Claiming My Name

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Two years ago today, I met Jeff Lilly in person for the first time, after having known him as an "online friend" for several years.

I wish I could say birds sang, sparks flew and cosmic spheres clicked into perfect harmony. What actually happened was that we were both so nervous and shy, it took several hours of awkward glances and chatting on the futon before we could look each other in the eye without blushing furiously. Still, two years later and we're madly, amazingly, blessedly in love. And six months from today, we'll officially be newly weds. Rock!

Which means... my name is changing. I'd assumed for a long time that if I ever did get married, I'd be keeping my own name. I adore my name, especially my first and middle — Alison Leigh — and as a feminist, the idea of taking my partner's name seemed a bit antiquated, and too much of a hassle.

But Jeff's name is so simple, and sweet, like him, and I find myself honored and excited to be taking it. Family names, like families, come with lots of baggage and ambivalence and history. Jeff's name comes with four step-kids, for a start. It also comes with a whole complicated history and heritage that, stepping into his life as a partner and best friend, I'll now be a part of, too.

But I didn't much like the idea of becoming "Alison Shaffer Lilly." Just didn't jive. And like I said, I love my middle name — after a period of intensely disliking it when I was little, I eventually made peace with its odd spelling and lilting brevity. I learned later on that it was my father who chose that name for me, Leigh, the Gaelic spelling, meaning according to some "meadow or clearing" and according to others "courageous one." Keeping my middle name seemed an appropriate way to honor my father's family and our Irish ancestry, as well as the rolling farmlands and fields of my childhood home in Lancaster County.

So "Alison Leigh Lilly" is who I'll be. In six months, legally.

But I'm impatient. And, let's face it, a bit of a teacher's pet perfectionist. I like reading the books before I take the class, and getting ahead of the ball before it starts rolling. So I've decided, in the spirit of my anniversary with my beloved today, and in honor of my Irish family roots — I'm making the change now.

Yup, starting today I've decided to be "Alison Leigh Lilly." It'll give me some time to practice my signature. I can try on my new name like the pair of shoes you get for your wedding, the ones you're supposed to wear to your dance classes so that come the Big Day they'll be all broken in and you can dance like a demon all night long without getting blisters — except, of course, that we're not taking dance lessons. And I won't be wearing shoes at my wedding.

It's also a practical career matter, and I am if anything a practical career woman. (She said seriously. No, seriously, you guys! Why are you laughing?) Though I've put this blog on semi-hiatus for the past several months, the career opportunities keep rolling my way, and really, I'm sick of worrying about having to send out notices and new bios six months from now when we finally get around to getting hitched. A stitch in time saves nine, they say. So from now on, my "professional" name is transitioning from "Alison Shaffer" to "Alison Leigh Lilly (née Shaffer)" so that, six months from now, I can drop the "née" and get on with my day.

I am totes serious, you guys. So serious that I've made a Facebook page. Yeah. That serious. You should check it out.

In fact, you should hop on over and tell me your stories about how you "claimed your name." And maybe share some advice about how long I can expect the slip-ups and stumblings to last. Because I gotta say, breaking a twenty-seven year old habit may not be easy. I'm going to need all the help I can get. So next time you see me, lend me a hand with a friendly wave and a "Why hello, Alison Leigh Lilly! Lovely day!"

Together, we'll get there.

New Website in the Works

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For folks still following along at home....

No, I'm not gone or giving up writing. Yes, a new website is in the works, incorporating a more permanent/static structure in addition to a blog feature to showcase my writing and share news with readers. My hope is to have the new website ready to launch by my birthday in mid-June. (Though I'm not making any promises.) Stay tuned for announcements here and on Facebook (where I also now have an author page) as the months roll by.

If you can't bear to do without me and my startling wit till then — well, that's probably something you should have a doctor take a look at. In the meantime, though, I'll still be posting fairly regularly about Pagan and Druid themes over on my wedding blog, Wedding on the Edge, along with my partner, Jeff Lilly (author of Druid Journal). I'll also be making the occasional appearance over at Pagan+Politics.

So hang in there, my friends. And in the meantime, spend some time outside making peace with cold winter and dawning spring. Many blessings, and many thanks.

"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."

- Joseph Campbell

The Long Goodbye: Part Four

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It seemed I had two choices before me. The Page of Wands, a young, spontaneous and energetic form that could be the very embodiment of the internet as a medium, with its attention-grabbing multimedia and almost endless opportunities for someone to make a name for herself through charisma and laughter. Or the Ten of Pentacles, embodying formality, structure and an engagement with traditional patterns of expression that could lead to the fruitful, prosperous marriage of spirit and form characterized by generosity and exchange. And the third card? The choice that was not a choice?

Making a Clean Break

Last night, I had a dream. One of those dreams so vivid and blunt, it's hard to ignore the message. One of those dreams that just feels like a metaphor, even when you're in it.

