A Little Winter's Thaw

For years now, Imbolc has been my favorite holiday.  A lot of people may not be familiar with it, so here's a quick explanation:

If you're among certain kinds of Northern European pagans, the year is divided into eight pie pieces, by the holidays.  Four of those holidays are the solstices and equinoxes, and then there's an observance bisecting each of those.

At the Winter Solstice, one of the things people do sometimes is to hold vigil for the sun to return after its longest night.  We watch the sun set, and then we stay up all night to watch it return.  It's a way that we can express faith that we will stand through the darkest times, until the light comes again.  We greet the return of the sun with joy, though winter's only half over, because we are now on the road to spring.

Roughly six weeks later, we come to Imbolc.  In agrarian cultures, it marked the lactation of the ewes, the first faint sign that the lambs were coming, and spring following behind them.  Long before the weather turned, before the earth quickened or the trees put forth their leaves, into the bitter grey there came the promise of spring.  Here in Central Texas, Imbolc is more likely marked by the first green shoots and budding wildflowers, to herald our brief and gentle spring before the brutal summer takes hold.

The reason that Imbolc is my favorite is that it's a marker of validated faith.  In the northern latitudes you can't see, at the Winter Solstice, any real indication that spring will ever return.  All you have is your belief in how the world works, that it will continue to follow the laws of nature that it always has, and then at Imbolc that faith is met with proof.

When I lived in the Midwest, I always knew that the worst of the year, the most bitter, brutal, demoralizing cold came in February, in the weeks following Imbolc.  No matter how mild a January thaw might be, there remained the looming threat of weather so cold it would freeze the gas lines in your car, burst your pipes, creep in around your windows to torment your sleep.  The worst of winter was always its last gasp.

As a modern, educated pagan who knows exactly how the seasons progress and why, there's less concern that the sun will or won't come back, and the cycle of the year becomes metaphorical.  Imbolc comes to stand for the moment when the darkness breaks briefly, to give you a glimpse of the coming light before the year plunges you into another harsh test of faith.

My country is in darkness now.  The long election season and the first two weeks of the new administration have cast a lot of people into despair.  We rightly worry that fear and ignorance have handed the reins of power to a dangerous madman, and that we'll end in war -- external OR internal.  The most vulnerable members of our society are at ever-greater risk.

There have been small victories, though.  Marches and protests, rogue government agencies, little wins over policy or polemic.  There is just enough happening to mark an Imbolc moment, a signal to those who crave light that it will come someday and give us the ease and abundance of full summer.

There may yet be worse to come than we've endured already.  There may be more danger, there may be more rage and fear driving our actions and our neighbors'.  It's not yet time to plant our gardens, or plan our leisure time.  We have more tests of faith before us, but we can survive them.

We must apply winter logic, though, if we're going to get as many people as possible through the darkness ahead.

Know your resources and use them carefully.  Check on one another.  Support and take care of your neighbors.  Stand up for each other.  Plan for the worst.  Keep your faith and believe in the better times coming, but make sure your root cellar is stocked to get you to them.  Trade what you have for what you need.  Fight the madness that accompanies isolation and despair with companionship, with music, with laughter.  Find a hearth and circle it with love.  Connect where you can, and fight where you must, but remember, always, that your only goal is to carry yourself and as many of the lives around you as possible through to the better days.

Together, in community with one another, we can reach spring.

Compersion is Not Just About Romance

If you hang around polyamorous circles long enough, you run into the concept of 'compersion'.  It refers to the state, when you and a partner are involved in multiple relationships, where a partner's happiness with another person brings you happiness because you're genuinely invested in their own well-being and you don't view that relationship as a threat to your own.

Whether it's a natural outgrowth of healthy polyamory or a general goal some people struggle towards is a matter of hotly debated opinion, and I'm not going to weigh in on it here.  I'm here today to talk about a different type of compersion: the manner in which it relates to the people your partner loves but is specifically not involved romantically with.  I'm talking about seeking compersion with your partner's friend group.

I am part of a large, caring, close-knit tribe.  We're loud, loving, honest and heavily invested in our success as individuals and as a group.  Many of us struggle with some form of chronic physical or mental illness, so we support one another on the bad days and celebrate the good ones.  We've got a diverse skillset that includes domestic, medical, technical, literary, financial, and social skills, and each of us is happy to put those skills to use to help one another, so that we all benefit from what we each have.  Without this group, my depression would have claimed me years ago; other friends would have failed in things they wanted or needed.

Over the years, some of the people I've dated have been intimidated by my tribe.  They see this group of unfailing advocates as somehow arrayed *against* them, in competition for my time, energy, or affection.  One poor fellow once told me, "Well, I just feel like if they don't like me, you won't like me."

He had it backwards.  If I love you and they see that you love me, my tribe will look at you through that filter, and if they don't understand what I see in you, they'll try to find it, try to build a relationship with you, try to meet you on some common ground, because they want my highest good.  They are invested in me being well and happy, and they consider anyone who is invested in me being well and happy as their ally.  It takes a lot for them to say, "No, I'm sorry, I know that this person is important to you, but I can't accept them."  And in most cases, that starts with a partner rejecting the friends, not the other way around.

The effects of having a tribe like mine have been twofold.  The first was that I chose not to pursue a relationship with anyone who treated my tribe as adversaries, and I feel that I'm much better for it.  If someone couldn't respect the people who love and support me as an important part of my life and necessary to my emotional health, then that person wasn't committed to my happiness.  My partner, on the other hand, has been delighted to find that I had such a wonderful support system, and he has really enjoyed building relationships with them.  Our wedding was a celebration of shared happiness surrounded by people committed to supporting it.

The other effect is that I view my partner's friends as MY allies in his happiness.  He has a group of good friends, and I have made it a point to know and have relationships with his friends, because if they are the people he enjoys and loves, who share in his triumphs and support him in his troubles, then they're on my side because they're on his.  When he goes out with them, and has a good time, I get the benefit of seeing him happy.  When we hang out together, we all have the shared baseline of valuing my partner upon which to build our own friendships.

That's where, for me, non-romantic compersion comes into play.  I have some interests my partner does not share.  He likes to do some things I either don't have time and energy for or an interest in doing.  If we tried to be everything to one another, tried to be the sole support, then we'd both be less happy.  But I can see him come home from an afternoon of games with his buddies, or plan to go out with a friend to see a show, and celebrate the joy he has in doing things he enjoys.  When we have separate experiences, we have things to talk about together.  Even in our monogamous relationship, we can embrace the things and people outside our relationship that make one another happy, and take our own pleasure from it.

Too often, I see the partners of friends or loved ones look at established friendships with suspicion, as obstacles to be navigated or power struggles to be won.  I've seen partners who treated friends as competition for a finite resource, and that hurts everyone.

Love is never a finite resource; time is.  And you have the choice, in your relationships, to compete for that finite resource and ensure that someone doesn't get enough of it, or to share it with the people who, when your beloved's demons come calling, will stand beside you as you help to fight them.

I Am Capable of Procuring My Own Freshly Dismembered Plant Genitalia

I love cut flowers.  I love them a lot, probably to an unreasonable extent.  There's just something bright and cheery about them, a little bit of outside come in to beautify the day.  If I could, I'd have cut flowers in every room of my house, every day, all the time; they're one of the few things that never loses its 'special' quality.  It's possible I've played the Smithereens' "Cut Flowers" a few (thousand) times.

As a young woman, I absorbed the cultural narrative that cut flowers were a thing boys gave you.  If you didn't have a boy, you didn't get any flowers.  Sure, sometimes your dad sent them to you, and if you were in Texas for Homecoming your best friend got you a giant mum, but the 'flowers come from boys' meme was firmly entrenched in my head.

I was not a girl the boys pursued, and my luck ran to not-particularly-romantic gentlemen.  "Happy Valentine's Day, I got you a tool set!" was always conflicting for me, because I *liked* the tool set, and I *needed* new tools, so it was a wonderful gift and I loved it, but I sure would have liked some flowers, and I had said so, but I still usually got told "Oh, you know, you're so fierce and strong and practical I thought you wouldn't go in for silly romantic stuff!"  In between practical non-romantic boyfriends, I've been single for a lot of my adult life, so receiving flowers is still a rarity for me, something I find special every time.

Years ago, I was lamenting my perennial flowerlessness to an older friend, and she said, "Just buy your own flowers."  When I protested that doing that seemed like giving up, like settling for what I could get, she said, "No.  It's not giving up at all.  It's independence.  Flowers are easy.  You walk into the store and you buy some, and then you have flowers.  No meaning, no hidden statements about your worth as a person, just flowers."

