Thinning Worlds

At Samhain I honor my Ancestral Dead and formally welcome them into my home and hearth. It’s a common practice for witches, pagans, and ancestor worship practitioners. It’s also something I do every day, not just in autumn. The other side of the Halloween coin is May Day, otherwise known as Beltane, and it’s another time when the lines between the living and the dead blur.

The living, the dead, and the energy beings that bleed into this world from another. There are too many stories of fairy folk from differing mythologies for me to not be open to the possibility that they exist on another plane. I mean, once you believe in ghosts the door to what is possible stands wide open.

And I believe in ghosts.

            They visit me in my dreams. But when the worlds are thin I see them in the waking world as well. I see movements out of the corner of my eye, things tucking behind chairs and bookshelves that aren’t there when I look for them straight-on. I feel people entering the room behind me but no matter how certain my body is that I am not alone I cannot see anyone with my naked eye. And my scalp prickles as if a hand has gently touched me. It warms beneath another palm. I no longer reach up to check because I know it is not a physical presence.

This is how I live. The blurs are what I refer to as wayward spirits, harmless travelers drawn towards memories of being alive. The thinner the worlds get the brighter my inner lighthouse gets. I have a room lurker who is also an old fixture I call the German Guy. I know he belongs to my maternal Grandma Art’s side and as she passed last spring I am not surprised he has come to sit with me. The hand I feel on my scalp is my Great-Grandma Elsie. She is my spirit traffic cop, never far. When the worlds bleed across each other her presence is more vigilant.

I leave out cups of tea and horribly salted chicken wings as a thank you to her. Or strawberry shortcake in season. She lived with us in the summers and was alive until I was seventeen. There is a space in my heart that was shaped by her, a part of me that remembers how she molded me. She saw what others in my family did not see and now, from a grown-up perspective, her experiences with a difficult son dictated the advice she gave me:

You have to love, anyway. You can’t let the bullies stop you from living your life.

That goes for spirit bullies, too. If you are sensitive to them, they can crowd the room and demand attention. So when I clean my Ancestor Altar and refresh it I call in peaceful spirits that do not wish us harm. I take a shot of some pungent liquor and make an offering at the edge of our property for those spirits seeking offerings with no regard for the living.

There is room for them all to be honored…just out there. Not in my home.

In this thinner world I ask the Ancestors to safeguard those who may not yet be at peace and to watch over their families.

I still grieve for Recent Dead. It wells up as the thinning comes and I can feel spirits more viscerally. I am both reminded of their loss and equally hurt that their ghost has not come to visit. I wish them peace even as I grieve the loss of them, the loss of their physical presence, of their wisdom, of all the time we’ll never have to repair or strengthen wounds and hearts. And I am left to figure out how to move on from unfinished work.

But not alone. Those Who Have Gone Before aid me in my grief. The Ancestral Dead, the centuries of others who have felt such loss, have been deceased long enough that they can hold space for my sorrow. Their physical connection to the World They Knew is long gone and they are drawn to that familiar emotion of loss. Whether intentional or not, they sit with me. I know this. When I am open to it, in my darkest moment, I do not feel alone.

For some people the thought of ghosts is isolating and frightening. It can drive them from a space. We often feel such a way about things we cannot explain. I’ve always trusted what I am experiencing more than just my eyes. We do not see everything and we do not see everything the same way as everyone else. It makes our personal experiences valuable.

Ghosts are real.

Those blurs I see out of the corner of my eye are not all ghosts. After years of working with spirits you can sense/see the difference. Some are land wights waking after a wintry slumber. Finding a way to embrace the life-waking in the same breath as life-transitioning-through-death is a way to honor those who are no more.

Look up the histories of your ancestors and leave offerings appropriate to the lands of your people. I leave out bread and seed and fruit and tea to feed those just waking and I do it in the name of those I miss. In my grief I choose to feed life.

Open your heart to the thinning of the walls between this world and the next. Do not try to quantify or qualify. I will tell you that yes, your loved one is gone. And they are alive. And they are reincarnated. And they are with you. All of that is true, all at once, right now.

Now they are gone. Now they are everywhere.

How will your heart honor them?

Spirit Workings

Dream visitations are usually benign. I used to get them in the corners of my nightmares but they were always apart from the nightmare. You may be a Scrooge who has karmically earned a visit from Marley, in which case have fun. But there is no reason you should be scared of a dream visitation from spirit.

When you do a lot of work with spirits in dreams sometimes you are called to Work. There are ways to help the dead in their realm.

A friend came to me recently, in a dream. He’s been dead for a decade and his death was disarming and unexpected. As was the dream:

I’m in a hotel, wandering around. There’s some kind of wedding. We were right about coming there. Something cried out for help. We set a trap that involved pushing carts around unnoticed and drawing symbols on specific walls.

That night, another body shows up in bed with us. I hitch my breath.

He came to me as he saw himself, like Voldemort in the train station. He is wasted away to skeleton three-quarters his actual size. It breaks my heart and he cannot bear to look at me. He covers his face with his hands, crying.

He’s crying and apologizing for not working harder. He’s humiliated at how I saw him at the end, at how things ended.

I could ask him what happened.

I could ask him who did it.

I could…

But he is broken, swimming in regret and guilt and shame. And I remembered the light in the hospital that came to me when I felt most broken-- I remembered that and all of the things that he did that were good and made him someone we cared about. I pulled it up and shared that with him.