I dreamt I was a student in college again, engaged in a class discussion led by a wise old professor. Yet this professor seemed to take particular pleasure in setting me up for embarrassment and frustration. As the discussion progressed, he would often interrupt himself or students as they explained their ideas or expounded on theories, and shoot a question at me. Being a dream, I can't now remember even what the subject was — but I do know that, again and again, I felt the frustration rise as I found myself interrupted, torn out of my focus on the ideas of others as they unfolded — forced instead to stand up to prove myself to these peers, to prove myself worthy of being there to learn. It wasn't enough to attend, to listen intently and consider carefully the concepts being shared. But more frustrating was that, each time this professor interrupted the flow of conversation to challenge me to a verbal duel, he allowed only a sentence out of my mouth before he veered back again, leaving me hanging there dumb, my words decontextualized and my thoughts unfinished. It felt for all the world like a goddamned Twitter feed — one hundred forty characters was all I got.

Until at one point, I finally managed to break out of it. The next question he asked me, I found myself speaking in paragraphs. Whole arguments cascaded out of my mouth in point after point, theories backed up by evidence and examples, counter-arguments considered and deconstructed. The professor seemed impressed, asked another question to prompt me... yet I could feel something slipping. The students around me began to talk over me in their own conversations. Someone behind me snickered. Mid-sentence, the professor interrupted me again, this time to tell me, "Well, at least you've finally demonstrated that you're not a complete idiot, which is a bit of a surprise. Some of your ideas were actually pretty sound. Of course, you're horribly boring, so boring that your dullness itself is offensive and detracts from the values of your ideas no matter what they are. You were more attractive when you weren't saying anything."

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).

Same Time Tomorrow: A Meadowsweet Donation Drive

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Click above to donate!

"It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, 'Thanks, that was great, here's some money, same time tomorrow, okay?'"

- Terry Pratchett, from Soul Music

Lovely, beautiful, generous readers.... have you been working out? Seriously, you're looking really good these days, at least ten years younger than you are (you're in your early thirties, right?). Your hair always looks fantastic. And have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy your company? Always so witty and interesting — you must be the joy and envy of all your many friends. Also, I heard that your spouse/offspring/pet did really well in that thing he or she was doing, and I know that you must be so proud — though I bet they have you to thank for all your encouragement and support. You know, speaking of support....

I've been thinking recently, especially after my little crisis back in September, that it's time for a bit of a shake-up around the old blog. I have visions in my head of a truly marvelous semi-magazine layout, with feature articles, more frequent guest posts, an expanded resources page, maybe a poetry and lectio divina column... And, most thrilling of all, a domain name. O so professional.

Of course, I've been blogging here at meadowsweet-myrrh dot blogspot dot com for several years now, fast approaching my three-hundreth post, and the sheer number of pages published here could easily fill a couple sizable books. Meanwhile, the number of you wonderful readers has crept up and up, especially over the last year. Many of you keep coming back because, let's be frank, you are wise and well-read people who recognize good writing when you read it — but more importantly, at least I hope anyway, you can tell when a person has poured her heart and soul into the work she shares, and you are kind and empathetic folks as well as being intelligent and sharp as a tack.

Etymology of My Gods, Redux

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While Bob Patrick was writing up his recent guest post on polytheism and divinity, I was busy gathering my thoughts on Bonewits' version of modern American polytheology, and doing a bit of research and etymological digging of my own. Exploring the roots of words like "god," "deity," and "spirit" gave rise to the contemplative-poetic piece posted a few days ago. But I thought it would also be valuable to share — in solid, trustworthy prose — the results of my digging.

Words for the Many, Words for the One

deity

From the Latin deus, "god." Related to the Proto-Indo-European root *dewos-, which gave rise to various words for god, spirit or demon in languages like Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, etc. The PIE form comes from the base *dyeu-, which means "to gleam, to shine," and also gave us words like sky and day. It seems the term "deity," related to the name of Zeus, originally evoked the idea of a being or spirit of light, whether a solar-god or a god of lightning. The word "divine," also from the Latin deus, when used as a verb (as in "to divine the future") originally suggested the ability to see by a supernatural light.

Ali's Summer Vacation: Announcements, Guest Bloggers, New Features, O My!

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Hello, all of you lovely and beautiful readers out there! I hope your summers have been full of smooth sunlight, cool waters and copious green. I know mine sure has! And there's more to come, as I pack up and ready myself for a month-long hiatus from the blogosphere.

During the sweltering dog-days of August, I'll be traveling north to the rocky shoreline cliffs and wooded mountainsides of Acadia National Park in Maine, where I'll spend a week with my family and my partner Jeff, hiking, biking, swimming, reading, wining and dining. Soon after my return, I'll be off again, jet-setter that I am, on my first ever trip abroad to the emerald and mist-strewn coast of Northern Ireland, to attend a week-long retreat on Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism, led by Gareth Higgins and Carl McColman.

But never fear! Though I'm taking the month of August off to do some sun-soaking and soul-searching, I've been working hard in the meantime to make sure readers here at Meadowsweet & Myrrh have plenty to keep them engaged and entertained.

Cú Chulainn and the Queen of Swords: Reflections on Reason and Nakedness

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One of the ways that I clothe and shelter my nakedness in the world is with my intellect, which always seems to be churning away sometimes even in spite of myself.

