Midwinter

In the northern hemisphere, today marks the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year.

My life is awash in messages about enduring through the darkness, about faith in the light, about getting through the bad and believing the good will come again.  These are all good messages, especially at this juncture of American history.  If we don't believe this particular long night will end, we might not keep going.

I've been contemplating another approach to the solstice this year.  On that shortest day, when the least light is given to me, I'm going to cram a full day into it -- not necessarily the activities, but the joy and the living of it.  I'm eating delicious food and reveling in it.  I'm loving my friends and family a full day's worth in these short bright hours.  I began my work day with focused productivity and accomplishment, and met three concrete deadline goals by 10 am.

Headlong, heedless, I embrace this day as if the setting sun were my own ending.

That setting sun will find me on the road, hurtling towards loved ones as the light dies and the long darkness falls across the land.

Into that darkness, I am cast with a choice.  I can hold the light, clinging to it and willing its return.  Some years I do this, because I need that lifeline to get myself to the next moment.  Hope and faith as acts of resilience are essential to humanity.

This year, though, I release the light and let myself fall into that night.  Stronger and more deeply rooted than I've been in years past, I believe that I will fall through that darkness and out through the other side of it.  The light will be there.

As the slow beats of my own heart echo through me, I can embrace my own darknesses. 

A span of heartbeats for my fears, which I respect as my careful guardians and meet with courage.

A span of heartbeats for my grief, which I consider as the touch of love upon my life, and meet with compassion.

A span of heartbeats for my anger, which I tend carefully as a righteous fire to light a path to justice.

A beat for my anxiety, a beat for my worry, a beat for my temper, a long flurry of beats for my pride followed by a matching cadence for self-doubt.

With my heart resounding in my ears, I dive down into that silence, that peace.  I am the falcon diving, the falling star, the razored edge of the descending blade.  And there, at the center of the darkness, I find the stillness, the silence, the space between my own breath and body, and I hold there.

One moment, and a heartbeat.

Two, and a heartbeat.

Three, stretching out into timelessness, the darkness all and eternal around me.

As the distance between the last heartbeat and the next one expands, I wait and I gather myself.  I gather the peace at the center of all, to hold when chaos spins around me.  I gather the silence of midnight, to give myself time to reflect when wisdom is needed.  I gather the tiniest kernel of the essence of nothing, as a powerful tool of banishment in the coming year.

Outside of light, outside of time, outside of life itself, I honor the parts of me that have always been hardest for me to love, and I embrace them, rushing back into myself to meet my own beating heart.

And the fall continues, but now I tumble towards where the light will be, towards the future, towards the spring.  Still in darkness, I hit solid earth, meeting it with both feet.  I stand, and take one last moment to thank the night, before I turn to face the coming day.

Blessed solstice, my darlings.  I love you all.

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.

Blessed Yule

Winter Solstice (Yule) is one of my favorite holidays.  It wasn't always, tucked into the overwhelming press of events that is Family Christmas and Year's End and everything else.  I used to just let it slip by unobserved, perhaps giving a nod to the first day of winter as I rushed to finish shopping and crafting and all my other obligations.

Over the last ten years, though, I've not only embraced my own darkness, but begun to speak openly about my struggles with depression, loneliness, and insecurity.  In doing so, I've come to understand the meaning and the beauty of the Longest Night: the chance to rest in unabashed faith that the light will come again.

Non-pagans, especially my atheist friends, ask me how I observe the longest night.  When I tell them, "I stand in darkness and believe the sun will rise," they painstakingly explain to me that of COURSE the sun will rise, don't I understand science, that the earth is spinning and this is entirely what's wrong with religion and why people of faith are stupid, assigning metaphysical meaning to basic astronomical events.

This is, of course, ridiculous and completely misses the point.

Of course I know how science works; I'm not stupid.  I'm an educated woman of faith in the 21st Century, with a background in science and a curious mind.  It'd be ludicrous to suggest that I genuinely believed, on a practical level, that the sun was going to go away last night and never come back if it wasn't properly called, if no one held vigil to welcome its return.

