The Long Goodbye: Part Three

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The Seven of Cups indicates the paradox of choice, and the difficulty of choosing when too many opportunities and options seem to beckon. Unable to decide which course it would be best to pursue, we starve and waste away like Buridan's ass paralyzed into inaction by an unpredictable future. The card was telling me what I already knew, what I had been experiencing for the past few months as I tried to juggle an increasing number of obligations while fighting to keep down my frustration at not making very much progress on any of them.

Obligation and Divination

Throughout my life, I have been pretty good at following my intuition, listening for the cues of my subconscious to help guide me in making important life decisions. It was this kind of listening that led me to choose the college I ended up attending — where I met several people who would change my life, where I had the opportunity to do independent research that eventually led me to my Pagan path, and where I earned a degree as valedictorian of my college class. It was by listening to my intuition that I found myself moving across the state to the lovely city of Pittsburgh — where I first entered a graduate school program and then left it for being wholly unsuitable to my personality, where I found a job as a waitress (against everyone's hopes and expectations) and spent five years wandering spiritually and intellectually in ways I never could have if I'd settled down and gotten a "real" job. It was intuition that led me to seek out a connection with Jeff, who happened to have connections in Pittsburgh through both family and work and who eventually took a leap of faith of his own and moved here to be with me. And it was intuition that prodded me into taking a trip across the ocean to the land of my ancestors, despite being terrified of both airports and flying, and having never traveled alone or abroad before.

But these were all times when a singular opportunity presented itself, and I had a simple choice to make: stay, or go. Now, I found myself in a much more complicated situation, with almost endless possibilities any of which might be fruitful depending on how I chose to direct my energies. I also had more responsibilities and obligations, not least of which were the children to whom I'd soon become a stepmom. And so I also had a pressing sense that it was important to make a choice of some kind and follow through with it, rather than languishing passively and allowing Spirit to drag me along where it would. I had spent a lot of time cultivating my will and honing my skills — now, I felt a strong and definite call to step up and be active in my own destiny, to act out my gratitude for the blessings of my life by taking a more directive role in the work I would do in the future. But of course, that work still needed to be grounded in Spirit and soul-longing.

The Long Goodbye: Part Two

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Then, out of the blue, several things happened at once. Most of them were things that, for one reason or another, I did not want to mention here on Meadowsweet for a little while... out of a sense of privacy, respect, and a bit of base superstition.

Synchronicity Abounds

The first, already known to readers, was that I posted the announcement for the Samhain to Solstice "Same Time Tomorrow" Donation Drive, which I'd been planning for a couple months in hopes that I might generate enough funds from supportive readers to move this blog to an expanded website with its own domain name. Almost as soon as I'd posted the announcement, however, a creeping sense of regret and frustration began to steal over me. I knew that I would dislike always wondering, as each day passed, if anyone would like my work enough to donate, which is why I'd only planned it as a temporary measure. I had no idea how painful it would be to feel overlooked as the month went by, with less than one percent of readers acknowledging the donation drive, and my readership numbers actually shrinking after I shared my request for suppport. Yet within a week of the donation drive announcement, a new job opportunity came my way and I began working from home as an independent contractor with a more flexible schedule and better pay than my former waitressing job — doing work that, being project-based and detail-oriented, satisfies my Gemini urge to plunge into the nitty-gritty and make measurable progress on particular tasks, and then move swiftly on to the next one. Experiencing the sense of job satisfaction and enjoyment I got from this new work put my frustration with blogging into sharp relief.

The Long Goodbye: Part One

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The golden cups
are in his hand,
his hand is on the knife
and the knife is
above my head.

- Taliesin*

Three times I drew the Seven of Cups, card of soul-wrought dreams and tempting fantasies beckoning, and possibilities so numerous they seem to paralyze all ability to choose. Three times I drew the card in daily meditation before I finally agreed to seek for further guidance.

Where It's At

Things have been all tangled up lately. The puzzle box or wrinkled seed that was planted in my heart during my time in Northern Ireland — the small, mysterious thing curled in upon itself that I had all but forgotten about as things returned to normal — has been creaking and clicking as one by one its latches unhook and slip open... or it has been germinating and putting down roots that slip their sly tendrils in to pry open the soil of my soul. It all sounds very dramatic when you put it like that, but the truth is that I have been growing increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with certain aspects of my work. And when I say work, I mean the soul-work of my writing, that strange little hobby that cannot make me a living but is indispensable to making me alive.

I've started to have serious doubts about blogging as the appropriate medium for my writing. It takes a huge amount of pride-swallowing to write that sentence, considering it was only a few months ago I was raving about how Meadowsweet & Myrrh was like my online "home," and scoffing arrogantly at people who easily abandon their blogs and let them lie fallow and un-updated for months at a time. I take my writing — and thus my blogging — very seriously, perhaps too seriously at times. I am as slow to abandon a project as I am to leave behind a faith path that no longer meets my spiritual needs (and it took my nigh on half a decade of dilly-dallying to do that before I finally dropped the Catholic label and admitted to myself what everyone else already knew).

Keeping the Days: The Orchid Shamans

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The Orchid Shamans
Phipps Conservatory, Pittsburgh, PA


As the days grow darker and the winds grow bitter here in Pittsburgh, one of my favorite ways of coping is to retreat to the Phipps Conservatory and Greenhouse to meander through their rooms of lush greens and radiant blossoms. The orchid room, especially, always fascinates me. I imagine each orchid could be a shaman from some strange, exotic tribe, wild feathers and fringe and face paint, flinging their arms open to some unheard drumbeat pulsing in the roots. If I were a shaman, I think I'd want to be a shaman of the orchids.