Don't get me wrong, I value reason highly as an expression of Spirit in the human animal; it is a wisdom-weaver and pattern-dancer, it is one of the meaning-makers of human experience that can serve to highlight and elevate, to shape and navigate. When used in this way, reason and critical analysis can exercise the mind, stripping it of falsehoods and obscurities and laying it bare to the world in all its complexity and sublimity (and when applied with a devotion that borders on bhakti, reason can be a terrible and awesome thing that shakes the world ruthlessly down to its rattling joints).

But too often, reason can be wielded as a weapon. I find that I do this far more often than I like, and it always leaves me feeling uncomfortable, disturbed from the dwelling-place of naked presence that I am continually seeking in the world. When I feel threatened or misunderstood, I can swing my intellect like a sword, cutting down hesitant, half-formed or poorly-articulated arguments where they stand — without regard for the meanings they are striving towards or the complexities they, too, are trying to navigate. The fight becomes the thing, and I get caught up in the thrill of parry and thrust and the heat of my own mental muscles tensed and flexing as I dodge and turn and feel the bite of my blows striking home.

Madeline, Praying (a short story of quiet and mystery)

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A hand injury has cruelly kept me from the keyboard for the past week, and in the interest of healing I am still taking the typing very slow and easy. So that my lovely, loyal readers won't feel abandoned, however, I offer you something from the stockpile. The following is a short story I wrote seven or eight years ago, way back in college, before coming whole-heartedly to the Druid path, during a time of grappling with (dis)enchantment, death and mystery. Oddly enough, it features a girl named Madeline (more cynical and angry at Spirit than I ever was), and a hint of flowers. I thought it would be an enjoyable follow-up to last week's guest post. Reading it now, I can only remember hints and shadows of what I was trying to grasp as I wrote it. But I hope you enjoy it, despite its uncertainty.

Madeline, Praying

Entering the abandoned church, she felt as if she were entering the glen of a deep forest. Etched stained glass windows filtered light like entwined branches arching out from the thick columns, trunks of stone. Normally so hard, so brittle, the glass just like any glass, fragile and easily shattered, splintered by a brick or baseball. The marble and granite unmovable, chiseled perhaps, but otherwise worn only by time stretching into future eons of unwritten histories. Yet as she entered the church, she felt as if she were entering something alive, something breathing, momentarily transformed from brittle, breakable, into something delicately living, moving with the breeze, shifting colors of sunlight through branches of trees, seemingly so still and yet growing, always reaching, imperceptibly, in all directions for the sustenance of warmth, of earth and sun, of water, air and light with which the world of this stale chapel was suddenly transfused.

Pagan Peace-Making: A Call for Submissions

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Six months ago, I resolved to write a book. Or, at least, to try. I gave myself a year, to flush out all the insecurities and psychological stumbling blocks that were in the way, and begin the work of articulating my vision and song of practical Pagan peace-making.

Six months later, the journey has changed shape. The process I committed to has come to demand that, first, before the sojourn of writing there must be a period of pilgrimage, a going-out along the peace-forging path in a new and more social way, learning from others as I go. Back at the beginning of May, I was invited to join the blogging project Pagan+Politics, and the familiar anxiety swept over me again as I wondered if I was up to the challenge. The experience has been both simpler and more difficult than I anticipated, with a great deal of stress and distraction as I have fought the urge to follow arguments far off course, into unfruitful bickering and petty fact-checking. Yet it has helped me to clarify my own thoughts, as well as get a better sense of where the detractors and dismissers of peace-making are coming from. Most importantly, however, it provided an opportunity to hear from readers the relief and gratitude at discovering they were not the only Pagan Pacifists out there, and to discover just how important it is for us to hear the voices of others and to know that we are not alone.

Peace-Making, Despair & Resolution

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I will finish my book manuscript.

I will, in fact, begin my book manuscript. And I will finish it. This year.

That is my resolution. And it's a difficult one, because I've been wanting to write this book since... well, since forever, it seems. And yet, there's always something standing behind me, as if looking over my shoulder, throwing a shadow across the page. I might call it fear — fear to turn back to look over the past several years and delve deeply into the frustration and loneliness that brought me to this place, or fear to share this part of me in a form that strangers and, worse yet, family members might freely peruse, giving perhaps only cursory thought to it, not understanding. O yes, there's the old fear of misunderstanding skulking there. But I think the truth is, what I'm really afraid of is what I might ask of others. I'm afraid of asking others to face despair.

Because in some ways, that's the worst of what I might do. There was a moment — a moment that now lingers in my memory like a haunted hillside where no one ever goes anymore and the stone footprints of some forgotten foundation lie half-hidden in the overgrown weeds, outlining where the ancient house once stood — there was that moment. When I rested quietly beneath the crabapple tree and willed my body to dissolve into mud, willed the worms and flies to turn over my flesh into compost, willed the rain to wash the pulpy heart muscle from its cage of bone so that I would be empty, so that I could empty myself finally, once and for all, into the world. That was despair. And it was, in some ways, beautiful. In some ways, like a surrender, a submission to the force of life and spirit that kept this mass of molecules and neural twingeing cohering in form when everything else seemed to have dropped away. God was not there. Love had not saved me; it had only intensified my sense of longing and separation, my impotence. I cannot choose, I am not free. Let me dissolve, let me give myself up to this tragic beautiful mess of hungry nature... so that my love might, somewhere, do somebody some good. Echoes.