And say what you will about the ignorance of history, the ancients approached the solstices with a scientific curiosity.  They observed the changes in the length of days, in a culture where the balance between light and dark and the shifting seasons of the year, laying the framework for sowing and harvest, meant the difference between survival and starvation in the long, dark winter.  They were watching to see that the days became shorter to a point, and then *something* happened, and the days began to lengthen.  Without astronomical tools and study, you're not going to develop a working model of how planets move around the Sun, but lifetimes of observed phenomena will make you feel pretty secure that at some point, the cycle will shift, and you start building massive structures to act as accurate calendars.

So why celebrate the Longest Night with vigils and celebrations, with statements of faith, with a joyful welcome of the sun's return, if we know it's just how the world works?  Human psychology.

Through the month of December, especially in Northern climes, it can begin to feel like the darkness will just keep swallowing the year, that one day the sun *will* set and never rise again.  Anxiety sets in, depression and hopelessness.  The food of winter is hearty but bland and unvarying.  You begin to wonder, "Will I be eating turnips in the darkness forever?  Is this all there is and ever will be?"

And then the leaders of faith, the people who guide your tribe with wisdom, say to you:  Trust us, the light will return.  The wheel of the year will continue spinning, time keeps moving forward.  Someday, yes, there will be an ending of everything, but that day is not today.  Today is the day our calculations tell us that we can stand in the rising sun, welcome it back, and rest in the faith that from this moment, the darkness loses hold and begins receding.  The bitter cold of winter will remain, but this moment, here, this is the turning point of light.  We no longer travel into winter, because now we are moving towards the spring.

The world will keep on spinning.  The light will come again.  Though there will someday be an end, that end is not today.

Into every life the dark seasons come.  At some point, almost every living human has had a night they weren't sure would end in sunrise.  Almost everyone has, at one time or another, wondered if they were staring into the beginning of a permanent, inescapable darkness: it will never get better, there will never be beauty and bounty again, I will never again stand in the sunlight and feel warmth on my face.  I will forever be here, eating turnips in the darkness.

The people who survive the dark seasons usually do so by putting faith in the fact that the world keeps spinning, time keeps inexorably moving forward, and that the cycles of light and dark will turn, as they always have, to return to sunshine and the summer days.  This must get better, we tell ourselves.  The world will return to balance, the cycle of the year will proceed, and if we can just hold faith through the Longest Night, the sun will return, and hope with it.

Not everyone makes it.  Every Yule, in the safety of the risen sun, I take a moment to think of those who held on as long as they could in darkness, but whose grasp failed before the light came.  I have, at various points in my life, been angry at them, been broken-hearted at losing them, felt guilty for failing them, and almost been one of them.  But now, when I think of them, I feed my own fire, building it up in hopes that if there's someone whose grip is weakening, they might be reminded of the sun by the light of my burning.

I love you all, and Blessed Yule.

Blood Harvest

As I was taught it, the harvest comes in three parts each year.  The first harvest, generally speaking, is gathering the early bounty of fruit and tender greens, the second harvest is the late summer/early fall reaping of the fields, and the third harvest is the butchering, done once the weather has cooled enough to keep meat through the winter.

The general associations with each harvest persist, because the *concept* of the harvest is integral to modern paganism as it's practiced, but we've moved away from the practical reality of it as we've abandoned our agricultural lifestyle.  'Harvest' has come to be synonymous, for many modern pagans, with getting what you've worked for, a reward to for the energy you've expended.

We mostly talk of how we reap what we have sown and tended, how we gather in all that we've planted.  We talk of projects coming to fruition, and at most we look out over our backyard gardens, pleased with the bounty we've brought to our own table.

In that transition to metaphor, the real meaning of the darkest harvest is often lost.

The first harvest is a collection of bounty.  Fruits, new shoots, tender growth the fertile earth really can't help but lavish upon us.  We celebrate sweetness, what is rich and delicious and delicate.  We preserve little of this first harvest, because it is meant to delight, not to sustain.  Perhaps we make some jellies, flavor oil or wine or vinegar, but even what we save of this harvest serves to accentuate life, not sustain it.