The first time I gave myself flowers, I stood sort of furtively in the grocery store line, sure that everyone knew I was a pathetic loser who didn't have anyone to send her flowers.  The cashier stopped, looked at them, looked at me, and then picked them up and SNIFFED them delightedly.  "I love flowers," she said.  "I wish someone would buy some for me, too.  Your friend or whoever is lucky."  I almost told her the truth, but couldn't quite admit that I didn't have someone to buy them for or someone to buy them for me, so I smiled and said, "I love flowers too."

Since then, I buy myself flowers regularly.  I also go to movies alone if I want to see them, instead of waiting for a date to see them with.  If I feel like dinner in a nice restaurant, I eat dinner in a nice restaurant, enjoying it whether my companion is a boyfriend or a book.

I'm not saying it happened overnight, the belief that going ahead and doing the 'date things' myself isn't settling.  Even now I fight the curious looks from hostesses when I cheerfully say, "No, I'm not waiting for anyone.  Just one, please," and refuse the suggestion that I sit in an uncomfortable chair at the bar and eat my furtive lonely dinner under a giant football game on the TV.  No, I'll sit in the dining room, thank you, and enjoy my meal just like anyone else.  And when the cashier asks me who the flowers are for, I smile and say "They're for me.  I just love flowers."  One or two of them even said, "I never thought of buying them for myself.  I should do that!" and I always agree enthusiastically.

The journey to loving myself so that I didn't depend on someone else to do it for me has been so worthwhile, though.  While I'm dating a lovely man who does buy me flowers and plan sweet romantic weekends, I'm able to look at those gestures and appreciate them all the more because I don't depend on them to 'prove' I am loved.  They are allowed to be exactly what they are: expressions of love and appreciation that are sweeter for not being required, for not filling in some relationship check-box.  If you're depending on someone else's love to make you feel worthwhile, then you never will.  The void has to be filled from the inside; it'll just consume whatever you're given by others, voracious and unchanging.

Today is Valentine's Day, a difficult day for many.  For some, the holiday is just a stupid commercial Hallmark holiday designed to throw another set of rapids into relationship navigation.  For others, it's a genuinely painful reminder of love lost or missed, of personal emptiness.  Some of my friends have lost a partner in the last year, and my heart goes out to them.  Today, more than any other day of the year, we fight the social machine that tries to make us worthless, that slams binary genders into heteronormative monogamous constructs and dismisses everything else as 'weird'.  If you don't have love, if your love is wrong, if the love you have is incorrectly expressed, you're told that it makes you different, ugly, deviant, less-than.

I'm lucky, in my life, to have so many shining examples of love done right.  In all manner of incarnations, from freewheeling uncommitted singles to stable, dedicated polyamorous blended families, I am surrounded by people making love work, and making love into a life.  Maybe it's maturity, maybe it's the power of attraction drawing people like me to me, but the core of people who form the closest and most important structures in my life all share one thing, regardless of relationship status: we all recognise the value of loving yourself, of being happy to buy your own flowers and delighted when someone else buys them for you.  We all see, in ourselves, something worthy of loving and we're all committed to bringing that out into our daily lives.  When we look at each other, our partners, and ourselves, we see beings of light and wonder, souls we embrace without reservation, and individuals worthy of love, and we love each other, and that's good.

I love you all.

On Gratitude

You see it a lot, the phrase 'an attitude of gratitude'.  Over November, many people I know were doing 'thirty days of gratitude' across various social media platforms, taking some time each day to offer a general acknowledgment of something or someone for whom they felt thankful.

Here lately, I've also seen a lot of people wrapping up the end of the year with "I'm so glad for all I have!" posts, talking about wonderful communities and wonderful friends and the support they receive every day.  They gush, in glowing terms, how lucky they are to have made such wonderful friends.

I think I'd like to ask them a couple questions.

You've acknowledged your general gratitude for the things and people in your life, but have you specifically thanked and acknowledged the people who have helped you?  How often do you sit down, and instead of throwing a general thanks 'out there', seek out some person who's done something to support or empower or protect you, so that you can say "I see what you did, and I honor what you did, and I could not have achieved what I have if you had not?"

That's the thing, you see.  In the US, we glorify the culture of the 'self-made man'.  And in the culture of the self-made man, there is no room for specific gratitude, because it suggests that another person's work and love had some impact on who you are, that you are not wholly self-made.  So long as you keep your thankfulness general, you don't have to admit that there was some part of that self-making that you simply did not and probably could not accomplish on your own.

It's OK to thank God (or the gods) if you're a 'self-made person' because you can subscribe to prosperity doctrine or the law of attraction, that says that if you have the right faith, belief, or mindset, that's all that's needed for divine or universal blessings to be given to you (see also magical thinking).  You can couch your acknowledgment of what you've been given with vague gratitude so that the credit still really rests with you, for 'keeping positive' or 'being a good person'.  It's karma, you see, that your previous good deeds have put a down payment on the world rewarding you with help when you need it.  If this friend hadn't chosen to help  you, someone would have, because you deserved it.

Same thing with being grateful for your community.  Sometimes people say "I'm grateful that I have such good friends," and I hear "Congratulations to me for choosing friends who will help and support me regardless of whether I have helped and supported them!"  Keeping gratitude general still lets you, on some level, claim credit for foresight or good judgment in ensuring that community would be a resource to you.  (it is fine to be grateful that you have good friends, as long as you understand that you should probably also occasionally acknowledge why, precisely, they ARE such good friends)

When it comes to specifically looking at your life, and recognising that an individual made a deliberate choice he or she was not obligated to make, to benefit and support you, that can be very daunting for some.  To admit to real and specific gratitude to another person's free choices is to swallow your pride and acknowledge that your identity as 'self-made' is a convenient fiction.

None of us is self-made.  We must all own our decisions, and we are all in control of how we will respond to what happens to us, but we all owe gratitude to someone, somewhere.  Maybe it's as small as 'stopped to help me change a tire on the way to a job interview' or 'stayed on chat with me all night when I was stressed about my sick cat' but it's there.

So I challenge you, when you practice your attitude of gratitude, to examine your life, and pinpoint those choices that others have made for you, out of no obligation other than love, empathy, or compassion.  Then seek out those people (if you can find them) and personally thank them, not 'for all you did' but for 'that moment in time'.

Thank you for reading my blog, by the way.  Every time I see clicks or comments, it inspires me to keep writing.

On the Longest Night

Tonight is the Longest Night.

As they do every year, the days have become shorter and darker, the nights longer.  And as it does every year, a tiny but visceral fear has taken root in my mind:

What if it never gets better?

What if the days just keep getting shorter and darker, until the light is gone forever?

What if this is the last winter, the forever winter, that will never ever go away?

That's a bit like what living with episodic depression is like.  Every day a little darker, every day a little harder to get out of bed, and you keep telling yourself, because your rational scientific brain KNOWS IT, that this will have to get better, that the world is a circle and life will spin back to long days and lazy afternoons someday.  But that Traitor Brain in the back of your head says, "What if?  What if it never gets better?  What if the happiness becomes more and more fleeting, less and less powerful, until the long darkness just...stays?  What if this episode is the one that kills you?"

It's no coincidence that most of my serious depressive episodes happen in the winter.  Though it's not quite SAD, there's something about watching the sun go that speaks to an inexorable creeping darkness.

Yule has special meaning for me, because it is a defiant night, when you stand in that darkness, and you watch the sun go down, and you throw faith out into the world and tell yourself that this, this is the darkest of it.  And you put all your faith, everything you are, into the certainty of the coming sun.  You burn so brightly into that darkness, because you know you're halfway there, and you throw a little extra into the fire because you know that somewhere out there is someone whose faith may not be strong enough to see them through to sunrise, but they can get there by the light of your burning.

This has been a good year.  Traitor Brain has been driven back to her cave, and holds little power in my daily life.  Last winter was much harder, much colder.

I know that the worst of winter lies before me, the bone-deep cold and the hard frozen earth and the creeping frost death that strikes even in the heart of Texas.  But I am armed against that whispering chill, with a sword to batter the walls of ice and a shield before me that shines like mercy and wonder.

I believe in the sun, and I will it back with the joy of my heart.

Blessed be, my loves.

On Holidays Secular and Spiritual

When I was a young Badger, I started to understand that my country celebrates two Christmases.  There's the solemn celebration of the birth of Christ, honoring God's promise of hope and salvation.  And there's the warm, loving celebration of time with family and friends, exchanging gifts and drinking eggnog and singing about sleigh bells.

