Texas Rain

Though the clouds had been hanging overhead all morning, it didn’t start to rain until a low rumble of thunder had sounded like a horn heralding an army. And then the sky unfolded. I sit here listening to it flow, then ebb away again quietly. As time passes, it rushes out more heavily so that the glass of the windows drum like thunder, which I haven’t heard since the first low peal about an hour ago. And then just as swiftly it seems to die again, so that I can hear individual drops falling off the leaves and petals of the bougainvillea outside in the front garden.

I suddenly race outside to drag pillows from the chairs in the front garden. In less than a second I, and the pillows, even though they have only been out for a short time, are soaked through.

This is Texas autumn. When you live in a place where October and November may still mean 100 + degree weather, or stifling humidity from hurricanes and sudden, swift flooding, showers like this one accent the gentle, pleasant weather and seem to say, “See? Texas knows how to take care of its citizens too.” After years of extraordinary drought, rain like this opens the mouth of the earth, and makes it sing.

This year, the latter half of October and November have unbelievably pleasant, gentle, cool and filled with sunshine. Storms, some small and gentle, and some loud and frightening, are bringing the world back into green life after several years’ worth of parched brown summers. In the northeast, autumn is a time of death, decay and oncoming cold. This year’s Texas autumn is a time of abundant green, and blessed relief.

I think when I sat down and began to type, I wanted the rain to inspire me to say something spiritually moving or wise. It hasn’t given me any great insights, except that to listen to it is enough. It is enough that this is where I am right now, listening, sitting, thinking, and letting the rain bring back life to my own parched soul.

 

Language of the Flame

Tonight is my Flamekeeping shift. I’m trying to take this time to be more definite in my beliefs, and laying out a solid plan of practice. As I sit and ponder, I struggle with the all too familiar, growing knowledge that often haunts me as a writer: what I say cannot capture what it is I am feeling or understanding. Sometimes, it is very close. Other times, my words utterly fail in the face of pure perceived experiential knowledge.

The more think about my path, and the more I sit and look inside myself and try to define what it is I believe, the more trouble I have with this inability of language to capture what it is I feel about the world, about myself, and about my place in it. These key ingredients to a coherent set of assumptions about the world–spiritual beliefs–should, if anything should be communicated, if only to myself for greater clarity. The closer I seem to come to something, the stiller I become, waiting for it to manifest as a clear thought that I maybe, maybe will finally be able to capture on paper. The closer, the quieter I become, straining hard to hear it sound through my inner ear.

Still closer, and still elusive.

As I focus on the flame tonight for Brighid, I think of how easy it is to see the hotness of the yellow color, to feel the tiny warmth radiating and the pulsing light gently wash on the immediate surroundings. How easy it is to perceive, and understand, without the medium of words. Even my words here, trying to describe what I see, and what I feel, take far more time to process and only then approximate my experience.

An Seanchas Fior is a path based primarily on the power of words to shape our lives, to form patterns to live with. My path therefore appears to be founded on something weak, insubstantial, and ultimately, inconsequential. Words are a product of our imagination, stories the product of words.

But suddenly a last thought shimmers through my head as I prepare to extinguish the flame, and go to bed. What if, my thought whispers, what if it is the other way around?

What if words are a product of stories? This seems logical. After all, our experiences of life came first, and our words came second to try to share them. Thus, my world, based upon words, is actually based upon stories, not words; on events, not things.

What if, that tiny thought says, what if that path, and everything my world stands upon, is a flame–an event based upon the interaction of other things, which are themselves, a result of the interaction of other things. What if words are in fact far more powerful than we often consider them to be: what they fail to capture may not be a thing at all, but an event–insubstantial, but not inconsequential. Their power, or lack thereof, hints at the truth: that what they fail to capture cannot be captured at all.

I am a flame, ready to ignite, ready to be blown out. I am a word on the breath, ready to exhale, ready to fade.

 

On the Recent Small Outbreak of Racist Gaels In Forums

The interested may find the relevant conversations (and conclusions) here at TC:

Celtic and Kemetic

Erinnightwalker’s Intro Post

I am, appropriately, Finn over at TC, and have posted at length in those conversations.

While now I’m regretting the time, arguments I’ve spent and anger I’ve suffered while trying to address this, it just goes to show that this is a highly sensitive, “hot button” topic for members of the Celtic polytheism community, especially for Recon-minded folks like myself.

I want it to be abundantly clear, particularly for these newcomers who suffered the indecency of these egomaniacal trolls, that the historical evidence shows the Celts, being a conqueror culture, were a syncretizing, blending, boiling stew of cultures that took languages, gods, and practices willingly, unabashedly and wholeheartedly. The historical evidence also shows the Celts were a tribal culture, placing great importance on family and community, yes, but adoption into each other’s families and communities was highly practiced, and the adoption of pan-Celtic deities, attracting worshipers from all walks of life, and all over the European continent is clear in the record of lore.

There is no place in today’s society for the arrogant tribalism, racism and xenophobia espoused by the people who told these seekers they were unworthy of worshipping “their” gods; that “their” gods were uninterested in their worship, and wouldn’t accept them unless they were, under duress and after extreme abuse and embarrassment adopted by “their” clan; and who slap unwarranted curses of “cultural misappropriation” on those who wish to explore their culture and build relationships with those gods.

The Gods call whom they will, regardless of race, family, and gender, and they will gladly accept with open arms those who seek to worship and work with them honestly, authentically, and devotedly.

