Category Archives: daily practice

Saturday Poetry Blogging


To Meditate

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace.

- Thich Nhat Hahn

Picture found here.

Poetry Is a Way of Celebrating the Actuality of a Nondual Universe in All Its Facets


I love what Gary Snyder says about poetry and meditation:
A year or so later, in Kyoto, I asked my teacher Oda Sesso Roshi, "Sometimes I write poetry. Is that all right?" He laughed and said, "It's all right as long as it comes out of your true self." He also said "You know, poets have to play a lot, asobi." That seemed an odd thing to say, because the word asobi has an implication of wandering the bars and pleasure quarters, the behavior of a decadent wastrel. I knew he didn't mean that. For many years while doing Zen practice around Kyoto, I virtually quit writing poetry. It didn't bother me. My thought was, Zen is serious, poetry is not serious. In any case, you have to be completely serious when you do Zen practice. So I tried to be serious and I didn't write many poems. I studied with him for six years.

IN 1966, JUST BEFORE ODA ROSHI DIED, I had a talk with him in the hospital. I said, "Roshi! So it's Zen is serious, poetry is not serious." He said "No, no—poetry is serious! Zen is not serious." I had it all wrong! I don't know if it was by accident or it was a gift he gave me, but I started writing more, and maybe I did a little less sitting, too. I think I had come to understand something about play: to be truly serious you have to play. That's on the side of poetry, and of meditation, too. In fact, play is essential to everything we do—working on cars, cooking, raising children, running corporations—and poetry is nothing special. Language is no big deal. Mind is no big deal. Meaning or no-meaning, it's perfectly okay. We take what's given us, with gratitude.

* * *

In Japanese art, demons are funny little guys, as solid as horses and cows, who gnash their fangs and cross their eyes. Poetry is a way of celebrating the actuality of a nondual universe in all its facets. Its risk is that it declines to exclude demons. Buddhism offers demons a hand and then tries to teach them to sit. But there are tricky little poetry/ego demons that do come along, tempting us with suffering or with insight, with success or failure. There are demons practicing meditation and writing poetry in the same room with the rest of us, and we are all indeed intimate.

Here's one of Snyder's poems that I think is about meditation. And reading (and writing, I suspect) poetry. And mystical experience. Oh, and not falling.
John Muir on Mt. Ritter:

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

Picture found here.

Energy Follows Attention


An interesting conversation with a dear friend has had me thinking for a few weeks about mystical experience. And one of the things that I've realized is that while it's generally not possible (absent LSD or other psychotropics) to have a mystical experience on demand, it is possible to do work that will lay the groundwork and help pave the way. (That's not to say, given the nature of such experiences, that they don't sometimes come to those who have done nothing to prepare for them, or that all the preparation in the world will ensure them. In this way, they're a bit like athletic performance. Some people are natural athletes and can achieve amazing performances without as much practice as it would take, oh, say, me. Others can practice and work out for a lifetime and still not break the record or perfectly execute the grand jete. It nearly drove Salieri crazy.) And I'm reminded of Adrienne Rich's admonition that:
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

And yet, and yet, what I've observed is that daily spiritual practice and an openness to mystical experience, as well as a willingness to go with the experience when it happens (to not shut it down, discount it, run away to some distraction) are certainly helpful.

And I think that all of this is relevant to the notion of developing and being in deep relationship with your landbase, with your own Bit of Earth. Which is, for me, where mystical experiences come from. Few of us living in this technology-studded culture are able, without some work, to connect easily and deeply to our landbase. Like most important relationships, it can take work. And, yet, that "work" -- once we decide to make time for it -- is really quite easy.

1. Pick a place. Better if it's quite accessible and won't take time and effort to get to. It can be your yard, a nearby park, a strip of weeds between your apartment building and the dry cleaners. It can be a potted plant in your window-sealed office if that's your most likely option.

2. Spend time there. That's all. Don't expect to have a conversation or receive insights. Just go there and spend time. Fifteen minutes, if that's what you've got. An afternoon, or a sunrise, or a long lunch break if that works.

3. Repeat Step Two daily, if possible, or as close to daily as you can. Keep doing this.

4. Begin to notice how things change. What new animal did you see? Is the plant that you sit by blooming, losing its leaves, sending out runners? Keep doing this for months and months, years and years. Maybe you'll feel, at some point, like getting a field guide and trying to learn more about that bird who sings to you from an invisible place in the tree or about that weed that seems invasive. Maybe you'll want to look something up on the internet or ask a local gardener who's been working for years in your area.

5. One day, maybe early on or maybe after a long time, you may get a notion to do something: leave a crust of your sandwich for the ants, bring some water in a bottle to pour on the thirsty little plant you've been watching, pick up the trash, plant a vegetable garden or a tree. Maybe this is the land telling you what it needs, maybe it's just your wild whim. An' it harm none, do as ye will.

I pay a lot of attention (and we all know that magic, like energy, follows attention) to the strip of land alongside the Potomac River that I travel through every day on the way to my office. After years of this work, I can recognize subtle changes and I welcome so many manifestations of the landbase's energy as my old friends.

Today, I noticed that the chicory is now in bloom. Chicory's flowers always remind me of the color Alice-Blue, derived from a dress worn by Alice Roosevelt Longworth and they're happy and dancey, the way you'd feel if you wore that dress to a party. I didn't used to know chicory's name; to me it was just that pretty blue flower that grows by the roadside. But eventually, maybe it was chicory and the landbase talking to me, or maybe it was just a whim of my own (and the real lesson is that there's honestly not much distinction), I wanted to know its name and that's led to me learn more and more about it.

