windinthemaples

On Sunday morning, there was no mistaking the fact that it had shifted into autumn. I'd arrived, Friday afternoon, wishing I'd packed bug spray and shorts and now it was misty and cold and everywhere I was seeing the first glow of color on the changing leaves. The night before, walking to ritual, there had been something like diamonds winking from the dark grasses beside the path, little landbound fireflies sending a few more messages out into the night before the seasons turned. I had never seen anything so amazing in the natural world as those motionless, pulsing stars at my feet.

Others were awake before me, and everytime the cabin door by my headboard opened and hissed closed, a draft of damp, chilly air wafted over me and tempted me to abandon my warm bed. It finally succeeded. I got dressed, packed my things into my carry-on bags, and then took my camera out into the land one more time. Everything was cloaked in mist, still and quiet, restful and contemplative. All was well with me, truly well.



I walked the path up to the main house for breakfast. Someone had a deck of tarot cards out for a morning card draw with the question of, "What are you bringing home from Diana's Grove this weekend?". I drew the Five of Swords, or in this Celestial Tarot deck I was pulling from, the constellation Pegasus. Not sure what to make out of it, as it certainly didn't feel very comforting or welcome a gift to bring back from the Grove with me. :)

After a final session with my Circle of Support, the whole group got together for a fare-thee-well check-out. Everyone got a few minutes to share a memory from some time at the Grove in the past and a memory from this weekend in particular. I felt just overwhelming gratitude. The community there is extraordinary, the women who founded it inspirational, the commitments that people have made to keep it growing and vibrant remarkable. I am lucky to have found Diana's Grove while it existed in this incarnation, on this land. I can't help but wish I'd arrived sooner, somehow, that I'd been able to go through the leadership training programs, but that is small potatoes compared to the blessed sense of gratitude I was feeling. I loved every person in that room. My soul was perfectly content--at peace, at home.

After hugs and goodbyes and another delicious lunch, I had a few hours to myself before it was time for me to leave for the airport. The Grove got quieter as cars rumbled down the gravel roads and away. The bunks in our cabin were stripped, one by one. I decided to go and walk, by myself, the big labyrinth mown into the meadow. I have walked by that labyrinth so many times and never stepped in. I never really understood what, beyond a meditative aid, a labyrinth was meant to deliver. I overheard someone say that you must consider what you're looking for in the middle before you begin the walk, so I stopped on the threshold and considered what it was that I needed to find in the center of that winding coil. There was only one thing, and I didn't consider it to be related, at all, to my letter to Persephone. (Though I realize now, they very much were.)

( In the center of the Labyrinth, I hoped to find self-esteem... )

At the new moon, celebrating the end of my month with Pink, I went to take down my pink-themed altar and to clear the space for Silver's work. The area had gotten cluttered with found treasures and gifts that seemed to pour in to acknowledge my achievements and breakthroughs. From my mom, as a get-well gift, there was a pair of necklaces, one pink and one purple, from a charity in Africa that employs AIDS/HIV affected women in meticulously rolling beads from colorful magazine paper. The other, a small statue of a white-robed girl with her face buried in a bouquet of pink flowers. It is as if she knew, precisely, what I would need to affirm, the girl who bought herself flowers for the first time this month. In the mail yesterday, a card from a virtual stranger with an exquisite image of a pink lotus blossom. Chunks of pink stone, kicked underfoot in a Chicago alley, a multi-faceted bead found sparkling amongst the trash in a tree planter at the exact moment when I said to myself, mentally, "Wow, every breath is a moment to model love in the world, isn't it?" Winged seeds my son handed over, with great excitement, because they were faery wings and rosebuds dried from my bouquet, that enshrined a compassionate moment to myself.

Isis came to watch my progress, looking radiant and modern. Her hair, normally braided and weighted down with a crown, was flowing in waves of rainbow black over her shoulders. She'd traded her pleated linen for a gauzy, Grecian floating sleeveless pink gown, fixed with silver clips over her sun-brown shoulders. She's sitting, uncharacteristically domestic, with a large piece of fabric draped over her lap and a needle and embroidery thread in hand.

There's nothing to mourn, she said with a warm smile my way, you are leaving nothing behind. The thread she stitched with was silvery-pink and iridescent, making small bits of color in the fabric as she sat and sewed conversationally.

"Mama, are you Lady Pink?"

I can be.

"This has been such a hard month. I thought this would be one where I'd really shine and now with it ending, I feel like I've only started to get it, that I'm seeing Pink, really seeing those lessons, starting to transform about three weeks too late. It has been hard to decide whether I need to devote to another Pink Month. I could learn a lot more if I did."

Every month of your life has been a Pink Month. Why do you think that next month will suddenly be different just because you will be studying another color? The Silver will be Pink, the Blue will be Pink, every month you will grow more into yourself and you were always meant to be Pink. Your compassion, your desire to serve, your goodness and love will shine through everything you do and will color everything you learn. You lose nothing by growing in other areas. Each month, you will find the way to give it away, to make a gift of it for someone else. That is your Pink work.