I took his face in my hands and repeated over and over again that he should be proud of the Work that he did, not what he didn’t do. I tell him to let the rest fall away.

I make him look me in the eye to see how I see him.

He removes his hands and his eyes are so piercingly blue.

It takes hours of unflinching gazing. And then he smiles.

In the end there was peace. For both of us.

An Evolution of Spirit

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” ~ Nelson Mandela

I talk pretty on my blog about kindness and compassion. My words are honest and I work every day to live by them. But I wasn’t always this person. We are born with open hearts, and then the world happens and shapes us and we spend the rest of our lives fighting to get back to that original place of faith in humanity. Every year I get closer. But I like people to know how different I was, to understand how much I have changed. Because if they do not perceive my change, how can they believe themselves capable of the same transformation?

“Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

I used to be an anger ball. By that I mean I was very quick to anger. I was angry at the violence I had suffered. Angry at the people around me who found relief by taking out their pain and insecurity on others. I was angry at the hardness of a world I did not seem to belong in. I was no better. I curled in or lashed out, always one of two extremes, as a way of taking what I needed from the world to survive it.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t know there was another way. I was a heavenly body on the inside of the circuit, the sun that the solar system revolved around. I didn’t see that the world was smothering me because I put myself at the center of it. All I saw was that I was suffocating. And I couldn’t see a way out.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” ~Buddha

I was at a crossroads, my own personal Equinox. I was disconnected from myself, from the earth beneath me, from the sky above me. I could see the forest of trees but not the roots of them entwining and holding each other up. I didn’t know how to bend. I didn’t know how to flow. Everything was fire and lava. I wasn’t living in the world, I was burning my way through it.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

When we feel lonely we push out at the world, keeping it further at bay. I pushed everyone away before they could leave me, before they could hurt me. I thought pain was inevitable and that was the face I gave.

“Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” ~Mary Oliver

It wasn’t what I wanted. I was at a crossroads and I made a choice. I turned away from chaos and insanity, from trying to fit in and struggling to breathe. I let go of the anger that was eating me from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just released it in small breaths. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it up to the universe. I rediscovered faith and turned my attention to finding a path that felt firm beneath my feet. I took the time to get to know myself.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” ~Danielle LaPorte

I had defined myself for so long by what I didn’t like, what I didn’t want, and what I thought I was supposed to want, that I found I didn’t know what it was I did want. What did I like? Who was I? I first heard an answer in a ritual in the dark in the mountains. Deep in the core of you, what are you? I quieted my soul and listened, and the word that came from my mouth surprised me.

“Light,” I said, with tears in my throat. And later, the overwhelming answer I found was kindness, goodness, compassion, and joy. When I removed the protective layers from my heart, I discovered the brightness I had been searching for all along within me.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” ~Brené Brown

The world I live in is a better place for having me in it. I believe that. I feed it my hope and my optimism and my compassion. It does not mean I am perfect. It does not mean my heart is not weighed down by the violence and evil that men do. It does not mean that I do not cry in the quiet nights within the safety of my walls. But I cry because I am connected now. I feel part of the earth beneath me and the sky above me. I feel part of the roots connecting the trees beneath the surface.

“Softness is not weakness. It takes courage to stay delicate in a world this cruel.” ~Beau Taplin

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain S. Thomas

Do not be ashamed of the ways the world has tested you. Do not be ashamed of the times you have fallen, of the times you have failed to get it right. What matters is that you picked your head up. What matters is that you picked yourself up and you kept going, even though you did not have faith that what lay ahead was better. It is not our perfect moments that define who we are. It is the moments we are imperfect that shows the spirit that lies beneath the flesh and bone. It is how we carry ourselves through those moments that reveal the soul of us.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

We are meant to follow our own paths. It is never too late to change tracks and find your way back to you. Our original state is harmony and peace. The world is hard but there are others in it, lighting candles in their hearts against the dark, struggling to grow despite the resistance. Every action is a choice. When you stand at the crossroad, open yourself to compassion and hope. You just might be surprised where you find it.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli


[Originally posted September 24, 2014.]

Preparing to Revere the Dead

Spring has finally sprung. This is the time of year that I pull out my box from Samhain, from when we spoke the names of Ancestors and Beloved Dead and burned their ribbons in the fire. It is the time I take to prepare for the shrines I hold between Beltane and Samhain.

I pulled out white muslin and cut new ribbons, one inch by twenty-one inches. I cut one-hundred and one ribbons, adding them to what was left of last year. I folded them up and slid a straight pin through them.

A little danger as sacrifice for standing in the presence of the Ancestors.

I cut blue ribbons for those who died since last year’s shrines. My hands trembled at the list of names of loved ones who passed this last year. The seasons of hard losses stick under my ribs.

I ironed the ribbons one at a time. It is a meditation I enjoy. That level of mindfulness is the least I could do. So many remembered dead dance through my heart, as they did in life.