Like Miss Alice, (her father is reported to have said that he could "be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.") it's got a mind of it's own and spreads where it will. The chicory growing along the Potomac River in Virginia likely came from some that Thomas Jefferson imported and grew at Monticello. Like a dear old friend who shows up at the first sign of trouble or hardship, without waiting for an invitation, chicory grows in abandoned fields, along roadsides, in places where the land needs to begin to recover itself. Its leaves can be eaten and its roots provide the flavoring in chicory coffee. It is reputed to have medicinal uses and is sometimes encouraged as fodder for livestock.

And it's pretty and happy and sways in the early-morning sunshine as if it were skipping home late from a dance.

What's blooming just now in your landbase? What might you notice if you committed to spend some time paying attention for the next week, or Moon, or turn of The Wheel?

Yes.


This.

Ritual is not only about entertainment. It is not only a pleasant pastime or an opportunity to socialize. It is not even simply a psychological tool to shape ourselves and our communities through shared emotional or aesthetic experiences, though it can certainly be used this way.

At the heart of my spiritual life rests the deep knowing that ritual is a way of listening to the Song of the World as it moves through the earth and the land, and engaging with that Song as something holy, wholly challenging and transformative. Shared ritual is when we accept the burden and blessing of being embodied beings of this dense, physical world that gives us life, and when allow ourselves to respond in kind, to speak back to the natural world with its energies and currents and wild mysteries. Ritual is not for our sake alone, but for the sake of the whole world. It is for the sake of the solitude and silence that surrounds us, that frightening shadow of void and absence that makes us who we are, makes us whole.

We ignore it or seek to replace it at our own peril, for the world is what is real. Even in our deepest solitude, the world of experience and natural forces persists.

* * *

We have been neglectful and arrogant for a long time in this country, intoxicated with our own power, lulled into disconnection by our own thirst for convenience and speed and ease. Those years of solitude I spent grieving and kneeling to the dust on the floor were not made up of my grief alone. The land, too, grieves. She misses us. She longs for us to once again touch her as a lover caresses the beloved, to whisper to her of our secret dreams and sit with her in the long silences of twilight. She aches to be with us in our ritual and our prayer. She loves to feel the pounding of our feet and our drums in dance and song and praise — not the scraping and gnawing of our machines and our indifference and our consumerism and our denial.

Our religious communities are not only human. The world, too, the earth and her creatures and her ecosystems and forests and rivers and storms — all these are part of our community of spirit, the community from which our lives crest and subside again like waves of the ocean. And we cannot embrace the world in its wholeness and holiness if we seek to escape it or deny it through digital media that robs it of its voice and deadens our ability to listen to its thrumming presence in even the deepest silences and loneliest moments. Digital and social media have their place, they can give us some direction and help us to share ideas and information across the globe. But they cannot ever replace the hard, necessary work of showing up to ourselves in all of our limited, bounded, frustratingly beautiful imperfections and engaging in the wildness and wilderness of a world so much bigger than we are.

Please, please, please: Go read the whole thing. And then go outside.

Picture found here.

Father of Waters


A part of my daily practice, believe it or not, is my drive to and from work. I have a choice of routes, but I always drive along the fey-populated Spout Run and the beautiful river into which it feeds, the Potomac. Batty old woman that I am, I find myself in deep relationship with the water, the rocks, the honeysuckle that's thriving just now, the runners and early-morning kayakers on the Potomac, the expanding colony of purple thistles just as you exit onto the T.R. Bridge, the homeless vet I chat with there most mornings, the dead trees just at the edge of the island facing the Kennedy Center. It's a good thing that traffic moves at a crawl.

As I was driving beside the Potomac this morning, NPR was reporting on the flooding that's been happening alongside the Mississippi River and its tributaries. "Mississippi" comes from a Native American word that meant, "Father of Waters," and it was aptly named.

I simply can't imagine how much water it would take to do what the news reports describe, nor how it would be to live -- as a human, a tree, a bird with a nest in that tree, a snake, a fox, or a rose bush -- within that flood plain. One thing that rivers do, that rivers need to do, is to flood.

And so my sympathies are with the Mississippi and with the Element that I call every day when I cast a circle, every time that I need something to dissolve, every time that I need things to flow along. And, as well, my sympathies are with the humans, and the trees, and the birds, and the snakes, and the foxes, and the roses.

Because they are all the same thing; they are all, to paraphrase HC, Goddess pouring Goddess into Goddess. And, yet, they are each separate and precious, and the desire of the human not to lose her home, and the desire of the fox kit not to lose her den, and the desire of the tree not to be swept away, are every bit as strong and as valid as the desire of the Mississippi to occasionally overflow His banks in a big way.

And so, tonight, I will sit at my altar, here in the district devoted to the Goddess Columbia, here beside Spout Run, here in the Potomac Watershed, and I will light incense for the Father of Waters and for all who live in His floodplain. I will send energy to strengthen the Web of All. I will listen to the words of Derrick Jensen, and I will be more grateful than I can express for having incarnated upon this watery, dangerous planet.

Join me at your altar, will you?

Listening to the Land


In the district dedicated to Columbia, the weather can turn on a dime. (OK, you have to go back to the 1800s to find Columbia on a dime and, even then, she's called by her nickname: Freedom. But you know what I mean.) Just last week, I was out in the bitter cold, covering up tender plants; today we had sunny weather and temps in the 80s. I've known it to pretty much skip Spring weather here and go directly from Winter to Summer.

Today's sun and warmth have literally been working magic on my tiny bit of Earth. Jack-in-the-pulpits that were not there yesterday evening when I took Hecate's deipnon out to the altar are now several inches high. My neighbor's deciduous magnolia is a waving magnificence of creamy pink. The tiny horns of hosta have poked through the Earth, looking for all the world like an invasion of some underground alien species.