First, you have to love something that much, you have to want something like peace (or God) with your entire being — and I don't mean the "rest in peace" kind of escape from responsibility and pain, but the active, squirming interconnection of creation that throbs through everything. You have to want it so much that you would die in order to accomplish it, or just to get out of its way and let it happen. And then, you have to know that it doesn't matter, that it's too big for you, that you are, either way, too small and careless and fragile. Because that is love: love is touching something bigger than you, too big for you to control. If you cannot touch that hugeness and feel your life like a flicker of sardonic laughter on the edge of chaos, then it isn't love. If you do not reach out with all of your ridiculously insignificant being and seek for it knowing full well your ineptitude and failures, it isn't love. It isn't love, if it doesn't drive you to despair.

This is not some teenage-angst love poem. It's not that kind of despair. It's the despair of ecstatic helplessness, the utter out-going of surrender. You cannot live your life this way, and so you don't. You give it up — and yet somehow, it goes on anyway. Even your life doesn't need you. I made a resolution then, too, that I would eat and drink and work to pay for shelter, and I would wait. I would let my life go on, if that's what it insisted on doing. I would stand up from under the crabapple tree and go home, and I would keep the body fed and healthy, I would exercise and think and breathe and meditate and write (because these things were a necessary discipline), and besides that I would simply wait. I knew who would win out in the end, after all; suicide by living well is still suicide. There were days when I thought maybe this was something like what Christ had felt (or Jesus the historical person, if that's all he was, some poor sod who'd had his body broken on account of his for-so-loving the world): wanting, whatever the cost, for my existence to contribute even one minute particular to the overwhelming Divine Loveliness of Being, and more than that, wanting painfully to just Not Screw It Up.

And somewhere in that despair, I found freedom. Not go-kill-some-foreign-jerks-who-object-to-imperial-capitalism-to-protect-our-freedom kind of freedom. Not even freedom the way I'd always thought I had it all along, that freedom of free will, the freedom to think and experience thinking, to be aware and to experience self-awareness. No, I found a freedom that exists within the tension of Perfect Will and Perfect Love, within the paradox of that loneliness of being a being who longs to unite with Being, and that loneliness of being a being who is already and has always been united with Being. And it is because of that freedom that I can believe in peace, in the possibility of pacifism as peace-making, as creativity that weaves a world of beauty and integrity and breathless, messy Spirit.

And so I've been trying for a while now to write a book about peace. My blog posts last June (and recent articles published in Sky Earth Sea) are ways that I have tiptoed around the idea, trying to work up my courage. But the truth is, I do not know a way to peace-making except through real love, and so too through real despair. (The man who invented the peace sign says he wanted to evoke the image of a person holding their hands outstretched in despair, the peasant before the firing squad.) And the idea that I might not be capable of writing a book that can give to someone this necessary love of existence, of being, of Spirit, is hardly terrifying at all compared to the possibility that I just might succeed, even the least little bit, and suddenly find that what I have given is something painful and heart-dissolving and... awful. Can we make peace without experiencing despair? Can we skim the surface and come away mostly unscathed but still better for it and ready with our hands clean and our tongues ready? (Can I even make any kind of sense to people when I'm bogged down by poetry, rhetoric and convoluted sentence structures?)

And then there is the part of me that feels (please, Pagans, forgive the Old Testament reference) like Job after the game is done — a bit of me that is scarred over and will probably always carry a certain amount of resentment and hardness for what I went through, a part that might not ever completely heal or cease mourning for when I thought I was innocent, when I was not yet burned up. There are people who love me deeply now, better than I have ever been loved — but this part of me that used to really believe I deserved it and could revel in such love, that part is slower to respond and may be a permanent cynic. (And so there is also joy, the disbelieving shock of discovering, over and over, that love, too, comes whether you believe in it or not, that like life itself, love doesn't need your faith in order to be real.)

But peace-making isn't about being joyful or feeling good all the time. And if I made a resolution once, I can do it again. So I'm giving myself a year, a year to write the book I'm afraid to write, a year to churn out whatever terrible drivel and agonizing truth might be left over lingering in my skin from that afternoon under the crabapple tree. This year.

This year. I will begin my book manuscript.

And I will finish it.

Song of a Daily Druid: Practicing the Daily Simple

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January's issue of PaganPages is out; this month's Song of a Daily Druid column, Practicing the Daily Simple, tackles the question of what practical daily spiritual living looks like, at least in the life of this practitioner! Following up on last month's column about the elements of ritual, this month I explore three simple techniques that require no ritual whatsoever, but can be employed anywhere, anytime, as a way of incorporating spiritual awareness into everyday, mundane activities. Check it out!