Mark Dutcher Eaton*, Melinda Tanner, Elizabeth Fricke, Jeff Patterson, Willie Lingenfelter, Elsie Durant Riddle*, Gabe Reynolds, Joel Pelletier, Victoria Eaton*, Edward J. Jerge II, Trent Illig, Donna MacDonald Riddle*, Jurgen Banse-Fey, Charles ‘Sienna Fox’ Duvall, Jack Singer, Tommy Amyotte, Paul Seeloff, Richard James Riddle*, Andrew Begley, Susan Alvarez-Hughes, Coswald Mauri*, Norm Herbert, Jad Alexander, Dr. August Staub, Princess Leather Falcor*, Melvin Chausse, John Simeon Croom, Karl Weber, Luna Jackalope*, Albert Gritzmacher III, Freya Moon Greenleaf, Patches the Crazy Circus-Freak Dog*, Barbara Jean Schiffert, Bella the Bear-Cat*, Joe Quagliano*, Soja Arumpanayil, Tracy Lee Flint Jr., Christina Adkins, Harry T. Brashear, David Ruston Eaton*, Carol Quagliano*, Paul Ames*, Robert Kiff, Sumant Malhotra, David Knight, Amy Maxwell, Ruth Ann Livingston Kiff, Zami*, Joseph Croteau, Norm Eaton*, Patricia Ann Art-Slomba*…

They are not forgotten.

I breathed deep and exhaled. And then my heart skipped.

This year the heat startled me. It pulled me from my litany of names, from my ancestors. The heat scared me. It’s a sign of how well-recovered I feel that I stepped back into my spiritual habit without remembering that I have not handled the iron since being on fire. I forgot that my wife did this part for me, sacredly, the last two years.

I ironed all of the ribbons. Slowly, reverently, cautiously, and carefully. My hands were unsteady and clumsy as I have been since recovering but I did not burn myself. My ancestors stood with me, hovering like they did in the Burn ICU.

But I ironed all the ribbons.

My wife came home soon after and ironed the prayer flags I use to mark the entrances to the shrines. There are 63 flags, all hand cut and hand sewn. It was a way of layering magic, fluttering flags calling those who hear to come greet their ancestors.

This is what it means to build a practice. This is how I prepare to honor the dead. Focus. Intention. Work. The spirits from the other side who meet me in the middle sure do help. This is how we open a doorway that others may walk through if they desire it.

When Death Settles in for a Long Visit

Our eldest cat is old. At 22 years she's roughly 98-102 in people years. That's the toll her long life has taken on her body. She has outlived two of her sisters. She still uses her litter box. She still prowls the house at night, even though it involves more yowling and getting lost in the dark. Her instincts to hunt are strong but her eyesight is not.

She has slight dementia. It's been a long three years of worrying over her, reassuring her, finding her, calming her, etc. We love her. Of course we do. But some days it's like having a stranger in our home. And death is a shadow fixated on her movements.

Even as I type this, I am prepared to change tenses. I am accepting of the reality that even in the few days before I post this Zami may pass. Every day carries the possibility that she may no longer be with us. And yet she might live another five years.

Who knows?

It's hard to live at that edge, that boundary. Anyone who has ever cared for a dying loved one knows this space. That place of difficulty when they get forgetful. When you have to get up during the night to check on them. When you haven't seen them in a while and you raw straws or play rock-paper-scissors to see who is going to make sure they're breathing. And you make deals with your deities for more time, longer days, and that they pass peacefully in their sleep.

There are days and moments where you will wish their ending to come swiftly. Because you're human and to be a caretaker is to be drained and running on fumes and unable to say fuck it when you need to because there is care to be given. We are human.

We're readying ourselves for a retreat to the mountain. We will tell her we love her before we leave. We will snuggle her and tell her what a beautiful girl she is and how much we love her. And we will tell her that if she is ready, we understand.

You wish kindness for their suffering, but what of your suffering heart?

Let the living care for you. We do what we must for those we love. Listen to your instincts. Listen to your heart. Listen to your head. They will not agree but if you look for the light, the way will become clear. Only you know the best choices for your loved o

The poet Mary Oliver has a piece called "In Blackwater Woods" that has a delicious ending that I cling to when death involves my loved ones. It's easy to be strong for other people. But it's hard when the potentiality of death is in our home. Every breath is precious.

"...To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go."

Disclaimer: I did not get to post this piece before I left on my retreat. Zami was gone when we returned yesterday, which made it feel all-the-more important to publish this as it originally was.

Half a Year

Dragon and Phoenix by Nico Niemi

I started my rehabilitation six months ago the Solstice. The longest day of burning sun has a different meaning for me this year, as I drape myself in shawls and hats and gloves to keep out of its eye. I am halfway through my year-long recovery and much further ahead than I anticipated; not as much as I would like.

I feel a stronger kinship with Spirit than I did before my accident. I saw the dead in a way I haven’t before, fairly corporeal. I saw my Great-Grandma at my bedside. I saw scores of other unknowns come and pray for me, lay ghostly hands on me to heal me. The known and unknown worlds moved in tandem. Science and magic were one in the same.

I wouldn't say my connection to Spirit is different than before. It's more like I see it clearly now. I see each of my breaths and all of my choices much more clearly.

That's what knowledge is, what wisdom means, why learned people were both respected and feared. Knowledge is to have your eyes opened. And once you see, you cannot unsee. Once you know, you cannot unknow.

It’s a choice. I always want to know.

There are some things that are hard to bear. I am in pain because I was on fire. It could be overwhelming to sit in that truth. But in application, I was on fire and now I am not, because the body is a fricking amazing animal.

I have new beautifully tender skin that is teaching me what it means to experience the natural world for the first time. Again. I am walking. I am healing. I am transforming and growing. I am the phoenix rising from the ashes. I am the dragon waking from a long slumber. I am the sun emerging from behind the moon.

I know that spirit is always around us. So is life. So is death. We dance with all every day and there is no reason to fear it, only reason to surrender to it. Remember that you are the darkness and the light. Embrace it. Breathe. And live. Every moment is a gift.