I've known Witches who don't feel the need for a daily practice, but I find that I really need one. And a big part of my practice is communing with my bit of Earth, with Spout Run and the Potomac River, with my landbase and watershed. I need to be in touch with them to help me understand who I am. Because I am not separate from them. I am all wrapped up in the water level of the Potomac, the migrating birds hanging out on the Three Sisters as the sculling teams from Georgetown skim by. A part of who I am is the day upon which the fiddleheads (today, in the sunnier spots!) emerge from the soil and begin to gently dance open, a reverse Spiral Dance that moves within my own soul as much as it moves out in the woodland garden. I find out how trustworthy and gentle I am from the squirrels, and peanut-eating crows, and bluejays; I learn how much I truly believe in both the light and the dark when I watch the giant hawk perusing the morning doves at my feeder the way a hungry teen eyes the all-you-can-eat buffet. I need my fox to show up once in a while to re-enchant my garden. My own health is somehow bound up in the health of "my" homeless vet at the TR Bridge. And the weather that moves through Columbia's district moves through my moods and into my thoughts.

What speaks most to you in your landbase? How do you connect with it? How have you learned to listen to yourself by listening to it? If not today, when?

Views Unfold Along Paths


Views unfold along paths. A common pond shape in Japanese gardens, for example, is roughly in the shape of the character for "heart." There are few places along the shore where the entire pond's edge can be seen, because of the way that land intrudes. Thus with each step along the path, hidden views are revealed, and other views hidden. This "concealing and revealing" technique is one way to make small spaces seem larger, since there are always new views to see. Going up and down along topography does the same thing, since it generally forces you to look down for most of the time. Then when you reach the top or the bottom, a view can spread out before you as a little surprise. The gaze, which has been down, is suddenly open to something elementally beautiful, like sunlight on a rose.

~Landscape as Spirit: Creating a Contemplative Garden by Mosko, A. & A. Noden

It seems to me that much the same could be written about daily practice.

Picture found here.

Paying Attention in the Garden


Landscape Guy came over yesterday to walk the garden with me and make plans for this year. It's hard to believe that we began working together three years ago. I think that this is the year when the garden will finally begin to come into its own; the last three have all been about taking things out, getting structures in place, and putting in plants and trees. This is the year for things to begin filling in and growing out. One of the amazing things for me about walking the garden with Landscape Guy is how much he notices. I swear I wouldn't have noticed the tiny beginnings of drancunculus vulgaris or petasites hybridus that he saw as soon as we stepped into the woodland garden, nor the lilium 'Casa Blanca's, poking up like miniature chartreuse horns in the front cottage beds. I think it's a combination of experience (Landscape Guy's been gardening in this little corner of Zone 7b for years and years) and keen attention.

And that's true, in general, I think, of having a relationship with your landbase: experience and attention make a big difference in what you're able to perceive. You can have some relationship with your land (whether your land is a park near your apartment, a strip of weeds growing beside a parking lot, or a large tract of land) by showing up on the 8 Sabbats, but it won't be the intimate relationship you can have if you pay deeper, more frequent attention and give yourself the gift of experience. And those two things take time. They take carving time out of your day to become the Witch of This Place. And, as Annie Dillard told us, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." And so it comes down to asking yourself, daily, if you want to spend your life, for example, watching tv or developing a deep and ongoing relationship with the manifest bit of the Mother where you find yourself.

This time of year, for those of us in the myth-crammed MidAtlantic, is such a wonderful time to commit (or recommit) to paying attention to your landbase. Spring and Autumn are our two most liminal times, when things shift and change hourly and daily and reward us so intensely for our attention. I love to pick a small area -- a few inches, a square foot, a specific corner of the garden -- and see what changes I can notice. Sometimes, I take a picture of the same spot every morning and evening and use those pictures in my daily practice or for divination. (If I had an ounce of artistic talent, I'd draw or paint or sculpt it, but, well, I'm about to be 55 and I know my strengths and my weaknesses.)

Last Fall, Landscape Guy and I put in two new magnolias in the SouthEastern corner of the woodland garden. He reminded me that magnolias are originally swamp trees and said that it would be almost impossible for me to overwater them, especially as they were getting established. And I watered all Fall, until it was time to put away the hoses and turn off the outside faucets. (Actually, I managed to water one day past that date, but several hundred dollars of plumbers' bills later, we'll gloss over that little mistake, m'kay?) Over wine yesterday, I asked Landscape Guy whether I should start watering the magnolias again and he said, "No, not yet. I think you'll just know when it's time." And I was reminded of Wendy Johnson's advice:
Every garden is unique, quirky, distinct, and disobedient, just like every gardener, and no one can really tell you how to water your garden. Yet all well-watered gardens have a common song that greets you the moment you walk through the gate. Watering is a form of courtship rooted in affection and experience, and in the desire for the garden and gardener to know each other inside and out. ~ Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World

I'll just have to pay deep attention and keep asking the magnolias if they're thirsty. It will be good experience for me.

You come, too.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

Daily Practice


I should post more tonight, but there are a handful of my best friends putting themselves on the line for collective bargaining, the American middle class, and the right to peacefully assemble, tonight, in Wisconsin. And I have been sending energy and reiki to them, in gratitude for what they are doing to make my G/Son's world a better world.

I came home and sat down at my altar and noticed how the floor beside my altar has become polished with my regular sitting down. And I laughed and thought, "Well, one can hope that my soul has gotten a bit of polish over the years, as well."

There is something so cynically evil/evilly cynical about first giving big tax breaks to those of us in the upper 2% and then declaring that "there's no more money" to pay basic benefits to those who keep our traffic moving, educate the next generation, put out fires, investigate child abuse, inspect our food, etc., that it's almost difficult for me to wrap my mind around it. I don't want to live in that world. I don't want my G/Son to have to live in that world.