Even when I was Christian, those two holidays were different for me.  When we went to evening/late services on Christmas Eve, I didn't associate the magical candlelight sermon on hope and love with the next morning's explosion of wrapping paper and Family Dinner.  I found that the differentiation seemed easier for me than for many of my peers, over the years, as they wrestled with cramming spirituality into a Christmas stocking.  And when I left Christianity, I had no trouble keeping Family Christmas alive in my life and discarding Spiritual Christmas, which had ceased to hold a deep meaning for me.

Lately I've been coming to understand that today has a similar dichotomy for me.  There's Hallowe'en, which is the orgy of costumes and candy and spookiness that seems to bring out the kid in every last person.  And there's Samhain, the dark winnowing to end the year, when the veils are thin and our dead stand among us.

I like Hallowe'en just fine.  I like candy, and I like to see other people's costumes, and it's great to watch people get SO INTO creativity and expression because maybe they don't feel like they've got an excuse year-round.  But I find that I celebrate it mostly by observation, by watching others embrace it.  I have no costume ideas.  I don't feel compelled to carve up a pumpkin for the office contest.  While I totally respect the effort that goes into designing witch hats out of donuts, ice cream cones, frosting and sprinkles, I have no desire whatsoever to put forth that effort.

Samhain, though, is incredibly important for me.  It's the time of the year when most are pulling inward to rest through the dark part of the year, when I and those like me, who have chosen the alternate path, begin our winter's burning to stand as guideposts and guardians.  Today, so to speak, I take up my sword and begin my watch.

Today I stand in love and trust with my dead gathered around me, not mourning them but honoring them.  I thank those voices that have spoken to guide me, I am grateful for those who walked into darkness to light my own way, giving me the courage to stand as light for others.

After long years of wrestling with this holiday dichotomy, I'm finally at peace with something: I don't celebrate Hallowe'en.  I love to watch it go by.  I laugh and enjoy other people's celebrations, and it makes me genuinely joyful to see all the fun and happiness.  I am not, by any means, a Hallowe'en Grinch.

But this is one day of the year I have to stand apart, my loves.  As I take up more fully the path of the Warrior, as I step more deeply into the Wood, sometimes I have to choose the path apart from the crowd, because what I am doing needs my full attention.  I don't begrudge you the ability to balance the secular and the spiritual in your celebrations, to stir the cauldron and still use it to bob for apples.  Perhaps in future years I'll manage that balance as well, but right now, at this time in my life, what I am doing in the spiritual consumes my focus.

I have been, as I do, resting this summer.  Today is my last day of rest for a season.  Tonight I gather my final harvest, draw upon the energies I've been storing, and light the fire I'll hold through until spring.

Let me say, because I do not say it often enough: I am more grateful than I can ever say to have been given this space to burn, this torch to bear.  For the trust I am offered, for the chance to serve and ward, I am thankful.  My harvest is not of the physical; it is the trust, respect, and love of those people, living and dead, who are part of my life.

I love you all.

In Which I Do Not Care Why You Made That Choice, Just That You Were Free To Make It

I'm going to tell you something I generally only discuss with people I'm considering as potential long-term committed sexual partners:

I do not believe it would be ethically or morally right for me to terminate a healthy pregnancy, so I won't do it.  If I become pregnant, and the fetus and I are physically able to survive and thrive, I will carry the baby to term and raise it.  The level of the father's involvement will be at a minimum fiscal, and based on our relationship at the time.  I won't sleep with anyone who can't accept that reality.  I have great respect for the two or three partners over the years who've said "Yeah, I am really not ready to be a father in any way shape or form and I am not willing to take that risk," and either limited involvement with me to non-risk behaviours or ended the relationship entirely.  That takes a lot of self-awareness and integrity.

Why won't I terminate a healthy pregnancy?  Because I'm physically, emotionally, and financially able to take care of a child.  Because I'm educated about birth control and pregnancy.  Because I have access to reasonably effective, reliable birth control.  Because I live in a city where I have access to emergency contraception in the event of rape, and good prenatal care in the event of accidental pregnancy.  Because, to me, an unplanned pregnancy would be inconvenient and perhaps a little awkward to explain to my conservative employers, but it would not require me to give up an education or a career or other opportunities.

There are personal reasons and spiritual reasons and all manner of other reasons, but what really matters?  Two things:

1.  That I have the right and legal protection to make whatever my choice might be, with the guidance of a trusted physician, and receive safe, legal, reasonably priced healthcare.

2.  That I understand that no part of my personal reasoning for whether or not I would choose to terminate a pregnancy has any bearing whatsoever on the decisions another woman might make.

In Texas right now, laws are being passed to deny women the right to terminate a pregnancy after 20 weeks.  Many proponents of these laws say "Well, isn't five months enough time to decide?"

You know what?  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.  Maybe a woman's just found out she and her husband are carriers for a potentially devastating disease.  Maybe she's escaping an abusive relationship and knows her ex will use a custody fight to keep stalking her if she has the baby.  Maybe she's got erratic periods and she didn't find out she was pregnant until her fifth month, and she's been taking medicines that cause birth defects the whole time.

And maybe, just maybe, nothing in that last paragraph matters because a woman seeking an abortion at any time, for any reason, does not need to justify it to me or to anyone else.  Maybe there should only have to BE two people in that room when the choice is made, and one of them should be the patient and the other should be the doctor.  Maybe we should trust women to know their lives, and their needs, and their capabilities, far better than any other person would know them, and make their decisions accordingly.  Maybe we should assume that a woman considering an abortion has already talked to her partner, her mother, her spiritual advisor, her therapist, or anyone else whose input she feels is important to the decision, and does not need a governmental mandate to do so.

A lot of people say "If you don't have a uterus, you don't have a right to an opinion on abortion."  I disagree absolutely.  We all, every one of us, have the right to that opinion, and the right to speak it freely, and I think that as long as we can do so respectfully, we have an obligation to speak our minds freely.  I believe that a clear and open discussion of the moral and ethical issues surrounding sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, and parenthood is long overdue in this country because we'll never stop using shame and fear to control sexuality until we can have those conversations openly and without judgment.

What we don't have?  The right to turn opinion into law.  The right to assume there is a common religious morality that should direct legislation.  We don't have the right to assume our choices are a universal ideal and judge or shame those who don't fit it.  We don't have the right to claim a moral high ground we do not actually hold, and deny essential healthcare funding (and access) in a perversion of 'Christian values'.  We don't have the right to establish rules regarding when others should have 'made up their minds' or whether someone's reasons are 'good enough'.

There are dozens of reasons a woman might end a pregnancy, and dozens of reasons she might not.  I refuse to split hairs, to even engage in the act of finding 'defensible abortions' that justify why a woman might have a 'reasonable' explanation for it.  I say, absolutely, that it does not matter to me that another woman might choose differently than I might.  It matters to me that both of us are given equal respect and freedom to make those choices, and equal care and opportunity to carry out our choices in the way that is healthiest for all concerned.

In Which I Admit Lust

I was going to write a light philosophical musing about the range of Beltane practices in the pagan community, from the visceral and orgiastic to the fully academic, but instead I find myself focused on something else.

Desire.

For years, I buried passion in compassion, earthing it down and keeping it tightly reined.  My sexuality was something deeply private, even its *existence* shared only with the few partners who managed to make it through the intellectual and emotional obstacle course to my bed, and even then I didn't always admit the most powerful truth: it's not the act of sex that pleases me, but the exchange of desire.  Inexperienced and fumbling, lacking the right vocabulary or even a complete understanding of my own feelings, I could never fully explain that it mattered far less how a man touched me than it did whether or not his hands shook with pure need as he did it.  Being wanted wholly, utterly, helplessly has always been my greatest aphrodisiac.

The face I showed the world was one of service, kindness, duty, compassion, hiding my more feral impulses beneath a calm, smooth, helpful smile.  I was considered, by many who knew me, as prudish, repressed, even frigid.  Some of this came from my own acceptance of the idea that lust was something only thin, pretty, socially normalized girls got.  As a fat girl who's been more than once described as 'sort of plain', I assumed that my chances to be truly desired would be few and far between.  The events surrounding my marriage, which don't bear going into here, only served to reinforce that assumption, to add yet another layer of "so much is clearly wrong with you that your lust could only ever be a burden to its targets, gratified as an act of pity or mercy."

