Goddessing: A Goddess / Pagan Blog

Picked up my sister at the airport on Saturday night. She's here for a week's visit. It feels like vacation for both of us.

I finished my paperwork organizing project on November 10, two days before my deadline! Since then, I've sorted all the cookbooks and made room for them on the pass-through between the dining area and the kitchen. Something's changing in me. I'm starting to think and act like a cook!

I've almost finished organizing my beads and have made a place for them in the living room, so that I can bead while watching movies at night with F.. after dinner. I love that. The living room has south- and east-facing windows, so it's the best place on winter days for doing any kind of crafting. It's warm and bright and home to my 50-something house plants (yes, it's almost a jungle!), so beading breaks during the day are something I have to look forward to this winter. I've got three ongoing pieces of web work for clients and some web projects of my own, but beading breaks are de rigueur and I'm looking forward to getting back into beads now that I've got that nasty paperwork project accomplished. W00t!

My sister brought photographs and F.. picked us up some scrapbooking supplies, and we're going to try to arrange Salve Regina from Sister Act for my choir, so we've got plans for creative collaborations and for doing nothing, too. Yup, it's a vacation.

Our Thanksgiving menu: free-range turkey, dressing (haven't decided which recipe yet), cranberry jelly, brussel sprouts, deviled eggs and a relish tray (almond- and garlic-stuff olives among other morsels), pecan pie (I'm going to post that recipe here, it's yummy). We may bake our own bread, and F.. says we have to have pumpkin pie, too, though I'd rather make a sweet potato pie. Hmmm. Wonder if I can talk her into that. We'll probably do some kind of ridiculous jello mold, too, in honor of the ancestors. LOL!

Permalink posted by Sage -- 4:59 PM.

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Most mornings, like this one, I don't get up early enough to see the Morning Star, but lying awake in my bed, in the Hour Blue, I know she's there.

The Hour Blue, a direct translation from the French "l'heure bleue," is that time of morning (and evening) when the sky takes on a particular quality of light. I think of it as e.e. cumming's "the magical hour when is becomes if."

Many indigenous people know the magic of this hour and use it as prayer time. I was told years ago by a native woman of South America that in her culture their concept of time is radically different from ours, that they measure time by dawn and by dusk, hours when the veils between the worlds thin, a time for calmness and tranquility, for sitting outdoors and reflecting, observing, absorbing, communing.

When my friend J.. "lived with the Native Americans," as she says, they called it the Star Hour. She was taught to be up and out in the Star Hour, saying prayers. "It's especially powerful for healing prayers," she tells me. Since her healing sojourn with the Native Americans, nearly two decades ago, she's been walking her dogs every morning at this hour, and praying in her Native/Christian way.

This summer, the quality of the matinal hour blue was particularly vivid. It reminded me of Folon and the intense blue of his skies, and of those exquisite scenes in Howard's End when first Ruth Wilcox and later Leonard Bast walk through fields of violet-blue wildflowers at dawn, or dusk, when the color of sky and flower is the same and, as with the early spring Virginia bluebells here, there's an excitement in the auric field, an otherworldliness, caused by the colors themselves.

I didn't know if my perceptions of this past summer's vivid blue were influenced by the acuteness of my grief, or by the presence of Venus, lending her light, or both.

Yes, Venus has been our Morning Star since about the time of the Summer Solstice, rising before the sun and therefore visible in the pre-dawn sky. Scientists say she lends two-thirds of her light to earth, and there are ancient mounds in England whose purpose has been determined to be the observation of the Venus cycle, when, at certain times brilliant crystals are lit deep within, not by sunlight, or moonlight, but by the light of Venus.

Though I wasn't out to see her this morning, she rose two and a-half hours before sunrise, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac, but her time as Morning Star is waning, and already you need a low eastern horizon to see her. By about mid February, 2005, she'll be rising so close to sunrise that she'll no longer be visible, no matter the topography. Goodbye Morning Star! I wonder if I'll miss her then, knowing she's not lending her light to morning's Hour Blue?