I cried, unsure what to say to such kindness, such compliment, such reassuring guidance. She finished her stitching, knotting and snapping excess thread away.

"Thank you. I needed to hear that."

You are devoted to living your life as a Song to Isis, are you not? Have you never stopped to listen to yourself sing it to me? Can you be so deaf, Rachel, to the music you are making? Beloved girl. Sweet, beloved girl. Sing your heart out. Every day, you serve me well.

It was time for her to go. She stood up, arms laden with her sewing project.

"I didn't know you were a seamstress."

I am not. You are. All of you are.

The room tilted, she spun, the cloth that she was holding floated down and spread itself out against a wall where I could see it. It was a work-in-progress, no doubt, and bigger than I could even take in all at once. Close up, I could see it was made of stitched hearts, both miniscule and fairly large in a rainbow of colors and textures and heart-like shapes. And together, though not entirely filled in, I could see the suggestion of a gigantic heart made up of all those smaller, individual hearts taking form. There, in one space, was a small over-round heart in a silver-pink iridescent thread that I recognized--Isis' latest stitches.

This is the song of your life. Everyone has one, but few see it before they die. Sing the song that only you can sing. Love, for me. Believe, for me. Live, for me.

And she was gone and only a faint ghostly memory of that embroidered field was left. The brilliance, the light, the sparkle, the warmth that had poured out of it was dazzling even still. Had I stitched that miraculous, infinitely detailed image? Of course not, She said from some distant place behind my ear, you sew, always, for others.

And I saw it! I saw friends and family and loved ones and strangers and passers-by I smiled at taking their turn to sit at my Song, stitching hearts of gratitude, hearts of acknowledgment that said, "Thank you" and "You don't know how much what you did meant to me" and "You wished me a good day on the worst day" and "You made a difference in my life". I saw myself sitting to weave a few stitches of thread into others' Songs, marking the places where they treated me with kindness, gave me the advice I needed, bandaged a wound, cheered me with their presence, inspired me to believe in myself, met my eyes and encouraged me to keep going, held a door open for me when my arms were overloaded. My Song is recorded by others, added to with every kindness I do, every act of compassion, every word and action that positively impacts someone else's life here. It is the feedback, the acknowledgement, the record of my Life lived.

A Goddess sewed one of the hearts, a token of my work's loving impact on her immortal existence, and I begin to feel, again for the first time, that my case is not so hopeless after all.

I do the work of Pink in the world and it is beautiful.

Saturday, at dusk, mermaiden and I dressed for the final ritual of the weekend at the Grove. Sarah looked like a dream twirling across the grass in the hand-dyed, hand-sewn ritual robe she'd bought from the Grove's ritual garb store. This ritual, unlike the others, we as participants had been invited in to co-create the elemental invocations. I'd been chosen by Center, and so while I helped set up some final candles at the Barn and took photos of Sarah's happy twirling, I was preoccupied with my obligations. What would I say?



Just before ritual, I and the other three women who'd drawn Center as their element to call met for one last powwow. I'd had a strong vision of Center as the dark nothingness a breath before the cosmic Big Bang, that expectant moment of Pure Possibility. I was asked to speak for the group in the invocation, to stand in the Center and convey what I saw. We were invoking Center as that place, at the center of everything, at the center of ourselves that contains All That We Are, All That We Need, All That We Can Be. That core reserve of infinite potential, waiting power, and pure, divine essence. The others would orbit around me, whispering All That We Are, All That We Need, All That We Can Be as I stood in the center and twined it together. Marilyn Sue, our facilitator, asked if I wanted to do a dry run before ritual. I had to say no, frankly, because I had no idea what I was going to say. Not one clue, five minutes before. :D

Oh, ritual was beautiful, with each small group performing a different, empowering, inclusive invocation of their chosen element. When it was time for me to step into Center, the hairs on my arms stood at end and I knew what to say. It was that electrical-charged feeling of connection, that pure-fire flow of channeling. It worked and Center, as we'd conceived it, was there.

The beauty after that moment was that my working role was over and I was able to fall back into ritual, be surprised and embraced by the work of the other priests and priestesses, and have an emotionally rich experience within the genius ritual plan.

One by one, four priestesses stepped into the center of the circle. Each one held a bowl aloft and were there to carry the challenge of one of the four elements. Each stood in the center and gave their qualifications for being able to hold that element's challenge, sharing a story of one challenge of that type they had met in life. The sharing was extraordinarily brave and vulnerable and sobering. The heroics of those priestesses! I was openly crying. They were, indeed, capable of holding that challenge for us all.

We were each then called to take a rainbow ribbon, the string of our lives, and to visit the four priestesses, as we felt appropriate, to claim beads from their bowls representing the challenges of those four element types we'd met in our own lives. There was drumming and singing and candle light, slow movements and sacred exchanges between hero and priestess. Hands shaking, I reached into the bowls of colorful beads and strung them, one at a time, upon the string of my life. A challenge for fire, a challenge for water, a challenge for air, a challenge for earth. I whispered to each priestess and they met my eyes, unflinchingly. Some witnessed silently and others said, "Good Work, Hero" or something else to acknowledge my victories. I took one bead from each element, tied to a specific challenge I'd faced, but also representative of all the acts of heroism I'd undertaken in the same elemental way.