For years, I believed that anyone in whom I felt a sexual interest would be embarrassed by the knowledge, and if he were sufficiently generous of spirit, he could bring himself to accept and perhaps even indulge my desire without showing his revulsion.  I cannot begin to count how many men I watched, hopeless, fiercely hiding any evidence of my interest to spare them.  Even when I could manage to admit it, I was circumspect to the point of nonchalance, and probably gave the impression of lukewarm interest instead of the burning passion I felt.  Very few men saw through it, and I wish now I'd made it easier on them to love me.  (I'm sad to say that some of you, reading this, have probably missed out on a certain amount of what I imagine would have been pretty incredible sex, as a result of my fear.  Sorry about that.)

Each year, Beltane came and went, and I buried myself in academic musings about personal creativity and intellectual fertility, shying away from the true celebration of desire, of lust, of the sheer blissful sharing of intimacy as a sacred act.  I said, "This is not really one of my holidays."  I feigned disinterest in the romps and celebrations of my friends, while secretly wishing I could join their headlong burning.  I so tightly bound and constrained my own expressions of desire that they only rarely woke reciprocal desire in others, and when they did I found myself thrown off balance and inclined to deny them entirely.

Just before I moved to Texas, that began to change.  I began to work with fire magic, and I learned that you can't actually hold a flame suppressed indefinitely.  It must be given freedom to burn, to shine, to glow as it will.  Before I was able to move into safely holding and working with fire in any meaningful capacity, I had to address my own desires -- not just sexual -- and acknowledge them as valid and worthy.  I had to learn to make "I want" statements without feeling I was a penitent asking for a favor.  I had to stand, open to the gods and myself, and admit that desire is a sacred prayer, a ritual of will, an expression of being alive.  This led me to the practice of sacred sexuality, to the idea that all acts of intimacy can be joyful rituals of shared love and lust.

This Beltane, I choose to formally honor my desire, to acknowledge that I am grateful for passion's presence in my life.  I honor the gods with my spirit, and with my heart, and with my body.  I begin from a willingness to accept my own wants and needs as valid parts of my experience in this life, and I embrace my nature as a sexual being.  I will not be embarrassed by or ashamed of my own lust, and I will not hide from what I desire.  I will offer to share my passion as I will, and on my own terms, with no constraint beyond my respect for the boundaries of others.  And when the opportunity for shared and passionate joy comes into my life, I will not suppress it, will not temper that passion with the fear that I am giving too much, delving too deeply, flying too close to the sun.  This Beltane, I join that headlong burning, that spinning arc of sunward longing, that visceral and joyous celebration.

I want.

In Which I Finally Understood Easter After I Stopped Being Christian

One of the last times I visited my grandmother, she wanted to give me 'a little money' (I think it was $20 or so; she liked to tell me to 'get myself a treat'), and I followed her into her bedroom so she could get her purse.  Looking at all the family pictures on her dresser, I noticed one that wasn't a relation.  Neatly tucked in among the shots of my mother and aunt, sister and cousins, of my great-grandmother and my great-uncle and my nephews, was a small framed picture of Christ.  I didn't really think much of it until I was headed home, but it says something profound and significant about my grandmother's relationship with her faith.

She had, of course, all the other pictures of Jesus that Midwesterners have, the one over the TV, the one in the guest room, and so on.  But here was one that made a statement that defined her: Jesus was part of my grandmother's family.  He was not a remote and unknowable being, a distant mythical figure to be worshiped but never understood.  He was a friend, a brother, a father to her.  When she prayed, she genuinely believed that he heard her, and that feeling of being heard gave her comfort whether her prayers were answered or not.  Though, my grandmother's prayers were usually answered -- not because she was better than the rest of us, but because she knew what her God could give her.  She wouldn't pray for an end to a sickness, but for the wisdom of the doctors and the courage to endure.  She wouldn't pray for a good harvest, but for the strength to work hard and the skill to make the most of weather and circumstance.  When my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, she didn't ask God to take it away: she prayed for smart doctors, and her own courage, and her husband's comfort.  She understood that faith isn't about waving a magic wand to get what you want; it's about having support and comfort for your journey.

I'm thinking today about my grandmother's relationship with her gods because it's Easter, the most holy and joyful day of the Christian faith.  A lot of my friends like to mock it with faux-clever quips about zombie Jesus, but I can't really see my way clear to mocking something that meant that much to someone who's meant so much to me.

When I was little, I didn't really like Easter because it wasn't as fun.  Sure, there were eggs and candy, but Christmas had a TREE and PRESENTS and maybe even SNOW and time off school.  I left the Christian faith at 19, before I fully understood the idea of self-sacrifice, of making life choices for the love of others.  Within paganism, as I've chosen a path of duty and service, I've finally come to understand Easter, to understand why this story of incredible love and compassion is so powerful to those of the Christian faith.

My grandmother believed that once upon a time her God had looked forward to everyone who would ever be, and had known that someday she personally would exist, and he had asked his son, "I love these people.  Will you also love them enough to die for them?"  And she believed that Christ had looked forward, and had seen her (and everyone else who would ever be), and said, "Yes, I will."

In the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay, a character named Kevin Laine swears an oath: "Though he be a god, and it mean my death ... to this I will make my reply."  Later, another character references that promise and points out that you give a little leeway to a man who says that sort of thing, even if he doesn't quite know how he'll accomplish it when he says it.

That's sort of how I feel about the Christian promise.  I am not a Christian theologist, and I have my own ideas on the nature of free will and redemption that may or may not jibe with the Easter story.  But the gist of it is that one man said, "Yes, these people, I love them so much, even the ones I've never met, that I'll go through this horrible thing for them, just because of my own belief that somehow my sacrifice will make something possible for them that they couldn't have otherwise managed."  And...I have to give a certain amount of respect to a man who swears that sort of oath, even if the fundamental mechanics are sort of unclear to me.

If you've read Fionavar, you know what Kevin's reply was.  If you haven't, you should.  And it remains to be seen what Christ's reply really means in the long run; people have their own beliefs ranging from 'nothing' to 'everything'.  Maybe he never existed.  Maybe he existed as a man and teacher who's been expanded to the Son of God to fill a mythic role.  Maybe he was the literal Son of God.  I don't know.  I can't know.  Personally, I don't need to know.

But I do know that my grandmother loved him deeply, with all her heart, and that her love for him was profound and important enough to her to inform every single aspect of her daily life, to color every interaction, every conversation.  And just as I wouldn't mock someone's dead father, or dead brother, and just as I would be hurt by someone mocking my grandmother or the best friend I lost in 2004, I simply cannot find it in myself to disrespect her love that way.

I love you all.

In Which I Advocate for Domestic Partnership

Almost everyone I know is currently up in arms about gay marriage.  It's understandable; a substantial portion of the American population is being denied basic civil rights on a flimsy 'moral' pretext.

The argument as to whether homosexuality is moral or immoral is relevant to the social and personal treatment of gays, but it should be irrelevant to law.  Law is not, contrary to popular belief, derived from a moral argument.  It's derived from an ethical agreement we participate in as a society.  Things are not illegal because they are 'wrong' on a moral level.  In a pluralistic society, things should be illegal because they're detrimental to the social order, not because they're in opposition to a theological position.

Civil rights are not detrimental to the social order.  Equality is not detrimental to the social order.  If you give everyone the same rights and privileges under the law, it creates a more stable system, not a less stable one.  Greater social stability is an inherent benefit to those who live within a society, so long as it doesn't prevent the growth and progress of that society.  Any expansion of civil rights encourages the growth and progress of a society.

Marriage equality is a complex issue, and one that affects me on a number of levels.  As a non-Christian, I object to living under the assumption of 'Christian morality'.  As a straight ally, I see my friends and loved ones denied a basic right I enjoy simply because my sexual preference is more palatable to a certain segment of the population.  And as a clergyperson, I have to wrestle with the issue of whether or not I will perform heterosexual marriages when I can't legally solemnize same-sex ones.

The first two are larger social problems, but the last can be viewed as a matter of contracts.  Ultimately, what I've come to consider is that I should give up my power to confer legal status on anyone, straight or gay.  When I perform a wedding, it should be solely a spiritual and social ceremony, with no legal standing at all.  I believe that clergy should play a simple role, managing the rites and rituals of community life.  But I believe that ultimately, the only way to maintain a proper separation of church and state is to create two separate elements to marriage.

The first element is the social and spiritual one, the ceremony before community in which consenting adults swear oaths to one another by whatever they hold sacred, oaths that create no legal obligation.  This element of a wedding confers a social standing upon the participants, by which those who share similar values can recognise that these people have made promises to one another.  It creates a moral obligation, but no connection under the law.  I feel, as a priestess, that I am qualified to perform these ceremonies because I intimately understand the structures of oath and obligation, the social fabric of community that makes that ritual meaningful.

