please Join me

The Arctic is Melting

Wed, 2 Jul 2008 16:31:57 -0500

Have you read this article yet?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/06/27/north.pole.melting/index.html#cnnSTCText

Can you believe it? I have joked for years about how I would surely be dead and my ashes spread before the North Pole melted. I appear to have been terribly wrong. We will all soon be living on a planet with no northern ice cap, perhaps by the end of this summer.

I am stunned.

I am enraged.

I have not been able to even begin to taste the full bitterness of my grief.

How does one begin to set up prayers and spells around such a catastrophe?

How does one work for the best of all as the world melts before our very eyes?

The death of my first husband nearly killed me. The death of the Arctic may finish the job.

I am managing to keep my head above the waters of despair at the moment. I still dare to taste the waters of restoration. Yet, this dying beloved’s cries haunt my every waking moment.

This will not do. But what do I do?

Who does one call? The Ice Giants? The Snow Queen and Her icy Snow Ponies? Our senators?

I know that not to do anything at all is to be overwhelmed by despair. I know that if I do nothing at all, I will slip into the icy lethargy of apathy.

What do I do?

I am making a Queer Spirit Wheel.

I am taking a journey to the heart of the Land of Ice for a bit of wisdom.

I am writing.

I am fully opening my heart to my pain, grief and rage, willing to be willing to take the next step into healing, fully embracing the consequences of my choices.

May we all dare to dwell in beauty, balance and delight.

A Midsommar Visit to a Sacred Lake

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:43:01 -0500

We are back from our Midsummer Journey to Lake Superior.

This is one of the most beautiful and powerful places I have ever visited. Standing on the edge on the Lake is standing on the brink of a gigantic holy cauldron filled with the fresh waters of life. The very touch of the waters of Lake Superior send healing spells throughout the flesh. It is a fere of Witches who dare to taste it’s liquid blessings. I dream of a Midsommar Pagan gathering on the rocks and beaches of this lake who calls itself a Friend to the Clan of the Human Being who will gladly devour those who show no respect for its ancient authority and potential for total transformation.

Mark and I started our pilgrimage to the Lake early on Sunday morning, June 22. We drove from under a sunny sky over the Twin Cities into the shadows of thickening cumulus clouds of amazing beauty and complexity. We soon noticed that some of the clouds were streaming heavy rain while the sun pierced the cloud layer with beams highlighting the intense greens of Midsummer woodlands and pastures.

Happy Midsommar!

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:20:20 -0500

Midsommar (Midsummer) is here. It is one of the only old Euro-Pagan holidays that are still openly celebrated in Northern Europe. It is said though, that only in Sweden has it kept it’s original names, Midsommar (Midsommar), Midsommarafton (Midsummer's Eve) and Midsommardagen (Midsummer's Day). It is the great day of Sunna, Gidden of the sun or as some experience Her, the Sun itself. Mid summer is a time when the veils are thinnest between all of the realms in the multiverse. It is also one of the central gathering times for a hearth-clan to come together. It is a sacred time in which to celebrate their survival. It is a Season to openly recognize and honor the abundance and thriving life that are currently flowing through their hearth-folk and hearth-holds. It is a time to party with all of one’s feres!

Midsommer and Yule (encompassing Lucia’s Feast, Winter Solstice, Midwinter and Christmas) are the two great holidays of the Nordic Folk. Even in my Swedish American family, the ghosts of these two holidays survived through at least my childhood. Yule was always the most magical of our family holidays, usually centered around my grandparents’ dinning and kitchen tables. But, Midsummer was the largest of our family’s gatherings. This event had evolved in the States, into a giant pot luck picnic feast usually held somewhere in the country: someone’s pasture, a county park, on the banks of the Des Moines River, etc. The food was great, the drink was plentiful, the evening’s bonfire was brilliant and firework’s were not unheard of. These family Midsummer picnics formed my idea of what the ideal gathering of any kind should be by the time I could walk.

This year’s Midsummer season has been and promises to be as grand as I could wish for.

Mark and I started the holiday by getting up at dawn on Friday morning, eating a summer breakfast of strong coffee laced with brandy and oatmeal filled with fresh peaches, sweet cherries, rose water and cream. It was all topped off with sweet lust filled kisses.

The Perfect Day Date

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:34:54 -0500

Countryside also sells great daylilies at a great price. For $6 a piece, we brought home healthy specimens of ‘Bela Lugosi’, ‘Lilting Lavender’, ‘Bold Tiger’, ‘Spider Miracle’, and ‘Red Flag’. I spent most of the morning snuggling these new friends into our gardens.

