Prayer for an easy passing

I wrote this for my grandmother. She passed two days later, drawing her last breath as her daughters finished singing “How Great Thou Art.” We should all be so lucky as to be carried over in a boat of love and song.

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More than dust

I think a lot about death — not in a morbid way, as such, but as a sort of logical outgrowth of my cosmological beliefs. Think of it as a sort of religious logical proof:

IF we believe that the dead are still with us, or at least potentially with us;
AND we believe that it is to our mutual benefit to develop relationships with those many dead;
AND there are a lot more dead people out there than currently-living people;
THEN of course you’d think about death a lot, because your life is ineluctably braided through with the lives of those who have lived where you live, birthed who birthed you, loved who you love, worshipped as you worship. The dead are a part of the living.

“I want you to know how much I cared”: being open, not being strong

As so often happens when I’m moved to write something, today’s post comes from multiple sources that, while not intrinsically connected, end up jostling against each other in my daily life. Usually I end up working to hide the seams, as it were, to make the writing feel like an uninterrupted whole, but today I’m showing my work. (Sorry for mixing those metaphors.) Today, meditations on openness and honesty, courtesy of my non-druid friends, Jens Lekman, homosexuality, and my husband.

Apologizing to Antonin Scalia

In case you somehow didn’t hear, Antonin Scalia died last Saturday. Scalia was a staunchly conservative Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, arguably the core of the conservative justices of the court. His death leaves a gaping vacuum on the bench, and it brings heightened political tensions to an election where, honestly, I wasn’t sure there was greater tension to be had. But I’m not here to write about Scalia, not directly anyway.

The mists, the sea, and the passage of souls

Earlier in the evening we had had a Grove study meeting. We concluded by going through a series of guided meditations, recording them for the convenience of future meditators. After a pair of grounding-and-centering meditations, I took the last reading, a brief trance journey passing through the Mists to arrive nearer the Otherworld. As the guide, I wasn’t able to make the journey myself — I was too involved in pacing my delivery and keeping an even, guiding tone for the others — but it seemed to be a successful experience, judging by the faces of the others when the meditation concluded.

We’re all leaving: death and the glory of life

It’s near a week past Samhain, but I feel like it’s still haunting me. In the Catholic Church where I was raised, most holidays aren’t really a single day, but rather the high points of longer periods of preparation and continuance, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised: I’m still in Samhain’s penumbra, or perhaps I might say I’m living through Samhaintide. Whatever I call it, I’m still strongly feeling the mantle of death and the dead on the world as we begin the journey into the dark half of the year.

Imbolc: life against all odds

Yesterday, Three Cranes Grove gathered to celebrate the feast of Imbolc, the time of the first signs of spring. We sang the praises of Brigid, goddess of the fires of healing, hearth, and creativity; we lit nineteen candles surrounding the Well, each representing a line from a praise-poem that accompanied the lighting; we reblessed a healing blanket that passes around the Grove. My friend Meg was there, with her son C, who also happens to be my godson. C is just shy of a year old, excited and curious about everything he sees. I was filled with joy to be able to introduce him to my way of honoring the Divine, and he went with me to give offerings to the Kindred and to sing a hymn of praise to Brigid. (Pro-tip: barley in a small plastic container turns out to be an excellent rattle, and I’m certain the Kindred didn’t mind exchanging some of their physical offering for the happiness of a child.) He is so full of innocent life, and I look forward to watching the springtime of his life as he grows and learns. This is Imbolc.