SPIRIT 2-fer: Caring and Compassion

My previous post got me thinking about the subject of the next grace on the list, as well as one several steps down, and how they fit together. As I mentioned before, there may be such a thing as caring too much - when one's thoughts and worries about others begin to overshadow the concerns of oneself to a point where it becomes damaging. This is the opposite extreme to being entirely self-absorbed, and just as harmful to oneself and, I believe, the world at large.

Compassion is often grouped together with caring as being indistinguishable, but I propose a considerable difference in my personal definitions of the words. Where caring is the thought alone, maybe with the word to go along with it, compassion is thought, word and deed in one - and therein lies a world of difference. Caring alone, as good as my intentions are and as much as it springs from my love for my friends, leads to nail-biting and hair-tearing and more sleepless nights than I care to admit. I can speak of my concerns to other friends, but even after pouring my heart out, I always seem to come away with it even fuller and heavier than before. Compassion, on the other hand, with its inclusion of action, gives me a real outlet rather than just temporary relief.

To put my definition of these terms and two previous ones more succinctly, caring is to compassion as awareness is to activism. The girl who is merely aware and caring reads an article about war or a worrying letter from a friend and cries. The girl who is active and compassionate puts the paper or letter down, gets up, and goes to a peace rally or speaks to the friend. I want to be the second girl.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs...

A week or two ago, I took advantage of the lovely weather to take a walk with a friend and shoot the breeze, just to share what was going on in our lives. Lately I've been quite worried about several of my friends, and I was letting my walking partner know all of my concerns, as they have been in the forefront of my thoughts. I looked down at the sidewalk and saw a playing card at my feet - the Queen of Hearts. A bell rang in the back of my mind that this meant something, but I couldn't remember just what, so I picked up the card and put it in my wallet, planning on deciphering it later. When we were retracing our steps to end the walk, I noticed another card on the ground near where I'd found the first one. Wondering if this might be the second half to whatever message I was supposed to be getting, I picked it up as well, even though it was soaked through...although it had barely been sprinkling. It was another Queen of Hearts.

Now I could have overlooked finding the first card alone as an obvious coincidence - it was a neighborhood with plenty of kids, who could have been playing with a deck of cards and forgotten to clean them up. But the second card being exactly the same as the first, as well as both cards being directly in my path, gives me a bit more pause about the whole situation and makes me more inclined to believe that this really is the universe trying to let me know something.

The Queen of Hearts corresponds to the Queen of Cups in tarot, and every source I saw during my research mentioned the word "compassion." This card denotes someone who cares a lot about others, which is of course a good thing, unless it's taken too far. There's the possibility of this card showing up in a situation when someone is putting their cares about others above their own cares, sometimes even to a dangerous level. I don't think I'm in any danger of completely forgetting myself for others, but there is the fact that, when my friend and I started talking and she asked me what had been going on in my life, the first thing I thought of was my worries about my friends, NOT what had been happening to me.

I know I'm being told something. I think it's something along the lines of "lighten up a little bit!" or "don't worry so much about what you can't change!" or even "remember yourself!" I'd welcome any other views on the matter, especially the bit about the second card being all wet. Totally can't get that part.

In other news, I'm making yogurt at least once a week and it is better every time :D

MIND/BRAIN/SPIRIT: Knitting, Entrepreneurship and Awareness

I have been knitting like a fiend these past several days. I'm making a sweater (my first!) for my sister out of this absolutely luscious yarn - soft, fine alpaca, in a deep jewel-toned watercolory mix of blues and greens - and have already finished most of it in just a few days. My mother is astounded with how fast I can knit, and truth be told I'm surprising myself a little - I actually knit so much that I broke the skin on my thumb yesterday (but it's since healed over and is getting nicely calloused). It got me thinking, however - the main drawback towards making an attempt to sell my creations, online or in local boutiques, has been the fact that it wouldn't be worth the time it would take - I always assumed that if I charged no more than the price of the yarn plus the cost of making it in minimum-wage hours, it would add up to far too much for anything larger than a hat, pretty much. Lately, however, I seem to have become a faster knitter even than I used to be, and so it just might be worthwhile (as well as an interesting experiment).

