The warp, the weft, the weaving...

There is a lot that I want to say and yet the words escape me as though I am trying to catch the mist.  The mist clings to my hands but it is no longer mist, it is water and it clings to every part of me. Yet I cannot explain to you what the mist is like when I show it to you as it glistens as water on my skin.

I want to talk about fear and I want to talk about courage.  I want to talk about honor and I want to talk about community.  I want to talk about honesty and I want to talk about magick. I want to talk about the darkness and I want to talk about the Ancestors.  Most of all, I want to talk about how all of these things are connected and I don't know where to begin.  Score one for Honesty.  Score two for courage because I'm going to do it anyway.

Most people think of magick as magic...puppet show parlor tricks designed to impress and amaze a crowd.  While many of the Pagan folks I know like things like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, none of them seem to think that we are questing for Dragon's gold or attending a Quidditch game any time soon

Magick is more subtle.  It is standing knee deep in a river and feeling the tugging current.  Sometimes it is like looking at the muddy bottom and the clouds your steps make as you pass through.  Sometimes it is like reaching to the sandy bottom and pulling the sand out to look at the fine grains and chips of mica before you toss them back into the swirling waters.

When Magick is done as it was done over the course of this past weekend, it is much more like being the stream that feeds the river.  The lake that feeds the stream, the wellspring that feeds the lake, the runoff from the mountain.  It was like being a part of the flow of water from the icy mountain peak to the sea.

I could explain the Rites, how they worked, what they did, what their purpose was because these things were told to me in human words with human mouths and even though you might read and understand those words you will not understand the feeling unless you were there. 

This weekend, I sacrificed myself to myself for the purpose of myself and then I lay myself upon the altar of community while others did the same and I connected to people in my community in the way my ancestors did, through sharing experience and love and joy and sadness and vision.  We went back and visited our ancestors and then our ancestors came forward and visited us.  We sat in circles around a fire telling stories and visions and laughter.  We ate and we danced and we drummed and made loud noises and rejoiced underneath the stars.  We shared meat and mead.  Even now, just recalling the experience I am filled with wonder and awe and a little bit of fear because I want to do it again, and soon.  I want to feel the way I do right now for a long time and yet I know that eventually the mist will clear and the water will dry from off of my skin and I will try to remember that feeling and not quite get the gist of it until I read this again, and then it will be my own sweat that reminds me as I put myself to work trying to call the mist back to me...join the river currents and watch the air push eddies through the fog, feel the warmth of a fire on my skin, the damp and solid earth beneath me and the spirits of my ancestors as they gather around me and recall a time when we put so much less effort into living with them because we knew they were there, we knew they were present and we reaped so many more benefits from that knowledge.

I feel in some ways, carried away by the current.  This is my first real writing since these experiences and there seems so much to say, so much to set down, so much to learn and so much to teach and I feel unequal to the task.  Not because I am incapable, but simply because I cannot teach such a personal experience.

This weekend, I learned that imagination is magic.  This weekend I learned that we are all connected because every living and non living thing in the universe has a common ancestor.  This weekend I found my center and let it expand beyond the boundaries of my flesh and this weekend I remembered that I am one in a long line of people, stretching back into the otherworld and out of it again in a never ending cycle of life and love and death and grief that is the perfect balance of both the light and the darkness.  This weekend, I learned that the darkness is not a place to hide, it is a place to be a light of my own and a light for my people.

This weekend, I learned the name that the gods know me by and I rejoice to hear it's syllables in my ear.  This is the name that my tribe will know me by because it is the will of the gods that it be so.  I looked into the cauldron and I saw the bottom of the cauldron.  I saw rust and I saw scoured rings.  When I stopped looking through the water, I saw the sky, brilliant blue in the dawn and the top of a single tree, fire-like in fall brilliance.  I cupped that fire in my hands and I poured it over my head and I awoke from my slumber.

So...that was my weekend...

In conclusion, I will leave you with the words of a song that I learned as we held hands and circled around a fire blazing in the darkness beneath the light of stars whose light was new when our ancestors were.

The Warp, the Weft, the weaving.
When we gather, we grow stronger.
Spinning threads from soul to soul.

New friends

The likelihood of shaking a friend loose when making changes in your life is directly related to the speed and angle at which you make the turn.  A turn that takes a month shakes loose a lot of friends, one that takes years allows a lot of people to confusedly hang on and wonder just where in fuck you are taking them.

Often, the problems with change erupt more in your wake than they do in front of you.  Short of dodging unexpected obstacles, the friends that have attached themselves to you (and you to them don't forget) often remember more about the person you used to be, the person they fell in love with than the person you are becoming.

When reaching this place, it is often helpful to remember that you are not the only one changing, they have changed too because change is the only constant.  Many of the friends I have now don't know how to swallow my Paganism even though I have never asked them to.  Certainly it is a subject I like to talk about because it excites me.  I am excited to have found a place where I fit in so well.  A place where people look at me as being a person of value instead of a person to be wary of.  I've heard that from a lot of people who walk a Pagan path, that it feels like coming home and that is exactly how it feels to me.  The issue is that when you awaken to something like this, you make new friends and you meet new people who become friends.  Meanwhile, in your old life, your other friends often feel as though they have been left holding the bag, waiting for you to come back.  It's not that the temptation to go back to those times isn't there.  I used to mix it up, drinking and smoking and having crazy times and I miss it.  The thing is, I just love my life right now, more than I did in those days.  I love my life because I am not longer looking for a rock to hide under, I no longer drink and smoke because there is some hole inside of me that needs filling.  My son looked at me today, he's Two, and asked me about what Mabon is as we were turning our wheel of the year wall hanging.  My wife and I shared a look and a family hug.

What I find is, that the friends I have had don't know or understand what motivates me anymore and I am not certain I understand what motivates them any longer.  The only real contact that we have is via social networking and that is often terse and unorganized.  As we make the turns and changes in our lives, it becomes important to expect that as we change, we have decisions to consider about who we spend time with and why.

Sometimes we have to make the decisions and other times our friends do.  In the end, we all have to decide if we wish to remain old friends or become new friends again.