… for friends who have become the family I never had … for a home, paid in full, when I was so afraid I’d end up living under a bridge … for cats who greet me at the door then cuddle up with me on the couch, purring … for students that care for me as much as I care for them … for a reliable car, Maggie, and the freedom she brings me … for ‘girly’ wine shared with the girls … for having the courage to finally get that tattoo … for unending curiosity … for glorious books … for my book of quotes and wisdoms and pictures and jokes that soothe me and inspire me and make me laugh on a sad day … for connection to the unseeable and the unnameable … for cool nights around a campfire shared with like-minded friends … a once-more relatively sound mind thanks to the wonder of thyroid meds … for people I’ve never met but am coming to know …

For all of this, and more, I am thankful

Journey

Something happening this weekend in Louisville, KY (Saturday, Nov 6):

“Native American Community Soil Blessing   5-6 pm, Brown-Foreman Amphitheatre, Waterfront Park.   The Circle of Indigenous Spirit Women offer prayers and a community ceremony.  Participants include Martha “Momfeather” Kaelbli Erickson, founder and Executive Director of the Mantle Rock Native Education and Cultural Center in Marion; Steve McCullough, “Chief Red Spider” of the Salt Creek Sundance, a medicine man who travels the world performing Native American spiritual ceremonies; and Native American and Kentuckian Sarah Elizabeth Burkey a singer, song-writer, and musician.  Native American ceremonial drumming provided by the Kentucky-based “Istayapi.”  Please bring a handful of soil collected locally or from around the world to offer as part of this ritual.”

I will not be in town to attend this, but other women in the group will be a part of the ceremony.  Those who bring soil will have it blessed and be able to take it back with them to spread in their own corners of the world.  The Circle of Indigenous Spirit Women is growing bit by bit:  a friend who is of Native American heritage has joined; my friend who was a nun for 40 years and is now a Pagan Priestess is joining; another friend who was a JingleDress Dancer before MS was diagnosed is joining. 

Little steps.  Important steps.  One hour of our time to spread the blessing to many corners.  One hour to come together in combined energies … to tell of our love of our Earth, not just in words but also in action.  Little steps.

This is a part of the 15th Annual Festival of Faiths from Nov 3rd – 9th.  There will be a movie, DIRT!, and different classes, workshops, etc: Sacred Soil Tool Kit … Night of a Thousand Stars … Manufactured Landscapes … The Real Dirt on Farmer John … urban gardens …Sacred Soil: You’ll Always Come Back … Meditative Movement Workshop … Living On The Land: A Symposium on Faith & Food … Tending the Garden of Our Sacred Soil … Dust-to-Dust: Leaving This Earth Naturally … and more.

~Journey ~

May the sharp tang of woodsmoke around an open  fire bring not only the warmth of it’s heat but also the warmth of cozy friendship and delighted laughter and song.  May you dance under a waning moon that carries with it your cares, your anxieties, and your frustrations … and fill you in its stead with insight, hope, faith, trust, and connection.  May the Earth in all Her glory and changing moods gently hold you and nourish you as you travel this Wheel of Life.  And may the Gods, however you see Them, continue to watch over and protect you as you journey from one amazement to the other.

In your losses, may you remember them with love and laughter that they ever were with you – what an enormous blessing!  Open your hearts to them, call their names, and let them know that you remember them.  They are on such a journey themselves – an adventure!  Hug them in your heart and kiss them soundly … and then let them go.

They’ll be back …

Bright Blessings/Journey

“Hands, teeth, guts, thoughts even, reassigned to be stars or belt buckles, lunar dust or railroad spikes.  I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected he was whittling at my skull.”

“Tinker” by Paul Harding

thank you, rooted68

Journey

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

 

This is an event happening tonight:

Our Full Blood Moon Ritual will be dedicated to the seven young gay men who took their lives due to hate and harrassment.  The deaths of these gay teenagers are tragic and heartbreaking, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies to their families, friends, and communities.  The deaths of Seth, Billy, Asher, Cody, Justin, Raymond and Tyler are a wake-up call that we must do more to stop the harrassment and violence experienced on a daily basis by millions.  It will be a very special and unique ritual, with elements of Celtic Paganism and rejuvenation magickal workings to heal and cleanse ourself, and the universe, of hatred and negative energies.  We encourage everyone to please attend this special ritual.