The Practice of Hanging Names

When I created my first ancestor altar it was meant to be a place and space to honor those who came before me. I was only looking for a quiet space that could be made sacred, to light candles and say names. It was a good place to start and my ancestors became a meditation of names burned deep into my bones.

After a year of devotional practice and attendance to my altar, I had a firm foundation and I was ready for something less passive. I was prepared for the next step, to reach out to the names I had been speaking for connection and counsel.

My personal altar changed and the travelling shrines I created during the year did as well. I wanted them to be a space, whatever the place, for spirits and humans to meet, where I could speak to them with greater chance of being heard, and vice versa. But I wanted the shrines to be thoughtfully provocative to the senses, to help blur the line between the living and what comes after.

I had been doing research into my Slavic genealogy and then into early Slavic pagan practices, trying to bridge a gap from the last known-to-me name and their unknown ancestors. I stumbled across information describing how, when babies were born, a piece of earth was placed in their mouths as the first food they would ingest, as a means of keeping them always connected. Then, the umbilical cord was tied to a tree in the center of the village, where it would leather over time, swaying in the breeze with the cords of those who had come before them.

I had the thought that someday, when I had a home that had a tree, I would tie a natural ribbon on it for each of my ancestors, and let them decay away. That visual stayed with me so strongly, that I began to include it in all of the shrines I help co-create. I offer people the chance to write the names of ancestors or deceased loved ones on ribbons cut from natural fabrics, and hang them on an installation. When the shrine comes down, I roll the ribbons up and keep them until All Hallows, where we read the names on them out loud and burn them in our sacred fire, sending them up like prayers.

The unexpected layer of the magic for me came in the first shrine we created like this. I was sitting in it at dusk and the ribbons swayed gently in the evening breeze. And I peered through the veil they created. I peered through it and I heard a woman's laughter. On the other side of the ribbons, on the other side of water, two young women laughed on a floating bridge.

I remembered that one of the ways to truly honor the dead was to be alive in the world.

Stone Ally as Healer

My hospital room was up on the sixth floor and I had a small window that showed the brick wall of a building across the way. I went weeks without seeing nature and I went nuts. Even though I knew that beneath the floor, beneath the hospital, beneath the basements, there was earth. But I felt so disconnected. My family brought me two precious things: a piece of birch limb and a flourite crystal.

I'm a bit of a stone geek and rock nerd and I can feel the different energy between different varieties of crystals and minerals. I consider them to be great allies in negotiating the flow of energy. Flourite happens to have enormous healing properties.

When I was scared, or when they changed my dressings, or when I meditated, I often held my flourite to my chest. Instead of trying to reach down beneath the hospital with my thoughts, I held the crystal to my body. It was always cool to the touch, and the way the crystal cleaved inside, and caught the light, it helped me go deeper and deeper into my meditation, into growing new skin cells and helping the grafts knit together.

And it soothed me. When I cried I held it to my forehead. It took the feverish flush from me.

The large stone was colored like a spring day against the gloomy winter afternoons. The sun is coming, it sang. It was born from somewhere in the earth, compressed and colored by fire. By fire. I held onto that. And we healed together.

The Rite of Passage in Trick-or-Treating

When I think of Halloween, my mind drifts to cups of mulled cider, the crunch of fresh apples, bright orange jack o’ lanterns, crisp leaves underfoot and the smoky breath in the evening air that foretells the coming of winter. The holidays of my childhood evoke memories of monster movies and spider webs, pillowcases full of candy, bobbing for apples, spooky houses and things unknown.

And trick-or-treating.

Once a year we had permission to, and were encouraged to, dress in costumes while travelling door-to-door, collecting candy in our pillowcases. Looking back, I understand that Halloween was a chance for an insecure girl to wear another skin, someone else I might be. Our parents would ask us, “What do you want to be for Halloween?” and the universe would open before me. When I didn’t have an idea for a costume I would raid my parents’ closet and come out some version of hobo, hippie or gypsy. Halloween, dipping us into darkness, was ripe with possibility for those among the living.

Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain, pronounced sow-en, eventually coming to America with immigrants in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Children went out into the night carrying lanterns lit with candles, called samhnag, made from turnips. The root vegetables were carved with frightening faces to scare away the spirits wandering the night. Children went from home to home, guised in supernatural costumes, where they were given offerings of food or coins. The gifts were meant to help the children ward off any spirits wishing to do harm on Samhain, the night when the dead walked again.

Some later customs refer to it as Souling, where children would offer prayers for the dead in return for a small cake. At houses where they were refused, they would batter the door with the butt ends of turnips. One of the earliest records of guising for Halloween comes from 1895 Scotland. A North American reference to it in a newspaper in Ontario in 1911, reports that children would go guising between six and seven on Halloween, spilling songs and rhymes and being rewarded for them with candies and nuts. Trick or Treating as we know it in America didn’t begin until the 1950s.

Our parents carried us door-to-door when we were children and later, when we could walk on our own, they would coax and encourage us to go up and ring the doorbell while they waited for us on the sidewalk after a whispered reminder of what we were meant to say. The walk to the porch was long to my short legs. The temperature in the air dropped in the space between my parent and the heat behind the unfamiliar door opening before me. After a hearty “Trick or treat!” and a piece of candy dropped in our pillowcase we would run back to our parent, back to safe, and on to the next home.