The second aspect of marriage is the legal contract.  It creates a connection under law, a set of obligations with fiscal and legal ramifications, and a set of privileges that affect property transfer, parental rights, healthcare decisions, and financial standing.  The set of promises entailed in civil marriages all relate to simple contract law, and should be handled as such by a state-appointed official well-versed in contracts, estate law, tax policy, and property rights.  As a priestess, I am not an expert on contract law, and am not best qualified to legitimize that relationship.

I propose a complete severance between the aspects of marriage, that the clergy be left unmolested to perform any marriage they choose:  man to woman, man to man, woman to woman, three or more people.  In cases where one party is unable to legally consent (age, mental incapacity), clergy marriage shouldn't provide protection to the relationship (if you find a priest to marry you to a twelve-year-old girl, "she's my wife" should not protect you from statutory rape), but otherwise there should be no legal restrictions on who can be married in such a ceremony.

In tandem with this, any domestic partnership should be required to undergo a civil contract registry to obtain the rights, privileges, and legal standing available to married persons.  Any number of consenting adults can sign a contract, provided all signatories agree to the terms.  You can be married all you like, but without a domestic registry the state recognises nothing about your union.  Each state has a standard set of rights and privileges associated with marriage, and a simple "John Doe and Jane Smith agree to enter into a domestic partnership according to the laws of (state) with no exceptions," contract would cover most marriages, and those with more complex relationships are free to seek legal counsel to codify the terms of their marriage contract, just as a couple can seek legal advice for a prenuptial agreement now.

Most suggestions of 'domestic partnership' offer a 'separate but equal' dodge around marriage equality, creating a second tier of 'almost the same' to be offered to gays and lesbians, but that creates a second-class marital status.  Pure equality under the law requires, ultimately, that only the law determine who has a legal standing.

This involves me giving up a power I currently hold under law, but I've been feeling a growing conflict with that power for some time.  I am not qualified to advise on the legal ramifications of contract marriage, and if I am truly taking the responsibility of officiating weddings seriously, I should be able to intelligently explain to everyone involved the full ramifications of the thing we are doing together.

In Which I Am Not Pretty

This poem by Kate Makkai is making the rounds again, and it hits me so hard every time I hear it.

When I was younger, I wore "I am not a Pretty Girl" like armor.  I've never fit the measured social standard of 'pretty'.  I am too large, too curved, too strong, too loud, too smart.  My features are described as 'striking' or even 'majestic' and 'beautiful' but I never fit into the pretty pink size four prom dress, and so many of my high school colleagues tried to make sure I'd wear that failure for the rest of my life.

Every 'friend' who said, "It probably doesn't come in YOUR size," every young man who rejected me in favor of some tanned and slender, soft and smiling creature, the teacher who 'inspired' me with "It's OK.  You don't really need to worry about your looks, because girls like you are admired for what's inside," all served to remind me that there is a mold for 'girl' in this world and I grew out of it somewhere around the eighth grade as the Pretty Girls were just learning how to grow into it.  The Pretty Girls took that power and they made my life hell for years.  And I let them.

I wore my rejections as a reminder that 'women like me' didn't have to be desired to be valuable.  I told myself, for years, that I didn't need love if I could just be smart enough to figure out how.  I had crushes like the other girls, but I assumed their futility from the start.  I operated under the expectation that who I was, this too-tall and too-present body, the unafraid opinions and the aggressive pursuit of my own ideas, the fast-moving mind and the mouth trying to keep up, spelled a diminished mating fitness that everyone could see.

I spent years of my life believing I'm not (and never could be) the sort of woman men pursue; as much as I've always flirted and joked, I secretly believed anyone showing interest was settling.  When I look back at my 20's, I have to admit that while I dated some wonderful men, I also threw my time away on some real losers just because they showed an interest and I didn't think I really had the room to be picky.  Girls like me, I was made to believe, should learn to take what they can get and not complain.

In short, I lived Makkai's premise as a defiant embrace of failure, a deliberate rejection of my own pursuit of happiness.  Fuck 'pretty', I said, which was a good start, but then I took the fatal step of missing the point entirely, of becoming complicit in the exact thing 'fuck pretty' is supposed to reject.

I agreed to accept, somewhere along the way, that only pretty girls deserve to be loved, desired, happy, and fulfilled, and that by embracing my own lack of 'pretty' I was giving up any chance at all that.  I decided I would reject their stupid notion that women have to be pretty, but instead of taking that next step to "I deserve the chance to pursue what will bring me joy regardless of whether I grew into or out of the 'pretty girl' mold," I said, "I'll just get used to not having the nice things pretty girls get.  I'll content myself with more cerebral, more spiritual goals and maybe find love with someone who's willing to look past the outer me," never realizing that by doing so I was automatically devaluing myself, those goals, *and* anyone who might look twice at me.

Whether I meet that standard or not has nothing to do with whether I deserve to be loved, whether it's reasonable for me to want to be desired, whether it's shallow for me to want compliments, whether I build loving relationships or spend my life alone -- or move between paired and alone as life moves and changes.  If I choose 'deeper' pursuits, it's not settling for having a 'nice personality'.  If I seek partnered relationship, it's not a desperate chasing for something I'm not 'supposed' to have.

These days, pretty's not my enemy any more.  It's just another way for people to be.  Pretty is more than just 'easy on the eyes'.  Pretty is easy to know, easy to approach, easy to like and accept.  Pretty is more comfortable, more pleasant.  There's nothing wrong with being any of those things; pretty people are actually pretty nice to have around -- especially once we all got out of high school and 'pretty' stopped being a weapon in the wars girls fight to destroy each other.

But...I will still never be one of them.  I cannot fit the pretty mold and I won't kill myself trying.  I'll keep being too big and too loud and too 'striking' and I'll keep challenging assumptions about beauty and I'll keep on being just awkward and ferocious enough that 'pretty' falls off when you try to hang it on me.

There are any number of people who'll read this and want to reassure me that *they* think I'm pretty.  While I appreciate the sentiment, it's not necessary and I'd rather they not do it.  I've come to terms with it.  It's not a denial or a resentment, not a resigned acceptance of my 'never have' status.  Not pretty is a way to be, just like pretty is a way to be, and I've abandoned "Fuck Pretty" for "Hey, Pretty, did you know we're on the same side?  Let's go get a beer and hang out."

In Which I Love You

Today is a frustrating and upsetting day for many people who are important to me.  Social pressures and personal anxieties collide to create a terribly perfect storm of guilt, loneliness, resentment, and bitterness.  Those who feel the lack of a partner feel it ever more keenly today.  Those whose relationships don't follow traditional dynamics face a reminder that they're outsiders.  Even those with stable, joyful, happy relationships still may face a minefield to be navigated.  Do I make a gesture?  Do I plan a date or buy a gift?  What if I do and he doesn't?  What if I don't and he does?  What if I do the wrong thing, and I hurt the one I love?

Awash in a broad cultural message of "Have you DONE ENOUGH to deserve your partner's love?  Did you EARN it today by proving your worth as a partner?  If you don't have a Valentine, you FAIL but if you have a Valentine and don't do everything right you still FAIL and if you have a Valentine and do everything right your Valentine might still FAIL and not love you enough," many end up lost and angry.

But we don't have to listen.  I know it's easier said than done, but we can speak louder and fight harder than that voice.

Love does not fail.  Love never fails, because its simple existence is victory.  When you stand your ground and let the love flow out from you to the Universe, you beat back the tide of hate, of judgment, of fear and inadequacy, and you are mighty.

Choosing to love is allowing the sacred to act upon the world, through you.  When you open your heart first to yourself and then to those around you, what flows through you is divine communion with the deepest essence of the Universe.  I don't mean something as limited and finite as gods.  I mean the primal stuff, the heady swirl of matter and energy from which everything that has ever been or ever will be is made.  A loving spirit is a conduit for pure creation, a beautiful and perfect moment in space -- and that moment can be created every single day, every single second, if you choose to.  The longer you spend immersed in love, the easier it becomes to tread those waters and breathe those vapors.

Love is revolution.  Everything and everyone you love, you make beautiful, even if it's just for one moment.  We're under tremendous pressure to let the ugliness of the world beat us down and back every day, to admit that it's all crap, all worthless, that happiness is a crock or a thing other people get to have.  Love is the best defense, the only certain way to shine a grace even the meanest spirit can't deny.

