New Years Intentions and a New Moon TUSAL

My year end TUSAL.  What's a TUSAL?  Read on...

This past year has been really full for us - we saw improvements in my health (as much as chronic illness will allow), some challenges in his, we moved toward a more active and highly fulfilling relationship with Cedarlight Grove, I served on the Board at our UU church during a period of great upheaval that is ongoing, we GOT MARRIED, Michael's job of 11 years "downsized" him in a multi-person lay-off (the most recent of several), and that spurred us toward several decisions about long range self employment plans while he quickly took the steps he needed to secure new employment within three weeks.

Roller coaster ride, for sure, complete with scary and exhilarating bits.  I confess, my wish for this year - as it is almost every year - is for peace and quiet.  Peace from contention for myself and those around me, and quiet enough to be able to listen to my interior thoughts.  Of course, a huge part of achieving that is simply insisting on making room for it, and that is something I am always working toward, rather unsuccessfully.  And part of it is dependent on what life brings.  What last year taught me is that Michael and I, between us, can face some challenging stuff without unnecessary trauma.  That's a really nice thing to be able to trust.

I do not, as a rule, make 'resolutions' for New Years, but I do like to set a few intentions, and these are mine:

1.  This is annual - I'll be blocking out what stitchery projects I will be doing throughout the year.  This year, specifically, I want to do ornaments for all nine of my grandchildren.  It's been a few years since I have, and it is time.  Every time I do this, I consider it may be the last time my hands will let me do it for them.  Additionally, I have a couple large pieces for us that I'd like to finish, and I want to work on a couple auction pieces, starting early enough to get them done before various auctions occur. (In other words, plan ahead!)

2. Healthy eating - Michael and I didn't fully give up, but we did allow ourselves to ease up on a lot of snacking and carbs, with inevitable results.  He did such a fantastic job last year shedding weight that has plagued him for a long time, I want to ensure that isn't undone. (Meanwhile, my excess pounds seem to be plastered on with crazy glue, but even without weight loss, I know avoiding certain foods makes me feel better and it's worth it)

3.  Soap Making!  I plan to devote time each month to learning the art of soap making, from simple to progressively challenging.  I am very excited by this! I try to learn a new skill every year, and this is in for 2014.

4. My Dedicant's Program for ADF.  That was the entire basis for beginning this blog.  Michael finished his and is now preparing to work on his Clergy Training... and I'm still puttering along.  I am ok with that as the way it needed to be... it was helpful to me to simply experience ADF without worrying about formulized documentation.  But at this point, that's what's missing - my documentation  And there are so many truly intriguing study options available once this is done, so.... going to get it done.  I'm striving for before my birthday in early June.

5. Household organization - my lifelong nemesis, but becoming SO critical if we are to move forward on our various desires.  I need to set up a systematic plan for decluttering and then maintanence that won't totally run away from me when my RA decides that I can't manage a work day.