The experimental part would be tied into the fact that I'm going to start taking classes in business with a concentration in e-commerce in the spring. It might be interesting to see how much natural aptitude I've got at this before I officially learn anything about it, and how much better I can get once I am actually schooled in the subject. The first thing to do, at any rate, is to collect a number of patterns and designs that are mine enough (that is, altered enough from the patterns on which I base my creations) to sell without being a plagiarist. I also need to get everything that's been floating around in my head for years and actually put it down on paper. I think the hardest part will be pricing the stuff - I was looking on etsy.com the other day for pricing information and saw stuff that I could make in a couple days tops (read: a lot closer to the beginner's level than I am) priced for $120, $150, upwards of $200! If we go by a scale based on fineness and complexity of the garment, the sweater I'm making now would be at the upper end of that range, simple based on the gauge (number of stitches per inch, which translates as fineness of the knitted fabric)!

So yes, that's my newest project thus far. I've had the bug before and slowly get closer to actually doing something with it every time the cold season rolls around. I'm pledging now to have sold at least 10 large pieces (sweaters, shawls, etc) by winter solstice in 2009 - how that will be accomplished remains to be seen.

Awareness is next on the list of graces, and it's a toughie. On the one hand, I think it's absolutely essential - as children of the earth, one of our responsibilities is to know what's going on with our mother and all the rest of our siblings, and to do less would be to deny our connection to every other being on this planet, and to the planet herself. On the other hand, sometimes it can be just too painful. There was a time when I simply stopped reading the newspaper (apart from the crossword) because the glut of bad news - wars and rumors of wars, brother killing brother, and all the rest - was too much for me to handle along with the stresses of my own life. Too many horrible things over which I had absolutely no control; it was a choice between continuing to be aware of what was going on in the world and not crying every morning when I read the news.

I am older now, though, and somewhat stronger. I've come to the conclusion that anyone who can take the emotional pain of knowing about tragedy without being able to do anything about it simply must make themselves aware of the goings-on of the world - for the simple fact that the more people ignore something bad or wrong, the more leeway it has to continue. The world turned a blind eye towards Hitler and his rise to power and terror in his own country, and only took notice when he started to seriously threaten the rest of the world. We as a planet cannot afford to make anything close to the same mistake again.

So awareness is definitely on my list. Next up is caring, which should be up soonish, as I'm on break now. W00t!

-N

MIND/SPIRIT: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Well, this was going to be a post about awareness, the next grace on Sylvan's list, as well as some general updates and such. However, I've been somewhat distracted from that - as I was reading through the day's postings, I noticed that the article on pomanders linked to through JPC's blog was entitled "Golden Apples of the Sun." Being something of a lit. nerd, I remembered that this was a line from a poem by W. B. Yeats, but couldn't remember the rest, so I looked it up - the poem is called "The Song of Wandering Aengus" and is a beautiful, complete story in only three stanzas that I won't spoil, so click on the link and read it now.

However, as lovely as that poem is, it's not my favorite of Yeats'. My favorite is much more popular and over-anthologized, but even the glare of too much popularity can't obscure the gentle evocativeness of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," which is as follows:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of linnet's wings

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Yeats wrote this when he was a young man of about my own age (23, I think) living in London. At the time the Irish were still quite looked down upon by the English, and Yeats, with his Sligo accent (in the West of Ireland - somewhat equivalent in American terms to that of the Deep South or mountain areas) must have been especially marginalized. Also, the island he based his dreams on was not viewed as such a picturesque place by the locals, who gave it the unseemly name of "Rat Island" before he rechristened it, and the last I knew, they were still calling it that, unaware of the dreams of a tiny, peaceful Avalon drawn for the world by one of their countrymen. Whatever his neighbors called it, it could still be the focus of Waldenesque daydreams for a lonely young man living among strangers in the middle of a cold, dark, grey city.

I won't go into deep detail about the imagery of the poem or wax on much longer about how it is the perfect escape. I'll only say that this tiny, perfect picture of a peaceful life spent in the midst of nature is, essentially, what I want my life to be. It is what I have longed for through all the long hours of work and study in the past several years, the dream I barely dare to wish for because it doesn't fit in with the plan of what other people want for me. It is nothing like the streamlined, modern daydreams of my father and sisters, full of nice cars and big houses and power in the form of too much money - but it is my dream, and I know that I am not alone in wishing for it - there must be others who, too, "hear it in the deep heart's core."