While she'll be gone for quite some time in her Morning Star aspect, she'll be back among us as the Evening Star by Beltane, if not a bit earlier, setting after the sun and visible in the night sky. Then, we'll call the blue hour crepuscule, twilight, dusk, evenfall, the gloaming -- the time after sunset when there is still light in the sky. In a song from the 40s, a part of my mother's sheet music collection, they called this time of daynight "the deep purple" (a song of lover's regret: When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls and the stars begin to twinkle in the night, through the mist of a memory you wander back to me breathing my name with a sigh.)


Heinz Prammer of the European Society of Arts and Culture has called it "the forgotten hour ... that 'middle kingdom' between day and night which seduces one to relax and be carefree, to dream and let go."

He says we need to reclaim this forgotten hour. I think he's right. We don't have to wait for Beltane or Samhain to experience the thinning of the veils, and we don't have to be in forest or field. That magic is available to us wherever the sky is visible, twice a day, every day of the year, if only we'll slow down enough to perceive it and experience it. A time of beauty, soul-time.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 7:37 AM.

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I refuse to live in fear.

Some friends talk about emigrating. Some scientists talk about the coming extinction of the human species. Some politicians stop at nothing to get things their way.

I refuse to live in fear.

I can choose.

I refuse.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 9:29 PM.

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At least 17 things we can do, from Susan Truitt, Co-founder, CASE Ohio, Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections.

Here's one:

Permalink posted by Sage -- 11:35 AM.

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I voted on Tuesday, was depressed, shocked, and in an altered state of consciousness on Wednesday. I kept trying to figure out how so many people could have voted for Bush, despite all the readily available information about how unAmerican and unConstitutional his actions and policies are, how harmful for the people and the planet while being so helpful for big businesses and big bank accounts. Then I remembered, You can't figure this out. There's no logic to it. That's the point about religious fundamentalism. And that's what we've got, a religious fundamentalist in the White House, setting policy and courses of action based on a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and on pro-corporate, fundamentalist politics.

So on Wednesday, in the middle of my grief and disbelief, I called my friend N who spent the entire month of October working for the League of Conservation Voters' (LCV) campaign for Kerry. I knew she'd be more down than me and that she needed a call. Amazing what small acts of connection and comfort can do for us. She cc'd me on an email she sent out yesterday:


N won't stop with grieving and thanks and comforting. She's already thinking deeply about what she can do to "change the dynamics of this country so that when a President lies to us, cheats us, scams us, steals from us, scares us, depresses the economy, makes women's lives harder and chips away at the health and beauty of our mother Gaia that Americans will respond out of outrage, not out of fear at a threat that is (mostly if not wholly) created by the same people who are perpetrating the rest of the CRAP?"

Yes! I think my job will be to support N. She's got the energy, time, resources, heart, mind, and spirit for this. I'll also take in at the next deeper level how important encouragement, support, and connection are for our well-being.

As for the rest of the world, there's an interesting piece (GOD SAVE AMERICA) from Brian Reade at the Mirror (UK), giving an international perspective. Reade says:

Permalink posted by Sage -- 11:13 AM.

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September 2003. Last menses?

February 2004. Last menses?

November 2004. ??????

I was hoping that pause had moved on to stop, but no. Don't know whether to sigh, cry, or celebrate. I guess I'll just honor the flow, but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Permalink posted by Sage -- 5:15 PM.

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Yesterday, I birthed a beautiful daughter. Well, she's actually a three-year-old, but the big party (i.e., long working weekend) was for the beginning of her fourth year: Volume 4, Issue 1: MatriFocus, Cross-Quarterly for the Goddess Woman.

I'm proud that we've surpassed the three-years-in-cyberprint milestone. I'm proud of the new design, and my crossword puzzle (interactive!), and my editorial (I decided that after three years behind the code and otherwise generally behind the scenes it was time to come out and add my voice to the others; blogging has given me the confidence for that -- a writer's ease).

