The past few years I’ve been becoming more aware of natural rhythms. I know that it started with the moon.  I began to look for her in the sky, to notice her shifting phases.  Then a random Facebook post introduced me to the Celtic wheel of the year and I began to find out more. I’m especially conscious of this this week having recently celebrated the summer solstice.  I’m still growing my practice around this and I find that after many years of following formal church liturgy I am enjoying finding creative ways of expressing spiritual practice.  This solstice we gathered together with a few friends and family, lit a fire, blew bubbles as the light faded and shared some drinks and snacks.  The next day we were up (it’s an early alarm for those here who commute so not too much of a shock to the system) and we were out in the garden with coffee looking for the midsummer sun as it rose, a pink sliver through early haze across the valley.

As the solstice moment passed I was aware of the sense of the world turning, I could imagine the days shifting, the sunlight hours dwindling all the way to midwinter and Yule.  I am finding the rhythms helpful in regulating my own tendencies to overwork and over “do”.  An awareness of the ebb and flow of natural cycles, of growth and rest around me reminds me of how important this is for my own health and well-being.  For many years I wouldn’t acknowledge the need for this in my own life.  Inevitably while I was hugely productive for a lot of the time this would be followed by spells of burn out and poor health.  I kept wondering what was “wrong” with me and relied on caffeine and alcohol to help me speed up or slow down when my own reserves were failing.

Listening to our bodies is a lost art.  Tuning in to the physical sensations of the everyday.  There is a wisdom and knowledge in our physical selves that gets lost in modern life.  We rely on our knowledge, our thinking.  For someone like me, who has lived most of her forty plus years in her head, it can take an earthquake to shake us back into ourselves.   The real wake-up call in my case was a complete physical collapse last summer.  I was literally stopped in my tracks and I am in the process of relearning how to be in my body, to heed her whispers and wisdom, to trust a deeper knowing than that offered by clever thinking.

With this in mind I was fortunate enough to take part in a teaching session with April McMurty the other evening.  April is the creatrix of The Moon is my Calendar, and teaches how to live in tune with moon rhythms and cycles.  We were encouraged to reflect on how tuning in to the moon’s patterns can support us as we pay greater attention to our own radiance, to consider how we are shining in our lives, and to notice the periods of expansion and contraction.  I found this enormously helpful, and timely given my own current healing process.  April’s website has more information and a video tutorial if you would like to try this way of working with moon rhythms (https://themoonismycalendar.com/)  I will be spending some time today, preparing for tomorrow’s new moon, reflecting on what is ready to be released, what needs to be allowed to fade, and which seeds I will be planting for the new cycle.

 

Plants are magic.  I love this herb.  It has a vibrant, tangy, fresh fragrance.  It’s leaves are a limey green covered in soft down when young and darken, growing glossy with age.  Bees love it too, always a good sign.What’s even better is it can help with low mood and anxiety.

When I use a plant to make remedies I get to know it first, sitting with it, observing it.  Once I’ve got a sense of my plant ally I’m ready to pick some leaves. I’m looking for the healthiest leaves, avoiding those which are browning or blemished.  I don’t take more than ten percent from each plant or I could damage them.  And then I thank them for sharing their goodness with me (respect!)

So once I have my leaves I set them out for a while to allow any creatures to make their escape.  If I’m having a stressy day I might then take a handful of leaves and steep them in freshly boiled water.  After about five minutes I’ll strain them and compost the pulp.  The tea is refreshing on its own, though for added soothing I add some honey.  I can take this up to three times a day if needed.

A recent project was my first tincture.  I took leaves and filled up a small jar then covered it with alcohol (I used a value brand vodka).  I will leave this for six weeks and then strain it and decant my potion into dark glass dropper bottles (not forgetting to date and label them).  I’ll then use five drops in a small glass of water when needed.

 

There’s a tendency to think I have to be in the right place.  Whether it’s the right mood, or with the right tools, or holding the right qualifications.  Before I can begin.  I have done this in my professional life for years, making sure I have the training and accreditation.  I’m not convinced it’s always needed.  Not that you shouldn’t be prepared for your work life, but that people never ask for the proof, they generally just want you to do a good job.

I do this with spiritual practice too.  I feel like I need to be ready.  Before I sit down to pray, before I read cards, I want to feel like I’m centred, that my mind it clear, that I’m soul-shiny and at peace.  I want to be guaranteed a distraction free space (which rarely happens in a busy household).