-N

SPIRIT: Assertiveness

Unlike the previous two graces I considered, I don't feel like the word "assertiveness" has really any negative connotations that go with it. Moreover, it's definitely something I need to try and work on these days. I'm not sure if I consider it a true virtue to live one's life by, but it is at the very least an important character value that I know I need more of.

Assertiveness, roughly speaking, is the happy medium between being a doormat and a bully. It is saying what you like, going after what you want and being unafraid to try and influence people toward your aims, but without being rude, overstepping their personal boundaries or forcing them to do what you want - basically, getting what you want and being damn nice about it. 'Nuff said.

The area in my life that I think I most need assertiveness is in my relationship with my father. It's not a terribly healthy one - our conversations all seem to consist of him stating and restating what he wants for and from me in increasingly louder tones and me standing there sullenly, answering in single syllables and praying to be anywhere else in the world at that moment. Before I moved back here a few months ago, I'd lived on my own for four years, seen the world (well, parts of it), and become an independent adult woman in my own right. Suddenly being back here, though, staying in the same house, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same room that I spent my miserable teenage years in somehow causes me to revert to that same moody, sullen, troubled, silent, sad little girl I was back then anytime my father and I clash wills. I am struck dumb, unable to say what I think or feel or want in any way that makes sense to either of us. I feel like a stupid child, as I'm sure I must appear in his eyes - a silly little daydreamer who pouts whenever anyone mentions that her dreams might not be worthwhile, and who won't put real work towards anything that might actually lead her somewhere.

The thing is, though, I do have goals and dreams that are worthwhile. The two main ones at the moment are to get myself fairly secure financially and to continue my education, and the overall goal is to strike a happy medium between these two - not to put one (and the rest of my life, pretty much) on indefinite hold while I rush headlong towards the other, as he seems to believe I will do in either case (towards more schooling, if I should do as he wishes, and towards a dead-end life in low-wage jobs if I should go against him).

The problem here, of course, is that I can type all this out fairly coherently to a (mostly) anonymous internet audience, but I can't get up the guts to speak the same words, quietly and calmly, like an adult, to my own father.

I got an unexpected hint tonight that I probably need to say more of what I'm thinking, and damn the torpedoes. It came when my dad was reading the Bible before we ate dinner (yes, they do that every day), and the passage for the day was about Moses and the burning bush. There's a part where Moses is all "but um I like can't speak good 'n stuff, pick someone who's more...uh...ella...eloquent. Yeah." and then YHWH is like "honey with ME telling you what to say, you gonna be making speeches like they was Grandma's cookies, 5 dozen at a time AND all of them damn good!" Well ok fine they were speaking some strain of ancient Aramaic, but the gist is still there. Anyways, it was just a little bit of a two-by-four - I say often that I've got the exact same problem with words and use that as a crutch and an excuse for not speaking my mind, even though I know that with the right intent and the Big Mama telling me what to say (once I ask her nicely) I could speak words that would shake the planet.

It's getting late and I need my sleep, so I'll call it a night. To sum up, this one's got more than a fair chance of being on my final list.

-N

BODY/SPIRIT: Activism, etc (and more valerian)

Well, so much for writing every day. Meh. I have a feeling I should put a virtue along the lines of diligence or orderliness near the top of my eventual list. In the meantime, there's lots of stuff running through my head, so excuse the rambliness/unclear nature of this post.

When I first think of activism, I think of marches and protests and yelling and waving signs and possibly getting arrested. This is the image we have been given, for better or for worse, by today's media and government of "activists." I'm not saying that this is a bad thing at all - in fact, we may need more of it than ever these days, depending on how things go in the near future - but if you think about it, there is a much broader spectrum of things that you might be considered an activist for. This could be as "little" as, say, recycling, or choosing to buy from certain businesses and companies because of their environmental and ethical standards, or signing a neighborhood petition. Basically, activism might be defined as going (even slightly) out of your way to demonstrate or make heard your beliefs and ideas.

