Community Spirit and Human Values

Here is some advice for you:
make peace with all your family.
And here is more: never seek revenge,
even when you have just cause.
An here's yet more: never break an oath,
for bad luck follows liars.
And here is my last advice: watch your words,
speak with care, avoid all
thouse whose speech is careless, for foolishness is loud,
but wisdom whispers.

--Scandanavian Lay of Sigrdrifa

The goddess tells us to be prudent and truthful, to be honorable and loving. Beyond the changeful forms of society, some values seem to be constant.

Talking about constant values in changeful forms of society seems actually to be the crux of the matter - the values part being the reason for the changefulness maybe.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that the 'Good Old Days' are something to be harped after, longed for with nostalgic sorrowing and shaking of heads, not at all - but there has been change, even in my lifetime, and it's not necessarily been all good.

The biggest change has been in the way we as people interact with our fellow human beings. With the increased competitiveness in modern society today's attitude is far more 'every dog for himself!' Each person wants the accolades for some wonderful new innocation for him or her-self; charity is something you give in monetary value to organisations suddenly, and not in inherent kindness in your heart and everything moves so fast that no one has time for each other any more. That's the really sad part.

There are two exceptions that I can think of that are important to me... provide a link between the two halves of my life. One is the 'South' and one is here in Egypt. The latter, once you get past the fact that many out here will try to rip you off if you seem to be a green behind the gills foreigner, most Egyptians are good hearted, and can't do enough for you... but in the South - oh the warm sweet South...

The very first time I visited Chapel Hill, which admittedly is very... um... cosmopolitan for the Southern US (It's a Uni town after all), I was struck by just how warm and welcoming its people were. They say 'have a nice day' and they actually mean it - it isn't just something to say. Their doors are always open, their home is your home, and if you need something, and they have it to give, they're actually offended if you don't take it. This is what it means to 'have time' for one another - being ready and willing to change everything at the drop of a hat (or a call or a message) to do something for someone that needs something. Just being there for each other.

This is the essence of being human and having decent human values... and community spirit... at least to me.

Creativity: Reading and Writing

Yes! I will be there
for the revels--
tossing my head
and dancing on the dew.
I will be there, yes! Free
in the glad greenwood,
leaping like a deer
who fears no hunter.
There I will dance
with no man watching,
there I will find wisdom
written in the forest shadows.
Is there any gift greater
than feeling such joy?

--Maenad song, Greek dramatist Euripides

Little is known about the celebrations of these women, [The Meenads, women of the cult of Dionysus] who for more than 200 years practiced a religion apparently based upon union with the divine.

Without getting metaphysical, or psychosexual, how does one invoke union with the divine. Is it simply that altered state where one is so interconnected with life and all else that one truly feels that ecstasy of the spirit. Like when a shaman drums, or a dancer dances and each becomes lost in the rhythm, the moment, the magic of it all.

I could have wished for some kind of divine ecstasy today... but no - woke with the kind of headache that just makes you want to crawl back under the covers and stay there for the day. Couldn't of course, I needed essentials - Milk and toilet paper... but...

Going out of doors on a Friday is a kind of meditation itself. It was a beautiful morning, not too cold, actually warm enough that walking I had to take off my jacket and tie it around my waist. Takes about a half an hour to walk to the store so one way or another you're going to be walking when the Call to Prayer begins... and once it starts from one Mosque, then the cascading echo of it comes from all around... even as someone who is not a Muslim to tonal and atonal quality of the sung prayer is quite intoxicating... in this case, calming - bringing a sense of peace not ecstasy. I'm sure I've said this before, but it was no less true today than it was then... and coming back with my milk for my tea, I did find that the headache had subsided enough for me to at least function a little... and to continue thinking. What are the things that being me to that union with the divine.

It's two things... creativity and love. When I read and when I write... when I am able to be loving, and when I am loved, these are the time I feel most at one with the divine within myself. These are the times I am able to feel the quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) ecstasy of spirit. Tomorrow I must find time to do these things.

Word of Power

Earth, holy mother, source of nature,
you feed us while we live, yu hold us when we die.

Everything comes from you, everything returns to you.
What else could we call you but Our Mother?