The problem is that this becomes a block or a barrier, a reason not to.  I use it to avoid starting.  Because starting is hard.  If I start something, rather than just planning it, I’m putting it out into the world, making it real.  I am clothing my thoughts, dreams, ideas in the flesh and blood of reality.  And that makes them vulnerable.  That opens them up to attack, to the possibility that they won’t thrive or survive.  And the fear that when I see them, embodied, they will be small, weak, ugly and I will wonder what I was thinking…

Of course, and you will know this, the point it that we’re never ready.  There is no perfect linear narrative in this life, it’s a construct we use to make us feel like we’re in control.  The point is that you just have to start.

I took part in an art workshop the other day with Monica Garcia  and afterwards she shared this quote with us from Chris Zydel:

“One of the biggest lies around the creative process is that we have to be in a magical state of inspiration in order to create.   This fantasy state is some combination of bright eyed and bushy tailed excitement, uber confidence and feeling an unbroken connection to the creative flow.  And one of the saddest things I see in my creative practice is when someone comes to my studio saying that they haven’t created in weeks, months, sometimes YEARS. All because they have been waiting in vain to be blessed by that sweet creative elixir that they mistakenly think is the only indicator of a visit from the muse. 

In my experience you can create no matter WHAT state you are in. You don’t even need any IDEAS in order to create. All you need is the intention to be creative. And the willingness to actually take some action around your creative process.  When people come to my Painting From The Wild Heart classes they discover that they can create when they’re tired. When they’re cranky. When they hate being creative. When they’re upset. When they’re convinced that they are stuck. When they’re bored or when they are feeling old, shut down and dried up.

The muse shows up when we show up.  If you devote yourself to her she won’t leave you in the creative lurch just because you’re in a bad mood.”

Straight after reading this I got hold of my art things and began.  Because I’d been tired, and unfocused,  I wasn’t feeling ready, it wasn’t comfortable. But something happened in the time I had to create.  Something opened up, unblocked, began.  Not just in the work I was doing, not just in the colour on the page and the glue on my fingers, but in my heart and soul.  It was like a tightly clenched fist beginning to uncurl, bringing the possibility of a new way of being.  Starting now.

 

 

Hello there.  What’s your week like so far?  What are you doing with yourself?  Are you working, out all day at your job? What is that like? Where do you go? In a school or a shop, caring for others, driving?  Are you at home with children, spending your hours building wooden train tracks or blanket dens? Do you enjoy what you do?  Do you feel it’s a part of who you are or do you find it’s the way you earn your bread but it isn’t key to how you see yourself?

Do you find it’s the first thing people ask you, what do you do?  I think it gets complicated.  I do lots of different things, and I want to open a window on myself to show people when I meet them, so we can understand each other.  I want to see their story too. But then it becomes a long, convoluted rendition and I can see that they didn’t want to know that much, they wanted a label, so they can organise and sort me and file me away.

What do you do?

This is my window, a glimpse.

I write poems.  I dance in the kitchen.  I talk to the cats.  I grow herbs.  I watch the bees as they work in the garden.  I teach.  I practice healing therapies.  I journal.  I drink peppermint tea or smoky, brown coffee.  I watch the moon and stars.  I bake, I like simple and uncomplicated cakes, wholesome, that fill the house with their fragrance and draw people out of their rooms to see what’s cooking.  I sing in the car and talk to myself.  I love playing crazy golf and picking up stones on the beach.  I overwork.  I day dream.  I like stories.  I like to feel the ground beneath my feet and imagine the people who were here before me.  When I’m tired I bury myself under a blanket on the sofa and watch DVD box sets or browse through Facebook.  I dream about traveling and about having a huge kitchen with a scrubbed pine table where people are always dropping in for tea, to talk or pull some cards.  I love to walk.  I love the rhythm of my body and the timeless sense of moving across the land.  I love water, to swim or paddle.  For some everyday magic I love bubbles, blown in a shiny, glistening crowd, dancing across the grass and over the hedge.

 

I started a new venture this month.  If you know me you won’t be surprised.  I like new ventures, the fresh page, a new packet of seeds.  This isn’t something I would have imagined though, not given my history of Christian heritage.  But I can see the signs which brought me here along the way, through the years.