While I'm not sure that any sort of activism that I don't already do pretty much subconsciously even should be a part of my life right now from a perspective solely based on my getting my life back together (more than what I do now could potentially take a lot of time away from work and, in the spring, school), I feel terribly selfish for even thinking this. I believe that the vast majority of us (at least in the US and other rich countries) need activists - people coming out and yelling at us about how horrible the real state of things is - to jolt us out of the complacency that it's so easy to fall into. Whether or not this is included on the final list (still need to decide how long that will be) depends on if other things on the long list turn out to be more important for me now rather than in general. We shall see.

So the valerian tea wasn't actually all that bad to taste - it could be the smallish amount I used, the other herbs in the mix or possibly the relatively short brewing time - but neither did I notice a huge effect. I was slightly more restful and calm, and although I of course do not remember how long it took me to fall asleep, I definitely wasn't lying awake for hours like I have before (although I haven't done that much recently anyways - having to be up before sunrise certainly helps with insomnia ;P). I'm brewing another batch, this time with a cup of water to a scant tablespoon of herb and have let it sit for about 45 minutes so far - hope that has some effect other that stinking up the kitchen like yeah whoa.

Briefly: when I turned on my Pandora station today, this song popped up first thing. I thought it interesting, considering that it is a full moon tonight :) Also, check out this video (yoinked from Beth Owl's Daughter's newest post) on a few things Bush and his cronies are trying to make happen before they're ridden out of town on a rail (now THAT would be an awesome late birthday present!). This is the kind of thing that makes me want to be a "real," yelling, out-there activist - this kind of thing cannot be allowed to happen. Of course, many things like it already have slipped by under the radar - I'll post the link to the bill/whatever it is that makes the president the sole real power in this country in the event that an unspecified emergenct situation is declared. But enough doom for tonight.

A quick prayer/public request to all the gods, goddesses, other beings and friends paying attention: T is in not-so-good straits. Send good thoughts and hugs his way, and help him know that he is going to pull through - and help me be the best friend and biggest comfort I can for him right now.

Goodnight, all!

-N

SPIRIT/BODY: Acceptance (and valerian)

When I did my primary research on this topic (that is, googled "acceptance" and looked at what came up), the results mostly seemed to fit one of two topics. The first is a positive look at the word and what it connotes: acceptance is, basically, learning not to sweat the small stuff and the so-called "unchangeable" everyday problems that plague us, as well as learning to love oneself just how one is. There's a basic problem here, at least for me: right now, I do not especially like where I am or what I am. Even though my life is by no means a bad or uncomfortable one, there are aspects about it that I do not like and that I wish to change. If I worked hard to love where I am right now, I would have no reason to continue to work towards the goals of changing my situation and myself. One of the sites I found says otherwise, that in fact "[a]cceptance allows change":

"Think of acceptance of yourself like being okay with where you live now. You may want a bigger house one day. You may dream about that new home. But there ARE advantages to living in a smaller home if you only took the time to think about it. It is possible to be happy with the home you're in now, while still dreaming and working to make your new home a reality."

The inherent problem with this as I see it is that if you truly are completely happy with your life, you will have no desire to change it. If there remains the desire to change it to something "better," then by definition your life is not as good as it could be and thus you yourself are not as happy as you could be. This type of acceptance seems to be either an excuse to stay in the (not quite ideal) circumstances of the present, or else a sort of temporary, false acceptance until the circumstances you really want are achieved.

The second topic is nearly the same thing, but with a key difference: the things one learns to accept are neither good nor unchangeable. Here, acceptance is used to mean the mental process that an abused spouse might go through - convincing themselves that "it's not really that bad, this is just life, I just have to learn to live with this."This is part of the mentality that Christianity has used to keep the downtrodden down for centuries, as well as something I've seen in my own friends, and I abhor it to the core. Nothing more need be said there.

There might be a third type of acceptance as well - that which helps us realise that a friend who has died is in fact not coming back to us, or that the choices we have made in the past cannot be rethought and changed, that they are what they are and all we can do is live with the world that results from them - that is, the past is in the past and is truly unchangeable. This type of acceptance might be best defined as the opposite of regret, and is as I see it the only definition worth giving more thought to. Acceptance in this form may make it into the final list -we'll see.

