This is part two of this past Sunday's message to the students of Reflections. For part one, go here.
It is amazing how when we think about the season of fall, we, especially in the Northeast, often think of all the splendor of the trees. It is a little odd since at some level the trees are experiencing a form of death with their leaves changing colors before they fall off ... and become compost. But in their decline they have that last bit of glorious color. I think of it as a reflection of the promise of spring; that the colors of fall are a reminder that spring is still ahead. So yeah, this is where things start their journeys toward repose, but do not lose hope.
And so the splendor of the second harvest is that little reminder that it is still safe to hope … it is not over. Then of course there comes the final harvest, which can be read in many ways. For those of us approaching the later phases of our life, not knowing how much time is left, it says “You know you need to start getting things done.” But it also traditionally means, “You need to start putting things away and restocking -- start preparing for winter.” For as sure as spring, summer and fall comes around, winter is not far behind.
And so the three harvests, not only to allow us to reap, but they also teach us. And I know I have said it many times, that if you want to understand spirituality, look at nature. All the lessons are there.
And we celebrate fall’s foliage by understanding what the harvests are about at all stages. That it is an urging to prepare but it is also a promise of what is to come.
The Wealthy Ones
In many cultures, when they have the harvest – not always at the same times of the year as ours -- there is the usual practice of taking the bounty and piling it up somewhere and just looking at it. Like all the apples from the orchard piled up. Or all the corn piled up or all the wheat gathered together. Just piling it up …because we need to be reminded of how well we have been treated by the earth. We need to remember how much we have received from all the work we put in. And it didn’t matter if your farm did poorly and another farm did well. Often that same table or spot was used to display all the fruits of the collective labor. It was like a statement of “We have reaped!”
Sometimes, it is hard for us to imagine what is on our harvest table. When we only look at that one underperforming patch, or something newly planted that did not grow quite right. Or something that is maybe on a two-year cycle and it is not ready yet. Sometimes we need to be reminded of all we truly have. And this is especially true now in our current economic climate. We need to be reminded of all we have in our western society where we take so many things for granted. We need to remember that all of us, every single person in this room, if we were transported to another country, a second or third world country, we would be the wealthy ones. Not that our difficulties are not real, but that difficulty is not all there is and we need to be reminded of that.
There is a beautiful song by Starhawk called Demeter’s Song. Demeter is the Greek Goddess of Agriculture. Especially for those of us living in this time, we do not get how phenomenal it was for humans to discover agriculture. Just imagine if you had to keep moving in order to find food. That you could never settle anywhere because once you ate up the food available, it was gone. And then you would have to just keep wandering in the pursuit of food, never being able to put down roots.
So can you imagine the faith, the leap of faith, it was for someone to actually put something in the ground and then wait for it to root, sprout, blossom and later produce what could be eaten. The gift of agriculture was a fundamental gift of life, and the gods of agriculture was looked upon as not only the givers of food but also the givers of laws and civilization. The entire human species changed when they were “given” agriculture. So Demeter was a pretty big deal to the ancient Greeks. And every culture that had an agricultural deity, that god was pretty central.
[I sing Demeter’s Song]
We are the wealthy ones. We have been given so much. The promise of Demeter has not ended. The promise has not been taken back. We can learn to live in a more sustainable manner. We can learn to live in harmony with others on this planet. But we need to remember always what we have already been given because we are the wealthy ones -- maybe not in coin, but in community, in education, in comfort and in safety. In spirit and in flesh, we are the wealthy ones.
There was a way I was taught, and it is also in the The Intuitive Body: Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice by Wendy Palmer, if you ask for something as if do not already have it, you cannot receive it. You can only receive more of what you already have. So whenever you ask for something, you always ask, “May I have more” of whatever it is. Because that means that you acknowledge what you have already been given.
For example, I often joke about my lack of patience. Apparently I had to admit that I have a great deal of patience, because now I always ask for more patience, …. and more balance … and more rest/recovery. We need to acknowledge what we have received. We need to be able see ourselves, even in our stories about our loss, sacrifice, and devastation, that we are still the wealthy ones.
[We paused to sing the chorus together.]
And that is Demeter’s message to us. That her ability to give to us depends on our ability to receive and acknowledge what has already been given. And that is the message from the rich foliage of fall. “I have already given you the spring and the summer, and now I give you the harvest”.
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Submitted by katrina on Wed, 08/05/2009 - 8:00am.
This is the first part of a mini-sermon I delivered on Sunday to the students of Reflections. I will post it in two parts, mostly because it was a lot longer than I realized. I had started our session discussing the mystery of unknowing. Maybe I will post that mini-sermon at some point. I hope you enjoy part one. I will post part two later this week.
