The Dawn Of A New Era

Dearest Reader,

Below is a post I started to write on January 1st. For the month of January I have been working outside the home! I am a teaching artist for an awesome organization called Creative Action http://creativeaction.org/
Sorry for the long neglect, a lot has happened and my blog has been very spotty with the updates. I now have found time during the super bowl to sneak away to a cafe and write about this exciting life of mine. Enjoy!

So here we are the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the end of the Mayan Calendar. In my early 20s when I was big into the activism scene this date really scared me. I really thought this would be the end of the world or a shift to things getting much worse. As I got older and closer to the actual time of 2012 I started thinking differently. Maybe the fear I had running for so much of my youth dissolved a little, maybe I just had more perspective living as an adult in our crazy society, a shift occurred from within. I started seeing this time as a chance for our country to get better. For my generation to pick up the slack, for an ancient way of thinking to come back into fashion where people are more connected to their actions and feel fulfilled by being connected to each other and nature.  

I want to live my life in a sustainable way, I want to have my family more connected to the food chain through growing our own food, building our home and treading more lightly on the earth then we currently do. We talk about a shift from urban to rural. It would be challenging, exciting and scary. We want to live near a city so we can use the resources of it. Both our careers are city reliant and I imagine it will stay that way for a while. All my life I have known how to observe nature through the lens of a city dweller. Other then brief stints farming for a few months, I have lived in a city context and found my sacred space in city parks, down alleyways and on the frequent hikes just outside of the places I live. 

 Having a yard is one of the key ways I have stayed connected to nature. I follow a Cardinal family as they play in the pecan tree outside our bedroom. I stare at the intricate patterns of the elm leaves as I swing in our hammock. As I walk Sweetpea to the park I stare at the grackle impressions, deep black on immense blue sky. I get my hands dirty in our small, freshly built veggie bed and pick caterpillars off our cabbages.

This meditation with the wild things that live near me helps keep me focused and guides my thoughts to the beauty of this universe, to the interconnected web of life, to my version of deity. I am teaching k-1st graders about local ecology and art. We are getting to know animals that live around us, plants that grow in back of the school and trees that line our neighborhoods. Passing on this information is key to our survival as a species; it’s that ancient wisdom that is rarely shared. 

I see the spark of connection in Sweetpea. She delights in plants, picking carrots and petting flowers. I look forward to the days she has several acres to run around on and claim as her own, mud forts, streams and hollow logs. Daddy and I are close to making this vision come true; we are also far from it. For now we have our home for another year, another year of tending plants, listening to birds and bonding with our neighbors.

This morning our UU reverend led a sermon on female deity and God as a huntress. This was the first time I had really thought of a female deity as something other then a mother. I loved it! I love the mother Goddess archetype too, but somehow being able to imagine a higher power as a huntress got my creative juices flowing. The Age of Aquarius is a turning, a looking back and looking forward. This time is about highlighting female power in our society. I am ready to dive in.

 

All Hallows Eve

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It is Sweetpea's first real Halloween. She has been celebrating this holiday sense soon after being born but this is the first time she has become aware of candy, costumes and getting into trick or treating. As a parent I am conflicted by Halloween. I love the holiday, the DIY qualities of meeting your neighbors, the art installations on front lawns, the costumes and yes, even the gathering of candy. I love that this pagan holiday addressing death in this season still is celebrated in a mainstream way with the lighting of candles and carving of jack o lanterns. 

My main issue with Halloween, besides all the corn syrup, is the idea of witches. Medicine women, healers, herbalists, are the people we call witches. These women were put on trial and often burned at the stake during the dark ages. The villainizing of these medicine women lives on today in our green skinned, crooked nosed, caricatures of women people call witches. She rides around on her broom scooping up children and eating them. It’s a terrible and scary image. Girls dress up like witches today reenacting these “evil” women. Yes there have been some exceptions to this, good witches, Samantha on the show "Bewitched" and more recently Hermione Granger, but most of the time the old, ugly, hag is what I see being the most played out. There has been a lot of reclaiming of the word witch in the pagan community. Now folks wear the pointed hat with pride. What I see in the main stream culture though is a complete lack of understanding of who witches really are. They are different from the other made up ghouls of Halloween.  

 I try to be relaxed about what is enacted on Halloween, every society has a shadow side and this is the place young and old alike get to try things out.  At the same time, the thought in the back of my head is, “really, we are still dragging this old concept of women healers as villains out of the closet again?” I remember being so scared of witches as a young person, It would have been nice to have a broader perspective of these misunderstood women healers. It looks a little like the way folks wear other cultures dress during Halloween and think its ok to pretend to be that person for the night. I think most folks are coming from a place of play with this but I have seen how hurtful it can be to my friends from the cultures that get the most Halloween attention, like Arab and Indian people.

 My family celebrates Samhain, the pagan holiday that honors our ancestors and this season of dying. This morning we watched the sunrise and lit our jack o lanterns welcoming our ancestors into our home for the day. Sweetpea and I decorated our family alter with pictures and memorabilia of family members and pets that have passed from our lives; she decorated with candy and some marigolds. We will make a pumpkin pie to feast on this afternoon and think about all our beloved dead and all the folks that recently lost their lives from the intense hurricane Sandy. After pie and candles we will get dressed in costumes and join the hordes of children and care givers on the street tonight playing in the community game that is Halloween. I hope to give Sweetpea this balance growing up, understanding who witches really are, taking a moment to notice all the amazing people and animals that pass into and out of our lives and the sweetness of family, community fun.