I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the concepts of “spirit” and “connection.”
What evokes the sensation of connection for you? Some people may feel connected to nature while walking in the forest, or sitting silently beside the ocean. Others may experience it while performing music, or writing, or creating art, or kneeling to pray. Many others gain connection through making love, sharing a meal with family, or laughing with friends.
 
While we might find many of these activities pleasurable, it is the presence of this sensation of connection to your own core, or to something larger or beyond yourself, that differentiates a pleasurable experience from a spiritual experience. Only you can tell which things are simply, if delightfully, pleasurable and which things hold that unique sensation of connection.
 
“Wakan, Wakan, every creature
Wakan, Wakan, every rock.”
 
One of the basic tenants of Native American belief, and one of its most beautiful, is that everything in life has a spirit and is Wakan, or sacred. Our First People honor the primal force of life, the stream of existence in which each of us swims.
 
In witchcraft, when we look within ourselves to seek the nature of spirit, we often use the concept of “As above, so below. As within, so without.”
 
The Dalai Lama used the analogy of a pebble, dropped in the middle of a pond, whose ripples flow outward all the way to the edges of the water.  Unfortunately, people sometimes swim around in their little spot of water, largely unaware of the larger cosmos in which they are involved, and the miracles it can bring them. But you have to wake up and stretch your feathers to see the whole pond!
 
 Jean E. Charon, a French physicist, philosopher and author of the book, The Spirit: That Stranger Inside Us, says, “There are microscopic individualities inside every human. They think, they know, and (they) carry Spirit in the Universe.” He calls these bits of intelligence eons, also known as electrons.  “An electron that was successively part of a tree, a human being, a tiger, and another human being will thus remember for all time the experiences it has collected during these different lives. The electron will maintain within itself all of its experiences as tree, as human being No. 1, as tiger, and as human being No 2, to whose organisms it belonged.”
 
Wow!
 
The ancient Celts had a word for this concept, tuirigin (TOOR’ghin), a very precise word for which there is no English equivalent. The nearest we can get to a translation is, “a circuit of births,” according to Caitlin Matthews, a Celtic historian. She says it’s, “not quite the same as reincarnation. In tuirigin, the soul or spirit moves between the otherworld and this world in a series of journeys.”
 
The Gaelic word for God is Cruithear, which means ‘creator’ or ‘shaper,’ and the ancient people in Scotland, the Picts, were referred to as the Cruithne, “people of the shapes.” Roman accounts, as well as Scottish oral tradition, tell us that the bodies of these ancient ones were covered in elaborate blue tattoos of various animals and other shapes. According to Matthews, it was their way of honoring the sacred world that had shaped them.
 
How many of us live our lives as ambassadors of the sacred spirit in all things, be it human, plant or animal? If we do not remember our own sacred standing, we may do things that are not in alignment with ambassadorship. Rather than fostering harmony and living an inspirited life, we may instead create discord and destruction.
 
What if the soul that is our current self came into this lifetime for a specific purpose? First, however, we must recognize that purpose and consciously act upon it.
So this week, I turn my attention inward to my personal work. I take to heart the Dalai Lama’s analogy of a pebble dropped in the middle of the pond, whose ripples flow outward all the way to the edge. My actions ripple outward, having impacts I may never know.
 
For the rest of this year, whenever I find myself in a crowded place, whether it’s a football stadium, a Yule ritual, a movie theatre, football stadium, or driving in traffic, I’m going do the following activity: I will look at all the different people and whisper to myself, “Every man, my brother. Every woman, my sister. Every crying child, my child. Every old woman or man, my grandmother or grandfather. Every wounded soul, my soul. Every animal and creature, under my care.”
 
Will you join me in this exercise in conscious connection?
 
In my mind, your spiritual path makes no difference. The witch’s path, the tribal path, the Buddhist path, the Christian path. Your path.  All of us make ripples that radiate out around us. Let’s make the biggest loving ripples we can.
 
Blessed Be.

 
 The Queen was quite pleased with herself. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving and she planned to spend the next four days getting ready for her guests. First, she swept the floors and mopped them with magical herb water, singing, “Out with the negative and stale, in with freshness and prosperity!” She could almost feel the house breathe a sigh of contentment when she finished. Next, she bleached her sink and deodorized the garbage disposal and trash can with fresh lemon from her tree in the garden. She cleaned her cabinets and counter tops with lavender water. The room was gleaming and spotless.
      