I sat and cried, running my fingers over the beads in the dark, drawing the ribbon through my hand and finally acknowledging not only the pain of those times, but my own role as the hero in getting past them. We were given time to meet with one other person, to share the stories of our beads one-on-one. A man I know, somewhat, crossed the circle to sit beside me. He held his string of beads out to me on two hands, a precious, precious object, the physical symbol of his entire life, and asked if I would hold it. I took it, reverently, and held his life as he leaned close in the darkness and whispered the secrets of those seven beads. I watched his eyes, transfixed by his story and the raw depth of sharing. I loved him. This was not a public face but the voice of his brave, struggling, beloved Soul. Who would not love this man? No face of the Divine wishes you harm. Every face of the Divine loves you. We are all so flawed, so beautiful, struggling to complete a set of impossible tasks in the pursuit of our true selves. It is all about Love. We are all heroes, all of us, but do we feel Loved? Do I believe that Venus is challenging me for my own best interests or do I believe that She is spitefully punishing me for my human beauty? Do I believe that I am a hero for simply surviving the tasks or do I never take a moment to breathe and acknowledge that what I am doing so magnificently is both impossible and hard? Will I love the hero that I am as well as I love the heroes that I see in this Circle around me?

That man cradled my life in his hands as if it was the most precious, dear, fragile thing in the world. He leaned close to hear as I told him the stories, crying, of my four representative challenges--instances I would have said before today were tales of failure and grief and loss. At the end, I could tell that he Loved me for them all. I felt it. I took back the string of my life, thanked him for holding it, and he slayed me by saying, "I would have held your beads twice."

We returned to the priestesses and added beads, unknown beads, for future challenges. They will eventually have their own stories to tell of my heroism, of my Life.

Regrouping, we began to sing the night's chant.

I Will Be
I Am Me
Pure Possibility

Here and Now
There and Then
I Can, I Have, I Will Again

Can you celebrate your life's story as a series of successes instead of a series of failures? Can you honor the self that has made wise choices, survived the unsurvivable, been transformed and stood their ground? Good work, hero. We are all heroes. We have all done impossible things throughout the challenges of our lives. What next impossible thing will you do?

I Will Be
I Am Me
Pure Possibility

Here and Now
There and Then
I Can, I Have, I Will Again

I stand in the Center, in the darkness before the beginning, in the moment that exists in every moment, of Pure Possibility.

Friday, after our sessions and lunch, we had the afternoon to ourselves to explore the land and try to find respite from the summer heat. Sarah and I were of a mind, so we changed into lightweight clothes and headed to the creek. The water level varied from a few chilly inches to a couple feet, so we found a comfortable little dip mid-channel to plunk ourselves down in to cool off, chat, and let the currents sweep our troubles downstream. It was a decadent experience. Little fish started congregating around us, hiding out in the shade under our legs, darting impishly away from mermaiden's attempts to pet and hug them underwater.


(This photo was taken the day before, but I don't care! :D It's mermaiden, working her Earth Goddess mojo. :D)
~*~

We showered and dressed and got all sparkled up and jewelry-laden for ritual. The ritual began in the barn, where we met in the moonlight clutching our love letters to Life. We were back into Psyche's story, her choice to follow the Song of Life and to exit the Underworld. At some point, most of the ritual staff disappeared from the barn and we were instructed, at long last, to begin our silent journey from this dark Underworld and back into the full riot and color and light of Life. We were told to go out into the world and to listen to the love songs, the songs of Life that were so audible in the night-dark woods and grasslands. Singly and in unintentional pairs and triplets and small groups, we left the drumming of the barn behind us for the dirt and gravel footpath outside, flanked with occasional tiki torches, as it wound through the bottom of the meadow for some long minutes to an area of the Grove that is called the Water Path, a clearing with a firepit near the creek bed. In the woods, here and there, there were snatches of an instrumental guitar and maybe the call of a pipe or flute. The ritual participants walked in silence, scattered along the path, the crunch of feet and the rustle of robes the only counterpoint to the roaring cry of the cicadas. At long last, I turned a corner in the darkness and the ritual site came into view--a vision of priestesses waiting to welcome us in white dresses and capes and an abundance of candlelight and tiki flame. A ring of chairs was open on one side and in the opening, priestesses there to give us cups of cool water and bid us relax and rest ourselves after our journey. I found a seat in the circle and was sipping my water as other journeyers arrived from the dark path. Whispers and clumped ritual staff members around the circle edged into my awareness. There was something strange in the chaos and I cast my eyes Sarah's way to see if she was catching on to the unsettled feeling in the circle. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and the welcome I'd felt at the lights of the clearing dissolved away into a sense of uneasy tension and squirminess. I didn't want my cup of water anymore. I didn't want to be sitting in that chair. At last, all the journeyers arrived and Patricia, one of Diana's Grove's founders stepped into the center of the circle and announced, with great calm, that one of the ritual staff members, intending to aspect Pan, had been bitten by a snake and was going to be carted off to the hospital. There he sat in the center of one of the whispering clumps, his instep in his hand and several staff members crouching by his legs. Patricia assured us that everything would be fine, that the snake had been asked to leave and had (without harm) complied and then River stepped into her priestessing role to resume the ritual.

