Category Archives: Great Wheel

Asia, Family, Great Wheel, Health

Life and Death

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Beltane and the Moon of Mourning

Tuesday gratefuls: Kate, head back, asleep in the car. Kate in t-shirts and shorts with Snow on the ground. Kate’s t-shirt, Though she be tiny, she be fierce. Rigel against me last night. Kep. Yet more Snow. Sleep.

Sparks of Joy: Rigel’s eating well. Chuang T’zu.

Back to working out. New work out, body weight. For Hawai’i. Felt good. Plan more walks, longer there. Increase cardio.

No word yet on the death certificates. I’m going to call today. It’s absurd that I have to shepherd this process, but I need to get on with it.

I have a list of pre-Hawai’i tasks and post-Hawai’i tasks. I want to get all of the pre-Hawai’i work completed so I can take my first vacation in quite awhile in peace. Especially need to get that IRA logjam resolved, get the money river flowing again.

As the shloshim continues, one more week plus a day, some of the grayness has begun to lift. The haze lightens. Not all the way, maybe not for a good while.

Yesterday I intended to do more than start working out again. Nope. I read. I napped. I watched TV. Fed the dogs. Made food. Ate it. A kind of fatigue, a languishing. As Deb said, some day are better than others. Just go with the way you’re feeling. Trying that out for now.

Always appreciated the New Orleans style funeral. Second-lining, trombones, dancers. Chuang-t’zu, after his wife died, sat on the floor banging pots and pans, having a good time. Confounded his friends.

Chuang Tzu Sings Upon his Wife’s Death (Written by You-Sheng Li )

 

When Chuang Tzu’s wife died, his friend Hui Tzu came to offer his condolences and found Chuang Tzu hunkered down, drumming on a potter pan and singing.

Hui Tzu said, “You lived with her, raised children with her, and grew old together. Even weeping is not enough, but now you are drumming and singing. Is it a bit too much?”
Chuang Tzu said, “That is not how it is. When she just died, how could I not feel grief? But I looked deeply into it and saw that she was lifeless before she was born. She was also formless and there was not any energy. Somewhere in the vast imperceptible universe there was a change, an infusion of energy, and then she was born into form, and into life. Now the form has changed again, and she is dead. Such death and life are like the natural cycle of the four seasons. My dead wife is now resting between heaven and earth. If I wail at the top of my voice to express my grief, it would certainly show a failure to understand what is fated. Therefore I stopped.”  (Chapter 18)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Easter Morning

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Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Sunday gratefuls: Broad spectrum antibiotics. Kate’s will. Jamie Bernstein. Easter and Passover and Spring. Friends. Rabbi’s. Countryfolk. Mountains. Dogs.

Sparks of Joy: Kate’s blood cultures negative for infection. Exhaustion, but exhaustion held in the care and concern of so many others.

Kate at Mama’s Fish House

Been thinking, a lot, about the holidays: Ostara, Easter, Passover. How they hold the wonder and awe of Spring and apply it to our human lives. On Maundy Thursday (no, I never remember what that means) Kate was in severe crisis. She had a crowd of nurses, physician’s assistants, respiratory therapists, a pulmonologist. All working carefully, quickly, urgently.

I had a hushed conversation in the hallway with the physician’s assistant and Dr. Fenton, the pulmonologist, about resuscitation.  Asking hard questions. Trying to be true to the situation, to her wishes, to the possible.

She survived the crisis, her blood pressure down and her breathing more stable. She moved to the 10th floor where she could be treated with nurses who work with more complicated cases.

Her situation got better, but death still seemed as plausible as recovery. On Good Friday, her lucidity returned, she made it off the bipap (a small mask that is actually a treatment for the pneumonia, among other things), and her white cell count continued to come down.

Yesterday we found her blood borne infection was gone. Though it still needs a four to six week bout of IV antibiotics to make it sure it doesn’t resurface. She passed her swallow study so she can drink and eat. Prognosis still guarded, but less so now.