My celebration of this harvest has grown out of a delighted gratitude at all the world gives me, even when I do not tend it.  I take joy in beauty, in wonder, and in the general abundance of the life in the world.  The sacred earth of the first harvest is freshly turned and fragrant, soft beneath my feet.

The second harvest, the grain and the root, is the workhorse.  We gather what we've carefully tended, pulling in all that our own hard work has brought to fruition.  We honor the seeds that we've planted, and we celebrate a world in which directed energy brings useful reward.  From the second harvest, we take the daily bread, the sturdy beer, the unglamorous turnip.  Most of it is saved away, preserved because we will depend upon it later -- and because unlike salad greens or strawberries, a few weeks in a dark cabinet doesn't much change a potato.

For the second harvest, I honor my own hard work and practicality.  I take time to appreciate the fruits of my own labor, the work of my life.  The sacred earth of the second harvest is beneath my own nails and ground into the cracks of my hands.

The third harvest is the darkest: blood, sacrifice and loss.  What you brought into the world, that which you have tended, and loved, and cared for most patiently, you must kill.  This is no bloodless scything; the dark harvest requires you to face that sacrifice, look it in the eye, and destroy it entirely.  Take something you have loved, slit its throat and spill its blood, and then butcher it for your own survival.

The sacred earth of the third harvest is the cooling earth of oncoming winter, softened and warmed only because it is soaked in blood.

For the third harvest, I honor and acknowledge my own loss.  Friends and family taken too soon, or those whose passing marked the end of suffering.  Missed opportunities, friendships broken, love that failed to sustain a relationship.  I sit with the empty spaces in my own heart, and I respect that as the veil has thinned and the Wild Hunt rides, Death walks among us not as a stranger, but as one of us -- and that I walk as Death as well.

That is the nature of this harvest.  To honor loss and sacrifice, to respect the full cycle of the year,  I can't stop short with a barrier between myself and my own identity as destroyer.  I can't stand as protector only, guarding that which I love from all who would injure it (including myself).  I cannot only nurture, I cannot only collect and tend the bounty of the world.

I must, for this harvest, be willing to look at my life, see what must die for me to thrive, and end it as quickly, mercifully, and completely as possible.

This year, nothing seems particularly fit for the blade.  In past years, I might have offered a token sacrifice, given up some trait of personality or favored object, but my understanding of sacrifice has deepened: one must not only lose something much beloved, but that spilled blood must have *purpose* to be sacred.  So I hold my blade ready, and I bide my time, and my only offering at the moment is my willingness to accept my own dark goddess.

Blessed be the light and the dark, and all those beloved.

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 Magic and Magical Thinking

Fairly frequently, the disputes I run into over the validity of witchcraft happen because one side or the other has conflated magic with 'magical thinking'.  'Magical thinking' is the idea that if you just believe in something enough, it will come to pass.  You can visualize that weight loss without ever cutting a calorie, wish your way into that loving relationship without working on communication, and believe that a better job is coming instead of working at the one you have.

People on both sides of the faith debate seem to buy into this, and so non-practitioners become confused when people who practice more practical forms of faith-based work refer to it as 'magic' or even 'prayer'.  So allow me to explain the difference, as I see it, between magic and magical thinking.

I'll use a story to illustrate it.  Several years ago, on finding out that I'm a witch, one of my friends asked me to do a spell to help him get a new job.  He hated the one he had, he said.  I told him to spend half an hour writing out a list of the general criteria he wanted in a job, and to bring me that and a copy of his updated resume.  He arrived with a listing he'd printed out from a job website, and explained that he wanted me to do the spell to get him THAT job.  I said that no, that's not how it works, and asked him about the resume.  He hadn't had time, and besides what did I need it for?  I explained that I was going to use the resume as a focus, to create a spell asking that when he applied for a job, his resume would reach the desk of the person most likely to hire him, be seen by the right eyes and represent him well.  Basically, I was offering to use magic to remove obstacles and allow him to more easily get the right job for him.

