessmystic.com
Ides of March
The divets in the panels of ceiling tile above me were deep and numerous. I found a particularly deep hole and focused on it, relaxing my shoulders and forearms, slowing my breathing. The robin I had seen in the morning came to mind — my first robin of the season, a sure sign that Spring has come. What a great omen for a day like today, I had thought earlier. Thank you, Mother of Birds.
The dentist gave me one round of shots, then a second round, and finally a third and fourth as my upper jaw clung stubbornly to sensation. After a final set of pokes satisfied both of us that I no longer had sensation, he prepared for the work at hand. "If you have to lose a tooth, it's the best one to lose," he had explained to me several weeks earlier. He had given the option of trying to save it with root canal and crown, but the odds weren't good that the fix would last long, and for the price I could have instead a needed new computer, or rings for our upcoming 10th anniversary, or a lift for putting my scooter in and out of the van I hope to buy in the not-too-distant future. The decision had been easy: I went to the dentist knowing I'd be losing a tooth.
I thought of the wisdom teeth that had been cut out of me when I was 21, and for the first time understood what they are probably all about — a second set of molars for the wisdom years when the first set, worn down or decayed, dropped, or were pulled, out. If I still had my wisdom teeth, I thought, would the one on this side of my upper jaw move into place and give me another twenty or thirty years of molar power?
As the dentist began to loosen the tooth from its bony socket, the pressure against me felt like an assault. I realized I had stiffened again. I refocused, and relaxed. I felt the tooth moving and heard what sounded like a crack. The last thing I wanted was a broken tooth that would have to be dug out of me. I began to speak to my tooth, to send it energetic support, to encourage it to release itself from my jaw. You're doing fine, I said to my molar. You release yourself wholly, with ease. I decided at that instant that I wouldn't ask to keep the tooth, that this magic was all about letting go.
"You're doing fine," said the dental assistant as she squirted water in my mouth and suctioned it out.
"You're doing fine," said the dentist as he grabbed the tooth with his extraction forceps and began rocking and rotating it.
I'm doing fine, I thought. And then it occurred to me — today is the Ides of March! For a brief moment, fear came pouring in as the famous phrase automatically formed in my mind: "Beware the Ides of March." I gave another brief moment to the inevitable question: Why didn't I schedule this on another day? Then I took metaphysical action: I release all fear and all causes of fear. I cast a net of protection around me.
Soon, the tooth was out. The tooth, and most of its root. A brief tug with a set of tiny forceps brought out the tip of the root that had clung to its long home.
"Hardly any bleeding," said the dental assistant.
"You're lucky," said the dentist. "With the amount of decay you had — see the two large cavities here and here? — I had expected the tooth might break and we'd have to cut it out. You've saved yourself some money and some discomfort."
Amazing....
Gratitude....
Focus, relax, banish fear, invoke protection, affirm: I hadn't realized how second-nature my spiritual practice had become until this tooth called for some on-the-spot practical magic.
The dentist gave me one round of shots, then a second round, and finally a third and fourth as my upper jaw clung stubbornly to sensation. After a final set of pokes satisfied both of us that I no longer had sensation, he prepared for the work at hand. "If you have to lose a tooth, it's the best one to lose," he had explained to me several weeks earlier. He had given the option of trying to save it with root canal and crown, but the odds weren't good that the fix would last long, and for the price I could have instead a needed new computer, or rings for our upcoming 10th anniversary, or a lift for putting my scooter in and out of the van I hope to buy in the not-too-distant future. The decision had been easy: I went to the dentist knowing I'd be losing a tooth.
I thought of the wisdom teeth that had been cut out of me when I was 21, and for the first time understood what they are probably all about — a second set of molars for the wisdom years when the first set, worn down or decayed, dropped, or were pulled, out. If I still had my wisdom teeth, I thought, would the one on this side of my upper jaw move into place and give me another twenty or thirty years of molar power?
As the dentist began to loosen the tooth from its bony socket, the pressure against me felt like an assault. I realized I had stiffened again. I refocused, and relaxed. I felt the tooth moving and heard what sounded like a crack. The last thing I wanted was a broken tooth that would have to be dug out of me. I began to speak to my tooth, to send it energetic support, to encourage it to release itself from my jaw. You're doing fine, I said to my molar. You release yourself wholly, with ease. I decided at that instant that I wouldn't ask to keep the tooth, that this magic was all about letting go.
"You're doing fine," said the dental assistant as she squirted water in my mouth and suctioned it out.
