Video of Polar Bears Playing with Huskies

Still photos of encounters like this have been going around the internet for a couple of years, but this is the first time I've seen video.

Reunion with Wild Lion

It's unusual to find two loving animal videos in a row on my friends list.

The one below is via jillwheezul.

Morning Meditation Beads

I've just completed my first solo bead project: a strand designed to help center me when I do the morning meditation I received the day after my initiation.




(Click the photo to expand, if necessary.)

The meditation starts in the underworld (at the pendant) with Ereshkigal and LM, then goes up and into the four elements plus the stars. The transition beads above the pendant strand are transitions in the meditation as well.

Looking at it now, I might have chosen to at least try putting the spirals next to the black stone at the top of the pendant, but it always seemed to want the transition pieces, and the round beads didn't fit well against the shape of the stone.

Ah well. . . my teacher has warned me that pieces like this need to be re-strung periodically, so I can always change it later if I want to. For now, I'm just delighted that it went together as easily as it did!

It was kind of funny: both the Earth and the Star sections were redesigned three times each before I found the combination of colors and shapes that worked for me. It certainly helped to justify the amount of bead-buying I've done in the last few weeks. It meant that when the original design didn't quite work I had lots of options to fall back on.

I was also surprised by how quickly the strand seemed to take on a sense of life as the beads started to go on the tigertail. Once they were strung, and moving together freely, the whole assembly became far more potent. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. . . but I was surprised by how quickly the sense of life/energy began to grow.

First Solo Bead Project!

Look what I made!!



I may finally have found a craft that I enjoy and am good at!!



This is a meditation strand, designed to anchor my morning meditation cycle, which starts in the underworld, goes through the four elements and the stars, and then centers me. I wanted a set of prayer beads because I do this before I get out of bed in the morning and sometimes I'm pretty foggy. I expect that beads to help me center and focus. I've never really tried doing something like this before.... We'll see if it works as expected.


Thousands of thanks to oakmouse, who got me started on this, and who did such a good job of guiding me through my first project that a month later I was able to do this strand with the book simply as back-up confirmation! (The book is Pagan Prayer Beads by Clare Vaughn and John Michael Greer -- highly recommend if you want to try this craft!)

Struggling to Find the Words

I mentioned here a week or so ago that I need to update my profile, but I haven't done it yet. I just haven't made the time to work through how the various elements fit together now -- at least in a way that makes a reasonable introduction to someone browsing for new friends.

Today, during the class I'm teaching on personal spirituality, the topic was "The Divine: Images, Names, Relationships." Preparation for today's session was to create a collage that represented that person's images/thoughts/feelings/etc. about the Divine.

I made one too.



The people in the class today were from a fairly conventional background, so most of the images I'd chosen were way outside their frame of reference. They were very interested in learning about each one, which was nice. . . but at the end one woman -- my mother -- asked in a tone that was not quite plaintive: Why a dark goddess?

I had been expecting the question, of course, but I still found myself struggling to answer it. I could say, "Because that's who called me," but that wouldn't really answer her deeper question, which was "Why would you follow the dark instead of the light? What is it about the dark that attracts you, and should I be worried about you?"

The first thing I did was to reassure her that "dark" in this context was not "The Dark Side of the Force" -- but I stumbled after that. I talked about the depths, about facing our shadow sides, about helping people mediate and heal grief, shame, and fear. I didn't think to talk about the power of transformation in the dark, or about the death process (I'm not very advanced in that area myself, having been focused more on grieving this past year).

I won't say that I was embarrassed by my inability to present my path -- and my patron deity -- in a clear and coherent way. . . but it was made very clear to me that I need to spend some time thinking about this, so that when people do ask -- and they will, because I'm supposed to be "out there" where people can see me and ask questions like that -- I will be able to explain what I do in a way that is accurate and doesn't needlessly push buttons. (I'm sure button-pushing will be necessary on occasion, but I don't want to do it without intent.)

This of course comes back to the subject of updating my profile here. If I can do one, I'll be well on my way to accomplishing the other as well.

Words Words Words

Today's class was about the Divine -- images, names, relationships. It was enjoyable, as always -- but there were also many poignant reminders of just how different my background is from many people's.

It's not just the wandering spiritual path I've been on since my existential crisis, it's the education and the reading. Today I used the words logos and theophany and explained what they meant. I read some passages out of The Crafted Cup in which Shadwynn describes his belief about the way the Divine Mystery expresses itself on a kind of spectrum in order for us to be able to relate to it. I read the highlights of JM Greer's discussion of the Tetragrammaton in Paths of Wisdom, which is a book on magical Cabala. I read a poem by Mirabai. I read David James Duncan on apophatic spirituality and his desire to un-say "God" in order to approach the reality behind the word. I shared a collage with images from several different pantheons, the Tree of Life, and the Grail Hallows. I didn't get to it, but I had also brought and bookmarked JM Greer's story of the cats from A World Full of Gods (a lovely little parable that explores why each person thinks his view of "cat" is more reliable than the differing views of "cat" held by others), and the Vision of Isis from Apuleius. For those struggling with how to reconcile their conservative Christian background with new ideas, I suggested Andrew Harvey's Son of Man, with its powerful mystical christology. And that's just the materials I prepared, not the tidbits and anecdotes and references (like Liberation Theology and "argument from silence") that came up during the discussions.

And these references were all just grabbed from my shelves and/or picked off my hard drive. I don't have to go looking for it, it's part of who I am. . . It's what I've been focused on for all of my adult life.

And it impressed -- even awed -- the people in the class, whose religious background was pretty much limited to Sunday School and traditional Protestant worship.

My purpose in the class is not to convince those attending that they should share my beliefs -- but those who attend speak explicitly of trying to find answers that make sense after the old ones have stopped working. To find new answers, you need to have frames of reference beyond the only one you've known. Today I spread out a wide range of ways human beings outside of Protestant Christianity have conceived of, talked about, and related to the Divine. I don't have a personal stake in any of them, nor in the answers these students come to -- except insofar as I want their ultimate authority to be the voice of the Divine within each of them, not some person telling them what to think, what to believe.

I felt the power of my words today, the power of logos to define and shape reality, to re-draw horizons, to change the terms of the discussion.

It was a good feeling.
It is, I believe, part of what I'm meant to do.

The Power of Logos

What I express below is actually kind of ironic, given what I expressed in my previous entry about struggling to find words to express my own path. . . . Some things are easy for me, however. . .

( Behind a cut for those who may have seen this elsewhere )