6. Finally, this year, I will not only be serving on our UU congregation's board (until summer - I will not be re-running for next year), but I was elected Member Advocate on Cedarlight's Witan (their board).  It's a new position, and that's intimidating enough, but my continuing to feel like I am very new compared to so many others there is also intimidating.  But my intention is to do my very best, and I am humbled by being allowed to serve in this capacity, and very grateful for the opportunity to do so.  I'm thinking a lot of Isaac's Bonewitz' delightful maxim, "Why not Excellence?".

~~~

Sooo... TUSAL??  It is the Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long, where each New Moon, stitchers show off not their work, but their jar of thread snippets, or ORTS (Old Ratty Threads).  Why? Well...why NOT?!

Above is my jar over the last year - minus those threads that wound up in little pill bottles when I was out and about and forgot to toss them back into the main jar.  The threads will be set out for birds for nesting materials - I've done various things with them over  the years, from offering them to a good fire to using them to stuff ornaments, but I like offering them to our local birds best.

And so, on this first New Moon of 2014, my totally empty jar awaits a year's worth of filling up.  Into this jar will go the labor of my hands, the love I send to those I stitch for, the meditations that come while hands ply the needle, and the frustrations of threads frogged out again when a mistake has been made.  I look forward to it all.

Happy New Year!

~ Lynda

Honoring the Ancestors Through Work

Over the last couple years, I have come to value and love the time spent with my Grovemates at Cedarlight Grove.  Because we live south of DC, and they are located in Baltimore, we miss a lot of what happens there.  In addition to High Rites, they hold weekly Sunday services, regular Reiki sessions, workshops, guided meditation journeys, lunar rites, etc.

My path has not only been one of growing familiar and comfortable with ADF - but also with the whole notion of being a part of the group - of any group.  I've moved from "I'm not really a joiner." to enjoying High Rites with the Grove, but still regarding myself as mainly a solitary who occasionally gathers with the group, to really identifying these wonderful collection of people as my trip and half seriously joking that we should move closer to Baltimore because we are missing All The Good Stuff!!

A big part of what we miss is the enormous amount of work my fellow Grovemates put in on a near constant basis - all the usual internal volunteerism that goes with maintaining a large and vibrant group, but also the unique aspects that go along with actually owning permanent space.  Cedarlight Grove owns and maintains an early 20th century house in Baltimore which - as old houses do - takes a lot of ongoing maintenance and renovation.  The surrounding yard was just that several years ago - a yard.  Through countless hours of hard work, it has become a showcase garden sanctuary, with several distinct shrine areas and a happy home to plants and butterflies and birds of all sorts.

Not being able to get up there for maintenance work does make me feel more on the outskirts of the group than I wish to feel as I come to feel a greater urge to be a full and complete member of CLG.

All of which is background to say that we had one of the most meaningful experiences yet with the Grove this past Sunday, and I am still feeling a sense of peace and accomplishment and blessedness as a result.

Just a few blocks from the Grove, there is a small cemetary surrounded by houses that had been abandoned when the caretaker died back in the 1980s. The headstones date from the mid 1800s to mid 1900s, most around the turn of the century. The neighborhood irregularly tends to it but it had been awhile and there were fallen trees, tipped over and broken headstones, and tons of ivy and other weeds.  CLG decided, as it's community service project for Samhain, to go do a clean up.

The perimeter of cemetery was full of garbage - it's pretty clear this has become a dumping ground for nearby residents.  I walked around it with Taryn, using my cane when needed to scoop debris closer, and we had got a good way to filling an entire contractor sized bag by the time we were done.   While that wasn't officially in the cemetery, I'm hoping the effort will lead to a bit more mindfulness about tossing trash there.  Once that was done, I spent most of my time taking pictures of the progress and of the headstones.  There was talk of getting some pencil rubbings on a later day, especially of those that are becoming illegible before it is impossible to tell what they say.

Meanwhile, the more able bodied were cutting weeds, pulling up seemingly endless lengths of ivy, and attempting to either put headstones upright or, when that was not possible, to straighten them out to reduce further damage to them.

The biggest obstacle was a felled tree - a rock-hard large tree that had fallen a few years ago, crushing headstones beneath it.  Our senior Druid spent two days breaking it down in manageable lengths that could be rolled away, freeing the graves beneath it.  The wood will be chopped into firewood for the Grove's High Rites.

I have honored the Ancestors through stories, songs, libations and ritual - but this concrete, mundane work has been the most satisfying I have experienced.  These markers bear the names of the streets we drive to get to Cedarlight.  By helping this resting place return to a place of haven and beauty so that those who are buried there might be remembered awhile longer, I feel that we honored their memory and connected ourselves better to the geography and history of the place we have planted our Grove.  We are discussing adopting this little cemetery for ongoing care and attended, and I very strongly hope that we do.

This experience has affirmed for me that we need to find a way to be more involved in Grove activities between High Rites These are our people. We are a Grove.