The first year that we went out trick-or-treating without chaperone- our own little gang of tricksters- was an early, and personal, rite of passage. Mom stayed home to mind the door and was busy making sheets of homemade pepperoni pizza so it would be hot and waiting when we came in out of the cold. We walked the neighborhood and then the same route we walked every morning to elementary school. Up one side of the street and home the other. It was familiar and known, but in the cloak of darkness it felt foreign. Landmarks stood in shadow and we needed new eyes to find our way.

We were being trusted to watch out for each other, to stay safe, to cross streets wisely and not to stray beyond the streets we knew, or the ones we were told we could travel. As children we didn’t realize how far the web of grown ups-who-knew-each-other spun and we were not hip to the fact that we were never in any true danger.  But that unknown is an essential element to the rites of passage that test our mettle and help us grow. The cold leaves crunched underfoot as we ran from porch light to porch light, pillow cases filling fast with candies my brother and sister and I would later sort through and trade (always setting aside some tootsie rolls for my dad).

There was one house that was always decorated fantastically for the trick-or-treaters. And then one year, the house was barren, the only decoration a scarecrow flopped onto the porch with a bowl of candy in its lap. A lot of houses that closed for the night would put the candy bowl out on the porch with a note. As we closed upon the porch, I felt a strange feeling in my belly and I stopped. That’s a person, I thought. I knew that when we got up there, the scarecrow was going to grab us.

We stood still, watching the scarecrow and debating whether or not it could be a real person. We dared someone to see what kind of candy was in the bowl so we could gauge whether or not it was worth it. The scarecrow didn’t move the entire time and was sitting at a strange angle. We approached in a group and as I reached into the bowl… the scarecrow grabbed my hand as we screamed and ran halfway back down the sidewalk. A familiar voice laughed, assuring us it was our neighbor. We stood our ground and made him show his face before we went back for the candy we had earned.

There was a thrill in being able to be brave without the need for a parent. On our own we had evaluated the threat, calculated a plan and supported each other in carrying it out, calling on the energies of our Other skins to aid us. On Halloween we stood in the shadow of no one. It was always light when we started our adventure and in the joy of running from porch to porch we would lose the subtle slip into darkness until we were cold and tired and our bags were heavy with loot. Often, home seemed far away. We would slip home and share stories of what we had seen on our travels.

The next morning’s walk to school, I was aware that the same-old route I had been taking every morning was different. It was bigger. The houses weren’t just landmarks anymore. They were also skins of homes with families and faces inside of them, containing other children who thought the world was no bigger than the size of their house. On that morning I understood the world was bigger than my house, my block, my route to school. There was more of it than I could comprehend.

As a child, on Halloween night I walked with demons and devils, witches, ghosts and ghouls borrowing human skin, along with superheroes and princesses. I dared to enter dark places and returned from them unharmed. In the turning of the world, I learned I could enter the darkness and return. Maybe not unscathed, but I could return and know the healing would come. Each year now, as I drop candy into the bags and baskets of little cows, superheroes, witches and pirates, I hope they will remember their fearlessness on this night. I hope they will remember how they learned to move from jack o’ lantern light to jack o’ lantern light as a way as a means to get through the darkness.

[Originally published October 26, 2011.]

The Bastard's Ball

Last week I talked about how to work with/around unwanted ancestors in your family tree. In a couple of weeks, I’m going to talk more about doing a bit of ancestor work at this time of year. But this week I offer another way to honor those unwanted ancestors without having to invite them into your personal space. I set it up before doing any kind of work, before calling on my full ancestral line. It’s simple and easy and it can take a myriad of forms.

I call it The Bastard’s Ball.

• Start with a space set away from where you intend to work. It can be a far corner of your yard, outside your home. It can be a small altar in the next room, a shelf beside the front door, or a folding table in a closet.
• As with most magic, intention is everything. It’s more important than props or aesthetics. If you set aside a space and you mean for it to be isolated, it is.
• First I light a candle. I call on the bastards, the drunks, the abusers, and the thieves. Some I call by name. But I concentrate on my family tree and I pull down those whose energy echo is dark and murky. And I light the candle, drawing them to it.
• Then you need to entice them to stay. I leave a variety of vices out, like alcohol, cigarettes, candy, coffee, pastries, etc. If you know of specific vices, use them. It will make the spell stronger.
• If you’re feeling especially uncertain, you can ring the small space with a circle of salt.
• It can be that simple. Walk away and leave them to play while you do your own work elsewhere.

After my ancestor ritual, meditation, or dumb supper, I put the lights out on the Bastard’s Ball. I send my guests on their way, hoping they enjoyed my hospitality. It’s a twofold intention. I do it as a means to keep their energy from my work, as well as offering them a thank you for being part of the reason I exist.

Not everyone can stand in the place I do, and that’s all right. I think it’s important to acknowledge the dark as well as the light. When I claim my ancestral lineage, I accept it all. Without even one of those links, I would not be here.

To see where you’re going

You must know who you are

To know you who you are

You must know where you’ve been

The story of your ancestors speaks through your blood

Light and dark

You choose the way forward

Honor the Recent Dead

All Hallows

Last week, I shared the difference for me between my Ancestral Dead and my Beloved Dead. As we near All Hallows Eve, I want to talk about the Recent Dead, where the emotional waters of grief are shallow and stormy, and easily stirred.

