Sunday, May 29, 2011

Memorial Day 2011

Dear WEb,
Today is the day before Memorial Day, the day of memory, usually the day of remembering those who have died in battle. This time on the Wheel, I re-member my Beloved who died and myself, who almost died.

I begin with where I was on August 19th of last year...I was at a crossroads with my Will to either live this life out without Phoenix or not. It was a scary place and a very necessary one, one that I have just recently reminded myself of as things have been very hard with my most intimate two legged Relation. I have felt like we are too now at a similar crossroads with the cultivated relationship/life that is between us. Another scary and necessary place. So, I turn back to August 19th for some help...

Part of the poem I wrote that week included the following guidance: “...if you decide that you cannot go any further, then the new life will die with you.”

My Will then was to risk living without my most beloved four-legged Guardian Companion Phoenix. I chose to stay. In staying I have also come to find out what that ‘new life’ is that didn’t die. She came in the form of a new two-legged intimate Relation who has helped me/my Beingness to Return. I am also that ‘new life’ Returned and I have felt hardly recognizable to myself sometimes. When Phoenix was shot, one of the first coherent thoughts I had and kept repeating was: “I will never be the same.” It was the only Truth I understood then and still didn’t really know what it meant. As the year went on, the profound changes that began with that statement started to surface from the Deep. And the effects of not being the same have become evident in with my most intimate two legged relation. It is hard. So hard. right now.

And much of the time I have not been kind to myself. Re-reading that entry from August and remembering that there is a new life that my Will and Return has created...whew....it is a profound responsibility to see myself through this. I am responsible to that new life. I chose to say "Yes" to this.

This gesture is a ‘prayer’ to that new life that is weaving something with myself and my two-legged intimate Relations. It’s a reminder that this situation is not just me ‘behaving badly’...this is about the new life that came last August with a choice of Will. It is part of my profound responsibiltiy to recognize this life, this crossroads. I am hearing this song sung by Melissa Etheridge as that ‘new life’ singing to me, so when she sings "When you are at the end of your rope, come find me" she is that new life calling me to remember...

I turn the song/music “Heaven on Earth” and do just that....I re-member my many facetted love and my responsibility to this new life and new and old love.

Love,
Me

Monday, May 16, 2011

Across The Wheel

Dear WEb,
There are many things happening right now I have that felt sense of the interconnectedness of the Web. I don't know what it all means. It's not all good. Much is destructive, and...I need to try to acknowledge the links. Not because I want to make it 'all good' as they say. NO, it's not all good! It's not all Goddess, not at all. And, I think that there is Her weaving of some sort of something. It's important to me to stay connected to an understanding that is larger than me. So I don't get lost in the flood. It's a way of hanging on for Life and letting go at the same time.

Tomorrow is the holy day, Lunar Beltane. On the Wheel of the Year (an Earth based "calendar" that many European Earth-based peoples have lived by for millennia) across from Beltane is Samhain, the beginning of the Deep time around the beginning of November. I am often intrigued by what's across The Wheel from where we are and this time the energy of Samhain got my attention even before I saw on my calendar that it was Lunar Beltane coming up. I felt "something" coming last week and then received a poem written by a sister who really understands and has lived Descent. I was so moved by the understanding of Descent in this poem; it reflected something in me before I really totally understood it. I wondered why I was relating so well to the energy of Descent when I allegedly have "Returned" from my year long Descent of grieving my beloved Phoenix. Then, I realized that Return doesn't happen and it's done. Nothing is linear, especially on The Wheel. So, I thought next that this poem was reflecting my back and forth process of Return.

