Off on Retreat

I'm going to be spending the next four days on retreat at my sacred island, and don't know if I'll have internet access or not. If I do, you'll probably hear from me; if not, I'll catch up with everyone when I get back.

lwood, I appreciate your comments, but may not be able to respond in full until next week.

The last few days have been very rich, but most of my work has involved things that aren't appropriate for public posts. Learning when to keep silent is part of the training.

Blessings to all.

Reatreat!

It's 8:52am.
I'm sitting at my dining room table, next to an open window, barefoot, wearing my pajama bottoms and one of Lohain's sweaters.
My daughter is at school.
Check-in at my hotel isn't until 3pm.

I have a nice, quiet morning ahead of me in which to make leisurely preparations for my journey to the island.

My packing list includes my regular journal, my priestess studies journal, a short stack of books, a couple of tarot decks, everything I need to perform a Grail Mass (including freshly-baked biscuits), my camera, my body pillow, hiking shoes, and my laptop. If I have free or low cost internet access in my room, or a strong signal on my gadget, you may well hear from me before I return on Monday evening. Then again, you may not.

Please send prayers and energetic thoughts for a_belletrist, who embarked alone this morning on the adventure and ordeal of the 3-Day walk, and who has been gracious beyond measure in her understanding of why I needed to take this time for rest and reflection instead. Between the two of us, we raised more than $4,400 for breast cancer research.

I'm off to check my friends page now, and respond to a couple of recent comments, then I'm going to start packing.

May you all be blessed this weekend, and find renewal and/or adventure in whatever forms best suit you.

Homeward Bound

Today's lesson is to always research the location of a hotel before making reservations.

My retreat lodging turned out to be in the only standard issue small city on the island, which is also the home of a Navy base, complete with fighter jets.

The room was nice enough, but ten minutes after unpacking I knew I couldn't stay. If I was going to be in that kind of neighborhood I might as well have stayed home. And it was far enough from the places I did want to be that it wasn't worth it.

Management very graciously did not charge me the one night's fee I owed contractually.

I stopped at several more hotels on my way back south, but none of them worked out.

So here I am in the ferry line, about to head back to the mainland. I can do the writing and reflection I need to do at home, and do some day trips into the country if I need to get out for a while.

And the Daughter is off with her dad, so I'll still have my alone time.


(And I did complete the one ritual act that needed to be done on the island.)

Not So Good

I am nowhere near as serene as I was when I made my last post. Nothing has gone right since I left the Earth Sanctuary. I'm tired, hungry, and feel alone and vulnerable.

I'm sitting in a Mexican restaurant a few blocks from my apartment, hoping some food, light, and the presence of cheerful people around me will help me feel better.

Home Again

Food helped (and vodka), so did talking to my parents on the phone, jammies, and sprawling on my own bed.

The nettle rash is pretty much gone.

The pool is empty (knock wood).

So far, Maledicte is a pretty good book.

I dislike dramatic mood swings.

However different today turned out to be from what I planned, it still beat the heck out of being at work.

Finally, "Wild at Heart" in Ballard -- and its staff -- rock.

Burying the Stone Knife

Last night, after a sequence of events I am not sharing publically, my extremely potent stone knife ended up broken off at the hilt. I knew that I needed to take it with me to the island today and bury it, even before getting confirmation from one of my teacher's inner contacts.

So I wrapped both pieces of the knife -- blade and hilt -- in a black cloth and put it in the carry-on bag I was using to carry my magical items. I put the bag in the trunk of my car and hit the road.

When I reached the island, I figured I would take the pieces to the Earth Sanctuary tomorrow and bury them near one of the paths. But as I was driving north, I suddenly saw Newman Road and knew that was the turn-off and I needed to take it now.

I didn't go to the labyrinth or the dolman, but took the bundle and a bottle of water and headed up the trail. Before I left the parking lot, I told the spirits of the place what I needed to do, asked permission to leave the pieces of the knife there, and felt assured that it would be okay.

At first I wasn't sure it was actually going to work. There hasn't been a lot of rain, and the ground was dry and I didn't have anything to dig with. Also, there's a lot of underbrush along the path, and I didn't want to go crashing through it. After a while I found a small but sturdy stick and received permission to use it as a digging stick, so I took it with me.

Finally I found the spot: a tree with raised roots, under which an oval stone had been deliberately placed. The ground in front of it was thick with pine needles, and the green plants near it were widely-spaced enough to allow for digging. I asked the tree for permission to leave the knife there, and received it.

The ground was loose and rich and moved easily in response to my digging stick -- but I had neglected to ask the permission of the guardians of the tree: the nettles which clustered and twined between path and trunk. They left me a rash on my right forearm (my first nettle stings) to remind me not to slight the smaller plants in the future.

I dug a hole the unwrapped the bundle. To my surprise, only the haft was there. The blade (which I think I had wrapped first/deepest) was gone.

I spent a few moments going WTF?? then proceeded with the ritual. I blessed the water in my bottle, asking blessings for the knife, the spirit of the knife, and those whose hands had crafted it, then poured it over the haft. I spread the earth over the hole and it didn't look like anything had been disturbed. I gave the rest of the water to the nettles.

All along the path back, I looked to see if the blade had slipped out of the bundle, but never found it. It wasn't in the trunk of my car, nor in the carry-on. I've looked on the floor of my bedroom since coming home and haven't seen it.

I have my suspicions about what may have happened to it, but they defy the usual expectations of natural law.