Imbolc 2010 poetry blogging

For the 5th annual Brigid Poetry Festival, some Mary Oliver:

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- Mary Oliver 

I originally wanted to do the one about the wild geese, because that one is really helpful to me right now, but I feel like everyone already knows that one and I should do something a little different. One thing I love about the annual Imbolc poetry blogging is that I get to read lots of poetry I wouldn’t have seen before, so while Mary Oliver’s swan isn’t exactly obscure, it’s a little less well-worn than her geese. But I still like the geese, so here they are as well:

Wild Geese 

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

My grandmother gave me a book of Mary Oliver poems, so these always make me think of her. This is the same grandmother that gae me The Secret Garden for my 4th birthday and The Golden Bough for my 10th. I think I was 12 or so when she gave me Mary Oliver. Thanks, grandmother, for consciously shaping my sense of the sacred. I miss you.

 

Ambitions for 2010

I’m a little behind schedule for  a New Year’s post. I wasn’t really feeling the whole New Year goal-setting thing last week, so I didn’t give it a bit of thought, but now that it’s almost two weeks in, I’m starting to look around and notice a pile of goals.

- I signed up for Rosemary Gladstar’s Science and Art of Herbalism class. I didn’t do it with any particular thought beyond that fact that I had a good month financially, she’s knocked the price down for the winter, and it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I have studied herbalism in many different ways over many years, but never in as formal and systematic way as this class. I just got the ginormous binder and it looks fantastic, very in-depth, and just what I wanted. I would like to complete this course by the end of 2010. If it takes longer because I really get it into it and want to go deeper, that’s fine, but I don’t want it to take longer because I get distracted and lazy. This is also a part of a larger goal for the year, which came from divination I did at New Year’s – this is the year when I get focused on learning healing work. I feel drawn to energy healing, but the classes and such I have seen in Reiki and other such modalities have a new-agey, scammy feel to them that repels me. I want to learn something more basic, more down to earth, and I’m thinking I would be better off learning from the faeries than from the New Agers. But ideally I’d like to find a human that can help.  Of course, herbalism can also be a form of energy healing, since it also works with living (or once-living) beings in the form of plants – mediating the energy between human and plant is sort of what I see as my work as an herbalist, so maybe I’ll get clearer on that. Anyway, that’s my big woo-woo goal for the year.

- By December, I would like for my dog to be able to pass the Canine Good Citizen test. Did I mention I got a dog? I got a dog, right before Thanksgiving 2009! She is awesome! She is in my lap right now forcing me to reach awkwardly across the keyboard, but that’s fine! I blame any typos in this post on her. This is my dog:

Her name is Clara, after my great-aunt who died the same day I brought her home. I got her from a great little shelter in New Jersey, with the assistance of The Gods Are Bored’s own Anne Johnson. (Anne was right – this is indeed the correct dog for me.) She is learning how to be a happy and well-adjusted little dog, which is a bit of a challenge as she is anxious by nature. She is also very well-behaved and aims to please, so I think we can get to good citizen status in a year. So there’s another goal – the CGC is a concrete and tangible goal, but it’s part of my larger goal to be a good dog-mom.

-  Dance more.

-  Get my driver’s license and a car. Shock, horror, etc. Some things have changed in my life that make car ownership seem like the way to go. Has to be done. Ugh.

- Keep up and continue to expand on my spiritual path – the druid stuff, the witchy stuff, the faery stuff – all that stuff. Keep doing it, and keep writing about it.

- Take real steps to get myself back up to New England – I don’t think it will happen in a permanent way this year, but steps can be taken. I’m done with this Southern life. I am tempted to throw some really big goals into this bit, but for now those will remain unspoken. These will do.

 

Pagan Charity

There are some blogs that I read but never comment on, as for one reason or another the author’s tone or choice of subjects leave me feeling contentious, and I don’t really want to get into comment-wars with anyone (or be moderated out of existence, which is more likely). I keep reading them because they occasionally come through with something interesting or thought-provoking, and sometimes I learn as much or more from my own hostile reaction as I do from the content. Brendan Myers’ is one such blog. I think part of my issue with his writing is in part related to tone rather than content – for instance, in his latest post, the one that inspired me to write this, he talks about the issue of homelessness in America and asks what the “Pagan response” to this should be. As though none of those homeless are themselves Pagan, as though none of us are involved in social justice work, as though there is some monolithic “Pagan response” that is even possible, as though homelessness was some new and shocking thing that had just come to his attention – with the sort of carelessly privileged “oh my, poor people exist whatever shall we do!” tone that is guaranteed to make me go all argumentative. And thus I don’t comment there, because the issue of charity in a Pagan context is an interesting one worthy of discussion that doesn’t need to be derailed by my grouchy irritation. All this is to explain why I’m responding to something on someone else’s blog without actually responding there, because there is one bit that struck me as an explorable point:

