Race for the Cure

Yesterday morning, I woke up before the sun to go downtown and do the Susan Komen Race for the Cure. Now, I'm not a runner or a morning person but this was something I felt I needed to do. It took me nearly a month to manage to get the day off from work but I argued that it was for a good cause and eventually won the day.

This was my first ever 5k, so I didn't know what to expect. I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of people there and by the emotions all around me. I choked back tears nearly a dozen times as I listened to folks talk before the horn blew and the race started. But once it did, those pesky tears dried right up!

just a small portion of the crowd.

And in impressive fashion (at least to me, as someone who never runs) I ran about 1/3 of the race and power walked the rest. My best mile time was 12:40 and my slowest was 16 and a few seconds. Not too shabby!

crossing the finish line!

As I rounded the corner at the end, I saw a certain bearded fellow grinning at me from across the finish line and booked it for that last 200 feet. The feeling I got from actually doing this and then finishing it was amazing - I'm so proud of myself! It's a little weird, with my legs being as sore as they are today and my shins saying 'ouch!' but I could see this running thing maybe becoming a hobby. :-)

Welcome, Autumn!

Damn, did I miss this time of the year something fierce! I spent so much time being outside this weekend, reveling in the season, that despite setting up my altar I didn't touch it. I didn't perform my usual ritual, instead I spent time out in the sun, by firelight and with my fingers in the dirt.

And that was all the ritual I needed to connect with this part of the year. We spent Saturday evening at a friend's housewarming party where there was plenty of music, food and beer around a cozy campfire. The first of the season for us! The mosquitoes were even on their best behavior, I was only bitten twice - unusual for me.

Yesterday evening the perennial jungle of roses and rosemary in my gardens started being pruned back, the dead annuals have been pulled up and this year's baby mums have been planted. While I did that, hubby worked on tackling our very out of control hedgerows and butterfly bushes. We ate dinner and then took the recycling out. We don't have local pick-up, so we take it to a 24 hour bin drop-off site.

As you can see, even with all that pruning these bush roses are still massive

As we were driving home, where my camera/phone happened to be, I saw some bright shiny eyes and a slender form crossing the road ahead. I slowed down, thinking it was a deer and was beyond myself with excitement as the headlights illuminated a coyote! As he slunk back to the side of the road he was joined by another one. Now, I know for some of you this is no big deal... but I've never seen a coyote before. Ever! I just sat on the shoulder watching them for a bit as they wended through people's yards and out of my sight. I was completely enamored.

Making me rethink my plans for future backyard chickens - not in having them, but in housing them. We'll see what happens in the Spring.

I hope you all had a lovely Equinox and that so far, Fair Autumn is treating you very well!

Staying the Path Part 2: Ritual and Altar

First, I want to thank everyone for their honest and thoughtful comments and posts regarding Staying the Path Part 1: Deities. I'm always fascinated by both the parallels and divides found between people's individual paths as well as how different people relate to what they consider to be divinity. If you haven't shared your thoughts and would like to, please do so!

As I mentioned in my previous posting, I find that I am able to stay my spiritual path because it is flexible and changeable. I don't need to cling to outdated ideas and methods that no longer serve me, I can transition and my path will wend and wind differently to open up new avenues to me. This has been the case with my relationship to Deity and it has been even more so true when it comes to my approach to ritual.

When I first put a title to the feelings I've carried, unnamed, since youth I threw myself into book after book in the library's 'New Age' section. I devoured any and every text I could lay hands on, which admittedly, was sort of slim pickings mostly revolving around Wicca and Astral Projection. Having always been a bookworm and having long been enchanted by fairy tales, folk lore and mythology I had some vague sense of what I was looking for but none of that was mirrored in these books. Somehow, and I think it was the excitement of having even some of my feelings validated, I didn't let that get to me.

And so, I let that innate knowledge I'd gathered from my other readings slip away and began to do things by the book. As a solitary and the only pagan I knew of, I had no one to turn to for advice or teaching. We were still in the stone ages of dial-up internet and sparkly personal Geocities web pages. Those tangible bound pages were all I had to learn from and so, I did my level best to follow their tutelage.

