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.

 

My First Post In a Long Time

And probably my shortest.

Today over at Pagan Prompts, the topic was this:

In a single sentence, what is the essence of your spiritual beliefs and/or principles?

So here is my answer(s):

“The Multiverse is a story which we must keep writing, telling, editing and remembering.”

“Read books, and write your stories.”

“Breathe in the wind, carry the light, and tell true stories.”

Okay, so I can’t choose just one. But any one of them taken at a time is basically correct. I shall probably post more on this later, but once I grok it a little more.

 

Impermanence

The fundamental tenant of Buddhism is that the world is an illusion. Beneath our own fears and fantasies, the world we dwell in is pure emptiness. Nothing lasts. It is only when we realize the transience of being, the essential nothingness that is the whole of existence that we can begin to break free of the endless cycle of reincarnation and fear. Note, however, that acknowledging the impermanence of being does not acknowledge the emptiness of right action and right thought. Though the world may be nothing but illusion, Buddhism asserts that we must yet work and be in this world, and act in the right as yet.

Existentialism follows the same line of thought, emphasizing the absurdity of the world, and the chaos of the world, rather than the illusion of it. Meaning, in existentialism, is the agent of impermanence; only our conscious making of meaning can assert any notion of permanence to our world, and assert our actions in it as right.

Modern science asserts impermanence as the essential state of the universe, as entropy. Entropy is part of the second thermodynamic law which states:  the total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. This means that entropy will either stay the same, or increase. It will never decrease. It also implies that all states of high order will eventually move to lower states of order, to disorder.

In essence, the universe, as a considered whole, is moving along the arrow of time, and is falling to disorder every second. Nothing, indeed, lasts.