After our visit to Countryside Gardens, we drove back into Minneapolis to eat for the first time at Relax, a Chinese restaurant. We had wonderful lunch specials which prepared us for our next adventure, a long walk through he Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

We look at looked at two photo exhibits at the Institute: Alec Soth: Sleeping by the Mississippi and Smoke and Mirrors: Vance Gellert. If you have a chance to see these shows, please don’t miss them. You may be as touched as deeply as we were.

After the museum we went over to Dream Haven, a wonderful comic book store to pick up standing orders and wander through their wares. Then we moved on to pickup a few groceries and then on to the gym for a good workout.

After the our time at the gym we went home and prepared a delicious spaghetti dinner. We both adore spaghetti with lots of cheese and it was very very cheesy and delicious.

Most of the rest of the night we read. One of our very favorite things to do with our evenings together. Mark read me passages from his psychology texts, sometime with a grunt of disgust, sometime with out right laughter. I am still reading The Omnivores Dilemma, an amazing book. It is a must read for all who are interested in growing sustainable cultures of beauty, balance and delight.

We finished our date by watching the latest of the adventures of Dr. Who and Donna.

It was a perfect date day.

Bless the Bees.

Practicing Kindness

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:11:01 -0500

Many topics have been percolating through me these last few days. One of the things that is currently precipitating from this rich brew is a meditation on old central questions of mine, ‘What is niceness? What is kindness?’

In the Summer 2008 issue of YES! magazine, Akaya Windwood of the Rockwood Leadership Program, writes an inspiring commentary entitled; Don’t Be Nice - Be Kind. Akaya tell us about a community meeting focused on the violence occurring throughout their neighborhood. The meeting was a mixture of folks; different classes, ethnicities, genders, races, religions, etc. The atmosphere was also just as rich and complicated, filled with despair, skepticism, sadness, grief, hope, fear, etc. Akaya asked the group for one agreement before the meeting would began. She requested that folks be kind rather than nice. She reports that folks responded with a big yes because, “Everyone was tired of the old pattern of blaming and shaming, of finding fault with one another, and we needed a way to say difficult things without feeling hobbled by politeness.” It seems that the meeting went well and folks left with a strong sense of possible changes for the better.

I grew up in and still live in communities that often confused niceness with kindness. I often heard growing up, that old standard advice, ‘If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all!’ It was often hard for me to actually know what grown ups meant by this. Now days I am subtly and not so subtly told verbally and nonverbally, that it is politically incorrect, divisive and/or outright rude to express anger, distress, disappointment, etc., directly to an individual, community or system that continually undermines my work, my life, my hearth-family. Is it rude to smile sweetly at someone whom has done one a disservice and pretend that nothing is off between you? Is it best to bottle up a perceived wrong done to you, letting it fester until the boil has broken? Does being nice mean being silent even as the ice caps melt, our food is slowly poisoned, our families dissolve? Is it an act of kindness to allow such actions and thoughts to remain in the shadows?

I have noticed that words have power. I have used the power of words to craft spells and to write poetry. I have used words to support and to undermine my feres. Words have inherent power that can be used for any purpose.

I have also noticed that the roots of a word deeply informs the powers held in it. The ancient meanings of a word actively inform and underlie the word’s current usages. I suspect that etymology is not only a science of words, but also a study of their magical powers. Thus, I often research the origins of the words I choose to weave into any of my specific magical workings let alone my day to day life.

According to the 1933 edition of The Oxford Universal Dictionary, nice has meant;

Foolish, stupid - 1560.
Wanton, lascivious - 1606.
Strange, rare - 1555.
Tender, delicate, over-refined - 1720.
Coy, (affectedly) modest; shy, reluctant - 1676.
Difficult to please or satisfy; fastidiously careful, precise, or punctilious; particular - 1513.

The current online New Oxford American Dictionary now defines the word nice as;

1 pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory : we had a nice time / that wasn't very nice of him / Jeremy had been very nice to her.
• (of a person) pleasant in manner; good-natured; kind : he's a really nice guy.
2 fine or subtle : a nice distinction.
• requiring careful thought or attention : a nice point.
3 archaic fastidious; scrupulous.

