Creating the Life I Want

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the kind of life I want to live, and the values I want to embody. There is a stark contrast between that life and the life I am living. It's not about what I can afford. I don't want an extravagant life or even an opulent one (though moments of that are certainly welcome and enjoyed). I just want a life that includes a lot of time outside, a lot of time helping other people and a lot of time working on causes that are important to me, like loving the Earth, human rights and little things like that.

So I started by taking a hard look at the life I am living, and this is ongoing. The assessment includes an analysis of my time and money and energy, for the most part - because isn't that what effects life most? I also think about my health in a holistic way, which is to say physical, mental and spiritual. How does that factor in? I've started to identify behaviors that are actual barriers to what I want my life to look like. And then, on a small but steady scale, I'm trying to make changes.

The first thing I did was to stop the gaming madness. Gaming has been a long time way to blow off steam, but more and more it's always a way to isolate myself from the people and the world around me. So I removed all Facebook games with a nice note to those I'd been gaming with. I cancelled my WoW account. And I've managed to stay away from the siren call of the Xbox. I have to revisit my vow nearly daily to not mindlessly fall back into the games, but that's why I removed them from their platforms. If I have to go through the trouble of reloading them, I have to think about why I'm doing it. That's stopped me each time.

I'm figuring out the spiritual stuff kind of as I go. Being in a seminary environment is really forcing an examination of, well, everything. If you've been reading, then you already saw the Witch or Druid post. Fortunately I don't think it has to be such a binary decision. I have been doing a lot of work to add pieces of druidic practice back into what I'm doing, and that feels exactly right. But it's taking more time, which brings me back to the study of how I currently spend my time and energy and what I can move, reduce or eliminate to make room for creating the life I want.

I'm getting older, you know? And all that "I'll figure it out later" stuff I used to tell myself isn't working. Regardless of whether or not you believe in reincarnation, there is a finite amount of time I have in this body and this time to learn the lessons I want to learn.

I'm also on the look-out for a good therapist, but it really needs to be one on my insurance. Right now I'm a little impatient because the ONE person on my area who isn't CBT/Brief Therapy-oriented is full (of course she is - she's the only one doing what she's doing). I'm holding out for the right person. I'm not in crisis, but I do want an excellent co-navigator to help me move through these changes. She may have some openings in September, and I'm hoping that works out.

This isn't the first time I've done this, and it's sort of a spiraling thing. I dance with this and each time a little more seems to shift, or I see it from a different perspective. It's the work of life for me, and I'm grateful for those people who still support me as I move through it, even if it's not in directions that make sense to anyone but me. Because at the end of it all, that will be it, won't it. What I got out of it. Not anyone else. Good for people-pleasing me to remember.

Witch or Druid?

You may remember my points from a recent post about what's working me now.  I'm working with a seminary that is unabashedly (and even beautifully) Wiccan. Whole-heartedly Wiccan, from the ritual style to theology to areas of interest (forms of healing humans, herbs, chakras, etc). I love them for being so Wiccan because nowadays it can be hard.

Because Wicca has been one of the more visible traditions (even accused of having privilege!), it's also been one that's often denigrated, sometimes rightfully and sometimes from a place of something kind of ugly. It can be difficult, for example, to go into traditions that value scholarship - sharp, supported scholarship - and claim my Wiccan past. If I do claim it, I am expected almost immediately to discount it. If I don't, then my own scholarship and ability to be discerning is sometimes called into question.

What I'm concerned about lately is whether I have any business representing myself as Wiccan clergy, particularly with the ATC. Why? Because I diverge pretty strongly on my theology of divinity. I moved away from the All, from the Lord and Lady as facets, or interchangeable parts, quite awhile back. And stepping back in has been both familiar and uncomfortable. Familiar because it's a form I know, language that was part of my early spiritual growth. For me, it was the first step away from a monotheistic model of the divine. Uncomfortable because it no longer fits how I experience the divine, and yet it is truly central to Wicca, and particularly to Wicca that is strongly influenced by British Traditional Wicca. How do I honestly teach a class without owning that my own definition of the gods has changed, and the Lord and Lady and the attendant term Consort no longer really work for me.

I also have a problem with the concept of polarity as it is currently discussed. It's not enough to say "Oh, we don't actually mean gender identity" when we use the words masculine and feminine. Those terms are inherently laden with gender assumption. If we truly wanted to explain polarity and take it away from male/female and into a place of gender-neutral discussion, we could. But there's a lot of traditional gender roles woven into the fabric of Wicca. That's not a value statement, it just seems to be something that is and it's not really working for me. In fact, it's always been something that doesn't make sense to me. If we all embody both aspects of polarity (which is a very dualistic perspective, by the by), then why does gender (either identity or cis) enter into the equation? Because it's a fertility ritual? Even in nature gender can be fluid. So the male-to-female or female-to-male components of so many rituals feels a bit contrived and illogical.