Will you sit down tonight for those who are standing up for all of us in Wisconsin? Polish the space beside your altar. Polish your own soul.

Meditation is like showing up for demonstrations. We can always think of reasons not to. Or, we can just show up for the practice, for our own lives, in our own times, in the places that call to us. I'm sending my energy to Wisconsin.

You come, too.

Picture found here.

Home Soil


Every garden is based on affinity for and knowledge of the ground, on true intimacy and kinship with your home soil that comes not only from cultivating the garden but also from sitting completely still on the earth that you garden, and walking aimlessly and mindfully about on this same ground. These practices are rooted in listening to your soil and in following your garden down to its source. Begin by sitting still and doing absolutely nothing. Make yourself very comfortable on the ground and then, don't move at all. Give your full attention to what is happening around you. Watch the shadows of the black mulberry leaves move like cirrus clouds across the face of your garden. Be ordered by the beat of the ruby-throated hummingbird pulling red nectar out of full-blown salvias. Sink down to earth and sit deep in the saddle of your home garden. Settle yourself on yourself and let the flower of your life force bloom.

~Wendy Johnson in Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World.

Landscape Guy dropped this book off at my house a week or so ago, and I am absolutely LOVING it. Reading it along with David Abrams' Becoming Animal (I've always been one of those readers who has a number of books going at once; it used to drive my mother crazy. Do you do this or do you read one thing at a time?) is an amazing experience in connecting to the Earth as part and parcel of a spiritual practice.

What do you know about your home soil that you didn't know a year ago?

Picture found here.

Watching the Land Transform


It began to snow heavily here within the last couple of hours and I've been out on the porch every couple of minutes, simply watching and being with the rapid transformation of the land. A really major part of my spiritual practice, and one that's pretty difficult to discuss, not because I'm unwilling, but because we simply seem -- at least I simply seem -- to lack the words, is simply "being" with my own bit of Earth, listening to it, trying to grock it, experiencing it in all of its moods and moments, and relating outwards from my tiny space to the larger landbase/watershed of the Goddess Columbia. For me, it's this incredible privilege, an unearned honor, grace.

Two things struck me, and maybe neither of them makes a lot of sense to anyone except this batty old woman.

First, just as the snow was beginning to get heavy, I snuck out onto the inner edge of the deck and put out a bit more birdseed. The community of birds that hang out in my euonymus bush took immediate notice. As is often the case, the first bird or two brave enough to come that close to the porch were tiny birds. Once the larger mama cardinals watching from the euonymus saw that the tiny birds were safely scarfing up seeds, they braved it themselves. What's up with that? Are the tiny ones just braver, more driven by a desperate metabolism, stupider, what? And what is it that is so elementally satisfying about seeing birds in the snow? Is it simply reassuring to our mammal natures to know that they're still out there?

Second, there was, for just the shortest moment, a deep revelation to me about the relationship between this kind of Winter snowstorm and what goes on in the land all Summer. That's it. Just a moment, and not anything that I'm at all able to put into words, beyond that. But one thing that I have learned over the years is to pay attention to these momentary knowings. I've also learned that this kind of revelation will come back, happen several times, and grow a little bit each time. And, over time, they'll enrich me and my practice, become a part of what I just "know."

Does that ever happen to you?

Photo (from last year) by the author; if you copy, please link back.

What Would It Take for You to Smile Before Your Ancesors?


As a part of my daily practice, I ground and make contact with the cold, red, Virginia clay upon which my little cottage is built. I twine my own roots around the deep roots of the ancient oaks, tall maple, triune river birch, crape myrtle trees, new magnolias, Japanese temple pines, gardenias, lilacs, lavender, rosemary, and sage. This part of my practice can actually take a reasonable amount of time. It's like checking in with a bunch of different family members; you wouldn't begrudge that time or try to rush it, would you? And I will go to my grave believing that it matters, that the Earth is healed when we spend time with her, touch her, send our love directly to her.

Lately, I am more and more aware of the way that a horizontal (about three-foot-tall (or deep))-layer of cold has spread not only over my bit of Earth, but of how it has, as well, spread for several feet underground.

I admit that, when I walk outside every morning to feed the birds (barefoot, if at all possible and reasonably safe, just to remind me that I am a priestess of the Earth and need to physically connect with Her), I examine the sunny protected Southern exposure near my deck for some sign that the crocus and daffodils (of which the tips are only now just barely visible) have grown a bit. I walk outside every morning to the car and scan the hellebores for a bud or two, scan the mulched, North-facing, cottage gardens for any sign that the Gallanthus, aka, snowdrops, are beginning to sprout, even though I know that they're a good 4 weeks away, at least.

And, yet, what my bit of Earth is telling me is that, until that layer of cold rises out of the red clay, there won't be any flowers. I'll know to really look for the flowers when I ground and find that the cold has stopped penetrating deep into my red Virginia clay. That's not what I expected to learn when, a novice, solitary Witch, I began, years ago, to daily practice grounding, but it's what grounding is teaching me, just now, all these years later. "Here, my dear, here's a deep revelation: Winter's cold seeps below ground and that influences when things bloom." Well, um, yeah, but I was thinking more, you know, dramatic revelations, lightning, dawn cracking thorough clouds, and, well, yeah, of course, cold/Earth/plants, yeah, ok, but, um deep insights? "Here, my dear, here's a deep revelation: "Winter's cold seeps below ground and that influences, when things bloom." OK, I learn, pace, Mr. Roethke, by going where I have to go.