Even the gods call you that. Without you
there is nothing. Nothing can thrive, nothing can live

without your power. Queen and goddess, I invoke you:
you are all-powerful and my needs are so small.

Give me what I ask in exchange, I will give you
my thanks, sincere and from my deepest heart.

--Roman prayer to the earth.

How infrequently, however, do most of us today acknowledge this web that supports and sustains us? In many cultures, the first action each person took each morning was to bow in prayer to the sun and to the earth, expressing gratitude for the warmth and light that enlivens the planet, and for the earth's plentiful food and water. How rarely do we, today, follow such ancient practices?

There's a saying that always stuck with me all through my training and teaching of the Craefte. It was this: "Please and Thank you, are also words of power."

I am one of these rare few in life that has always, in some way, acknowledge these transitional moments. Oh not always with some grand gesture of bowing and scraping, but in some way perform some kind of morning and evening orisons, even it it's just a moment's thought, (and no - 'Oh God is it morning already?' doesn't count. Yes, from time to time, I ahctually stopped what I was doing, turned a specific direction and spoke some words that began, "hail to thee..." but not always. Sometimes its with a simple thought I've welcomed and respected and thanked the Old Ones as they reach out to help give us life.

To that end there's something very special about watching the sun rise, and well as pausing to watch the sun set. This was my morning and evening. Having gotten up early to type and talk with Mir, the sun slowly rising around the conversation was energising - a reminder that no matter where we are in the world, the same sun shines down on us... and to watch the sky darken, knowing that we survive under the same moon and stars. This was my day - my orisons - the memory I will take with me into the next morning.

Only trouble is, is that now, having been up so long - I'm tired.

We Make Our Own Dis-Ease

Greetings to you, moon, our guiding jewel!
I kneel to you, I offer love.
I kneel to you, I raise my hand to you,
I life my eyes to youm
O moon of the seasons!

Greetings you you, my darling one! Greetings to you,
O graeful one!
Steering tides as you journey, you light up the night,
O moon of the seasons!
Queen of guidance, queen of luck, queen of love,
O moon of the seasons!

--Traditional Scottish invocation to the moon

Before the calendar measured time, we marked the year by observing the planets in their stately parade across the night sky. We noted the tides and the moon's phases and the length of days. We attuned ourselves to the seasons. We did not grow angry when there was snow in winter or rain in summer. We recognised that nature is more powerful than we are, and honoured her strength.

Maybe this is part of what is 'wrong' in modern society. We have lost touch with the natural rhythms of the world and of ourselves... become dislocated from our part in nature and our relationship with the heavens and the earth.

How many of us read our horoscopes in the daily newspapers, or have our astrology chart drawn up and then go around saying 'Oooh, better watch out, Mercury is in retrograde this week," as if it means the beginning and the end of the world... compare that with how many of us actually raise our faces to the sky and observe the movement of the moon and stars and [i]feel[/i] how their presence make us feel.

I used to have this issue a lot more when I was running a pagan group, especially around festival times... which have, through the march of the years, become fixed on the calendar instead of just being in their place in the year. With that, and with the pressures of society and other commitments weighing on groups and individuals, Imbolc has become a festival that is observed on the nearest weekend to the 2nd February... and there in lies my beef...

The phrase, never on a rising tide was drummed into me during my training. We don't know what the incoming tide will bring, so inviting it in might cause issues that we aren't equipped to face... so... if the closest weekend to Imbolc happens to fall before 2nd Feb, then shouldn't we say that we will observe Imbolc on the first weekend after that date? But then, the date is artificially imposed anyway - would not our ancestors have been observing the length of days - watching for the first signs of spring and watching for the nearest full moon? Think of the moveable Christian feast Easter, for example. Easter falls on the first Sunday, after the first full moon, after the spring equinox! How pagan is that?! So if the Christians can do it, shouldn't we pagans time our festivals by that kind of count... in which case, should not Imbolc fall on the second or third full moon after the Winter Solstice? (I say the third for those years in which the full moon falls within days of the Solstice).

It's a thought I have - maybe I should try it one year and see what difference it would make.