And I'm missing the stronger tie to the Earth, to the Mother. While healing people is a fine and weighty thing, I find myself wanting to focus on the Earth, to tie my practice to that. And this is where the Druids come in.

I have always loved the elements of scholarship in ADF. The training is pretty great, and even more so, I imagine, if a person is lucky enough to have a grove nearby. Given my draw to the Irish pantheon, and ADF's room for a broader expression of the divine, it's a great home for me in the very same theological sense that can make me feel out of place with my traditional Wiccan peers. But the balance here shifts towards the dogmatic, and this is the place where it can be a challenge to speak about having a Wiccan background without a lot of assumptions being made.

Druidry and BTW (British Traditional Wicca) share a lot of ritual traits in terms of liturgy. It's more about ritual theater than it is about experiential ritual. While I reserve space for ritual theater, I prefer it to be balanced with ritual that invites me to participate, and moreover, with ritual that allows me to have my own experience through careful use of language and ritual components. So both leave me a little cold in this area, but it feels as though this could be more about needing to spend more time with groups in the flesh, rather than online.

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking it's something I should share with the folks I'm working with at the seminary. And I'm thinking I am probably missing some blinding thing here. I spent a fair amount of time eschewing labels, and I still get that, but ultimately found that what happened is that I just fell away from everyone, away from communities. That's not what I want.

And a third thing to throw in - I am really enjoying my UU interactions. I'm sure the fact that it's in person has a great deal to do with that. I keep hearing there are Pagans there. I'm waiting to meet them. I'm thinking maybe I need to do something to make it so. Certainly in a prior "life" I did a lot of that kind of work and I loved it. Maybe just a discussion group. Gods know I could certainly come up with topics... and facilitate the hell out of them. Because I got THAT out of college if nothing else.

What's Working Me Now

Coming back to a full-time spiritual practice (and training) following mundane grad school is proving to be challenging in ways I wouldn't have expected. Here's what's working me over.

• Raising my educational level (and arguably, life experience level) has lowered my tolerance for shoddy scholarship and shady claims. I already had a sensitive BS-o-Meter, and now it's more so. I also have a hard time with ignorance of larger systems (i.e. oppression, ecological and on and on).

• I have a lot of baggage preventing me from returning to my most recent tradition, some related to point one, but most related to boundaries and community dynamics and tradition foundations and experiences I had between 2004 and 2011. Even if I worked through this baggage (and I desperately need to, likely with some assistance), I don't think I can or will return to that tradition. There are too many things surrounding the pieces I like (namely ritual style and commitment to the Earth).

• I don't experience the gods as psychological constructs or thoughtforms or facets of one (or two) divine force(s). I experience them as distinct, part of a larger cultural context (including other gods) and accompanied by ancestors, nature spirits and other beings.

• I see value in melding scholarship (i.e. knowing your gods and their culture and their historical contexts) with form with ecstatic ritual AND formalized, structured, accessible training programs (that use some great spiritual leadership components rather than sage-on-the-stage models) - and I don't see this happening. Anywhere. Certainly not in a place accessible to me.

• Speaking of ecstatic ritual, I also have experienced growth and emotional breakthrough as a result of participating in ritual theater - not as an actor, mind you, but as a witness. The ecstatic ritual community often seems to view this as an either/or proposition, and I feel it is both/and. So add ritual theater to the above list of things I value. It's a new addition, but one I'm glad I'm shifting on. (The ritual theater community tends to be intensely uncomfortable trusting themselves without a script. I've been there, and I get it, but I've seen magic happen via improv - which is what I think ecstatic ritual feels like to them - too.)

Thinking about this for the past several weeks, I thought again about how I often find myself in liminal places. In fact, I often seek these liminal places out - I even live in one, a place where land, sea, sky and river meets, working at a place where people stop to gather resources to continue with their path, or forge a new one. I crave that mist-shrouded space, but I find myself most often alone there. I never quite feel like I fit completely into one space. I'm always straddling the line. And I NEVER intentionally "drink the kool-aid" - that's just anathema to me. Sometimes that makes me unpopular.

I am missing a person to talk to regularly about this stuff when it comes up. Hoping to find a person to fit that space soon. In the meantime, I'll just keep walking here at the edge and doing the work.

Wuv... Twu Wuv...

For Beltaine, I had to write a short response to love and fertility deities and mythologies. In particular, I was supposed to contrast them with the Adonis myth. I was kind of surprised by what I came up with.

