I did not sleep well, at all, last night. I’m still sick from the virus and sinus infection that I caught sometime last month, which went undiagnosed. Yes, I went to the doctor. I’ve slept most of the last few days. So much, in fact, apparently I can’t sleep anymore. My mind is too full of ideas, goals, things I need to do so other people can do their job to keep resting. I made myself sleep until 5 AM, but after that I allowed myself to get up and start getting dressed. If I felt wretched, then I’d go back to bed, but if I could manage it I wanted to be up.
In the bathroom as I dressed, I could hear the dawn chorus of the birds at their spring best, that spurred me on, energized me. Now, of course, the energy is ebbing and I’ve got a fine tremble in my arms as I type this, so perhaps not the smartest thing I’ve done, but . . . I called circle to the music of the birds in a choir all around me through the open windows. The cool, spring air is still caressing my bare legs in the skirt I’m wearing. I’m wearing orange and black for Halloween colors, which makes me smile, and because orange is the color for the navel chakra, and I’m wearing citrine set in gold, because those are colors that are good for the solar plexus chakra. These two chakras have been depleted, or blocked for weeks and now I know why. Sometimes I can keep pushing on sheer will power and guts, but eventually I pay the price, this illness is that price, but I push, that’s who I am. I push myself and I push those around me, not push them around, but I always want the best for and from those closest to me either in my personal life, or business. I want us all to be happy and to be the best possible us we can be, I don’t apologize for that, it’s who I am. Never apologize for who you are if it works for you and is your true self.
I called circle and entered sacred space with the moon still shining overhead in a veil of clouds, and the spring air soft on my skin, every bird in the neighborhood singing their hearts out like a blessing in the air, and darkness still thick enough that I had to light my candles carefully in the dark, so I didn’t trip over our three small dogs. For those who don’t know, I was lighting a candle for each element – earth, air, fire, and water. I also light a candle for spirit, and then invoke God and Goddess. If you haven’t guessed, I’m Wiccan, some of us use the term witch, but I do not. I find the word is too dramatic for most of the people here in the Bible belt and explaining that our path of faith is Wiccan, as they are Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, works better than other terms. Some words are hard to separate from their past associations like witch, or inquisition.
The three small dogs were very happy that I was up and wanting to come over to the office and meditation area. They know they get treats and which drawer they’re kept in, and if they were bigger dogs they would so have had it opened and burgled months ago. I’ve caught our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, worrying at it, and trying with mouth and paws to open it. Our pug, Sasquatch, awaits his orders when they need muscle, like ramming doors that will not open. It’s given him his umpteenth nickname of Rhino. Sometimes Rhino finds doors too solidly closed and you hear a thump, and he staggers himself, but mostly he gets the doors in the older parts of the house to open, but most doors open promptly by their human staff, if they’re allowed in that room at that time.
I watched the first glow like a cut in the darkness that allowed the light to seep through, and then dawn spread in a pink, mauve, purple, lavender neon extravaganza lighting up the eastern sky just behind my eastern candle and I was able to greet the light, praise God and Goddess, though dawn always feels more feminine to me. I asked for their help in healing, and being positive while I healed, and finding the lessons that I’m supposed to be learning during all of it.
Now, the dogs are over with our daughter Trinity, who’s job it is to feed them, and I’m left to bird song and the first sounds of my neighbors rising for their days. The sun is a visible ball of fire through the trees like an orang-yellow spotlight and the sky is soft blue with clouds. I’m finishing the first tea of the day in my new chipmunk mug, and feel better than I’ve felt in two weeks. I can see the two silkie bantam hens grooming and searching for insects in the grass of their yard, and I am feeling all together domestic and biology loving, and that always makes me want to write. For those who are new to my books, or who know me only through the mirror of my books, you will find more about nature and animals in my blog and personal musings than violence, sex, vampires, or werewolves, or wereanything. I work in a world that is incredibly violent, but I try not to live there. I need the other sides of myself to nurture the parts that are drawn to the violence, and as for sex, I still haven’t decided how much of that to put here, or anywhere on line. I simply can’t decide my comfort level, so I leave it alone for the most part in these personal writings. If I find my comfort level at some point that may change, but for now there will be more of writing, ornithology, faith, and puppies in my blog than sex and sadism. If that isn’t what you want there are other writers that seem more than happy to share their most intimate details with you, or share the intimate details of others, but I am not one of them. I still feel that intimate reality is a gift to be shared with those who actually get to see you naked on purpose for happy nefariousness, not something to simple titilate and tease for more readership. Which is weird since I put more details in my books during the sex scenes than pretty much anyone out there, but that’s my fiction, and I’m comfortable with that. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex, but sharing my personal sexual details with the world, still not sure that’s a good idea, so – more of blossoms, than blow jobs, in my blog. Yes, that is a tortured reference to Dickens.