The thread was snapped for me. Growing up in South Florida, snakes are serious business. There are coral snakes, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths. We have six poisonous snakes and they are all pretty serious business. I wanted to know where the snake was when he was bitten, what kind of snake was involved, if it was poisonous, how long it would take them to get him to a hospital, how the snake had been asked to leave, how far away that snake had been compelled to leave, and what would keep him or her from returning. I'm an air sign, I wanted to intellectually exhaust the topic before moving on and instead, here was the ritual team getting us to start tonal singing work while the guy is actively being loaded into a hastily rounded up car directly behind my chair. I found it physically impossible to harmonize. Everything was coming out in minor, dirge-full moans.

The ritual text moved on to talking about the life around us, the songs of Life around us, and all I could do was creep and shiver and suppress nervous giggles about hearing the songs of snakes all around me, twining silently up my chair legs or sidling ever closer to my feet in their totally-impractical sandals. At one point, we were each invited to the fire pit which had been transformed into a candle-studded altar where we were each able to retrieve a lit votive by which to read our Love Letters to Life.

As we reread the words we'd written, in a fabulous twist, we were told to mentally replace each instance of the word "you" in the letter with "I". For, in truth, we'd not written love letters to Life as we'd thought--we'd written love letters to ourselves. My love letter had been in poem form, so the cool and fabulous twist didn't work nearly so well. And really, I was all out of joint and off-step and thinking of snakebites, so maybe nothing in ritual was destined to work well for me that night. Here I'd gone out of the safety and comfort of the Underworld into the challenge and sensation of Life and this snakebite had me feeling completely unsafe, exposed, imperiled. I thought to myself during the ritual, "Why do I need this message? Couldn't I have babystepped into a welcoming world? Instead I'm sitting in the dark and practically barefoot with snakes?! Who would be so cruel to me when I'm already feeling vulnerable just in rejoining life?"

At some point, we moved to our chant for the evening and clustered around the firepit-candle altar to sing it.

Let the beauty we love
be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the ground.

I was forcing it, unfortunately, while others genuinely seemed moved by the chant and the ritual and were even physically kneeling and kissing the stones and logs and earth circling the many-candled altar. Meanwhile, I'm safely perched up on my chair or standing back three feet and thinking to myself, somewhat obsessively, "Snakes live in woodpiles and they live in rock piles and what are these people doing on the ground? Holy crap they're crazy!!"

After ritual, we had a short little jam session, pulling chairs up or sitting on the ground directly around the altar area and having a little re-sing of the main (Rumi text) chant. Sarah was sitting on the ground, I think, sorta in front of my chair and she lifted one hand, mid-note, and pointed to a spot between candles. There, a couple feet away from a dozen singers and weaving swiftly between the votives and pillars and other candleholders, was a two foot patterned snake. Right under her silently pointing finger.

I, and my lawn chair, was ten feet back from the firepit within two seconds. The song halted and singers scattered back, particularly when the words "Copperhead" and "poisonous" were sounded by someone in-the-know. The snake moved quickly, unpredictably, and someone said we should clear a path out of our circle for its safe exit. Well, I didn't want to let that snake out of my sight, it was in the only area of light in a hundred acres of darkness, so I watched it like a hawk and jumped up onto my chair for good measure. I can't believe I was the only person who didn't want my bare feet so close to the ground but really, I think I was the only one up on a chair and I got some good-natured ribbing for it later.

Some people came up with the grand idea of making a break for the barn's safety and so whole groups of ritual-goers abandoned their chairs and headed for the gravel path. Never has a long, dark path seemed so sinister and dangerous to me. I was watching my feet in the feeble moonlight and praying, really, really praying, that I would not accidentally step onto a snake. It seemed like a real danger--two snakes in one ritual! Maybe the whole Grove was writhing with poisonous snakes and the small one we'd seen eating a fish on the banks of the creek that afternoon was, with some reflection, a third copperhead.

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG.

(illustrative photo by TomSpinker of Flickr)

I have no animosity towards snakes, you must understand, but I don't know them. Their habits, their moods, their signals are alien to me and so they seem unpredictable. I'm snake-dumb. I'd rather avoid a miscommunication entirely by not running into any and not, please Goddess help me, force one to bite me by stepping on them, unintentionally hurting them, or making them feel endangered by my presence. I've never been bit by a snake, never known anyone bit by a snake, so it all seemed pretty overwhelming and horrible. Walking back there was a lot of laughter and snakes-are-good conversation around me and I was wound tighter than a spring, praying to every Deity I have ever served to protect my naive, blundering self from crossing the path of all the snakes laying invisible on the path.