Youth, lust, possession, lack of consent, immaturity, impatience… all things that seem to function in most Western myths related to deities who are considered to be love and fertility deities. Doing the light research for this assignment, that was the first thing I thought (and this may well be related to my own age and position in life vs. watching my newly-minted adult daughter navigate her own relationship waters). The question I had? Why is it always about possession and jealousy and sex? Does sex have to be about possession and jealousy?

As an experienced adult, I think the answer is no. Does sex = love? Nope, that doesn't follow either. In fact, what I see in a lot of these myths are the strains of heterosexual monogamous relationship models where being in a relationship implies some kind of ownership of one’s partner. What I’m interested in knowing is whether this is because we’re retelling them through the society of today, or whether these things have been related since time immemorial. Most people would say that the latter is true, but I’d be interested in some data to back that up.

When I was young, I might have believed these myths were great models for relationships. Now I feel like perhaps they could be great models for what NOT to do in a relationship, whether it be romantic or not. Where’s the love/fertility deity who models great communication skills, compassion, patience, boundaries and consent? Do those things have to be separate from love and fertility? I sure hope not.

If I take a different perspective on fertility - if I take it into the realm of other ways of creating, like writing, art, visioning and one’s own work - that shifts things to some extent, but still… these stories still bring up questions for me around obsession and balance, communication and true devotion and love. How do we act on passion without destroying boundaries? And how do we sustain relationships past the point of conception?

I’m not sure I’m providing much in the ways of answers here, but these have been the questions I’m sitting with as I think about how in mythology, one must dig deeper to find narratives about love and fertility that aren’t deeply entwined with jealousy and “taking” a person (in many ways perpetuating rape culture - yeah, I said it. I went there).  Some of them could stand a good re-telling.

Tell me... what love/fertility myths are the exception to this? Why the conflation of love and lust? Do you think they're the same?

Dreams?

For the past two months or so, I've been having some strange dream experiences. If you know me at all, you'll know that's saying something. I've been a lucid dreamer since I was 9 or so and heard a program on NPR that gave tips on how to develop the skill. My dreams have recognized patterns in a way that some consider premonitory (I just think my brain put pieces together when I was sleeping - nothing supernatural). And I've had hypnagogic hallucinations since I was very young. So you could say I'm a very active dreamer, one who remembers dreams well. I spend a lot of time in the sleep borderlands. I'm not sure if it's an effect of being a light sleeper or the cause.

So what could possibly be new at age 43 and a little? Well, twice now I've had sleep experiences that are sort of like hypnagogic hallucinations in that I'm aware of my waking world reality - the light and shadows in the room, the sound from the road, etc - but different in that I am being invaded by an entity of some sort. I can feel it in my deepest self, and the only way I can "evict" it through a tremendous force of will, followed by a strong round of shoring up barriers. I've never had such a sense of invasion, not even when I was pregnant. I can't get a sense of who or what the thing is, only that we are in a deep struggle for control. I've managed to get it out twice now, but each time I wake up feeling unsettled and attacked. It's not a fun way to be.

Last night I had another new experience, also when in the sleep/wake hypnagogic state. In this one, I was listening to the noises around me - the cars on the road, the rattling windows, and so on. Suddenly the sounds disappeared, and I could hear nothing but wind and bird song and water. I received a message of "this is the true reality" from a genderless voice. And then I was right back into the real sounds. I felt peaceful, and I drifted back into deeper sleep.

I find myself switching between science and the mystical in trying to puzzle out what's going on. Maybe my hypnagogic hallucinations are morphing somehow in response to some aging hormonal change? Or are things actually changing? What the hell is up with the attacking thing? The first time that happened, I kind of shrugged it off, though I did tell Jeff about it. The second time shook me. Of course if it happens again, I'll go through the process of "Who or what are you?" "What do you want?"

In the meantime, I'm not having much luck finding anything on the 'net to help me puzzle it out. I'd be interested in knowing if any of you have had these experiences. I remember how relieved I was years ago when I found out I wasn't the only one who saw the sleep spiders (this is one of the "normal" manifestations of my hypnagogic hallucinations).

Water, water everywhere

For most of my adult life as a witch, I've claimed to be a fire woman (in fact, FireWoman was a magickal name for a time) or an air woman (Queen of Swords, anyone?). Occasionally I'd undertake some work with earth, which was really about connecting with my body in some way. Water though? Water visited in the form of dreams - dreams where giant waves were waiting to pound me flat, to suffocate me, where there was no hope of swimming to the surface. Think the beach scene from Deep Impact.

Seriously. I still can't watch that scene. It gives me the willies.