*steps off soapbox*

 

Universal Values

Once again, over at Pagan Prompts, there is a another question to help me get my thoughts together:

What values and virtues do you believe should be universal for all pagan paths – not just your own – and why are these virtues/values important? How should they be practiced?

The language of this question is at once intriguing, and unnerving. The way I read it, this question could be (or maybe should be) asking what values and virtues should be universal for all paths, regardless of whether it was pagan or not. And that is when a line that is far too easy to cross should be tread upon very, very carefully.

After all, what person won’t espouse some particular value of hir belief system as being universally important? And yet, so many values of so many belief systems are out of balance with each other and our way of life; so much so that they cannot be cast universally upon humankind without seriously retarding and restricting our moral and ethic growth.

Still, it is an interesting question to ponder, and an opportunity to examine various faiths to find the common points between them all. These similarities, these values, can maybe point to an ethics system that evolved purely from the social interactions and relationships between humans, regardless of how they mystically experience their world.

 

The Living Tree

If there’s one thing I need to be reminded of sometimes, it’s that looking at new stories, not just the old, is a key part of my path, and essential for my own spiritual life. I need to look for inspiration and thought not just in contemporary authors’ works of fiction, poetry and sundry, but in the new storyteller and medium unique to the twenty-first century, the blog and its author, the blogger. Heck, it’s one way I’m telling stories, after all.

One of these new storytellers is Cuan, at Song of the Old Wanderer. I recently discovered him and am intrigued by his own Celtic pathbuilding work. This post in particular, Life Is…, has some resonance with me, not just for its poetic sensibility, but its attempt at codifying and communicating the basic values and principles of his path (called the “lifeway”) in a unique and, moreover, consistent and intelligent manner.

This description sounds too clinical to really convey the sense of story and language Cuan expresses here, but I find that one of my main issues, particularly with keeping up with this blog, is finding a unique and succinct way of communicating, and distilling, all the thoughts that roam around my head that concern my pathbuilding work. Laying out my principles and values took a lot of out me, and the work isn’t even over yet. My basic beliefs are in a constant state of flux because my specific view on spirituality and my personal expression of them is constantly changing.

In the coming weeks, I hope to have a new list of my principles, and I want to try to look to work’s like Cuan’s, and my friend Juni’s at The Path of Mist, for inspiration and motivation.

In closing, I’d like to take this thought and dream it out:

The living tree makes natural, pure poetry by its standing, its growing, its leaves shaking, its blossoms opening.

Sometimes I think that in order to be considered seriously in my search for wisdom I have to be flawless, static, and above all, solid, in the sense that I cannot be vague, or dreamy, or be open to changing my mind or refining my essential viewpoint. Poetry is built on a sense of the concrete giving way to the abstract; it is in the stasis of the language that the flow of the emotion can be discovered.

It is however, more subtle than that. The tree, the woman I am, is rooted and immobile in deep soil, but is subject to change. Her leaves fall, and grow again, in season, and she bears fruit and blossom in her time. To be principled is not be to be a boulder, but to remain upright even while the seasons change, and you with them.

To be a poet, principled and strong in her beliefs, is in fact, to be a poem: every word, every letter placed deliberately, with meaning and intent behind every action, but overall open to a myriad of interpretations and emotions. Poems change through drafts, and revisions, in constant change and fog while the initial intent remains the same. I make poetry through my own changes; it should naturally follow that my path should do the same.

 

Independence

I’ve been thinking a lot about my current situation in life. I’m back in Texas for good; or at least, as far as I know. I’m back in my parents’ house, not for good, most assuredly. I’m trying to find a job, which will then lead to my own apartment for the first time (since I’m determined to live alone for at least a little while), and I’m trying to find a way of getting around on my own without having to own a car.

This has naturally got me thinking about independence, in the financial sense of the word, but in other ways as well. Upon reading a prompt over at Pagan Prompts again, this sentence stuck out to me: “Is it important for you to take the journey alone?”

Independence is not only a virtue in today’s society: it’s necessary. Our whole economy is modeled around the satisfaction of the individual unit (person, family, business). America is founded upon the philosophy that the individual has inherent worth, regardless of where, when or in what circumstances he was born. Few other texts match the nearly religious transcendence in its commitment to independence than Emerson’s Self-Reliance and The Declaration of… well. You know.

I have thoughts about the individualism of today in an economic and secular, cultural context, but today I’d like to think a bit about what it means in a spiritual context.

 

Being Open

Today, I’m testing out a new client called ecto, that may help me keep up with this blog slightly more regularly. So far I am liking it, though naturally the last thing in the world I need to spend money on is a new piece of software (I have so many trials and demos of other programs already, it’s rather ridiculous).

Appropriately, today is a flamekeeping shift for one of the cills I belong to. Unfortunately, more than one obstacle is blocking my spiritual connection and my own path development, not least of which is a recent doubt of depression.

Fortunately, Pagan Prompts has something for me to muse on.

How open are you about your religious beliefs? What do you do when you are asked questions about them?

Many different sites, forums, and articles talk about how the new spiritual deivant, longing to be accepted openly, has to deal with curious onlookers and family members who can’t help but notice she doesn’t like church anymore. This advice runs the gamut between, “Answer their questions fully and thoroughly so as to educate them,” (which I think would make the questioner run for the hills out of boredom more often than not) and “say as little as civilly possible”, (which rather defeats the purpose of being questioned). I believe firmly it is all meant in good spirit, because having an answer to someone’s question, even if it is “I don’t know,” is something I always aspire to do.

I have rarely had to implement any of this advice, however, partly because for a long time, I kept my own beliefs to myself, and often outright lied about them.