~~~~

On a different note, I've decided to bring my other blog, The Auld Grey Mare, to a close.  I have used it to talk about food, crafts and other more mundane parts of my life, and I'm finding that separation to be increasingly arbitrary.   What this means is that there will be entries on those things here, whether or not I directly tie them into our  spiritual walk or not.  It is the whole that makes up the life Michael and I are building together - I hope those who are interested in only one part or another aren't too unhappy about this, but I trust that those who are interested in us will not mind at all.

~ Lynda

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Down Home Blog Hop, The Inspiration Exchange, Whatever Goes Wednesday, Whimsy Wednesday, Works For Me Wednesday, Wow Me Wednesday.  

Hearth and Heart

Back when I was first getting started with polytheism, I tried to build some affinity with the deities of the Irish pantheon, as I know I have some ancestral heritage there. As much as some of the gods appealed to me though, I didn't seem to appeal to them, and I never felt much responsiveness.

At Yule 2011 at CedarLight, we honored some of the Norse gods, and they seemed to be very "present." For quite a while after that, I made regular offerings to Odin/Woden at home, and read up on both Asatru and Anglo-Saxon Heathenry.

This Spring, though, the Greek gods caught my attention, Hermes in particular, and after a couple of dramatic answers to requests, I began to call him my patron god. The Hellenic culture appeals to me intellectually, as much of their original pre-Christian mythology and philosophy has survived through the centuries.

But then the weather turned cooler and it was as if Odin returned from travels and knocked on my window again, much like Gandalf, and now the deities and culture of the northlands are again top of mind.

All of this fluctuation, coupled with some of my initial study on ADF's clergy preliminary program, has led me to the conviction that ADF's notion of "hearth culture" should be only a starting point. In the reality of history, the cultures of Europe mingled and mixed and migrated, and gods were worshiped far from the lands where they originally appeared.

I've been thinking that perhaps there is some value in a pan-Indo-European hearth. In practice, most of the ADF members I know do not limit themselves to a single hearth culture, but choose – or are chosen by – those deities that they find affinity for. Nothing in ADF discourages this, but the hearth culture paradigm as presented in the Dedicant Manual might leave the impression that our ancestors lived in isolated bubbles, either Norse or Roman or Gaulish for example, when the reality was much more dynamic.

So, to extrapolate from history, the various IE cultures encountered each other and shared their ideas and religion fairly broadly until conversion eventually overtook the land. Had that not happened, it stands to reason that the process would have continued to the point that rather than a set of distinct pantheons, the gods of all the lands would be known more universally and available to all. While it seems likely that a Norseman would still be more inclined to make offerings to Thor or Freyr than to Ares or Lugh, a person with a mixed ancestry – as is true of most 21^st Century Americans – might not have the same strong ties.

What I am thinking toward, and the work is far from done, is to simply articulate in theory what is already frequently the case in practice. I will post more as my thinking develops.

Finding the Gods

It's fair to say that many, and maybe most, polytheists have one or two deities they consider their special patrons. These are gods who we believe have sought us out, or responded well to our seeking them, to whom we give frequent devotions and offerings, and from whom we expect more regular attention and favor than the other gods we may honor now and then.

Before any of that happened to me, when I was new to polytheism and still trying it on, I approached the gods of the British Isles, especially Ireland. I can't actually trace any of my family tree back to Europe, but based on family names, England and Ireland are good guesses. But I did not feel any particular interest from those gods at the time.

A little while later – just last year, really – I began to intuit that Odin/Woden was trying to get my attention. I had felt his presence at CedarLight's Yule ritual in 2011, and then I began to notice crows or ravens (I'm still not sure I can tell the difference). I am sure crows and/or ravens are always around, but it's the noticing of them that makes them omens.

Anyway, after a period of hesitation (Woden is not necessarily a comforting presence), I began to make offerings to him. Some months down the road now, I can call him a patron, although I still one whom I prefer to interact with only occasionally. I get the impression that this suits him just fine.