Her friend, Jamie, reported she looks good. Jamie stayed all night with her.

It’s Easter morning.

Family, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, US History, Weather +Climate

Colorado Can Lead

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Ostara and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Wednesday gratefuls: Chipmunk wife. Snow. More. And, yet more. Vaccines. Diane and Mary. Formula 1. Netflix. Yin Yang Master. Biden at work. 45 in Florida, his natural habitat. The Woollies. Spring. The Great Wheel. Its turns. Celebrate.

Sparks of joy: Snow. Life itself.

 

The Snow coming down again. Like Minnesota rain, straight down in gentle punctuated lines. Sat watched it against the Lodgepoles yesterday afternoon. Their red Bark, their Branches beginning to droop, covered in Branch shaped dollops of white. The Japanese Ukiyo-e prints and some paintings often show Snow and Pine trees. This was the same. It was easy to imagine myself in the mountains of Akita Prefecture, Kep wandering around on genetic home territory.

Then. Spring snows. Not the harsh snows of December and January. Wet, yes, but coming as a confection rather than an invasion, even in the depths we’ve had over the last three weeks. It’s as if we’re being inundated by confectioner’s sugar, a big wire shaker somewhere overhead.

And, even better, as Kate just said: “I see Snow and I see no Fire.” May it be so. This helps. Better Spring moisture gives some protection during June, our month of greatest fire danger. Historically. In July the monsoons come and soak the afternoons. Though. Has not happened but once since we’ve been here.

Kate has swollen salivary glands. Chipmunk face. Or, mumps. But she’s not been anywhere to catch the mumps. She had mumps as a child, anyhow. Good thing we already have an appointment for her at 1:00 pm today. My annual physical follows. Good times at New West Physicians. Painful enough to require an Oxy. Unusual for Kate.

Boulder continues to be in the news. A Libertarian ethos reinforced by cowboy culture is in a scrum with the progressive politics of metropolitan Coloradans. Boulder is the epicenter of this Mountain state’s radical left, as Berkeley is to California. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the shooter’s motive, but even if not, it’s still a bloody metaphor for the tension.

I do think there are ways through this impasse. At least here. I’ll mention the primary one I see today. Coloradans are outdoor oriented. Even if you never get out to hike the trails, ski the runs, or camp in a Mountain Meadow, the Mountains loom in the background or foreground. The Skies turn blue and the Sun shines in that bright, cheerful Colorado way. We all care about the wildlife, the rugged valleys, most of which we will never see.

Rancher culture in particular loves the land, too. The way forward that I see presses this love of the outdoors, of the wild things that live here, into a compact for a Colorado future both wild and free. The drivers for this compact will include a need for better water policy, climate change, changes in the nature of agriculture, especially toward regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture has a foot hold in the Flint Hills of Kansas. What they do there can work here.

This idea and its friends excite me, make me want to get into the mix. Colorado can lead the nation I think just because of the conflict and tension. Use the power and energy it generates to forge a covenant between metro and rural.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Humanities, Memories, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

They Say It’s His Birthday!

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Spring! and the Ovid Moon of Metamorphoses

Shoutout to birthday boy Publius Ovidius Naso, or Ovid as we know him in the English speaking west. He’d be two thousand and fifty-four today.

Saturday gratefuls: Safeway pickup. Kabob skewers. Kate’s fluid flowing. Psalms class finish. New class start April 9. Writing poetry. Colorado Mountain Sun. Ancient ones on Justice. Vaccines. April Fool’s Day: shot II for me.

Sparks of Joy: Unclogging Kate’s feeding tube and avoiding another ER adventure. Wu wei, the Way of my life.

March 1, meteorological spring. No romance in that one. March 20, today, 5:37 MST, the Vernal Equinox. Spring. Ostara. Bunnies and crosses and parting of seas, oh my! Lots of romance, lots of theological pulling and hauling. This religion defining moment: resurrection and another: the Exodus. I settle these days for the Sun and the Earth’s celestial equator. See this explainer if you need more. More or less equal hours of Sun and night.