I spoke earlier about the mystery of un-knowing, but now I want to talk about Fall’s Foliage. The previous rituals this year were Spring’s Sprouts and Summer’s Blossoms. And now we are at Fall’s Foliage.
I will admit that fall is my favorite season, spring is a close second, but fall …I just love it. It may seem too early to talk about fall now that we are entering what is normally the hottest month of the year.
But of course we are discussing the mythic realm, the realm of spirit. And so we have discussed the importance of patience that leads us to care for and nurture the sprouts of spring. And later we meditated on how the blossoms of summer were just the beginning of what was coming later – that the blossoms were not the final stage.
And here we are at our Fall’s Foliage ritual and it is being held on the Sabbath of the first harvest, which makes it all the more potent. It is about how, finally, we can begin to harvest. Not all of the harvest is ready however, not all of bounty you have planted is available to be consumed or ingested. But, we can recognize that the first harvest is the promise of more to come.
And that is the hard part, because just as people have no patience to allow the sprouts to continue growing. And often folks jumped the gun with the first blossoms. So it is often hard to figure out what is in fact a part of the first harvest.
In the physical realm, at least around these parts, the first harvest is traditionally grains and berries. But in the realm of spirit, the first harvest is all about those little signs that signal to you to let you know that all is not forlorn, that there is hope even in the midst of despair.
Everyone’s first harvest is different. Sometimes it is the little things that count. I use to read a twelve-step book of prayers and quotes, one for each day of the year. And one of the entries was about noticing the variety of shades of green in nature. Through all those years prior to that lesson, I never noticed that the green of nature came in different shades. It was just Crayola eight-pack green to me, because my world was very stark. And that little book said, “Notice the shades of the green, the variations of green.” And I am reading this book at the bus stop because that was when I read it each morning, and I look up and suddenly saw for the first time, all the different shades of green around me – I stood there frozen with my mouth open, in shock. And that new awareness revealed to me that there was more than I imagined in the world. That was the beginning of my first harvest.
Later I stood in the pavilion at my first witch camp being led through some exercises to aspect Aphrodite. And at the very moment when I felt her presence, suddenly I could once again see the variations of green, and it was a shock to me … just like the first time. And I realized that here again was another glimpse of my first harvest. And so over the years, I have used the shades of green and whether I can see them as a measure of how healthy I am, emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally. It was such a gift for me that after a time I never lost the ability to see the variations of green, not once over all these years.
The first harvest can be the smallest thing. It can be something that everyone else around you takes for granted. Your first harvest will have a meaning just for you. It will be sustaining like the grain and it will be sweet like the berries. But it will be your first harvest.
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Submitted by katrina on Mon, 08/03/2009 - 9:10pm.
Sorry about how I have been silent for so long. Actually I have been posting like mad, living up to my moniker as the crazed mystic, but it has been exclusively on our private Reflections school forum. We selected True Love for our 2009 book study. We started reading the book together on February 5th. We turned the reading into a devotional practice by reading a single chapter daily for a week. We are at week three of the study and this petite book is shaking me to my core.
It is a heart opening practice because we are focusing on self-love and spiraling outward to our loved ones. This book is one in a long line of mindfulness books from the beloved Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
But the heart touching nature of his message reminds me of a similar reaction I had to bell hooks’ All About Love. One of her lines just shattered me, “There can be no love without justice.” Whoa!
I thought back to all those people who caused me such harm under the rubric, “…because I love you.” If that was not love … what the hell was it? It ripped open my eyes as delusions and denials fell shattering all around me. Looking out with new eyes, I began the slow process of disentangling myself from some unhealthy, often toxic, relationships.
And if hooks could shatter so many faulty fun house mirrors, Hanh equally rips away blindness and ignorance.
“In true love, you attain freedom.”
“Understanding is the essence of love.”
“The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence.”
I am practicing being mindfully present with everyone I meet. And I have to say it is more difficult than I had imagined. But when applied to myself it brings tears to my eyes every single time.
“If you are not there, how can you love?”
Anahata: A Bell waiting to be rungThis question haunted me through last week’s yoga class. We are working with chakras this session and last Thursday was all about the heart. I am no longer surprised when my yoga instructor, Carrie, starts emphasizing my current spiritual practice, crisis or insight. She spoke so eloquently about opening the heart that my eyes began to tear up.
And then we proceeded to do some of the hardest poses and movements, or maybe I should say the hardest ones on me ... in a very long time. How very difficult it is to open the heart, to open my heart. And so much of yoga is focused directly on this practice.
I invite you to join us as we explore this practice for 16 weeks. Maybe you can blog about it.
Are you willing to open your heart? Are you willing to be free?
Dear one, I am really here for you. And it makes me happy.