“We talk a good talk about how important it is to be practical. But the emphasis on the practical rings hollow to me, when that practicality is directed only on one’s own “personal development”: aligning one’s chakras, or finding one’s spirit guide, or meditating with crystals, “working with the gods” or “being open to the change”.”

Ignore for now the use of scare quotes or the deliberately sarcastic tone taken in regard to other people’s spiritual practices (I’m sure trying to do that) – there’s a point there. I think the point is that if our practice is oriented only to the self and never turned outward, it is hollow. In the context of the entire post, he seems to be saying that a practice that is wholly self-centered is selfish and is of no benefit to anyone, as even the practitioner will fail to benefit from a practice that does not include charity. Charity to those other people, those people over there, those people who are not us. If only “we” could look up from our crystals long enough to hand “them” a blanket and a bowl of soup, then our spiritual practices suddenly would take on new meaning! Homeless people – more useful than crystals!

Oops, I’m getting sarcastic – I wasn’t going to do that. You can see why I don’t comment directly. Let me try again. I meditate, I mess around with crystals and spirit guides and chakras, I “work with” the gods (when I’m feeling fancy I call it theurgy, but whatever). I’ve also spent a not insignificant part of my life as a homeless person. It was a long time ago and I hope is something that I will never return to, but you know what? I did the same sorts of things then (though my crystals were not so nice) and if it ever happens again I will keep doing those things. I do them because they are part of who I am and how I live in the world. When times get difficult they are the things that sustain me. There are times when I have resources to share – when that happens, I share as best I can. There are times when I don’t. This isn’t directly related to how much time I spend meditating, but to how my own luck and life are doing. The more I am dedicated to my spiritual life, the more I am inclined towards a consistent attitude of compassion and nonjudgmental curiosity (obviously I am not there yet, but you know, there’s always room for improvement.) The more consistent I am about daily meditation, the better I am at handling my personal affairs and the more I have left over for others.

I started out in life with a whole lot of strikes against me. I have managed to beat unpleasant odds, and I’m proud of that. I attribute a great deal of that to what I have learned from the Gods and the guides and the faeries and the Universe and everything, and I couldn’t have learned any of that without the “self-development” techniques that Myers so snidely dismisses.  Giving a blanket to someone who is cold because the sight of a suffering fellow human is unbearable is compassion; giving the blanket to the cold person because it will somehow enhance your spiritual practice or will allow you to look good to your fellow rich people is just more hollow vanity. I remember being a poor kid and seeing clearly the difference between those who wanted to help out of compassion (very, very rare but much treasured in memory) and those who wanted brownie points with God or the other church ladies. I got a reputation for being “difficult” early on because I would rather have starved than have been someone’s charity project and was not afraid to say so.  It’s why I still think of charity as a dirty word – using other people’s suffering to enhance your own self-image is ugly, and the person you are helping can see that ugliness.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t help people who need help, but I believe that as long as the help does not come from a place of true spiritual compassion, it will ring hollow to both the giver and receiver. If you’re hungry enough, of course, it doesn’t matter who is handing you the soup, but it certainly affects how both people feel about the relationship, and how we exist in relationship to one another is the entire point of existence. The idea that there is a mass of faceless poor over there somewhere in need of soup is, I believe, a destructive one. There are no “tent cities” – there are neighbors of yours that live in tents. The smelly homeless guy under the bridge is as fully human as you are. I don’t know of any way to come to this understanding without spiritual practice, whatever the flavor.

That is what the “pagan response” should be, if such a thing is possible – recognition that we are all human beings living in relationship with each other, and that we all do the best we can under the circumstances, and that our lives are defined by our relationships with our fellow beings.

 

happy solstice

 

Interesting religion meme

Dmiley meme-tagged me:

what religions do you find most interesting apart from your own? Would you pick one of the major world religions? Say Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism or Judaism? Or would you pick something more obscure, like Wicca or Taosim or Rastafarianism or Gnosticism? Would you pick irreligion, say Atheism or Agnosticism? Or if you’re not Christian, would you say Christianity?