More recently, another god has come into my consciousness – Hermes, the Hellenic messenger of the gods, fleet-footed and quick-witted. That began with a book coming to my attention, “The Gods of Reason” by Timothy Jay Alexander, which turned my attention in general to the hearth cultures I'd never given a second look to before, Greek and Roman. The more I read and contemplated, the more the Greeks began to appeal. I started making offerings to Hermes because I had a specific request that he seemed to be the right one for, but I quickly found myself liking his energy and presence. Now I'm giving him a brief morning devotional and incense almost daily, just because I want him to be welcome and stick around.

As I near the end of Dedicant Program, I find that the year and a half of study it has entailed – much required, some on my own – has really changed my outlook. At the beginning, I was approaching the gods tentatively and with very little understanding of what was going on and without even any confidence that polytheism made any sense. Now it just seems to be a given.

I find that the Celtic deities still do hold some appeal, especially as I spend more time with my grovies who are more immersed in that culture than I am. And I would like to expand my interactions with the gods of Olympus as well. Among the gods and the hearth cultures, even when confining myself to ADF's Indo-European focus, I find elements that appeal to reason and logic (the Greeks with their history of rich philosophy, in particular) and elements that appeal to primal energies and earthiness. It's a good mix.  

Ostara at Cedarlight Grove, 2013

Ignore those bare trees - it's time for Spring!

As Michael is getting close to wrapping up his Dedicant's Program work, I am just beginning mine, so I'll be posting about our High Days for the next year or so.

Last night, Michael and I attended this year's Ostara celebration at Cedarlight Grove.  While we may have been hailing the start of Spring, the weather was grey, cold - low 40s - and damp from passing rain showers.

This actually seemed fitting, as one of the deities of the occasion was Graine ("GRAHN-yeh"), a Celtic goddess who is the Winter Sun..the 'little' sun that gives us light but not much warmth, and who presides over the dormant and quiet part of the year that leads to spring's blooms.

I knew nothing of her, nor all that much of the other deities - the Celtic pantheon is something of a mystery to me (and I was a little disappointed that Ostara didn't involve, well, Ostara and the Germanic hearth culture from whence most of our current spring customs come - but it was interesting enough that I got over it).  Our deities of the occasion were:

Bardic Inspiration: Brigid
Gatekeeper: Dagda
Dieties of  the Occasion:
Graine - the Winter Sun
Sadv - the Dancing Deer
Aengus - son of Boann and Dagda, associated with poetry and romantic love

Many attendees shared poems and artwork as sacrifices, while Aurora took on the part of Sadv and did a dance for us.  Michael made an offering of homemade vanilla extract, and also made his oath to the Grove.  I made a silent offering of thanks to Brigid with incense, for healing and an accompanying upsurge of creative energy I've been experiencing since Imbolc.

Ashley took the omens by scrying. She used an iron cauldron of water that had been heating over  the Fire and cracked an egg into it, to read the shapes.  Some of the egg splashed over onto her scribe, leaving egg in her hair and a hummingbird shaped splash on her shirt.

The omen (paraphrased - it was hard to hear and I recorded what I could):  "If you look too closely at tragedy, tragedy is all you will see.  Calamities are like volcanoes, bringing pressure.  Listen to your guides, and you will see these volcanoes are fire bubbling up from below to heat your cauldrons and effect change.  Meow."

Yes...meow.  The first shape she saw was a cat.  No idea what that's about, but I'd be on the look out for cats adopting the Grove. hah!

(Here is the actual Omen Q&A:

Omen Question: We seek the wisdom of the Ancient Ones. What say the Ancient Ones?

Omen as Read: If you look too closely at tragedy, tragedy is all you can see; it clouds your vision. Calamity, like a volcano, can result from too much pressure. Change your perspective - your guides are with you, magic is with you, and the volcano is only fire coming up through the Earth, through your cauldrons, to affect change. Meow.)

All in all, it was a chilly, fun night that seemed to be full of energy - for me it was less about the Deities than the Folk.  I never know from High Day to High Day which aspect will grab me - this time it was the community of people I've come to care about very much.

