Angela from the Center

Full moon malaise.

2011-12-08T20:16:00.001-05:00

It’s time. I find myself deep into December, the snow so paltry thereisn’t even that sense of noble winter survival. Nope, there is instead a sensethat there is so much wrong that I have to stay almost unconscious tocontinue. Yet nothing in my lifesupports me zoning out. My situation, my job, my belief system, my selfknowledge, all require me to remain involved and present. It seems almostunfair.

I know IT isn’t fair. I see the larger picture across theglobe; sufferings and war, wealth and opulence. I understand the level of privilege I have. Just to have thespace, the electricity, the heat, the computer to complain isn’t fair. None of this is fair.

But I know Justice.

I know Justice exists. I have a feeling, a physical feeling of what or who Justice is – in mychest. I feel the lucid placewithin my body. I feel the clarityof Justice. I am not just. But I know Justice. So when kids complain about things notbeing fair, and we tell them “that’s the way life is, it isn’t fair.” I have afeeling we are telling a lie.

I also know that it’s true. But maybe fairness and Justice aren’t the same thing. Maybe the process is much lessimmediate, much less finite. Maybe the wheel of Justice is so large we can’tunderstand its girth.

I hate that idea. And I think it must also be true. Justice manifests sometimes in ways I observe. And sometimes not; at least not within my observation. If Justice occurs and I don’t observeit, does it still change the balance within my life?

What if Justice occurs outside my time? What aboutthen?

And if in fact the effect of Justice is like ripples in apond – ever sending circles out across time and space; can I not then relaxinto the possibility that is all works out? One way or another balance and beauty, love and life; willbecome the new culture.

In perfect love and perfect trust.

I have a friend who says that a lot now. That phrase hasnever worked for me. It seems to be self-defeating. I’m really aware of personal and,frankly, global inability to be “perfect.” So, take perfect out.

In love and trust.

Hmmm.

Yes. I can seek to live in love and trust.

The moon is almost full. The glass is almost full.
Now if it would just snow.

snapshots

2011-10-31T21:46:00.000-04:00

For Samhain I have a wall of mentalpictures, too diverse to hang together.

I always loved Halloween. Children do. But for me it wasn’t just the costume and candy. It was thecold. It was the dark. I lovedbeing out in the October night, masked and unknown. Those were the days of marathon trick or treating. We would drive to the big town 17 milesfrom our farm and go up and down those streets lined with houses. That waswhere really good treats were. Candy bars and gum and popcorn balls, sometimes homemade caramel applesThere were streetlights but much dimmer, much further apart – sometimes only atthe corners. Along those silversidewalks were streams of children. Adults waited by the car, smoking.

One year I was dressed as achicken. I know for sure thiswasn’t my idea. No one has everwanted to be a chicken for Halloween. My mother dressed as a clown, an annual event, with blacked out teethand pigtails and my granddaddy’s overalls. I couldn’t help feelingembarrassed. Not so much cause mymother was young enough to still want to dress up for Halloween but because ourcostumes were bad.

(another time)

At home, in the apartment on MassAve, I had finished candying straggling trick or treaters. Later they arrived,fresh from downtown Boston, after watching late night costume shopping and aciddropping outside Berkley School of Music. Ah the tales of subway costumes - Wasshe a nun or was that a costume? No, was that an accountant or was that acostume? – and walking from Harvard Square. Lights and people and color and thesmell of leaves were what they told. They acted out the Halloween scenes into the late night until I went tobed leaving them laughing.

(later)

The hilltop yard had four altars –one to each direction. In theeast, massive mountain shoulders black against star sky, there were veils topass through into the dark. In the west there was a huge barrel filled withwater and floating apples. Therewere only a few left. I haddelayed the apple bobbing with some thought of maybe skipping it, but I foundmyself kneeling down to plunge my face into the cold water, apple skidding outof my reach. Finally, with somehelp holding my hair back and maybe shoving an apple in my mouth, I succeeded. My face tingled in the chill Vermontair.

(tonight)

He came home tonight from trick ortreating. Not as much candy aslast year, sign of the recession maybe. One house gave him a plastic snake, a plastic scorpion, and two cards –one says

I ♡ class warfare

The other says

Downsize

Over a picture of a guillotine.

Óangela magara 2011

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

2011-09-07T11:20:00.000-04:00

Unlike James Taylor I’ve only seen rain lately. It’s raining now and has been for several hours. Sometimes the rain is hard but always it’s steady. If I had been flooded out last week I would be afraid. Some communities are taking precautions by asking people to go stay with family or friends on higher ground for the night. I’m sure all the hardest hit places are very alert right now. I have seen rain but rarely this much and this often.

Our local community is, like many in Vermont, along a river. We have been affected three times this summer by flooding. Irene is “the worse flood since the hurricane of ’27.” I’ve had places I shopped closed since May because of flooding. Some were just getting back into business when this flood hit. Some fared better, some fared worse this time. But economically this is very hard for Vermont. Not even thinking of foliage season or ski season but the businesses that those of us who live here shop at, have dinner at, visit for new glasses, or to see a dentist; are affected. Some have had to clean up after a flood two or three times this summer. I don’t know how these businesses will fare in a year. But they are part of the fiber of this community and this state and would be missed if they were to close. This gives “buying local” a whole new meaning.

I live in Vermont so buying local is something I like to do. Now I feel like it’s a bigger issue. It is one of the ways Vermont can recover from the losses it has suffered. It’s going to be harder to stay in business as a dairy farmer if your silage all floated down the river or your feed corn was made useless by flood waters, not to mention if you lost half your herd. Buying Vermont milk, cheese, and butter is part of what I can do to help. Anything I can buy directly from a farmer is even more help since all the profits go directly to them. This is going to be more difficult because so many farms, the really good productive ones, are located on bottom land. Flat, sunny land by the river is rich, less rocky, and warms up quickly in the spring. It can be wet but it grows good crops.

Some farms lost 1/3 of their crops down the river. Some lost the fields as well to erosion. The same torrents that ripped the roads apart tore through farm land as well. I love those farms and honor those farmers. There’s not work much harder than farming. To have this kind of economic loss is going to – no, let’s put it another way – could make this winter really hard for Vermont farmers. If there is anything I can do to ease that difficulty I want to do it.

And the artists, the man who sells firewood, the blacksmith down the road, I need to see what they have I need and buy what I can from them. For now, buying local is a civic act of integrity. It is how we will all survive together.

This wasn’t what I had intended to write when I sat down. But the rain keeps coming, the cool is beginning, and I feel the urgency of fall preparation. This time it is taking on a much larger scale.

© angela magara 2011

Response to Oslo

2011-07-23T12:29:00.002-04:00

It hit me hard. Made me feel unsafe. Violence in Oslo? Oslo? There seems to be no reason for it. None that I can actually understand. I was horrified.

But this morning I realized that I when hear about a bombing in any of the middle Eastern countries I don’t respond in the same way. I’m not sure why. Unpacking that reality I am seeing layers of myself and my thinking that I always need to examine. I don’t think I am less affected because of racism; although I do come from an extremely racist society. I don’t think it is based on sectarianism, although I see in myself, as a feminist, layers of assumptions about the condition of Muslim women that need to be unpacked. I think my mind has been conditioned.

I have been hardened by the violence daily displayed on the media to accept a bomb in Kabul. I accept that innocent citizens going about their business are killed because of where they live. It seems to be within the parameters of reasonable to me if it happens in Kabul. I understand that there is war in Afghanistan. This certainly affects my thinking but should it?

My caring and compassion have been expended for Afghanistan I suppose. But I have a fresh supply for Norway.

I don’t find that thinking particularly appealing. Nor do I want to become accustomed to death from violence wherever it occurs. I want my heart to stay tender to suffering without flinching at its repetition. I breathe in the pain and accept it, breathing out compassion. I breathe in our loss, transmuting it, to breathe out release. I breathe in anger and breathe out forgiveness. I breathe in my own limitations and breathe out forgiveness. With each breath I am, like the trees, supporting life. It is part of my work as a human.

Breathing in suffering…

2011-04-24T07:41:00.004-04:00

I wonder if humans naturally long for “resurrection” as part of their mythology. Whatever dogma, it seems returning from death is integral to most faith systems. It is the rock upon which Christianity is founded.

As a converted Christian, I honor the day lilies for carrying in their life cycle the same assurance of return. The seasons here in New England resonate with the resurrection story; spring with its slow coming, summer filled with birdsong, rampant mating and blossoming, followed by harvest in fall. All of this abounding life slowly folds in on itself and withdraws into the seeds and roots that carry next year’s rebirth. Winter comes then in white and silence. Though it is dark and seems sometimes to stay far too long, Winter finally releases us all into the life of the next Spring.

Each turn of the season holds feasts and celebrations. Each turn on the cycle, on this wheel of the year, lays up memories and stores of all kinds to carry us humans along. We know, in our bodies, the linear passing of time. Yet we experience around us in the natural world the circling pattern that life dances. We know that after the long silence of winter will come the upspringing of life. There is reassurance in that knowledge. The hope of the Christian resurrection is a mental, dogmatic, representation of the truth told in the natural world. After death comes new life.

There are a lot of things being said and done that represent themselves as Christian. But it seems to me that the core of this belief system is the faith that eventually, after death, believers will know new life. So today, on this most important of Christian holidays, I pray for new life for Jesus’ followers. May they, as the lilies rise above their old stalks and spent leaves to flower, let go of the old fears and teachings that separate them from non-Christians and, finally, know new life.

I am holding the hope for resurrection.

©angela magara 2011

Earth Day Psalm

2011-04-22T13:43:00.003-04:00

Ever since the disaster in Japan I have become more and more aware of a truth I had known but had not experienced viscerally. Simply, we are joined together into this manifested place - Earth.

I wanted to offer a poem for Earth Day. This is Psalm 108.

OH Goddess I am rooted; now can my full voice ring true.
Awaken, Life in my body, rise up Life in my mind, dance Life in my Spirit and
Join the star chant.

Whatever words my lips shape, Goddess is heard.
Earth formed me and all I form holds Her.
Sacred water, within – without
Breath – sacred too
There is nothing I share with all life that is outside the Circle.

In this lies the hope.
In the truth of our family lies our confidence.
This is our strong city, our deepest well, our mountain.
Awaken Life.

Then all is well.
Countries and peoples alive with the stars.

***
May we
Sing with the trees
worship the Sun,
Make love to Water
As long as breath is shared
April 22
2011

we protect you

2011-04-10T15:02:00.005-04:00

"We protect you," the towering evergreens told us. In this time of thinning ozone, of acid rain, and possibilities I probably won't learn about until much later; trees are standing sentinel for us. They, and other green bloods, are cleaning the air, catching toxins, and offering oxygen so we can breathe.

Long ago the trees taught me that by breathing, like them, I can transmute toxins within my body and spirit into health and useful energy. I can breathe in my own anger and hatred, my grief and resentments and breathe out clean air. Like the trees I have magic within which changes things. I breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. My hypothesis is that just as we have the physical means to perform that change; we also have the tools to change negative feelings and energies into useful and often positive ones.

This process is win-win. I process my negative feelings and ultimately transmute them. At that point I can breathe out positive energy into the situation that was troubling me or into global health and wellness. My exhales are one of the elements of life for trees. Together we hold part of the web of life between us. Within that connection lies opportunity.

It is a relationship of air.

elemental collaboration

2011-04-09T14:37:00.003-04:00

I’m listening to the steady stream of winter melt sliding off the roof. Water is running today under the hot sun. In the sun, even this far north, it seems more direct and intense than I remembered. It has been a long winter.

I participated in a global prayer for water a week or so ago for the water surrounding the hot reactor cores in Japan. During the prayer and meditation after I felt the reality of the percentage of water in my body, my cells. I experienced, for a moment, a feeling of elemental connection. I know that my body is part of the body of the earth but the experience of that truth and of its elemental resonance has not been this clear before.

I want to explore what lies within this relationship. What is the shape of our congress? How can we, working together, bring healing into being for us all?

debris of disaster

2011-03-13T12:32:00.005-04:00

I can't stop watching video of the disaster in Japan.

I try to go think about other things. I clean and do the rounds but the feeling of panic along the skin of my back accompanies me. This planet upon which we rely for all the elements of our lives, has shifted massively. Thousands of people have been ripped from their lives into death or complete change. I think some part of me is sensible to that going on so I feel it. Just an echo of what is actually experienced by those in Japan and by the environment there.

When I look at the picture above all I could think is that each box, each stick of wood, each car, each thing or the debris it has now become; mattered to someone. Before the disaster all these things were important. Now they are worthless. Worse than worthless because now they have to be cleaned up and removed. Where is a place large enough to hold all the debris this disaster has created?

The time has come it seems. That time which we have both anticipated and feared.

I read a posting that said that each person now on the planet has a purpose. Each of us is part of the transformational change that is now happening. I resonate with that assertion. The next question always is, "so what now?'

Snow-garitas!

2011-01-19T10:34:00.003-05:00

I imagine myself a serious person. I share ideas and information, some of it quite serious, on this blog. But today I just want to thank two people for the lovely cocktail I had last night. I thank Ashling Barr and my maternal grandmother Anna. Ashling is in Boston and decided to make margaritas with snow. My grandmother lived in North Carolina and made snow cream from any snow that fell in that southern state. I combined their intelligence and inventiveness and made a delicious concoction.

My grandmother loved snow cream. We would put a clean sheet on the hood of the car as soon as it began to snow. Once the sheet was covered we would take that snow inside to make snow cream. Grandmother would mix sugar, whole milk and vanilla in a bowl, then add snow until an ice cream texture was achieved. We quickly spooned it into bowls and ate it before it melted, shivering. When I moved to New England I found that even though there was plenty of snow no one ever made snow cream. It has always been a mystery to me. Only one caution was part of the snow cream story. You must not eat the first snow of the year. My great-grandmother, Mama Howell, was very clear that the first snow washed the dirt from the air. After that the sky was clean and all that fell from it pure enough to eat. But I digress.

Snow-garitas are made the same way except the liquid is tequila, triple sec, and lime juice with a tablespoon of sugar stirred in for sweetness. Once this mixture tastes as tart-sweet as you like stir in fresh clean snow, a cup or so at a time, until you have a slushy mixture. Pour into a glass and enjoy. You could salt the rim of the glass or do what we did and toss a little salt into the drink if you like.

I always liked making snow cream because it celebrates snow. Snow-garitas take that celebration to another level. I recommend them on a snowy winter's night.

contour of heritage

2010-12-11T11:08:00.003-05:00

I come from a complicated family. We all do I expect. I have been driven to pursue self-knowledge by my childhood. Yet today, for the first time, I realized the valuable legacy I received from my grandfather and my mother, neither known for generosity. They gave me their aspirations, their unrealized dreams, their deferred hopes, their longings.

Granddaddy would say, "stupid can't be fixed but ignorant can."

Jyles believed in reading. He had a 6th grade education but spent his evenings reading medical books bought used when he was in Baltimore. He had run away up north in hopes of getting an education. In North Carolina, up to the 6th grade, school was free. After that there was a charge. His parents refused to pay for school. "What'd he need that for?"

Once he was big enough, he lit out for the North where school was free all the way though high school. He wanted to be a doctor.

He didn't go to school. He became a chauffeur, fell in love, bought used medical books and a ruby ring, loss his love, never became a doctor, married a woman he wrongly surmised was his inferior, and grew bitter. But he always valued learning. He saw it as the way out.

My mother was Classist. A devotee of upward mobility, she modeled herself on the middle class presented in magazines and movies. She insisted on good manners, clean nails, quiet and graceful carriage, and good grammar. She believed that she was exceptional. By extension, I too, was exceptional - if not quite as much as she.

Mama expected to succeed, whether by hard work or manipulation, submission or domination. She did what was necessary to survive and, sometimes, flourish. She took it for granted that I would do well in school. A's were not impressive. "We're smart enough. Just haven't figured out yet how to turn that into gold."

Both Granddaddy and Mama were appalled when the seeds they had planted began to bear fruit. But that's a different story.

This one is about gratitude.

Anger illuminated

2010-12-03T09:50:00.002-05:00

I have felt, as I shared in this blog recently, that now is a time to illuminate - to bring light to dark places. In this darkest time of the year light is a gift, even the smallest light. To that end here is a bit of poetry from Marge Piercy's To be of Use

Anger shines through me, anger shines through me.
I am a burning bush. My rage is a cloud of flame
My rage is a cloud of flame in which I walk
Seeking justice like a precipice...

...anger storms between me and things, transfiguring,
transfiguring.
A good anger acted upon is beautiful as lightening
and swift with power.

Blessings of the Dark

2010-11-28T12:52:00.003-05:00

We have entered the darkest time, those of us in the Northern hemisphere at least. I am a Scorpio so I am accustomed to discovery in the deeper, less seen parts. But this time, from November 22nd until December 21st is a journey into the most dark we will experience. Yet I feel enlivened, invigorated.