To participate, state your own religion (or irreligion) as your first preference, state the other religions that interest you most as your second and third preferences, then pass onto five others. If you’re feeling brave, say why they interest you.

 My religion is  – well, that’s kind of what this blog is about. My religion is my religion, and it’s a sort of druidic shamanic faery witchcraft thing. If you want a bigger answer than that, there’s three years of blog postings below. Dig in.

I like Anne’s answer to this question the best  – “yes.” They are all interesting because they are all manifestations of the human drive to understand the Universe. She beat me to it with the good answer, though, so I need to work for another one.

I’m stuck with the question “interesting in what way?” I find mystical contemplative traditions interesting regardless of source, so I’m interested in Sufism and Christian mysticism, for instance, without having a burning desire to learn more about Christian or Islamic practices in general. I’m less interested in those aspects of religion that prescribe rules for behavior within communities or descriptions of the fate of the soul after death. What really interest me are the big questions about the role of the self within the universe. The answer to those questions among more mystical types tends to be “love more,” and I love seeing all the paths that lead to that answer and the different ways the answer is presented.

But here I am talking about investigating ideas in other religions, and that’s just research. I’m going to answer the question as though it was asking specifically about practice – which religion could I see myself practicing, besides my own? The problem I have always had with practicing anyone else’s religion is the feeling of being a spiritual tourist. I love Tibetan Buddhism, for instance – the chants, the practices, the art, the philosophy, the history – I had a brief but passionate love affair with Buddhism when I was younger. It was a valuable and educational experience, but I broke it off because I never felt like it fit me. I was constantly aware of being a foreigner within the religion – it was beautiful but it never felt like mine. I never felt like anything but a tourist, and I suppose with much devotion, study and language lessons I could come to feel at home there, but to do so would mean giving up my native land. I left it behind because the price for it was too high for me. It’s still interesting to me and I still occasionally go and sit with them, but once I realized that I wasn’t willing to walk all the way down that path it stopped looking like the right place for me.

So, turning closer to home, I would love to learn more about the religion and spirituality of the Abenaki people that lived in the region that is my home before my own people came there. I don’t know how much of that is alive and current, and if it is I don’t know how much I could or should have access to – I want to learn more about it, but only from someone who lives it as part of his or her culture, not from books or anthropologists or other interpreters. So this would involve coming into a personal, friendly relationship with people from that culture, and I don’t think that could be done successfully except in the ordinary way people come into personal friendly relationships. I do not want to cozy up to someone just to gain access to “Indian-ness” because that would both be rude and would be unlikely to get me what I want. It is interesting to me and possibly something I would be willing to immerse myself in, as I have always felt that my connection to the forests and mountains of my home is the root and the essence of my spirituality – I can give up the various trappings of paganism without a whole lot of regret as long as I get to keep that link. But I don’t think that this is possible for me in this life – if it is, it’s something that has to happen to me, not something I think I can reasonably seek out. I have no expectations around it and accept that certain doors will probably stay closed to me forever, and that’s okay. But I’m still interested.

My third choice is one I could realistically see adopting someday. I would be interested in becoming a Unitarian. This is, to be honest, mostly for pragmatic reasons. If I was to live in a more rural area, which I hope to someday, I would like to have the social support of a church, and the only church I could join in good faith would be the Unitarian Universalists. However, I don’t think I could do so as a sort of “beard” for my Paganism, as that feels disrespectful to the Unitarians. I would need to really take it up as part of my path, and I’m not sure what that would mean from here. So I’m interested, in the way you might be interested in someone you don’t know really well yet but feel sure could be a good friend in time.

I do not ever see myself giving up my own path. There have been times when I have wanted to give up the dysfunction, confusion, controversy and general silliness of modern paganism, but that feels like turning my back on family and home. I have people already; I have a spiritual home and I have no desire to leave it.

I almost forgot the “tag five others” bit. I’m kind of late on this one and it seems like everyone has been tagged already. Maebius, maybe you could do this one?

In other news, you may have noticed a prolonged silence here. My life is all up in the air right now, and I’m waiting for things to settle out a bit. I don’t feel like writing about my current unsettlement, but it’s hard to write about anything without referring to it, so I’m mostly just not writing. I have no plans to give up blogging, as I like it and as you can see am game for a meme now and then, so there’s no need to take me off your feed just yet. I could up and get chatty any day now.