And, then, I drive beside my beloved Spout Run and alongside my beautiful Potomac River and see the ice that has been there for weeks and weeks - unheard of here just South of the line that Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon decided to draw. Last weekend, I was driving G/Son home, and we went over the bridge from Virginia into Maryland, across the Potomac River. Almost always, I tell him, "Now we're driving over the beautiful Potomac River," and then I call out, "Good morning, beautiful Potomac River!" This time, I said, "Now we're driving over the beautiful Potomac," and, before I could say anything else, G/Son said, "Good morning, Potomac!"

You know, I have been a good deal more lucky than I had any right to be. I raised an amazing, kind, gorgeous, good-humored, feminist Son, who married a beautiful, down-to-Earth, kick-ass-yogini of a hera, and who is an Earth-shatteringly-amazingly good Father. I've loved me some poets and priests of nothing. I've taught a lot of poor kids a lot of stuff and I've organized some educational programs to ensure that a lot more got taught. I've kicked a whole lot of law school ass, and I've written motions and briefs that have, if I do say so myself, been improbably successful. I've advised a number of wind and solar companies, thereby, in Lovelock's words, cushioning The Fall. I've taught one or two amazingly bright young lawyers how to think about legal issues and how to write good legal prose. I've been friends with a whole lot of amazing women. I've made a warm, welcoming home that frequently houses Witches and their rituals and provides an afternoon's succor for activists who need to sit on a porch. I've done magic for Code Pink, talked truth to power, and poured wine for wounded revolutionaries. I've worked with an inspired greenman to make a garden and ritual space. I've marched in every important march of the last half-century, handed out campaign literature, helped to get a woman on the ballot in VA and voted for her in the primary, done pro bono work to ensure voting rights, and fed people who were hungry. And if I were to die with nothing to proclaim to my ancestors beside the fact that my G/Son has a first-name, "say good morning when you pass" relationship with the Potomac River and that I know when my bit of Earth is still cold, well, I'll die happy and answer gladly, that's all I can say.

May you have a deep relationship with your own bit of Earth and may you find a river or mountain or moor to which your family may become tied.

Picture found here.

What Are the Needs of the Beaver, the Bear, the Salmon?


We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better. The white man has been only a short time in this country and knows very little about the animals; we have lived here thousands of years and were taught long ago by the animals themselves. The white man writes everything down in a book so that it will not be forgotten; but our ancestors married animals, learned all their ways, and passed on this knowledge from one generation to another.

- A Carrier Indian, from the Bulkley River, in British Columbia


~quoted in The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.

I think that this notion of "marrying," -- which produces, over time, as good marriages will, an understanding of what, for example, an animal or a plant or a river or a landbase or a watershed does and needs -- is a lovely one. It's an experiential marriage, one that proceeds and undergirds and finally makes possible a "marriage of true minds." I think that it's true, as well, for our relationship with ourselves, especially as Witches. It's one reason why I find daily practice so important. It's an opportunity to really get to know myself, my deities, my mission. It's not something I can get just from reading down what someone else has written in a book, any more than the Carrier Indian could really know about beavers by reading about them. And it is from that slowly-developed relationship with myself, born of daily practice, that I am able to begin to reach out and marry my bit of Earth, the plants and animals in my garden, my beautiful Potomac River, Columbia's landbase.

Well, we're all polyamorous in our own way.

Picture found here.

Staying in Love When It Snows


As regular readers know, it's important to my spiritual practice to be in active relationship with a specific piece of land, rather than just having warm feelings for the intellectual construct of "the Land" or "Earth." A large part of my daily practice involves getting in touch with and listening to the specific, small (less than a quarter acre) bit of land on which I live and garden. When I lived in an apartment with no yard, I adopted some spots near me as "mine."

Even in Winter, if it's at all possible, I'm bundled up and outside, even if only for a short time. I've learned that, as long as I can keep my hands warm (I've been known to wear mittens over gloves and one of my goals for the coming year is to learn how to knit those fingerless gloves that I could wear over full gloves), I don't really mind the cold, at least down to around 25 degrees or so. Finding out how to dress comfortably for the outside (for some people, it means fleece-lined boots, while for others it's a hat or a big warm scarf around the neck) can make it easier to maintain a relationship with your bit of Earth even in Winter. And, really, not knowing what a place is like in Winter is sort of like "knowing" a person, but being ignorant about a huge chunk of their life.

That said, as an old woman with a previously-broken-and-still-held-together-with-screws-and-plates ankle, I'm more than careful about not going outside when it's snowy or icy. When you really can't be outside, one way to deepen your relationship is to learn about your land. What do you know about the First Peoples who lived there before you? Do you know where your water comes from and where your waste goes? Can you identify the birds and other animals who live in relationship with the same bit of Earth as you do? Can you identify the trees that live with you? A lot of that information is likely available on-line. Additionally, Field Guides, which you can often get quite cheap secondhand, are a great way to get to know more about your area. A coven might want to buy a set and circulate them. I keep, for example, Birds of Virginia, on my porch so that when I see a bird I don't recognize, I can try to identify her. But in the Winter, when I can't go outside, I'll read a page or two every day in order to try and learn about local birds. And now, thanks to Margaret Roach, I'm in lust for this: The Bird Songs Bible. If you have children, all of these make good family activities on snow days and are a great way to instill a love of nature in the next generation.

If you garden, keeping a garden journal can be another way to deepen your understanding of your bit of Earth. During the year, I'll note on Facebook when each new flower first blooms. Then, on a snowy day in Winter, I'll go through and make a chronological listing in my garden journal. It's interesting to see, from year to year, the patterns and the variations. More serious gardeners additionally keep track of last frost, rainfall, hours of sunlight, and temperatures. Margaret Roach also has up an interesting podcast about the process of preparing to order seeds for next Spring, another great way to spend a snow day.

Finally, even when you can't be outside physically, you can do meditations and trance work to communicate with your bit of Earth. Let it know that you want to listen and then be willing to open up and learn what is taught. You can do art inspired by your relationship. You can raise energy and send it to, for example, the shivering animals, the roots deep under the snow, the earthworms and bees that are so necessary to the Earth's survival.