Then later in the week there have been more circumstances where my internal response was to decisively Return...to the cave. That is, it feels like a Descent again. Curiously, the weather for May has become uncharacteristically cool here making curling up in a dark room and bundling up appropriate and comfortable. Additionally, interestingly too, I began a liver cleanse that I had planned several weeks ago only because the timing coincided with a colonic that I had already scheduled months ago. Then last week I did some research about fibroids/ovarian cysts/breast cysts etc (since my have not shrunk since 6 months ago at the last ultrasound), I found that these are related to an over abundance of estrogen which is processed by the liver! Everything has come together accordingly without much of my planning, per se. So, to recognize the place here on The Wheel as Beltane because it is across from Samhain feels quite significant and yet another sign to me that there is some Divine weaving happening to pay attention to.

Lastly and most notably, my partner is dealing with more pending destruction down South with the floods from the Mississippi River reaching her home town and family there. There are levees that are starting to break up river from that town. We are both frightened what is in store in the coming week and months. People losing their homes, one another, animals turning rabid, disease let loose into the flooding waters, malaria from mosquitoes infestation of sitting waters, violence unleased in so many forms. We are on the edge of something here. This feels like another piece of a global Descent. Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear spills, oil spills, hurricanes, broken levees... There so much upheaval, I can hardly believe it. And, I'm not even directly in it. I do not live in Japan. I do not live down South. In India. In Afganistan....on and on. I have the privilidge of sittting in a catbird seat right now, able to communicate and process this from a distance. Sort of.

I have been feeling some of this in me since yesterday. This intense breaking. This pressure. This upheaval in my own body. In my own personal life. I know I am not separate. I am just not "there" physically in those places, living those horrendous things on a minute by minute basis. I am watching/feeling/sensing/experiencing from afar. And not because I am watching the media. I do not watch t.v.. My source both comes from hearing, for example, what it's like from family who are readying for the pending floods best they can and what I can feel in my body of this...this...something.

This is not a 'wow, look at me' self-congratulating thing. This is seriously not about me. This is about something happening that is both a tearing and a weaving. And I do not say any of this to keep myself comfortably at bay from what is happening. I am writing it so I can help myself remember the connections. Remember that whenever there is a rupture in the Web (which a has been happening for millennia to the Earth), there is some guiding force that seeks to repair: Return and Repair. It doesn't mean that we will all survive, or even choose to, in any given Descent. It means that this, I believe, is available--Descent, Return and Repair. I've lived it last year. Right? Well, mostly. It's a Process.

I pray for no suffering. I pray for Weaving. I pray for hands to hold.
Love,
Me

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Reinforcing the Levees

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
It’s the first Thursday after my class has ended, so it’s my first Thursday “off” in 17 weeks. I’ve had some appointments today and have done some usual housekeeping things. It’s all felt different without the time pressure of needing to get things done before class or doing last minute preparations before class etc. And I’ve spent some time going back to read early entries in this log. I’ve missed you, Phoenix, so much these last few days especially. In rereading the early events, I’ve gone back to you again, re-membering what happened again. It wasn’t a dream. I’ve not just woken up to this life I live now. I re-member the ruins from which I have come.

This evening I created a new large altar on the floor. For several weeks now there’s been a configuration of standing stones on the floor with my seated woman statue and a seated crone sitting across from one another ‘in council’. There was a tea light in front of each one, illuminating their conversation across the way. Between myself and the crone were two standing stones with a channel of space between the two rocks. I imagined that was the channel that made the way for the wordless conversation between us. So for weeks we have ‘been in council’ regarding all manner of things. Tonight, it felt like council was finished, for now.

The new altar grew organically into something that is both reflective of current situations and is also a spell, an act of magical intent. The cloth is brown velvet and the edge of the circle is kept by six pairs of standing stones. Six. Yes, six twin sister Grandmother stones. I am in the middle in the form of a bronze statue with my arms wide open. Around me are scattered fragments of pottery that broke this winter with the extreme cold. Then I trailed some blue yarn that I’ve used in circle to signify my ‘coming unraveled’ this past year through the ‘ruins’ of these broken fragments. Finally, I used gold glitter along the places of the fabric that were not laying flat, but had bulged upwards to create creases. These creases I ‘saw’ to be levees, like the levees that hold back waters from flooding towns. The glitter was placed there with magical intent to ‘reinforce’ these levees.