The 1933 edition of The Oxford Universal Dictionary states that kind has meant;

a. Well-born, well-bred, gentle. b. Of a good kind; hence, good of its kind.
a. Of persons: Naturally well-disposed; sympathetic; considerate; generous, liberal, courteous. b. Exhibiting a friendly disposition by one’s conduct to a person or animal. c. Of action, etc.: Arising from or displaying a kind disposition.
Affectionate, loving, fond; on intimate terms
Kindly
Grateful, thankful.

The current online New Oxford American Dictionary now defines the word kind as;

having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature : she was a good, kind woman / he was very kind to me.
• [ predic. ] used in a polite request : would you be kind enough to repeat what you said?
• [ predic. ] ( kind to) (of a consumer product) gentle on (a part of the body) : look for rollers that are kind to hair.
archaic affectionate; loving.

After meditating on this information, my question became, which of these words (nice or kind) do I want to weave into my world? Which of these words truly nurtures the cultures of beauty, balance and delight? Which of these words have the reservoir of power needed to help transform the current over-cultures’ worldviews into sustainable multiversal worldviews? I chose the words kind, kindness, and kindly.

Now I sit here wondering how to actively practice the ways of kindness, firmly rooted in burden-less truth and my own authentic self while yet embracing good manners. Though non-violent language, common courtesy, and/or political correctness are all grand first steps, it seems to me that practicing kindness goes well beyond them. I suspect that we are just beginning to feel the life giving powers of kindness again reemerging from the rich realms of our core beings. I suspect that consciously and intentionally choosing to be kind is foundational to a fully integrated life. But what does that mean? Is it up to each of us to decide on our own what kindness means? How do we grow common understandings of what is kind? How do we grow an etiquette rooted in kindness and compassion? I do know this, it will take the ongoing sharing of many open hearted, clear sighted and hearing adventurous folks meeting face to face and on line to explore these mysteries over a good bit of time. Meanwhile, I am choosing to practice the arts of patience.

I am very interested in what you consider essential to growing a culture of kindness. What are its main elements? How do we craft an ever changing Earth based etiquette which will nurture, not stifle, the emerging cultures of beauty, balance and delight? How do we include the dark and the light, the dusk and the dawn, the phases of the moon, the cyclic nature of the multiverse in practicing the ways of kindness?

I look forward to hearing from you all.

May we always welcome the ways of kindness as we walk our roads of wonder, pleasure, and plenty.

They Have Emerged!

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 13:01:14 -0500

I just had to tell you.

My chard, pole beans and zucchini have sprouted! My tomatoes are blooming. The promise of abundance fills the air. Life springs forth again from the sacred soils of planet Earth.

I am so damn glad to be alive here and now.

May all of our gardens grow lush and magnificent!

All Hail Flora!

Sing A Little Song, Dance A Little Dance

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 07:48:53 -0500

My Dear Feres,

If you dare, go to these sites and witness clear expressions of the emerging cultures of beauty, balance and delight.

http://www.youngatheartchorus.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82mwhSyHbow&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55g_Wqki42g&NR=1

I cannot wait to see this movie. I only hope I have a chance to go to a concert someday soon.

May we always sing a little song and dance a little dance as we journey together with our feres on this amazing road we call life.

A Dragon Dinner

Sun, 1 Jun 2008 15:20:40 -0500

Yesterday evening I joined a house full of Witches for a Dragon Dinner. It was marvelous. I have not been to one for sometime now and it was time for me to celebrate my living red blood once again.

The Red Dragon Dinners were started some time ago in celebration of those who were living and thriving with HIV. The dinner soon evolved to embrace all of us who are living with cancer, diabetes, and all blood diseases and other blood dysfunctions. It can be a wonderful time to celebrate the wonder and majesty of all life.

Last night we decided to hold a dinner in honor of both the Red Dragon and the Gold Dragon. It was a dinner dedicated to our living red blood and our choices to heal. It was delightful to have both dragons as our guests of honor. For some of us, it was the first time that we had met the Red One. Most of us, (we are all part of the Winter Witch Camp community) had been introduced at this last Winter’s camp to the Gold One. It was a sweet time to gather us all together.

Green Blood Allies of the 2008 Vegetable Garden

Sat, 31 May 2008 06:19:58 -0500

My dear fere, Greg, but up photos with a few words about his balcony garden. He has inspired me to do the same.

I have a very small garden. You’ve seen the pictures. I only have room for a small kitchen garden. But, it is enough room for the blessings that only growing your own food can bring a person. I depend on the rich living soil of my garden to compost more than just kitchen wastes. I depend on it to help me cleanse my spirit and soul, my heart and mind. It is a fere that I will never willingly abandon.