I have started training with Vanessa Sage (www.sagepriestess.com).  We are right at the beginning of the year long programme.  I have days where I’m so excited, where I want to drink it all up and soak in the wonderful teachings and the wisdom of all those I share the circle with.  And there are days when I am afraid, wonder what I’m doing and who on earth I think I am.

I’ve been in that kind of space before though.  What I am beginning to understand is that your path, whatever that looks like, is just that.  Yours.  You can’t learn it from someone else, though they might be the next signpost.  You can’t put on what they do and inhabit it. That would be just like living in an empty shell.  The shell may be beautiful, but it isn’t yours.  Gee but I’ve been going down those roads for forever already.  Seeing how others do their journey and wanting to be in the place of flow.  Imagining that grace can come if I put my feet precisely where they have stood.  That’s a kind of discipleship I suppose, there’s nothing bad in that, we need it for a time.  But there comes a time to dance your own dance, to shine your own light, to sing your own song, to carve out your own shell, unique and crazy with rainbow spirals and all the glitter you can muster (image from #gaiantarot Three of Fire). 

So this is it.  The priestess path.  Beginning to be the “living priestess” and working out what that means exactly here, in this skin, this space.  Emerging into the light, wings damp but growing stronger.

For the longest time I went to church. I remember going as a little girl, walking across the fields for services, the smell of polish and dust when we were seated and staring up at the man in the pulpit.  I remember Sunday School, the plaster cast figures in the nativity scene, the blue robes when I played Mary one Christmas and the stone humps of graves in the churchyard.  As a teenager I grew more evangelical, I read my Bible everyday, I became involved in helping at services and a regular attendee at my school’s Christian Union.  I wanted to be a nun when I was older, to live a life of devoted service, be a bride of Christ.

Instead I married young, it’s important in some kinds of Christian culture where sex outside of marriage is frowned on.  I was a young mum as a result, before I’d worked, or traveled or lived some dreams.  It was my choice and I believed the best one at the time.  I continued going to church, I began working with a spiritual director, explored vocations to ministry, trained in my church to be a lay minister, ran Sunday School, met parents before their children were baptised, led worship, preached.  I attended spirituality days and retreats.  I wanted to be a priest, to serve God with my whole life.  Life swirled around me, children grew, started school.  I began training as a teacher.  I planned to be a self supporting priest so I needed some way to earn a living.

Then came the unexpected.  Plot twist! I began experiencing strange symptoms at the end of my induction year as a teacher.  The doctors identified a minor stroke.  I was thirty five.  It took about six months to recover, but in that time something shifted.  I began asking questions about why I was here.  I came to realise that I didn’t want to sacrifice my life to the church, that I wanted to live free.  I began to seek ways to balance life and work.  That took a long time!  The habits learned as a teenager took almost a decade to break.

After that marriage ended I found my faith less convincing.   The promises that God would see me through, that if I was a good girl I would be rewarded, felt hollow.  I tried to find my way back,  to re-engage with church and that way of believing.  It was in itself like the end of  relationship, years of giving it my best, persevering, but the soul had gone out of it.

For some years I had been aware of a different energy, pulsing like a heart beat underneath daily rhythms.  I had been noticing the seasons, the phases of the moon.  I had been hearing echoes of words I didn’t remember learning.  I felt something calling which I couldn’t name.  At first I felt guilty.  My years of Christian heritage had warned me against the dangers of the pagan path, the unruly chaos that lay outside the church…

One Sunday, while our priest was away, I was leading the service.  There was a seismic shift in my soul as I read the familiar words from the opening of the service.  Where were the women?  Where in my church, my faith, my beliefs was the feminine?  I felt cut off, disconnected, dispossessed.  I began to search out a different path.  I left my ministry role.  I joined virtual circles to explore the wheel of the year.  I began to follow the moon’s cycles with intent.  I find myself on the edge of an adventure – stepping out on a pathway to places I didn’t expect.  I am new made, fresh faced, uncertain.  Yet there is also the sense that I have been here before, something almost remembered, at the edge of consciousness.

So I’m on this journey, for want of a better word.  I don’t know when it began, sometimes I could say last year, or the year before, sometimes I think it was about twenty years ago, or longer.  Whatever.  It’s been about seeking the divine, about searching for a  life purpose, about fulfilling a God given mission.