I can remember being vaguely paranoid at the time that my parents would find out I was practicing 'the craft' and would flip the fuck out on me and played all manner of other terrible, scary scenarios in my teenaged brain. Thinking back, I don't think some of the books helped with this paranoia as many of them had passages on people finding Wicca to be scary and others had chapters devoted to keeping it a big secret. In any event, this paranoia made me incapable of leaving up a permanent altar or looking for what I needed to create one openly. I gathered what I could, a small knife, a ceramic cauldron that I'm sure was from Hallowe'en, candles, incense, a small bell, a fancy book to write in and kept it all in my underwear drawer. Where else do you hide things from the world when you're a teen and you live at home?

When I did set up my altar, on full moons, new moons and sabbats, it was set up exactly like the diagram in the book. Dead center of my bedroom on a little table, elemental candles in their proper places, things related to the God on his side and things related to the Goddess on the other. I lit my candles, walked around that circle several times with my salt water, incense and sword. I can remember twinges of doubt that I didn't have the right stuff, that my tools weren't elaborate enough, that I didn't have statues and that all I had to pour into the chalice at the time for cakes and ale was a wine cooler - probably pina colada flavored, since again I was an uninformed teenager and when the book said wine I wasn't about to swap it out for spiced rum! (Yes, I had booze stashed in my drawer with my ritual tools, there wasn't much room for underwear for a bit!)

I did everything as I was told, read the words that were written, made the proper gestures and got the offerings as close as I could and.... I waited to feel something. Anything. But I never did. And I'm not going to lie, it was sort of brutal as far as let downs go. All I had done before to feel connected was pray and talk to the Gods but now that I was following the elaborate rituals in the books to honor them they were silent afterwards. Even my beloved Artemis and Hermes were mum. Those twinges of doubt became full blown feelings of failure and after a year of nothing, I packed everything away and felt spiritually lost once more. If what I felt in my heart was similar to the things written in these books, then why wasn't I able to connect or feel maybe just a little something? Ritual left me feeling a bit tense, a bit drained and honestly? I didn't really enjoy doing it as much as I had expected to. And admitting that made me feel terrible. Like I had forsaken the Gods who had brought me through childhood into Adulthood.

I gave up everything when I packed that stuff away. No more card reading, no more calling on the Olympians, no more calling myself a pagan. In a fit of depression and anger, I locked my spirituality up and pretended it didn't exist. This lasted a few years and brought me into my early 20's. The age of good internet connection speeds, the online blogging explosion via Livejournal and bookstores popping up like mushrooms after a solid rain.

Through an afternoon's perusing of Borders, I found that the 'New Age' section had grown up. Now it included all manner of books not just based in Wicca, but in Witchcraft, Polytheism, Shamanism and things I had never even heard of before. I immediately began going there on my lunch breaks to read books at the cafe tables. As a poor college student I couldn't afford to buy them but I could pick up some good points in an hour's time to take home and research online. Again, there were the heavily choreographed rituals with their very specific layouts but there was also something new interwoven amidst all that; the notion to follow your gut and not to do something if it doesn't connect you to your higher power or if you just plain don't like it. I was floored and honestly, a little pissed off that I had let go of my intuitive nature years before. Here was the freedom I needed, the validation that in not enjoying ceremonial ritual there was nothing wrong with me. Immediately I wanted to smack myself upside my own head for being so fucking stupid and when I looked up from the book on the table, for the first time in 4 years, there was Hermes smirking at me across the table.

Now my altar is set up however I want it to be set up and it changes not just seasonally, but whenever I feel called to do so. I don't crowd things on there that mean nothing to me, no heaps of tumbled stones, no fancy knives or expensive cauldrons that I would feel horror at burning something in. It houses my practical tools; the old cast iron cauldron, the wand I made from a stick my husband brought home because he thought I'd like it(I did), a shell and a bull's horn, keys, feathers, bones, coins and sometimes artwork depicting the deities I'm working with or honoring at that time. I work and worship at this altar, it isn't just a display of pretty objects to be dusted on occasion. And most importantly, it no longer hides in my underwear drawer! It now permanently resides in my bedroom, where it is the first thing I see upon waking and the last thing I see before sleeping.