As the earth quiets and stills at this time of year, both we and the animals prepare to spend more time indoors than out. In the solitude we can hear more clearly our own thoughts and emotions. Mine move to the people I have lost in the last turning of the wheel.

The celebrations of Halloween and Samhain are dedicated to the concept of the spirits of the dead walking the land. Millions of minds are directed towards this idea on October 31^st, whether in belief or mockery or fun. With such a large pool of energy to connect to, it is a fitting time of year to actively honor their memories.

Death as a Passage

Just as births are a joyous occasion and a rite of passage for both parent and child, death is also a rite of passage for both the deceased and their loved ones. It is meant to be a moment that alters our lives. After death we are forced to make sense of the sudden absence of physical life. We are forced to try to put faith in something fundamentally unknowable.

A fetus spends nine months in its cocoon, forming and birthing itself. As someone who appreciates the balance of the natural world, I believe that our spirits, once released from the larger physical cocoon, spends time to unform from the essence of who we are into… whatever comes next. Whatever you believe that to be. I honor the unknowable journey when I honor their memory.

Let Them Rest

            I do believe that those spirits who recently die are in a state of transformation, even though I don’t know of or into what… it’s where I put my faith. And just as our hearts are in turmoil at their loss, pulling at the strands of life that still might be connected to their spirits would pull at that transformation they are meant to undertake.

            Sometimes the recently dead reach out to us. Sometimes they are not finished. But that should be their instigation, not ours. So do not call the recent dead to work. But honor the love you feel for them. Honor that they were in your lives. Remember them that they will live on.

My Recent Dead

What names sit in your list of recent dead? Who were they to you? What impact did they have on your life? What lessons did they bring that challenged you and helped you grow?

This summer we lost a good man, my uncle, David Ruston Eaton. This loss seemed to bring the mortality of everyone I love into sharper focus. I will also honor the lives of Connie Salisbury, Ralph Hall, Arawn our kitty friend, and my grandmother’s youngest sister, my Aunt Carol Quagliano. I am a better person for having known them, for having been shaped and colored by their deeds, ideals, and service. I see the threads that connect us all more clearly every year.

There are many ways to honor the memory of the recent dead. If they died from illness, you can make a charitable donation in their name or volunteer time at a hospice. If it was a role model of yours, see where you can give back, like maybe working with Habitat for Humanity, or reading stories to children at the library. The one thing death clearly defines is how important it is to be a part of the life around us.

This year, on All Hallow’s Eve, spend a moment and share the name of someone who impacted your life, in whatever way, who passed this last year. Offer a toast to their memory the next time you share a drink. Tell a story of something you learned from them, or share a memory that makes you laugh. Light a candle for each life you’re grieving and be reminded of the light they brought into your journey.

Every life touches another.

Every death vibrates in someone’s breast.

May those we have lost be at peace.

May those who have lost find peace again.

Ase.

[Revamped from an article originally published October 20, 2010.]

The Ancestry of My Computer

Written September 14, 2015:

My computer is dying. His motherboard is failing. I call him Frankenstein, as he is cobbled together from bits of new and old and scavenged parts. He’s one in a long line of computer-helpers I have had that were passed down to me.

Well over a decade ago, I was gifted a hand-me-down computer by friends. And when that one crashed and burned three years later, I was gifted another tower by another friend. That one got me another three years.

When that one puttered out, it was in spurts, clearly warning me the end was coming. Another friend of mine found me a tower, the same day, that was being recycled from a small business, for $100. So I pilfered the money I had saved up to fix my sewing machine and bought the new computer.

Since then, another friend of mine has been the guardian angel of my writing and is my go-to computer guy. When the machine blinks or burps or blips I call him. We have replaced the sound card, wiped viruses, uninstalled and reinstalled operating systems, and dealt with hard drive issues to keep it going. After one call to him about strange noises in the fan and pages loading weird, my beloved Frankenstein was given a death sentence. We didn’t know when and we didn’t know how, but he was slowly shutting down. His motherboard was draining power from the other organs of his insides and piece by piece, they stopped working.

So I watched what I demanded of him. I didn’t download or upload any heavy programs. And he chugged along for a couple more years.

Last week his poor little brain started spazzing out, trying to perform at 100 CPU even though nothing was running. And today his exhaust fan stopped working. Tomorrow his meat gets a brain transplant and a new skin. It’s not a big upgrade, but it’s a similar brain with far fewer miles on it, another machine that had been destined for recycling.

Someone else’s upgrade was an answered miracle for me today.

I get attached to the pens and machines I use to create my stories. And even though it will still be my computer’s hard drives in a new box, I am sad to see big, clunky, noisy Frank go.

His new, temporary home is a small, sleek white cereal box of an tower. I have already started calling her Leia, for the dark patches on either side of her white face. And then I was reminded that Frank had another life before me, just a peon worker in some small office somewhere. It seems fitting somehow that Frankenstein has come full circle, finding a new home with Leia’s motherboard, another tower whose previous life was with a small business.

That thought, of his life before me, prompted by a friend, lead me to contemplate his life before that office space, when he was just separate pieces- a motherboard, exhaust fan, disk drive, sound card, video card, hard drives, etc. He was bits and pieces built separately, sent to some factory and assembled together. Before that he was bits of wire and metal and plastic and tungsten, cut, soldered, and cobbled together to form working pieces. And before he was bits and baubles, he was precious minerals mined from the earth- gold, platinum, palladium, copper, aluminum, steel, oil and tungsten.