One conviction that has led me so assuredly onto and along the Druid path is the conviction that no amount of philosophizing and debate can make up for a lack of daily, practical work in the spiritual life. It’s easy to forget that any one system can start to seem like the single Truth if you spend too much time within it, and not enough time allowing your body and its natural energies free range to roam. I can hypothesize about the nature of deity, the relationship between free will and destiny, the role of love and grief… and in some ways, this process of writing and thinking is indeed a kind of practical work, too. It does help to clarify, to enlighten, and just as often to frustrate and to reveal the stumbling blocks hiding just beneath the surface. I follow my words like hounds I’ve set loose on the hunt, never quite knowing where they will lead or what scent will send them howling.

But there is other work to do, as well. These simple, daily works are as much a part of my religious practice as the esoteric and exotic, the sacred “set-apart-ness” of much of religious life. I don’t always have the energy — or the time! — to go hunting through poetic imagery and the dense tension of metaphor, weaving my way through the lush undergrowth of belief, identity, paradox and process. Sometimes I have to come home to myself, sometimes I have to clean the hearth and feed the dogs.

......To read more, check out Song of a Daily Druid

Sky Earth Sea: Better Than Coffee!! (and other bits of interest)

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Hey there, dear readers! Shameless plug to follow, for those of you looking for some new high-quality reading material on Druidry and Paganism... Check out the latest issue of Sky Earth Sea: A Journal of Practical Spirituality. Not just for Druids and Pagans, this journal has something for anyone and everyone interested in spiritual practice and looking for ideas and guidance on how to incorporate Spirit into everyday life.

I'm particularly proud of my two contributions to this issue, if you don't mind me saying so. (So proud, in fact, that I'm planning on sending my dad a copy of the issue, just to show him once again that Druids aren't crazy tree-hugging hippies... or, okay, we're not just tree-huggers, anyway!)

"The Peaceful Warrior: Pagan Pacifism Without Excuse" is an article exploring the necessity of nonviolence to counter the rampant systemic violence of our modern consumer-culture world, and takes a careful look at the mythology and iconography of the ancient Celtic past to discover themes that help to guide our search for fearlessness and courage. How can a violent, tribal past be relevant today? What roles do vulnerability and individuality play in fearlessness? How can we step up to become "peaceful warriors" in our own lives? This article presents some potential answers to such questions.

"Peace of the Three Realms: A Daily Meditation" is a step-by-step guide through one of my favorite daily practices, a series of interwoven meditations based around the Druid Prayer for Peace. Using such techniques as daily prayer and visualization, we can each begin to embrace a new worldview, a new story about the role we have to play in creating peace in the real world.

This issue also features lots of interesting articles on other forms of meditation, including a few how-to guides to get you started. On top of that, enjoy great poetry and beautiful seasonal artwork! Visit their website and check it out! (You can subscribe electronically for a very modest price, barely more than a cup of coffee; or, if you're not sure, register to download an earlier issue for absolutely free and see what you think!)

Also, on a more somber note, take some time to read my recent guest post over at Druid Journal: On Grief and Connection: A Response to the Fort Hood Deaths. While Jeff’s last post illustrated very well the kind of divisive rhetoric utilized in most political speeches these days, language that takes for granted an implicit superiority of American citizens and soldiery, and that rejects understanding, compassion and forgiveness for fear that such things will lead to acceptance of and complicity in violence (that is, those forms of violence deemed unacceptable by the State). His post, by reversing the target of this rhetoric, raised a lot of hackles and provoked a lot of feedback, through comments and email, about the basic immorality of justifying violence and excusing killers. Now, with his gracious permission, I try my hand at rewriting Obama’s speech, not by reversing its aim, but by turning the rhetoric itself on its head, and speaking in terms of inclusion rather than exclusion, connection instead division. This is the speech I wish Obama had given, though for reasons that will become obvious, it is not one I ever expect any political leader in this country to give. 

Best of 200

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Well, darling readers, another hundred posts have gone by since the last time I paused to review. What a whirlwind year and a half it's been! Last time, for my "Best of 100" review, I shared with you some of my most popular posts (according to viewing numbers as well as reader comments), as well as a few of my personal favorites. Since then, I've grown a bit more interweb-savvy and now have several nifty tools at my disposal to give me a more accurate analysis of readership statistics. Unfortunately, I haven't been using most of these long enough for them to do me any good as yet! So for now, a more haphazard break-down will have to do...


Popular Posts and Interesting Series

Some old favorites continue to attract new visitors to the blog, but as my subscribers have grown (thanks to all of you who have passed on links and shared your comments, questions and insights on other blogs and forums out there!) several more recent posts have earned a respectable response as well.

• In the past one hundred posts, the most popular by far has been the post Cultivating an Environment of Truth, followed closely by Three Humans Walk into a Bar: Language, Labels & Naming Spirit. Song of the World: Some Things We Know is not far behind, with some controversial posts (such as Book Learnin', On Striving & Strife, and A Quandary of Cats) rounding things off.