Perhaps it is the Feast day we have just celebrated in the US. Perhaps it's the tiny snapshots gathered throughout the days spent with family and friends. Of course all those specifics have an effect but it seems to me to be more coded in us than that. There is a time as the days quickly shorten that urges creation. One pagan view of Yule is that it is the rebirth of the God, the return of the Sun. Maybe what I am feeling is that push to bring forth light in this dark time.

Maybe part of the Blessing of the Dark is the value of the light each of us can spill into reality. The deep dark loves the smallest light.

Sanity, Rally towards

2010-11-01T14:27:00.006-04:00

The question that was chanted at Jon Stewart's Rally was "Will this work?" At least it is as I recall it. It seemed we could agree on the Love Train being workable. I wasn't at the Mall in Washington. I was in a living room in Vermont watching it on Comedy Network. Other friends were at city-wide support rallies. We had some fun, we talked to some people, we ate, we loved the Peace Train, we loved Ozzie. We so loved the O'Jays.

Watching the Rally was wonderful in some strangely familiar, yet long-missed, way. I felt some of the same things in the past but that was long ago. The images I have seen on public media for the last decade have not been joyful, silly, inclusive, and filled with both mirth and reverence. It was so good to see.

I hope there will be unexpected results from these midterm elections. I want to see reason and compassion have a place in our national discourse. I want to see balance restored with the least upheaval possible. I appreciate the smart folks who conceived of, planned, and executed the Sanity Rally. It was an amazing act of creative magic.

"Will it work?"

It already has. May it continue to do so and multiply.

Observations on "It gets better.”

2010-10-28T15:08:00.002-04:00

I have recently watched many videos taped by gay and gay-supportive people as part of the “it gets better” initiative. Whether they are personal friends of not my response is personal. There is something profoundly universal in the telling of the story of being an outsider. I also think hearing this, seeing it on Facebook and elsewhere could possibly make a difference to a young person feeling totally alone. At the very least it shows that this time will pass and another time will come – a better time.

I watched one friend’s video several times. I was touched by his story but more compelling was his joy. Like most of us, most of the time, I have heard complaints and small talk, jokes and stories from him. But this video spoke of the gift of his life, his present life, and how much better it is now than it once was. He celebrated and enumerated the richness of his relationships, his work, his community. I rarely hear him, or anyone else, describe the sheer joy and pleasure that they take in their everyday life. I was struck by how making such a testimony might affect the people doing them. It is rare we get an opportunity to look at our life spread out before us and call it good in a public way.

I was sharing these observations with a dear friend. He listened and then, eyes filled, he said, “there was a time, when Aids was decimating our community when we expected it would only get worse, never better.” I think in that moment he realized anew that awful time had passed. It has gotten some better.

To have people who have lived through such a time say “it gets better” is speaking across so many challenges and tragedies. It is a brave statement from people who may know levels of suffering that they don’t even mention. But it is there, it is in the fabric of those powerful short films. The battles fought and survived ride in the bodies and spirits of those who have endured them.

I want to honor the layers contained in the short sentence, “It gets better.”

Reviewing my intentions

2010-07-02T06:11:00.004-04:00

There are certain rituals in my life that are so ingrained that I can’t recall when I started them unless I really think. Jonathan Cainer is one of them. I read him daily and have since ’94 or ’95. Jonathan is a British astrologer who is currently looking forward to the great and wonderful changes this series of unusual conjunctions will bring. That message is definitely not what other astrologers are bringing. It’s hard to find an optimist in print these days that doesn’t require me to suspend my unbelief. I appreciate that Jonathan can do that. He reminds me that the folly of hope is not folly at all.

Today Jonathan suggested that I might want to review my intentions and see how my actions match them. I think that might be a great thing to spend this holiday weekend doing. I invite anyone who wants to join me. Maybe next week we’ll know something we didn’t before. Maybe it will be valuable. I’m sure it will at least be interesting.

The 4th of July is a weird holiday, full of contradictions. There’s the nationalist part which makes me really uncomfortable, especially with us in open wars in two countries and bombing other countries for reasons I don’t really comprehend. I can’t understand but I continually make up scenarios to try to understand but even that level of fantasy can’t make it comprehensible, not really. Yet it is true, actually happening as I am writing this, as you are reading this.

But I love fireworks. No. I mean love. I am a Scorpio and with all that passion I love flashing lights in the sky and big booms. It’s a shame really because I just don’t understand it. I am usually very sensitive to noise as any of my now adult children could tell you. But fireworks, they’re the best. Yet I know that the reason for the fireworks is to commemorate “the bombs bursting in air.” And I think about how I would feel if I were an Iraqi woman. Would I love big booms and bright lights in the sky? This passion is extremely problematic, ethically, for me.

What does any of this have to do with intention?. Not much, except to recognize that knowing oneself is costly in terms of ego but with surprising personal benefits. As I recognize more and more how inconsistent and inconstant I am; I become equally compassionate with the inexplicable inconsistencies in the people I encounter. Which means I like them more. In that atmosphere I am happier each day.

The idea of spending this weekend reviewing my intentions, saturated with the energy of people having as much fun as possible, works. And maybe when those fireworks go off l can be there in the pleasure of that moment. Perhaps I can suspend my unbelief and celebrate the idea of imminent positive change.

©angela magara 2010

June's Dark Moon magic for the Gulf of Mexico

2010-06-12T08:40:00.003-04:00

Another dark moon is approaching. Last month this time(see previous blog) some of us did magic inviting an increase in awareness of the scope of the disaster in the Gulf and in the media coverage of its actual impacts. I have noticed a shift in that direction. The interest of the media has increased to the point that they are now being denied access. I am trusting that this increase in awareness will continue to grow and bear the fruit of clear and accurate information.

Last night I sat with friends stirring the cauldron for what new dark moon magic might be next. Again the question, what do we want to grow from now until the full moon around this disaster?

The answer, supplied by Jude, was “growth in a healing response”

There have been a lot of reactions. There have been lies and cover-ups. There have been diminishments and discounting. There have been quick answers to complex situations that have availed little. There has been anger at the foolish arrogance of corporations. There has been disgust at weak and ineffectual leadership. None of these reactions have provided healing for the pain of this event. A response requires a stimulus. I propose that through the power of our intention, we can supply some of that stimulus.

I invite any to whom this resonates to join me on this dark moon and plant the seeds of a healing response in the Moon's dark roundness. May all who know of this disaster become primarily interested in healing it, at all levels.

In the face of an irresolvable problem, healing magic can shift impossible into possible.

So mote it be.

Michael

2010-06-11T17:46:00.002-04:00

My brother died a few days ago. He was 60. He lived off the grid on a sailboat in Key West. He walked half of the Appalachian Trail last year and was finishing up this year “before I’m too old to walk it.” My father called and said he was found in his sleeping bag. He apparently had died of natural causes in the night and was found the next morning by other hikers.

Michael and I didn’t really know each other. He lived with my father, I with my mother. I met him the first time when I was about 20, already away at college. My mother called and said that Michael’s therapist thought meeting his mother would answer a lot of his questions. (Clearly this person didn’t know my mother who avoided answering questions.) I came home from East Carolina to be there and meet him and my father. I had no previous memory of either.

Mike was a typical annoyed and annoying adolescent. He wasn’t particularly wild or crazy. He was pretty angry at being abandoned by his parents but not unreasonably so. He was thin and dark and brooding. I liked him.

My father was another matter. He was very military which didn’t appeal to me at that time, nor now. I was as foreign to him as he was to me. On that Saturday afternoon long ago he was much of what my mother had claimed and infinitely mysterious all the same. Michael clearly didn’t much like him.

The next time I saw Michael I was heading to Florida to Jesus ’76, a Christian rock concert and series of workshops. He had grown his golden red hair long. I was amazed that the dark brooding boy had transformed into this big, Nordic man. We had a picture taken together, the only one, and I left shortly after.

Thirty years later I got an email from my father forwarding one from Mike. We sent emails back and forth a couple times a year. I learned he was a body builder, lived outside the system pretty completely, and loved Cuba. He sometimes had sailed there before Bush made it seriously illegal. He liked the music, the freedom, the friendliness, and – I think – the fact it made his uber-patriot father livid.

The next time I heard from Michael was last year when he was going to start walking the Appalachian Trail. He had always planned on doing it but felt he had better get to it. He was getting old. I sent him an email telling him to let me know if he was going to get anywhere near New England and I would meet him at the end of his hike. I never heard back.

The next thing in our relationship was my father’s voice telling me Michael had died.

It is a strange thing to have a brother, same father and same mother, who you never really know. It is unsettling to have a brother who shared none of your life growing up, nor any memories, but is still a close relative. It was odd to see similarities in us, evidences of our shared genetic material; but without context. And now the possibility that we might know each other is gone. I don’t feel regret but I do feel something. I feel the loss of what might have been and never was. It isn’t a great loss, since it is only an idea, an image; but it is a loss.

So Michael. I am glad you got to walk the Trail. I’m glad you were never too weak or old to do what you wanted to do. I’m sorry it ended so soon.

Until we meet again.

©Angela Magara 2010

Dark Moon magic for the Gulf oil disaster

2010-05-13T11:35:00.004-04:00

Tonight I’m going to do some dark Moon magic for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Whether you believe in magic, or positive thinking, or the simple energetic power of a number of people focusing on one thing; I invite you to join me.

There is a new moon in Taurus tonight at 9:04 PM EDT. New moons are traditionally a good time to plant and Taurus is a very fertile sign. It is a very auspicious time to do energy work for growth.

The question I was puzzling with was how to use that natural energy to support some kind of healing work in the Gulf. What about that situation do I want to see increase? What do I want to plant and see grow between now and the Full moon? I asked my daughter Leah these questions. She and I regularly do dark moon work together. Her reply was “an increase in awareness, both of the current situation and responsibilities to the future.”

As we talked more we realized that we need an increase in coverage by all media, not political blaming, but actual coverage of what the impacts are now on the lives of all the beings living there. We need an increase in responsible action. We need an increase in understanding of the limitations and conditions of living on this planet with other creatures. I’m sure you could add more.

Tonight I am going to step outside and connect with the earth here under my feet and the sky above my head. I am going to picture the Gulf as I have seen it in pictures. Then I am going to speak aloud the seeds I want to plant, here in the place between earth and sky. I will release them into the dark of the moon, the dark of the sky, and the dark soil of possibility. I will ask for these ideas, and any that come to mind at the time, to increase. Just like when I plant beans, I will drop them and cover them and wait for them to sprout.

Some might name this act prayer. Some might call it positive visualization. I call it magic. All I know is that the situation in the Gulf needs a series of miracles. I need to step outside possible and draw the impossible – the unlikely – into reality. To manifest that level of miracle requires a lot of us focused and relaxed into the confidence of change.

I invite you to join me. 9:04 PM tonight would be great. But if that doesn’t work for you any time in the next two weeks will add to the energy that will shift this crisis.

So mote it be.

©angela magara 2010

The real terror

2010-05-06T08:27:00.003-04:00

There has been an act of terrorism in the United States this week Possibly there were two acts which could be defined as terrorism but only one fully qualifies. In looking for a definition of terrorism I find that politics have changed it to serve national interests and policies. Terror itself is defined as panic: an overwhelming feeling of fear and anxiety. So working with that very general, non-political definition, which of the two major events stirs terror in your imagination?

The idea of an SUV packed with propane and fireworks which could have blown up in Times Square is terrible. There would have been considerable property damage and possibly significant loss of life if it had gone unnoticed. It did not. The laws and policies in place caused the event to be averted. We are all glad about this. I see this event, which the New York Times at least is keeping front page - story one; as over. Act of terror averted, arrest made, trial in the future.

The real terrorism is the flooding of the Gulf of Mexico with toxic oil. Anyone who reads reports, even the milksop of our mainstream media, of the oil disaster should begin to feel panic at the magnitude of this explosion. The life of that region, human and otherwise, will be permanently changed by this event. That statement is based on the hope that somehow the 200,000 gallons of oil pouring each day into the sea will be stopped. If it is not stopped I don’t think we have any idea of what shape and result it might have.

I am afraid and anxious, in a state one could define as terror, about the BP oil “spill.” As an aside, it is hard to see 200,000 gallons defined as a “spill.” As one commentator said, “you spill coffee, milk, or the dog's water.” This isn’t a spill. This is something much larger, larger than our language has words to describe.

There is an ongoing act of terror happening in the Gulf. It is not being sufficiently reported. Perhaps it is the magnitude of the disaster that prevents our leading news sources from reporting in any substantive way. Perhaps it is the actual helplessness with which we face this disaster that silences. Or perhaps, in the end, these commercial enterprises don’t want to focus on the neglect and arrogance which allowed this terror to happen. It is better business to report on a crime which was attempted and foiled than on one which is ongoing and seemingly unstoppable. Especially when the real disaster, the real terror producing event, was perpetrated by corporations.

Isabel Allende speech

2010-04-12T20:43:00.002-04:00

I have a special love for Isabel Allende, her work continues to influence and inspire me. However this speech challenges me to widen my hopes and raise my ambitions as I imagine the future.

Now

2010-03-18T10:59:00.003-04:00

I travel a familiar road,
yet new.
There, known tree -
here, last year's hollyhocks;
but surging beneath the transparent soil
is life re-born.

I am walking slowly and seeing where I am.

magara 2010

A Pagan's rant on St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T10:48:00.003-04:00

3/17/10 St. Patty's Day - that fucking snake chaser, pagan vanisher, religiously empowered destroyer. That's what we celebrate today with the wearing of the green. A tradition, I for one, don't honor anymore.

There are things I admire about Ireland, such as the devotion to poetry and music, to the beauty and power of crafted words among friends. I cannot help but admire a people who, though occupied and oppressed, could not be defeated. I love the stories that are so fantastical and mysterious, that exist outside ordinary cause and effect.

I love that the lore of Ireland continues to retain magic and other worldliness. I appreciate that fairy mounds and goddesses, wells and stag continue to be honored. I am grateful that at least the Irish were able to hold on to some parts of their pagan practices. Because of their tenacity we can follow the Celtic Wheel of the year and have some idea of the traditional celebrations of the holidays. Without this stronghold of paganism and earth based celebrations perhaps nothing would remain of the European nature centered spirituality.

There are individuals and sects and even countries that seem to have a calling to be the keepers of a faith or heritage. These are places which seem to have a unique history of relationship with spiritual beings and traditions. Ireland and Tibet come to mind as countries for which this is possible. Arizona and New Mexico, Vermont and Maine, and the mountains of North Carolina also resonate for me. Each of these peoples has suffered under an overlord's tyranny but continues to hold to their heart knowledge.

In the face of christianity in Ireland and communism in Tibet these particular spiritual loyalists have been ground and scattered. Remarkably, the scattering which is a great tragedy in their national experience, has informed all of us. The faiths for which they have been persecuted have spread to their refugee lands. The tearing of these two cultures seem to have spread the seeds of their beliefs and ideas across the world.

Lifting my glass, ignoring St. Patrick; I celebrate the Irish, both the myth and the actual, for keeping the faith.

tryst

2010-02-01T21:54:00.001-05:00

Tongue of flame,
Lover lips to mine,
Brigit breathes secret mists to my mind

And I write.

So it has been, is.
May it always be so,
this dance, this intimate congress,
this Love.

My passion, her precious,
We share fire and
spill white-hot words.

©Angela Magara

Cyberspace Poetry Slam for Brigid

2010-02-01T15:05:00.003-05:00

5th annual Cyberspace Poetry Slam for Brigid
Feel free to copy the following to your blog/facebook/website and spread
the word. Let poetry bless the blogosphere once again!
WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2010

WHERE: Your blog

WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day

HOW: Select a poem you like – by a favorite poet or one of your own – to
post February 2nd.

RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on
this post. Last year when the call went out there was more poetry in
cyberspace than we could keep track of. So, link to whoever you hear
about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

Please pass this invitation on

for you know we are all poets
once in a while.

The Choice made in Massachusetts

2010-01-21T15:32:00.002-05:00

I have lived in Massachusetts. I have worked in Massachusetts. The result of the election for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat is not a surprise to me. Massachusetts is a working class state with a separate, and articulate, intelligentsia. I think the ratio of those folks has been clearly demonstrated by the results of the recent Senate race.

That is not to say there are not intelligent, educated republicans. Though I might like to think otherwise, it isn’t just about stupid. It is about something else which I can’t understand. At some place in the lives of people who are personally compassionate and inquiring a decision is made to not use those traits in making political choices. I blame Christianity, the Catholic Church specifically, since that religion dominates in Massachusetts.

Dogma requires unquestioning acceptance of rules which, in the case of the Abrahamic religions, go counter to a person’s natural instincts. The link between religious zealots and right wing politics is undeniable. My assumption is this; once a person has been conditioned to accept something blindly - original sin for example - it is only another step to shift that capacity to supporting baseless political positions. Christianity is the perfect training ground for accepting rhetoric without facts.