OK, so I'm proud of myself and of my work, but I include in that all the gracious women (and a few men) who've contributed writing and art and photos, money and time and energy, editing and organizing and emailing, and proud, too, of our subscribers -- grateful for their energetic support and for reflecting back to us the quality of our work. I'm also awed and amazed at the steady growth and recent growth-spurt (we jumped from 9 to 13 regular contributors from the Lammas issue to this current one). Steady is an interesting characteristic of the work of a disabled Sagittarian. I guess I'm proud of that, too.

As all six of you know, this past half-year has been such a trying time for me -- a portal, an abyss, a time outside the box (will I ever find my way back in? that's my question). Getting the Beltane Issue out two weeks after my nephew's suicide was an act of will, and getting the Lammas Issue out, an act of duty. In the midst of the depression, I questioned my commitment to the zine, but hung on. Moving on is such a Sagittarian thing to do, and one doesn't make major decisions during a major depression.

Some time around Equinox, I woke from one of those dreams you know is more than infogarbage-processing. In it, a teacher/guide and I were discussing vocation/calling/priestessing. I was having trouble understanding the second piece of what was being described to me as a two-part process, the process of divine ordination: basically, the Goddess calls you to do some work and then ... what? Could you say that again, I asked.

So he explained it again. I was still confused, starting to understand and yet fearing that I had failed, fearing that She had called me and I'd missed it, or that perhaps She'd never called at all and I was fooling myself. Isn't the inner critic a lovely persona to live with, even in your dreams? And doubt, fear, and shame lovely companions on the walk?

It was my guide/teacher's third explanation that made it all clear to me, and I came into full waking consciousness when I heard his words: It's a journey, and a journal.

Now, on waking, things weren't quite so clear. Oh, the first part, sure. Even in the dream I understood the "being called" part, the journey. But journal? I stayed in bed, eyes shut, and pondered. Did this mean I should write? Did it mean I should write the book that had been proposed to me, recently, by a professional book packager -- A Witch's Grimoire -- a book I wasn't terribly keen on writing? I had been toying with doing a grimoire blog instead of a book (bits of it are lurking around in cyberspace, somewhere -- a postmodern grimoire; now wouldn't that be marketable). Maybe the dream was saying write/publish as a blog, not a book. Maybe the dream meant blogging is my vocation. Hmmm. Clearly this was going to take some meditation.

Well, meditation, yes. But it was my partner's response to the dream that brought clarity. It's about MatriFocus, she said. That's the journal.

Poof! She was right. Her words made that immediate "feels right" in my body-mind. Duh. Thank you Goddess Beloved.

And so, long hours, hard work, renewed commitment and inspiration in the midst of depression, a redesign, new articles, new contributors, new features, the Samhain Issue published a day later than usual, and one exhausted designer/editor.

And yes, I'm proud. Proud of all creation, I guess. Proud of Joseph Campbell who told us all: Follow your bliss. Proud of the women who heard Goddess call before me, who organized, created, disseminated (ovulated?), who said With the Goddess, there's no middleman. Grow a relationship with Her. It will take you to your self, to the heart of the matter, to your own precious heart.

And of course, the journal part is a bit more complicated, or perhaps more complex, than MatriFocus alone, but how I came to publish MatriFocus is more intricately connected with my priestess journey than I can tell in a blog post, or even a book chapter, though pieces of the story are scattered throughout my Cella documentation.

******

Oh my. How much of this is delirious exhaustion talking?

I voted today, gave blood at my doctor's office, and will go to choir rehearsal tonight. I noticed that the sumac, deep red a few weeks ago, is now in some places a brilliant orange, in others fading to yellow.

I'm also noticing that today is November second, and I haven't started my book! I'm going to give NaNoWriMo a try this year. Wish this Sagittarian some steady energy, will you? She's gonna need it to stick with a daily novel-writing practice. Daily and Sagittarian? LOL!

Just 500 words a day. Just 500 words a day. Just 500 words a day....

Permalink posted by Sage -- 1:38 PM.

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