Yes. We’ve moved from the transitional time of Imbolc to the birthing blooming buzzing time. Spring. No wonder the Anglo-Saxons, those Northern European ancestors of so many of us, chose a fertility goddess, Eostre, to celebrate. Estrogen. Ostara. Easter. Yes, the Catholics took her name, added it to the resurrection celebration, and, voila: Easter!

Jesus as Eostre. A dying and rising God like Tammuz, Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, or Jesus seem like good company for a fertility goddess. Any gardener can testify to the thrill of planting dusty brown clumps of vegetative matter in the Fall of the year and in the Spring of the next year, the rapture of a moistened bed pierced by green shoots, then Tulips, Crocus, Grape Hyacinth, Iris, Lilies in colorful flower.

Isn’t resurrection a matter of taking a dead thing, or what appears to be a dead thing, putting it away, and having it rise out at the right time? If you listened to the Southern Gospel Revival’s rendition of “Ain’t No Grave” )two posts below this one), you heard the line, “Ain’t no grave, can keep my body down.” Further on, “When that trumpet sounds, I’m a risin’ from the ground.” Could be sung by every Tulip bulb I ever planted.

This is the right time to celebrate those things you may have planted a while back, projects or dreams that have needed some time in the grave or the soil or the unconscious.

It’s also the right time to look at the bed you’ve tended, the one in which you planted them, your life. There might be weeds, or, as I prefer, plants out of place. Note that this means you may have good habits or plans or projects that have become plants out of place in your life. You may have to remove them so your new projects and dreams will flourish.

Ask Eostre for help. You might find her in your anima, perhaps buried in your shadow. She’ll burst out, give things a boost up, if you let her. I’m sitting right now on Shadow Mountain, imagine what lies beneath.

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Great Wheel, Health, Holidays, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

The Frozen Rose of Texas

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Imbolc and the Megillah Moon

Sunday gratefuls: All the Megillah’s. More snow. More cold. A good sleep. Cold chicken. Red Lobster biscuits. My Ecuador alpaca coat. My new LLBean insulated plaid shirt. My duckies. Love the cold, don’t love being cold.  Vaccines. Covid. 45 gone. 46 in. Judah and the Black Messiah.

Sparks of Joy: Fresh, white Snow. Rigel jumping up on the deck like a 5 year old. Life.

 

 

Those vaccines. Hard to come by up here in the mountains. Not yet. We’ll get them though. Sooner, I imagine. Haven’t gone the obsessive click now, click again, click now, click again route. We’ve survived Covid so far doing what we’re doing. Gonna keep at no visits, grocery pickups, only essential medical visits. Probably for a while after the vaccine, too.

Love that they’re out there. That we’re eligible. That others are getting them. That more will get them. Might be Happy Hanukah and Merry Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho. or Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel. If that happens, I’ll still enjoy the darkness of the Winter Solstice, but I’ll be right there with the light worshipers, too. Can you imagine how festive a season that will be?

Meanwhile a hyper clean, car sized robot will roam Mars punching holes in its surface and storing soil in special containers for the second part of a three stage project. The second stage is a lander that picks up those containers and the third stage returns them to Earth for NASA and European Space Agency labs. 2025-2027. Far away from the virus infected planet it left last July. Smart Perseverance.

And, maybe, just maybe, our nation will have made progress on sorting out its painful contradictions. I watched Judas and the Black Messiah yesterday on HBO Max. Fred Hampton was 21 when J. Edgar conspired with the Chicago P.D. to eliminate him. 21. When I watched, I kept saying yes, Fred, yes. Power is people. Capitalists, no matter their color, exploit the people. A Rainbow Coalition. Yes, Fred. Then he died in his bed, never waking up, his pregnant Deborah arched over his body.