The towns in Louisiana and along the Mississippi are in danger in these next many days of being flooded. Spillways are having to be released because the waters there are rising so high. This release will send massive amounts of water at high velocities into the rivers, lakes and bayous causing dangerous tension and pressure on the levees which protect towns, homes, families. Someone I love has loved ones there. We are scared of the outcome for them and their homes. And...I cannot ignore the parallels. Internally we are dealing with a lot of emotional upheaval that feels like rising waters that are pushing our internal levees to their capacity. This altar is for reinforcement within and without. That all levees will be strong enough to hold up against the pressure.

I am in the middle of it all, with my arms wide open. I’ve asked the Goddess to take it all, reconfigure it as She has and will. I will continue to not fear the ruins. I am in the company of a strong circle of six twin sister Grandmothers. Devastation can roar around me. I will endure and find my place in the reconfiguration. With my arms wide open to Her.
Love,
Me

Monday, May 9, 2011

An Evening Labyrinth Walk

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
Tonight I walked the Labyrinth right at dusk. I entered when I could still see most of what was around me and by the time I reached Center and began my Return, it was darkening. But the beloved white stones lit the way. I felt the familiarity of this walk, these stones, the lavender, rosemary, lemon balm and those precious lamb's/Phoenix ears....they make me cry everytime because I feel your ears in my hands. I am flooded with that sensory memory of us walking beside one another and I reach down and hold your ear, like it's your hand in mine. Has it been over a year? That hardly seems real. A lifetime ago and...just yesterday. I long for the simplicity of us.

Today i told A. the story of the dress you sent me last year, just a month or so after you were taken. Remember how I would go to work so sad, so so very sad and sometimes I would leave on my break just to go cry. That day I went to Goodwill because sometimes I experience magic in Goodwills. I go in and defocus. I let go of intent of finding any particular thing. My eyes lead me and I often find the most interesting amazing things. So, I went that day in hopes that maybe something would find me other than the intense longing for you. There I stood in front of some rack of anonymous clothes, crying, longing. And then, the magic: you turned me around and I heard you tell me something like this without words, "There, that is the dress I want you to wear when you think of me." And there was the most brightly colored dress full of shapes related to the ocean--starfish etc. That was just like you to send me something so happy, so joyful. That's how you were most of the time--jolly, happy and playful, except when I left. Then you were sad. We called you "Mr. Sad Sacks" because you were bereft when I left and forever waiting for my return.

So, tonight I'm feeling sad sacks, myself. I wore that dress today and loved remembering the story and getting to tell it. It takes me to you. I've been so focused on other things these days, since my Return at Spring Equinox, that when I remember you, sometimes it feels like a different lifetime. Then tonight, the grief rushes in again, your ears in my hands.

I miss you. I miss our Life that was you and I. Things feel somewhat tentative right now with different aspects of my life. I do realize that a solid ground is important for me, so I feel renewed in my commitment to maintain as much of that as possible. Not because I fear change or cannot deal with instability. Shit I've lived a year of that. No, there are relationships in my life that are ground for me, like you were, Phoenix, only different. I don't know if I'd be ok without those grounds. Not because I am not capable of creating that for myself, but because I want ground with these particular relations.

Likewise there are relations that are water for me, like you were, Phoenix, only different. These relations flow. We merge and follow through the depths of emotions and the unspoken with one another. It's a watery place. We are are not afraid of getting stuck here because we know the logic of flow. I don't know if I'd be ok without these waters. Not because I am not capable of creating that for myself, but because I want flow with these particular relations.

I want a place to root and I want a place to flow. I need both. I want both. And this post has certainly flowed to somewhere other than I originally thought. Thank you for the space to follow, Phoenix. Thank you for the guidance of your ears.
My deepest love,
Me