I didn't much feel like the after-ritual dessert party at the barn. I was feeling shocky and ungrounded and bizarre after the interrupted and reinterrupted ritual energy and wanted nothing more than to reset myself, and my outsized fears, with the remedy of a good night's sleep. (I'm a Libra--given time the scales always settle down into calm, even-keeled, rational thought and big-picture perspective.) The dark minute or two's walk into the woods to the outhouse at night felt like blindly praying my way through a minefield. The Grove felt dangerous for the first time ever and I felt stupid for not having respected those dangers in the past. Following the call into Life wasn't looking so attractive anymore!

(Don't worry...by the end of my next installment, I get a grip on myself but in the dark of night, with copperhead snakes afoot, I was a mess. An "I don't even know what to do with myself because there isn't even an emotional label to put on this" mess. :D)

Friday morning, I woke to the misty, cool enchantment of dawn. After the battering heat and humidity of the day before, I was eager to take advantage of cooler temps. I grabbed my camera, slipped my feet into my clogs, and took off on an early morning walk of the land with the companionship of one very friendly, very adventuresome beagle that I found waiting outside the cabin door.



Butterflies were out in dancing, laughing clouds of color. Goldfinches dove and banked among the wild echinacea. Brilliant, milky moonflowers glowed in a scatter of magic around the meadow and fenceline. In one perfectly fragile blossom, a camoflaged snowy spider held court. Dew sparkled everywhere and the morning sky was a watercolor wash of pastel pinks and purples and blues. The pathways were sealed, in spots, with iridescent webbed barriers and I felt like the only human alive in a world of bountiful, busy little creatures. Everywhere I looked, the Earth was bright with life. Grasshoppers skipped ahead of my shoes and great black butterflies drifted down to investigate the bright surface of my hat or the amber pattern of the freckles on my bare shoulders. I found my way down to the rock-bottom creek and walked into its icy, shallow current. Oh, it was glorious standing mid-stream and watching small moonstone-scaled fish and chubby little tadpoles race past my shoes. The rocks glowed underfoot, reflecting all the colors of the sunrise, of the wildflowers, of my heart. Oh, to be alive and alert and awake and aware, to be fully present in the magic of a summer morning in nature!

( Photos from my morning hike under the cut )
~*~

By 9:30am, it was time for everyone to meet up at the main house and split up into our respective small support groups. There were four of us in my group and I welcomed the opportunity to get to know the others better. The facilitator of our group was a guy I'd met back when I first joined Mystery School but didn't fully recognize until the second day at the Grove. Life or magic or presence or something had utterly transformed the way he looked and carried himself. It was eerie and interesting--I tried not to stare. After our group broke up, it was time for a morning Breath and Song, Prayer and Trance work session. It was really an amazing demonstration of skill and spontaneity. It started with clapping, rhythm, breath and then a handful of facilitators beginning to hum and tone and wordlessly sing. Others joined in. I joined the building song, adding my own melody, my own complementary rhythm, soulful rise and fall, and soon the room was filled with a yearning, magical, entirely improvised, wordless song of prayer. Each individual was singing their soul and yet together, somehow, it worked and together, somehow, we all made a beautiful, coherent, rich and dynamic whole. It was one of the most incredible, empowering, all-out-abandon experiences of song in my life and it was essentially an unplanned morning tune up and gathering-of-the-tribe. Phenomenal. Every hair on my arm raises just remembering the song of that room, the light in everyone's eyes, the glow and power and rock-em-sock-em gorgeous group of people I was surrounded by, singing with, singing to.

We moved into breath work and I closed my eyes and found a comfortable, grounded place to sit on the floor as I was coached through the Breath of Wind, the Breath of Rising Embers, the Breath of Rolling Waves, the Breath of Growing Trees, and the Breath of the Divine and Mysteries. By the time the morning session was ready to begin, I'd experienced a breath/energy/body/spirit connection in a completely new, immediate, impossible to ignore way. It was terrifying and challenging and energizing and enervating. Just a glimpse into an entire world of ritual tools I'm unschooled at.

~*~

At our morning session, we went back to the story of Psyche and her choice to pursue the path of challenge. I don't remember if it was River or Cynthea or somebody else who led the discussion, but what struck me from that session was that the path of challenge leads us to our very self. It is tempting, so temptingly easy, to settle for the other option--easy success and the approval and admiration of others. The harder path is less glamorous! Why, on the easy path, everyone can look like a star because they are doing the things they are naturally gifted at. The path of challenge, however, is littered with opportunities to look foolish, experience complete failure and silly mistakes, and to be viewed as unlikable or different. Psyche could have remained, forever, a beloved princess to her people. They loved her for just who she was! She could fill the role with ease and looked graceful every step of the way. Imagine, then, when she chose the path of challenges, how absurd and clumsy and out-of-her element she must have appeared before she battled through and grew from her experiences! Hadn't I just admitted to myself, this month in Temple of the Twelve work, that one of my three greatest heart wounds was that I didn't try things for fear of looking ridiculous, embarrassing myself, and failing? Here, in morning session, I was hearing that was a pretty common reason why people stick with what comes easy to them--why so many women like me might choose life as a princess in comfort instead of a life of fighting to be acknowledged as an equal to a God. I'm scared to show my loving public that underneath the smooth, princess exterior lies a bumbling, make-it-up-as-I-go girl prone to failure, mishap, and absurd pratfalls!

