Welcome To the Cedar Grove

May earth, goddess of all creation,
mother of all that is and will be,
may she give us a great land.

May earth, with her mountains and plains,
her slopes and her peaks, may she open
herself to our needs.

May earth, with her rivers and waters,
may she give us enough to drink.
May she pour herself upon us.

--Hindu hymn to goddess of earth, Atharva Veda

Today, too, clearly articulating needs is the first step toward having them met. yes the expression of such needs is often me with reproach.

My greatest needs are emotional ones - right now at least. The need to feel valued, the need to feel validated and the need to feel needed and loved.

For the most part, those needs are met in that my wonderful guy gives all of these to me, and more... even when I don't express them. But frustrations, both those that I suffer from, and those of others, sometimes even my guy, can from time to time lead me not to feel such things. Lately I've been strugging with feelings of worthlessness.

On reflection I think a lot of it is tiredness. The end of a long school year with so much still to do that I'm falling behind on everything else that I want to be doing. But the argument goes that: should it really be something that I want to be doing I'd just go and do it. I would make time... put aside other things in order to have that time for things I want to do. After all I have so many hours after school in which to read, to write, to type up the notes from my daily meditations which I have at least managed to continue with - and notes for which I have many days worth of writing. The fact of the matter is that I'm bringing so much work home, assessments to mark, class work to mark, lessons to plan. Allowing the fact that I don't go out anywhere after school - or rarely anyway - to completely scew my work/life balance. There is no balance. I'm not alone in this.

So... no, the workload from work has not eased at all, but I have decided that enough is enough. Where did this come from? Two people, both very dear to my heart. First, (though someone Indirectly), from my wonderful guy... and secondly from my still tenuous, but growing connection with My Lady. My own needs, combined with those of my guys led me to partition the Lady for help in getting off my overworked hands and putting those hands to work in catching up with the things I want to do.

The answer came in somewhat of a surprising form... in a dream... (that's not the surprising bit - quite common actually)... it was a dream in which I was in an office in school, arguing with the head teacher, and the owner of the school. They were arguing with me about loyalty, and I was standing up to them and telling them that no matter how hard I work for them my first loyalty is to my family - to my husband, and the life we have together, the things we do and share, and then second to the families of the school. That nothing that they could say would change that, because that was the way it was, and should be. It was a very unsettling dream, but also in a way very empowering.

The upshot of it all is that yes - if these things are important to me, which they are, then I will adjust the balance of work, and my own things to so that I don't keep constantly flailing, and failing to do the things I want to do, and have said I am going to do.

Perhaps then I will learn to validate and love myself again (I don't like myself very much right now), and feeling it from myself might help me to feel it period.

O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the angels, Queen of the May.
O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the angels, Queen of the May.

--Catholic song to the Virgin on May Day

With the coming of Christianity, the old festival was discouraged, especially in the light of its highly sexual content... But the ancient symbolism held fast, though hidden...

As I was reading through this meditation guidance, and thinking on the festival of Bealtainne, I could not help but bring to mind last year (2011). We were sitting outside, Mir and I, with a fire in the old fire pit, when suddenly something Mir said made me realise that it was Bealtainne, we had a fire, and I could darn well jump it if I liked. Then again, I also remembered earlier in this year, when Mir and I had to get the new, metal, fire pit, because the old one finally broke. I remember sitting there with the new pit and thinking what it would be like to try jumping the fire over that one. I don't know why I should have thought that, but I distinctly remember the thought.

Fire and sexuality always go hand in hand for me. A bit of a chicken and egg question really is: which came first, my paganism or my association with fire and shared intimacy. Even I'm not sure, but definitely - each goes hand in hand with the other.

I guess I've digressed a little bit... as the initial quote was about how Christianity subsumed and then sanitised the Old Ways - the Old Festivals and the Old Gods. And it got me to thinking about impossible to answer questions... why is it that we, as a people, are so afraid of our own sexuality - afraid of it to such an extent that we use it, and allow it to be used against us, as a weapon? Why should it be wrong for such a devotional practise, (and I've spoken elsewhere in this journal about the sanctity of sexual intimacy, to be a part of faith, worship and the mythology of any religion, be that Christianity or any other for that matter? Why view Jesus, God, etc. as sexless and make the intimate sharing of ones body with another whom you love into something dirty, something that should be considered wrong - to be hidden away at all costs? It's very hurtful, to think about it logically, to reject something as life affirming as sexuality. After all, what brings new life if not the union of the masculine in nature, with the feminine, male and female, man and woman? Hurtful and confusing.

