daily quote

Everything that touches us, you and me,

takes us together like a violin’s bow,

which from two separate strings draws forth one voice.

O sweet the song.

~Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

The Art of Marriage

The little things are the big things.

It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say I love you at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.

It is at no time taking the other for granted: the courtship should not end with the honeymoon; it should continue through all the years.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.

It is standing together facing the world.

It is forming a circle of love that gathers in the whole family.

it is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice, but in the spirit of joy.

It is speaking words of appreciation and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.

It is not expecting the husband to wear a halo or the wife to have wings of an angel.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience, understanding, and a sense of humour.

It is having the capacity to forgive and forget.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow.

It is finding room for the things of the spirit.

It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal, dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

~Wilfred Arlan Peterson (1900-1995)

5th Annual Brigid’s Poetry Slam

Friday, January 29, 2010
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 I 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

Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

thoughts on solstice changes

I am thinking about Solstice tomorrow….

…might start a 365 project, except it wouldn’t necessarily be self portraits. Just an act to do something daily.  Maybe it should be craft 365. Doing something crafty every day. Not a single project daily, but making efforts each day.

…thinking about faith as a pagan. What does that mean? What traditions do I have? what does being a pagan mean to me? what exactly does faith mean?

…thinking about magic, and believing it. Believing it can help me with direction in my life. Maybe it should be a magic 365 project.

Winter in the Great White North

I live near Red Deer in Alberta, which is 1.5 hours drive south of Edmonton, or north of Calgary, depending on what you are more familiar with. I suspect this means that I am the Sister farthest north in latitude! Or is that longitude…. Last Friday Winter arrived, and decided to stick around. We’d had a cold snap in early October, but the snow melted within a day, and most of November was warm. But Winter is here to stay now I think. It wasn’t too cold over the weekend, but early this week the temperature dropped. The high for today is -10 Celsius, with an overnight low of -24. It will warm up a little tomorrow and Saturday, but drop again on Sunday. We have about 10-15 cm of snow on the ground. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is mixed with some ice, and the roads in my town are now a dirty white. It is a small town, and there are no snow removal plans like Edmonton, where I used to live. Calgary generally doesn’t remove its snow, as chinooks arrive regularly to melt it off the concrete at least.

What is a chinook you might ask? It is a warm wind that comes from the south, curving off the mountains and heading into the great plains to be gobbled up by arctic weather patterns. You can see a ‘chinook arch’ in the clouds in the sky when it is there – a clear line or break in the clouds from one horizon to the other (almost). It’s quite neat. One day I’ll have to try to get a good picture of it. And….today the sun rose at 8:24. It will set at 4:26. That’s right – only 8 hours of daylight! As we move closer to the Solstice in the next few weeks, that time will shorten. In Edmonton, it is even shorter (8:29 and 4:19). The flipside to this is that in June, we have daylight from about 5 to 11. I will be going for a walk later today, and will have to concentrate on the experience so that I can describe it to you with wonderful adjectives so you can get the full effect!

Having said all of that – I have to agree that this is also a ‘bear time’ for me. I call it my winter denning. I want to enter my den and not come out again until spring. The cold weather, the dark, and the slow energy after the hectic summer catches up and I want to stay inside, cook and eat, sleep, and maybe get around to crafts. Thankfully there are winter sports to get me outside, and the silly need to work and pay the bills to make me interact with other people.

Someone asked, why do you keep track of the seasons so intently? For me, it is another way to observe the wheel of the year. And I particularly enjoy watching the plants make their changes through the seasons – birth, growth/flowers, and fruit-fall. Here, we have 4 distinct seasons, and I know other places do not. Winter and Summer dominate, with Spring and Fall making short appearances. If you blink, you might miss them! Winter can last for up to 8 months, depending on how you define it. Usually there is snow on the ground between October to April. But it can snow in May, and September to. Spring can be just warm winter days, and then it blends quickly into summer. Fall seems like cool summer days, until the snow comes. Oh, and our growing season is traditionally considered to be from May 21 to September 21. Most avid gardeners start their seeds indoors to get a jump start.