And while we are on the subject of dates and calendars, can I just say how much it annoys me that everyone says that the first day of spring is on the day of the spring equinox - that the first day of summer is on the summer solstice (um... it isn't called 'midsummer' for nothing), and that autumn, or 'fall' begins on the autumnal equinox? Come on people... equinoxes and solstes are the mid points, the points of balance... the fulcrums... How dis-eased are we making ourselves deliberately misaligning ourselves so with nature?

A Joy As Intense as Sorrow?

Heart of heaven, heart of earth,
let our children and grandchidlren
live on this earth as long as the sun
moves across the blue sky above.

Let the sun come! Let the dawn come!
Let all people have peace,
let all people have happiness.
Let us all have peace and happiness.

Goddess, mother of the sun,
Goddess, mother of the light,
let dawn bring peace and happiness,
let your light shine in our hearts forever.

--Mayan prayer

We are never separate from this world in which we live. For this our foremothers gave constant thanks, and we should as well.

I'm sensing a theme here... and I don't mind that so much, except it sends me on a circle, or spiral of meditation that doesn't really go anywhere except over old ground.

I spoke yesterday about my thoughts on the connectedness of ourselves, as humans, with the Wheel of the Year... or rather on our lack of it. Will I repeat the same today or simply speak on the same with a varying theme?

I've spoken about recycling, and looking to conserving the world in which we live because we are all connected with each living thing and when we waste - we waste within and for ourselves as well.

All of these things have been the focus of my meditations before now, but what about our connection to other people, each other... our pets?

My mother is a strange one... there have been times in the past when she has known that there was something 'wrong' or that I was upset, even if we didn't live in the same house and see each other every day, (it occurs to me now as I type this that she may even have done so again now). I recall one time when I was living across the city from her and out of the blue she had called me up and asked if I was okay. I wasn't, and when I asked her how she knew, she said she had had a dream about me coming into her bedroom and standing at the bottom of her bed like I used to do when I was little and had had a bad dream or something.

Mir always knows too, through the manny connections on many levels that we share, when there is something going on... bad dreams, bad feelings - worries, but then again, she's one of the most 'connected' people I know. She is the rat-whisperer, she talks to the deer and they listen, interacts with the squirrels and other wildlife around - I envy that connection, that expression of love that pours from her in all these things. It makes sense to me then that with someone whom she loves and who loves her, she would feel the connection. It breaks my hear too, that she's so connected to everything that she can't stand to see even fictional depictions of injuries to animals - in a movie for instance. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly can't be easy. When we saw Warhorse recently, for example, there were many tears shed - and being closely interested in racing, if any of the horses are truly hurt, it is a heartbreaking thing to see.

It is an sure indication of a heart and mind connected with the world, with all life, and honestly something to be aspired to. I envy that connection, I wish that I could feel so deeply as that... even for all the pain that it brings - because the joys too, must be as intense.

Temper Tantrums

The goddess is an eye of fire,
born from a cauldron of strength.
The goddess is a radiant fire,
born from an ocian of fear.

The goddess is strong and fearsome.
Her magic is strong and powerful.
When she grows angry, she strikes,
and her enemies wither from her wraith.

--Egyptian Coffin texts

Egyptians knew when they honored Sekhmet, the wrathful lion goddess of the sun's fire, nature cannot be contained nor constrained within our human vision of gentleness and love.

I am a woman that has a temper. I know this and I have always known this - but since childhood... since understanding that my father and I shared that temper and that it wasn't good for either of us when we clashed, I trained myself - not necessarily a good thing to do, but I did it anyway - to sublimate my temper, to sit on it. I turn it inward so that I don't blow up.

When I lose my temper I'm not a pretty sight.

But in an effort to be more healthy - psychologically speaking, I've at least been trying to talk about things that are bothering me - to let off steam I suppose you'd say - even if the person I'm talking to is myself... you know the whole, walking around muttering to myself kind of deal. Not working.

I'm starting to think I should just let go all of those long trained, self imposed restraints and just - when I'm pissed off, when I'm angry, when someone has had a go at me or stabbed me in the back, to just let rip. Just once. Maybe. Maybe just once to fly through the streets like the avenging Sekhmet, destroying all in my path, laying bare all before me... Yea-no. Can't do it.

I can't do it for a number of reasons, chief among them that it's counter production, and certainly not the patient, loving and considered pagan I want to be. I seriously know I should be able to just turn around to someone that has bothered me, annoyed me, hurt me - whatever, and say, "You know... when x that really made me feel..." but that's not happening either.

