Pagan Parenting: Presence and Void, and Other Rude Things

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An interesting topic came up over dinner this evening with the kids, and though at the time my mouth was full of spinach and gala apple salad, and the conversation quickly moved on to hide-and-seek and other things, I wanted to make a note here of some of my own passing thoughts. For I think that in many ways, we still live with the lessons of our own childhoods and, especially for women, these lessons have not always been the healthiest, physically, emotionally or spiritually. There are a great many things that, looking back, I wish someone had told me when I was a young girl, about how the world works and why people do what they do and think the way they think. And one of those things I wish someone would have told me is: sometimes it's okay to avoid a person, even if it's rude.

To remove oneself from unpleasant or unhealthy company is only one of many rude things frowned upon in women (yes, even today), but it's one that vibrates a sympathetic chord deep in the quiet center of my being, and I find myself desperately wanting to explain to my partner's two oldest daughters that it is, in fact, definitely and completely okay to avoid a person, especially if that person is mean, manipulative or expects you to think and behave in certain ways that you do not, in your heart of hearts, agree with or feel to be right. These girls are on the verge of preadolescence, and the thought that they might grow up thinking that women are expected to always be accommodating and easy-going in whatever company, without thought to their own personal boundaries, needs or self-respect... well, it bothers me. This is basic stuff, of the "say no to drugs/peer-pressure/bridge-jumping" variety. And yet, as I've mentioned here before, they have been raised thus far in a decidedly extroverted and in some ways very gender-traditional household (despite their mother being a self-proclaimed witch), which has left them with the impression that to decline social interaction is, especially in females, the height of rudeness. As both a feminist and an introvert, I feel the need to speak up and represent, for the sake of all my fellow kindly recluses.

Of course, it's a complicated matter. While avoiding a person can sometimes be the wisest and healthiest thing to do, it is different from merely avoiding confrontation, which is also something highly prized in women. It's important to understand how these two things differ. Avoiding oneself physically from a conflict can in some cases be the most radical kind of confrontation: the very "presence" of one's absence can provoke and challenge, especially at times when one is expected to be present (or at least go through the motions of presence). There are times when showing up and merely "walking through the part" — this kind of false presence of pretending social niceties — is the real avoidance, and what is sacrificed is not only self-respect and honesty, but the sacredness of real presence, and the meaningfulness of real absence.

And this is where the Pagan spiritual life comes to play an important role for me, though there are echoes of Buddhism here as well. For the Pagan parent embraces both the light and the dark of the natural world, the day and the night, the bright sunshine filtering in and filling every space, and the emptiness of the night's void gaping between the faraway stars. The void is not something to fear or shrink from, but has its own role to play in the dance of harmony and balance. And so too does avoidance, which once meant not just to escape or evade, but to withdraw, clear out or empty oneself. It is this same process of emptying oneself that gives us the precious space of solitude and the sacred capacity for connection, through which we can learn to open to our capacity to imagine, and to relate to others. Through ritual and trance, such as that of the shaman, it gives way to what we call "shapeshifting" and journeying through the Otherworlds. But this ability to seek solitude and empty oneself is also a source of stability and strength that can enable us to be kind and loving towards others as well.

In our solitude, we enter more completely into our own presence, we begin to know it better and experience its fullness and power. And we learn that our presence is something precious that we can choose (or choose not) to share with others. It is not something to be frittered away uncaringly or lived only half-heartedly, it is not something that can be demanded or expected, it is never obligatory or compulsory: it is a gift. When we realize this, not only do we appreciate ourselves more and protect more fiercely that sparkling individuality that gives our presence its uniqueness and meaning, but we also come to see that our being present — fully and truly and whole-heartedly present — can be a gift of loving-kindness and transformative connection that we give to others. We are less inclined to take it for granted, but likewise we are all the more capable of giving it knowingly, even to those who we think might not appreciate it, because we understand the real nature of the giving. But all this rests on our ability to give it freely, to choose to give our presence to others; or, through our absence, to demonstrate the withdrawal of our support for unhealthy conditions or to point to or illustrate an absence that we already feel is lurking beneath the surface of acceptability and politeness.

The Pagan life is chock-full of many rude things. Playing in the mud, laughing during religious ceremonies, going braless or barefoot or unshaven or skyclad, dancing in the firelight to the beating of drums, bragging, boasting, flouting, flirting, fucking, eating and drinking and wandering wild in the woods under waling moonlit winds, so many rude and naughty and socially frowned-upon things. Let us not confuse what is rude with what is cruel, or callous, or stupid, or wrong. Let us be rude to the utmost of our love, and seek silence, and sing, and be joyous and honest and present and free.