So here's the part that hooked me right through the chest. Knowing all that, knowing that there is a choice between the easy path of doing what you're good at versus the challenging path of becoming fully who we were meant to be--the very purpose of life isn't to sail through gracefully, masquerading as someone put-together and worthy of a pedestal. The purpose of life is in our own, individual process of becoming. A forest is magnificent in its diversity, when the many varied seeds become their intended selves. We are all born seeds in that forest. Born seeds. Not blank-slate seeds but specific seeds. I don't know what I will grow into, I fret and worry and flail around because I don't know how to become the shape I'm supposed to be because I wasn't born with a seed packet description or a photo of my fully mature, realized state. I don't know what kind of seed I am! How can I grow into something without that information?! This has bothered me for years now, because Mystery School talks a lot about souls as seeds growing and I always draw the blank. I don't know what my vision for myself is. I don't know what I am meant to become. I don't know who I truly am, at core, and that is perhaps expected as that is a life's work and more to get to the bottom of. But what blew me away was the thought, finally, that seeds don't have to know what they are growing into. When they grow, they are also becoming, and no forethought or blueprint is necessary. I am a seed and what I have the potential to become is set. A Mystery to me, but not something I have to figure out. I don't have to wait to figure it out in order to grow--I need to allow myself to grow and see what I grow into becoming. I'm already a certain kind of seed. All I have to do is grow. There is no need to know anything beyond that. Once I figured that out, totally accepted the reality of that necessary blind faith, in the hospital a little voice said with great loving charity to me: You are a sugar maple. I don't have to know how that translates into a human life. I don't have to know where I'm headed. I just have to grow and trust that the essence of myself, that seed of me, will direct me into my best, intended shape.

(photo by realkuhl on Flikr)

~*~

Separating my experiences at Diana's Grove the weekend before my surgery, the hurt and healing of the surgery saga itself, the month of working on compassion and other "Pink" topics in Temple of the Twelve, and everything else that has been unsaid for so many weeks is impossible. It is such a tangle! Everywhere, lately, I've been discovering wise words about wounds and compassion in such a synchronous flood that it is impossible to ignore how important the lesson must be for me to learn. I'd love to be able to compartmentalize it into neat single-topic entries here and yet I can't cut it cleanly apart. So, eventually I'll talk about Diana's Grove and how some of those moments fold back into some of my surgery moments and my healing moments and my Temple of the Twelve moments. For now, though, as best as I can, I wanted to tell you what I learned about my third, and greatest, heart wound.

I don't count myself.

This month, my Pink Month with Temple of the Twelve, I accepted a few challenges. I agreed to dig for and uncover my three greatest heart wounds. I vowed to take steps to heal those wounds and to develop, in particular, a long-range strategy for the healing of the largest of these. I intended to act in a mindfully compassionate manner every day. I dared to stand my ground, at least, and stop running from love in all its forms as it made its way towards me. I would do (and record) one kind thing for someone else each day of the month. Tall order, all of that, from such a gentle color! :)

Following my surgery, I was doing some mid-moon musing on all the ways that this month has changed me and I have risen to the challenges Pink set before me. I've realized that I was shorting those around me by giving generously but carefully avoiding having to receive love/gifts/favors/encouragement/compliments/you name it in return. I wasn't allowing people to really connect with me, to know me beyond my surface layers. I've learned a lot about wounds--the way they stick around only because I feed them, the way that they can be honored by me and yet not sustained, and to appreciate their making as opportunities for compassionate growth within me. I've enjoyed the feeling of gifting myself with flowers for the sheer beauty and enjoyment of the act or surprising loved ones and strangers with tokens of appreciation and magick. I've affirmed for myself how inseparable my compassion and my service of priestessing are intertwined. There was one thing, though, that I had not done. I did not record my daily acts of kindness. Two days ago, I was quite certain, I would be repeating my Pink month in order to meet that obligation fairly.

It isn't that I didn't share a smile or a kind word, an encouraging note, a meal, or a gift with someone every day. Chances are good that I did. I left small "Believe" cards behind on bus benches and subway seats with random quotes about faith and accomplishment. I contributed uplifting, beloved books to the neighborhood free book exchange box. I called a rescue organization and did my best to aid a young pigeon in peril. I bought a meal and extra groceries for a neighborhood homeless man I've sailed past apologetically in the past. I poured my heart into the natal chart readings I did for people. I gave away gifts both small and large. I made a point to cheer all the people who crossed my path--nurses, cashiers, bus drivers. I wrote thank you notes in my hospital bed to the staff who delivered my food, checked my blood pressure, wheeled my bed from place to place. What I didn't do, though, was record any of it. I had failed in that obligation, completely, and would have to start over again next new moon.