Of course, the move reminded me of the damning curse of racism, but it went further, much further. Fred brought together Puertoricans and poor whites. He saw the thread that wove together the oppressed and was able to speak to it, to help others see it. No wonder they killed him.

What if the Proud Boys and the Black Panthers saw common cause? They could. It’s corporate capitalism that keeps them both down. What if those of us on the far left joined, too. And Chicanos. And Asians. And Native Americans. There would need be no violence. That sort of self-awareness would win at the ballot box.

I know. Texas. How would you like a $16,000 bill for keeping the heat on? See the paragraph above.

Great Wheel, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Heal Yourself with the World

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Sent by friend Bill Schmidt. Good advice.

 

 

Advice  from María Sabina, Mexican healer and poet – “Heal yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds. Heal yourself with mint, neem, and eucalyptus. Sweeten with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile. Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a hint of cinnamon. Put love in tea instead of sugar and drink it looking  at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain. Stand strong with your bare feet on the ground and with everything that comes from it. Be smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with your forehead.  Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier. Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember … you are the medicine.”

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Poetry, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Imbolc 2021

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Imbolc and the Wolf Moon

Monday gratefuls: Easy Entrees bacon wrapped pork tenderloins. Green Beans. Kate’s no nausea days. House cleaning today. LLBean and my new shearling hurricane shirt. The Ancient Ones tell stories around the council fire. Tom’s story. 45 gone. 46 doing stuff I like. Feel better. Imbolc.

The Ewes, the pregnant Ewes. Milk for their Lambs. Means Milk for all. For Cheese. For children. Imbolc. In the belly. In Ireland this is and was the birthing time for Sheep. The Lambs came; the Ewes freshened; the family fed on food not stored over the long fallow time.

It was clear the promise of the day after the Winter Solstice was not false. There would be another spring, another freshening of the earth. All would be well, all manner of things would be well.

What a precious and delightful time. Lambs gamboling. Suckling. Milk squirted directly into children’s mouths. All delighted by the miracle of birth and renewal.

Hard to put ourselves in the place of people who subsisted on stored Grains, Vegetables, smoked Meats over the long fallow time begun on Samain, Summer’s End, and lasting until today.

Brigid, the Triple Goddess. Her day. This from a wikipedia article:

She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare.

Poetry, the smithy, and the hearth were her domains, thus the Triple Goddess. The often week long festivals the Celts celebrated on their four cross quarter days: Imbolc, Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samain (October 31st) gave villagers a break from their subsistence lives. A chance to play, to sing, dance, trade, honor their gods and goddesses.

Imbolc was also a time for discerning weather, peeking into the immediate future. Hoping for Spring, but knowing it could still be distant. It was this tradition that has translated in the U.S. into Groundhog Day. Here’s a Scottish proverb that suggests the link. Bride is Brigit.

Imbolc is a good day to consider those freshened thoughts and projects you have. What came up for you during the dark, fecund days of Winter? Are there dreams or hopes or works you imagined then that need a push right now? You can ask Brigit for help. It’s her big day and she’s listening.

If you have an artesian well nearby or know of one, you could also follow the ancient Celtic practice of dressing the wells. On these holidays the Irish, the Welsh, The Scots, the Cornish, the Manx, and Bretons would, in ancient times, take flowers to the well, make corn dollies representing Brigit and leave them there, tie rags with wishes and prayers to shrubs and trees nearby.

These Holy Wells are pathways to the Otherworld, the world of Faery, and a place where the Holy Ones pay attention to the needs of the common person.

Brigit, the Triple Goddess, is a Fire Goddess, and at Kincaid in Ireland a double monastery, men and women, kept her eternal flame alive throughout the year. Might be a good day to have a Fire in the Fireplace, her hearth, and consider the creativity her Holy spirit represents.

Welcome all to the blessed season of Imbolc. May your projects blaze up and warm you and yours.

Art and Culture, Asia, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Health, Literature, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, News of the Strange, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel, US History, Weather +Climate, World History

Still here. Still ok.