• The most popular post of all time, in terms of reader comments, remains To Love a God: Struggling with Morality in Polytheism, and the inquisitive posts Why Druidry? and Is Christ Special? still draw a regular number of hits from Google searches, as does The Swan Maiden's Story, oddly enough (though it's not nearly as erotic as the more recent Yewberry: A Myth Retold)

Continuing my tradition of unreasonable verbosity, the past hundred posts have also seen a few serials attempting to explore subjects in more detail and depth, including:

• A series on poverty and prosperity back in October of last year (Voluntary Poverty, Love & the Prosperity Gospel, and God & the Free Market), which I've recently revisited with my dual-postings, The Group of 20 and the Mythology of the Market, and Archetypes in Market Mythology & The Role of Protest


• Re-Membering Theology, parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, a long response to Johnson's and diZerega's Beyond the Burning Times, deo and Mandy's announcement that they'd "outgrown Paganism" and the spontaneous blog carnival that followed


• A series on Spiritual Aesthetics (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4) followed immediately afterwards, with Part One making it into the top five most popular posts of the last year and a half


• A brief organic series emerged around Valentine's Day, with the posts Regarding Spiritual Growth, In Love with Spirit: Method & Purpose, and In Perfect Love & Perfect Jenga! (which has more clicks than views, according to FeedBurner, probably because of the unfortunate product placement!)


• This past June saw the birth of a new Pagan carnival in the blogosphere: Pagan Values Month, which I kicked off with a guest post over at Druid Journal, Pagan Values: Ecology, Environmentalism & Practical Pacifism, and continued here on Meadowsweet with the posts Relationship & Story, Go Play Outside!, Violence, Destruction & The Difference, and Relating to the Wild, before surrendering to the exhaustion of Lost in Thought...

Unnoticed and Unknown

Perhaps more interesting, some of my favorite posts have sat quietly unremarked for quite some time, so during this review I thought I'd take some time to gesture vaguely in their direction as well, in case readers might wander over to have a look-see.

• Several semi-poetic-slash-creative-writing works like After Beauty and Nobody Wakes Up Alone received no comments whatsoever! (Though Ode to Finitude and The Hunter, overt shameless poetry, garnered a few very complimentary ones.)


• On Grace and Finding Your Center: A Meditation on Movement didn't get much response either, though personally I'm rather smitten with them (of course, it was spring and I was rather smitten in general at the time).


• Shaman & Priest: How America's Cultural Landscape Shapes Its Religious Institutions had some potentially intriguing arguments to make, as did The Death of Civilization.

The Future of Meadowsweet

What's next for Meadowsweet & Myrrh? My dear, dear readers, it's always hard to predict such things... But my goals for the future involve posting more often (at least five times each month, that is, slightly more than once a week). To help me work towards this goal, I've come up with a few categories in which I hope to write more regularly, including:

• Pagan Pertinent Books: reviews featuring books that are not specifically by, for or about Pagans, but still have a vital relevance for deepening Pagan spirituality (my review of The Road is one such example, though I have others in the works)


• Pagan Parenting: observations as a not-actually-anyone's-step-mom about parenting challenges as they pertain to Paganism and Druidry (since I am in no way qualified to write about this topic, I figured I'd give it a shot)


• Sacred Textuality: meditations on excerpts from particularly meaningful spiritual texts and poetry (After Beauty was my first serious attempt at this sort of writing; swing by and let me know if it was even remotely interesting, relevant or helpful)


• Myths Retold: engaging with old myths in new ways, revisiting familiar tales and dipping a big toe into the waters of complicated stories that I'm still only just learning myself (The Tale of Mabon and Yewberry are both recent examples of this type of work)


• Experiencing Deity: on-going explorations of theology, polytheism and direct experiences of Spirit (along the lines of Three Humans Walk Into a Bar and On Grace)


• Musings on News(ings): thoughts on local, national and global news items from a Druidic perspective


• Solar/Fire Festival Contemplations: a necessity of every Pagan blog, it seems; thoughts on the changing seasons and their rituals and celebrations (for instance, Lughnasadh and Alban Arthan)


• Let's Get Physical: discussions of embodiment, especially regarding health and physical activity and how they relate to the Druid way (such as Finding Your Center and The Speed of Blood)

I'm sure politics, environmentalism, romance and career angst will also continue to play pivotal roles in the writings here---so never fear, your voyeuristic urges and anarchistic tendencies will be duly satisfied, as well. If you have any more ideas about things you'd like to read more about in this blog, don't hesitate to drop me a note! Until next time, happy reading!

Song of a Daily Druid

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The October issue of Pagan Pages is up, and with it the second installment of my column, Song of a Daily Druid. This month's column begins to explore the subtleties of the Bardic way and the role that poetry can play in the spiritual life, working with the relationship between creativity and imagination and the importance of memory, experience and the physical body.

All poetry begins in the dark. In the cave of memory, the new poet lies awake, wrapped in the simple, loose-fitting shift of a sleeper, listening to the echoes of her own breathing and the whine of her own blood in her ears, the only sounds. The close stone walls are damp with her exhalations, sighs of longing or uncertainty, muffled sobs or murmured joys. She can see nothing in the darkness, not even the low ceiling above, but in that senseless obscurity her memory moves, conjuring up fleeting images of apricots, water spigots and firelight, half-heard sounds of bare running feet or the rubbing of tree branches against brick. Sometimes the dank, unmoving air of the cave seems to bring her scents of autumn leaves rotting in the riverbed, or tangled woolen yarn, or muddy earth turned over and mixed with the smell of blossoms. These memories are in her, and they are the beginning of her art. She must seek out the language—its rhythms and articulations, the shapes of its vowels, the teeth and tongue of its consonant stops—seek out the words that evoke and mirror sensation.