I realize I am speaking counter to 76% of the people in this country. That is the percentage of people who admit to being Christians in this country. But something is making us do things as a country that most of us don’t like. I think investigating and mitigating any causes of our war-mongering, violent, fearful, sexually repressed culture might be helpful.

©angela magara 2010

The Way of Fire

2010-01-18T19:53:00.002-05:00

The Way of Fire
5 phases 5 times

A 5 month exploration of inspiration and the work of creating.

In this workshop we will investigate the 5 Phases of Fire 5 times noticing what it can teach of creativity. Celebrate the spark and burn of imagination, tend flames and embers and ashes. Open to, and into, our individual voices. We will learn practices, tools, and patience to bring forth the fullest expression possible of our visions and our fire.

The relationship each of us has with creativity and expression is valuable outside of any medium. It is ultimately our relationship with life force. Using magical tools of imagination, intention, loyalty, ecstasy, and release; we will spend time and energy with our creative selves.

The Way of Fire is a virtual class, taking place online and on the phone. We will also create and collectively maintain an astral space for our work together. I am offering this workshop as a free-will offering. I ask that those who take the class make an donation by April 28th, freely, as each wills. I invite you to add your fuel to our collective fire and share the discoveries we will make together.

If interested in more details, please contact me at angela@angelamagara.com.

Conflict

2009-12-01T13:27:00.001-05:00

Today’s tarot card, drawn again from the beautiful Daughters of the Moon deck, is the 4 of Flames; A.K.A. (drum roll) Conflict. The card shows two naked warrior women with fire for hair. They stand with bows drawn and arrows point to point. Their feet are amidst the serpent coils of a dragon breathing flames to fill the sky.

Can I just say, “uh-huh.”

It, somehow isn’t personal - this conflict. My experience is more that it is atmospheric. This has been going on for a month or so. Right now seems particularly irritating. I know there are astrological reasons but there are others much more able to discuss that cause (or is it explanation?) than I.

I have been giving this situation some thought since I know myself to be a bitch. Not occasionally but continually; sometimes grounded and insightful, sometimes thorny and asp-tongued, I am a bitch. Let me be clear, I am completely comfortable with that. I believe it is one of the phases of being a maturing female. Perhaps you’ve heard of Maiden, Mother Crone? I’d amend that to Maiden, Mother, Bitch(aka Queen), Crone, Hag. We live much longer now. But I digress, I was discussing the atmosphere of conflict I perceive.

Let me propose that conflict is just mis-directed energy. If I can sense the energy and use it creatively the outcomes are sometimes exciting, beautiful, interesting, and/or self-informing. It is always satisfying. The energy abates and the wake left is a calm shore. My experience of the alternative is frustration.

Like the picture I described before, my arrow is poised to fly – it just needs a target. This could be a driver in my way, customer service for my cell phone, my friend, my ally, my kin. I can let fly at anyone. But I’m really not a thorny bitch all that often so I hold that bow drawn and don’t release. It takes a lot of energy to be civil, supportive, accepting, and non-judgmental when the bow is already drawn and the arrow nocked. Since I find my energy at a premium nowadays, I use whatever the universe is supplying, in the best way I can. I find getting alone is essential.

When I am alone and standing around with bow drawn it usually doesn’t take me too long to feel silly. I am learning to direct this wild flaming energy creatively. Sometimes that means writing. A few weeks ago it meant planting bulbs. Sometimes it is organizing and cleaning the silverware drawer. Finding ways to express it usefully, maybe joyfully rather than destructively, is the goal.

I share this because you may find yourself in a similar place.

Yes, during this season of peace and goodwill, in this day of announcing troop increases in Afghanistan, in this time when 1 out of 4 children in the US of A is on food stamps; I endorse letting that energy sweep in and clean your cellar, write a piece of music or code, finger paint, or dance; whatever wants doing. I’m finding it works out better than the alternative.

©Angela Magara 2009

An Hypothesis

2009-11-16T16:25:00.003-05:00

Since I was a child there have been those groups who insisted that the real threat is the Communist intention to take over our country. The shape of that threat took many forms through the years. First it was that the USSR had nuclear missiles directed at our major cities and defense centers. We hid under our desks and those with the means built bomb shelters. Our country build an arsenal of nuclear weapons that terrified anyone of intelligence. That passed.

The next Red Threat came complete with domino theory. This was the justification both for Korea and Vietnam. It was the reason for the tragic loss of combatant’s lives* and shocking levels of civilian losses* in Laos and Cambodia, as well as Vietnam. If those remote countries fell to the Communists then eventually they would take over the "free" world and, alone with no allies, we would be overwhelmed. Citizens protested and, for a time, we ended our overt wars. Nixon visited China. That passed.

The Berlin Wall fell. The USSR broke into many countries. Communism clearly had self-destructed. America was the only superpower remaining, we were assured. We flexed, stretched, and reached our control wherever we could, to gain whatever was there for the taking. We gave China most favored nation status. Our fear of Communist takeover passed.

Today Obama is traveling to China. The press release says he is going to discuss religious freedom, internet access, and censorship; oh, and trade. He was quoted as saying “few global challenges can be solved unless the world's only superpower(that’s us – the only first world country still in recession) and its rising competitor (does anyone else see China as a competitor) work together. He and his advisers have insisted in virtually all public utterances since he arrived in Japan on Friday: ‘We do not seek to contain China's rise.’”

The GOP and rightists have been worrying since the end of WWII that we would be taken over and controlled by Communists. Apparently all of our wars, all our immense defense spending, all the covert and overt interference in other places far away(Asia) and nearby (Cuba, Central America) was to prevent that horrible possibility.

I have a hypothesis. China is now deciding whether we will enlarge our war in Afghanistan. Obama’s trip is actually to ask China for more loans to fund this war which we cannot execute without them. Our country doesn’t have the cash to send more troops to the Middle East. That is why the trip was preceded by an announcement by the administration that it is not choosing a strategy right now but is continuing to consider options for Afghanistan. China’s response will shape that strategy. If this hypothesis is true then China has taken over our country.

If this hypothesis is valid then the GOP and the Democrats, which have supported unchecked trade with China, have handed the country over to the Communists. Ironically, that which was our greatest (manufactured) fear has come upon us at their hands. Let me add, Communism hasn’t been a fear I’ve held for 40 years. This is not a statement of fear of communists but consideration of the political manipulation wielded under that “takeover” banner.

The Chinese didn’t need to bomb us, nor invade us. They just had to take the long view and let us consume ourselves into submission. “We do not seek to contain China’s rise.”

We couldn’t if we tried. We have funded it with our greed. We have assured it with our export of jobs, manufacturing, and capital. It has been good for the GNP and multi-nationals. I propose that the reason the fear of communist takeover has passed is because it is accomplished. It is now a matter of seeing what China is going to choose to do with the country they have bought.

The irony is that we have caused the loss of 5,262,745 human lives in our pursuit of this stated policy. Such waste. Maybe the Chinese will run things better. But I doubt it.

©Angela Magara 2009

Loss of life in wars
*Korea total lives loss 2,800,000 US losses 34,568
*Vietnam total lives loss 1,700,000 US losses 58,177
*Cambodia total lives loss 600,000 US included in Vietnam figures
*Laos total lives loss 70,000 US included in Vietnam figures

Ah, youth

2009-11-10T11:30:00.001-05:00

There is a power young girls have. I remember realizing that I could direct the thoughts of a group of boys just by walking by. The year before I would have been invisible, of no importance. Now that had all changed.

No, that’s not it.

There is a fear that young girls have. I recall walking across the street with my girlfriends and laughing at the old man eyeing us from his car.

“He should go home to his wife and kids,” Tamera said.

We all laughed but I felt afraid at the invasion of this man’s eyes. He didn’t know me. Who was he? Why was he looking at me?

No, that’s not it.

There is a pride young girls have. They lift their faces and let their hair blow and revel in the delight of their new bodies. I remember standing by the side of the community pool and feeling the satisfaction of no longer being a “chubby girl.” I recall the smell of the iodine and baby oil we mixed for tanning and the amber beads water made on my legs as I came out of the pool. I just felt good. I felt the blood rushing, carrying me to an unknown place.

No, that’s not it.

There is a sadness young girls have. I remember having to give up wearing comfortable clothes. Suddenly I had to wear a garter belt and nylons – “make sure your seams are straight” – and a bra. I can still feel myself hanging from the monkey bars on my swing set, hanging upside down by my knees and my shirt falling over my eyes. I reached up and pulled down, or rather up, so my bra wouldn’t show. I fell, losing my grip.

No that’s not it. It’s all not it. I know that once I didn’t have the responsibility of being a woman, of always having to be aware of the effect of my sex, my body, my behavior, my safety, my choices. I recall a time when if something happened to me, or someone threatened me, I could expect to be protected. I didn’t have to consider if I had somehow caused it.

Mostly I want, for just this moment, to acknowledge the power of female coming of age. I want to give voice to the conflicts and the losses that accompany the power of being a woman. I want to acknowledge that as far as feminism has taken us, the distance we have to go stretches to the horizon.

©Angela Magara 2009

Beginning

2009-11-09T10:18:00.003-05:00

I must temember - I am Goddess
The Dreamer, The Creator of visions
My point of power is now.

ffiona

I have been away from this blog, from writing generally, for the last few months. I try to tell myself I am taking care of more important things and I am. I worked and refilled my coffers. When work ended I came back home and have spent a month settling in. So in some way I can justify the way I have spent my time but my excuses are a lie.

I face this again, and again I straighten my spine and open to the fact that writing is work. More importantly it is work that I want to do, much more than organizing – anyone who knows me would agree - or baking bread, or cooking, knitting, spinning, or any of the vast number of things I use to entertain and sustain myself. The core work is the place I avoid. I suspect I am not all that different from other people. Lazier perhaps, but not really different.

This morning I pulled the Dreamer from Ffiona Morgan’s lovely Daughters of the Moon Tarot. It is the card that would correlate with the Fool in the Rider-Waite. I have to tell you, I wince when I see the Fool or this version of it. “Beginning? What again?”

I haven’t finished all the stuff I already started. How am I going to be starting out on a journey when I am already on one? How do I do that? Each time I pull this card it means I have to expand my capacity in some way. So I look at “beginnings” with some dread. This could be a condition of having logged up so many incompletes, so many failures, so many sputtering ideas in this long life of mine. Whatever the cause it is unworthy of me to shy away.

As the quote above says “I must remember – I am Goddess.” There are many ways to read this but today I am focusing on the re-member. I need to put myself back together. That could be the work that I have come to do in this lifetime. Expanding my capacity, opening my cauldron-self to the next ingredient will make me glad.

It will make me glad – does make me - glad like opening the door to my home and seeing all my beloved and familiar treasure. The freedom and the security of identity will continue to unfold unless I stop it.

Today I will not. Today I will write. I will begin, again and anew.

A fun video with heart

2009-09-02T15:31:00.001-04:00

I saw this video on FaceBook. It just cheered me up completely. Stay til the end for the sweetness.

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Truth, or something like it

2009-09-01T11:34:00.001-04:00

I think of myself as a person devoted to truth. I was once more of a zealot about what was “true” than I am today. I have gained enough wisdom to understand that the truth that is self-evident to me may not be to someone else. And further that that same truth may not actually be true for someone else. I have come to understand this doesn’t mean either of us are wrong, just on different places on the wheel. I am not comfortable with that kind of soft-edged reality but that doesn’t make it less, well…true.

Speaking my truth has been a process of learning the value of silence as well as speaking. Perhaps it is the effect of age or the process of erosion but I find myself sometimes saying, “I hear that is how you see it. “

Sometimes I follow that statement with “reasonable minds can differ” and sometimes I don’t. There are people who cannot sit with differences without conflict. Each time our “truths” differ I have the opportunity to either engage or not. I hope that I have come to a place where my ego doesn’t demand engagement every time.

Today I have gotten two messages about my position as to speaking my truth. Jonathan Cainer admonished me to avoid conflict and create peace. The Tarot card I drew today was the Queen of Swords also encouraging me to be honest and to take things with humor.

When I get two hits around the same issue, especially when I am not aware of any significant situation that these speak to, I try to examine myself and the events of the day to see where it might apply. Then I realized that everyday I need to keep the creation of peace as a priority. Everyday I need to be dwelling in honesty. I always need to be aware of my own willingness to engage in conflict.

The balance between having an authentic voice and holding my own counsel, between fighting for “right” and allowing the process to take its own time and way; is always a challenge. But balance is necessary to avoid foolishness in my experience. It is the work of my current life. It is the doorway to greater clarity and greater love. So today I appreciate the idea of truth, the reality of multiple truths, and the grace needed to let life flow as it will. Today I breathe in and out, creating peace with each breathe by my intention.

And that’s the truth.

2009-08-19T11:34:00.002-04:00

I just viewed this clip on Salon.com and thought it was the clearest reaction to the "town meeting terrorists" who have disrupted and destroyed any serious discussion or debate about health care. And of course Barney Frank has won my heart with this reaction.

one more thing...

2009-08-06T09:33:00.002-04:00

While I was gathering the things that most have caught my notice in the last few weeks I forgot one.

Who's the Man?

Bill Clinton is the Man, no doubt about it.

Watching Bill Clinton play a role on the international stage was wonderful for me. I admit, without reservation, to being a serious Clinton fan. I never found anything he did personally offensive. As one elderly woman who was interviewed in a Jewish retirement home in Florida said, "he did what any man would do. Bad or good, that's the truth." I agree.

It was good to see BC with Al Gore. Good to see him making history once again.

I know there are many things BC has done that were I party to them I would say they were terrible. I know he is as much of a war-monger as Obama. But he is brilliant and charismatic. In politics in america that is rare and precious.

Welcome back to the game, Bill. Welcome back.

harvest

2009-08-05T09:51:00.003-04:00

I haven't been faithful to this blog the last few weeks. Summer has come to Vermont, at least a little, and I want to be outside and enjoying the wonderful air and light. But I do have some bits I have gathered I wanted to mention this morning.

Health care reform:
Being one of the millions who don't have health care coverage I am interested to see the elected officials from some of the poorest and most needy states standing in the way of a public option. How bad does this system have to get to be re-designed? Bad enough to cause pain to those who are most privileged. Those of us less privileged can suffer and die as long as those who hold the money and power are comfortable.

Cash for clunkers program:
This program was so successful that it has run out of money. The price reduction is only $4000 max. If that degree of price reduction has made so much difference why would auto retailers and manufacturers not just lower their prices to stimulate sales? That's the question my daughter, Leah, asked me and I guess I have no answer.

Global warming:
I realized that I was saying to friends around the country. "Yeah, the weather is weird. Guess that's what they meant by the term 'global climate change'."
Upon further reflection I also discovered that I am loathe to say that what is happening with the weather in Vermont is 'climate change'. But it is. My reluctance to name it is, I believe, a direct effect of the anti-climate change rhetoric of the Bush years. Scorn can be a very effective control mechanism. I think in the coming months I want to become more informed about what is happening to the world climate and what we know might be its effects.

Summer
I have never seen more vivid flowers. I have never seen so many hummingbirds. The forest is alive with the music of tall-tree birdsong all day long. The air is fragrant with the breath of that forest and of the soil of the gardens, in all its richness. Water is trickling down streams that cross our land, sometimes more, sometimes less; but always the water has a voice.

Food
I am thankful to be in a food producing area. No, let me restate that. I am grateful to live in a place where there are farmers who honor the land, the food they produce, and in a community which values what farmers do. I am also really glad to live with a productive garden, thanks to my daughter and her partner. And I can't forget those fabulous protein producers, the hens. They are a constant source of pleasure for me and entertainment for the stalking kitten.

These small steps into sharing the responsibility for producing the food I eat instruct me. I begin to really understand what amount of labor is involved in 5 pounds of flour or cornmeal. I know what support and labor is required for a cheese omelet.

***

Changes

2009-07-11T12:18:00.002-04:00

I am always amazed at how things change. I shouldn't be surprised since in my entire life the consistent element has been change. Usually I find when I look back along the tracks behind me that the changes took me exactly where I most wanted to go. Or at least to a place where I was more at peace with who I am and the reality that surrounds me.

I will not be taking the train cross country this summer. Consequently, I will be returning the donations that were so generously offered. You have my deep gratitude not only for financially supporting me but sharing my vision. It was a wonderful exercise of faith for me, and I hope for each of you who joined me.

I am disappointed not to be going on this adventure. But I know the focus of my attention needs to be shifted in another direction. There are higher priorities right now than adventure. I have to say I never thought I'd articulate that!

But in this syrup sweet day in Vermont when the air is fresh and fragrant, I can't really regret not leaving to travel. There are times, and this is one, when home is the best place to be.

Can a popular movement happen?

2009-06-29T12:11:00.002-04:00

Reading, this past week, about the massive protests in Iran I am perplexed. In this very repressive society mass protests are filling the streets. In this closed and almost inflexible theocracy, citizens are apparently protesting the outcome of an election. Seeing the images, hearing the rhetoric of Obama and others I can only wonder. I wonder about several things.