Still, the ocean has long been a source of infinite energy for me. I feel amazing after a visit to the beach, even more so if it's stormy. Seems paradoxical, doesn't it? I'm drawn to the ocean when it's stormy, but I have nightmares about being crushed by a giant wave.

So the dream interpreter inside says it's about fear of emotion. And I think that's true for the most part. So I've avoided water as a guiding element, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unconsciously. Water gods or goddesses? No thanks. Tarot cards? Yeah, I'll probably draw the five of cups. 

Except recently, that has NOT been the case. And in April, for the first time in many years, I felt a call to the ocean, and it was a call from Manannán mac Lir. While in northwestern Washington, I saw a pod of whales in the wild for the first time in my life. I couldn't tear myself away from the beach. And I couldn't shake the image of a man wanting to guide me through the water. I knew who it was, but I was essentially in denial. Called by a god? A god of the water? Of the body of water most likely to create that crazy wave I dream about? Yes. Called by a god. A god of water, and mist, and liminal spaces. Called by Manannán mac Lir. And then the correspondences started to pile up.

• My house (like most wild places in Oregon) is surrounded by wild blackberry, a plant sacred to Manannán. 
• My wand, which I'd waited nearly two years to carve, was of alder, a tree sacred to Manannán. 
• In this season of spring, my house is surrounded by yellow flowers which are - surprise! - sacred to Manannán mac Lir. 
• He has ties to goddesses I've worked with over the years, with Áine and Brighid. 
• The centerpiece of the tattoo on my back has the triskelion in the center - a symbol associated with (among other things) Manannán mac Lir.

Manannán is a psychopomp, which figures, given that I've been working so hard to deal with the passing of my father and my daughter, as well as facing transitions, death and again, liminal spaces in other areas of my life. His stories of misting out the past to focus on the present make sense to me, as I spend far too much time thinking about what's behind me (occasionally what's ahead) and rarely on the now.

I've been visiting the sea at least once a week, listening. I've opened space on my altar. I've opened a space in my life. I'm kind of excited to feel called. It's been awhile since I've felt that kind of connection.

Coming to peace with water too, both in the sense of literal disaster waves (I do live near a tsunami zone, after all) and in the sense of emotion. The latter is more of a struggle, but it's work I'm doing, albeit mostly on my own.

What gods are you working with? Who calls to you?

two months? really?

Time gets away if you let it. I've been meaning to get to this blog and post for about two months. In April I attended the Spring Mysteries Festival up in Washington. I've been officially admitted as a graduate student at Woolston Steen Theological Seminary and begin my graduate work in a few short weeks.

I've kind of had my spiritual world rocked, not by mind-blowing newness, but by revelations about my own path that I really should be writing about so as to process. It's that spiral process that we talk about at WSTS - it's the labyrinth walk. Every trek around the center brings a different perspective.

Yet I find that when things are REALLY hard, and I don't have the clarity that brings comfort, I have difficulty writing. I have difficulty exposing the vulnerability. And really, I didn't expect to be wrestling again so soon with imposter syndrome (thanks grad school...), but so I am. I haven't written because I don't even know where to start. There's so much that's good, and so much that's challenging me, and so much that's driving me a little nuts - just so much. Added to that is mundane life, which is also so much in much the same ways. I'm long past overwhelmed.

And still...

I want to talk about the experiences at the seminary and at festival. I want to talk about being called by Mannanan mac Lir. I want to check in to see if I've actually been the priestess I thought I was, or if it was all ego. I want to feel anchored to a shared reality, to feel a little less liminal. Or... to feel a little more at peace with being so liminal.

I miss people who live close, who I can invite over for a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. I miss face-to-face conversation, connection and opportunity to talk through this stuff with someone who knows me and who knows my past story. The problem is that the people who fit that profile are scattered across the country. I can't afford to fly them all here, but I truly wish I could. I would love to sit in a circle of my spiritual brothers and sisters and feel heard... and also to listen to what's going on with them. And by listen, I mean to truly open to understand beyond the blips and bits offered by Facebook. That's such a fragmented view.

And also, I find I wish to connect more deeply with some of my newfound friends, but I'm struggling with feeling all the social anxiety that is so familiar. Most of them are several hours away (and more). Skype and SecondLife are great, but for me, they're not the same as real connection. I think they can be an extension of that, a way to maintain it, but I find it difficult to build that connection strictly online. It's awkward when I can't read someone's  body language and hear the nuance of voice inflection. I guess I rely on that more than I knew.

So I came here today to read someone else's blog, but ended up with an open box in front of me. This is what came of that. I'm pretty sure that everyone who reads this is someone who knows me for real, so tell me - what do you want to know? What do you want to read more about? And what do you most want me to know about what's happening in your world?