One Year In

The ADF journey came full circle with Mabon, celebrated on the night of Sept. 22 at CedarLight. Mabon last year was the first one we attended together, and the first one for me since Imbolc of 2008. As I've chronicled here, we missed the two previous high rites due to other commitments, and it felt good to be back.

The event was marked by a heavy rain that started to fall just a few minutes after the ritual got started. We all retreated to the sheltered pavilion, though, and picked up right where we had left off.

The rite was based in the Norse pantheon, so we invited the ancestors to serve as gatekeepers and honored Heimdall as the deity of the occasion. I hope he welcomed being in the place of honor rather than working the door, as he is usually asked to do.

They invited us to bring our own divniatory tools and cast our own personal reading in addition to the group omen. I borrowed Lynda's Druidcraft tarot and while I planned to draw only one card, ended up pulling two by accident. They were the seven of wands and the Hermit, which I interpreted to mean I'm resisting too hard the Hermit's quest for wisdom -- in other words, I need to become diligent about the mental discipline training, my main nemesis in the DP study.

Beltaine

Dedicant Documentation:
The High Rite

The Dagda was only meant to be the gatekeeper at Cedarlight Grove's celebration of Beltane, but he ended up dominating the event. From the rush of wind that came right as the gates were opened, to the fire batons that wouldn't go out easily, to the snapped strap of one woman's top as she danced in offering, he made his presence known.

The deities of the occasion were Dagda's son Aengus Mac Oc and Aine. The prayer was for the kindred to bless all our creative efforts in the coming year, and the omen suggested that we may encounter difficulties, but should remember that the gods are near. The gods enthusiastically accepted our offerings, according to the seer. (She used a crystal ball.)

At the end of the rite, we processed out between two fires, reflecting the ancient Irish Beltane tradition of driving the animals between two fires for purification.

The Irish deities felt warm, mischievous and friendly. This came at a good time for me, as I had been flagging in my studies and I left with new affirmation and determination.

Essay on the Meaning

Beltane celebrates the return of warm weather. Named for the Irish sun god Belinos, the name translates to “fire of Bel.” It is about fertility and abundance. Like its opposite high day Samhain, Beltane is a day when the veil between our world and the Otherworld is especially thin.

Celebration of the day, also called “May Day,” is centered around lighthearted revelry – dancing around a maypole, singing, sex and general merriment. Beltane expresses a sense of great relief that the fallow time of winter, the endurance of the cold and privation of living off of food stores is at an end. By May in most of Europe, as the traditional song “Hal An Tow” puts it, “Summer is a-comin' in and winter's gone away.”

In Ireland, the ancients celebrated Beltane with bonfires and dancing sunwise around the fires. It was customary to release the animals and drive them between two fires for purification.

In northern and central European cultures, the day was traditionally celebrated in similar ways to the Gaelic, with dancing, maypoles and a general celebration of warmth and fertility. The celebrations typically take place on the night of April 30 into the early morning hours of May 1. Today in those lands – and corresponding ADF hearth cultures – the high day is known as Walpurgisnacht. This name appears to have been derived from the name of an English missionary, St. Walpurga, who was canonized in AD 870, about a century after her death.

Our Social Circle

We've now attended two 'pubmoots' with a small group of Asatruar in northern Virginia. They're not part of the same kindred, but they gather once a month as fellow travelers for socializing (so far, none of the conversations have actually been about Asatru.)

This gives us a second pagan social outlet (in addition to rituals at Cedar Light Grove) and one that's much easier to get to for us. I'm liking the way our social circle is building. But our home practice has not been keeping up. We had been holding a small ritual of our own each full moon, but a variety of issues (including some dissatisfaction with the source material we were using plus several weeks of either having house guests or travel) disrupted it. I'm hoping we can get back into that at the next full moon.

We also have not been using our home shrine for any sort of devotional work. It's a habit, one we fell out of before building it up. With luck and some diligence, we should be able to return to it.