1) Why when an election was called in this country amidst clear voting irregularities, did no one fill the streets of our major cities? We never, I include myself here, got up off the couch or out of our cubicles to demand redress of this situation. No one DID anything. I wonder why, in a country with a history of protest and activism, nothing happened.

2) In recent years when protesters have filled the streets in the US, there have been beatings, arrest and/or detention of journalists, and suppression of facts and news about the protests. The lid was firmly held on the reports of beatings, abuse, and excessive force that were the reaction by all levels of law enforcement. Yet in Iran, where supposedly there is incredible suppression of information; video and photos and reports are getting out about the scope and nature of both the protests and of the governments response. We actually have video of a protester dying and we know her name. I wonder how that can be. How can this discrepancy be explained? How can information be managed so effectively, in both cases, without some oversight and goal setting?

3) Can the protests in Iran actually be coming out of individual outrage and a personal desire for change and justice? Or are they being orchestrated by someone? I want to believe this is a popular movement. I want to believe that there aren't foreign dollars/euros/pounds making it happen. I want to believe that the videos and photos we are seeing are actually being taken on someone's cell phone. I want to believe the first-hand reports are authentic. But is that even possible? And if possible, then how would major news outlets across the globe be so accessible for this unverified information?

I do wonder about those and other things. I wonder if the time when we could sort the chaos and sift out the truth has passed. I wonder if the idea of a popular movement enacting real change through non-violent protest was a dream. No, not a dream but an actual fantasy. Did we just make that up?

I do know that there are so many more things going on than I can possible know about. I know that power is being handled in ways I cannot even imagine. I believe that governments are shifting all the time but my attention is only brought to it if it serves to support the status quo.

I don't know what to do about it. I don't know if protests and demonstrations and petitions can have an effect any longer. I don't know if they ever did. I recall standing near a bridge that led from Virginia to DC during the 1971 protest to shut down the government. There were hundred of thousands of protesters stopping traffic and filling the streets. But all across the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, stood Marines - helmeted, armed, and serious. They lined all the bridges I could see. At that moment I was overwhelmed by the government's power. How can we ever hope to defeat an opponent who is so strong and has all the guns and training to dominate? I have never received an answer to that question that gave me any realistic assurance.

So I look at these reports and I wonder. Is any part of it true? What part? How true and in what way? And does it ultimately matter?

The last thing I am wondering is if popular protests and direct action can no longer be trusted what devices will work change? What will make a difference and how will we know it has?

Writing for a ride

2009-06-20T23:28:00.006-04:00

I invite you to join me on a cross country train trip through the magic of the internet. This is a carbon footprint-reducing/creative writing project to fund a environmental choice I am making. Let me explain.

This August I need to travel from Vermont to Vancouver, BC to teach at BC Witchcamp. In an effort to reduce my carbon footprint this year, I’m setting the intention to make this trip via train rather than flying. Train travel will cost about $1800 round trip. I can raise about $900 from confirmed sources but I need your help to raise the rest.

I’d like to offer an exchange of my writing for your financial support for this ride. I have set up a members-only blog to share the experience. Each of you who contributes will receive the URL so you can log in and travel across country with me as it happens. In addition, for anyone who contributes $40 or more I will send you a signed copy of my book, Earth Psalms. www.angelamagara.com

I am hopeful that the lure of reading about a journey across North America made with consciousness and awareness will call to you. I look forward to sharing this trip with many of you.

To make a contribution go to
www.paypal.com
and enter my email address
angelafromthecenter@gmail.com

If you have questions or need more information please contact me at that email address.

Thanks again.

All aboard!

graduation thoughts

2009-06-07T17:40:00.003-04:00

I just attended my son’s graduation from Harvard Extension. This program is a little known but amazing opportunity to get a first class – read that “upper class” education at a relatively low cost. It was begun in 1910 to offer the residents of Cambridge and adjacent communities access to the education at Harvard, which most of them could never hope to afford.

Most students only take a few courses but some, each year, complete a BA or MA of Liberal Arts with an assortment of concentrations. It is a very diverse, very varied group. There were graduates ranging in age from 17 to 75. Concentrations were in philosophy, creative writing and literature, biology, religious studies, history, foreign language and literature, and art history. My assumption is that everyone there was working class. Many held a full time job, had children, had other commitments and still did rigorous academic work.

The class speaker titled his speech, “a second chance at a 1st rate education.” It was touching without sentimentality. I sat there celebrating that this mother, who was the first to graduate from high school in my family, could see her last child getting his degree from a good school. His sisters both have also graduated, one from BU and the other also from Harvard Extension. It is possible to crawl up to a place where ideas are about something other than the most survival-based topics. But in this country it isn’t easy. And it isn’t free.

I tried to calculate the amount of the student loans those graduates might represent but math was never my strong suit. The fact that anyone in this country has $30,000 of debt for a BA or maybe $60,000 if they went to a really pricy school, or got a Masters is a terrible burden. It is a national disgrace that the no one seems to notice. It is a decades-long bondage for people from the lower classes who have the intelligence, but not the finances, to get an education. It is like punishment for being your best self.

But yesterday wasn’t about the cost or social injustice. It was about the pleasure and enrichment of, the joy and passion for, learning. It was about the value of knowing your own excellence and success. May, someday, this exaltation be all that is carried away by graduates after they leave college. That, and the pleasure of discovering what is next.

Excellent job, Gabe.

Mercury direct

2009-05-30T09:59:00.003-04:00

Finally Mercury has gone direct again. It went direct at 9:03 am this morning. This frees me up, as it does most folks, to speak more clearly, express my thoughts more eloquently, and make choices and decisions with more confidence that the situation won't shift after I have chosen.

As a writer this particular period has just been like walking in mud. Nothing I have written has had the sparkle and strength that I am usually able to manifest. I have been dissatisfied with anything I have written, when I could make myself write. I have thought my ideas were dull, my language limping, and my point - well - missing. My hope is with Mercury going direct I might not have as intense a time with this as I have this past 3 weeks. This hope of future brilliance is both at the same time, reasonable and superstitious. But as a woman raised in the South I cannot ever pull fully away from the confidence that unseen forces and rules are shaping much of my reality.

"What would happen in one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open".--Muriel Rukeseyer

With Mercury going direct I have hope once again that I will write something that will be completely true. I hope to find the grains in my life that will split my world open so the rich gooey center pours out to enjoy. Like a seed splitting to sprout, some destruction accompanies all growth. Ah, already Mercury is working his magic. May we all be facile without being glib.

train travel - postscript

2009-05-28T14:33:00.002-04:00

I've been back from my 12 hour train ride for a few weeks. Like always, when I go away I return to see my life, home, entire situation with new eyes. I appreciate that about travel. It offers me an opportunity to see anew.

I learned something new on that trip. I have spent very little time in my life actually relaxing. It is pretty hard to stay occupied on a lengthy train ride. I knitted, I read, I listened to audio books, I wrote, and I watched movies. But finally when I had done everything I had brought to do, I just looked out the window. My story teller's mind made up sketches of stories and lines of prose as the different views slipped by. It was not only restful to just let my mind think and wander, I discovered it was an investment in future creativity.

What I found the week after I returned is that I would awaken in the night and strings of words, images, ideas, lines of dialogue would pop into my sleepy head. I would turn over and go back to sleep, my dreams opening in vivid colors. I am still inspired, if confused by the effect of that trip. Again, I recommend it. I talked to a friend of mine who said he just couldn't stand being on the train after a while. The inactivity drove him crazy. Well, he is a much more physically active person than I am. So train travel isn't for everyone.

I am inspired to spend a few minutes each day watching the world go by. I think there is something restorative about sitting at idle. It is the the pause between breaths.

riding the Vermonter 55

2009-04-30T00:11:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I took a trip via train. Yes, it was much better, more mellow, less stressful, more time consuming, and much more human than flying. Following are just a few verbal snapshots of the day.

morning
the train arrives. The station is just a small building beside the tracks. There is a manager who opens the station for two hours a day, one for the departing train, one for the arriving train about 10 hours later. A 3-year old is walking the "danger" line along the edge of the platform. His grandfather watches without concern. The train growls to a stop, the steps are folded down and I am assisted with my bag as I climb aboard.
--------
It appears from the train that Vermont is forests and rivers. Once in a while a small town, often expanses of farms, but mostly forest and streams. The trees have no leaves yet but some of the maples are blushing with buds. Ellie, who introduced herself, manages the snack car. She provided me with delicious coffee which I am sipping as the newly manured fields flow by. There is the motion, thump, thump, hip, thump thump; and the song of the whistle as we pass through each town.

I observe that I live in the right state. Vermonters, at least those into whose backyards I'm peeking, have a lot of junk. There are piles of building supplies, cars for parts, and barrels of recyclables. There are metal pieces, pipes, and gardening pots and tomato cages. In Vermont the possibility of any future use for any item is reason enough to put it behind the garage in the back of the yard where no one can see it. It's not "hoarding" but Yankee thriftiness. Or so we say.
-------
As we enter New Hampshire more people are getting on. A man who lives on Mahatten Island, another who flew a private plane to Vermont and is returning via train(it wasn't his plane), a silent Asian man who might be Indian or Pakistani is working on his computer at one of the dining tables. Jose, the conducter, is joking with these regulars and complaining how services and supplies at the hotel where he spends the overnight in Vermont have declined with the recession.
-----
It is 11:30 am and the thin man from the lower East Side is walking by with his second beer of the morning. Clearly I have left the land of the Puritans. I'm so glad.
------
Heading south at the end of April is like traveling into the next season. No leaves on the trees gives way to flowering crabapple and a pale green mist of tiny new leaves. Azaleas, hot pink, flash in yards as we pass. Tall evergreens are fewer now. The tracks are shouldered by scrub pines and wild apples.
------
Further down the eastern corridor into Connecticut the comparisons become much less about types of trees and much more about rural compared to urban.
-----
Underground in NYC. Lots of trains here at Penn Station. No buskars in the undrground, no color, only gray and shadow and moving people at the end of a day of work. Hurry is apparent.
-----
In New Jersey a sign lit in big white lights.

TRENTON MAKES. THE WORLD TAKES.
-----
Time is different on this train. Maybe because I'm not driving. Maybe because it is long - 12 hours, maybe because I'm not confined. I walk around and stand and chat with Ellie looking out different windows on the other side.
----
train arrives in DC. We had been 1/2 hour behind schedule right outside of NYC but arrive 15 minutes early. As I walk towards the station an electric cart pulls up and my friend and I are driven to her car parked outside on the street. Maybe it was the walking stick or because it was late and he had nothing else to do. But it was the frosting on the cake. The air is summery and damp.
-----
Train travel is better than flying. It isn't faster. It is better.

blogging vacation

2009-04-27T22:58:00.002-04:00

I am going on a 12 hour train trip tomorrow. While I'm doing this train trip, my first in the US in 40 years, I am going to blog about it. I may not have too many opportunities to upload my writing but when I can I will.

I know that the train is more Earth friendly than flying. My question is, will it be a comfortable, relaxing way of travel. I'll have more answers in a week after I travel both ways.

More to follow.

CIA torture memos

2009-04-21T10:03:00.002-04:00

I don't want to beat a dead horse. These memos have been talked about, interviewed about, analyzed and discussed. I just want to note one thing. If this prisoner was "water-boarded" 183 times in a month what does that really mean, day by day? 6 times a day, everyday for a month, he felt like he was being drowned. Or maybe there were different schedules on weekends so they didn't almost kill him on Saturdays and Sundays. So that would bring the number of events, near-drowning events, to more than 8 a day.

Have you even been tossed in waves and thought you were going to drown? Remember how that felt? How you avoided the water for a while, how weak you felt, how lucky to be alive? Imagine going through that repeatedly over the span of a month, several months, a year, possibly years? I can't imagine a more sure way of making someone insane.

I don't know what the answer is. I only know doing this is a perfect way to create many psychotic people, prisoners and guards and interrogators. To deny the humanity of another person, no matter how noble the end, destroys the humanity of the perpetrator.

We will reap the whirlwind.

Socialism Sucks

2009-04-08T16:29:00.002-04:00

Catchy phrase is it? Original thinking, and it utilizes poetic devices.

I was driving home from Boston last weekend. As I'm leaving town to get on the highway I spot a big black Chevy pickup. It is very clean, very black, and looks new. Blazing across the tinted back window was "Socialism Sucks" in black Gothic font.

I wondered about the man driving that truck. It was a man but I couldn't tell how old. Was he just foolish and young? Bought his first truck with the new low rates and government incentive to buy American. He also bought the ultra-conservative catchword for anything that gives assistance to the working class instead of the upper class. He is clearly working class but his allegiance has been shifted from his own best interest to the best interests of a class of which he will never be a member.

Maybe he is older and ignorant. He has believed what the TV has told him for some time now. Now Fox News is telling him that what is happening, the reason the economy is suffering, the reason gas prices keep going up; all of it is the result of the "creeping socialism" that is infecting the country.

Whatever his story, he has a truck that gets sad and seriously low MPG. He has a vehicle which has no trade-in value since by the time he wants to move into something less consumptive or expensive he will be unable to get rid of this fossil. He is a victim of the failing auto industry which chose to lobby and fight to keep MPG and air quality low. Now those same companies are asking the government to subsidize their failures with tax incentives and bail-out money. But this man, this unconscious person, thinks it is socialism which sucks.

We each learn in our own way and at our own pace. But sometimes that process is really unreasonably hard to comprehend.

Welcome Spring

2009-03-20T21:07:00.002-04:00

Today is the mid-ground. Days and nights of equal length. Balance attained. Maybe that is one of the exciting things about spring equinox - that feeling of balance which is always shifting during the rest of the year. We need some balance right now, this country, this world, this teeming population of humans. I don't know how balance will be attained. I can't even see darkly in that glass.

But for this moment, this present, there is balance. The light will soon begin to increase which makes me and the plants happy.

Blessed Equinox. May we all find balance, if only for a little while.

Noticing a victory

2009-03-16T09:28:00.002-04:00

Today the President of Pakistan re-instated the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who had been dismissed because he made a decision the (US supported, paid for, and controlled) then President Musharraf opposed. The reinstatement was the result of protests by lawyers and other citizens. In addition to massive protests, the ousted opposition leader Nawaz Sharif broke his house arrest and joined the protesters convening on Islamabad.

It is not a victory of "right over wrong." It is possibly an untangling of one knot of oppression in a skein of tangles that is Pakistan. But it is an opportunity for some level of truth-telling to be done. One of the issues over which the chief justice was dismissed was a fear that he would call intelligence officers to answer questions about hundreds of Pakistanis apparently held without charges since the American war on terror began in 2001.

What I am noticing is that the grip of the American government on countries around the world is being loosened. This change seems to be more about the oppressed slipping free than about the oppressor letting go. I celebrate any time, anywhere, that popular protests yield change. I am hopeful that as the next few years pass we will see more and more countries remain our allies while acting and thinking independently.

Astrologers tell me this is a time when hidden things will be brought to the light. It may be an opportunity for things to be seen that haven't been apparent, for hidden crimes to be revealed, and for hidden agendas to become visible. It doesn't sound pretty, doesn't sound encouraging, but it does sound like we might begin to hope to actually know what is going on. What decisions are made after that will depend on how willing people and governments are to admit mistakes, lies, and deceptions.

I am noticing the power of individuals and their willingness to continue even after 7+ years of fear saturation. I am noticing. and I am celebrating each tiny step. And I am wondering what steps and stands I will need to take as time goes on. I am wondering how I will be part of the change I long to see.

slippin' and slidin'

2009-03-05T16:41:00.002-05:00

The Dow fell 281 points today. I don't really know what it means but like fans that appear at the playoffs I am now watching it everyday just to see what will happen. I don't own any stocks. I don't have an IRA. Nor a retirement account. Up to very recently I felt a little bit like a loser that I was first a theater person, then a hippy, then a stay-at-home mom, then a business owner; spending years earning little or nothing. I never had accumulated the resources to save for the future. Even after I got an actual job there wasn't enough to do any significant saving.

Now it seems like that history wasn't all that bad. I have not lost years of my life working so that the super-wealthy can enjoy their benefit. I can't imagine how folks who have played by the rules and have lost already more than a third of their investment must feel.

But mercifully all of us alive today have ancestors, some still alive, who have lived through a depression. They have a wealth of knowledge and the benefit of experience to share with us. They know how to endure and come out the other side. We carry their genetic material. We carry their strength and endurance. LIke them, we will be fine.

I watch the Dow to see how things are going. And I buy seeds for the garden. I'm thinking that all that stuff I learned while I wasn't working might now prove really useful. In fact I'm confident that's true. Each of us has useful skills and some of us have youth and considerable upper body strength. So this year we will continue to combine the resources we have and find the way to ride this wave.

It's scary. But exciting things always are.