 

Answering Ali, sort of

Ali asks:

What are your experiences in groups (Pagan and otherwise)? What were some of their rewards, things that kept you coming back or really helped to shape your spiritual path? What were some things you wished were different, that you found distracting or frustrating or detrimental? What, in your experience and understanding, is the role a group should play in the spiritual life, and how does it relate to the idea of spiritual community, and to solitary practice?

I always need to be a member of a spiritual group. Without one, I feel like something is missing in my life. I think part of that is simply the loneliness of this path – most people I encounter in everyday life know nothing about my spirituality and would be deeply uncomfortable if they did. That’s OK, because I feel pretty much the same way right back. It’s not something that ought to be talked about around the coffee machine at work. But it is something that needs to be talked about, and not just with my closest friends and family. And I love group ritual – I love the dynamics and currents and eddies and flows of energy passing in and amongst and around people in ritual. I love being part of that flow. A really well-done group ritual is one of my favorite things in the world. I love it for reasons that are aesthetic as well as spiritual. The best way to get to really beautiful ritual in the Pagan context is to be part of an ongoing, long-running group that has become attuned to one another and knows and loves each other.

If that was all there was to it that would be good enough for me, as I think both of these factors – social and aesthetic – are important enough to keep me getting on the bus and going to these things. It’s the same thing that makes people join bird watching clubs  – there’s this thing we like to do, and we like to do it together. But of course there is also an overt spiritual dimension here that is lacking in bird watching. One does not go bird watching in order to get into deeper understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and the relationship of the Self to the All (though if you do go bird watching for those reasons, let me know, because that sounds fantastic.) And so a Pagan group also needs to help, in whatever way, to get to those deeper questions.

There are a couple of ways to go about this. Right now I’m thinking of it as “the Druid way” and “the Wiccan way” because I am thinking about two different groups lately, my Druid grove and the Wiccan coven I just found. (These may or may not be representative of how Druidry or Wicca in general operates – I have certainly seen other groups with those labels that don’t work the way I describe. But it’s my experience for now.)

My Druids have a sort of core set of rituals that get changed around, refreshed and refurbished each time with a rotating cast – there is, for instance, a Herald in the ritual, but there is no one person who is Herald, just whoever feels like doing Herald that time. Even though we work from a script there is a certain improvisational, seat-of-the-pants feel to it, as we never know exactly who will show up and what they will bring with them. There is no official leadership; while there are a few people who can be generally counted on to make things happen in a leaderly sort of way, none of them would be comfortable taking the title of Boss Druid, nor is that needed or wanted. We meet outdoors, regardless of weather, and the weather is always a supporting cast member in the ritual. The Imbolc when it was ten degrees out was very different from the Imbolc when it was forty degrees; the Lughnasadh when it hailed and poured… well, actually, we always get storms at Lughnasadh. But that becomes part of it, part of the ongoing and developing relationship we have with each other and with the space where we meet. We take what comes and we meet it, and each other, with joy. I love this. I love those people and that park and that weather and those rituals. We do not confront the Big Questions in any kind of a head-on way; our group discussions tend to lean towards the silly rather than the profound (though we can be profoundly silly at times); there is no teacher besides the forest and the weather and the interactions we have with each other. We come from different backgrounds and we come for different reasons, and I think any attempts to channel that into a structure meant to address the big questions would be a miserable failure. We’re not that sort of group. We each get it, in our own way, and we all get something valuable from the experience, but the wisdom comes in its own way as we open up to it, not because we go off hunting for it. We stand there and put ourselves where it can fall on our heads like rain.

My impression of the coven of which I am not a member is necessarily less expansive as I’ve only been to one ritual. It’s quite different, though. There is a hierarchy of leadership, there is an order and a tradition behind it, there is structure and sense to it. There is instructional time. The High Priestess is not just playing a role for the purposes of ritual; she is a priestess who has studied for years to be what she is. We meet indoors in a controlled environment. There are reading lists. There is homework, at least for the members. There is a process to go through before one is considered a member and work to accomplish to advance through degrees. By the end of the evening we got around to being silly, but at first the conversation was “what’s this Mabon thing all about?” And we talked about it and had ideas together and had a directed and focused discussion. It was nice. I find this very appealing. It’s like school! I love school!

