2009: The Grey Year

A sort of reorienting post for myself, and a confession for you.

2009 was a rough year for me in many ways, but spiritually it was probably the most disconnected year I’ve spent in a long time. It was also the first year I’ve spent where I felt that Brighid was absent from my life nearly all the time.

Depression probably plays a role in this, as does the emotional and psychological upheaval of graduating and being expected to “grow up” and “settle down”. As I grow older, I find the thought of growing up and settling down more and more repellant, and more and more frightening. I find the thought of finding a job, keeping in touch with friends, making new friends and starting romantic relationships rather boring most of the time, and terrifying some of the time (usually when I’m alone and feeling sorry for myself).

The small, rare moments when I am finally able to push “adult thoughts” and “adult life” out of my way and find the young thoughts and young life I had when I first found Brighid and committed to her are so comforting, but feel so removed from who I am now. Who I was and who I am now of course are different, but in a way that makes me feel self-less, unsure and disheartened. In short, I really dislike who I am becoming, and I miss who I used to be.

I am growing more certain that I’m the one moving farther and farther away from Brighid, and the life I wanted to give her, and that is the reason why I dislike my life and myself now.

I’m going to work hard this year at conscious pathbuilding, and updating in this blog again. 2010 needs to be the year that I make contact (har har) with myself again, and make contact with Brighid again and the life I wanted to serve her with before I went off to college. I am a lantern without a light: useless, empty and cold without her fire inside me. I want to rekindle us, become her lantern again, and feel her light inside me again.

 

Honest Scrap Award

This is rather late in coming, but good things are always welcome, and I guess a little shameless plugging of others’ work is fun too.

Heather at Say The Trees Have Ears nominated me for the Honest Scrap Award back in October. I love reading Heather’s blog, and find a lot of inspiration in what she has to say, so I’m sure that you (the few who read this blog!) will too. Thanks again Heather.

Here are the rules:

1. Share 10 honest things about yourself.
2. Present this award to 7 others who have encouraged you or whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design.
3. Let them know of the award and the guidelines.

Here are the seven others (unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Heather nominated many people whose blog’s I follow–I’m going to try not to do any repeats!):

1. Heartshadow at Flamekeeping
2. Star at The Song and the Flame
3. Erin at The Adventures of Ranger Elf
4. Vee at Athenaeum for the Artist
5. Erynn at Searching for Imbas
6. Lupa at Therioshamanism
7. Caelesti at Politics and Polytheism

And here are 10 honest things about myself:

1. Some people are cat people. Others are dog people. I am a bunny person. And not just in the sense that I prefer rabbits as pets to anything else. Technically, in the Chinese zodiac, I was born in the Year of the Tiger, but for the longest time, due to lunar calendar confusion, I assumed I was born in the Year of the Rabbit. I didn’t discover otherwise until a short while ago, and it baffled me. If you know anything about the Chinese zodiac, you know that a Tiger is pretty much the last thing I am, and if you know me, you know that the Rabbit is pretty much exactly me.

2. I have the worst eyesight of anyone I know.

3. My hot-button topics are: any issues where science and religion meet (or more frequently, collide); public education and young adult empowerment issues; the environment and humanity’s impact/interaction with it; and book crimes (censorship being the most prominent topic, but understated dismissal of genre fiction as “real literature” is another). Touch upon one of these topics, and I can go on for hours.

4. I learned how to be kind and considerate to others from my parents, but mostly from working as a softlines (clothing) associate and cashier at Target. I always say, “thank you” and “hello” and “have a nice day” to associates at any store. I always leave 20% tips. I always hang or fold my clothing when I am finished trying them on, and I always carry them out to a rack or attendant. I always hold the door for people walking in or out. I always try to let people out of a driveway when there is a lot of traffic (when it is safe to do so). Thank you Target shoppers for showing me the lowest depths humanity can come to, and also showing me how to rise above it and be a nice person.