I know the simple answer to the question is, of course, control. For a church (or religious institution/body if you'd rather), to say how, and with whom on may legitimately share oneself gives that body an enormous amount of power over the individual, and the family, and thus the community - so I suppose that answers my questions quite admirably really... but I think there is more to it than just that, or else the Goddess lore, the old thoughts and symbols that have survived, albeit disguised, would not have done so, and we would all be living in a sexless world. But survive they had, deep in our innermost hearts, we recognise the sacredness of sex, and cling to that apron string of our Eternal Mother who bids us remember from whence we came.

Goddess, we know you by so many names:
Ceres, mother of the harvest, you who in the joy
of finding your lost daughter gave a new diet
to our forebears, no longer acorns to eat but
nourishing bread raised in fertile soil; and Venus,
inventor of that clever way of luring us to procreation;
and Artemis, the physician who eases women's birthing pains;
and Proserpine to whom the owl cries in the night.
We have many names for you, and all
are your true names. We have many rituals
for you, and all are your true rituals.
There is no end to you, goddess, heaven's queen.

--Apuleius, The Golden Ass

The goddess, who could turn a deaf ear to her children's cries, had to be encouraged to show her more beneficent side.

This is something that bugs the ever living doo out of me... not just with Goddess spirituality, but with any maybe even every spirituality. This notion that the divine power turns deaf to the pleas of his or her children, and must therefore be placated with prayers and supplications to make him or her comply with our needs.

Grrrr. Just grrrr! As a part of life we do not see the bigger picture. It is therefore somewhat selfish to assume that our wants and our needs should be catered for, just because we want that... or maybe not selfish, but self centered... like the children that we are, I suppose. Okay I can go along with that... I can calm down with that one a little bit, but still... if we cannot see the bigger picture we cannot see the piece of the Universal puzzle that we are that might require that we face x, y and z in order to reach a once more - since all life happens in a circle.

No it doesn't necessarily mean that I find it any easier than the next person facing all the things that life sends my way. Doesn't mean I don't have those moment of 'why me' that people get, or moments of, 'I deserve this because of how I have been.' All of these things still are a part of me, because hey, I'm only human, but maybe knowing that everything that happens is part of a bigger picture helps to give me strength to know that it will all be all right in the end... maybe?

Maybe... but not right now.

Right now I'm suffering a moment of being very very human and railing against everything that is going on in my life, and in the lives of those around me whom I love and care for. If this makes me hypocritical then so be it.

We kneel before her, because she is kind and terrible.
We raise our arms to her, because she is gentle and fierce.

We call out to her, again and gain: Kali, mother, O goddess,
we know it is you who holds up this world, we know

it is you we see shining forth in every being, we know
it is you who is awareness, you who is hunger, you

who is power and peace and faith and beauty and compassion
and contentment and sleep itself and all life, we know

it is you who is our mother, the mother of all forms, and that
you bring love and joy to all who sing your praises.

--Indian poet Chandi

Suffering connects us not only to each other - for all humans suffer - but also to the goddess in her darkest aspect. Without pain, we would not treasure the marvelous delights of life as deeply.

There is a certain tradition among many 'Native' or indiginous peoples of the Shaman as a kind of 'wounded healer.'

He or she is able to more fully connect between the inner and the outer worlds because of some kind of woundedness - either physical or spiritual. The Shaman does not bemoan his condition, for he realises the gift inherent in the challenge, that what has been 'taken' from him is recompensed in what he has been given in return. This is the nature of duality - this is the duality we see reflected in the blackly mirrored surface of the goddesses eyes when she is in her dark aspect.

We would do well to take a leaf out of our ancient, more 'simply connected' brothers and sisters. To recognise that in all life, there is balance, one way or another. We need to embrace our wounded nature, rather than to reject it, as so many of us do, myself included - for I am no saint after all.

I went through the longest thinking myself to be less of a woman, less of a wiccan, less of a priestess due to one small fact - I have PCOS, and because of that, I am naturally infertile. My body doesn't produce ova right, and the ones it does make are weak, and usually fail. That's as much personal information as I'm giving out about that whole thing right now, because that's as much as I feel comfortable with, but there /is/ more, and maybe some time I will share more, bu tnot now.