In other news, I bought a handful of valerian this evening, and some tea made of a teaspoon of that and a pinch each of chamomile and mint is steeping right now. I'm assuming I'll need to have some kind of a chaser - everything I've heard about valerian says it is rather vile, and the whiff I got when measuring it out certainly seems to back that up. I'll post the results of that experiment tomorrow. Goodnight!

-N

SPIRIT: Overhaul, plus the makings of a tradition

I have been rather lax of late with this blog, and the few bits I have written don't quite fit what I want this blog to be all about - that is, detailing the process of changing myself, inside and out, into the woman I want to be. Without a set format for what to write about, it seems, I can't quite find the inspiration or drive to actually sit down and write. Thus, I'm going to take a page from the book of certain other bloggers I admire - namely, the wonderful Dianne Sylvan, who is right now doing a fascinating little series based on the alphabet, or as she puts it, "an alphabetical exploration of the aspects of my spirituality that are important to me." Of course everything she writes is awesome, but I especially like the idea of limiting one's choice of topics, for a while at least - it both cuts down on the indecision, the "too much to write about" that often plagues me when I take up pen (er, keyboard) and forces me to still be creative but within certain bounds, making it more of a challenge that way.

I'm not going to copy her exactly in doing the alphabet thing, but I think the idea of having a certain list of things to write about could definitely help me get back some inspiration. Therefore, I'm going to direct you all to this page for a moment. It's an article by Sylvan on creating one's own ethical code, choosing those specific virtues or "graces" that are most important to you, and setting them up as a standard to live one's life by. It's a wonderful idea, and very useful to those of us who don't have a default set list or scripture to draw from.

At the end of the article, she gives a list of 81 virtues gathered from various traditions with the suggestion to think and meditate on them and decide on a list of the ones that are most important to you to be your own personal code - which, I've decided, is fairly vital in order to have any kind of a direction in your life, something I need badly right now. Thus, for the next 81 days (or so), I will attempt to meditate on one of these virtues every day (or less often, seeing how other things go, but at least 3 or 4 a week), starting with the first of the list, "Acceptance," hopefully this evening. In case I need a break from that (and I probably will), please send me requests for what herbs or natural methods to try next, as I've done with nettles, or anything else you think I should write about.

-N

MIND/SPIRIT/something like that

So I might have to makeup a new topic heading for these posts that are not quite worldly enough to be MIND but not quite SPIRIT material, just random musings. MUSE, perhaps? Anyways...

I was talking to T the other day, and he brought up what I think is a very interesting thought. Basically it goes this: pretty much every task or project, large or small, that you takes on reflects somehow on your entire life, or rather how you want your life to be. Specifically, in my case, T wondered if all the work I'm doing on the garden is a metaphor for what I'm trying to do with my life in general.

When I started, the place was not quite a mess and had a decent basic setup, but it was a mix of boring bare dirt that was heavy and compacted from being ignored for too long and ugly invasive overgrown old foundation plantings. The first thing to do was to uproot and throw out everything I didn't want and dig up the soil, throwing everything in to an ugly, albeit temporary, chaos. This part is the most backbreaking and the least immediately satisfying - especially discovering bucketfuls of gravel in the soil that make it impossible to do quick work with the big shovel and force me to crouch down and pick each one out with a trowel - but even more so overall, as each day of work just reveals more of what still needs to be done. Deturfing the new flowerbed means I need to dig up all the newly-exposed soil there. Digging up and loosening the soil means I need to amend it and plant before the frost, as well as moving a good volume of soil somewhere else, as decompacting it means there seems like about twice as much as there used to be. And at the end of the day, it still looks far worse than I want it to, with mounds of bare soil everywhere - very unfinished.

Making all the plans for the future is a bit more fun, but still just as hard work. All the pretty plans and drawn-out diagrams, while certainly fun to put together, have to work with the existing space and criteria using plants that will work in the area, considering all colors and textures of each plant (flowering, fall color and any winter interest). I want the garden to be lovely and useful in all seasons, flowing gracefully through the year without any "down time," as well as being low-maintenance (taking care of itself, basically) and pleasing not only to those people who see and use it most often but everyone else who might come across it. It's going to take some years to get it to that point, and I realise that no one else is going to want to work on it, as least not as much as I'm willing to do, so I need to commit to this now.

I'm sure I could go on with this and find many more metaphors and probably some interesting revelations, but right now I need to go finish packing, as I'm leaving for a visit to Ohio early tomorrow morning. Yay!