Learning How to Move: Contemplations on Leaving Home and Making a New One

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I stand in the living room, my cords thickly covered with lint and smears of dust, my face flecked with dirt and sweat, my lower back protesting the past few hours of kneeling, stretching, lifting and sorting. On the coffee table is a teetering pile of objects, the last of all my earthly possessions gathered from the four corners of my apartment — and in front of me, is the empty box.

I began the process of moving in with my partner, Jeff, about four weeks ago, although I have been unofficially staying at his place for several months now. Still, his sparsely-furnished duplex never felt exactly like "home." For me, home was my adorable, retro-style one-bedroom on the second floor of a warm brick building. It was the first apartment I ever lived in on my own, the first apartment where I could walk around naked after a shower on a hot summer afternoon, the first apartment where I was free from the worry of loud or lazy roommates, the first apartment where I could come home from work exhausted and lonely and indulge the urge to curl up and cry without having to feel guilty or ashamed.

This is home: when I first moved in, I painted the walls in the living room a blue so pale, so close to true white, that at first they'd made the ceiling look yellowed like old paper. A second coat, and there it was, that ice blue rippling over the texture of the swirled plaster, cool and silent like peace, like solitude. Now, without the wall art, they look so bare and cold again, and I stand frozen over the final empty box, scanning the collection of handmade pottery and glass bottles and delicate metal candleholders gathered together on the square teak coffee table. All the little décor items that wouldn't fit anywhere else, that seemed too fragile or too essential to pack up in the preceding weeks. But today is my last day of packing boxes, and within another week the apartment will be empty of everything except stripped down and deconstructed furniture, ready for a deep cleaning and the coat of paint that will bring the walls back to the requisite off-white semi-gloss.

For a while I was nervous about moving in with Jeff. My apartment always smelled of incense and essential oils, or the sweet fragrance of fresh laundry, or the wild scent of trees or rain coming in through the wide-open windows. These were smells that welcomed, but demanded nothing; that soothed and comforted without insistence or expectation. But on weekends, Jeff's place smelled like children, and the detergents and soaps their mother used at her house during the week. I would come over after a long day of work to a household full of kids who were (despite all stereotypes about children being flatly full of wonder and laughter) complicated and complete individuals, human beings who had grown up for the last decade in another household, living with very different values and expectations. I began to realize how hard it was to live with someone else's kids, to take in stride the stress and demands they carried over from a week with their mother.

The hardest part was always feeling like a guest, a burden the kids soon outgrew but that lingered for me despite spending almost all of my time at the house. It was the feeling of not being able to ask for that space and solitude that we introverts so desperately need at times, of feeling uneasy about putting up the boundaries I was so skillful and graceful at raising and lowering at will when I was at work or with friends. It was the feeling that these were not my dishes in the cabinets or my food-stuffs in the fridge, and so it was not my place to organize or cook or take out the trash, or to ask anyone else to do those things when the clutter or the stomach-growling started to get to me. It would be rude of me to ask, and likewise rude of me to turn down any request made on my energy or time. Or at least this was what I told myself, what I felt intuitively in this place-that-wasn't-home. I could retreat to the bedroom, to the bed that Jeff and I shared that was now covered with my own soft comforter... but this led to restlessness and even to bouts of sickness that lasted longer than any I have experienced in the years since graduating college. Being sick was one of the ways I could claim some kind of exemption, some relief from the role of guest, and my body took advantage of that fact whether I wanted it to or not.

And so, for a while, I worried about moving in. But last week, the last of my kitchen supplies made the migration and found a new place in the cabinets and pantry that had so long stood only half-filled with Jeff's collection of solo items: one pot, one pan, one skillet, one mixing bowl, one box of tea, one can of green beans. Now, the orange juice in the fridge sloshes in the sunflower-yellow pitcher I used in summers past to make fruit slushies, and the black speckled spaghetti pot I inherited from my father sits prominently next to the huge metal soup pot I used one year in college to make stew for an entire dormitory floor. And there is a joy that I feel creeping out from the corners of this kitchen now, a wholeness, a sense of fitting, of settling in. There is a plumpness here now that feels like... home.