I let those thoughts consume me (and perhaps to a degree I still feel them, and this leads me to fail as a woman and wife? - that's a thought that only just occurred to me and I must consider further, but right now I must not digress), until I became bitter with them, instead of seeing the one great gift that came with my deficit. My capacity for love. Love for the children of the world; love for the suffering; love, compassion and empathy for those in the same or similar situations to me...

But along with that love is the glassy mirror-eyed dark goddess inside of me, fiercely protective; of the little ones, of women and their 'rights' to mastery of their own bodies - their own existence - their own being... She is not one to cross in this regard... and while I would never impose some of my own personal beliefs onto other people... neither, my friends, am I.

Yes, I have been given a great gift in the 'wound' that I carry. Now I only need to learn to embrace, and not to reject it.

In the heart, a merry fire burned, or cedar and of sandalwood, so fragrant that a visitor smelled it from afar. Calypso sat there, busy at her loom, her golden shuttle darting and her light voice lilting with song. A thick forest surrounded her home, with alder, poplar, and cypress, whose sweet smell hung in the air like smoke. And in the trees great birds had nested: owls and hawks and crows of the sea. efore her door grew a massive vine so hung with grapes it seemed the fruit would break the branches. Four streams passed neary, irrigating beds of violets and flowering herbs. Even the gods were charmed when they visited Calypso's home.

--Homer, The Odyssey

Within each of us, too, there lies a dream of home, of a place where we can e at peace and at rest.

The cliche, 'home is where the heart is' is particularly poignant for me. And home has multiple meanings each of different significance.

Home is where I come to after a day at work, where I can throw on house clothes or PJs, or lie down and take a nap, or rail, or cry, or put on loud music, or soft, and just be. I have a place such as this in my apartment in Cairo... and when I was not there, it was my bedroom in my parent's house in Leicester.

Home is where my parents have a home - a place I know that if all else falls, I can come to, find solace safety and a place to stay. Yes there were a couple of occasions when I have made the call, to ask, "can I come home." Even knowing that I didn't need to ask, still I asked anyway. When Alec and I separated in 2003, that was the last time... and as always I received the answer, "of course you can." Whether that is a place called home or a 'people' called home I'm not so sure. The nurturing and protection of parents, and particularly of Mother.

But Home... true home that truly is wherein my heart dwells. Ironically it is the one place where I am not allowed, as yet, to stay for more than 90 days. Home is the love, and the jobs, and the games and the activities and the space that I share with Mir. It is where I feel safe, and loved. Where I know I will be accepted for who and what I am with all of my faults as well as my virtues alike - and where I do the same. It is the combination of both of the first two 'meanings' of home, and yet is more than either - far more - because there is a sense of the 'inner' in the Home I share with my beloved... with the one that holds my heart and my life in her hands that defies definition because to do so diminishes it, and yet at the same time has a spiritual dimension that makes it truly a part of me on a deeper level than just coming back to a space in which I am safe and loved.

I think it is that inner notion of Home that defines a part of who I am both together with, and apart from my wonderful guy.

What is my goddess making?
Saule is plaiting a sieve, a basket
in which to sift the spring rain.
Look! Her little daughter is dressed

in a garment of dew. Her fair hair
is hidden beneath a white veil
and over the viel is a wreath
her mother wove of fresh leaves.

--Lithuanian folksong

Spring rains may demand an umbrella, but we should celebrate their coming as a signal of the goddess' love and concern for us.

There are so many places today facing drought because of the lack of rains, and yet, we still see them as an inconvenience when they come. It's one of those times when I despair of humans as a race of people. Never satisfied... never understanding the connection between the water we take for granted and the life that follows it.

It feels to me like just another rejection of our connection with the Land and with the world around us; another rejection of the connection with the Universe. It's a sorry state of affairs. It always elicits a wry chuckle from me also, when my colleagues complain of the rare rains that come in Cairo - rains that are sorely needed in the desert for there to be any life at all. I can't help but be reminded of Arrakis in such times.

And yet... this week particularly, I find myself doing the same. Wanting it not to rain, not to be cold so that Mir and I can spend time outside. Have dinner outside; have a fire outside; read outside in the hammock... all these things, because I had wanted outside time. Had tried to fix a schedule that would allow us as much time in the yard as possible. Of course there have now been other things that have gotten in our way - things that are unavoidable and must be done. So I will do what we must always do, and adapt the plans so that they can still 'fit' with the available time. I could meditate on my flexibility, or my frustrations that force that flexibility - but that would be a very negative thing to do and I don't wish to be negative.

