Prayer
Shakmah WinddrumShakmah Winddrum has passed beyond the veil and I am at a loss to truly express my sorrow and my gratitude. Thankfully, my dear sister, T. Thorn Coyle has written the very words that resonate within my heart.
We within the Order of Elemental Mysteries are officially in mourning. We stand with our sisters, brothers and warriors of the New Seed Sanctuary and their sister tradition Light Haven in love, light and ultimately in grief.
May She return to the Mystery that borne Her and may Her name resound loudly through the hearts of all who walk the path She carved out of sheer Will and boundless Love.
Shakmah will be remembered, and she will live on in our hearts, in our minds and within our work.
Ashe! Blessed Be! Amen!
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 11:43am.
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Fri, 08/29/2008 - 12:07pm.
My brother called me late last night. And although he said initially that nothing was the matter, he then proceeded to tell me just how hard his life has become lately. He seemed surprised that he was admitting this all to me on Thanksgiving just minutes before midnight.
And he laughed the entire phone call.
He said with what he was up against, that crying was not an option. His words seared into my heart and by the end of the call I too found myself laughing. And when he eventually hung up, I too found it impossible to cry, I was so heart sick, I was past tears.
I wandered blindly around my kitchen compulsively reaching for food till it hit me. The reason my brother called me minutes before midnight on Thanksgiving … is because I am the only person who he can tell the truth about his life. And at the moment, his life is fucking impossible. And that brought me back to brink of tears again, only much, much deeper. I fell asleep finally on the verge of sobbing.
This morning as I lay in bed, I thought about all the people in my life where crying is not an option at the moment. There is too much coming at them and it looks like it is starting to speed up. My brother is facing heart stopping stress, backbreaking work and utter exhaustion to hold off complete financial ruin … and he is losing the fight. My friend K is facing a life threatening illness with very slim chances of fending off having to make a terminal choice. And my friend S just buried her father and has to fly home to the west coast while leaving her grieving mother on the east coast. And then there are the myriad of friends facing hard choices about what to do with their ailing parents who increasingly need almost constant care.
Everywhere I look, I see loved ones facing some very hard choices and looking desperately for some new options, some alternatives to what seems like impossible choices.
And so today ... For my brother, my friends, and people suffering everywhere who may feel sometimes that crying is not an option … I pray to the gods. I pray that the tightness loosen, and that the rough areas recede. I pray for sweetness and joy to fill their lungs and heart in whatever way brings them some respite. I pray for concrete answers to desperate prayers. I pray for forgiveness and resolution. I pray for compassion and miracles. I pray for lightness and real laughter that eases away despair. I pray for divine intervention and love. I pray for second chances and fool’s luck.
Today, I pray that in this hard, hard world of constriction, restriction and limits, that my tears, my real and welcomed tears on their behalf, will give them what they need to buy a vowel.
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Submitted by katrina on Fri, 11/23/2007 - 10:46am.
I shared during one of my workshops recently, how as a child I had prayed almost every night. I mostly prayed for finished homework and chores. I also shared how disappointed I was at what I considered a general lack of response. I thought this meant that the god of the Catholics was uninterested in my heartfelt prayers to escape work and tedium. I ended this story by saying that what I had learned over time was that I had simply been praying to the wrong gods.
I now know who to direct such prayers. And nowadays, my prayers are answered. I do not mean in that universal abstract kind of way either. My prayers are answered concretely and in the here and now.
One of my answered prayers was revealed to me yesterday. I had set November 15th as the go/no decision date for my Descent workshop and as of yesterday, my workshop is a go! Yay!
I had asked for a sign that this was the kind of work I should pursue, and the answer was revealed with a resounding Yes!
And yes, I have enough participants which is wonderful, but more than that, I discovered an error in my tracking spreadsheet that when corrected suddenly made these workshops less risky and overall easier to plan. So in the same day, I received sufficient registrations AND discovered a way to do more of them. Wow!
Some may say that this was simply a revelation of an error I had made, and thus it does not count as divine intervention. And in many ways that is a correct statement. But here is the woo-woo part, as Thorn often refers to situations like this, I have used this exact spreadsheet in many guises for event planning over the last eight years. And in not one of those events, had there been an error of this magnitude or scope. And the fact that I did not notice this particular error till after I made my heartfelt prayer is also significant.
To me, timing is everything. And today I feel remarkably better about my work and the steps I have taken to share it with the community at large.
I guess I could also say, I have learned what to ask for in prayer too. I no longer ask the gods to do the work for me. I ask them instead to guide me in my work, to help me do my work, and more importantly, to reassure me that I am on the right path.
And today, I feel reassured … cuz my prayers have been answered.
Ashe. Amen. Blessed Be!
Katrina
PS: Also as of today, I will open late registration for Descent. So there is still time to join us for our journey into mystery.
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Submitted by katrina on Fri, 11/16/2007 - 1:40pm.
Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".