With the empty box at my feet, it occurs to me that this is really why moving is stressful. It isn't the time or the heavy lifting, it isn't even the sense of dislocation or uncertain newness. It is this decision we face whenever we pack up our lives into boxes stuffed full of old newspaper: the decision about what to put on the bottom. It's the choice we must make about what foundation to build on, about which of our many possessions and assets — whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual — can bear the weight. It's a choice I have faced with every single box I packed over the past several weeks, and it never gets easier. It is always daunting and difficult and full of doubt. My apartment was full of beautiful objects: pieces of art given to me by loved ones, sculptures and statues chosen in moments of excitement and appreciation, delicate spiraling twigs and feathers and special stones gathered during meandering walks in the local woods. Now everything that transformed this boring box of living space into a home with fringe and feeling is waiting in a heap to be placed carefully, reverentially, into this flimsy cardboard box. Placed with uncertainty, and resolve, and best of all, hope.

This is not about domestic bliss or good womanly womanhood.^[*] This is about memories; this is about a sense of self. This is about living embodied in the pool of materials and understanding how my existence has been shaped by the contours and shades of the landscape through which I move. Learning to move is about learning to use our feet, learning to trust that the bones and muscles and joints will bear our weight and carry us forward. And moving from a place that was home, to a place that will become home, is about learning to trust in that same kind of foundation, and seeking that same kind of motion, learning to stand on our feet instead of trundling along on our knees.

Jeff has long since opened his home to me and invited me to come inside. It's finally starting to dawn on me that it's time to step up and enter in, to participate, and to trust that the foundations that I have built in making my first home alone are strong enough to bear the weight of partnership, family and a future together.

^[*]It is perhaps unfortunate that the kitchen is the first room to be completely moved and unpacked, since it might leave you with the impression that I, like "all women," identify most keenly with the domestic life of cooking and cleaning. This is just a bad coincidence, I assure you.

Secrets of the Spring

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I am so incredibly bad at keeping secrets.

By which I mean, I'm quite good at it... but usually it requires some kind of sound-proof booth. Nothing gets out. And I mean, nothing. Not a peep.

So think of these past few weeks here at Meadowsweet & Myrrh as a kind of metaphorical sound-proof booth into which I've stepped as exciting potential projects percolate in my brain. Imagine me stepping into this booth and drawing closed the door behind me with that satisfying ssthwumphsshhh... then hunkering down to work at a nice, wide wooden desk, scraps of paper and photographs sprawled everywhere, with scissors and glue and paintbrushes and bits of wire and, yes, gods forbid, perhaps even a little bit of glitter I think. And every once in a while, I'll look up from my intensity and reverie... and what you will see is a pantomime of crazy, as I shout and wave my hands in happy frenzy and maybe sing a little song... while other times, you might witness my little freak-outs of stress and frustration, my paper-cuts and my bottles of glue tipping over and spilling sticky, gooey translucent ick over the gorgeous wooden desktop and pretty much just getting everywhere. Hence the need for sound-proofing. If I hadn't stepped into my little booth, by now you would all be privy to a few really joyous, really cool bits of news... and not a few unsavory tantrums.

Suffice it to say, I hope soon my spontaneous spasms of inspiration will eventually subside into something workable and soon this blog will return to its usual, regularly-updating schedule. But be forewarned, it seems this happens almost every spring: my energy demands that I be out and away from the computer, planning and plotting the next fabulous year in my ever-glowing life of homebody adventure and dancing gratitude. This spring-to-be so far has seen Jeff with a broken foot, my Cu Gwyn drugged up and groggy at the vet after his little snippety-snip, my apartment snapped up by a future tenant with permission from my landlord to begin the process of packing and moving (fat-lotta-help Jeff will be on that one). I have painted rooms, I have rearranged furniture, I have made phone calls and set up careful budget plans. I have (hold your breath!) gotten along exceedingly well with my mother (who, though she might fight like hell with me when it's between the two of us, is also the first one with her claws out and her teeth bared when it's me against the rest of the world).

And all the while, I have been praying and listening and contemplating, and the gods have been near, whispering in the winds and laughing in the branches and slipping along the slowly-melting icicles like late afternoon sunlight. I do not like when I read people's blogs and they say something like, "Sorry for not updating, but life has gotten too busy for Spirit." Rest assured, my lovably languishing readers, it is Spirit that has gotten too busy for me these days, and these past few weeks have been a bottleneck as all the animals and egregores I have made here in my little sound-proof booth have rushed headlong for the open door at once and gotten stuck half-in, half-out, with all their mouths panting open and all their tails wagging.

Ah, but let me not give anything away just yet! Bare with me a little longer as I pretend life is the same old dull and cold of winter and spring hasn't crept up behind me like a poet in dark. Brigid's eyes are smiling into the back of my neck, and I'm bending down to concentrate on the tasks at hand. I have yoga to practice, and bathtubs to wash, and furniture to move, and secrets to keep, and miles to go before I sleep...