This was led by Mystic Circle and open to the public.

~Journey

Change is happening here!  The nights are cooler and the days no longer hover in the 90s … Autumn has finally fallen into place.  It’s my favorite time of the year - I awaken to darkness, stretching and yawning as the night gives way to sunlight and silence gives way to birdsong.  And, of course, the impatience meows of cats who are surely starving to death, so neglected are they!  ^-^

After Samhain I’ll want to withdraw and spiral inward … but for now I am FRISKY and skipping and gurgling with a great laughter as the air begins to crisp just a bit and I feel like dancing!  In a few weeks, when the leaves are at their highest glory, I’ll visit Cave Hill Cemetary again where over 400 variety of trees will be letting go of their many-colored leaves: yellows, golds, tans, raw umber, reds, rusts and peach.  Like an artist’s brush held skyward, the colors slip down the trees,  from top to bottom, no two alike.  It is a riot of glorious color against a dark blue sky. 

Halloween decorations are already being hauled out to decorate houses and lawns.  Stalks of corn.  Bales of hay.  Scarecrows, mighty webs and scary spiders bigger than my head!  An entire graveyard appears on my next-door neighbor’s front lawn.  And there is this smell in the air … of Autumn and cinnamon-y apple cider warming … of candy corn … of a clean-ness that doesn’t happen at any other time of the year.  Already plans are in the making for attending the Witches’ Ball the weekend before Samhain (for on the night of Samhain, or All Hallow’s Eve, we will not be dressing up and carousing … we will mourn our dead and honor our ancestors).  

Welcome Autumn!  Welcome change!  The end of one becomes the beginning of another … and the cycle continues, never-ending, spiraling upward, onward, as we continue our journeys. 

Blessed Be!  ~   Journey

 

 

Last Thursday the Circle of Indigenous Spirit Women (of which I’m a member) met at the River Valley Cemetary here in Louisville.  It’s a cemetary for the poor and homeless in our city; it is also where the remains of those who donate their bodies to science find their final resting place.

And it is located right next to an enormous coal ash pond.

We met, three of Native American spirituality, one of Budhist, and myself, Wiccan.  We tied prayer ties to the trees, cast a circle with a medicine wheel in the center … sang songs, drummed, did the Pipe Ceremony.  Two people from the Sierra Club in Kentucky were there to join us. 

We honored the ancestors buried there … we sang to the Earth … sprinkled blessed water on the hard, dry ground … prayed … and joined hands.

On Saturday my group celebrated Mabon, the second Harvest, with graditude for the bounty of the Earth, with prayers that balance would once more find its way into our world.

On Sunday, another Mabon circle to heal the Earth and the waters of the Gulf.  As we sat on the ground holding cups of water, we listened to the song of whales, then joined them with healing sounds, and our hearts beat as one.  The water would then be carried to the Ohio River, to flow to the Mississippi, to flow into the Gulf … our “one drop to make a difference.”  The Turtle poem was read by the Priestess, she who is so attuned to the turtle, and she gave credit to Chad.

This is my real job – the one that takes me to a place where time stops and I am immersed in my passion and joy.

Journey

It’s a quiet kind of day today.  Soft rain sprinkles onto a hard dry ground that is thankful for its falling.  Muffled sounds come from the hallway here at work as people visit from office to office, on business or just saying a hello.   I’m in the midst of doing a rather detailed, and tedious, job and need to break the monotony of it all.

So I come here, to Avalon.   We used to dream and create here, tea parties under a willow tree with scones and fresh honey, a lavender tea to refresh us.  The skies were always clear, even when the rain fell and nourished this island of hopes and dreams … of things that might – could! – be.  I remember groves of apples and a woman dancing cartwheels with joy. 

It’s been a long, hot summer and sadness has touched each one of us in different ways.  Loss.  Recognition.  Insight.

I look forward to the day when once more the magical skiff brings us back to touch each other’s lives again … and we are no longer too busy to embrace.

BB Sisters!

Journey

I can be CHANGED by what happens to me.
I refuse to be REDUCED by it.

- Journey