-N

BODY/MIND/a little SPIRIT: Just some loony musings

This morning I began to have a strange feeling. If I had to place it in my body I'd be torn between putting it in the pit of my stomach and at the nape of my neck, just at that place where if someone grabs you there, your shoulders automatically hunch up. A couple of times I felt physically ill. I shrugged it off on the fact that I'd just eaten egg salad one time and found dozens of nasty white grubs in the turf I was digging the other time - but these things do not usually affect me, especially the grubs - I've been digging and de-turfing for a while now and come across hundreds of the little buggers in the past few weeks, and this is the first time that the bile has actually risen in my throat at the sight of them. I even got rather weepy a couple of times - I was thinking about W, it's true, but I thought I'd gotten to a point where I can think about him without instantly breaking into tears. But most of the time it's just a sort of eerie quiet nagging - or, as a song that just played on my Pandora station puts it, "a vague feeling of dread." Very apt.

While poking around on the intarwubs today I noticed on the nifty little gadget that my friend now has on her blog that it is, in fact, a full moon tonight. Now, let me say that I have not been keeping track of this at all, but it does seem to me that I've noticed before, at times when I felt undefinably uneasy, that it turned out to be a full moon. I've definitely had many times when I just felt "off" for some reason, even way back when I was a young'un - I verbalised it then as a feeling that "something's going to happen" but nothing ever really did, that I recall.

Noticing this possible correlation today, I did some more poking of the wubs and, while I can't find any definitive scientific studies or that kind of thing, there are a lot of comments on public forums from people saying that they feel different around the full moon, particularly mothers saying that they can track their children's behavior by the full moon, or rather that they can guess when the moon is full by how their kid is acting (it makes a difference - if you look at the calendar and expect your child to act up around a certain time, I assume that you will be more likely to notice instances of acting up around this time). Other people say that they can never sleep the night of a full moon, and wake up with the night sweats in a cool room.

There's also the thought in the back of my mind that I am feeling this way because there is something I should be doing right now, something thatI am neglecting or forgetting, and this unease is just a reminder to do it. As soon as I sign off here and drink my warm milk, I think I'll go light some candles and ponder a bit, maybe figure out what that something is. I definitely want to keep tracking the mood and matching it up to the seasons and moon phases, if there is a match. I probably won't do it entirely here, but instead write it down in a notebook and summarise my findings. Goodnight for now.

-N

BRAIN/SPIRIT (I guess): Jobs, injuries and some musings on fall

First off: I have a job! Woohoo! It's a full-time (and, I am assured, frequently overtime) position as a barista/cashier at an awesome coffeeshop on the Duke East Campus. I work 8-4ish 5 days a week, and lemme tell you I am NOT a morning person at all, so the fact that I have free coffee literally at my fingertips pretty much makes up for the fact that I have to get up by 6:15 to be at work on time. It's decent pay, too - a lot better than the 3.50/hr I was getting at Young's, even without tips here. Once I get a paycheck or two I'll start posting about setting up accounts and budgets and earning credit and all those money matters - not terribly interesting things to write or think about, but definitely things that one needs to know.

Secondly, the reason I'm inside at the computer in the middle of the day when it's bright and sunny outside and I still have a lot to finish in the garden before winter: I'm not sure exactly how I did it, but I must have pinched a nerve in my leg or something - there's a shooting pain running from the outside/back area of my left hip all the way down to my ankle whenever I step on that leg or try to use it in some way - that is, pushing the shovel into the soil. I tried switching legs, but digging apparently uses both of them pretty thoroughly, so I'm SOL for now. As well as that, my mom accidentally took my keys when she left for church, so I can't even go into town and chill - I'm stuck here at the house, hobbling around with just the cat for company.

Having nothing else to do, this obviously has me thinking a bit. This time of year, when it's still warm (well, warm to my Ohio-accustomed body; the locals are all in long pants and sweaters already) but the leaves have started to turn and fall and the noontime shadows get longer and longer - this is the time of year I feel most restless. Part of the reason is that this time of year more than almost any around here, you can actually see the wind - every time it blows, it catches the leaves and picks them up and carries them along, so you can clearly see its path and not just guess vaguely at it when it ruffles the grass in summer. The sight of a stream of leaves being carried along by the wind has always raised my blood and quickened my pace a little - heightening the desire to follow them, to chase the wind as far as it goes. I've never really done this - hikes and camping trips quell the desire temporarily, but I'm always promising myself that someday I'll do it for real, just pack up what I need and take off, following whatever path is set before me and never stopping, only pausing for rest before jumping up and off after the wind again.