It's been almost a decade since I took this risk, since I committed myself, heart and spirit, to living a life of conscious love.  I won't say it's been easy, because it hasn't.  This is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I am still doing it.  I still fight with the need to have my love validated by reciprocity.  I still struggle with the difference between "I don't have a partner" and "I am not loved."  I still hold out love to people who don't value or even notice it and haven't quite managed the lack of attachment that would take away that sting.  I am not always loved on the terms I want, and I have to remind myself that it's all right to love someone even if I don't like him very much.

But what's made it more than worth it, a thousand times over, are the moments when I stand, basking in the primal power of the Universe, head spinning with the energy of pure potential, loving eyes open to a world so beautiful it breaks and heals my heart all at once.  Les Mis told me long ago, "To love another person is to see the face of God."  It's more than that.

When I am wrapped in love, I do not see the face of the Goddess.

I wear it.

In Which I Hope We Have Enough Warriors

There have been, of late, too many tragedies like Newtown or Aurora.  Each one provokes a predictable round of conversations that flare quickly briefly, the national dialogue of "We must do something to control these guns" met by "responsible gun owners save lives" met by "shouldn't there be some limitations on gun ownership" met by Constitutional arguments, a whirling round of binary posturing that spins down into obscurity after a few weeks as other media horrors capture our attention.

Relatively recently, this mix has begun to include pleas for reform or at least expansion of our mental healthcare system, calls for better diagnosis and treatment of the sort of severe mental illness we imagine to be required for someone to fire a gun into a crowded theatre or classroom, or pilot his airplane into an office building -- because it's unthinkable that anyone besides a complete madman would do such a thing.

On all sides, there's a tremendous amount of political haymaking, with everyone certain he or she can find the magic solution in a law, a funding decision, the presence or absence of a deity in our public lives, that will resolve all of this, and insisting that solution be implemented to the exclusion of all others.

What I see precious little of, however, is evolution in our cultural dialogue on violence, on our shift from the narrative of the Warrior to the narrative of unbridled vengeance.

When I was a young girl, I watched a lot of movies.  I remember Red Dawn and Back to the Future and Goonies.  There seemed to be a tone, in much of the media I consumed, that said, "Yes, there are bullies and enemies and they are horrible people, but the little guy can stand up, and he can PUNCH that bully right in the nose, and the bully will leave him alone."  These were narratives of the Warrior:  if you are strong and brave and kind, if you fight for yourself and your loved ones, you can overcome those who would abuse or exploit you.  We had Han Solo and the Last Starfighter, who took on fights they could have abandoned, because they made a conscious choice to stand for the right.

I was inoculated with the culture of the Warrior, and it still resonates within me.  Somewhere, though, we started to be embarrassed, to consider the idea passe and hokey.  We found different icons:  The Crow, Thelma and Louise, avatars of wrath and vengeance.  We began to see a broad cultural shift in motivation, from protecting our loved ones and standing for what's right, to retribution and being the self-appointed right hand of karma.

The narrative of vengeance, of the man who's had too much and snaps, isn't new.  One need only look at Taxi Driver to see it.  The difference is that older narratives treat the descent into vengeance as a horror, a brutal depravity.  Batman Begins, on the other hand, a plot line fueled on all sides by revenge and retribution, is a glorious and lovingly crafted symphony of beautiful explosions, car chases, and gadgets.

Don't get me wrong; I love Batman Begins, and I own it on DVD.  But when I watch it, I find myself viewing it through the lens of the Warrior my childhood left behind.  I don't want to *be* that Batman, a dark hero despised by the people he has chosen to stand for, whose civic duty is tinged with a contempt and bitterness for the people unlucky enough to deserve a hero like him.  I have defenses against it, but I worry that we don't all have those defenses.  I worry that if we're raised on a diet of vengeance and violence, we lose the capacity to choose to use force responsibly. If we lose the heart of the Warrior, then we lose something precious that I believe we need very much.

I do have a certain amount of hope, though.  In every moment of tragedy, I have heard of heroes.  Stories of teachers who risked their lives at Columbine to lead students to safety.  Names like Liviu Librescu, the Holocaust survivor who died holding off the Virginia Tech gunman while his students fled.  Stories of first responders in Aurora, pushing towards the theatre to rescue the wounded, not sure if the gunman was still inside.  Kaitlin Roig, who sheltered those under her care, asked them to be brave with her, and spoke words of loving compassion to children she believed were about to die with her, so that the last things they heard would be, "It's going to be OK" and "I love you" instead of gunfire.  Those are Warriors' hearts.

Into the Murrah Building, into the twin towers, to the front of Flight 93, people ran towards danger to help those in need, to defend the innocent, to save loved ones.  Every day, around the world, people from all walks of life, teachers and firefighters and computer programmers and nurses and soldiers and retail clerks are given chances to stand up and choose love in the face of danger, oppression, ignorance, and hate.  Fewer, now, choose the path of the Warrior, and those that do risk ridicule or dismissal, but we can change that.

If you would stem the tide of violence, by all means advocate for better gun control and better mental health care and better protections or police patrols or whatever other concrete means you believe will effect that change.  But beyond that, do what you can to remind yourself and those around you of the importance of Warriors.  Forget the names of those who took up arms to seek vengeance, who lashed out in maddened hate and fury against a world they believed had wronged them personally.  Let them fall into obscurity, and remember instead the names of those who stood against them in courage, compassion and love.

On Human Interaction and Actual Social Skills

I've been rewatching "Sherlock" for the third or fourth time this week.  It really is a gorgeously done thing.  As someone who's had lots of friends (sometimes casual, sometimes close) most of her adult life, and who's never really had trouble making friends with people, watching the evolution of the relationship between Sherlock and Watson sparks my empathy.

Over the years I've known a lot of brilliant otherwise incredibly competent people who simply could not master the murky waters of social navigation.  These were not dumb people.  They were poets and physicists, artists or mechanics or warriors, who could pick up the tools of almost any trade and master them easily.  They weren't antisocial people, either.  They genuinely wanted a circle of trusted friends and loved ones.

But they spent years, most of them, viewing human interaction as an incomprehensible and illogical morass of hurt feelings and hidden rules.  They'd watch and observe those around them, noting appropriate behaviours and responses, and then try to use the data they'd collected.  It would go well, for a while, and then they'd say or do something wrong and everything would explode.  Everyone would be hurt and upset, and they could not explain why.  They just knew that somehow the technically correct action had been wildly inappropriate, and that everyone around them appears to have known, by secret communication, that it was wrong.  When someone more socially savvy would point out, "Well, here is why the people are upset, and what they expected you to do, and how you can apologise and explain to them that you didn't mean to hurt them," they would ask, "How on earth did you KNOW that?  Where did you learn it?  How do I know not to upset people in the future?  Who taught you the right things to say?"

The answer I give to that isn't very satisfying:  I just know.  I learned it by making the mistakes you're making now, when I was younger and there was more forgiveness for them, when the stakes for upsetting a friend were not as high.  You can't keep from upsetting people, and you won't always know the right things to say.

There are tools in all human relationships, but they're not the tools you see from the outside.  Small talk looks stupid and pointless, but it's not just small talk.  It's 'listening' and 'paying attention'.  Just learning to repeat the 'right' phrases means you respond to "My dog died today," with "Well, it was great weather for it!"

The other tools are no more obvious or apparent.  There's empathy, sympathy, intuition, and compassion, all of which involve a risk.  You cannot feel empathy for another person unless you're willing to actually open up your own thoughts and feelings to them and be affected by theirs.  Most of the compassionate people I know got that way by learning firsthand how it feels to be hurt.  You learn how to be a friend by sitting, talking, and listening, not by working out the statistical frequency of when it's your turn to buy the beer.  When I talk to people about my depression, many of them want to know the thing to say or do to 'make it better'.  Nothing will make it better.  Just be there and be present and I'll work my own way back to better, because being there is more helpful than any action you might take.

Most people out there started life no better at human interaction than anyone else.  Some had really good teachers, some had really bad ones.  Some have added barriers like Asperger's or social anxiety, and some have a natural knack or charm for dealing with others, but for the most part people all eventually blunder through learning how to relate to other people by a trial-and-error process.  If they're lucky, it happens sometime in elementary school and they manage to enter adult life knowing how to make friends, chat up an attractive person, or make small talk with a prospective employer.