"You're doing fine," said the dentist as he grabbed the tooth with his extraction forceps and began rocking and rotating it.
I'm doing fine, I thought. And then it occurred to me — today is the Ides of March! For a brief moment, fear came pouring in as the famous phrase automatically formed in my mind: "Beware the Ides of March." I gave another brief moment to the inevitable question: Why didn't I schedule this on another day? Then I took metaphysical action: I release all fear and all causes of fear. I cast a net of protection around me.
Soon, the tooth was out. The tooth, and most of its root. A brief tug with a set of tiny forceps brought out the tip of the root that had clung to its long home.
"Hardly any bleeding," said the dental assistant.
"You're lucky," said the dentist. "With the amount of decay you had — see the two large cavities here and here? — I had expected the tooth might break and we'd have to cut it out. You've saved yourself some money and some discomfort."
Amazing....
Gratitude....
Focus, relax, banish fear, invoke protection, affirm: I hadn't realized how second-nature my spiritual practice had become until this tooth called for some on-the-spot practical magic.
Labels: magic, spiritual practice
Health, Hearth, Heart, Earth
It started three and a half years ago at Samhain, with Health: a year-long focus, intention, practice to improve my health. One year stretched into two as my magic, prayers, and daily life -- conscious and unconscious -- tended to the needs of my body: physical health. In the midst of that, my beloved heart-child's death added an urgency: Survive this.
My health, ultimately, did not improve, though I did live through that year of statistically greater risk of mortality that comes to those who survive the suicide of a loved one.
At Samhain a year and a half ago, still working on improving my health and having given up the demanding routines of fifteen years of Goddess schooling and the community and ritual organizing work with the inevitable full calendar of meetings and activities that come with, I moved on to Hearth. I focused on my home life, cooking, my relationship, housekeeping. And I continued to work on my health, which was getting worse and worse.
In the hearth year, a major remodeling project fell apart on us, a major project to declutter and simplify got started and then interrupted, a territorial/hormonal struggle that had been developing betweeen two of our cats escalated and we had to segregate them, turning the household upside down as we began the creation of what is still in the process of becoming a Cat Sanctuary in the large bonus room/den off the garage. Meanwhile, my health continued to deteriorate despite continuing efforts to improve it, specifically the introduction of more and more vitamins and supplements to my diet and the addition of a semi-weekly routine of baking my own whole-grain bread.
Failed magic?
Or a long, slow working out of a complicated set of life issues intricately interwoven like the lines in a Celtic or Buddhist knotwork?
In the latter half of the Hearth year, a friend volunteered to teach me a health practice which ultimately moved me beyond the lingering remnants of depression over the loss of my precious nephew and gave me the energy to take my health-working to the next level, which led to the diagnosis of celiac disease.
With the diagnosis and its cure, eating gluten-free, I am recovering my health. My joints are less inflamed and I move around more easily. My digestion is improving, though there are still obstacles to overcome. Last week and the week before I experienced gluten contamination and, in each case, a three-day episode of all the gory celiac symptoms. I identified the first week's culprit -- an old cutting board I hadn't used in awhile. Clearly it had microparticles of wheat on it from all those precious loaves of bread sliced with love for my health and my hearth. Last week's culprit? I believe it was the cumin I used in my black bean soup.
It's odd, for someone who could call herself a hearth-witch, to have dangers lurking in the kitchen. But isn't that how it goes? When we explore the numinous, danger lurks. Protection magic: throw out all cutting boards and wooden spoons; dump all powdered spices and replace them with those guaranteed not to be stabilized with wheat flour; make another round through the fridge, the cabinets, the larder and remove the remaining foodstuffs that have, or might have, some hidden traces of gluten in them. Begin again.
Though I started my Heart year this past Samhain, I can see that the two years I gave to Health should be repreated for Hearth, then Heart, then Earth -- the four stations of this extended magical journey†. I could back away from Heart and officially start it next Samhain, but this suite of foci is so clearly a case of entertwined realities with magical and mundane workings outside the bounds of calendrical time that I'll just keep going, knowing that this year as I begin the Heart work I am still deeply involved in the work of Hearth and Hearth.
Indeed, in December as I got the diagnosis of celiac I also got bad news in terms of my Hearth life, or perhaps I should say the kind of news that is both bad and good, depending on perspective. My friend Rojo who had been helping me with housekeeping and personal living tasks weekly for ten years did some kind of gymnastics in her sleep and suffered a bulging disk in her neck. She's in the course of a long cure and lifestyle change which will bring good things to her, but in the meantime she can no longer clean her own house, much less mine. So this year with its added load of cooking and dish-washing thanks to the celiac cure also sees the added load of responsibility for housekeeping-without-help, something I would have deemed impossible before the influx of gluten-free energy and mobility.