In other news, sweet Jennifer has finally passed, slipping away peacefully, it seems, for we found her curled up between us as if she had just curled herself up and gone to sleep - never to wake. She is now across that rainbow bridge, frolicking with her sister, and the other members of her family whom she outlived.

Lady, goddess, your light covers
the world like that of the round moon,
Pattini, we offer these dances to you.
Be patient with us if our steps go astray,
for you are more skillful than we are.
Mighty Pattini, be joyous as you receive
all that we offer you, you who were born
from the womb of the lotus flower,
ou who bloom as beautifully
as the blue lotus itself, O noble lady,
O blooming goddess, accept our humble offerings.

--Sri Lankan hymns to the goddess

Unconsciousness of the earth impoverishes us.

This is so definitely the truth as far as I am concerned. Yesterday when coming in to land, I followed my own personal ritual, looking out of the aircraft windows, trying to see the land below me - coming home, and with that looking; that seeking, comes the desire to be out in the woods around the house. Reconnecting with everything... there's just something very special about being here, aside from it being 'home' that helps with that reconnection happening that doesn't seem to happen anywhere else.

Do I feel impoverished because of that lack of connection? Yes, but I've as yet to discover anywhere that I feel comfortable with goin to make that connection while in Cairo, and anyway it's not the same when it's not the green and the trees and the state of 'earth' that is alive in my heart. Sure the desert has its own kind of harsh beauty, and in fairness I've not really seen much of the land around where I'm living at the moment, but it's definitely the sense of greenery that I'm missing.

So here I sit, comfortable at last, surrounded by the green and the living trees and all of everything that makes me feel calm and alive, in the good company of my wonderful guy, spending time playing Skylanders, but knowing that I can reach out and touch the connection with earth at any time. And yes... I feel the richer for it. I feel love.

In the north, dark purple light appears.
In the east, yellow light appears.
From the earth, flowers appear,
yearning to live a long and joyous life.

We are those flowers. We are the Butterly Maidens.

Listen to our song! We sing to the creator.
And the earth repeats our song to the creator.
We begin singing as soon as we see
the yellow light of dawn, the dark retreating.

Our sound repeats and repeats.
We are the Butterfly Maidens.

--Hope Kachina Songs

As long as you are alive, you are as full of beginnings as the new dawn, the new spring. Rise, like the Butterfly Maidens, and fly toward what you desire.

Each new dawn, each new day, each new moment always filled with such possibilities. If I fly like a Butterfly Maiden from one to the next, how will I enjoy them all. I needs must be a Butterfly that drinks the nectar of each experience; to take her fill.

I've been thinking a lot this week about the many things I want to do when I'm home, from photography to sitting outside with the fire going, or sitting outside reading in the hammock... going for walks, visiting Biltmore... cooking outside.... playing games... the list of possibilities though finite in some respects, feels endless - in a good way. The world is my playground, and I can do as I wish, as I desire... I can spread my wings and let them bring me to where I wish to be. What I want to be doing.

Of course there's also the old in with the new... that I will have time in the day to perhaps type a word or two on my interrupted novels. But it's not a deadly pressure this time as it's always felt before, but the promise of a pleasure.

There's been such a shift in the way I'm thinking about things, and in the way things feel because of it, everything feels positive, exciting and renewed. Everything feels good.

Who white is she?
She is white as the inside of a lotus.

How do we adorn her?
We adorn her with chains of gold.

How do we dress her?
We dress her with white garlands
and necklets and armbands of finest gold.

How does she regard us?
She regards us with eyes that are as large as
a fully-opened lotus on a pool.

And how does she respond?
Oh, she smiles, she smiles, she smiles.

--Prayer to Lakshmi, India

But there is a wealth as well in the lovely smile of a friend,in the joyous voice greeting us when we return home, in the bounce of a pet's walk, in the deep eyes of an aged relative.

The gold that decks the goddess' image is precious, but to bring us happiness she is not limited to dead metal. Look around you through this day and find the ways in which the goddess blesses you. Acknowledge, and delight in the generosity she has shown you.

Today is Ostara - blessed be.