On Tuesday, she thawed her turkey and plunged it into an herb-infused salt brine bath overnight to be sure it would be tender and flavorful. This year, the bird was so big--nearly 25 pounds--she’d had to go out and buy a metal tub to accommodate the chubby sucker. Of course, the tub leaked, so she ended up lining it with a trash bag and making another batch of brine to replace the first one which was now soaking into the back lawn. She hoped her husband wouldn’t notice the big patch of dead grass encrusted in a salt ring. It was pretty hard to miss, but she was going to plead ignorance, no matter how much he questioned her.
       
She was almost finished preparing all her dressing ingredients to mix and stuff inside the turkey. Of course, her favorite, the one with cornbread, apples, currents, onion and mushrooms, she’d have to make separately the day before. Her daughter-in-law was allergic to mushrooms, couldn’t stand the things, and refused to eat at the Queen’s house if she had fixed anything with mushrooms that day. As she diced onion and celery, the Queen’s mind wandered to other mushroom recipes. Ones where she might be able to completely mask the ingredient. A small smile curved the edges of her mouth upward, and she pulled her red stock pot from atop the refrigerator and started a batch of home-made stock. “Vegetable soup will be perfect tomorrow. It’s forecast to rain, and soup always tastes better when it’s rainy outside.” By the time the stock was bubbling, the Queen was humming happily.
     
 Wednesday she got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the kitchen floor grout until it was the same color as the tiles. She timed herself:  twenty squares cleaned in an hour. Two hundred and fifty squares in the kitchen and entry way. No wonder she hadn’t cleaned them in years. By the time she finished, it was dark out. She could barely stand and her back was in spasm all night. She’d forgotten to eat her soup. But boy, that floor looked like new.

She got up before dawn Thanksgiving morning to stuff the turkey and get it in the oven. Almost screamed when she squatted down and shoved that twenty-five pound roaster pan of slimy poultry into the oven. Next house, she was buying a built-in oven she didn’t have to bend in half to use. She took some ibuprofen with her coffee. No time for breakfast, she had pies to bake. Oh, and that second pan of mushroom-free stuffing.
 
The Queen ironed her best table cloth, the linen one with scalloped lace edges. It had been a wedding gift, but she rarely used it. The stains were so hard to get out of linen. But today she thought, “It’s Thanksgiving. My loving family will all be here. My house looks beautiful. We have a delicious meal. I am so thankful for all this abundance for myself and my loved ones.” She was so happy, in fact, that she set the table with her best china and crystal.
 
The house smelled delicious already. With all the wonderful scents in the kitchen, her daughter-in-law would never know she made that mushroom dressing.
 She added a vase of bittersweet to the dining table and lit candles in the front windows. Feeling contented, she headed the bathroom to shower and dress for dinner.
 
While she was in the shower, the Prince arrived, home for the long weekend from Flagstaff.

“Mom, I’m home,” he hollered. He dumped the soft drink from his car in the gleaming sink, leaving it brown. Peeking into the oven, he checked the turkey. It smelled good but it wasn’t done. So he rummaged in the pantry for chips and salsa, dripping salsa on the counter as he filled himself a bowl, and leaving the dirty dishes in the living room when he went to his room to play video games.

Then the King arrived. He dumped a pile of junk mail on the table, next to her vase of bittersweet. He’d been collecting it in his car all week and decided this was the day to clear the passenger seat in case they used the car that night.
The cat jumped up on the table to greet him, and knocked over one of the good wine glasses, sending it to the floor in an explosion of shattering crystal.
 
The Queen was out of the shower by then. The king joined her in the bathroom, giving her a quick peck on the cheek and grabbing a quick feel-up. “Uh, don’t worry about the broken glass, honey, I’ll clean it up in a few minutes.” Then he headed into the next room to turn on the football game, leaving a trail of muddy boot prints on her pristine floor. It was raining outside.

 The Queen stumbled through the house in disbelief. 
 
 NO! I've only been gone for thirty minutes. She sank into a chair, feeling numb. It was the first time she had sat down in four days, except to sleep.

The front door opened and daughter-in-Law popped her head in. “Do I smell mushrooms?”