When it comes to ritual now, I've let go of keeping it scripted and choreographed. The biggest difference for me these days is that I almost never cast a circle now and when I do, it is almost nothing like the ones I used to. For me, ritual can be as simple as saying a few words of praise or gratitude under the light of the moon or over a candle or as elaborate as setting up the altar, lighting candles, burning incense and making it a bit more ceremonious. I go with my gut and I no longer force myself to do things just for the sake of doing them; the Gods and Spirits won't be offended if I go to bed with a headache on the night of a sabbat rather than half assing a ritual that my heart isn't behind. Whatever I do and whatever words I say though, come directly from my own heart and spirit, not from a book. On the rare occasion that I do find a ritual that speaks to me, that I love and feel called to perform, I will tweak it to make it my own - whether that be through timing, offerings, magic work done during or the wording of it.

These days, ritual is a very personal and very heartfelt thing and it connects me to those I work with and worship in a stronger fashion than I've ever experienced before. When I finish, I find myself relaxed, tired, tingly and most importantly, I have felt something.

So lovelies, to continue our conversation, let's discuss your take on ritual and altars. Do you have an altar? Let's hear about it/them and how you use it! Do you perform rituals and if so, how do you do so? Do you prefer the ceremonial approach or do you fly by the seat of your pants? Or, do you fall somewhere in the middle? How have your feelings towards these things changed as you've walked your path?

Just a quick note to add, I don't find anything wrong with Wicca, or ceremonial ritual and I hope that in recounting my own experiences I haven't given off that impression. While I know that it works extremely well for some people, the opposite is true for me. And while some of you may scoff at my wild witch ways, they work extremely well for me.

As this post has gotten very, very long, I will touch on magic in yet another post. I hope you'll come back and weigh in on that one as well!

The Cone of Shame

Yesterday was Miss Luna's 6 month UnBirthday. Unfortunately for her, she swapped out a party hat and cake for painkillers and this beauty:

The Cone of Shame! Please, keep the mocking to a minimum. After all, the wee princess still has her pride:

My poor, pouty girl was spayed Monday afternoon. No puppies for her! When they took her away from me at the vet's office along with her little stuffed toy, I barely made it to my car before I bawled my eyes out. Really, she was only going to be gone for one night and I couldn't handle it. I felt like a horrible fur-mommy, I just knew she was going to be upset about being in a weird place with weird people over-night. People told me she would ignore me the next day in a snooty fit of anger. I was worried to death until they called me to tell me she was awake and doing well; her surgery went smooth as can be.

Then in the morning, I was there at 10am on the nose to get my girl. When they brought her out, at first she was calm and just looking around and I felt my heart drop a little. But then, she saw me and she freaked out. She was so excited to see me she peed on the nurse and I couldn't help but laugh and maybe cry again - just a little bit. Then the nurses went over how I have to keep her from jumping and getting too excited and again, I laughed. Seriously, would you imagine this critter had just had a major surgery?

But she did. And in between snoozing and crawling on my lap and bumping into things with the cone she even found time to audition to be the next iconic Gramophone dog.

It's amazing to me, how very attached to this fur baby I've gotten since we brought her home to live with us in April. And how very far we've come from those miserable (seriously, I'm not going to pretend they were magical and wonderful) first weeks of potty training, crate training and getting used to a new 'person' to fit into our schedule. I wouldn't ever want to go back, but I'm happy we persevered.

Happy UnBirthday Loony Miss Luna!

Staying the Path Part 1: Deities

A little while ago, Aine over at The Deepest Well was thinking about the great amount of people walking a pagan path and wondering how many stay on it for the long haul and if it isn't just a passing phase for a good number of people.