On the subject of Faith

2009-02-25T12:04:00.001-05:00

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

I have always had faith. I would define that as an over-arching trust that a hand(reason, destiny, deity) is guiding my life. I believe that everything that comes into my life has value to my primary purpose and advances my learning and growth. I operate, when I am at my most authentic, as if there is a plan and I am in it, no matter how it feels or looks.

I have had several discussions about faith with my pagan friends. Some have incredible faith and assurance in their relationship with the invisible world. Others are uncomfortable with the idea of faith and rely on a world view that trusts the idea of random events rather than destined ones. I have no trouble holding both ideas simultaneously. I do indeed think things “happen” seemingly without plan or cause. Unjust things happen, horrible things happen, war and death, sickness and betrayal happen. Is that part of a bigger plan? I don’t think so. I think that within a plan lies the co-creative workings of each of us, shaping the future and the present according to our loves and hates and fears. War is not part of a divine plan, at least not of the deities I honor. But it is part of the reality. The Dali Lama says “In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher.” So perhaps it is with the struggles and injustices we encounter in this life. Adversity and suffering are our best teachers. Humans are obviously pretty hard-headed, as my Granddaddy would say.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” I have always liked the idea of defining faith as a material thing – substance – of another idea – hope. The archaic meaning of “hope” is a feeling of trust. This of course is beginning to complicate the idea of faith. What I have come to understand is that faith is a physical assurance somewhere in the center of my body. I could center it on my heart or possibly lower in my diaphragm area. I feel the substance of faith in my body. That assurance gives me the ability to believe in something I cannot at this time see. It allows me to risk disappointment and betrayal because it is a confidence in myself and what my body is telling me.

Exercise: sit with feet flat on the floor. Feel yourself anchored in your body and held by the earth. Gravity is holding you and I to the surface of the Earth. Focus on that sensation until you feel yourself grounded to the earth and your body. Bring to mind something you believe. Where does that belief manifest in your body? Concentrate on that part of your body and breath into it with long deep breathing. I find when I do this that the sensation grows and I am more able to feel faith. Explore if this is true for you. Discover where in your body faith is substantiated. I would invite you to invest some energy and time each day breathing into that place in your body. I have found that the body is vital to learning to follow intuition and divine guidance.

“Faith is…the evidence of things not seen.” It is interesting to me that the translators or possibly the writers of this passage use a legal term, evidence, to describe faith. It is as clear a statement as “seeing is believing.” It is not in opposition to that statement but is in fact the other side of the coin. “Seeing” is direct information upon which a belief or knowing can be based. Here is where it gets a little more complex. Faith provides the evidence for things not seen. So we can have two bases upon which we can rely for information about what to believe. They operate together to give an individual the broadest possible information support upon which to base knowing.

While the Bible does speak frequently about Faith, especially in the New Testament; the concept is not exclusive to Christianity. It is a human reality separate from any dogma. I have found as a witch that a considerable portion of pagans I know have difficulty with the concept of faith. I think this is a matter of feeling like choice is denied by having faith. However, the reader can see that faith, as I have explained it, is more an operation of a “sense” rather than a mental construct.

© Angela Magara 2009

Trippin' the fantastic

2009-02-17T21:02:00.002-05:00

I had a weekend and a bit to spend in the woods, at a camp, in Minnesota - well, actually Wisconsin.

I taught for 3 days about ecstasy. My teaching partner and I explored the roles of our hearts, our senses, and trust in the dynamic of ecstasy. As teaching always is, this was very instructive and humbling. As a teacher I work very hard to discover what I don't know and make a place in the process for what we will learn together. This particular experience was over the top. It was, as my dear friend Paul says, fantastic.

Working with energy is always edgy because it is invisible. But the gist of what we discovered was that the heart is the first organ of ecstasy. We came to understand that the senses are corridors/channels between our deepest selves and the divinity that lies outside ourselves. And I saw that trust is the state in which all of this can take place. This trust is not necessarily in the people around me but primarily is a state of being which recognizes the larger worth of letting go in an active way.

This sounds pretty vague because I have yet to solidify what became apparent during the days of working this. Spending 3 hours a day delving into information that is coming through in myriad ways and on several levels doesn't clear the mind. Later I hope to be able to articulate more clearly.

What I do know that I didn't know before is that my capacity for love clarifies my experience of everything. I know now that my open heart is a tool. I understand that my senses hook me to eternity.

Life is generous to me. I appreciate my chance to focus on ecstasy. It was more than I ever imagined. It was just what I needed to move forward with my own personal work and projects. I am so glad to be motivated and excited in my life.

Fantastic but simply true.

this video breaks my heart

2009-02-08T11:46:00.002-05:00

Maybe you've already seen it but if not this "Don't divorce us" video is amazing.

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Bridget's Day Poetry Slam

2009-02-02T11:38:00.002-05:00

Blessed Bridget
She of the fire and the forge
Of the well
And the hive.
She who draws poems to the lips.
We celebrate you this day.

Today is Bridget's Day, a celebration of many things including poetry. Bridget is the Goddess of Poetry and all creative writing. The following poem is one published in Earth Psalms. To read more you can go to my website www.angelamagara.com.

To see more poems that are part of this on line poetry slam go to www.branchesup.blogspot.com

SONG 17

My lips call to you Goddess.
My lips - in which I have steeped truth of its essence -
call to you and ask that the ear of my own heart listen.
I have sought wisdom from my dreams and walked the night ways seeking.
I have laid the scourge of revelation
across my shoulders
Demanding divinity from their flesh.
Magics and spells have I spun
to no end.

Finally My hands still and cease from their work.
I accept.

All are listening, each to the other, with love.
My lips call to you Goddess.
The longing of my soul must speak.
Hold me always in this path.
I have sown hopes, yield the crop of my desire.

There is no hope beyond this,
No delight that rings deeper.
I accept Your love, your world, your abundance, your want,
I open my clenched hands and I accept.
My lips call to you Goddess

And receive the kiss.

a personal gift from Obama

2009-01-25T17:54:00.002-05:00

When I was a little girl in Concord, North Carolina, my Mama took me to buy shoes before I started school. We went downstairs into the basement area of Belk's, the largest department store in town. In the basement were kids clothes and shoes. At that time they had a small x-ray machine (!!!) you could stand on and slide your feet under to see if your toes were cramped in the new shoes you were going to buy. Also down there by the children's shoes were the water fountains. One fountain was marked "white only." The other had a sign "colored." They were not the same. The "white" fountain had cold water and was shiny. The other fountain was dingy and as I watched someone drink I saw the bubbler was weak so he had to put his mouth very close to the metal. I felt bad. I didn't really know why but I felt bad.

I was measured for my new tie shoes for school. I tried on a couple of pairs and then my Mama bought one. I was not allowed to wear the shoes out of the store. My Mama said that was trashy. (I was never sure why but she said it so it was so.) A black man was there with his son and they chose shoes too but didn't try them on. The man took out another foot measure and gave them the size the boy needed. They paid and left. I asked my Mother why they didn't try on the shoes.

"Honey, those people can't try on shoes!" She said. "Would you want to put your foot where some Negro girl had put her foot?"

I didn't know why but I knew the answer was "NO, never." And I felt bad. I felt like I had done something wrong, had lied or stolen something. I couldn't have been more that 6 or 7 but I felt guilty of unfairness.

As I grew older I never questioned the assumptions I was given, the racism that was part of the fiber of my life. In 1965 I went to college and for the first time was in an integrated school. It didn't seem nearly as different as my granddaddy said it would be. It was the Civil Rights Era and all of us southern white youth were given an opportunity to think another way.

As I matured, and to today, I have worked to keep myself aware of my racism. I had a professor in a writing class say it this way. "We live in a racist culture. We are almost all handed a mental file folder marked Racism. It is likely each of us will carry that file folder for life. It is our job to keep it empty. It is our job to check ourselves, our assumptions, our casual words or thoughts; and name racism when we see it in ourselves. It is our job to unpack the file folder and keep it empty."

I have tried to do that. I am never completely finished with this task it seems. And always I have felt guilty with no way to absolve that guilt. I couldn't absolve it because it didn't come from an action of mine but from a family, a culture, a nation which continued to treat people of color as less significant in every way than white people. I was the recipient of privilege which I didn't want, didn't deserve, and couldn't stop.

But then President Obama was elected. When I saw him sworn in as President and he made his serious, well thought out speech I couldn't help but cry. When Aretha Franklin sang I wept. "Let freedom ring - Let it ring, let it ring, let it ring." I cried at the sight of all the people of all colors filling the Mall and celebrating this great change.

It was later in conversation with a friend I realized that for the first time since I was a little girl and had first understood this injustice, I didn't feel guilty. It is as though the culture for which I had been bearing that guilt had made a different choice. That choice released me.

I will always have to vigilant but the climate in which I have to do that work has shifted. Thank you, all the voters who did this and the corporate fund raisers, and all the other secret and mysterious workings of politics and politicians. Thank you President Obama.

Thanks be to the turning of the Wheel.

Joy in the morning

2009-01-20T08:36:00.003-05:00

I am crying.

I live without tv so I am streaming CBS right now. I am so touched, so heart-opened by this event and the bits of information the newscasters are sharing as they wait for the Obamas come out for the church service.

Michelle Obama's great-grandfather was a slave. The world I grew up in has changed. This change is now manifest in the person of Barak Obama. It is too much to hold in my heart. May we open, open to the possibility of renewal. May we know its sweep both personally and as a country.

My friend, Donald, has sent out a call to those of us who do such to do blessings and spells for Obama and our country. May we all send support to him and his work - our work - to change the direction of this culture from violence to peace.

May it be so.

winter wonders

2009-01-16T20:29:00.003-05:00

The deep cold has been locked in here for the last several days. Going out to see the chickens, the snow creaks underfoot. It is so dry and cold that nothing is clinging to anything else. We have a heated waterer for the birds but they busily fill it with straw once they have drunk. So when you come back two hours later they are sooo thirsty. It was pretty frustrating until my daughter figured out that now that the 7 birds are inside all the time they need that floor space. If they step in the water when the outside temperature is below zero it might cause them to have frozen feet or toes. So they drink, then fill the dish with straw so they have the space!

Chickens are not dumb clucks. They have their ways and order. When the humans come and rearrange things they have to make it right. If we fill the nest boxes with straw they empty them out to the level they had before. That's how they like it.

It has been interesting getting to know these chickens. They are Ameraucanas, bred from Araucanas which are native to the Americas. They are many different colors but the cool thing is that they lay blue, green, and pink eggs. Every time you go to gather the eggs its like finding dyed eggs. Every egg is a present.

After noticing it a few times I realized that the hens take turns sitting on the eggs to keep them from freezing until we come to gather them. That is so cooperative of them. And it means we get to have those eggs - those beautiful, organic eggs. What a difference between them and even a good quality egg at the health food store. I love knowing that they are somehow agreeing to support each other during these cold, hard times.

Chickens know how to get along. I however struggle when it is this cold and the pipes freeze and I feel like a shut-in cause I just don't want to go out. The chickens, though, they just cluck in a shout, announcing another egg laid then work together to protect what they've produced. I can't see them without feeling happy.

Winter is hard sometimes. But there are wonders, yes, there are. If I can just look up to see them.

walking the Path

2009-01-09T12:25:00.002-05:00

I was answering an email that came from someone who found me through the Reclaiming listing of websites and blogs. He is transitioning from being a christian to being a pagan possibly. He is seeking. As I answered him I said, "The path always opens up before each step. The unafraid walk with confidence and the afraid walk with courage."

When I read that I felt like 1) I had just spoken a platitude(not what a writer seeks) and 2)it was true. I realized it was a bit of information that was of value to me currently and I wanted to share it.

May the Path open before each step without ceasing.

Why do you die on TV? Gaza

2009-01-04T17:12:00.002-05:00

I was feeding the fire during the night and heard this essay/prose poem on the BBC. I couldn't say it better. Imagine Peace.

From the BBC

by an Israeli writer in London, called Daphna Baram:

Thirty-four children were killed in the first week of air strikes

"Silly children why do you die? Why do you die on TV? We took out our settlers, put a wall around you, locked you in, and still you are ungrateful. Can't you understand our need to bomb you? Why do you die on TV? The world is all against us, it always will be, why can't you help us a little, why do you die on TV?

Your suffering masks our historical rights, your ghetto makes ours forgotten, you are the new martyrs, and what's left for us, how dare you die in anonymous mass, we'll send all our air force to punish you now, how dare you die on TV.

The public is calling for crushing you down, elections are due it's a war of survival. It's our homes we defend it's our natural right, it's the chair in the government for which we will fight, if you don't understand, we shall show you our might, why do you die on TV?

You have to appreciate, time is now scarce, soon enough the tide is to turn. If you will in your cruelty make us march in, and our soldiers, our children, will start dying in your narrow alleys, our people will turn on us as swiftly as sin. The gung ho cries would stop, a new circle will begin: what are we doing there? Who sent us in? What is this folly? Why can't we just win?

This is why, silly children, we don't mean to kill you, but we need you do die fast, we need you gone as long as our permission lasts, we need your parents to learn to not mess with us. Can't you do us this favor, for the sake of peace and trust? But please do not die on TV.

We tried it in Jordan, we tried it in Lebanon and when it failed we tried again. No one could blame us for lack of persistence; if our method is broken why fix it? It is your responsibility to make it work at last. It is your responsibility to make us right.

And you have no-one but yourselves to blame if you keep defying us, you have no-one but yourself to blame for turning our claim for victimhood into a farce. It is your fault that we expose out children to your pathetic rockets; it is your fault that not enough of them die to make us look good on TV.

We want to stop, we really do, but you are binding our hands. Why do you enrage us so, why do you die; why do you die on TV?"

1st sentence of the month Meme 2008

2008-12-22T17:06:00.007-05:00

This idea comes via Donald Engstrom from Copper Stewart. I think it is a good way to see how the flow moved.

February 2008
I last posted on December 28th, that's a long time ago - actually 79 days - which I think is incredible cause it doesn't seem that long to me. I'm still working on my New Year's post. No really.
March 2008
I have been investigating the role of intention in magic.
April 2008
The pace that pain has given me limits what I can do.
May 2008
I am constantly noticing the diminishing of women that is part of the political process in the contest between Obama and Clinton.
June 2008
I am pretty sad this morning.
July
I am not happy to see Obama show his true policy positions now that the primaries are over.
August
Why are women so cruel to other women?
September
It has been hard to blog.
October
they are talking now - Obama and McCain.
November
I awoke first thing this morning knowing that change is happening.
December
Today I came downstairs to stir the bed of ashes and start a fire in the new wood stove.

I am noticing how involved and personally affected I have been by the political process we are now ending (or is it beginning?) I also observe many of us were deeply invested in this process and how it ultimately manifested. Just as my year ends with tending the fire at home, I wonder if many of us are returning to that focus. It will be interesting to see what will happen next. may we all stay present and see with truthful eyes.

shoo Bush, shoo

2008-12-15T08:19:00.002-05:00

Today the NYT reported that at a surprise trip to Iraq, his last, President Bush had to dodge two thrown shoes at a news conference. An Iraqi journalist, legally admitted to the conference in the Green Zone, threw the shoes as the ultimate insult to Mr. Bush personally. Of course the journalist was brutally grabbed and dragged from the room. He will most likely be charged with some kind of terrible crime. Unfortunately the crimes are ours, and those of Mr. Bush who was allowed by each of us who live in this country to destroy life and culture in Iraq.

Bush ducked the shoes but I expect none of the rest of us will have that opportunity. The shame, the guilt, the responsibility for such destruction and cruelty can be expected to burden us until we either cease to exist as a country or until our leaders and each of us acknowledges the violation we have done. Perhaps a more healing scene might have played this way.

Bush:
"It is with deep regret and humiliation that I apologize for the unprovoked attack on the Iraqi people and land. In our rage and anger we struck out at this ancient and honorable birthplace of much of civilization. We were wrong to do so. Now we have a long journey and much work to repair what we can. We acknowledge that we can never fully restore what we have destroyed and will always remain in a place of obligation to Iraq.

We are beginning now to move our troops out of your country. We understand that the result will be chaotic for this country after we leave, as the forces who seek to lead this land settle their differences and find their path to the future. Therefore the United States will open its borders to any Iraqi who seeks entrance to escape this violence and unrest. We will offer safe haven and as much support as our people can provide. It is the least we can do."

I wish this had happened. I wish it would happen in the future. I long to hear the truth from our leaders. There is little we can do to heal this situation but acknowledgment of our savagery and some plan, even weak, to offer restitution would be a good beginning.

I have not believed in Obama as the savior of this situation. He is too successful not to be part of the problem. But I hope, I hope fervently, that he will remove us from that country and begin finding a way to help rebuild and restore what we have destroyed.

For now, I am grateful that Bush is leaving the office, the international scene, and the decider's chair. May the next Man be more human and aware. May it be so.