How do you keep your relationship going when it has to be, for a short time, a "long-distance" relationship?

Picture found here.

Dark Moon Commitment


It's the first really raw day of the season, even though we are, still, a few weeks out from the Winter Solstice.

Last night, I tucked G/Son in, and, just as he was falling asleep, he murmured, "Nonna, I hear the wind."

I said, repeating one of my most-used magical incantations, "Yes. It's windy and cold outside. And we're here, inside our snug cottage: safe, and warm, and dry. You're under warm covers and you have on soft pajamas. Safe and warm and dry." I rub his back while I say it, and all that I have goes into hoping that all his winters are thus. [I never claimed high magic; the hedge kind works for me.]

This morning, after I drop G/Son back at his house, I come home and begin to prepare for the Dark Moon. A December Dark Moon: windy, and cold, and raw. The wind is whipping the last several hundred leaves off of the oldest oak. The birds who know me best sit huddled in the now-leafless euonymous shrub by the deck, knowing that I will show up to put out seed. The grey and black squirrels, who are now feeding pregnant bellies, sit on the edge of the cedar fence, waiting for the peanuts that disappear mere minutes after I put them out. My garden is, by now, almost all bones.

And I, bent under how much reading and writing I have to do today for work, take off my coat, put on some ritual items, and begin to prepare a meal for the dark, three-headed Goddess of the Crossroads. And, all of a sudden, I am fully engaged, fully present, fully here, even if what I am here for is "mere" commitment. I take comfort in T. Thorn Coyle's discussion of the fact that:

“Even when you’re just going for maintenance, progress ends up getting made.” I remarked that this seemed true for any practice.

While riding my bike to my next appointment, I pondered this. Why was this true of so many things? Physical health, meditation, writing, dance, job skills…? What was it about maintenance that would end up facilitating growth? My answer was commitment. For all of these, we are making a commitment to ourselves and to our projects. We are stating that something is important enough for effort, and even if we aren’t going full out, we still end up building muscle, so to speak. We end up learning something. We are showing up to ourselves and for ourselves.

. . .

Someone once said, regarding the Pentacle of Autonomy that I write about in Kissing the Limitless, that he wasn’t sure everything began with commitment and then flowed into the rest of the points (honor, truth, strength, and compassion). Didn’t we sometimes start with desire, or something else? Here is one answer: It isn’t that commitment starts every single thing, it is that commitment starts the action of our will. Commitment starts the flow of deepening. It takes what might be a small impulse, or even a daydream, and makes the first step toward channeling this into manifestation. Commitment is the goad to our spirit, and the cheerleader, and the stalwart support. Commitment is the thing that keeps us showing up.


Mighty Mother of All Change! You who stand at the crossroads, You who look in all directions! When I am full of time to come to You and when I am overcome with work, when I am able to spend hours at Your feet and when the world is too much with me, Bright-Coiffed One of Liminal Space, You whom I meet whenever I work for change, Heroic Hecate, all my worship is Yours on this windy, Dark Moon Day.

Picture found here.

In Love with the Land


In Medicine for the Earth, shaman Sandra Ingerman says:
To heal the [E]arth . . . you must connect with the elements, the plants, the animals, and all forces of nature. You must reestablish your connection with the web of life, seeing that you are not separate from the rest of life, and you must see the beauty in all things.

. . .

Intention You must set a strong intention to return to living in accordance with the laws of nature, remembering [that] you are part of the web of life and are ruled by, and a part of, the cycles of nature. You must set an intention to open the lines of communiation with the spirit that lives in all things.

Love As you open to the wisdom of the trees, the plants, the animals, the insects, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements, you learn that all life thrives on love, and love is a key to creating harmony.

Harmony If you return harmony to yourself by aligning yourself with the river of life, the river of life will bring harmony back to you and the planet.

Union When you remember your connection to the web of life, and the spirit that lives in all things, you are once again in union with yourself, the rest of life, and the divine.

Focus You must focus on your intention to open the lines of communication with the spirits of nature.

Concentration You must concentrate on intentionally changing your way of life to once again return to harmony with yourself and the natural world.

Imagination You must be able to imagine the spirits and forces of nature that live around you, the forces of nature that live in you, and a world in harmony and balance again. You must be able to use your imagination to see the beauty in all things.


In comments to my post this week on living in relationship with nature, Literata says, inter alia:
I think this concept of relationship with the land is the idea some people are oversimplifying when they talk about grounding with a local tree or observing the seasons.

. . .

I just about jumped up and down when I saw the photo [used to illustrate the post] - I recognize that area, because my personal connection is with Teddy Roosevelt Island. Building my relationship with the land there is based on observing the seasons, but not just as an abstraction: it's about noticing what's going on, what the changes reflect, what the spirit of the place feels like and how that changes. It's a deep kind of knowing, and I think the idea of relationship captures it better than anything else I've seen. Being in love takes effort - but it has the most rewarding results.

I think that Literata is right. Some people imagine that, if they sit next to a tree and ground, they've done it all. Of course, sitting and grounding with a tree is a great way to begin a relationship with that tree. And, if it's all that you ever do, that's still about a thousand times better than not doing it. But it's only a start. Similarly, if you want to get to know someone, meeting them for coffee and a chat can be a great way to start, but it's not the same as having a deep and abiding relationship with them. As Literata notes, being in love takes work. And, as Ingerman says:
You must focus on your intention to open the lines of communication with the spirits of nature. . . . You must concentrate on intentionally changing your way of life to once again return to harmony with yourself and the natural world.