The actual timing of the Equinox was at 5:15 Universal Time - at which point I was lucky enough to be standing outside in the sunshine. Sure it was chilly, but to be out at that time was a special moment for me. Just standing in the sun, contemplating the day.

Saw a Lapwing today... such a beautiful bird, so rare in England. This one must have had a nest somewhere nearby, because she was certainly making a fuss to try and hide it from the crows. But her flight, it was so wonderful... wheeling and diving... sometimes straight up before she would reverse direction and then loop and twist in the air. I could have watched her for a good long time... as it was the time I saw her was a gift.

And a more secular gift... today I managed to catch up with Noura - the head of Arabic studies at school. I asked her if she knew anyone in Rehab that could and would be willing to teach me to speak Arabic. She said she would help me to find a tutor, and that meantime, she would teach me. Meanwhile, my children continue to 'test' me every now and then. Today they asked me two questions. One to which I knew the answer and could say it. One to which I knew the answer but could not say it because I don't know the number 44 - I only know the number to ten. They tried to teach me, but I have forgotten it - it was very long. I do however know how to say 'my name is Eirian.' They were pleased with that. My children are such a gift to me also. They are loving, and very giving; brightness and light - just adorable.

And lastly I want to speak of a gift that I was given in the middle of a difficult time. Mir gave me a very timely reminder of the need to look for and see the positive - not just the negative as I had been doing. It really has made such a change to so many things. I think I'm even learning to smile again.

On Hildar Hill the goddess sat.
Poets someday will say that
light itself paled beside her,
casting shadows on the wall.
On Hildar Hill the goddess sat,
radience streaming from her.
Poets someday will say that
looking at her was like staring at fire.
On Hildar Hill the goddess sat,
combing out her fine hair.
Poets will someday say that
it was as fine-spun silk
and shone like gold.

--Song from the Faroe Islands

Absorbed in the world's beauty, we move together toward the dawning springtime.

After my wake up call yesterday; after realising that Mir is right, and that a big part of my issues both here and elsewhere, is the fact of my ingrained negativity... that I look at everything by looking at the negative and not the positive, it's time to do something about it. Not to talk, but to do.

I'm incredibly lucky - blessed - to have in my life, and to have around me some great people. None more so than my guy, who in spite of everything, or maybe even because of it, is self aware enough in a way that I seem to resist, to hold up her hands and say "I recognise that I..." Through our conversations, our admissions and confession, through hearing what she had to say, I begin to feel as though scales over my eyes and heart have broken free, and I am able to peel them away from the parts of me that needed freeing. I missed so many of the ways she was supporting me because I was caught in a downward spiral of negativity, and I apologies for that, she's been amazing and I embrace that love she's given to me and mirror it with all my heart.

Egypt isn't to blame for what I'm experiencing, what I'm feeling, nor my behavior in response to that. I am, and I can do something about it.

I also accepted the fact that I haven't always been using these posts as they are meant to be used. They're not meant to be used to whine and complain, but to comment on aspects of my faith, and path, and to reconnect with the goddess and that side of things. Yes, some of the posts I'm made have done that, but not all of them, few of them in fact. This too must and will change. And yes, I'm human - can't be a saint, as Mir said, even the saints weren't saints, but yes I can make sure that I separate the everyday whines/complains from what I want to be the reconnecting with my inner self.

Light is returning, and I'm able to see the springtime beauty around and within me, and I am able to embrace that, by looking positively... by acting accordingly. Yes, there are things that I want to do - like complete the novel - that I need to be at the computer to do them, which means shutting myself away - but also it doesn't hurt to take a while out to do other things, be less of a hermit. Like today... I needed something from the store, so I stayed on the school bus past my apartment as it goes past the store - saved a walk - and two other colleages went to the store, and then I was invited for coffee afterwards. The temptation was there to say no, that I had to get back, but then no... I embraced the chance to sit outside in the warm afternoon sun, with two people I work with and want to know a little better. We stayed for quite some time, until it had gotten dark as a matter of fact, and it was a good positive experience. Just a little example and reminder to myself of what can be. However (this part is tongue in cheek), note to self - do not order French coffee ever again. Talk about being able to stand the spoon up in coffee! Wow! I think next time I'll try mint tea!

The world is beautiful. Life here though different and sometimes difficult can be beautiful too, but more importantly is being able to see it, and then to share it with the ones I love.