Romans 2:1 NO excuse

2008-12-11T11:37:00.002-05:00

My good friend, David Edleson, sent me a quote from the recent interview G. Bush gave to ABC. Previous to this quote he had said that a Muslim praying is praying to the same God that he(GW) petitions. But the answer gets different when specifics are added.

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN (ABC NEWS) (Off-camera) So the leader of the Taliban is praying to the same God...

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH (UNITED STATES)
No, I'm not sure he's praying to a God. I think anybody who murders innocent people to achieve their objective is not a religious person. They may think they're religious and they may play like they're religious. But I don't think they are religious. They're not praying to the God I pray to, the God of peace and love. And that's one of the great ironies about this. You know, we're in a so-called religious war. I don't view this as a war of religion. I view this as a war of good, decent people of all faiths against people who murder innocent people to achieve a political objective.
_____________________________

I'd just like to put some specific Christian context to this to add to the irony. Romans 2:1 says "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things." King James version.

Ain't it the truth.

The sweetness of success

2008-12-09T12:16:00.002-05:00

Today I came downstairs to stir the bed of ashes and start a fire in the new wood stove. "New" is not exactly accurate. My son gave me this stove with the agreement that when he has a place to install it, he can reclaim it. It looks to be about 25 or 30 years old, from the time when hippies were building strange multi-level,multi-use houses and buying wood stoves as a primary heat, even cooking, source. Most of those wood stoves wound up sold or set in a garage when the propane stove was installed. My stove, a Moslo, is one of those. It has a squirrel imprinted on both sides and stands on tall curving iron legs. It looks a little like a colt, a lot of leg to the body.

The pleasure this little cast iron box gives me is silly. The sounds, the smell, the heat and comfort of having a fire to tend is wonderful. I held on to this little stove for 5 years, moving it and not installing it. Because I believed that someday I would have the opportunity to sit by it and feed it and have a relationship with it. Today I taste that reality and it is sweet.

it looks like the patient will survive

2008-11-06T15:35:00.005-05:00

We are settling in now with our feelings of happiness, of gladness to have escaped cruel disappointment. I feel like anything might be possible while understanding it is going to get harder, not easier for this country. When I look at the situation this is what I see.

Bush and his heartless administration have gutted this country. Every bit of wealth, resources, power, and influence possible has been greedily sucked down the gullets of the rich. Getting that back is going to be messy and, trust me, they aren't going to give anything willingly.

This doesn't even consider how to extricate ourselves from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are bleeding both money and real blood. How to leave them without destroying the lives remaining to those people?

Then there is the environmental crisis coming right at us. We will need money, intelligence, and investment to have any significant impact. Where will we get the resources to finance those innovations and inventions?

And infrastructure decaying around us.

And education short-changing children and diminishing our future success in the world and our ability to solve problems at home

And, oh yes, health care which is just a yummy sweet for that industry.

Oh, I forgot the prison industry based on racism, violence, the war on drugs, and profit.

And the ongoing sexism, racism, and denial of rights based on sexual orientation that waste our human resources. It is also a violation of the precepts of justice upon which our country was based.

Guantanamo.

Privacy violations.

DHS being ineffective and dangerously unwieldy, not to mention threatening and armed.

If we were a patient, we would say that the fever has broken but the patient is weak and will need lots of time and care to regain health. The patient has been very ill and, is in fact still just barely alive. But there is hope. Now at least there is hope.

whooo-hooooo

2008-11-04T23:29:00.002-05:00

Obama won.

The possibility of hope is mixed with the inevitability of change. Party time.

now for Change

2008-11-04T07:23:00.002-05:00

I awoke first thing this morning knowing that change is happening. Certainly if we move Obama into the Presidency of the US that will hold significant change for this country. But even if McCain should steal the election, the past will not repeat itself.

Bush robbed and deceived and destroyed. There is no more money, nor international good will, nor resources to advance imperialism. Even if McCain gets in the past cannot be repeated. It would be a dark and sad country for those of us living here, but it will change.

So all of us, whether we think the election will be stolen, whether we believe democracy actually exists in the US, whether we think Obama is all he portrays himself to be or a lying politician like all the rest; all of us are sitting on the roller coaster now. We are going for a ride.

I do believe Obama could allow positive change. I do believe the entire world would just, as a friend wisely said, relax if Obama were elected. It is my hope and my intention that he be elected. But today is the beginning, no matter what happens, of great change for this country. The past is falling behind us and the future is rushing towards us.

I am glad to see this day. And I'm excited to discover tomorrow. May the Goddess rise up, shake out her hair, and shift Power to serve life and not death.

First snow fall 08

2008-10-29T16:34:00.004-04:00

I understand not everyone is a weather maven like I am so if the changing season isn't fascinating to you, you might want to skim.

October 29 and it has been snowing, fluttering fat snowflakes, all day. Early certainly but so beautiful. One photo is of the garden, now tucked in for winter. And the other is of the chicken coop with the hens peeking out.

The amazing thing is that even though we aren't really ready for snow, it felt like a present - a surprise gift before the 31st and the ending to the Celtic year, Samhain. This white will last now until next April (not May, if we are lucky.) The tall Hemlocks will stand sentinel through the dark and cold. A common place wonder, this changing of the seasons.

If time circles, as the seasons demonstrate then we have faced this same kind of crisis before. We have lived through it, figured it out or just endured, but in the end we continued. This season also reminds us that some day we will not, continue - I mean.

So each first snow fall of the year is welcome.

Many happy returns.

Golden leaves

2008-10-23T12:02:00.002-04:00

I had the luxury of sitting and watching the shining maple along the road drop the last of this year's leaves. As I considered what the relationship might be between the tree and the leaves, I was surprised. This tree was releasing the very useful, working, necessary support that has sustained it throughout the spring and summer. Science aside, what is this myth, being enacted around me, saying?

The tree has a wisdom which knows the assurance that a new set of leaves will come again in the spring. And, unless there is serious disease, there will be new green leaves on that tree in May. Is that also true for the useful, now no longer useful, things in my life that must be released. Sure. We all know that. But what about something that has worked, more or less, for years but now no longer holds any juice for me. Is there a time when one needs to accept things as they are? I had thought so but looking at the maple I wonder.

I wonder if holding to the crinkled, sapless things in life just prevents the new juicy, life-filled things to manifest. I wonder if the lifelessness is a result of the tree's withdrawal of energy and attention. I know a lot of "new age" theories that would support that hypothesis but I've never liked those theories much. They just didn't seem real to me. But this maple tree, this teacher by the road says indeed, letting go of something when it is working, because it is time, is healthy. It is fearless participation in the cycle of life.

The steady breeze has pulled all those yellow leaves down. They lay like a shiny blanket around the tree, useful to the end, mulching the roots against fierce cold coming.

Talk talk talk

2008-10-07T21:46:00.002-04:00

they are talking now - Obama and McCain. They are allegedly debating. Having been on a college debate team, I can tell you even in my limited experience this is not a debate. I like hearing them for a while but it's like a speech, only broken up by questions.

McCain doesn't answer questions. That much is clear. Obama is better but does run on with his talking points. So I can only take about 45 minutes and then my fairly high tolerance for boredom is exceeded.

I am grateful that in the end the reins of my life are not in the hands of either of these men. I am grateful that in my experience there are many more factors besides Presidential elections that will shape my future.

So I can turn off the radio and read a book on bees, confident in the midst of chaos.

Mercury is retrograde - la de da

2008-09-29T17:44:00.003-04:00

I celebrate today.

I celebrate today that the House didn't give away all the possible funds this country might have for the rest of my life to Wall Street assholes who through ignorance and arrogance got themselves pickled. I say let them fall into the brine. At least if the country hasn't spent every possible future dollar maybe it can help working folks out of work, hungry people needing food, sick people needing medicine, and cold people needing fuel. Maybe if the government doesn't sell us into complete economic slavery we can save this country and its land and resources. Maybe.

So hope hangs on a maybe. I can live with that. Rise up, Gaia, and keep these stubborn and out of touch men from destroying what potential we have to help ourselves. And help, all you Earthly allies, and any above or below. We need all the help we can get.

I trust.

Seasons change

2008-09-08T19:28:00.001-04:00

It has been hard to blog. The Democratic convention happened. Then friends, and other folks protesting the policies and plunder of the Republicans at their convention in Minnesota, began to be arrested. There was injustice, arrogance, fascism, and riot gear. My need to breath and transform my own fear took time. My desire to help transmute the hatred into peace in the very air we breath took energy, time, and self-awareness.

I find my reaction is to continue to believe that balance will be restored. My individual life is part of assuring that balance. In fact it is the part I can affect most. But it’s not all I can do. I can also have an effect magically, working alone and with others. I can have an effect in every purchase I make, every priority I set. I can change much by shifting and sharpening my focus. I can let my voice be heard.

We are entering a time when less and less will people be able to deny what is happening to our personal freedoms, our open society, and our county’s resources. I don’t know what the outcome of that increased knowledge will be. Survivalists? Fundamentalism of various sorts? Strong local community ties? Increased reliance on local answers? I don’t know what the outcome of realization on a much broader scale will be. But it is necessary for change to come. Because for us to change these larger situations we need more people to make it happen.

Now as the season changes, there is guidance in how the forest prepares for winter. The energy of the sun is stored and as the chill grows each day that energy is stored deeper within the roots. The lovely leaves of summer change for one last show of beauty, releasing their moisture and falling to the ground above the roots. They blanket the roots and begin to decompose releasing more life back into the soil.

What should I gather, what is the nutrient source which I need store for this coming season? Where are my roots? Are my roots ready to hold the sustenance needed for the coming season? Is there an act of beauty, a creative project, a manifestation of the pleasure in this time, that needs to be done? What can be shed, and by its shedding enrich my life?

I don’t know what is coming but I do know that the elements are teachers and the turning of the wheel of the year holds much wisdom. Let’s enjoy the ephemeral fall.

spam

2008-08-19T09:03:00.002-04:00

I have taken to looking at my spam folder in the morning because I have found random messages that get shunted there by mistake sometimes. I want to see the new Aveda.com stuff but how is the spam folder to know? But mostly I get offers to enlarge my penis, earn a degree, get out of debt, and buy prescriptions from Canada. Today however I got one that said it was breaking news.

"Gay sleeper cells, trained by Al-qada, are waiting for the signal to rain terror on unsuspecting America." This is supposed to be a quote from a midwestern Representative to Congress. First I laughed. How could anyone be so ridiculous?

But the embedded hatred, fear, and deceit in that one statement is so massive that it makes me worry. Can we have been propagandized so thoroughly that people can actually believe it? Yes. I know that is perfectly possible. But how did we get here?

How did we get to the point where the combined fear and prejudice against the "other" could produce that kind of unreasonable conclusion. Well, the last 20 years has seen public education gutted and destroyed. So we have produced a generation that weren't given the educational tools to reason, evaluate, and make informed decisions. In addition, the news media, print and television, have come into a few hands and those folks have shaped the information to serve their corporate interests. So that avenue of differing ideas is gone as well.

I believe we won't regain our capacity to evaluate and discover, sort and determine relevance; until we no longer rely on those broken institutions. Then we can begin to rebuild our capacity for making informed decisions. I think of the mythic Abraham Lincoln studying by firelight (a staple in the biography I was taught as a child.) Like that long-ago Lincoln, since we have no education offered to us, we must educate ourselves.

I'm grateful for the internet and for libraries. I am even more grateful for the colleges and universities who continue to try to maintain intellectual dispassion and inquiry. May they flourish and stand for all of us.

home

2008-08-17T13:06:00.002-04:00

I’ve been thinking about homelessness. Not the classic definition of homelessness seen on TV and lurking in the backs of the minds of many older people in this country. No I’m thinking about my friends, some work colleagues, and myself; who for whatever reason have chosen to let go of that particular “American dream” for a time.

I have several friends who sold their homes, got rid of most of their possessions and started living in a camper or a school bus or an RV. These people all know what it is to have a home. They didn’t lose that home or have it taken from them. They handed it back in exchange for freedom. As one of my friends said last week, “ I think of it as home free.”

One of my work colleagues and her husband live in an RV. They work temporary disaster response jobs to meet their financial requirements and spend the winters in Mexico with other RVers who have become friends. They return to the same park each winter, like having a winter home in Mexico. In the summers they work, go to Texas where they have residency and take care of medical, business, and personal matters. They renew their drivers licenses, register their cars, pay taxes in Texas, which doesn’t require more than they can provide for residency. Then they wander the US. They work, visit their children, see friends, and have adventures. According to Barb, there are thousands of people like her who have just given up on the paid work and maintenance work having a home requires. She would rather do something else with her time and her life.

I lived in a hotel for over a year and a half while looking for a place to buy. My work provided lodging when I was working and when I wasn’t I stayed with my children or at another hotel on points. Since much of the time when I work it is in an out of state assignment this worked great for me. I brought my cat and my pans and knives and set up housekeeping at a Residence Inn. In a month or so I’d have to move to another assignment, another hotel but meantime I was not paying a mortgage, no utilities, no cable. With my cell phone I kept the same phone number and with my post office box I continued to maintain the same mailing address. Mail Boxes, a company that has boxes for rent, will ship your mail to you wherever you are in the world. So communication remained unbroken.

One of my friends has been living in Europe off and on for three years. He is only now growing weary of the life there. He has good friends, a sense of place, and favorite cafes in many, many places in this world. He continues to want what he was seeking; a congenial community where he can be of use and share life. But own a home, be required to work most of his waking hours to maintain that home; that is something to which he will never return.

These people, and many others I don’t have personal knowledge of, have made a decision to value their time and personal passions over a permanent address. Some, like me will do it for a time, then go back to painting on the weekend and saving for renovations. Others will stay mobile and will read more books, see more sunsets, and encounter more adventures than I might now.

The real sweet meat in the kernel of this nut is freedom. Freedom to have an idea and pursue it, to listen to the sounds from a deep forest without having to go get ready for work. Each of these friends has a level of freedom rarely known in this country, unless through great wealth. They are in some way a real threat to the weave that holds this materialist society firm. I believe as we continue to move into this century we will discover lots of ways people will drop out and create a life unique to their desires. It will have an effect, as yet, unknown. I'm looking forward to it.

Light in August

2008-08-09T18:17:00.002-04:00

I feel like I am on vacation. I sat this afternoon in the crystalline sunlight and smelled the wonderful scent of August in Vermont. Staying in Burlington for work this month is interesting. When I return home to take care of business and see my family and dog I am humbled by the sweet home I have. But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.

The light here right now is magnificent. It calls me to bare my skin to the sun and breath deeply. It reveals every blade on the flags, every leaf and needle on each tree, as the unique being it is. It shines on the life in each cell and catches its facets.

This is precious light. I must take the time to see.

woman-hatred

2008-08-07T08:28:00.001-04:00

Why are women so cruel to other women? Why are we so judgmental, so quick to blame? It seems that men hate women and women hate women; so its pretty hard to be a woman. This was really in my face during the democratic primary when so many personal, non-issue related jibes were made about Hillary Clinton. It shocked me to hear men and women I knew, people I understood to be evolved or at least aware, slam Clinton for “having a fat ass,” being over-bearing and arrogant, being a “bitch.” One woman said she just couldn’t accept Clinton because she “stayed with that man.”

It isn’t a surprise that strong women are difficult for folks, nor that this played a part in the national debate over Clinton’s fitness. But it made me wonder when we might no longer approach women this way. What would have to happen in our culture for women to be assessed in the same way as men. I know many people have real substantive differences with Hillary Clinton but what I heard mostly was personal hatred, personal objections.

So I take that information and I look at my own experience. Have I felt under-mined and betrayed by other women? Yes, certainly. Have I experienced judgment on how I wear my hair, how I dress, how I keep house? Yes. Have I known women to betray me when I thought they would support me. Yes. Have I been accused of being pushy, too loud, too opinionated, aggressive, over-bearing, arrogant? Yes, and that is only the things I know about. My daughter told me that once when we were in a store she heard someone say “I didn’t know women that old could grow their hair that long.” It was of course another woman.

But the question is why. And more, what can I do to change that? Not just for me because I have developed a thick skin and little trust for other women, or men for that matter. I want this change for the little girls I see holding hands and playing together. How can they hold on to the love they have for each other?

In the second wave of feminism, which caught me in its eddy, the tension and struggle of women hating other women was an issue we considered and tried to address. But with the rise of the conservative movement in this country feminism has lost ground. Young women seem to think there isn’t a problem anymore. There is a general notion that feminism did its work and now its over. It seems like each generation of women have to re-discover the barriers, the inequities, and the injustice for themselves. We seem to have no memory of what went before or maybe we just can’t imagine it happening to us. I don’t know.

I don’t know a lot about this misogyny. But I will not deny it exists.

The fruit of Choice

2008-07-30T08:11:00.002-04:00

A friend, Donald Engstrom-Reese, relayed a question in his blog(http://web.mac.com/iowariver/Walking_in_Beauty/Blog/) "are you ready to accept the consequences of all your choices." I found this an interesting question and posed it to myself. But the answer I heard surprised me. The consequences of my choices are tumbling into my life as a natural outworking of cause and effect, of sowing and reaping. It is a basic tenet of nature that whatever you sow, you reap.