I think that the daily practice of being in relationship with The Land is as important as the daily practice we do when we sit at our altars and meditate, vision, do spiritual practices, make magic. Both are necessary, but alone, it's difficult for me to see how either is sufficient. And I find that, in order to be a Witch, I need to be in relationship with a specific and particular landbase, specific trees and plants, specific running waters, a specific fox, a specific bossy cardinal. Otherwise, it's like someone who "loves humanity," but doesn't really know or care for any specific people. And while it's certainly a good thing to "love humanity," it's difficult for that sort of relationship to translate into the sort of medicine that Ingerman references. And, IMHO, that sort of medicine is partly what Witches are for.

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Thank You


Sun in Pisces and Gemini Ascendent, I have all of the signs in the Zodiac that look in two directions. As a result, I can often see both sides of any argument. It makes me a good lawyer, but, on occasion, an annoying friend and, to tell the truth, at times I can even frustrate myself: "Yes!" cannot be the answer to EVERY either/or question. Which is a long (two-sided) wind-up for saying that I can see both sides of the whole "gratitude" thing.

On the one hand (we Pisces haven't hands, but we Geminis have four!), I can agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that this whole "Bright Siding Thing" has gone way too far. Too many of us get talked into doing crazy shit in the name of being "positive," and the whole "be grateful" thing can cover an awful lot of privilege when it's directed at victims of abuse, people whose jobs got shipped off to someplace where there's available slave labor, or women with cancers growing in their breasts because it is profitable for multi-national companies to pollute our air, water, and food chain (Carolyn Myss has a standing invitation to bite me). My Ascendant Gemini comes with a rather well-developed capacity for cynicism and snark and there's a reason that my first poetry love was (and is) Dorothy Parker. As Derrick Jensen has said, there's actually something quite liberating about realizing that we're completely screwed; I've drawn energy from that wave for almost my life's entire dance. (Parker: "Drink and dance and laugh and lie. Love the reeling midnight through. For tomorrow we shall die. But, alas, we never do.")

On the other hand, I've found the spiritual practice of intelligent gratitude to be very rewarding. I work pretty hard at never having a drink of water and never eating a bite of food for which I don't stop and thank Earth, the people who worked to bring those gifts to me, and myself for the work I've done to ensure that I have what I need. I sit zazen almost every single day in my garden or my ritual room and send gratitude out to the Universe for my healthy, happy family, for a job that I love, for my circle of women, for the roof over my head, and for the absolute lagniappe (years after the breast cancer and the broken ankle that, even mere decades ago, would have killed me) of the moment when G/Son points to my computer and says, "Nonna, that word is 'fox,'" or says, "Nonna, I think your cold is better; I don't hear you coughing as much." When I was in my 20s and going through a very rough patch (personally, professionally, physically, and spiritually), I somehow, long before I'd read anything about practicing gratitude, began the practice of forcing myself to write down three good things that had happened every day. When I go back now and read that datebook, some of the things I had to count to get to three seem pretty strained (it was a tough time), but the practice was transformational for me. It forced me to focus on what I wanted more of and to stop only thinking about the things (almost everything, at that point) in my life that hurt. Whenever Son, growing up a Scorpio through and through, was mad at the world, I would say to him, "OK, that's all true. But tell me three good things that happened today." (Sometimes, I think he thought the best thing that could possibly happen in the whole world would be to have a mom who didn't ask idiotic questions. But he never got to be grateful for that.)

And, so. We have a secular holiday devoted to being grateful. We Americans should be not only grateful but also ashamed and afraid for the fact that we consume far more of the planet's resources than we ought. And we owe a debt of gratitude to so many.
Plants and Animals in the Garden,
We welcome you -- we invite you in -- we ask your forgiveness and
your understanding. Listen as we invokve your names, as we
also listen for you.
Little sparrows, quail, robins, and house finches who have died in our strawberry nets;
Young Cooper's Hawk who flew into our sweet pea trellis and broke your neck;
Numerous orange-bellied newts who died by our shears, in our irrigation pipes, by our cars, by our feet,
Slugs and snails whom we have pursued for years, feeding you to the ducks, crushing you, trapping you, picking you off and tossing you over our fences;
Gophers and moles, trapped and scorned by us, and also watched with love, admirations, and awe for your one-mindedness;
Sowbugs, spitbugs, earwigs, flea beetles, wooly aphids, rose-suckers, cutworms, millipedes and other insects whom we have lured and stopped;
Snakes and moths who have been caught in our water system and killed by our mowers;
Families of mice who have died in irrigation pipes, by electricity in our pump box, and by predators while nesting in our greenhouses;
Manure worms and earthworms, severed by spades, and numerous microscopic lifeforms in our compost system who have been burned by sunlight;
Feral cats and raccoons whom we've steadily chased from the garden;
Rats whom we've poisoned and trapped and drowned.
Deer chased at dawn and at midnight, routed by dogs, by farmers, by fences and numerous barriers;
Plants: colored lettuces, young broccoli, ripe strawberry and sweet apples, all of you who have lured the animals to your sides, and all plants we have shunned: poison hemlock, pigweed, bindweed, stinging nettle, bull thistle;
We call all plants we have removed by dividing you
and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here;
We invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We will continue to practice with you and for you.

~by Wendy Johnson, Green Gulch Farm, in Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth, ed. by Eliz. Robers & Elias Amidon.

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Daily Practice


I know that I'm a bit of a broken record (now there's a term G/Son's generation won't get) about this, but one of the most important things that a Witch can do is to have a daily practice. One of my v favorite bloggers says that we Witches need to work all the time to answer the question: "What are Witches for?" And, I agree.

One of the things that we're for, IMHO, is for having a daily practice.

