Recognition

Thanks to those of you who commented on my last post, sharing your own perspective on how you incorporate your solitary pagan ways into family events... and into everyday teaching of your children (or how your parents did for you).

Though I haven't taught my kids about any particular symbolism or anything, I've noticed a few things in the kids' art lately that inspires me to just keep doing spirituality as an every day occurrence.  This is the only picture I have at hand in this moment... but this isn't the first piece of art to come home.  There's a picture around here labeled "Mother Moon"... but I can't find it.  I'm not sure what this means, if anything.  At least these are familiar and ancient symbols.  Maybe the rest will come later.

I do know that my kids are good at noticing when life is really good.  One day, my five-year-old was sitting in the breezeway between our garage and the house, eating an apple just off the tree, as the late afternoon breeze blew... and she made a comment about how great the moment was.  That's spirituality too... and I had forgotten that until you all reminded me.

The bottom line is that I've noticed how much spirituality is in our everyday lives... so that it isn't something you can point at... a time or place when we do something in particular... but it's every moment.  And that feels good to me... to acknowledge that our spirituality is not different than the "rest" of our lives.

So, the art, and the recognition of beautiful moments gives me hope that even if I can't point to the "church" we go to, that at least I can see that we live in it through each moment that we are connected to ourselves and nature and each other.  And all feels well... for me... right now... *sigh*

Back to school...

Oh goodness... it's time to go back to school next week. I'm not excited. I'd prefer to have the kids with me... to go do all the fun things that were on my list for summer that we did not get around to doing. Sigh. Besides. I'm just not much of a morning person.

It's just starting to get warm in my neck of the woods... summer is always foggy and cool. And this year has been more than most. For goodness sake... I haven't even harvested a ripe tomato yet.
I bring this up here because I have to admit that I'm just not feeling the harvest festival cycle that started on August 1st. Honestly, I'm thinking I might have to rearrange the sabbats so that they make sense to me. I don't suppose anyone would notice (as I'm a solitary... and I don't do rituals all that much anyway). But somehow it seems dishonest... as the wheel of the year is supposed to be the one thing that unites pagans... right? If I give that up it feels like I'm just a lone person on my own anyway... so what's the point.

(Isn't this beautiful though? Makes me want to redouble my efforts to fit into the pagan wheel of the year...
I found this at evolvefish.com if you're interested in a sticker version of it)

I suppose I could commit myself to the lunar cycles... as that's more my calling anyway... but ignoring the seasons seems unfair even to me. I just don't know... I think it's going to take some real thinking... figuring out what's important to me, what kind of yearly rituals I want to have, which ones will strike enough of a chord with me that I'll follow through. The way things are right now I just feel guilty for missing those sabbats as they pass me by.

(I actually like this graphic too... the author says he or she uses it as a baseline to add more symbols...
and I liked the designs on his/her flickr page...)

So... I guess I really wish I had another month of summer left... to play with the kidlets and just be mellow. But here we are... and it's time for me to exercise that old addage that constantly comes my way: Go with the flow!

Candles

I don't know about ya'll but my family can use some coming together. I think it's some uncertainty as school ends (my kids are in 1st grade and preschool)... and for the 7-year-old the trial-and-error process of trying on new personas and figuring out who she is. These things come together to make us feel like we're going in a million directions, and we lose our harmony.

As I've become somewhat re-inspired to do more magic... I thought that a spell for familial harmony was in order. I chose colors of candles for each of us, and one in the middle to represent family. I put an spiral of ribbon (yellow because *I* associate it with balance... and there's that 2011 New Year's word again...). The small individual candles are intended to "feed" the taller family candle with those things that each of us bring to make our family what it is. With balance and harmony we will uplift ourselves, each other, and our family unit to be united for our common good.


I was very careful when choosing the words for my spell NOT to make this a binding. The intention was VERY clearly to allow the individuals to be individuals that contributed some energy of themselves to the family group in order for the family to function in its highest well-being.

It didn't make us all get along beautifully, or anything, but I do think that it reduced a little tension about the partitioning that was going on... "I don't have to clean that up, I didn't get it out"... or "but that's not mine". We've been talking a lot about chores in a context of caring for our objects and cooperating as a family so that our house runs smoothly. Sometimes they seem to understand, and sometimes they don't!

Unfortunately for me, their favorite way to help is actually to "help" me cook... which I like the idea of... but it's not really helping... which you know all about if you have or have had small children in the kitchen.

Wow!!!

I did it! I talked to my daughter's first grade teacher... and she's going to let me do the No-Fault Classroom Curriculum in her class! I'll be there every week... teaching 27 kids and a teacher how to be truly co-operative! OMG! What have I done???? LOL!

So, next Thursday we start... and lucky you... you'll get to follow me through this process! :)

Up first, creating a classroom agreement that maintains both physical safety and emotional safety in the classroom... 27 kids... a tired teacher... yup... I can do it! Eeek!

Doubts

So my book came... The No-Fault Classroom... and though I love the theory, in trying a No-Fault home I'm finding it difficult to put into practice. I've started with the kids... it works beautifully with my 6yo, but my 4yo is a whole separate personality type... and cooperative does not appear in her discourse. It's shaking my confidence in cooperation... and especially in introducing it into the classroom. I really want things to get better. This is going to take a lot of work on my part... and I don't have a lot of energy for it... I'm done tapped out fellas. Yet, all of the unhappiness and stress around here is working my nerves... I just don't understand why people can't just get along. Why can't we tell when it's something important and when it's not... why can't anyone else in my house be committed to this so that I don't have to do it alone... I just feel overwhelmed by totally revamping communication among four people TOTALLY alone.