And now I'm literally stuck here, alone and bored, unable even to lose myself in physical labor as I usually do, at the very time when sitting around is the last thing I want to do. I can't help but wonder if there's a lesson here somewhere - the problem is, I'm not quite sure what it is. Ostensibly there's the message of "you need to settle/slow down a little, whether you want to or not" but that's only the most immediate thing to do. Am I being told that the dream of wandering around as the wind blows me is childish, and it's time to give it up for more adult things, or just that in order to achieve that dream, I must first spend a period of...dormancy? preparation? something along those lines.

Of course, the message could be something along the lines of "suck it up, get dressed, go outside and work through the pain, just get on with your life, as you always do." Then again, it could also be "if you just suck it up and ignore your body, you are going to end up getting hurt even worse, as you always do."

I think the first thing to do, in any case, is allow myself a little more time to heal and sit back with a cup of tea, keeping a sharp eye out for any more messages. If any come along, I'll be sure to write about them here.

-N

BODY/SPIRIT: Still More Nettles, and some thoughts on church

This'll be quite a brief post, as I need to get some sleep before going to church with my parents tomorrow and I've only got a couple of points anyways. First off, I've noticed that in the few days since I've started drinking nettle tea, I haven't gotten any new zits and the ones that were there seem to be fading nicely. There wasn't all that much to start with, just the lingering effects of stress and the hormonal switch from going off BC, probably exacerbated by talking on the phone for hours on end, lol - but the fact remains that the only factor in my life that's changed in the time it took for what was there to start to clear up is the fact that I've started drinking the tea. It's not completely conclusive yet, of course, but certainly seems promising. I've also found that the tea tastes better when cold and stronger than most regular teas, and the pint I had today in the afternoon gave me the energy to make quite a start clearing out some ridiculously invasive groundcover in the front garden.

Second - yes, you read that first sentence correctly, I am going to church tomorrow. It's not exactly my cup of tea - especially when stuff is mentioned about "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess" - no thank you, sounds a little too Borg-y for me - and during Communion, when I have to sneak out and hide in the bathroom, as it's quite a small church and the sight of the music director's daughter pointedly sitting in the front row and not going to the altar would cause some tongues to wag, and I don't want my dad to have to answer awkward questions. But I do love the music.

One of the reasons I'm going tomorrow in particular is that my dad has asked me to sing a particularly lovely old hymn that fits my voice nicely. I've sung in church before and always get complimented - I don't say this to brag, but to point out a fact I'm only beginning to realize myself - that I have a wonderful gift that I can use to make people feel closer to...well, whichever name you care to use, it all ends up as the same One anyways. That's why I still love "church music" - old hymns and classical masses in particular send such a shiver up my spine that I'm certain the air would be full of all kinds of beings hanging there vibrating with every note, if I could only see them. I feel that all music, particularly those pieces written specifically for the purpose of making people feel closer to their god(dess), whether it be Christians to YHWH, pagans to the Lord and Lady, or anyone else you care to think of, has the ability to connect anyone with their particular deity of choice, through the universal language - the simple combinations of notes that somehow strike a chord (pun, sorry) in all listeners' hearts.

A pagan friend of mine disagreed with me on this point, and disliked it immensely whenever I sang "church" music. Whether it was a hymn in English or snippets from masses in Latin or Russian didn't matter, just the fact that it had ostensibly been written to honor and glorify the Christian god made it entirely unpalatable to him. This hurt me a little when he told me - not only because those are some of my favorite songs to sing, but also the fact that he couldn't see how almost any song can be used simply for the pure joy of music, to revel in the voice or talent that your own gods and goddesses gave you, whatever you choose to call them. When I sing songs about Jesus in front of the congregation, they're seeing him, I'm seeing my own Goddess, but we all end up in the presence of holiness, and that's really all that matters.

-N