A yearlong celebration of the earth’s holy days!

Hi my dear readers. I am not yet returning to regular posts but have been thinking of things and finally taking a leap back into leading writers (and nonwriters!) a bit, and I wanted to post this for you from my Meetup site. Note, you are welcome to attend one session or all the sessions! Just click on the image below to visit the event page.

I am committing to a yearlong celebration of our eight main pagan holidays, or the solstices and equinoxes and the four other holidays that fall midway between these four. We’ll do some writing together and create some ceremony and ideally make some magic. I hope you’ll take a look if you’re interested since this will be on Zoom so location becomes less important.

Until my next “real” post, I wish you all good things!

Bearing Fruit (1)

I have been growing my love for myself for decades now, for so long a skinny, timid weed of a thing. And in recent years feeling it grow more, recent weeks, even, thinking my not-so-skinny-anymore weed is even growing fruit and seeds, and I begin to see how birds and maybe squirrels and even lizards might come to nibble, or to sit in its shade, or breathe in the sharp green scent of its leaves.

Economic blackout February 28th

Hi everyone. I’m sorry for the late announcement pasted below but just now received this. Wishing you all so much well in these scary and disturbing times! And sending love and hope. May we change our world šŸŒŽ for the good of all beings everywhere. :)

Riba

Please consider this initiative & share with your networks: https://www.cbsnews.com/…/economic-blackout-feb-24…/ 
(Posted by Jon Stewart, initiated by John Clemens, I received this from James Baraz):

WHEN:
Friday February 28th from
Midnight tonight to 11:59 P.M. tomorrow night

WHAT NOT TO DO:
Do not make any purchases
Do not shop online, or in-store
No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy
Nowhere!
Do not spend money on Food & Gas
Do not use Credit or Debit Cards
Do not hire anyone to do work around your house, etc.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Only buy essentials if absolutely necessary
(Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)
If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.
SPREAD THE MESSAGE
Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!
WHY THIS MATTERS?
Those in power only care about their pocketbooks.
Corporations, banks only care about their bottom line.
Financial markets rely on consumers to spend.

February 28th
The 24 Hour Economic Black Out Begins.

Happy Thinning of the Veils (3)

Happy Samhain! Happy Halloween! Happy New Year’s Eve day! Happy beginning of these handful of holy days and the honoring of the waning of the light, our midpoint here in this moon-dominated portion of the year, our moving toward the most dark, the depth of innerness and reflection. Happy thinning of the veils between the worlds, between our side here and the other side where our loved ones who died reside. Happy magic time, ears and hearts open. May sweet or needed messages pass back and forth between us. And the love. Oh, yes. All that love.

Two Small Puddles (26)

Day 11 I feel like living proof we are only given what we can bear. I am not pointing to biblical references, only the proverbial sayings, and I don’t even know if I believe this is true. I think sometimes we break, and then if we are lucky we mend. But today she wakes better, more like herself. The angry attacks come less often. And the change feels calibrated to just before my tipping point. I could not have endured it much longer, but I only know this because it has lessened. I sense the full strain of it only now when there is some relief. Today in chavasana I fill with gratitude and leave two small puddles of tears on my green yoga mat when I am done. I marvel at the timing, this pushing me to the edge but not over. I’ve never been so aware of it, this intricate tuning. I bet it has happened before, many times. But today I am awake to it. I feel how big the gift.

My Day of Poetry, My Poem (32)

Today I had the great honor and gift of taking a class titled “Ways Poetry Can Enliven, Illuminate, and Improve Your Prose” with poet and professor Julie Paegle. At one point, she gave us each a poem on a small sheet of paper that we can carry with us out in the world to memorize. Mine was “The Reassurance” by Thom Gunn. (I think it may have been her intention or prayer to participate with the universe when she handed them out. Each one was different, and more than one person said she must be psychic.) In one exercise we were told to read the poem she picked for us, choose something we loved or hated about it and take that with us into a poem we wrote ourselves. This is the poem that came to me.

I remember
the first time you came back
after you died.

We were sitting
outside a prison
at a round stone picnic table
near a chain link fence.

I said,
“What are you doing here?
You’re supposed to be dead.”

You smiled,
nodded.

I remember waking up
still shocked by your presence
not sure if I was glad
or annoyed
to know you could appear like that
so alive
anytime you wanted.

15.2.2015 or Not Quite Mine (29)

Ah. I had no idea today was a magic number day until I wrote the date in my notebook: 15.2.2015. I still write the dates the way they’re written in Mexico (and most of the world, I’m guessing) with the day first and then the month. Maggie—a woman I met in Ajijic who split her time between Barbados and Canada but had come to Mexico for dental work—told me once my number based on my name is 15, so now I think of it as lucky. She had changed the spelling of her own name to get a better number. And she hated my beloved 29, based on my birthday. She thought it was a terrible number. I wonder if she would have changed her date of birth, too, if she could? My mind gets to wander while I write. It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve written in my notebook. My pen feels funny in my hand, my writing odd looking and out of practice. I am out of practice in all ways, it seems, knowing nothing but work these past six weeks. Work, and fitting in things between work, like sleeping and eating healthy meals. I’ve done my healing toning almost every day while I do my “morning chores,” but I’ve been doing them in the late afternoon or evening more often than not, having let work sweep me away for most of the day. I’ve begun to do my yoga again, though—a small set of sun salutes, mostly, hiding in the shade of the umbrella in the late mornings. And I’ve been swimming three times now. I’m especially pleased about these last two, about having found a way to reach the doing of them in the midst of this crazed stretch. But now, slowing down to write, I feel exhausted and numb, like my mind is not quite mine anymore.