So how in the WORLD would I do that for 27 people in a classroom?

Oh yeah... and Happy Valentine's Day. LOL... I'm such a scrooge...

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful for the bounty that the internet provides... as in... I am completely thankful to have found a wonderful, positive, accepting, thoughtful, thought-provoking pagan community that I would not otherwise have found. It has brought great things to my life in my personal growth and giving me a forum in which I can feel connected in ways that are not possible in my mundane life. And yet, the same people have brought magic to my mundane life too... and have supported me not only through my blog, but through their own, through the sharing of their thoughts and feelings. I am ever so grateful for you all!

Blessings this Thanksgiving!

Feeling out of sorts...

Something is strange... and I'm not the only one feeling it. Something is off... not balanced... not quite "right". Do you feel it?

Nellie at A Bit of Gardening Spirit feels it...

Geez... even my apple tree feels it...

(Note: I'm in the northern hemisphere... the leaves on the tree are turning, and yet it's flowering... ???)

Is it because the moon and sun are joining forces during parts of the day? Leaving us with a time where neither is with us at night? Are the extremes with us right now... sometimes both luminaries work on us simultaneously, with their different energies... creating conflict? Or just disorientation? And sometimes we are left without their influence overhead at all?

Is this where my strange dreams are coming from? I know I'm not alone in the strange dreams of late, either.

Life has also been challenging lately... we've spent hours in our house lately trying to figure out how to get everyone's needs met. It's hard... identifying those needs and managing how to make sure everyone is supported, loved, nurtured, independent, and content.

Sigh

Parenting and magic

Nellie over at A Bit of Gardening Spirit has been writing about parenting lately, and is putting out a call for people to start a cooperative blog about pagan parenting issues. I'm totally behind the blog in whatever way I can be supportive... I think it's a fantastic idea. I often wonder about how to teach my kids about what I believe and what I do, but in such a way that it's clear that it's a decision that each person makes on their own (or should, I believe). And maybe that's too much right now when they're 4 and 6, but it's where I'm headed. So, if you're interested in taking part please contact Nellie at her blog.

In the meantime, I'll give you a flavor of my pagan parenting, LOL... this is what I do for my kids when they have trouble sleeping.

I have a small bowl of flour, that I did a very short ritual over in the moonlight. I call it "magic fairy sleeping dust". When the girls have trouble going to sleep I get some on my fingers and sprinkle it over them and say:

Fairies of the stars, fairies of the moon,
Please let "name" fall asleep soon.
With good dreams through the night,
Let her wake happy, in the morning light.

I then tell them that it only works if you lay down quiet and still and feel it soak into your bones.

I figure it's a spell, and it has lots of the general elements of a ritual... and yet it only takes a few seconds to do. It also seems to work, especially on my older daughter who really resonates with this kind of thing.

On fire

So, I admit I held out on you a bit... when I said that we were going on a family vacation I failed to mention that we were loading four kids and six adults on an international flight to Costa Rica for twelve days. It was fabulous, and there were many many things to contemplate, but I want to share what I learned about fire while I was there.


Our first stop was the Arenal volcano in the northern part of the country. It's amazing. The volcano is active, spouting clouds of vapor every few hours, and occasionally throwing out lava. I never really spend much time thinking about fire, it's not one of my primary elements (I'm a water/earth girl if you were wondering). So I took the opportunity to really think about fire while at the volcano. I wrote a little about it that I wanted to share. It's not earth-shattering, it's all what you would imagine, but this was the first time I really felt it. So here goes...


Fire: I don't spend much time thinking about fire, despite using it in the form of a candle on my altar. I've always thought of it as transformative, of course, but I see it now as a truly creative force. It is active, certainly, and a bit spontaneous, as it seems that there are no hard and fast rules that can hold fire's spirit. Thus there's a danger element there, something that frightens me just a little. Fire can be warm and comforting, soothing, and just as easily, it can burn. In the same way that it can cook food, fire can char and destroy it. On a more physical note, heat drives the circulation of the world's oceans, forces molten rock out of the ground, causes air to move. Fire is about motion, transformation, action, purpose, spontaneity, passion, doing, and pressure. It is masculine, and lends itself to polarity of energies.

Photo credits: I did take the first picture, but not the second. The nighttime picture with lava was part of a CD we got after we did a zipline tour. We did see some lava, but it rained that afternoon cooling it before night, so I never did get a picture.

Celebrations!

The path to the party... thanks to my kids and an artistic friend!


And took you through a magical doorway...


Full of people and objects that brought my heart much happiness...




And the whole thing left me feeling happy and fulfilled. I have the deepest gratitude for all of my friends, they are truly wonderful people, treasures that I've found along the path of my life... absolutely the stuff of beauty! I am very blessed.

Gratitude

Today I am feeling gratitude for a paradox in my life. These two little people came into my world and consumed it, and yet, they've driven my quest to know myself and really spend time doing just that.


They've been the impetus for me to be a better person... to learn more ways to communicate... to really listen and understand what people are trying to tell me... and for me to learn to respond with compassion. I'm forever grateful for this paradox... this gift of motivation... the beauty of truly seeing. Thank you to my children. I love you to the moon and back.