And while the added burden of solo housekeeping has completely overthrown habits of living and added stress to homelife, it has also brought my beloved and me into new routines of partnership and a deeper experience of hearth, and of heart.
† Magical journey -- thanks to my writing-group partners Carol and Kat for this expression and concept; I look forward to each of their books about this approach to spiritual life and practice, pioneered by Carol for over two decades and practiced by the two of them in partnership for a number of years.
My health, ultimately, did not improve, though I did live through that year of statistically greater risk of mortality that comes to those who survive the suicide of a loved one.
At Samhain a year and a half ago, still working on improving my health and having given up the demanding routines of fifteen years of Goddess schooling and the community and ritual organizing work with the inevitable full calendar of meetings and activities that come with, I moved on to Hearth. I focused on my home life, cooking, my relationship, housekeeping. And I continued to work on my health, which was getting worse and worse.
In the hearth year, a major remodeling project fell apart on us, a major project to declutter and simplify got started and then interrupted, a territorial/hormonal struggle that had been developing betweeen two of our cats escalated and we had to segregate them, turning the household upside down as we began the creation of what is still in the process of becoming a Cat Sanctuary in the large bonus room/den off the garage. Meanwhile, my health continued to deteriorate despite continuing efforts to improve it, specifically the introduction of more and more vitamins and supplements to my diet and the addition of a semi-weekly routine of baking my own whole-grain bread.
Failed magic?
Or a long, slow working out of a complicated set of life issues intricately interwoven like the lines in a Celtic or Buddhist knotwork?
In the latter half of the Hearth year, a friend volunteered to teach me a health practice which ultimately moved me beyond the lingering remnants of depression over the loss of my precious nephew and gave me the energy to take my health-working to the next level, which led to the diagnosis of celiac disease.
With the diagnosis and its cure, eating gluten-free, I am recovering my health. My joints are less inflamed and I move around more easily. My digestion is improving, though there are still obstacles to overcome. Last week and the week before I experienced gluten contamination and, in each case, a three-day episode of all the gory celiac symptoms. I identified the first week's culprit -- an old cutting board I hadn't used in awhile. Clearly it had microparticles of wheat on it from all those precious loaves of bread sliced with love for my health and my hearth. Last week's culprit? I believe it was the cumin I used in my black bean soup.
It's odd, for someone who could call herself a hearth-witch, to have dangers lurking in the kitchen. But isn't that how it goes? When we explore the numinous, danger lurks. Protection magic: throw out all cutting boards and wooden spoons; dump all powdered spices and replace them with those guaranteed not to be stabilized with wheat flour; make another round through the fridge, the cabinets, the larder and remove the remaining foodstuffs that have, or might have, some hidden traces of gluten in them. Begin again.
Though I started my Heart year this past Samhain, I can see that the two years I gave to Health should be repreated for Hearth, then Heart, then Earth -- the four stations of this extended magical journey†. I could back away from Heart and officially start it next Samhain, but this suite of foci is so clearly a case of entertwined realities with magical and mundane workings outside the bounds of calendrical time that I'll just keep going, knowing that this year as I begin the Heart work I am still deeply involved in the work of Hearth and Hearth.
Indeed, in December as I got the diagnosis of celiac I also got bad news in terms of my Hearth life, or perhaps I should say the kind of news that is both bad and good, depending on perspective. My friend Rojo who had been helping me with housekeeping and personal living tasks weekly for ten years did some kind of gymnastics in her sleep and suffered a bulging disk in her neck. She's in the course of a long cure and lifestyle change which will bring good things to her, but in the meantime she can no longer clean her own house, much less mine. So this year with its added load of cooking and dish-washing thanks to the celiac cure also sees the added load of responsibility for housekeeping-without-help, something I would have deemed impossible before the influx of gluten-free energy and mobility.
And while the added burden of solo housekeeping has completely overthrown habits of living and added stress to homelife, it has also brought my beloved and me into new routines of partnership and a deeper experience of hearth, and of heart.
† Magical journey -- thanks to my writing-group partners Carol and Kat for this expression and concept; I look forward to each of their books about this approach to spiritual life and practice, pioneered by Carol for over two decades and practiced by the two of them in partnership for a number of years.
Labels: spiritual practice
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