Several newspapers lay amongst the pile of discarded mail. The tired Queen picked up the most recent one.
 
 “Screw the Thanksgiving goddess. I’m going to the movies.”

Happy Thanksgiving to all. And may your day go better than this! 

​Winter is coming.

My blood is thin and my bones are cold in the evenings. My animals no longer stretch out on the cool tile to sleep. Instead, they curl their tails around themselves, and tuck their noses into warm blankets.

The coats on their backs are changing also; every cat and hound has become fluffy.

But I have no fur, so I sit in my chair covered in the red Christmas blankets I pulled out of the chifferobe this week.

I often use the winter when I need to move through some of the smaller changes in life, allowing the Wheel of the Year to pull me down into the dark, where I can do my deep work. It pulls me out again in the spring, armed with a clearer plan for the year, resolutions made, and to-do lists quantified and prioritized.
​
But the last three years, I haven’t done a winter hibernation. 

The fires of change roared through my life in 2015, burning many of my hopes and dreams in its path. 

Like the wildfires now raging in California, I didn’t see the fire coming. There was no chance to sort through life, decide what was most important to keep, and let the rest go up in flames. Instead, the destruction was uncontrolled, and painfully destructive, as if the fire recognized those things in the forefront of my mind, the things I held most dear, and demolished them first.

I felt hopeless, and spent much of the next year in despair.  Finally last year, I began to rebuild. Hopes. Future plans. Newer, stronger relationships, forged from the lessons learned. 

Now I’m ready for another, albeit controlled, burn. This month, before I descend into my psyche for the winter’s deep work, I’m consciously shaping some fire imagery to use in some planned spellwork for change. 

rst, the image of fire to create an alchemical reaction, burning off the last of the dross in the alchemist’s chalice, until I am clean, pure gold.

Some negative connections of negativity remain from that old life, and they need to be ashed and released to the winds. It’s taken me this long to be willing to let go, even while the holding on stabs me now and then. (Aren’t we strange creatures? We hold onto the things that hurt us, because we are afraid that being free of that pain may hurt even more.) 

The second of my intentional images is the forge’s fire, seeing myself as a sword being forged by the Goddess through both fire (determination, will), and water (emotions, fear). She is honing my edges for a new usefulness, which she will reveal to me in her own time.

These are my Crone years, and I’m slowly learning to make the most of them. I know that if a person has resented his/her life--the burden of freedom, the chore of keeping body and soul together and pure-- then death will be just as unwelcome and resented. Our next life is predicated on the soundness of this one, and your undone work will be waiting for you at the crossroads, there’s no path around it. I figure letting go now of that which does not serve my highest good, is good practice for the time when, at the end of life, I must let it all go, and move on to my next lessons. 
 
P.S. NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) is progressing slowly. Until today, I’ve been editing my existing chapters instead of forging ahead on new words. But those chapters are now clean-spanking polished. Tonight, I move ahead into new novel territory.
Goal=have rough draft completed by December 20. Cross your fingers, this baby is overdue!

Any time my husband and I travel, we always make an effort to visit a local cemetery. Each one is different. Paul takes photographs, and I wander and visit the graves that I feel pulled to.
​
Many of the cemeteries in the Midwest, where I grew up, are calm, almost drowsy, places, often in the oldest part of town.  Huge oak and maple trees give a feeling of comfort and solidarity, and many of the plots are grouped by family name, so you can discern their history even if you don’t know them personally. Some are tiny, and some are wide-open “rural” cemeteries.

Others, like the stark stone markers at the Culloden Battlefield in Scotland, are filled with gut-wrenching grief.

Tours are given of the monument, and as you walk the wind-swept steps to relive that battle, the wind sings the names of those doomed clansmen. It was haunting.

Before 1831, America had no cemeteries. It’s not that Americans didn’t bury their dead, but that large, modern graveyards did not exist.

With the construction of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, America began to build large cemeteries in its more populated areas. 

Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA

Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati Ohio

Strolling Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio

​Personally, I like the idea of being connected back to the earth—becoming food for somebody or something, and also being connected to a place, if just for a generation or two.

It’s vain to think that people will come back and visit for generations, but I’d like to have a place where my children and their children could spend some time with me. After that, I’m fine with being re-released to Mother Gaia.