For smart people, especially people who know they're smarter than those around them, it can be doubly challenging because learning to relate to people doesn't feel like other kinds of learning.  There's no way to assess or measure your progress, there's not really any research literature to review, and your test subjects cannot be relied upon to provide accurate feedback.  You have no way to know if you're getting it right, until you're not.  And when suddenly you're not, it's usually in front of a large number of people, some of whom you really do care very much about, who can all now see how incompetent you are at this thing everyone else does (apparently) effortlessly, and the penalty for failure can be brutal.

It's terrifying, and it's no surprise that a lot of people just give up entirely. They say, "Fuck them and their games, I'll just be alone."  The difference between them and people who are simply antisocial is that antisocial people never particularly cared enough about connecting with other people to try and learn the skills, but a certain number of people who DO care resign themselves to loneliness halfway through learning that skillset, because it's incredibly discouraging.  Many of them end up angry, bitter, and frustrated by the fact that demonstrably less-competent people are able to accomplish more because they learned how to navigate the system instead of relying on technical brilliance alone.

Some people resolve to master it, no matter what it takes.  They keep making the mistakes, painful as they are, and refining their approach.  They watch obsessively, observing every example of human behaviour.  They read self-help and management technique books (the closest thing to 'how to relate to people' really does seem to be 'how to manage people'), and eventually they manage to cultivate enough of the technical skill set that they proceed through life without making major gaffes.  They've learned the wrong skills, though:  small talk and when to give flowers and that you have to help people move, instead of genuine empathy and active listening.  At best, they end up as early Data from Star Trek: TNG, who has calculated the exact force appropriate in a handshake, just firm and friendly enough to inspire the right level of confidence.  At worst, they can come off as false and abrasive, and occasionally a little bit creepy.

There's a third option, but not a lot of people have the courage or opportunity to take it.  You have to be willing to be really, seriously hurt.  You have to admit that learning to figure out how others are thinking and feeling, and being willing to respond to them in a real and genuine manner, is worth the risk.  You have to find friends who won't tell you "This is what you should have said or done," but will tell you "This is what you should have heard" and ask you "How would you feel in an equivalent situation?"  Feelings are always going to be a complicated and irrational business, but once you start listening to how people talk about themselves and trying to work out what they actually need from you, it does get simpler over time.

And if, like me, you're one of the lucky ones who does understand human interaction even when you make mistakes at it, the best thing you can do for your friends who don't seems to be to say, when they have misunderstood you or don't appear to be hearing you, "This is what I was saying, what I was trying to communicate to you.  This is the experience I am having and I need you to be aware of and sensitive to that."  It's also a hard thing, but ultimately worth it.

In Which I Do Not Accept the Enemy I Am Given

I have a friend who has struggled with her health for some time.  She has undetermined health issues, which her doctors can't explain, that essentially make a simple diet and a good night's sleep her personal Holy Grail.  She's recounted her experience in detail, and I've been following it.

Recently, she had a moderate epiphany helped out by a friend, in which she decided to shift her relationship with her body to one of compassion and empathy, to address her difficulties by remembering that her body is doing the best that it can, and it is not her enemy.

This struck me on a deep and personal level, because I have spent much of my adult life struggling with my weight and body image and my perception of my own attractiveness.  I've often felt undervalued, because I undervalued myself.  I treated my life as something I had to ensure didn't interfere with anyone else.  Most of it has been rooted in the idea that my body is my enemy, that my mind is my enemy, that my desires are my enemy, that my own identity is my enemy.  I am too fat, too smart, too extroverted, too chatty, too passionate, too ME to be borne.  I make others uncomfortable when I am strong, and disappoint them when I am weak.

Words of war fly at me, from every angle.  The magazine covers tell me how to 'defeat that stubborn fat!' and 'overcome those cravings!'  A gym commercial consoles me that I shouldn't accept my heritage or body type, if they interfere with how I want to look.  Advice abounds on how to sublimate your own needs in relationships with others, to make sure you've tricked them into feeling the way you want.  At every turn I'm offered weapons to use against myself, under the guise of motivating myself to destroy the person I am and become the person I'm told I should be.

I've spent the last few years gradually rising to resist the battle being brought to me, slowly coming to peace with my body and my identity and my loves and desires.  For a long time, I worried that that acceptance would mean I stopped evolving, stopped improving, stopped seeking.  If I ever accepted that my body was beautiful, I thought, I would stop taking care of it.  If I accept that my strength is not a liability, I might stop handling others with gentle compassion.  If I embrace the fact that I am smart and competent, I might stop learning new things.

In my head, I think, I have been viewing my possible relationships with my self as twofold:  antagonism or neutrality.  Deciding that I am not my enemy seemed to mean a sort of apathetic live-and-let-whatever attitude, that if I stopped fighting I ceded the right to care about the outcome.

There is a third option, and I've been slowly coming to understand what it means:  I am not my enemy, because I am my ally.  I want the best for me.  I want my own health and happiness.  I want myself to succeed, and to flourish.  This alliance has begun to transform my entire relationship with myself.

When I eat nutritious food, I do not think that I am staving off obesity or thwarting my love of donuts.  I think, "Here, body, is some stuff I know you need to do your job well.  I have taken the time to prepare it in an appetizing manner so that your sustenance is a pleasant experience."  If I work hard or skip a financial indulgence to save up a little extra, I think, "Hey, Future Self, enjoy that vacation!  Take lots of pictures so Further Future Self can look back and enjoy the trip!"  When I take that vacation, I think, "Man, I'm sure glad Past Self did this nice thing for me!  I think I'll make it a point to say something kind about her!"

That's actually the easy part.  I can look at the choices I'm trained to believe are 'good' and find a reason to consider them self-loving ally acts.  But the other side is hard.  The first time I said, "Hey, self, you know what?  A bowl of ice cream would make you feel happy and cheerful!  Let's have one!" I struggled with the idea that I was 'getting away with' something, that I was validating or justifying a 'bad' choice.

The challenge is to view every single choice I make as active self-support, love, and appreciation.  As my own ally, I have to consider my choices in the light of "Would I want my beloved friend to do it this way?" because I am my beloved friend.  I would want my beloved friend to have a workout that was fun and enjoyable, so that she could become as strong and flexible as she wanted to be.  I would not want my beloved friend to feel shamed and guilty about eating cookies for breakfast.  I would not want my beloved friend to shrink from leadership because she feared assertiveness would cause her to be perceived as less friendly or desirable.  I would want my beloved friend to be proud of her mind and her strength, because she deserves to shine.  I would want my beloved friend to feel she could expose her own vulnerability to people she trusted, because she deserves empathy and support.  I would not want my beloved friend to downplay her own potential because she was afraid of the challenge it presented her.

For many years now, I've ended a lot of my writings with "I love you all," to emphasize my commitment to living a loving life.  I believe it's time for me to change that.

I love us all.

Blessed Beltane

So ends the seventh year of my winter burning.

Some among my friends know the tale of how, from blackest darkness, I reached out to catch a single spark thrown across a desperate distance, to keep my own fires burning one long Yule night.  How I took that tiny spark, and from it kindled the flame that sustained me until spring.  How I have never forgotten the friend who cast it, and will treasure him to the end of my days.

Some among my friends know that for years, October plagued me with pain, and loss, and the fear of my own ending, how I guarded and fortified myself against it, building reserves of energy, and how I finally began to reach Samhain with some of that energy left over.

Many know how, each year, I gather my fire through the summer months, resting, dormant, to stand beacon from Samhain to Beltane, holding this space of flame for any who need it.  How for the dark half of the year I keep an open vessel, tending the fire with my gathered fuel, releasing those far-flung sparks for those unable to find their way.

Winter brings me into my power, my brightest Fire, my strongest burning.  I may be a child of the Sun, heliotrope, but I require the darkness to truly shine.

There are many kinds of Fire in the world.  There is the hearth fire, which nurtures and sustains.  There is the forge, which creates and challenges.  There is the conflagration, which transforms as it destroys.  I have been all of these, but my winter's fire is the candle in the window, the signal fire, the standing beacon.  Here is home, it says, here is strength and power.  Here are love and family, respite and healing.  Here is a perilous enemy if you try to move against it, but a steadfast friend in need.

Each Samhain, as the sun falls, I step forth in flame.  I hold out my hands in love and in Fire, and I carry them through the dark of the year.  When I hear a voice falter, I lend it my own tale of strength.  When I see a light begin to dim, I offer my own burning to kindle it.  When a friend cries out lost in the Wood, I say "Here, here is the way to familiar ground."  I do what was done for me, and carry it forward in service and in love.  All winter long, I feel the gentle touches, the pulls, that mean someone has used the Fire I carry in need.  Each time, whether I know the touch or not, I smile and thank the gods that I am able to offer it.  Some nights I wake to the desperate, ungentle touch that says someone in great need has reached out to me.  Those nights I'm even more grateful to be able to do this, because I know what it meant to me, for that last frantic grasp to catch and hold.

