finale to the latest healing request

So the man for whome I was asked to do a working of healing survived the surgery and recovered completely from it. However the tumors in his brain were just the tip of the iceburg it turns out. It is throughout his entire body, lungs, liver, spleen, even into his bones. It is a death sentence. I didn't recieve word on the exact stage of the cancer, but based on this description I'd guess stage four. All there is to do now is help the family cope as best as I can in what way I can.

Coming to the end of the Dedicants Path work

So I have been on the ADF Dedicant's Path for a year and a month now, and I am all but finished. The last step before I submit it is to perform my Dedicant's Oath. I have decided that I shall give my oath in public at the Cottonwood Protogrove's Public Imbolc rite. This feels appropriate as I consider Brighid a patron.
I am also about to start my second semester of nursing school next Tuesday. Despite this, I plan to move forward with my religious pagan studies and start working the Clergy training program as well.

Meditation journal update: Nin on my mind

I am still meditating daily, Still doing the two powers and the tree of light exercises. Why?, because they work for me. Today after the two powers and tree of light, I found myself going on a spirit-walk and landed at the court of Lugh. This was a good thing as I was in need of guidence in regards to some leadership questions of the protogrove. Answers came as a mixed combination of words and images. The Ogham I pulled after my return and the end of my meditation was Nin. Very fitting for the situation. It was a reminder and a suggestion for a course of action.

Helping the Employer

This morning I was asked to do a major working of healing for the Water witche's employer. He has fallen ill while out of state and is in a hospital. I don't know the nature of the illness. I was asked to do prayers, energy healing, and spirit evocation. I did all of thee above. I used the ritual outline I learned in ADF and Ian C.'s work. I opened the gates, gave offerings, took an omen. That being Tinne, I took it as a good omen. I invoked the blessing into the chalice and drank the waters of life. From there I called on my familiar and spirit guid the stag. I asked him to bring to me a spirit that would do good healing work. He left and while I waited for his return I did an energy working using the two powers and healing intention for the Employer. Stag returned with a Sow. I spoke to the spirit for a bit, felt it could do the work, and gave it instructions and then offerings. I finished with offerings and prayers to Bridgit for the Employers healing. Phew! I then did a full Ogham casting for the Employer over the next month. I see illness as being the central focus for the month with healing coming. Death does not seem to be coming.
Let's see what happens.

The Orchard of my youth

The drive was long as always. Eleven and a half hours alone in the car. As I turned off the paved road onto the dirt road upon which I grew up, the change was obvious like coming upon a bombed out city block after turning a corner.

I was lucky to grow up where I did. Lucky to live at the liminal place between farmland and the wilds. Lucky to grow up on a dirt road with only one visible neighbor, farmers fields and the ancient prune orchard on the other side of the dirt road. In the early spring those trees burst with little white flowers and it was magical to walk among them playing peekaboo with the fox and the deer. In the summer my parents and I would walk through the prune orchard on lazy warm evenings, headed over to the peach orchard. We'd follow the meandering deer paths without much care knowing that they too ended at the peach orchard. I have spent countless hours of the fall time in the prune orchard, grease paint on my face, bow in hand, tucked away behind a tree or in a blind made out of the blackberry bush that borders the orchard, in the hopes a deer would offer itself to the hunt. I remember the flight of an arrow, the red trail it made. I remember the falcon who took his dinner from a flock of Starlings in a tree not twenty yards from me. I remember cold misty winter walks among the bare trees who seemed to stand like silent soldiers in nice clean rows. Not so long ago I remember taking my kids on their first explorations of the old orchard. The mixed looks of excitement, awe, and nervousness.

I stopped the car. I couldn't help it as I looked out over the orchard. The trees no longer standing like soldiers on parade, but instead laying down, blasted by some bulldozer, their bodies broken and scattered. Some thrown into carnal piles awaiting the torch. The lonely mists still hung about, but the orchard is gone and all that is left to me are my wandering memories.

FACE PALM...

Ah..a winter solstice ritual. Nothing major, just my three other protogrove mates and myself, all working together in practiced harmony doing a basic ADF ritual of blessing. No scripted lines, just the four of us speaking from the heart as inspiration fills us. My grove mates were fantastic, everything went great till about the time I am going to drink in the blessing and I have the sudden realization that...I FORGOT TO BLINKING OPEN THE BLINKING GATES!!! and sadly the only small bit of consolation I had was in thinking that none of the others noticed either! doh! Seriously...how does one forget that?! It's only a key part of the ritual. Apparently the fairies made off with my brain. I have been doing this ritual format for a year now, I'd think I'd freekin' have it down by now. Well the nice thing about living in CA is I can make like the kid in the picture. ;) now...where is the nearest Palm tree...

Lighting the dark places: An essay about the meaning of Winter Solstice

Holly hangs in the door way, the wreath hangs on the door; the tree is lit and decked out in our finest tree ornaments. Candles are lit and the smell of sugar cookies hangs in the air. Yes all the signs of Yule are here, but what does it all mean?

The winter solstice has been marked in some way by every Indo-European culture. To the Romans it was Saturnalia and later Sol Invictus, to the Teutonic folk it was Yule. To the Irish it was…ah, but that is the question. It would seem we have just enough evidence to know that the winter solstice was an important day to the pre-Christian people of Ireland, but we have no idea what they did to celebrate it or what exactly it meant to them. This poses a few problems when, like myself, one’s hearth culture is Irish. So I find myself falling back on the traditions I know, most of which come from Yule traditions. Things like the Yule tree, evergreens, and holly to kiss under; to name just a few of the trappings of this high day. What these things all tie back to in some way is honoring the rebirth of the sun, and hope for our future. The winter solstice is important for on the day of greatest darkness, when there seems that the light is about to fade, we find our hope renewed knowing that the sun will again return, that the winter will end and the spring will again come and the wheel of the seasons ever turns on. Yule is a time of giving to others. It’s about sharing good will and good food. It’s about rejoicing in hope, about honoring the sun; it’s about light, even more so it’s about BEING the light. It’s about being the weak little candle flame pushing back the seemingly overwhelming darkness in another’s life. It is about the smell of evergreens, in the home, it is about baking cookies for your friends, it is about the kiss of peace, hope and love under the sprig of mistletoe.

The dawn is cold and grey; I am bundled against the penetrating cold of the morning, my hot coco steaming warm in my hands. I wait in the darkness, eyes scanning the ever lightening horizon, when suddenly; shooting me in the face is the first beams of the sun on the solstice morning. It’s not the cold that shoots through me, but exhilaration. Like that first sliver of light, the winter solstice has come to represent that moment of inspiration that can suddenly shoot through a person’s inner darkness, giving them an inner light. This is a good time of year to stop and think about what slivers of inspiration a person would like to have in the coming months. It’s the time of year to look into our selves and find our inner darkness, the places where we are ignorant, stumbling, or lost. Then upon finding it, we have the opportunity, the imperative, to bring in the light of inspiration, to become “enlightened”.

Winter solstice is a crazy time of year. Full of sparkling and blinking lights, sales, shopping, office and school holiday parties, commitments to family, and decorations. We get pulled in so many directions at once it’s easy to lose sight of what this high day is about. So take a time out each day of the “season” just to remind ourselves to honor the light of the sun, the light within, and to shine it on the dark places of our spirit.