I’m not saying that I think my Druid grove ought to do or be these things – that’s not what it is nor what it needs to be for any of us who show up and make it anew each time. But there seems to be room in my life for both things and a need for both things.

The biggest distractions in group work, I’ve found, have to do with dealing with dishonesty. By dishonesty I don’t mean lying about yourself or your accomplishments, although that can be part of it – I mean dealing with the person (or myself) who can’t or won’t engage honestly with the group because they are so caught up in what they think the group ought to be or what they perceive themselves to be doing there. There is a whole lot of this in Paganism. People come in with all this baggage around “witch” or “druid” or “Pagan” and look around for a place to put it. It turns into role-playing rather than honest spiritual exploration. It’s hard because there’s nothing wrong with being tuned in to a particular aesthetic, and sometimes that can help people get where they need to go – dressing up in certain ways, taking on a certain persona. But it can also be a way to hide from the self, to be dishonest both with yourself and others. There’s a mystique to this path that leads a lot of people astray – if you get caught up in the labels and the mystique and hey-cool-I’m-a-witch! part of the experience then there is a lot to miss, and frankly it can be a complete pain in the ass to deal with someone who is only there to shore up their funky self-image when everyone else just wants to get down to business.

I think the last part of the question, about the relationship of group work to your own solitary work, is one that can only be answered on an individual basis. I think that solitary work without a group can become unbalanced and ungrounded, and group work without a personal practice can become shallow playacting. This is something I have observed in myself and in other people I’ve worked with, but I don’t know if there’s anything universal about it. I think it’s probably a lot easier to create a worthwhile personal practice without a group than it is to  work with a  group in a worthwhile way without a personal daily practice. For myself, I need both and they have to feed each other.

 

still here

I will post again eventually -  just posting something so everyone knows I’m still alive and relatively well.

Instead of a post, I’m putting up a video of a song made entirely out of Awesome and Win:

 

my new crush

Last Saturday, I went to a Mabon celebration hosted by a local Wiccan coven. I went without any particular expectations and with nothing more mind than a way to get out of the house, meet some new people, and do something besides mope. I’d heard good things about this group and their tradition, so I gave it a shot.

Walking up to the venue, I felt the normal nervousness of being somewhere new – is this the right place? Am I on time? Will anyone be nice to me? Then I saw some people unpacking cars and gathering by the door and felt an instant rush of relief – oh, these are my people! Part of it is, I’m sure, the familiarity of types – big women in full skirts, men with gray ponytails, cute geeky boys, pale gothy girls – the usuals one always sees at these things – my people!  I immediately stopped feeling nervous or like an outsider. Everyone looked familiar, everyone looked like we were already friends (one person I actually had met before – we went to school together – but were never social with each other before and had to talk a bit before we figured out the connection.) More than one person apologized for not remembering my name and was surprised when I told them that we hadn’t actually met before.

They did good ritual. It was well-designed, well-run, and well-performed. That was nice and I appreciated it, but more important for me personally was the feeling I had of fitting in with the group. I enjoyed their company. I don’t usually enjoy company of any kind unless I already know the people – I force myself to meet new people because it’s the only way of getting past my initial discomfort with strangers, but I don’t actually like it. This didn’t feel like meeting new people at all. It felt like catching up. So I have a crush on a coven.

I’m wary about it, because I’m aware that it is only a crush and is based on just a few hours spent with them, but I’m looking forward to seeing them again. Membership is a long, drawn-out process, which is all to the good, but I’m actually contemplating joining them. I didn’t have that in mind this time but next time I’ll go in with that perspective and see how it feels.

I have no intention of giving up my Druidry or my Druid group – where this feels like a new crush, my druid grove is my safe steady boyfriend (who sadly I had to stand up for Alban Elued this year) and fortunately neither one conflicts with the other in any way. Not even in terms of scheduling – Witches on Saturdays, Druids on Sundays! Works just fine.

I’m glad to have something new to work on right now. I’m re-committing to my Ogham studies, which I let slide this past year, and coming up with a plan for the rest of my AODA degree work. I feel like I’ve been doing that work all along anyway, but I would like to bring some of the threads I’ve been following together in a way that fits with that. I have some time and space to get things done and I refuse to waste it on being depressed. Back to the book-blogging soon.