This led me to think about my own path, the way I walk it and how long I've been on it. The thing about this sort of spiritual journey is, unlike most organized religions I've come to know, it's changeable and transitional. It will grow and change as you learn more and grow and change yourself.

In the past, I've written a little about my beginnings on this path; about finding the Olympians in a book when I was maybe 7 or 8 and how their stories moved something in my soul. Before I would drift off to sleep at night I would say a prayer to each of them - beginning and ending with Hestia though I knew not why - to simply say hello, thank you, or to ask for guidance on something. Sometimes I would call on one individually just to talk about something that was bothering me or that I didn't understand. As a child, you don't over think these sorts of things, you just talk to your gods like other kids talk to theirs. While I respected each and every one of them, it was Artemis who claimed me as her own. But there was often also a bit of a mischievous laugh and a wink from an adorable curly haired god who I would hide beneath the sheets in the middle of the night with and talk of fun, adventure and dreams.

But, as is often the case, as we grow and we change, so too do our spiritual needs. And as those change, so to will our relationships with deity. Some will end; they might be painful or hurtful, they might fade away in such a way that you feel just fine. Others will change and grow, they will deepen and more will be asked of you. You will be challenged and you will learn. New ones will begin as your direction, leaning and pathwork changes.

Different gods came into my life, from other Pantheons. And though I did (and still do) hold the Greek Pantheon in my heart as my own, I could not deny the calling of others. Each has had something to teach me; be it a story, a habit, a skill or an important off shoot from my path. And while some have stayed with me for years others have only stayed with me for as long as it took to heed their teachings. Some of the relationships have transitioned, the best example being my relationship with Artemis. As I grew and married, I could no longer be one of her chosen. We knew it was going to happen and we were at peace with it when it did. And while she may no longer be the Goddess who has claimed me (that space is currently vacant), she still speaks to me in her aspect of Huntress and Wild Woman and it is she that I petitioned to watch over my sister in childbirth and to keep watch over my niece as she grows. Some, like the one I have with Hermes, have weathered the storms of my life, deepening and changing as I have grown.

Yet there are others still, whose signs have been clear as the sky on a cool Winter night, yet I have only recently realized that they've been calling to me. Not too long ago, I wrote about death and the dying becoming a part of my path and someone who I'd never spoken to previously brought up working with Hecate. I shrugged it off, chalking it up to someone just giving me the 'go-to' goddess of witches, if you will. I'd never felt any pull or inclination to work with her before and I don't tend to just petition whichever god/dess seems like a good fit for something. I forgot all about the comment and became ridiculously enamored of skeleton keys; snatching them up whenever I saw one that felt like it needed to come live with me. I've seen numerous snakes this summer and heard owls constantly. Still, I didn't put the pieces together, I chalk a lot of it up to mundane matters sucking up all of my time. Even after I wrote about the black wolf and the torch bearer and she came up several more times I still didn't get it. It wasn't until a few nights ago, while sleeping, that it finally dawned on me; Hecate is calling to me.

And so, she will be joining my household Deities for however long she deigns to work with me. For my part, I will be reading and researching all that I can on her, her mysteries and mythos and am open to suggestions.

As this has gotten a bit long, I will save my thoughts on rituals, magic and staying my path in a secondary post.

How has your relationship with the spirits, deities, ancestors, etc. changed throughout your journey on this path? How did you find them? Did they call to you and did you, unlike myself, hear them sooner rather than later?

What are your thoughts on staying the pagan path?

P.S. Some have asked over the years if I view the Gods as individual entities or different facets of the two all encompassing entities. I'm a polytheist, so I see them as more or less individuals, although I will say that some of the Gods and Goddesses you find across different cultures and Pantheons are very possibly the same ones bearing different names. For my part, I tend to worship and work with quite a few, though Earth, Sky and Sea are the biggest three (as they are the life givers) along with my Patrons (well, Patron right now.)I work with and am inspired by others, I have love and awe for them but they haven't claimed me. If that makes sense.