I will never forget the look on his face when he said, "What do you mean APPLY?"  Yes, honey, you have to actually APPLY for the jobs, and go to the interviews.  You can't just wish for it and believe hard enough that you should have it, and expect it to happen.  You can't just buy a witch a piece of pie and sit back to let job offers rain upon your head.  If it were that easy everyone would do it that way.  And I would have SO MUCH PIE.

He'd fallen prey to magical thinking, because he believed that if he focused on a thing, wanted it enough, wished for it, then it would 'just happen'.  Magical thinking is based in a sound principle, the first thing they teach you in driver's education: where the eye goes, the car will follow.  However, it completely ignores the mechanical connection between eye and head, head and body, body and hands, hands and steering wheel, steering wheel and car.  According to magical thinking, the eye controls the car and no other effects have to follow through.  You don't need any understanding of the process of driving, because the only thing that matters is where you focus your eye.  You don't even need to gas up the car or turn it on.  Just keep *looking* at where you want to be, and someday you'll just be there without crossing the intervening space.

There's a good deal of evidence that focusing on positive outcomes improves your life experience.  Thinking about what you want, instead of what you don't want, increases the chances of getting what you want.  Lots of people make ridiculous amounts of money hosting workshops and writing self-help books that expound upon this premise -- and stop there, creating a class of frustrated self-actualized theoretically empowered people who still don't understand why they're not getting anywhere.

Actually acting to *get* what you want increases those chances even further, and that's where practicing magic comes in, and that's the part a lot of people (pagans, Christians, and atheists alike) don't want to talk about.

For me, magic is best described as "an act of will backed by the will to act."  It's a bargain you make with yourself and whatever divine entity you're petitioning.  You say to the entity, "If you will act upon the world to assist me, I will commit to the technical part of the process and do the physical work."

If I want a new job, I'll polish my resume and apply for jobs.  If I want a new romantic partner, I'll actually ask people out.  If I want better health, I'll improve my habits.  That's my part of the bargain: the daily work of what I want.  Driving the car.

Sooo...where does magic come into it?

Luck.  Intuition.  Coincidence. Reinforcement.

Nothing is assured.  I know people who work hard, do all the right things, perform every right action to get to what they want, and they don't get it.  A flat tire on the way to an interview means they miss out on a job.  They don't notice the attractive person sitting at the next table reading their own favorite book.  They turn left, instead of right, and miss out on an opportunity.  I know people whose doctors have made bad decisions, with terrible consequences.

When a friend goes into surgery, I know the gods aren't holding the scalpel.  But do I believe they can be the voice of intuition that helps a doctor make a wise decision.  They can be the second glance a nurse takes to see that a medical dosage was written down wrong, confirm the number and get the patient the right treatment.

I have asked the gods to be the voice that whispers to me "refresh that jobs listing one more time before you log off," so that I didn't miss applying for a great job.  To inspire me to try a new coffeehouse or restaurant and strike up a conversation with the attractive man whose table I ended up sharing.  To help me find the strength and focus to keep acting towards what's important to me, even when I'm exhausted and demoralized.

Magic smoothes the way.  You still have to travel the distance.  That's the difference between it and magical thinking.  Magical thinking genuinely believes that you can convince whatever forces direct the Universe to give you a miracle every time you want one, with no investment or work on your part.

As a famous squirrel taught me when I was but a child, that trick never works.

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 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 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 Am Grateful to my Dead

I used to spend some time each summer at my grandparents' farm in eastern Missouri.  I'm sure my long-suffering mother viewed it as a blessed reprieve from her increasingly snarky younger daughter, but what it ended up being was a chance for me to really get to know my grandmother when neither of us was on 'company' behaviour.  I was a fully tempestuous teenager, and she was not as willing to overlook my attitude; we got along remarkably well despite that.

The year I turned fifteen, I suffered the agony of agonies, the most terrible trauma, that utterly awful experience: having to talk to an adult about my period because I had not planned adequately and had convinced myself that somehow, if I really really didn't want to deal with it during the visit, it would just...not happen.  Every woman reading this is snickering.  I can hear you all.