I can’t help but think, with gratitude, at how far these precious resources travelled and evolved to be built into a machine that was sold to a business and then second-hand to me. I hate my reliance on technology I can’t afford to keep up with. But I am grateful for Frank, my Frankenstein, who is becoming FrankenLeia. He was gifted to me as a tool to start writing my stories. He is the vehicle I use to search for submissions and send out my work. He is what makes my weekly blog that people are now reading possible.

My gratitude is boundless.

Compassion for Those in Grief

When my Uncle died, one of my family members took the day off of work to attend his funeral. She didn’t get paid for it, which I understand. But she got docked for it. They took money from her paycheck- but, if they weren’t paying her, they weren’t losing money. So it feels more like she got punished for having a death in the family.

I have a problem with that. I have a general problem with the way business handles death in general. The list of how many days employees get off for each different variation of family member is unreal to me. Like someone in a room can decide how much time a parent, grandparent, child, or uncle is worth. For you. I am far closer to a few of my friends, my adopted family, than some of my blood family. If my best friend were to die it would be like the loss of a parent or partner. But as far as a workplace is concerned, he could mean nothing to me.

When my grandmother died, I was too young to know that my workplace didn’t have to give me the time I wanted off. I called my boss at home and told him I was going to my hometown to be with my family, that I didn’t know what the arrangements were, or when I was coming back. I told him that I would let him know. I was gone for a week. I could have lost my job. I wouldn’t have cared. Nothing was more important to me than that time with my family. They needed it. I needed it.

Death is never convenient. It is never a good time. Even if you expect death will come soon, you are never prepared when it does.

There’s been another death in our family. My Great-Aunt Carol, my Grandma’s younger sister, recently passed. It’s hard to say, but it’s true, that she is in a generation where death is common visitor, for my age group. It doesn’t make it easier. I hadn’t seen her in decades. It doesn’t make it easy.

My world has changed again. That sphere of loved ones surrounding me in the grandparent generation has shrunk again. My outer sphere of living family members has shrunk. My ancestral spirit world has grown. Life changes. Life goes on. Somewhere.

I’m good at grief now, but it wasn’t always so. I was five or six when my first friend died. She was crossing the road to get to the mail when she was hit by a semi truck. Then my Grandpa, a friend from dance class, a friend in high school, my Great-Grandma, etc. All before I considered myself an adult. There have been at least fifty since then.

I didn’t handle grief well as a young person. I was still trying to understand what death meant other than I would never see them again. But even if you know how to handle it, it doesn’t mean you will when it actually happens. I’ve watched my parents suffer their own personal losses, the deep aching ones I have yet to experience. I know what lies ahead for me. Not how it will be for me, but that it will be.

So, knowing that we are, or will someday be in the space of grieving, what can we do when other people in our lives are grieving a loss we don’t feel? We can have compassion for our grieving friends and give them the space they need. If you can be there for them when they need to vent, sit in silence, or have a cup of tea, even better. Isn’t that what you would want for yourself?

If we disagree with how our friends grieve, or we feel the need to judge how long it’s taking them, we can keep our mouths shut. It’s the sweetest kindness when those we love are in their dark places. It’s a journey they have to take in order to find their way forward.

And if we can’t be there for them, if we can’t watch, if it pokes places we fear to look into, we have the choice to walk away. And if we are the grieving party and it’s been multiple years and we still sit in our bathrobes on birthdays and anniversaries, we have to accept that not everyone can take that journey with us. We can’t be angry at others for needing to move on before we’re ready.

It’s okay if you’re not ready yet. But honestly, you’ll never be ready. Sometimes you just have to do it. Moving on doesn’t mean letting go or forgetting. It’s not disrespectful. I know that step is scary- worrying that you’re replacing the loved one, worrying that if you move on, or that you’ll forget them. We all worry about that. But think about the depth of your grief. How could you ever forget a love that deep?

While you are grieving you are edgewalking between two worlds. The one in which nothing changes and the one in which everything does. You, on the inside, feel more strongly the ways in which everything has changed. While your friends are grieving they are edgewalking between two worlds. You, on the outside, are imbedded in the world that doesn’t change. It is your friends who suddenly fall out of sync.

All those who have lost will recognize the foreign journey the grievers travel, but they will not have the answers for the griever as to how to traverse that new terrain- it terraforms itself into individual experiences for each griever. But those who have been there will be able to be trail markers and touchstones, witnesses to the journey. Because they know that someday, we will all come out the other side.

Thank you for being a light in my life Aunt Carol. 

Morning Glory Meditation

Every year, as spring begins to blossom, I push the base of a wooden trellis into the fresh dirt next to our little stoop. I watch as the small seedlings from the previous autumn poke their way through the earth and unfurl. I weed the bed and water the small beings reverently. As the vines grow, thin and spaghetti-like, I teach them to move towards the trellis. They grow thicker, covered in short fuzz. The leaves grow bigger, shaped like hearts. The larger they get, and the deeper the color, the closer they are to budding.

I spend each morning in a gentle meditation, wrapping the sweet vines around the trellis, and watching them catch on over the days, until they wind themselves, in and out. The trellis is the loom where nature and I create beautiful art together. As the weeks pass, the vines become a green wall, offering us a sense of privacy; our nature guardian.

When the buds first come, they are tight little spirals, growing bigger each day. When I can see the color threaded through them, I know they will open the next morning and it will be a morning treasure hunt to see where the early blooms have hidden themselves.