Love,
Katrina
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 1:21pm.
This sermon, delivered in 2005, captures some of my current thinking in regards to sacred sexuality. As I begin a new thread, one that will focus on sex, this article serves as my preamble.
Katrina
Thank you; I am honored to be here today. Sacred sexuality is one of my favorite topics. I would like to start out with some definitions, and then on into the subject at hand – sacred sexuality, pathways to the divine.
Etymology:
Some of the following are from the Merriam-Webster dictionary on my PDA, the rest however are the output of my own fevered imagination.
- Sacred:
- Dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity, e.g. a tree sacred to the gods; worthy of veneration, i.e. holy; entitled to reverence and respect – not secular or profane; and lastly highly valued and important.
- Sex:
- Noun - Male/Female; biological designation;
Verb – consensual exchange of life force energy. (My words)
- Gender:
- Behavioral, cultural & psychological traits associated with one sex, Man/Woman/Transgender.
- Sexual:
- Associated with sex (sex as a verb) or with the sexes (sex as a noun).
- Sexuality:
- State of being sexual; condition of having sex or sexual activity.
What Is Sacred Sexuality:
Well to look at the above, we could say that sacred sexuality is sexual activity that is dedicated to a deity, that is holy, that is entitled to reverence and respect and is highly valued and important.
Dr. Loraine Hutchins, a dear friend of mine who happens to also be a national expert on the subject, defines sacred sex as “a set of beliefs and practices which seek to heal the split between mind and body, the erotic and the religious, and to bring them together, through daily practices and ritual.” (from Sacred Sex Divinities)
I define sacred sexuality as sexual acts, rites and practices that seek pleasure, healing and spiritual growth.
Why Is Sacred Sexuality Important?
Although definitions are helpful, we also need to comprehend why sacred sex is important, why it matters in a world like ours that has seemingly gone mad.
For most of us, what we experience as sexual energy is more accurately life force energy. We modern humans spend a great deal of our time blocking, suppressing and repressing our life force energy. And it turns out that sex is one of the few areas where we may allow our life force to flow unimpeded.
And if we could find a way to remove these blocks and obstacles, we could harness our life force in ways that could potentially change not only our lives but also the entire course of human history.
A small illustration of this potential is the practice of muscle testing. Muscle testing involves measuring the change in a body’s energy field in the presence of a potential allergen. My acupuncturist used muscle testing to determine my body’s reaction to wheat or pollen. I would hold out my right arm as my as I held the wheat in my left hand. The relative muscle strength of my arm was compared to when I held nothing at all. If I was weaker, bingo, I was allergic to the substance. Although not widely used, it provides a quick answer and can be used in grocery store aisles as well as medical offices.
So now, let’s expand the concept. What if we each had the ability to check in with the flow of our own life force energy? What if we could do the equivalent of muscle testing on everything that we encountered in our lives? What if we could determine that this option increases the flow, while this one dampens the flow of energy? And what about whether this job or this home, or this freeway design or this person or this food or this political candidate increases or decreases my energy flow.
Expanding it further, what if you became sexually aroused whenever you were engaged in your true life’s work or whenever you engaged in habits that contributed to your growth and evolution? What if you had an orgasm when you met your soul mate or simply acted in accordance with your deeply held values? Maybe that is bit too much, but what if we were guided by the flow of life within us and not by our fears, not by our prejudices and not by our projections? What if every one was guided that way?
Man, what a concept, and the sad thing is that it is almost unimaginable.
So how do we heal and grow towards that ideal?
Well one path is through sacred sexuality practices. Sacred sex practices can literally be a tool of evolution, healing and ultimately global change. If it were only that easy; As with everything, the reality is much more complex.
The Great Rite:
Most traditional sacred sexuality practices in wide use today are based on some of the same principles as a traditional Wiccan ritual called the great rite. The great rite involves the ritualized sexual joining of a man and a woman either physically or symbolically using a blade and a chalice. In the symbolic great rite, the woman holds the blade, while the man holds the chalice, but that is pretty much as risqué as it gets for the most part. In many Wiccan traditions, the link with ancient fertility rites is unmistakable. It is one of the reasons that in some circles, Wicca is referred to as a fertility cult
Similarly, today most sacred sex practices are popularized via images of what Dr Hutchins calls the romantic tantric-couple embracing on a New Age greeting card motif. And many sacred sex groups embrace this image just as feverishly as many traditional witches hold on to the great rite. They both espouse the man/woman dyad as the singular model of sacred sex.