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Winter and the beautiful waning crescent of the Moon of the New Year

Ordinary time. Is there any such thing right now?

Saturday gratefuls: Kate. A good night’s sleep. For both of us. Much needed. Rigel keeping me warm. Kep the good boy. Impeachment. 25th Amendment. Resignation. January 20th. All. Subway last night. Beef stroganoff tonight. Easy Entrees, thanks Diane and Mary. Life. Its wonder even amidst its difficulties.

 

 

 

Whoa. Yesterday was tough. I slept from eight last night to seven this morning. All the way through. Thankfully. Feel rested and ready for today. Grateful, really grateful.

Kate’s still worn out though the oxygen situation has resolved. She’s already fatigued from whatever has been going on for the last three weeks, then to have an insult like the oxygen concentrators gave her was hard. She’s still asleep. I’m glad.

As long as I can stay rested, healthy, get my workouts in, see friends and family on zoom, I am ok. Though on occasion I get pushed right up against my limits. I imagine Covid is helping me since I don’t get out, am not around sick people. Or, when I am, I’m masked. Odd to consider, but I’m sure it helps.

Life continues, no matter. Until it doesn’t, of course. That is, even when an evil bastard like Trump is in office, we still have to eat. When a rampant virus rages, we still have to sleep. When a family member is ill, we still love each other, support each other. Life is a miracle and wasting it, well, please don’t.

Got an article about building a computer. Something I’ve always wanted to try. Might just do it. Also read about an experiment that proved quantum entanglement is not instantaneous. And one about the lost merry customs of Hogmanay. And about lyfe, the idea that life might be, probably is, existing in forms we carbon based life forms might not recognize, even if it’s in front of us. And another on why water is weird. And another on why the universe might be a fractal. (thanks, Tom)

No matter how proximate or distant disturbances in the force, science goes on, literary folks write books and articles, the past remains a source of inspiration, and the future a source of hope. No matter whether life has meaning or whether it is absurd (as I believe) the secondary effects of this strange evolutionary push into awareness persist. And, yet they persisted.

Lucretia hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, ready for witnesses to her dignity, her sense of honor, and her tragic fate. Goya’s Dr. Arrieta, not far from her, documents gratitude for healing and the comfort of ancestors. Van Gogh’s Olive Trees teach us that perspective differs from person to person, yet each perspective can be beautiful while remaining unique. Beckman’s Blind Man’s Buff embraces the mythic elements of life, helps us see them in our own lives. Kandinsky. Oh, Kandinsky. His colors. His lines. His elegance.

Mt. Evans and its curved bowl continues to deflect weather toward us here on Shadow Mountain. The light of dawn hits Maine first, as it has for millennia. The polar vortex slumps toward Minnesota.

Roman Ephesus. The last standing pillar of the Temple of Diana. Delos. The Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The ruined temples of Angkor Wat. Chaco Canyon. Testimony to the ancientrail of human awe. Of an eagerness to memorialize wonder.

It is, in spite of it all, a wonderful world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coronavirus, Family, GeekWorld, Great Wheel, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Redlined

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Winter and the waning crescent of the Moon of the New Year

Ordinary Time

Friday gratefuls: Oxygen concentrators. The Oxygen Concentrator Store. Kate. Hypoxia. This crisis. That crisis. Covid. Armed seditionists, domestic terrorists, right wing Trump cultists. Exposed for what the word patriotism means to them. Trump. Go away, and, don’t come again another day. Brother Mark. Diane.

So Kate. Hypoxia. One of our concentrators gave out in the middle of the night. One we’ve had in for repairs twice, the last only two months ago. A confused time ensued when I got her the portable O2 concentrator and it didn’t seem to lift her O2 saturation readings. Sleepy. Gave her my O2 tubing, connected to the O2 generator I use at night. Not a big deal for me. My need for O2 at night is due to 8,800 feet and slight COPD, but I can do without it.