When I was younger I wanted to be a religious sister, join a convent, live a life devoted to prayer and service.  Then, for the longest time, I followed a vocation to ordained ministry.  I took theology classes and worked as a lay minister.  I read about prayer, took retreats, attended self-development courses, completed personality type indicator profiles.  I had therapy.  I had spiritual direction.  I trained professionally, and then in a different profession.  I was married, and then not, and then married again.  I became a parent.  Years and years of searching, sometimes feeling like I was in the right place, or on the right path, but mostly not so much.  Resting my head for a few months with one form of prayer, then finding it empty and moving on.  A spiritual nomad.

The net widened. I explored meditation, Reiki and its principles,  I began following the wheel of the year and the cycles of the moon, connecting to rhythms beyond liturgical calendars.  I discovered divination, began studying the tarot.  I took Hay House courses on angels and crystals and space clearing.  Still hungry to know, still hungry to connect with God, with that which is beyond, to find the path, my path.

What I am coming to realise, maybe you’ve found this too, is that for all the books and courses and studies and wisdom out there at the end of the day it is just about God and me.  I have tried to follow the patterns set down by formal religion, or by particular spiritual gurus.  Often I end up feeling like something is missing.  It can be like following a recipe but the end result looking nothing like the glossy image in the book.  Unexpected in spite of best efforts.

I am wondering if that missing link is God herself; if I have been so busy trying to find her that I am failing to notice  she is right here.  The truth I have been seeking might, after all, under my nose. Which is not at all what I was expecting.  Or looking for.  But is, perhaps, what is. Not someone else’s truth, not wisdom from a book or a doctrine… the truth of divine love and light breathing quietly beside me, holding me in the dark and whispering in my ear as I sleep.

For the longest time she was looking for the coat.  She learned about it first as a child.  “When you’re older,” her mother said, “You’ll find your coat, it’s unique, yours alone.  Look carefully because it could be anywhere.  When you find it don’t let it go, it will be your way.”

She looked for the coat diligently.  Throughout her teenage years she watched as others found their coats, their ways to be.  She saw girls grabbing at velvets and brocade, striding out in confidence.  She envied the rich colours;  ruby red, emerald green, shameless purple.  One day, she thought, mine will be there one day, and then I’ll know and I’ll finally be.

Years passed, she searched and searched; among thrift stores, in the high streets, rummaging through jumble sales tables, searching catalogues and in pattern files.  Still no coat.

She found some, yes, very beautiful in vibrant, gorgeous fabrics.  She even tried them, for a while.  But they were too tight, or the fabric irritated, one even choked her when she did up the top button and she discarded it quickly.

After a while she gave up, she had searched for so long.  She still envied others their coats, still admired them from afar, but knew hers was just a dream.  She returned to the generic mac of her youth and her step lost its spring.

And then came the rain.  It rained for weeks.  After one particularly bad shower she staggered into the house and began peeling off her layers.  She set aside the dull, damp mac, she peeled off her jeans and her sweater, removed her sodden, squelchy shoes and socks.  She brushed her fingers over her damp skin.  And gasped.

Her coat.  Soft and supple. Protecting her daily from cold and damp. Fitting her perfectly.    She flexed her arms and legs, stretched up and outwards, beginning an awkward dance of celebration as she realised the gift.  After decades of searching,  finding the journey’s end closer than imagining.  Unique. Priceless. Her own skin.

I was asked the other day if sacred space was important to me; I don’t know what prompted the question, maybe the large picture of our local, medieval parish church which hangs on my wall.  Anyway it got me to thinking about what that means.  More often than not for me I experience the sacred out of doors, in the garden or forest, or on a wind swept cliff top.  But there are other moments too.  Tonight, with both teenagers out at the same time for the first time in months, I find myself alone in the house.  Eventually I faced up to the pile of ironing that’s been growing apace.  Standing in the kitchen listening to some jazz, alone with my thoughts, suddenly the mundane moment became my sacred space, an uninterrupted pause, a patterned rhythm of activity.  I was calmed and soothed, rocked by the action of my arms as they smoothed the fabric and my hips as I danced from side to side.  This time alone is so rare and precious.  It is the powerhouse which fuels me, the space to be alone with my thoughts, to allow them to drift and blend, meld and meander.  It is the space that  Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.speaks of in her talk “Crones Don’t Whine” (http://jungchicago.org/blog/), the rare time when a woman can be alone and think.  It is a precious gap in the every day,  longed for and, when found, treasured and protected.  It is in these moments that I am restored to myself.