The flowers are full and thick and brilliant at dawn, staying to the shadows. The beautiful heart-shaped leaves act like umbrellas, extending the lives of the blossoms by shading them. At mid-morning, the blossoms glow with a luminescence that makes them seem otherworldly, as if tiny portals are opening from within the heart of the flower.

This is my favorite time of day to be in the garden, to be sitting on the stoop with a book and a notepad, stirring my own creative juices in their wake. I watch as the bees frolic and pollinate, leaving tiny dustings of pollen on the petals. I watch as the light fades from the petals.

As the day lengthens and the sun climbs in the sky, the morning glory blossoms grow weaker, their petals more translucent. The softening flowers tear easily and stick to the leaves around them. By mid-afternoon those that have survived curl in upon themselves. At dusk, the day-old flowers drop unceremoniously to the ground below.

Every day in the world of the morning glory is a new beginning, a new life. Their beauty doesn’t last because nothing lasts. The nature of life is that it ends. That is the magic of the morning glory for me. They are dead when dark descends, but tomorrow, there will be life again.

In the fall, when the garden withers, small buds of seeds are left behind on the browning vines. They will dry and shrink and loosen their eggplant-colored seeds into the ground. There, they will slumber through winter, waiting to emerge come next spring. So even in their seasonal ending, there is hope. There is always hope. But for today, under the last of summer sun, there is still beauty and joy.

[Originally published August 14, 2013; new photos.]

What I Know of Forgiveness

Forgiveness

Within with my loving-kindness work, I have and continue to endeavor to understand the notion of forgiveness. As a child I learned “forgive and forget” and it was easy enough to say the words of forgiveness, but I could never let go of the hurt in my heart. I felt that I failed in being a good person. I was also taught to “turn the other cheek.” I tried to live by those principles, but found myself taken advantage of, over and over. My heart was bruised and untrusting.

Years ago, I went to a workshop where I brought up how I felt foolish for letting people hurt me over and over again, citing the forgive and forget motto. My teacher looked at me, confused, and said, “Why would you forget? You don’t forget. You’d be foolish to forget.” It was a life altering moment for me. No one had ever said that to me before.

This post is not the answer to forgiveness as if there is only one answer, only one way, only one path. There are many paths and many ways and not all of them will work for you. This is the one that is working for me. This is my path to forgiveness. I share it in case any of my words can be of help to anyone else, in the way that it was to me.

I had it all wrong, thinking we were meant to “forgive and forget.” We are made to forgive, because people make mistakes, because we make mistakes. We are not meant to forget, or else how will we hold the person accountable when they repeat their hurtful behaviors?

I repeat, if we forget, how will we hold the person accountable if they repeat their hurtful behaviors? That makes sense. Then why forgive?

We don’t forgive someone because we’ve been taught it’s the right thing to do. We don’t forgive someone because other people are pressuring us to. An empty gesture is an empty gesture.

When we forgive someone, it is not about them. It is about us. We forgive them because we are ready to let go of the hurt in us. We forgive when our hearts need us to, when the hurt we hold onto hurts us. It doesn’t excuse the other person for their behavior. We don’t even have to tell them we’ve forgiven them. Because it’s about us.

If we wait for an apology before we release that pain, we anchor ourselves in it. What if the other party is never ready to apologize?

Apologies

For me, apologies are not about solidifying who is right or who is wrong. At least, they shouldn’t be. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I am a huge fan of agreeing to disagree.

So if it’s not about someone being right, what is it about? Needing an apology is about needing the other person to acknowledge that they hurt you. Delivering an apology is about acknowledging that, whether intended or not, something you said or did hurt someone you care about.

If I offer an apology, I mean that I genuinely feel bad that I hurt someone and I acknowledge that the behavior was not appropriate for my relationship with that person, and I make a promise not to repeat it. At the same time I ask the other person to hold me responsible in case I do by pointing it out to me when I do it. Re-patterning doesn’t happen overnight.

When someone apologizes to me, I make sure I explain to them what it means to me. I offer them time to think about it and come back to me. I have learned my own worth and no longer say “It’s all right,” in an effort to make the person who hurt me feel better. The apology isn’t enough. Their actions afterwards matter more than their words.

Moving Forward

The last time I had to confront someone about how they hurt me (again), he offhandedly apologized so that we could “move on”… I told him that if he apologized to me, it was an agreement that he would never treat me that way again, that by apologizing he was acknowledging that his behavior was bad for our relationship.

I threw him off by not just saying “It’s all right,” like I had every other time. But it offered us a real moment of connection. I don’t know if he’ll follow through on his end and I have no control over that. But I feel like, for the first time, I have laid the groundwork for not accepting that behavior from him again.

Forgiveness will happen when I am ready to give it. I have forgiven the dead for hurts done to me, without regretting that they were not still alive to hear it. I have also made apologies to the dead, without condemning myself for not being able to put it into words sooner.

I have forgiven people I hope to never see again, because the trust they broke can never be repaired. And yet, for the actions they took, I have found a way to forgive them for the pain they caused, in order to free myself from the feeling of being victim, to take any power they held over me back for myself. No amount of hate can undo the past, but I do not have to live in it.

If you forgive someone, it doesn’t mean you have to trust them again. And just because someone apologizes, it doesn’t mean you have to forgive them. If you are still sitting in your hurt and your heart has not softened towards them, it’s not time yet. Forgiveness will happen when you are ready to give it. Just remember that our hearts are not meant to stay hard forever.