5. My favorite things to bake are cookies and scones.

6. If I decide that I like you, it will take a lot to change that decision. If I decide that I don’t like you, it usually won’t take much to change that decision. There are levels to my friendships: it takes a lot of XP to level up with me. To use a gaming metaphor. Very few have made it to the truly “best friend” level; most are comfortably on the “I enjoy talking with you and am interested in your life but we won’t hang out after school/work/whatever” level. In fact, most of my friendships existed completely within school. Sad, but true, and something I’ve resolved to change since… I’m out of school.

7. If I hadn’t been set on majoring in film, I may have been a fibers/crafts major. If only I had learned to crochet earlier!

8. I was born on the Capricorn/Aquarius cusp. If you know anything about the western zodiac, you may know this makes for some really strange and often wildly opposite motivations/impulses/inclinations.

9. I love space. I love the science of space, the wonder of it, the vastness, loneliness and beauty of it. I love stories set in space, and I sincerely believe it is humanity’s destiny to move out into the stars and discover we are not alone.

10. It’s very difficult for me to see myself in a year, let alone five or ten years. What I’ll be doing, where I’ll be, who I’m with. In fact, it’s been a big blank pretty much since the end of junior year in college.

So, feel free to check out my friends’ blogs, and I hope they inspire you as much as they do me. Friends I’ve nominated, feel free to participate or not.

 

Samhain

In the lands where the ancient Celts thrived, October was the time of settling cold, final preparations for long winter, and the death of the old year. In the lands where some of their modern descendants eventually came, the leaves are turning gold, red, brown; the breezes are growing stronger and more chill; the sudden storms of summer are giving way to steady rainfall and in extremes, frost appears at the window. It is easy to see how traditions of the dying year can thrive in this environment.

In the lands where my ancestors came, the leaves remain on the trees; the long drought of summer is largely broken by storms, though the heat remains; there is no chance of frost until January. Maybe. My choice to honor this time of year as one of the memory of death and the meditation on the cycle of endings and beginnings may take a bit more effort to embrace, because the natural world around me seems to be alive, even thriving, after the extreme thirsty summer and the blessed new rains.

And yet, I choose to align myself with the patterns of the Celts because while externally my world isn’t preparing for a long sleep or death, internally, my own world is descending into the long dark-half of the year. It is the end of summer, samos.

Scél lemm duíb: (I have news for you:)
dordaid dam, (the stag bells,)
snigid gaim, (winter snows,)
ró-fáith sam. (summer is ended.)

Other pagan voices on Samhain:

Alexei Kondratiev

Beyond The Fields We Know

Gus diZerega

Ali at Meadowsweet Myrrh

 

Speck Post: Anger

Or, what I am currently thinking about.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m in the process of trying to find a job, and move out of my parents’ house, where I have been living since I moved here from Philadelphia about a month ago.

I’ve noticed that whenever I came home from college to stay for an extended amount of time, I undergo a peculiar kind of regression. When I come home, I feel like I become my younger self, my high school self, and I feel like I am often treated as such by other members of my family.

I was not a happy high schooler, though I hid it well. I repressed a lot of anger, resentment and hurt, so much so that I have a continued problem with my temper, getting frustrated, bitter, and even hysterical (in my own repressed, silent way). It’s inherited, I know, but that doesn’t help to alleviate it, or even help me to avoid it as I continue to live here. It also doesn’t help that with each day I long more for the day when I can come home and be alone; totally relax, and not have to muster up enough energy to interact happily with my family. It’s not their fault–they like to talk, understand. But a steady stream of interruptions, a steady amount of noise and interference, and a continued call for my socially acceptable mask wears away at my patience, and eventually exposes the simmering temper I try to keep under a lid.

What I am thinking about: what is the source of my anger? Is it a symptom of being a loner and having to continue to act with the people I love and share a home with? Is it a result of not having a place where I can just be completely “off”?

Is it deeper? Is it one of the wellsprings sourcing my depression? If so, what is it that I am so angry with that tiny irritations, like a slow Internet connection, seem like a personal affront or attack from the Universe itself?

 

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.