 

Book blogging: Kissing the Limitless, Chapter 2

My Free Will Astrology horoscope for the week:

These days, your gods can kick the butts of everyone else’s gods. Likewise, your lawyers and agents and sidekicks can most likely outwit, outdo, and out-wrestle everyone else’s. But it’s crucial to note that if you try to work alone, you will not be able to kick other people’s butts, let alone the butts of their gods, lawyers, agents, and sidekicks. The skills of your allies will be indispensable. The way I see it, your test in the coming days will be to overcome any tendency you might have to indulge in pathological levels of self-sufficiency as you cultivate a greater capacity to ask for and receive help.

Yup. I feel like energy is shifting, tides are turning, and I am very much looking forward to the New Moon tomorrow. May it bring needed changes and may my allies do what must be done.

To the book blogging – Chapter 2 of Kissing the Limitless is all about the life force, vital energy, what Thorn calls “life power.” Tapping into life power involves being able to still the center, what I’m accustomed to calling “grounding and centering.” Not wittering our power away in fruitless worrying or unproductive thought patterns; engaging in practices that build vitality rather than sapping it. All good, helpful things. Again there was really nothing new to me in this chapter but Thorn’s perspective on it made for a helpful reminder.  One insight that came to me out of reading this chapter is that most of our lives are made up of doing certain basic things: staying nourished and keeping a comfortable and safe home. Cooking and cleaning, really, and gathering resources so that we have things to cook and clean. That’s probably 90% of life. And we can look at 90% of life and think of it as something to get out of the way, or we can look at it as the substance of existence – when it comes to cultivating vitality, we have to draw it from everything we do. My job is, frankly, really dull and not very fulfilling to me, and I feel this is the biggest suck on my energy. I can’t do anything about that right now because I have other responsibilities to look after. I’m not sure how to fix that. But when I come home from work and have to face the dust bunnies and figure out what to eat for dinner, that’s not something that anyone ever gets to “fix.” There are no paths that I could take in life that will let me escape cooking and cleaning. So, in order to stay healthy and vital, cooking and cleaning have to be spiritual practices. (This is all my own meandering thoughts in response to the chapter, not something Thorn gets into here, just to be clear.) I get this and it’s something I strive for, but for some reason it never quite sank in until now that these activities are actually pretty fundamental and they HAVE to feed us back. Cleaning the house and making dinner are magical ceremonies, powerful rituals that transform us every single day. It’s all life, it all feeds life power.

 

Book blogging: Kissing the Limitless, Chapter 1

T. Thorn Coyle’s “Kissing the Limitless” comes highly recommended and I approach it with a mixture of big expectations and fear of disappointment. Big expectations because I really like Thorn’s other work that I’ve read, and fear because I really want a book right now that will smack me around a little and give some real help, and I don’t think it’s all that fair to put all that on one little book. Chapter One, “Discovering Possibility” was not at all disappointing because it gave me exactly that smack I needed.

There wasn’t anything in this first chapter that was new or revelatory or anything. It’s all stuff I already know, but it’s also exactly what I needed to hear. Chapter One is a challenge. The goal set out is understanding of the self, what Thorn calls “self-possession.” Thorn wants us to find and fully possess ourselves. This is helpful to me right now as until recently I thought of myself as completely self-possessed. My latest crisis has knocked that out from under me as I find myself flailing around unanchored, unsure of what I actually want, where I am headed, and who I really am. I knew it would be hard, but I had no idea that it was possible for me to be this bowled-over by anything anymore. If I had read this book even a few months ago, I probably wouldn’t have been nearly as pulled in by the first chapter because I would have thought that the work she was describing is not work I need to do. But suddenly I’m knocked off my pins, and here’s Thorn, reminding me that full possession of my soul is ongoing work.

I found the most useful part of this chapter, for me right now, is the last section on “Cultivating Practice.” I’ve really fallen away from my practice in the past few weeks. Again, there’s nothing that is new to me in what she says in this part, but I still needed to read it. One of the things that has occurred to me is that I have an unusual opportunity right now. My old life is gone, at least for a while, and I am so anchorless right now because I have lost my habits and the structure of my days. But this is an opportunity to create a new structure. I can wallow in shock and sorrow and numb myself with alcohol and ice cream and Torchwood DVD’s, or I can take some control and exercise some discipline and create new and better habits for myself. As always, my life is what I make it, and with discipline I really can do the Great Work. And right now I have some big opportunities to shake things up and make some needed changes.