However to restrict sacred sexuality to such trite images and limited applicability does nothing to truly heal the mind-body split, nor challenge limiting beliefs such as white supremacy, patriarchy, economic exploitation, and the global concentration of wealth and resources. We have to better comprehend the larger role sex plays within modern culture. We need to grasp the potential pitfalls that exist when we try to go up against the prevailing wisdom of any of the big three.
What are the big three?
Money, Sex, and Power
Money, sex and power are the three-legged stool of modern culture. They are areas of human experience littered with land mines, quicksand and deep dark caverns of shame, fear and regret. We have to be careful when we march into these areas because we often unwittingly recreate within new practices, the very problems we intended to resolve.
So sacred sexuality, like cooperative economics and power sharing, can be revolutionary but they can also be repressive. We can use these progressive ideals to turn the world on its head, to build bridges and communities, and to personally grow and heal. But we can also use them to uphold, and maintain the status quo.
What we need is a richer vocabulary, respectful dialogue and safe places to truly share and evolve our understandings, experiences and interactions in the realms of money, sex and power.
Ultimately, studying the sacred sexual practices handed down to us is not enough. We must also bring our critical consciousness; we must bring our discernment. We must recall that money, sex and power are all political.
So we need to approach sacred sexuality with our eyes, along with whatever other orifices we prefer, open and alert.
Sacred sexuality has traditionally been based on a heterosexual dyad, employing gender and sex polarities to symbolize the eternal dance of the universe. Few, if any, even considered same sex lovers. And usually the practices targeted at same sex couples embraced polarities that resembled hetero role-playing. So the reigning model was, pretty much, heterosexual couplings.
Most of these practices were also not about self-love or masturbation. Even solitary eastern practices, which employ techniques to delay or eliminate ejaculation, often frown upon any direct physical stimulation as if the body itself was somehow profane.
Even given these limitations, many seekers have found these ancient practices and principles both enriching and healing. But for some seekers, the seeming lack of diversity can often be experienced as daunting, non-inclusive even unsettling.
Thankfully, modern practices have been developed that embrace the realities of a far more diverse spectrum of sexual variations, orientations and preferences. Many of the most exciting of the modern practices are being developed within queer and women only spaces. Many began with a critical analysis of traditional practices and then quickly evolved into creating what is called oppositional communities – places where people can heal from the ravages of oppression. They are a long way from the ideal, but it is in these communities that some of the most revolutionary practices are emerging; practices that offer the promise of integrating the erotic into the overall healing of our diverse communities.
Yes, money, sex and power are all political. But each of them can also be transformative, healing and spiritual, even sacred.
Pathways to the Divine:
There is a saying we quote frequently in the craft, “All paths are one.” It is our way of acknowledging the validity of all the world’s religions and faiths, including atheism and humanism. We are obviously not the only ones who feel this way, but because it is one of our central precepts, we are able, for the most part, to cherish the diversity that exists amongst Wiccan practitioners. This is not to say that we do not suffer from fundamentalism and forms of orthodoxy, it just means we have the ability to invoke this principle quite readily into most debates within our path.
So the question remains of why do I call sacred sexuality, a pathway to the divine? Besides acknowledging it as a legitimate spiritual path, it is also an invocation of one of Wicca’s most sacred principles – that the earth itself is sacred.
So what does the sacredness of the earth have to do with sexuality? We witches generally honor the ancient elements as sacred – Air, Fire, Water And Earth. It is our inclusion of earth that defines us as an earth-based religion. This is in contrast to the earth as inert view, which carries with it a concept of the body as corrupt or somehow lower or lesser than mind or spirit.
This is important, because we do not just honor the elements universally; we also honor them in a very personal way as breath, passion, tears and flesh. To name the earth as sacred means our bodies are also sacred.
This ultimately leads us to honor and appreciate our physical bodies, and this includes our sexual needs, urges and hungers. Sacred sexuality is one of the ways we honor and celebrate our flesh. We do not see our physical bodies as simply shells that we cast away at death so we can ascend into the sacred summer land. We declare where we stand as sacred and embrace life as a gift in and of itself.
We also recognize and honor the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth – so the body is also not held above spirit. We seek to heal the split between mind, body and spirit. One area where the mind/body/spirit split can be healed is within human sexuality.
Sexual orgasm is literally the closest we get as living beings to glimpse the eternity of creation, to gaze into the eyes of the nameless one and reconnect with source.
The practices of sacred sexuality allow us to walk the edge of this sacred blade, and to remember, heal, grow and evolve as a result of that connection. We do not have to die to experience the summer land; we only have to die a little.
As we climb the steps into the temple of love, we need to realize that to be human, to be alive at all, is the Goddess’ greatest gift. And to be sexual is to approach the magical doorway into the realm of the gods.
Thank you.
©2005 Katrina Messenger
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Fri, 08/25/2006 - 8:00am.
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".