On Lammas, all the things I had to mentally unpack wove together into one all-encompassing sense of insight. One part of that new knowledge is that my not-recording my good deeds is actually a symptom of my greatest heart wound--I do not count myself. I think that everyone around me is so beautiful, so heroic, so worthy of praise. I love the spark of the divine within their eyes and watch with sheer admiration the loving work their hands do in the world. They may not see their strength, their light, the difference their lives are making in the world--but I do. Me, though, I do not count myself. What I do is ordinary and flawed and always-too-little, so I do not count myself. When I achieve things that make my soul sing, they are soon forgotten. When I fall short of my expectations for myself, however, I remember those things forever.

At Diana's Grove, we were encouraged in ritual to string beads of challenge onto a string representing our life. Instead of counting our lives as a series of failures, we were pushed to rewrite those challenges into victories--even if that victory was merely surviving the hard time. I cannot tell you how much I wept. I see everyone for their victories, for their purest motives and most untarnished qualities, and myself I sketch in negative space. Here's where I fell, chose badly, stepped awry, took too long, wasted potential, wasted time, wasted space, did not do that which I knew was right. Here is where I screwed up my Pink Month's endeavours by not writing something down each day.

So slowly and finally, the messages are starting to sink in from the month. On Lammas, it all came together in one knowing--I am deserving of an equal share of compassion. It is a given that I am flawed, that I am challenged by this life and that I don't always respond in the way that I would wish. It is a given that I act sometimes out of fear instead of love, out of pain instead of wisdom. This is a given for everyone. This is not why I don't deserve compassion but rather why I require it. I must begin to count myself. I am as beautiful, as important and immortal and precious, as those who catch my eye and my heart and my admiration around me.

I must count myself, number my victories instead of my failures, and lend myself the compassion I need to truly thrive and grow and dare.
~*~


This month, I ran across two phenomenal pink items from a catalog of inspirational gifts for women. They made me weep with joy and soul-deep longing, so I bought them. There would be women aplenty in my life that I could gift them to. That is my way, when I see wonderful things, I want to give them to wonderful people. One, a small blank journal, reads on the cover, "She just had this way of brightening the day." The other, a portable folding picture frame, read on the outside cover, "She makes the world a better place." For Lammas, as an act of compassion to myself, I gave those gifts to myself. I will not redo my month of Pink, unless my New Moon time with Lady Pink convinces me otherwise, but part of my long-term task of healing my wound of not-counting-myself, I am keeping track in my little pink book my kindnesses of the day--for myself and for others. Into the picture frame, I slipped a photo of myself and a trimmed down card from the same "She..." line that reads, "She listened to her heart above all the other voices."

It feels too extravagantly, embarrassingly kind to myself and yet also, I know soul-deep, true. I have trouble holding onto the knowledge in the midst of all my self-criticism, but I am good and loving and compassionate and influential. The less I doubt myself, the more impossible, world-changing things I can achieve.

We are all necessary, irreplaceable, glorious lights in this life, finding the places where our unique abilities are cried out for, altering forevermore the lives of those we touch, shaping the world with our love and compassion--and I-Am-Counting-My-Self!

(I hope you will, too.)

Lots of rose quartz, the vintage floral saucer I received at the Midsummer Faerie Celebration from Sarah & Jenn, pink candles, rose buds from the bouquet I bought myself, a decorative pink egg-shaped sculpture (sometimes in life, change is necessary and sudden--the egg is meant to crack and so, perhaps, must I). A glittery spin-art that Graeme made me a couple weeks ago. A heart-in-hand plaque that reads, "To the world, you may be just one person but to one person, you may be the world." Red and pink stained glass butterfly, other stones and whatnot, pink fabric.



Lady Pink, help me to remember to be compassionate to myself so that I can be limitlessly compassionate to others. Help me forget my pain, my troubles, my fears by focusing on the ways that I am always capable of improving someone else's day. Show me where to give and open my heart to feeling worthy to receive.

Blessed, Blessed, Blessed Be. <3

The words read:

Witch
Healing the Power of Loneliness with inner Light and Sound.
Air is cooler. calm and serene.
finding comfort--family--on the path.
We all have a role mothering, help connect all our broken pieces together.
Beautiful
GOOD
More, More, More, More, More Thanksgiving.

This past weekend was the Full Moon, the half-way point of our Black Month. How has your work with Black been going? Are you unearthing secrets? Dark sides to your personality that you hide from everyone, including yourself? Have you begun honoring your talents by using them in the world?