In the unlit recesses of the cave, her mind works as her body lies still, remembering. The small round stone rests heavy on her belly—she can feel its weight through the soft fabric and the way it rocks gently as each breath lifts it and lets it drop again. Her mind travels the stumbling, sometimes frantic pathways of the past, aflame with inspiration; she brings it back again, turns it over and over to the weight and solidity of the stone. Fire in the head, anchored in the earth. When the night is over, the waking world will come for her. She must find a way to bring poetry into being, to carry it forward, to bring it from the empty depths of the cave into the morning sunlight. To carry it like the stone: concrete, real, substantive in her hands. Light moves behind her eyes, and the stone wobbles on her solar plexus. All poetry begins this way: an image in the mind, a feeling in the gut, a moment in the dark.


(......To read more, visit Song of a Daily Druid)

After Beauty

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Strange, that all of a sudden I remember the poem--the smell of the book it was in, like a palmed cigarette stub sweaty and stale with old smoke, and how worn it was, and loose in its faded jacket--and I don't recall the poem itself.

Just that it was about a girl--I imagine her with oily hair in waves rich with grief that you could dip your fingers in--and perhaps a convenience store, closed for the night with security fluorescents churning in their cluttered hollows, or a living room in an old apartment with the shades drawn, or at least some other dark, crowded place where the noise and hands are hard and constant, tearing the throat out of dirty evening sunlight.

And about how the girl was beautiful because everything else was ugly.

How all the other people were ugly, hunched, bloated, without adequate faces, it seemed, missing teeth or noses, spaces where there should have been eyes or lips to speak with or close solemnly in recognition, in self-possession--but she was beautiful, her hair in perfect dark rivulets down her cheekbones and neck, a painting in oils turning in queazy pools over the surface of the water,

and about how she did not speak, or at least not well or for very long. And the poem ends like that moment

when you stand on a wet cliff, slick black rocks slouching into the ocean, and watch as a gull shifts uneasily in the air, its starved crescent form like a piece of bone scraping against the sky, watch as it seems to see the thick sliver of a fish below, watch as it slams itself into the sharp, ugly water--

because it is that hungry.

Beauty
by Stephen Dobyns

The father gets a bullet in the eye, killing him
instantly. His daughter raises an arm to say stop
and gets shot in the hand. He's a grocer from Baghdad
and at that time lots of Iraqis are moving to Detroit
to open small markets in the ghetto. In a month,
three have been murdered and since it is becoming
old news your editor says only to pick up a photo
unless you can find someone half decent to talk to.

Jammed into the living room are twenty men in black,
weeping, and thirty women wailing and pulling their hair--
something not prepared for by your Episcopal upbringing.
The grocer had already given the black junkie his money
and the junkie was already out the door when he fired,
for no apparent reason, the cops said. The other daughter,
who gives you the picture, has olive skin, great dark eyes
and is so beautiful you force yourself to stare only

at the passport photo in order not to offend her.
The photo shows a young man with a thin face cheerfully
expecting to make his fortune in the black ghetto.
As you listen to the girl, the wailing surrounds you
like bits of flying glass. It was a cousin who was shot
the week before, then a good friend two weeks before that.
Who can understand it? During the riots, he told people
to take what they needed, pay when they were able.

Although the girl has little to do with your story,
she is, in a sense, the entire story. She is young,
beautiful and her father has just been shot. As you
accept the picture, her mother grabs it, presses it
to her lips. The girl gently pries her mother's fingers
from the picture and returns it. Then the sister with
the wounded hand snatches the picture and you want to
unwrap the bandages, touch your fingers to the bullet hole.

Again the girl retrieves the picture, but before she
can give it back, a third woman in black grabs it,
begins kissing it and crushing it to her bosom. You think
of the unflappable photographers on the fourth floor
unfolding the picture and trying to erase the creases,
but when the picture appears in the paper it still bears
the wrinkles of the fat woman's heart, and you feel caught
between the picture grabbing which is comic and the wailing

which is like an animal gnawing your stomach. The girl
touches your arm, asks if anything is wrong, and you say,
no, you only want to get out of there; and once back
at the paper you tell your editor of this room with fifty
screaming people, how they kept snatching the picture.
So he tells you about a kid getting drowned when he was
a reporter, but that's not the point, nor is the screaming,
nor the fact that none of this will appear in a news story

about an Iraqi grocer shot by a black drug addict,
and see, here is his picture as he looked when he first
came to our country eight years ago, so glad to get
out of Baghdad. What could be worse than Baghdad?
The point is in the sixteen-year-old daughter giving back
the picture, asking you to put it in your pocket, then
touching your arm, asking if you are all right and
would you like a glass of water? The point is she hardly

belongs to that room or any reality found in newspapers,
that she's one of the few reasons you get up in the morning,
pursue your life all day and why you soon quit the paper
to find her: beautiful Iraqi girl last seen surrounded by
wailing for the death of her father. For Christ's sake,
those fools at the paper thought you wanted to fuck her,
as if that's all you can do with something beautiful,
as if that's what it mens to govern your life by it.