A daily practice is a way of checking in (of being in relationship with), daily, with Mama Gaia, your landbase, your watershed, the (perhaps quite tiny) "bit of Earth" of which you are the Witch. When I sit in my altar room and call the Elements, I announce myself: "I am Hecate, the Witch of this place," and by "this place," I mean the less-than-a-quarter-acre bit of Earth that I have delved, planted, laid upon, grounded in, weeded, raked, done magic upon, consumed the herbs grown from, and come to know these past seven years. When I wake in the morning, in the small room in the Northeast corner of my house (now refreshingly chilly and full of reminders of how lucky I am to have sheets, blankets, comforters, socks crocheted by my own grandma), I connect my roots with the roots of the three giant oaks, the two American wisteria, the two temple pines, the three Japanese maples, the many herbs, the gardenias and lilacs, the jack-in-the-pulpits, the drancunculus vulgaris, the toad lilies, and the daylilies that live here with me. I reach out and connect with the squirrels, and chipmunks, and cardinals, and bluejays, and Carolina waxwings, and rabbits, and foxes who live here with me.

When I eat my oatmeal and poached egg, I call upon Columbia, the Goddess of This Place, and Hygeia, a Goddess upon whom both I and my circle of women have called, and I ask for their blessings. I go out and give birdseed to the birds I know and I give coffee grounds to the gardenias. May we never hunger. May we never thirst.

When I go to work, I purposefully drive along-side my beloved Spout Run and my adored Potomac River and I give gifts to "my" Homeless Vet who waits by the entrance to the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge. These are the acts of a Witch.

When I get to work, I stop for a moment and invoke every woman who went before me, working with laws, words, her ability to write, and argue, and persuade. (What my secretary sees: "Just like every morning, she's taking off her sunglasses, rummaging in her purse, and putting on her reading glasses. Just like every morning, she stops, holds her hands over the keys, and then types in her password (just now "elegant editing.")) (What's really happening: Hecate recites her morning prayer: 'I am a manifestation of the Goddess. Mother, help me to grow into my Better Self. It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.' Hecate stops for a moment and invokes Hatshepsut, Druidic women, Boadicea, QE I, Mistress Margaret Brent, Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, and Athena, Goddess of politics and laws. Hecate invokes Hecate, Goddess of liminal spaces, the space where her words and arguments may create change. Hecate asks Mama Gaia for guidance. Hecate slips on reading glasses, sends reiki to her keyboard, and hits "Open" on the first e-mail of the day.)

At 11:00 and 3:00, my computer gives me a message: Time to get up, walk around and move, create some energy, and change, and movement. I walk the halls of my firm sending blessings to everyone there. "May we serve justice. May Fortuna bless our work." I return and face East, South, West, and North and ground in the zinging and singing and whirring swampy clay of Washington, D.C.

When I get home, I sink onto the rolled-up cotton yoga blanket before my altar, touch my forehead to the wood, and ground. Again.

Having a daily practice gives me the opportunity to connect with, send Reiki to, strengthen, and bless my own bit of Earth. It allows me to do the work of a Priestess, a Witch, a woman of Earth.

I believe, and I may be a crazy old woman but I do believe, that my daily practice does Earth good. And that, more than anything else, is what I am for. I am here to connect with the Earth and to let her know that she has an ally. I am here to connect with a run and a river and to let them know that they are seen, heard, loved, and experienced. I am here to drive over the bridge from Virginia to DC and to let the shining city on a swamp know that her ally is back, to get one v short glance of the statue of Columbia above the capital, and to let this polis know that she is loved in all her marble monuments and all her hidden gardens. I am here to minister to the trees, flowers, herbs, and animals of a tiny spot in northern Virginia and to send shining energy to them.

And that, as Mr. Frost explained, has made all the difference.

What are you for? What does your daily practice look like?

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You Gonna Eat That?


Continuing our discussion concerning mindful eating,* I recently came across this quote from Alisha Little Tree, who occupied a redwood tree to prevent logging:
I stopped being a vegetarian after that tree sit because I connected with that tree so intensely . . . it has really changed my whole reality. Now I'm thinking of beings not as conscious creatures, but as life-force. There's a really strong life-force in all of us, and in this forest in these trees. Connecting to the tree [is like just being,] it's not like you talk to the tree, because it can't hear, but there's this feeling. I don't know how to describe it, [it is], like a deep rootedness, very powerful, not superior to us, but certainly not inferior to us and more primitive or less evolved than us.

~quoted in Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future by Bron Taylor.

Taylor asked Alisha Little Tree about how the experience impacted her eating habits and she replied:
Because I just started to appreciate the incredible life-force in plants . . . and the line between animal and plants blurred. It's all just different forms of life-force.

Id.

For Lierre Keith, the change in her habits appears to have been related to becoming aware of various scientific studies that highlighted the consciousness of plants (although she discusses the desire that this information created within her for a direct experience with plants) while, for Alisha Little Tree, the change came about as a result of a direct experience, in nature, of the consciousness of plants. In both cases, the women were willing to accept new information (however received) about the interconnection of everything and to change their behavior based upon the new information. What would you do differently if you were even more vibrantly aware of this interconnection?

I'll suggest that practicing mindfulness and gratitude when purchasing, preparing, eating, and disposing of food can be a transformational spiritual practice. Stopping for a moment to be aware of the sacrifices/gifts involved in the food you are about to consume is a good place to start. What would it mean for you to eat as a sacred act, to eat as a Priestess/Priest? Does any part of your practice involve offering food to the Goddesses, Gods, ancestors?

*I'll repeat that I'm not making any judgments about how or what people eat, nor am I advising any eating regimen. I don't think it's my business to tell other people what to eat. People make choices about food based on a wide variety of personal likes and dislikes, health reasons, ethical decisions, and other factors. I am suggesting that we include more mindfulness and gratitude in our daily eating practices.

Picture found here.