In the book, Caroline arrives at her Full Moon with a crisis of faith. She hasn't even started her true self-portrait and she is certain it is a task she won't complete in time to move on to the next color. She feels unequal to the challenge she's been presented with. Under the Full Moon, she performs a ritual and is given something she needs--a teacher to help guide her efforts. It is only then, with the reassurance that Lady Black would provide all help necessary, and a newfound determination to do her best, that Caroline's work drawing herself as she truly is can begin.

How did the Full Moon's power change your relationship with Black, with the work, this month?

~~~*~~~

For those of you who signed up for the June/July token exchange, have you both sent and received a token package?

Mine waits for me on my altar and I know I have a lot of work to do to earn it! I hope to devote quite a bit of my free time this long weekend towards my portrait. One of the themes for the month for me has been the consequences of fear, of living with my eyes stubbornly closed so I don't have to risk seeing what's in the dark with me. It has manifested, in one way, as a medical phobia. I avoid the ounce of prevention, like seeing the doctor, because I'd rather not face what scares me (being not in control and some unknown life-changing diagnosis) and then down the road I have to pay for it with the huge, even scarier consequences of neglecting myself. It's like, I can spend $30 on an oil change every 3000 miles or I can wait and then kablow!! spend $2000+ on repairs. I can keep up with the dishes every day or I can wait and then wham!! I've got too much to manage and a sugar ant infestation to boot. What is it within me that invites the worse? Why do I continuously choose to ignore something until it reaches crisis stage? That theme is everywhere I look this month for me. I need to keep my eyes open and honestly look at what's around me, what's within me.

On the other side of the token, my talents, I had a tarot reading that addressed a lot about that. For me, the entire reading was about water and emotion *except* for the work of the month. That, it said, was the Ten of Swords. One of my talents is my logical ability to step back and see, dispassionately, the big picture. In order to use the rest of my talents as part of a meaningful, service-oriented life, I realize I must prune and trim both what I choose to utilize and how I spend my time. That's something that must be done intellectually and deliberately. So I will be doing a lot of thinking and list-writing about where all my time goes now, what my best talents are, and what few interests I should pursue in the future. I can't do it all. By not choosing, I'm just in idle, wasting both the days of my life and my Goddess-given talents, and I recognize that's not acceptable. I have been waiting for a Call, for Someone to make the hard decisions for me and that's being chicken. I must make decisions, narrow my focus deliberately, and get to work on my life's work. I must dictate what that life's work will be. So, yeah, I have a ton of work to do in the next two weeks and I, like Caroline, doubt my ability to honestly complete so much heavy-lifting and hard, scary soul-searching.

This past weekend, I flew to New York to take part in Sarah mermaiden and Jenn willow_cabin's First Annual Midsummer Faerie Celebration, an outdoor costumed tea party the hostesses had been dreaming up for awhile. I can't imagine a more perfect community in which to celebrate Litha, the turning of the seasons from growing light to growing darkness.

Friday, after a day spent in a Rosemont hotel entertaining Graeme while Daniel spoke at an expert witness conference, I got all glammed up and went to the airport. I *love* flying to New York because it is the quickest flight, just an hour and a half, so travel doesn't take all day the way a lot of our destinations do. I had on some high heeled espadrilles, though, and the miles-long walk through O'Hare was less then comfy. Oh, vanity! :D I just loved knowing I wouldn't have to carry a toddler around, so it felt like I could get away with all kinds of things. :) Getting to Buffalo, I was pretty distracted. I'd arranged Rhiannon rubymulligan's flight to arrive around mine but I couldn't remember if she was coming in a little ahead of my schedule or a little behind. Should I try to find her gate and wait there, or go out and get my bag at the baggage claim? She wasn't answering her phone and I was feeling very responsible for her. I wasn't even sure who would be picking us up! I figured I'd head out to get my luggage. And there, already waiting just outside security, lined up and grinning and waving with great excitement were Sarah and Jenn, as well as Lena lenaperry and Karyn belladonnastrap, the first guests who'd arrived earlier in the day. Lena even had a bakery box with two vegan cupcakes for us in her hands! Ha! In a movie, I'd have run crying down the hallway and thrown myself in their arms, but instead it was like, "Oh, hey, good to meet you/see you again. Have you heard from Rhiannon? What should we do? I'm worried about Rhiannon. I wish I'd printed out her flight information. Do you know her flight information?" while blocking the exit from security. :D In time, Rhiannon resurfaced, my luggage circled around on the claim belt, and we piled ourselves into two cars for the drive to Sarah and Jenn's house.

( Friday night, Saturday's party, and tons of photos under here. )
Such a wonderful day! In future posts, I'll write about the ritual and the rest of our weekend. There is so much to cover!! In the meantime, many many many more photos from Saturday are up on my Flickr site.

PS- Oh, another little thing. During the weekend, Sarah and Jenn passed around a wooden box filled with a tumble of crystals and minerals in every color. We each picked one randomly as a divination/intention/gift of the weekend. Mine, a marbled thing I'd never seen before, was fossilized fern, which Sarah said was for remembrances. Pretty awesome. :) I know my memories of this weekend are fixed in stone.