I'm realising a lot of the time that's a timing thing... see... what brought about all this thinking about temper is that in the last few days at work, a member of our team has been - well basically behaving like a kid that can't get their own way and is standing making a big fuss about it, instead of being reasonably professional about the problems she's facing. She has said to me on a number of occasions in the past two months that she feels out of her depth and unqualified to do the job that she has to do. Others on the team are far more qualified than she is. My immediate response on all of those occasions was unequivocable support. "We are your team," I told her, "Let us help you." Only to be stonewalled on every occasion. Now, today, the entire team was pulled into a meeting with the head of Primary to address the issue of our lack of pulling together as a team. That the woman in question is feeling, in her own words of the meeting - out of her depth, unable to do her job, and she doesn't feel that we, as her team, are supporting her. Um... excuse me - how many times have I alone offered! How many times have others... and we have been rejected on every turn - for why? - because the woman will not adjust her practise, is inflexible and honestly quite bombastic. So for the second time in as many weeks I ended up really feeling quite cross, and internalising it.

Still I try to be supportive, because as the people out here go, this woman is one of a number of people I can count on the fingers of one hand that I would actually have called a friend. But I have to sadly confess that this is becoming more and more difficult - a tenuous relationship... because having, as a member of the team, along with the others, practically bent over backwards to accomodate this woman's needs, when we next had a planning meeting firstly she didn't arrive, then when we asked if she was coming she came and was petulant, hostile and just downright arbitrary about everything - and talked to us like shit.

Seriously I'm hoping that she gets over whatever bug she has up her arse by the time this holiday is done, otherwise I really don't know how things are going to go... and that's a shame, because we had a good relationship before all this began.

An Embarrassment of Riches... NOT

How I love that dark beauty,
Seducing the world
with her black hair,
how I love her!

How I love my black darling
Who lives in the heart of the world,
in the heart of our hearts,
in the hearts of the gods,
how I love her!

Because she is black,
I love black.
Because she dances,
I love dancing.
Because she is beautiful
and black with dancing
hair, I cannot help
myself, I adore her!

--Indian poet Ramprasad

For we are - all of us - mortal beings who will one day face death. There is no avoiding Kali. She will be with us at the end; it is no good to pretend she will not.

Is this the pagan equivalent of the phrase, "the only certainties in life are death and taxes"?

Even if not, I think the sentiments are the same... in knowing that we will all of us at some point meet an end, does it not fill us with the knowledge that every minute of every day that we live is a precious moment to be celebrated... lived to the full.

Even simple things, like a good meal for example, simple but good; a good sleep; a decent conversation, but even those things don't account for everything. What about the sky that heralds a storm and then delivers gentle rain. We had that here the other day - we were all being warned that there were going to be sandstorms, (which frankly was quite an exciting thought for me, though I know how dangerous they can be, I've never seen one, and so I thought it would be an experience), instead some time into the evening a hush came over everywhere and I thought I could hear the sound of rain. I was surprised, so went and opened my balcony door just to see and lo and behold, there was a gentle rain falling from that stormy sky. How beautiful and unexpected. How precious a moment.

While I'm in a place where I'm still not a hundred percent comfortable, because of language, because of culture (and speaking of culture, a funny story in a minute), simple little things like this remind me that even uncomfortable, I can live life for those precious little moments.

Okay - my funny story. I don't know if I've mentioned my neighbour before. Kind gentleman, getting on in age, maybe late 50s, married, friendly, and an English speaker. We exchange greetings and the time of day if we're in the hall at the same time, that kind of thing... so... last night a person came to my door, not a word of English to explain what he wanted, and neither of us could get hold of our Arabic/English speaking friends on our cell phones to help us out... so... this guy knocks on my neighbour's door, after a moment or two my neighbour comes to the door wearing only his shirt and cardigan, and his boxer/briefs. I did not know /where/ to put my face - Muslim country and the neighbor half dressed. Of course he didn't appear to bat an eyelid, kindly translated what the person at my door wanted, and then we all went on our way, but... it was certainly an embarrassing moment for me - but also I suppose a /real/ moment. One of those - moments to remind you that you are alive.