Song of a Daily Druid

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I'm excited and pleased to announce the publication of my new monthly column over at Pagan Pages: Song of a Daily Druid!

This month's column, "How I Found a Home in Druidry," serves as an introduction to myself and my personal approach to Druidry, tracing the spiraling journey of my childhood through poetry, philosophy, landscape and music which echoed what I would eventually come to call the Ways of Bard, Ovate and Druid:

In the beginning, I was a wild child, a woodsy child, a child who could concentrate all of my attention on holding perfectly still so as not to startle the robin in the grass. I could disappear into the tense air of rapt attention, forget my own little body completely as my eyes widened and my breath stilled. Once, the robin's twitching eyes turned towards me, and I thought I heard it whisper... Cheer-up. Cheer-up, calmly, almost with amusement, you know, I can see you.

That was when I was a very little girl. As sometimes happens, eventually I grew up and stopped listening so closely to the world, to the landscape and the wilderness. It would be years before I rediscovered the rapture of stilled breath or the ecstasy, the going-out-ness, of listening closely and attending with reverence to sacred nature. Druidry would restore my sense of connection and intimacy with the natural world; it would open me to new ways of living with creativity and wisdom, playfulness and respect; it would bring me home to myself, to this person dwelling in my own particular body in my own particular place in a vast landscape infused with Spirit. Druidry was a home-coming for me, as so many Pagans and Witches before me have described their own rediscoveries. One day, I would look into the eyes of the world and discover—like some startled scullery maid or the only daughter of a widower—my real destiny wearing a strange new face, a face of beauty and dignity, but smiling at me with the same old familiar affection.

(....... To read more, visit Song of a Daily Druid)

In future issues, I'll be sharing some daily and seasonal practices of my own, and exploring how they incorporate and interweave the three elements, the three realms and the three "ways" of modern Druidry. I hope you'll hop on over to check it out, as well as the many other interesting articles, interviews and advice columns also on Pagan Pages.

*NB: At the moment, there are several formatting problems with the online publication of the column, but editors are working to correct these as quickly as possible!

Bringing the Rain

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"When the dragon wants a rainstorm he causes thunder and lightning. That brings the rain."

- Chögyam Trungpa

"You know," I said to Jeff last night after closing the laptop and setting it back on the bookshelf, "the cool thing about this whole idea of 'cultivating an environment of truth' is that you don't have to actually know what the truth is. You just have to make room for truth to enter in."

"I'm still not sure I know what Trungpa even means by an 'environment of truth,'" Jeff said, yawning a little.

"An environment of truth--you know. So, suppose you want to teach. Whatever subject. You can try to pour in all the information and skills into the student that you yourself know, right? But if that's all you do then your student will never quite surpass you; the best you can do is teach her everything you know but not ever more than you know. Or, you can cultivate in the student an aptitude for curiosity, inquisitiveness, careful observation, coherent reasoning... You can cultivate in the student an environment of truth, and show the student how to create such an environment for herself, the internal environment of her own attitudes and thought processes, and the external environment of encouraging, supportive and challenging peers. And with such an environment, she is receptive to truth in whatever forms, not only those forms you've discovered yourself already. She might learn things that even you don't know.

"An environment of truth, an environment in which truth can take root and come to full bloom. An environment that does not punish or discourage or dismiss truth, but is open and receptive to the discovery of new truth, as well as the preservation of old, familiar truth.

"And that's actually very freeing. It doesn't require you to know everything, the complete truth, before taking action or making choices; you can still act and choose in ways that reveal truth, even before knowing what that truth is. All you need to know is what kind of environment and relationships give rise to truth, to the revelation or realization of truth; you need to develop a talent for recognizing truth when it comes and attending to its circumstances and context. Then you work to create that environment and those relationships.

"In fact!" I continued enthusiastically, "In fact, in some ways it's like making art, or the process of writing: by creating an environment of truth, you are actually cultivating the circumstances of your own continuing discovery. I don't always know what I'm going to say before I say it--writing is a process of finding out and elaborating on what it is I truly think about something, just as much as it is a way of communicating with others. Sometimes the work of writing reveals connections and ideas I hadn't anticipated, but because I'm listening to the work and not trying to restrict it to some predetermined concept of what I want to write or what I think I should write, I can allow that truth to speak to me as well as to the reader.

"It's the same thing wherever you cultivate an environment of truth--in writing, in art, in the classroom, in family relations, in life in general. When your focus is on cultivating that receptive, fertile environment, truth can well up within it and flow freely through it, naturally, seemingly effortlessly even. You don't have to worry about controlling truth, you just... let it happen. The dragon wants a rainstorm--wants truth--so he creates thunder and lightening, he makes the things he can make because he knows he cannot make the rain itself. He prepares the way. And preparing the way brings the changing, falling rain.... You know what I mean? ...Jeff?"

I looked at Jeff. His nose half-buried in his pillow, he snored, a snore deep and rumbling.

"Speaking of thunder..." I muttered to myself, and smiled.