Mortified, horrified by my body's betrayal, I went to my grandmother and confessed my moon-bound shame in a barely audible mumble, wishing desperately that the earth would open and swallow me.  She merely said, "Well, then, I guess you need some of those pad things.  I got some in the mail once and I think they're in a drawer, and then you and I will just go into town to the Wal-mart and get you more."  With an utter minimum of fuss and angst (remarkable given my tendency to melodrama), the matter was resolved within an hour and I was left completely flummoxed by her practical, reasonable management of a situation that had seemed utterly daunting to me.

If anyone who knows me has ever been surprised by my ability to manage other peoples' crises pragmatically and swiftly, be assured that I come by it honestly; my mother does it as brilliantly as my grandmother ever did, and I strive to meet their example.

That hour, in which my shame and embarrassment and resentment of my own body were dispatched by calm acceptance and rational problem-solving, remains one of my core memories of my grandmother.  One of the other ones that stands out is a recurring one:  after I went away to college, got married, got divorced, and all through the years of living in Kansas and even living in Texas, every time I went to have dinner with my grandmother, she tried to have mashed potatoes on the table one way or another.  She knew they were one of my favorite foods, and for some reason they're just not a food people usually make for themselves.  Plus, she made way better gravy than I do.  Tonight, to honor her, I'm making roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and those brownies she used to call the 'diet-busters', caramel and chocolate chips oozing in the middle.  I'm setting her out a little plate and a small glass of wine.

I miss my grandmother.  We only saw each other once a year, and rarely spoke on the phone, but the knowledge that she's no longer there affects my entire world.  It's been almost a year since she died, and I still occasionally look at something I've done, some way I've interacted, and hope that she would be proud of me.

As the sun sets on the last day of the year, and the night rises, I tend to think on the lessons my dead have taught me, and those I'm learning from the living.  I plan for my long winter's burning by remembering those who have brightened my own path one way or another.

From my grandmother, I learned not only that reassuring pragmatism and a delight in simple food prepared well, but an even more important truth:  kindness is never wasted energy.

From my stepfather, who made me welcome in his house and found ways to give me 'extra' meat and vegetables without either of us admitting I didn't have enough to eat in college, I learned that it's worthwhile to try and find ways to help others that allow them to keep their dignity and their sense of self-worth.

From my Aunt Justine and Uncle Warren, I learned that family is not just about direct bloodlines, and that the abundance of a home is never diminished by sharing its hospitality and laughter.

From my best friend Jen, I learned that just because you aren't the brightest star in a given constellation, that's no excuse not to shine for all you're worth, because your light adds to the beauty of the sky in ways you can't see.

From Tony, gone almost twenty years, one of the hardest lessons:  live your life for yourself, because you can't save people against their will.

From my maternal great-grandmother, a stronger woman than I ever understood while she lived, I learned that we are not only who we appear to be in any single moment of our lives.

From my father's mother, the first death I can recall, comes the understanding that the joy of freely sharing what you have is not necessarily dependent on whether the magnitude of that gift is fully understood by the recipient.

They stand around me, and more, cousins and great-aunts and friends and long-gone loved ones, each with a lesson or a blessing or a challenge, and as the veil thins between the worlds I open my heart to listen to them, to accept what they bring to me and offer my own gratitude.  I think of artists and musicians, of writers and speakers who have all added to the Beauty of this world, and I'm profoundly thankful that their passions live on.

I have been blessed in my life, to be touched by bright souls and strong ones.  I have been loved and challenged and shaped by them, and I continue to be.  Gods willing, I shall continue to be.

The old year is dying, the new one beginning, and I offer thanks and farewell to my dead for another year.  I release my own dead weight, my old habits and fears and resentments, and feed that which I do not need into my Samhain fire.  May it burn through the coming winter to illuminate my path, to give me fuel to stand as a beacon and kindle those whose fires burn low in the darkness and the cold.

So mote it be.

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.