Now, I hear crows and they’re letting me know they’ve found a hawk, or perhaps the fledgling great horned owl that our pair raised this year, and I want to see what they’ve found. It sounds more like their, “We’ve found an owl, than we’ve found a hawk,”. Grabbing my binoculars . . . owl!
Tag: faith
Happy Imbolc!
It’s Imbolc, the first holiday of the year for those of us who are Wiccan. Today we celebrate the Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget. It was traditionally the beginning of lambing season, and the first growth after the long, cold winter. In some mild parts of Ireland, and the rest of the British Isles early wild greens and other wild eatables were in the fields if you knew where to look. It was a sign of spring, or almost, in that part of the world. Though, often you deliver lambs with snow and ice on the ground, or actually coming down around you. Imbolc is the promise of life’s return, not exactly spring, but a measure of hope that spring, and summer, will come, and winter does not last forever. As part of my Imbolc celebration today I’ve tried my hand at writing a prayer to Brid. I’m sharing it below. If it inspires anyone, great, but if it does nothing but let you share in some of my beliefs, than that’s great, too. Happy Imbolc everyone! Blessed be.
Dear Goddess Brid, Saint Bridget, be with me now as I put my foot on my path and seek to create reality out of thin air. Guide my hand as I craft this work of imagination made solid, and real enough to share with others. Help me find the inspiration of your forge burning in the night and in the day for your light never goes out, the gentle fierceness of your hand as it heals, and rocks the cradle of all of our endeavors, for fertility is not just about flesh and blood, but about taking that spark of heat, the idea, forging it into something solid, because ideas can be as real as a sword, or a ring. Let me be wise in my creation, let me be fierce in it’s defense, let me be true to my message and my vision.
So mote it be.
First Bird of the Year
Birders have a tradition that the first bird they see on New Year’s day will be their bird for the year. It’s a sort of theme for the year. Some serious birders will travel to exotic locales to try and make sure their first bird of the year is something spectacular, or at least something that they’ll be proud to knock off their life list (the list of birds they’ve seen). It’s part bragging rights for the hardcore listers, birders that seem to live for marking checks off their life list of birds. I’ve been a birdwatcher since college, but I’m not a serious lister. I’m not actually a serious birder, truth be told, but the tradition of first bird of the year is something I’ve kept, because I’ve added it to our path of faith.
We’re Wiccan, a nature based religion so it seemed a natural to use the idea of the first bird, or animal, of the year you see being a theme for the year. When I say, animal, I don’t mean your dog, cat, etc . . . unless it’s the only animal you see for hours. If you manage to not see any birds at all when there should be birds everywhere, then maybe the animal in question is your theme for the year. Two years running I saw nothing but squirrels for hours. One of the meanings of squirrel is to balance work and play, and for me I’d been doing too much work and not enough play. I’ve since fixed that imbalance with a vow last year to play as hard as I work. I’m doing it again this year, with a plan to play even more! I ended up finishing the newest Anita book earlier than I have in years, and I ended more energized and in better spirits than ever before, rather than exhausted.
So, what was my first bird of the year? It was a yellow-bellied sapsucker. Yes, it’s a real bird, not just a punchline for cartoons, or movies. I’ve only seen one of these birds ever, and it was in our backyard in the summer. It’s not a common bird here in Missouri, or at least not that I’ve seen. I’m always willing to believe that someone else’s bird viewing may vary from mine. It was a female, because of the lack of red on it’s head and neck, but even female yellow-bellied sapsuckers have some red on them, this bird had none at all. I looked up pictures of the bird and found that the juveniles can look like the females, but without red, so I thought, well than that’s it, but it wasn’t. The longer I looked at the bird, the more it’s colors looked crisp, and not dull, like the juveniles. I did some research and found that some females can have no color on their heads, and that the color is due, in part, to the bird’s diet. Western Tanager males get their amazingly bright colors from their diet, too, as other birds, as well. Cedar Waxwings’ diet can change whether they have yellow, or red, tipped feathers. Sometimes if we don’t eat enough of what’s good for us, we lose some of the color in our lives.
The above explanation is because not only did I see a yellow-bellied sapsucker, but it had to be the same female, because she had the same markings, or lack thereof. I get on the Cornell site for birds, which is always my first stop on the internet, once I’ve used my bird guides to identify the bird. Peterson’s guide is still my favorite, but I also have the Audubon guide, as well. The Cornell site has interesting facts about the birds, and I find them helpful for possible insights into what the bird might mean. Though, I go to the Ted Andrews’ books Animal-Speak, and Animal-Wise first, but if it’s a bird that’s not in the books, or I just want more possible insights from the natural behavior of the bird.