This gave me pause. So it isn't my decision as to whether the consequences of my choices are in my life; it is only the acceptance of their source that is within my control. This speaks to a lot of the rumblings I've been feeling lately about being stuck in the process and not able to get out. It is acceptance that raises my experience as one acted upon to one who is part of the action. This insight means that the position of victim is a rare one, more often the things that come into my life are not chance incidents but the straight-line result of my choice.

This is not about blame but about empowerment. Seeing my life as the result of my own choices, in addition to the forces that affect me from outside my personal choice, provokes a feeling of spine straightening, of chest rising and filling with air. I am not in control of everything, but I am in control of my choices. That is much more power than might be apparent at first glance.

I like the shape of my life in this light. I appreciate its power and its limits.

coming to a sky near you

2008-07-29T15:33:00.002-04:00

A solar eclipse is coming on August 1. Its portent, from the reading I have done, is for positive change. This is potentially both globally and personally. I have done some thinking about what I would have change. There are so many things that need to change. I don't need to enumerate them all on a global level. Never has so much been so screwed up with no obvious way out. But frankly, I find that encouraging. I am very familiar with the "darkest before the dawn" scenario. I am banking on that as the outcome of the current situation politically, environmentally, and culturally.

Personally, like you (I'm assuming here) I know exactly where the power of that eclipse needs to fall. So I am planning on going outside and placing myself and my continuing difficulty in the shadow of the eclipse while it is occurring. The time will be different depending on where you live. The total solar eclipse starts at 8:30 am Greenwich mean time. A partial eclipse will be visible in the area I live. To find out when in your area and how much you will see go to Google and do a search. One site I found is www.timeanddate.com/calendar/solar-eclipse. An astrological source of information on this eclipse can be found at www.lunar-shadows.com.

I am ready for some things to change. I'm very glad that the Sun and Moon and Earth are aligning in support and assistance for that process. May it be so.

Earth Psalms

2008-07-25T11:55:00.002-04:00

I've been revamping my website (well not me, Pict Media is doing the work.) I want to return my attention to Earth Psalms, which is now in a 2nd printing. and support it going out to places I don't know - to people I've never met. I am imagining that this book will resonate and support many people just when they need support. I imagine everyone who would benefit by reading this book having it in her hands.

Hmmm...

Well, I think we could call that transparent process.

I could say a lot about the writing of Earth Psalms and maybe I will when I can find a way to articulate the process in a clear way. I've tried teaching it but not with the power I know is avaliable in the plugged in creative process. So I am excited to focus some attention on this book and spend some time this fall promoting it; doing readings, teaching workshops and classes.

At the same time I am working on a memoir novel which is becoming interesting.

Water - the threat and the power

2008-07-24T13:42:00.002-04:00

The rain is pouring in Vermont. It has been raining for almost a week, with intermittent downpours and thunderstorms. Most amazing.

One hat I sometimes wear is disaster response. After almost 20 years of doing it I am really excited by terrible weather. I am a storm junkie. But my work experience has also taught me where that sense of excitement really sits. It is the threat of overwhelming destruction that gives this kind of weather its kick. As I drove around today I saw rivers raging, sides of roads washed away, and ponding in all the low lying areas. And it continues to rain.

Water, like lightening, goes where it wants to go. It is drawn through complex hydrological combinations to cut a path that follows the river's natural shape. So when we put our houses, our lovely cafes, our alfresco dining over and on a river we shouldn't be surprised when the river rises and fills them. But we are. We are in Vermont, we are in Florida, in Louisiana, in California. We are even surprised along the Mississippi. I don't really understand it.

Maybe the "have dominion" part of the Judo-Christian world view was a bad translation. Maybe it was really "have respect" and honor each living space as having a purpose before we plant it in corn.

Our relationship with water is like many family problems. It has gone on so long and there doesn't seem to be a way to change it. If we chose today to honor water as sacred that choice would make electrical generation, waste disposal, manufacturing, and flushing the toilet all problematic.

But there is a way we can live in balance with water and the land that water needs. There is a way, which I have not imagined yet, but there is a way. We remember again the power of water to destroy and of our ability to destroy water. May we learn how to live with the environment for the good of all.

By the way, Neptune sure did show up for Neptunalia and he still hasn't gone home. Some festivals are like that.

Have a great Neptunalia

2008-07-22T09:03:00.002-04:00

Neptune is one of the allies I call into my work daily. In an effort to discover more about him other than that he is a water god, I found that his chief festival day is tomorrow. Neptunalia was celebrated in Rome during the driest, hottest month. This seems a reasonable time to honor a deity of water, in the dry hot summer.

The festival consisted of building structures in the country of bay laurel branches, picnicking, sleeping overnight in the shelters, and generally relaxing and staying cool. July 23 was also considered a good day to begin water projects, such as irrigation ditches. In the city of Rome itself, Neptune's statue and temple was close to the racetrack since he is also the god of horses.

It sounds like such a typical summer weekend; camping out and sleeping in a tent, cooking over a camp fire, or attending sports if you had to remain in the city. The biggest difference seems to be the acknowledgment and honoring of water in the summer.

So tomorrow, I'm going to take a moment and honor the water I have. Honor the cycle of water, the essential nature of water, its life-giving essence, and its destructive potential. It seems a good thing to do in mid-summer.

I raise a cup to Neptune in gratitude. Happy Neptunalia.

"full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

2008-07-14T08:50:00.001-04:00

I am not happy to see Obama show his true policy positions now that the primaries are over. I’m not surprised that he voted for FISA, I’m not shocked that he is advocating increasing “faith based” funding in his coming administration, nor am I other than appalled that he is already speaking out to limit abortion. But I am sorry.

I am sorry that our government is such that we have no real choice. I regret that we are so easily entangled in a contest that may not work any significant changes in our lives. It is sad.

I heard a recent retrospective of interviews with the late George Carlin in which he said, “every couple of years they trot out this election process so we think we are making a choice. The act of voting makes us think we are deciding.” The contest between Clinton and Obama captured my attention. It did truly seem like we were making significant change whichever way it went. But I kept hearing the fantastic amounts of money each was raising and it made me wonder. How can such money be raised without serious obligation?

So if someone, or a group of someones, are creating this “choice” for us; who are the “someones?” If I were going to pick a group which is most powerful right now I’d have to go for Big Energy. Clinton spoke for “clean coal.” McCain advocates endless war and off-shore drilling. Obama supports ethanol, even though it already proven to be seriously flawed on several levels, and nuclear powera. Is it then true that Big Energy is going to continue to rule this planet through the office of the United States President. I don’t think there is much doubt.

Other differences between the candidates, nuances of focus, will manifest. But the survival of the planet, its dignity and honoring, is not part of political priorities articulated by anyone who will become president this year. What are we to do? What can we hope to do in the face of such power and greed and mindlessness?

Each of us will have a different answer but each answer together with all the rest will shift the balance. I have let my energy available for change once again be dissipated by the corporate game of politics. All that force of purpose and hope spent on an effort which cannot create the changes I envision.

A garden, saving and sharing seed, honoring the energy consumption I make and reducing it as a spiritual act, eating consciously, buying consciously; all these will make more lasting change. It is old wisdom but each layer is a new discovery. Discovery, once again, that the small changes of an individual life; combined with millions of others will manifest the change needed for the planet and for peace. So I believe, so mote it be.

Psalm 119.1

2008-06-19T07:36:00.002-04:00

I have taken to reading one of my Psalms daily. I am taking my own work as medicine as I write a new book. Today I share one stanza from Psalm 119. May we all walk with understanding, and if not that, then faith in the outcome despite how it may have gone.

PSALM 119.1

Blessed are those who can walk fearlessly.
Who with clear eye step blamelessly upon the land.
Life teaches all who listen.
No shame, but revelation, haunts our failures.
Let my eyes be open lest I lose my way.

Bridget's well - well sorta

2008-06-13T10:56:00.001-04:00

i write beside the font. There is, about 20 feet away, a stream. I believe it is one of the whys the fairies brought us to live here. Since my work is dedicated to, and in part flows from, Bridget; I am not surprised.

When I work with writers and other folks seeking access to their muse, I use the metaphor of the well to talk about creativity. All of us can relate to pure water- that effortless, magical, vital fluid. We all know the feel of the flow when we stand knee deep in its rush. So being here, writing beside a stream, is very instructive.

You see, the stream was diverted underground 30 years ago. That's my guess judging from the age of the house. This stream is what is known as a "high water stream." It runs at spring melt or when there are heavy rains in the mountains higher up. At least I think that was its pattern 30 years ago. But now it runs all the time and it longs to flow where streams belong - along the surface of the Earth. The stream has a role that can only be fulfilled in its natural course. Frogs and rabbits, deer and bobcats, all want a drink or to nibble along the edges. So I will learn more about flow, more about blocks, more about release and relentlessness from this stream.

I open to instruction.

Welcome Summer

2008-06-08T18:33:00.004-04:00

The heat has arrived. The moist, mosquito buzzing, iced tea drinking days have arrived to give us the appropriate energy for mid-summer, Summer Solstice. I am always surprised when Summer solstice arrives. Here in Vermont the snow is not long gone, the green things were just new a few weeks ago. Now the 90s buzz around my head.

This is a wonderful time when everything is surging forth and life is just too full, too precious in its briefness, in its momentary beauty. The sweat is part of it, that and the cool green breath of the forest, and the shimmering under my skin from the energy of life.

Hail and welcome Summer, throw off your dress and dive into the cold rivers. Welcome. So welcome.

© Angela Magara 2008

Democratic primary blues

2008-06-04T07:10:00.002-04:00

I am pretty sad this morning. Not just because the candidate I supported didn't win, although that chafts me greatly, but because the media and the leaders of the Democratic party spend most of the last 3 months calling for her to withdraw, give up, submit. My prediction? The media will turn their teeth on Obama as soon as the GOP machine begins to spew out the lies and half-truths it has stored up waiting for his nomination. They don't have anything unknown or unexploited on Clinton.

I am concerned when that happens Obama will not have the skill, nor the killer instinct to handle it. What will our country look like with McCain as Pres? Will I want to live here? Will you?

But at least we won't have that woman in the oval office. So the Democratic party bosses can uncross their legs and rest easy. I'm sorry we have come such a short way. But then black men were voting in this country 50 years before women of any color. I was a fool to think this dynamic had changed in less than a century.

Reasonable minds...

2008-05-27T10:31:00.002-04:00

I have learned a valuable tool for me in relationship. With a leaning to both "judgment" and "speaking my mind," I have found myself in conflict hell from time to time. So I have learned whenever I find myself in disagreement with anyone to first remember that the position which seems to me so foolish and uninformed, is, in the mind of the person holding it, completely reasonable. I have found saying to that person that "reasonable minds can differ" defuses many situations. The added benefit is that I find myself becoming more "reasonable" in the conflict of ideas. This recently brought me to another set of thoughts.

If "reasonable minds can differ," what do "unreasonable" minds do? After some thought I came up with this working statement.

Reasonable minds can differ but unreasonable minds demand agreement.

I think this may be true. I'd love to hear if this rings true for you, as well.

hatred of women

2008-05-08T12:02:00.003-04:00

I am constantly noticing the diminishing of women that is part of the political process in the contest between Obama and Clinton. As a culture, we have decided that "decent people" are not racist, or at least they take care not to appear to be racist. This is a wonderful thing. I applaud it and am grateful for the change this illustrates. I know that there remains lots of personal heart changes that will continue in each of us as we address our racist orientation which was handed to us by our racist society. But we have made some progress overall.

There has been no shift in the cultural consciousness as it relates to women. Clinton has suffered attacks and dismissals based on her gender. When there was a fashion spread with recommendations as to what H. Clinton should wear if she is elected, it didn't include the two other viable contenders - Obama and McCain. NO it included their wives. Now if the idea was to discuss the fashion of the 1st spouse, why wasn't Bill Clinton part of the spread. If the focus was on Presidential appearance and recommendations, then Obama and McCain should have been included. It's fluff, minor, but it is gender based bias spread for all to see and internalize.

This is yesterday's experience of sexism. I guess if growth is the goal then I should be glad that sexism is so apparent in this particular moment in time. But each day carries a news statement, an "expert" opinion, or some tid-bit of information which is slanted to diminish Hilliary Clinton's viability and attack her personal worth. And no one provides a rebuttal. The voices of those who would bring attention to the sexism are silenced.

If the press, the party bosses, and the commentators can accomplish it they will force Clinton to leave the contest before it is actually over. Neither candidate has enough delegates to capture the nomination but the push is to shove the woman aside.

I'm afraid it is as I had suspected. When folks have to choose whether to let go of their racism or their sexism, they will choose racism. If they chose sexism that might mean actual changes in the power structure of their own personal lives. The privilege that males hold is at stake.

Notice, if you find this assessment unlikely. Notice.

© Angela Magara 2008

Concerning Pace

2008-04-05T11:38:00.003-04:00

The pace that pain has given me limits what I can do. Actually it is that it limits what I can reasonable expect myself to do. I always was over-extended, over-committed, and deadlining. I always moved at a slower pace than anyone I knew, only now I can do so without feeling like I need to catch up. In my current condition I cannot “catch up.” It was, in the past, my habit to set my pace by what was comfortable for other folks.

I remember once, when I was living in NYC for a summer, walking down the end-of-day sidewalk and feeling like a pebble in a stream. While I walked from E. 21st to E. 101st, something I liked to do on a Friday evening, I could visualize myself in a movie shot from above showing the thousands of people rushing by me. I have always held that image in my mind when people wait for me to catch up. I understood then that my pace was different from the folks around me. Of course at the time I said it was because I was Southern and they were all Yankees.

I get it. I get that I need to move at the pace my body wants. I also understand that a lifetime of trying to operate in overdrive has a physical cost. It must be true for all of us that to live in this culture requires compromise or denial of some aspect of our person. Each of those compromises and denials exacts a cost.

So the pace of pain is deliberate but very instructional. Sort of like when you take a guided nature walk and you see so much more because you have to move slower and with more attention.

I am grateful for the instruction but I look forward to the summer days without school. (I've never really liked those guided tours!)

© Angela Magara 2008

Living in a deer wood

2008-03-27T09:38:00.003-04:00

The tall evergreens that dominate our land provide food and shelter for 5 or more deer. I am estimating the number because they come when I am asleep, probably at early dawn, to nip the tips of the cedar in front of my kitchen window or the smaller pines that surround the house. When I awake there are only the fresh prints remaining. But it is a dailiy path for them. I suppose with this particularly long and snowy winter that they may be venturing closer to people occupied space than usual. But I don't know that. It could be that when I put in my garden and we hang a swing and a hammock, plant hostas and peonies that we will be destroying habitat. I hope not. I also hope we will be wise and patient enough to understand the land and share it as much as possible.

This sharing of the environment, being part of the habitat, is a lesson this land is teaching me. I am grateful. The last time I moved and was part of changing a site with perennials and tree removal I was less deliberate. I learned from that experience and I hope will move more wisely on this land.

These woods are filled with beings, seen and unseen. I want to be able to occupy the space I need for vegetable gardens, herbs, and flowers. I also want to leave as much in tact until I understand and know the land better.

Sometimes these tall trees dance in breezes not felt but only seen and heard in the whispering voices of hundreds of trees. It is part of the cosmic chorus. I wnat to join it, not silence it. May the wise path open before our feet.

© Angela Magara 2008

deer in the woods

2008-03-17T08:51:00.002-04:00

Outside my kitchen window this morning, as I filled my tea kettle, I discovered a full grown female deer lying in a hummock between the trees chewing her cud. The morning sunlight is slicing through the tall pines seeking the snow-covered ground. The deer seems unconcerned, alert but not alarmed as I gaze out at her. When I called over my grandson and daughter to see, she pricked up her ears and looked directly at us. She only became vigilant when my daughter began to look at her through binoculars.

Perhaps she is injured. Perhaps this is her wallow since the house has been vacant for almost 3 months. She sits behind my house, sharing space and inviting discovery. And it is full of mystery, full of wonder for me. The time to see, to ask questions and observe, has come. I am so grateful

the process of thinking

2008-03-11T07:19:00.003-04:00

I have been investigating the role of intention in magic. I have also been conscious of my own hidden workings within my intentions. My first use of the process of clarification; looking at my assumptions, expectations, ego, and fears, around what I might want was very helpful.

When I actually write down my assumptions, etc., I find most of them vanish like mist when exposed to conscious examination. The rest serve to inform me of the complexity and possibilities of the decision. Using the sense of intuition as a decision making tool isn't uncommon for me but doing so with deliberate thought, is. I recommend it.

I cannot overcome my fears, nor acknowledge the web of assumptions and expectations that surround my decision making process; without bringing all that complexity into the light. This process not only allows for greater self-knowledge but releases a flow of energy into the situation and decision.