In the morning her O2 sats remained low. She was gray and chilled. Very unusual, that last, for Nordic Kate. Worked stuff around, got our third O2 concentrator kicked up a level and gradually her color returned. She got warm.

But the whole ordeal had wiped her out. Understandably.

Called the O2 concentrator store and said I’d like a new one. Joshua sympathized. But. We’d get you a recertified one right away, but Covid has us with no inventory. No recertified or new units. We’ll have to ship it off and see that you have no costs involved. Best I can do.

Just another random effect of the Covid crisis. Like Seaoh spending a full month of 2020 in quarantine. Like sister Mary unable to teach in Japan or make her way to Kuala Lumpur. Like brother Mark well into his longest stay in Saudi Arabia. Like toilet paper and standup freezer shortages.

Not to mention the newest superspreader event, the storming of the US Capitol by thousands of unmasked domestic terrorists. Seditionists. Acts of treason. These are the blasphemy equivalents for a democracy.

Fraught. Tired. Running at max rpms. Anymore and I’m into the redline. Exercise tomorrow. Not now.

Ordinary time. Yeah…

 

sedition: incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority

treason: the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family

Both definitions from Merriam-Webster

Commentary on Religion, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

And so it ends, on the Twelfth Night

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Winter and the Moon of the New Year

Christmastide ends, Day 12: The Epiphany, Twelfth Night

Wednesday gratefuls: Anger. Trust. Feelings. Love. Rigel. Kep. Kate. The comforter. Cooler. Murdoch’s journey. Christmastide. Pagans. Seekers. Mountain Waste. The stars in their courses. 30 Coins. Eyes. Ears. Brain. Heart. Feet. Hands.

If you’ve followed these, we are at the end, the Twelfth Night of Christmastide. The Orthodox celebration of the incarnation. The three kings came, found the Child of Wonder, left. But on their way out they spoke with King Herod. Yes, the Child exists. Yes, he’s a king. Then left by another route to return home, to say they had found their way to this signal of a new age.

Herod takes the news hard. No infant kings allowed. Male babies under the age of two must die. And so the slaughter of the innocents which we acknowledged and whom we celebrated on Day 3, Children’s Day.

In Merry England the Twelfth Night was another time for the emergence of the fool, for the inversion of roles, for letting go of the amazement of Christmastide in preparation for the now imminent return to ordinary time. We saw this same impulse on Distaff Day and in the male equivalent, Plough Monday.

Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, follows these themes with an exotic setting, gender role reversals, and a role for Feste, the fool. Written in 1601, it was for a performance on Twelfth Night.

Matthews offers another Robert Herrick excerpt:

Ceremony on Candlemass Eve

Down with the Rosemary, and so

Down with the Baies, and Mistletoe:

Down with the Holly, Ivie, all.

Wherewith ye drest the Christmas Hall

That so the the superstitious find

No one least branch there left behind:

For look how many leaves there may be

Neglected there (maids trust to me)

So many Goblins you shall see.

Any needles or leaves left in the Christmas Hall would, on the day after Twelfth Night, turn into goblins. A sound reason to finish taking down all the decorations.

Mine are all stored away except two: a shelf sitting Victorian Santa and the string of colored lights over my south facing loft window. Not sure whether I’ll leave them up or not.

If we take the other thread, the pagan/supernatural thread, during Christmastide, Yule, this marks farewell for the Solstice, too. We now know the Sun has committed for another year, the crops and the livestock will feel the heat, the warmth, the energy, the vitality. Whatever fears we had as the nights grew longer and the days colder, have given way to confidence that Spring and Beltane will come once again.

We integrate in this new year the lessons of the darkness. The going deep within ourselves, down to our roots, considering ourselves and our Souls in the most radical way, will nourish our accomplishments in the light of the world.

I hope Christmastide has a somewhat new meaning for you. And that your new year, this ordinary time, will bless you and yours.