So, what does it mean that yellow-bellied sapsucker was my first bird of the year? Ted Andrews talks about it meaning that you need to pay attention to the sweetness in your life, the hidden sweetness, since sapsuckers have to drill holes in trees to get to the sap. Though unsightly the holes aren’t supposed to be harmful to the tree. Deep holes, the bird uses it’s long tongue to reach the sweetness, but they also make rectangular holes near the surface of the tree where they just remove the first layers of bark so that sap fills the hole and they lap it up, and they also eat the cambium layer of the bark, and will come back and check the holes to eat insects that come to eat the sap and are trapped in it, sort of insects in amber, when they’re still fresh and yummy. They also drill holes in very orderly patterns. Other woodpeckers will drill here and there and are attracted to dead, or insect riddled trees. Woodpeckers don’t cause insects to attack trees, they actually will eat them out of the injured bark, and help keep the tree healthy for longer, but sapsuckers feed on living trees. Dead wood has no sap, so they need living, growing trees for their food.
What I’ve taken from the above is that I need to work for the sweetness in my life. Sometimes it’s just below the surface, and sometimes it’s deeper and harder to find, but it’s worth the work, and I need it to survive. I need the sweetness and joy in my life to thrive and be happy. I know that seems self-evident, but in years past I have lost sight of that. All work and no play meets some deadlines, but eventually it uses up the writer until the very well of creativity that you counted on dries up from lack of being refilled. You can’t just take water out of the creative well, you have to either put some in, or allow the well time to fill up on its own either through rain, or water seeping up from below. Like the sapsucker there are different ways for the creative imagination to fill up; either dig deep and get the sweetness near the center, or shallow and eat the living “bark”, sweet sap, and more protein (substantive) food will be attracted to the sweetness you’ve made in the tree. I’m taking that the more I work to bring creativity and the fun things into my life, near the surface of my life so its visible and not as hidden deep in the tree, the more food I will I have, and the better I will feel, do, be. Also, that there should be more than one way for me to get sweetness into my life and my work. I need to be flexible enough to do what works, deep round holes, or shallow rectangular ones, but I still have a pattern, a rhythm, an orderliness that works for writing, and for having fun in my life. Flexible orderliness is what I’m calling it. Years ago I would be too wedded to a schedule, and anything that disrupted it threw me horribly out of my writing schedule, but I’ve learned to be more flexible, in this last year, especially, I’ve learned to go with the flow of whatever wonderful, exciting, craziness is happening in my life. This year is going to be more of the same, I think, and that’s a good thing. Also, it is significant that sapsuckers feed on living, growing trees, unlike other woodpeckers. My sweetness and creativity come from things that grow, change, and are not static. I need to embrace that and not be afraid of the growth that will come in this next twelve months. Change used to really throw me, but I’m getting better at it, and this was a message that more is coming, but it’s all good.
Now, here’s the trick to all this animal message, or totem, guide stuff. You could have seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker and taken a completely different message from it. It’s all about what feels right for you, what your inner sense of rightness tells you. Some scholars over the centuries have called it our conscience, or even the voice of God telling us what is right, what is wrong. You have to be still enough, quiet enough in your head to listen, to truly listen. If you are too busy moving around, bustling, talking, lost in activity, the message can get garbled or lost all together. As a Wiccan I believe that the power and beauty of God and Goddess is all around us, that nature is that physical manifestation of Deity. We walk through the power of creation every day. We are surrounded by miracles, but most of us hurry past and never see them. It’s the old idea that there are angels walking amongst us, but you have to be open to the possibility that they exist and are present to have any chance of seeing them. The same goes for any message from Deity, you have to listen, you have to be aware that Deity really does talk to us, not in a flare of trumpets, or a angel in white robes and huge wings, that is possible, but God isn’t so flashy most of the time, I think. I didn’t need something that spectacular, just a little black and white bird, to be reminded that I need to work for sweetness in my life in the coming year, to be flexible in my orderliness and schedule, and that some creativity would come from deep inside, but some of it would be closer to the surface, and that it would have different shapes and sizes, but it was all about keeping it organized, though to others it may look like I’m just hitting my head against a tree.
I hope everyone had fun seeing their first bird, or animal, of the year, and that whatever comes our way we see the lessons we need to learn, do the work we need to do, and walk our path this year in the most positive and productive way possible.