Each winter has been different.  Some years, I barely notice Beltane's approach, taken by surprise when it's time to bank these fires.  Some years, April stretches out as a long, bitter struggle of will, to keep going without risking my own stability.  This year has been hard, but not bitter.  In recent years I find that others are feeding this fire.  A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, a moment of love or compassion, makes my choice an act of community.  Though I never asked for and do not expect anyone else to help me hold this burning, I'm grateful for everyone who takes even a few moments to say, "I have a little light to share.  Let me add it to the one you carry."  That means that this year, the first year *I* have had to use the winter fire for myself , I could draw from those reserves without the fear that I might not have enough light to share through to spring.

Today, I have slowly been banking my flame, shifting the scattered coals to conserve the remains of the fire until Samhain, releasing the open flames themselves to the bonfires rising across the land.  My power returns to the ember, buried beneath ashes, to smolder until the Wheel brings me back to winter.

Tonight, while my friends and loved ones gather to the Beltane fires in joy and celebration, I offer gratitude for all the many gifts of my life, and I rest now, in love...and in the cool, clear darkness.

It's a Beautiful World, Charlie Brown

My adult life has been one long striving towards beauty.  Not in the conventional sense, in the sense of making myself more aesthetically appealing or socially palatable.  I'm not one to chase the perfectly sculpted body or the meticulously engineered wardrobe, that enviably well-ordered life.

Instead, I'm speaking of Beauty, of the sense that a moment, a view, an experience is so deliciously right that it's impossible not to revel in it.  Occasionally, I find myself struck dumb by wonder, for no reason I can explain.  A sunset, a friendship, the smell of jasmine through an open window, can completely stop me in my tracks.

As children, we're indulged in our susceptibility to Beauty.  No one faults a child who stares up at her first Christmas tree, eyes perfectly round, in total awe.  Parents smile indulgently and say, "Oh, I wish I still had her enthusiasm!" or "I remember what it felt like to see the world that way..."

Few people ever remember that you still can.  That it's perfectly acceptable, even as a Responsible Adult, to stop, stare, and say, "Wow!"  My morning commute includes a brief downhill drive during which the Austin skyline hangs before me.  Some mornings it's shrouded in fog, some mornings it's pink-glazed glory, and some mornings it's heartbreakingly crisp, every line and window perfectly clear in the morning air.  Perhaps three mornings out of every five, I'm given the chance to acknowledge Beauty, and the days I do so are invariably better days.

For years I've tried to explain Beauty, never quite encompassing it.  For some, it's a matter of proportionality, of things being right and harmonious:  the grace of the bird in flight, the mastery of a well-designed musical piece, the balance of flavors and textures in a dish.  For some, surprise is integral to it.  You come around a curve to be struck unaware by wildflowers stretching as far away as your eyes can see, a riot of unexpected color.  Others require a wildness to embrace Beauty:  the untouched forest, the crash of the sea on rocks, the predatory grace of the tiger.

What it ultimately comes to for me is that Beauty feeds my sense that larger things are at work.  Gods, nature, love, maybe even mathematics, something grand and transcendent and beyond my own full comprehension moves in the world, and Beauty is the mark of its graceful passing.

My response to it used to be a sort of hushed and respectful reverence, observation from a distance, desperately trying not to touch (and thus spoil) the Beauty myself.  I firmly believed that as an imperfect being I could only damage that grace, only mar the surface and ruin it for everyone else.  I have come to a space, though, where I begin to understand how I am part of the Beauty around me.  Now I practice whole-body reverence.  I jump in, I embrace the moment.  I touch, I taste, I completely immerse myself in the experience and weave it around and through my life.  I stick my head in a vat of fresh-roasted coffee beans to exclaim, "Doesn't this smell WONDERFUL?"  I walk on the grass, touch the flowers, dance to the music whether it's being played for my benefit or not.

And I point it out.  See, look, do you see?  Smell this.  Listen to those birds, touch this fabric, eat some of my food, it's wonderful and amazing.  This book, this movie, has moments of perfect Beauty woven through it, you should touch it and let it come into your life.  Here is a picture of where I was, you should go and see it yourself, because it's just incredible and I felt the hands of the gods on my heart there.

It shouldn't surprise me that this makes some people profoundly uncomfortable.

I get that Beauty is not universal, that others won't find the same delight and joy in my world that I do.  They may not care for birdsong or chocolate cake, and so they don't entirely understand what it is I'm getting out of it.  Many of them are finding their own Beauty in their own way, and that's wonderful.  Anyone who reaches out to touch the world as an act of celebration enriches it.  But others seem entirely resistant to the concept itself, to opening any windows or doors through which wonder can enter their lives.  They keep eyes forward and head down, pragmatically experiencing it all as a set of discrete and generally unremarkable facts, happy enough but completely bereft of joy.  They set aside their awe with childhood, and refuse to allow it to upset the schedules on which their lives run.

Occasionally, they make me feel like a terrifying space alien bent on the destruction of all they hold dear.  More often, they treat me as a dangerous and fascinating curiosity, so far outside the experience they've chosen for themselves that they can only observe me with passing bemusement and maybe the expectation that some day I'll 'up' appropriately:  grow up, wise up, straighten up.  I don't really plan to, though.  I mean, it may happen that reveling in Beauty is just a phase, but I hope not.

We need that sense of something larger than ourselves.  Whether it's to feel safe in the knowledge that there are gods watching out for us, to feel empowered by love to do great things, or to set our sights beyond our grasp to conquer a mountain, a problem, or even just self-doubt and fear, we need to be made small on a regular basis by the immense Beauty surrounding us, to be shown our place, to feel that grace passing through our lives and see the footprints it leaves behind.

"He said that in the end it is Beauty
That is gonna save the world, now."
Nick Cave, Nature Boy

Chop Wood, Carry Water, Bake Casserole

My stepbrother lives in a house he and his wife built next door to the farmhouse where he grew up.  Two years ago, his father died in the farmhouse, after a long and terrible fight with cancer.  My stepfather’s last days were spent resting on the sofa in front of his wood-burning stove, tended lovingly by my mother and dedicated hospice nurses.

Each morning that winter, my stepbrother cut and stacked wood outside the back door of the house where he’d grown up.  He came in and built up the fire for his father, putting extra wood within easy reach, making sure the pieces were small enough for the nurses to manage.  He could not stop the cancer, he could not ease the pain, he could not fix the world.

He could keep his father warm and give my mother one less thing to worry about.

We can’t fix this world we live in.  Loved ones die, jobs and homes are lost, wildfires rage out of control.  We can’t quiet the storm, we can’t bring reason to the mob, we can’t stop Time or his sister Death.  If we stop too long to think on our own powerlessness, we’ll be unable to cope.  So, we all do what we can, as we can.  

We are creatures of the aftermath, we humans.  Brisk and pragmatic, we arrive at the scene of devastation with brooms and mops, with axes and hammers, with casseroles and tea.  We fill the dog’s dish, water the houseplants, take a confused child out to the movies for an afternoon.  This is the brave face, the one that says I cannot take on your pain for you, I cannot ease that burden, but I can catch the small things you otherwise might let fall.

It is one of the most basic ways in which we reinforce community, building ties and connections to keep chosen families whole.  It’s our own defiance, our self-assurance that we still have some control over our lives: that one person, armed with a strong back and a broom and a pot of tea, can stand firm in the face of chaos.

There are those among us who shine only when life is at its darkest, and most often to light the path for others.  You won’t see them at the parties, never the center of attention.  You will see them carrying the smoky clothes out of your burned home, and returning with armfuls of clean laundry.  You’ll see their names scratched on the bottoms of casserole pans delivered to a house in mourning, you’ll find them on your doorstep saying, “I heard you might be having a rough time.  Let me buy you dinner.”

As they stand beside you, to join your battles, they’re also fighting theirs:  against apathy, against fear, against whatever moments in the past they could not fix or control.  Scratch a hero, look deeper into a kind spirit, and you’ll often find a broken heart fighting its own demons alongside yours.  Look even beyond that, and you’ll see that we’re all broken in some way or another.  It is when we piece together our own jagged edges and temper the bond with fire and tears, that we create something new, and strong, and beautiful between us.