My particular consideration was when to leave my job and take some time off. Always the concern about money and being prudent rises, whenever I consider stepping out of the work-focused life, as do many other factors. Using this process of thinking about the situation I was able to come to a decision, knowing some of the risks, while also becoming aware of possibilities I hadn't considered before.

I am free to take time off now. I know what I will do if some of the situations arise that I fear or opportunities offer themselves unexpectedly. I feel a level of freedom and, dare I admit it, happiness with my choice. For some people this may be uneventful but for me to have this much clarity and peace is unique.

i wish I could be more eloquent but this work is so practical.

I continue to dwell in gratitude to the Goddess and all my allies for the opening of my own life as teacher.

© Angela Magara 2008

Intention

2008-02-25T19:19:00.003-05:00

What I intend I do; but what about the doing that I didn’t intent?

I’ve been noticing lately that if I set an intention, capture in a moment of magic the golden heart of my will as it aligns with a thread in the pattern, then I can expect a manifestation. It is not merely wanting or even planning but a physical experience of need, while at the same time knowing what will satisfy.

The problem, as I’ve experienced it, is that the control of that synergy is not within my willing grasp. It is apprehended by my authentic self. Now for someone else that might not be a problem but for me, there are many layers.

The layers of assumptions, expectations, fears, and ego cloud what I really want from me. I have to spend time sifting and shunting aside the sands in order to see what is very apparent.

Assumptions

Expectations

Fears

Ego

Each one must be addressed. As a writer it seems to me that the best way for me to investigate each of these is in writing. Ask the questions and answer them. Discover what I think/know.

Sooner or later, I will report back about the process. Maybe some of you would like to use this process and comment to let us know how it works for you.

© Angela Magara 2008

Transformational Depression

2008-02-18T17:56:00.003-05:00

I last posted on December 28th, that's a long time ago - actually 79 days - which I think is incredible cause it doesn't seem that long to me. I'm still working on my New Year's post. No really.

This happens to me a lot in the dark of winter. Some people say they are sad or depressed and so I thought maybe I'm depressed. This time is so rich for me, so full of self-knowledge that I can't define it as a downer. But when I read the clinical symptoms for depression it looks like January and February in New England to me.

I spent a weekend at Bridget and opened up to the experience of winter. I'm living in Portland, ME right now and it has been a seriously snowy winter, started early and hasn't stopped. But beautiful, so beautiful. So in the midst of the wet seaside cold, under pines laden with white; I spread the experience I had been having and read it. I'm sleeping because I'm tired - maybe not physically but of the situation and patterns that I need to change. After Samhain I always see them and then the holidays come and I am dazzled by all the sparkle. Then January comes and the shiny things are put away, the ice scraper comes out, and all the issues I identified in the golden end of autumn are now waiting to manifest and be embraced. That's a lot of work. It makes me want to watch anthony bordain and remodeling shows. But if I don't, if I take up my journal and write, take out some pens and draw; then what was depression become transformation.

I am fortunate not to have clinical depression. The downer I experience is the soil my roots must have. For deep roots I need to shove the rocks somewhere else and stir the cold soil until it melts.

But I'm glad that spring will come, and summer. That is living in faith.

© Angela Magara 2008

on the death of Benazir Bhotto

2007-12-28T07:34:00.001-05:00

December 28, 2007

The news of Benazir Bhotto’s murder struck me like a gong. Right now I find holding hope particularly difficult and this tragedy tore at the cord keeping me from falling into despair. How much loss and death will finally be too much for us, as a world culture, to survive. When will the balance be tipped to the side of hatred with no possibility of recovery?

And I can’t ignore that this is a woman who has been assassinated. The forces that hate women and all that they represent are more apparent, more bold and shameless in their denigration and destruction of the female force. It adds to the undercurrent of fear, fear of the patriarchy and its steady strengthening in the last decade. I am scared of the complacency and acceptance women, especially young women, seem to have with the injustice that surrounds them. It seems we no longer believe that anything else is possible, or even desirable. The erosion of reproductive rights, of loss of a sense of sisterhood, the burden of perfection and success; seems to have robbed women of the intention and expectation that a more open and just system can be achieved. What will happen if we no longer value, even to the limited extent we do now, the lives of women and their children and the world in which they have to live?

I don’t know any answers. I only know that the grey tangle of fear and dread provides a constant struggle, a battle just to remain stationary. There is no energy left to create, vision, and manifest if everything is given to just keeping my head above the violent waters that crest and fall all around me.

I grieve for Bhotto’s death, and for the loss of choice, of freedom, of hope it represents. The complicity of our government is unknown, but just the possibility that we were the source of her death is alarming. There is nothing standing between complete domination and destruction except individuals and their personal bravery and will. I no longer know if it is going to be enough.

© Angela Magara 2008

now that winter has come

2007-12-27T11:13:00.001-05:00

Now that winter has come, now that the cold has settled in, the restlessness is frothing up. Once winter comes I'm always ready to find the next thing, the next idea, the next project.

One of the perennial things that has re-asserted itself is my need for a new home. I have lived in a penthouse apartment in Arlington Massachusetts for the last year and a half and now I'm done. Actually with my work and travel I haven't really lived there since May of this year. The condo has been on the market since November. All of this leads me to the inevitable question - where to live next?

After surveying the entire US I return to my recent lover, Vermont. The hills, the sensibility of the people, the sturdy clothing, the peaceful struggle to make a good life, the silence of the woods, the call of the fey folk; all of these are sirens singing me back. So I am relocating to Vermont. It seems a little anti-climatic to return to Vermont - no big adventure, no real angst, no surprises except little ones; but it is the place on this Earth that calls to me the most right now. I need a home base and it seems Vermont is it. So if anyone knows of a house with land which could be converted to shared living space - 2-family, 3-family; I would love to hear about it.

During this time, when so much is lost, so much tainted with the graft and lies of this political administration; I want to establish myself for the storms to come. I cannot believe that this country isn't going to crash with the kind of robbery that has occurred in the process of waging war for oil. Our country is bankrupt, oil is fast becoming a luxury item, and the social safety net, limited as it was, has been dismantled. Disaster is the only possibility and I want to be in a place where I am able to take responsibility for as much of my food, heat, health, and survival as is possible.

Is everyone feeling this need to go aground? To find a burrow in which to survive the coming storm?

So with this winter grey, with this cold and lifeless season, I gather myself and all my resources to sustain my life and those of my beloved ones. I face this storm, knowing I am equipped and supplied with everything I need for the coming deluge.

May we all have the time needed to prepare and the foresight to know what is vital.

© Angela Magara 2008

IPCC to warn of "abrupt" warming

2007-11-16T18:28:00.000-05:00

I just read this on the BBC website. I'm not computer savvy enough to be sure I can link you there or that the article will stay up for long so I am including both the link and the text of the article.

It is all becoming clearer, more definite, undeniable. I look forward to learning what we will do, how we will change, what life will look like. I look forward to contributing all the old-time knowledge and skills I have and learning new ones, based in science and innovation.

But it is scary. It is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7098902.stm

IPCC to warn of 'abrupt' warming

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Valencia

The IPCC says more heatwaves are very likely in the future
Climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts, the UN's climate advisory panel is set to announce.

Delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed a summary of its landmark report during negotiations here.

Discussions were said to have been robust, with the US and other delegations keen to moderate language.

The summary will be officially launched by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Saturday.

It brings together elements of the three reports that the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has already released this year, on the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation, and options for mitigating the problem.

Among its top-line conclusions are that climate change is "unequivocal", that humankind's emissions of greenhouse gases are more than 90% likely to be the main cause, and that impacts can be reduced at reasonable cost.

IPCC PROJECTIONS
Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
Increase in heatwaves very likely
Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

Climate change: The evidence

The synthesis summary being discussed here in Valencia strengthens the language of those earlier reports with a warning that climate change may bring "abrupt and irreversible" impacts.

Such impacts could include the fast melting of glaciers and species extinctions.

"Climate change is here, it's impacting our lives and our economies, and we need to do something about it," commented Hans Verolme, director of the climate change programme with the environmental group WWF.

"After this report, there are no politicians left who can argue they don't know what climate change is or they don't know what to do about it."

Local witnesses

At a news conference, WWF presented testimonies from "climate change witnesses" in various parts of the world.

Speaking by video link, Australian scientists and fishermen spoke of the changes they were seeing on the Great Barrier Reef. And Olav Mathis Eira, a Sami reindeer herder from Norway, said that his communities are seeing weather patterns unprecedented in their oral history.

"Winter is one and a half months later than it used to be," he said. "We observed birds and insects that do not have a name in Sami."

The 20-page IPCC synthesis summary is due to be accompanied by a longer, more detailed document, following discussions here.

The findings will feed into the next round of negotiations on the UN climate convention and Kyoto Protocol, which open in Bali on 3 December.

a good story - told late

2007-11-16T09:09:00.001-05:00

Sitting with a co-worker today she began to tell me some of her Katrina stories. Those in FEMA who worked on that disaster all have stories, many of which include frustrations and barriers that prevented them from doing what they saw needed to be done. But this woman had two wonderful stories about her time working in San Antonio, Texas where thousands of evacuees were re-located. I want to share these stories because I had never heard them or anything like them. And on this rainy morning they inspired me, so I pass them to you.

When the Mayor of San Antonio was asked what to call the folks who were coming from New Orleans; were they victims, evacuees, refugees? He responded that he liked to call them "future residents of San Antonio." So welcoming to a group of people that many cities reluctantly received. Then the City sent workers over to the old military warehouses where the shelters were going to be set up and installed hundreds of showers, toliets, and baby washing stations. All of this was done over a long weekend to make the best possible short term shelter for the people arriving. San Antonio was one of the few places where the Red Cross didn't have to advertise for volunteers, in fact some days they had to cut off the line responding to the desire to serve this population and ask them to come another day. When the annual holiday party that is thrown by the City for the residents came along, the City extended the invitation to all the folks housed in the multiple shelters. But since these shelters were mainly on the military bases the people had no means to get to the event. So the City sent buses out to the shelters to provide the folks an opportunity to party with everyone else. The response of this City was gracious and generous. Sadly we never heard any of this here in New England and I would guess anywhere else in the country. Good news doesn't travel much at all.

The second story is also from San Antonio. The Mexican government had sent in a unit of the Mexican Army, which is the resource that government uses in time of disaster. They were trained as search and rescue but the US authorities didn't use them. Perhaps it was the bravado of the big rich country not wanted to take assistance from the poorer country. Or perhaps it was just bureaucratic red tape that kept these volunteers from Mexico being used. The Red Cross was leaving the kitchen they had been staffing so the Mexican army unit took the job of cooking for the sheltered people. They cooked all the food for those thousands of people everyday. On Sunday, when perviously it was catch as catch can, the Mexican cooks set up meats to cook on the outside grills. They were joined by some of the men and women from New Orleans who would stir up pots of jambala or dirty rice to go with the roasting meats and other foods that were being cooked. All in all for 6 weeks or so the Mexican Army cooked for and with the displaced people of New Orleans. What a missed photo opportunity!

I sometimes wonder if there is more potential for human kindness than we can ever imagine. I wonder if we are getting ready to learn the capacity each of us has to be generous. I wonder if the answers to many of the hideously huge questions that are hanging over this culture might not be simply answered through innovative, unusual, and unexpected means we have yet to see. It is a cause for hope. And so I hope, I hope that we will each tell the good stories we hear and keep our eyes open for the unexpected gifts life is going to give us as we face global warming, environmental decline, and economic collapse. There are answers and solutions I can't imagine. I hope.

© Angela Magara 2008

The time has come

2007-11-02T10:48:00.001-04:00

On Halloween night, Samhain, I called upon the women, dead and many unknown, of my blood and bone. I called these allies because they are the ones who gave me my fierce faith and my relentless will to survive. They are the source of the many abilities and instincts that guide me, protect me, and inform me in ways that only marginally reach my awareness. I need them now. We need them.

Each of us carries within us the genetic material of women and men who have survived massive global climate change, plagues, wars, and assaults on the fabric of life. I carry the accumulation of all that strength, all those immunities, all that wisdom in my bones, in my blood. We all do. Can you feel it? Take a moment and listen, open to the voice in your bones and blood.

With that kind of inheritance how can we fail to find the ways to survive this catastrophe? With access to that crafty and proven ability, each of us can hope to be part of the answer to the over-whelming problems of climate change, rising fascism, corporate domination, and human over-population. We have no idea what solutions we could devise, if we opened to the possibility. If we seized the opportunity.

So as I begin this new year, I am opening to the possibility that there are answers, there are solutions, for all these problems. I invite each of you reading this to open to the wisdom of your cells, to the knowledge within your blood. And beyond opening to it, which I am sure many of us have done. I invite us to believe it is enough. To believe that the simple steps, one upon another, will lead us together out of the darkness of this time.

Our ancestors are ready to assist. They are ready to look at the world through our eyes and give us the benefit of millennia of accumulated wisdom. They are ready to give us their songs to shape reality and change it.

We will change the world this year. I will change it this year. The time has come.

© Angela Magara 2008

October 31 Halloween

2007-10-31T12:59:00.001-04:00

Samhain

It is the magical day, in the magical season of autumn. Autumn is the reality of death clothed in color. The end, cherished for its return each year.

Living within the circle of time, held by the immediacy of this moment and the next it is so easy to forget, so convenient to forget the end which is rushing towards me, towards each of us. It is much easier to recall when the mortgage is due and what I need to remember for work tomorrow. The immediate replaces the infinite in importance, and the Ground falls away.

My Ground, that which holds me unshakable, is always rooted in my body. As my body moves across space and through time, it holds my personal reality. If I forget that, if I lose the memory that I am a living body, fragile, temporal, and temporary; then I am moving in a fiction, living a drama that exists nowhere. It is a state from which I find myself often awaking. I am doing so now.

I have been in Vermont, where I lived with love for several years. Work has returned me to this place and I could feel my roots dropping down. Here I see the sky, and welcome the sun moving across the clouds and the dance light and dark spins. Here I can take a breath and feel the loving gift of trees in it. Here I can listen and hear the sounds of life simply being lived. I have again opened my eyes to see the spinning universe around me and felt my place within it.

Blessed Samhain. Death that opens the eyes of life, and sweetens each moment – as long as it lasts. Remembering death as part of the celebration of my life.

© Angela Magara 2008

time of Death, time of Life

2007-10-10T15:42:00.001-04:00

Today the weather has shifted finally. In Vermont the recent unseasonable warmth felt wrong for October. Now the changing leaves are matched by the chill, a transition from the summer luxury and fecund smells of the end of harvest to the final gathering in of the squashes and pumpkins. The colors always tighten my throat with their mortality. These vibrant leaves only last til the first big fall rain and then their gold and bronze will lie like treasure under the trees. The quality of life that is hanging in the colors and scents of this time is also in my bones, my flesh.

All the beauty, all the wonder, of this life is passing, passing even as I write these words trying to capture its essence - to hold on to that which can't be grasped. I love fall. I love it most, I believe, because it is so brief and beyond it is the bone silent time of winter. Winter, like death, is all that can come when everything else has happened. When the harvest is gathered, when the cider is pressed, and the garden put to bed; winter will come. The order of it is reassuring and at the same time frighteningly inevitable. So with life.

Perhaps it isn't just the leaves and the grey sky and the chill across my shoulders that sends me to this melancoly place. Maybe it is because today marks the 5 year anniversery of the vote by Congress authorizing the war in Iraq. But if I apply the same rule of change seen in nature, then I can be assured that this harvest is coming to an end. This harvest of death, and foolishness, and lies is being gathered in. After that the land will rest, the country will rest, and all of us will recover to be ready to nurture and bear fruit when spring comes again.

It is hope that lies in the knowledge of the inevitability of death, in the sureness of winter. It is hope that assures my heart that this war cannot continue but will end. It is hope which lies like fertile soil beneath the raging cold and snow ready to yield new life in time.

I love fall. Its dispair is reassuring because it will end and turn to summer once again. May it be so in my life, in our land, for this war, and for all beings of this world.

© Angela Magara 2008

Vermont is magical

2007-09-25T16:20:00.002-04:00

In a few days my work will take me to live in Vermont for a few weeks. This time of year in Vermont is magical. The air smells sweet in a most particular way. After some years living there I became convinced, in a very non-scientific way, that the Maple trees sweeten the air with the same energy that they create that wonderful sap that becomes maple syrup. The air is syrupy and delicious to the nose.

Another wonder of a Vermont fall is, well - can't deny it, the colors. I have experienced fall in lots of places but the painting of the maples across those gentle mountains moves me to tears everytime I see it.

I am so fortunate, so blessed, to have this opportunity to return to beloved Vermont. My hope is that I will be able to spend lots of time silent and absorbing the wisdom and peace this place holds in her soil. My heart leaps to think of being there, like the rush knowing you will soon see your lover. It is joy manifest.

© Angela Magara 2008