Hmmm….I think that might be it for now. I’m off to buy some eggs to do some baking, and go to my local library!

Pagan Name Generator

I have recently moved to a new part of the province. I was browsing the WitchVox listings just for funsies, and thought about creating a profile to find other like minded pagans. But then I thought – I can’t use my mundane name! I need something with pizzaz! Something that indicates my witchy nature! So I decided to try a few Pagan Name Generators.

Here are the results:

Rowan Avalon Elder

from:  http://www.fjordstone.com/fjo/generator.html

Sapphire FlowingSpirit

from:  http://www.pythorium.com/pagan_name_generator

Ivy Whisper

from http://www.enchantedrealm.ca/pagan-name-generator.asp

WaterCloud BearCrow EarthBlue

from http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/7746/Humor/NIRPNG.html

FireHawk Yggdrasil

from: http://www.newmoon.uk.com/wicca/name.html

Chartreuse Mintseason

http://buggsy97.tripod.com/wiccagen.html

Fun Times!

Help Kitties! Feline Familiars

go to http://felinefamiliars.org

I can’t seem to make the link work at the moment, so you’ll have to copy and paste

On Eating Meat & Other Tangents

Chrysalis challenged the blogosphere to write about Pagan Values. I had hoped to do some writing of my own – and a recurring topic came up today. Here’s what I came up with!

Pagan Values: Respecting All Life

1. On Eating Meat and Other Tangents
For many years, I have contemplated becoming a vegetarian. Growing up in Beef Producing Alberta, I was probably in the minority in my exposure to vegetarianism. My mother’s mother was raised as one, so my mother was also. (She was the black sheep of the family though, and left England to come to Canada to marry into a family of meat salesmen.) I knew that Granny didn’t eat animal products because she felt that animals were our friends and we shouldn’t kill them for food. I understood that we had to look out for things like gelatin, but that cheese and eggs were okay.

Later in life, I learned what the difference was between that and vegan. No animal products whatsoever! Naturally, I thought I should go all the way with this path if I were ever to make a decision and stick with it.
But that has always been a problem for me – making a decision and sticking with it. And also respecting both sides of my family history – my father and his father supported their families by working for Canada Packers/Maple Leaf. To become vegan would seem to be disrespectful of their efforts.

Now, my body seems to be telling me other things. I have been dairy intolerant for some time. Cheese is a dream lost to me now! But lately I am also feeling upset when eating wheat and/or gluten, and last night, a nice steak. So perhaps my body is making the decision for me?

The question of whether to eat meat comes up repeatedly. It began again when I embarked on this path to train as a biologist. Observing life would seem to include an inherent respect for it. Observing life would also include a desire to sustain the ecosystem in which it lives: something which does not seem inherent in our current agricultural practices.

I am a city girl, I know very little of farm life. A few of my classmates have grown up on farms, and we’ve danced around this conversation a few times. I think I might be visiting a farm this weekend – I’ll have to ask some questions!

However, I do know what it’s like to drive past cattle on these rural roads, and past the feedlots that populate the highways in Southern Alberta. I passed one today. The cattle in one of the lots were following behind a truck as it drove through the lot, presumably feeding them. It brought to mind the images of people starving for food, following behind army trucks as they pass out food in war torn countries. It was not a pleasant image. And then, as I drive down a rural road, the calves are gamboling in the fields, and pretend to challenge my truck as if they can take it on. (Okay a little bit of anthropomorphizing here. I do not know if cows feel/think this way.) The two do not seem to fit together, nor does the thought of me eating the calf (and yet, that is what I did last night).

Then comes up the debate with hunting and fishing. As part of our curriculum we have studies mammals, birds, fish, and resource law. I learned about hunting and fishing regulations in Alberta. With my city-girl past, I have never done either. A few years ago I was still much against hunting as a sport. I still am, but have developed a different view of hunting as a way to feed yourself. It takes very little resources – the animals are already there, and they feed themselves. Unlike raising cattle and pigs and chickens. Would it not be better to harvest life that is free-ranging, part of the natural ecosystem, and not ‘poisoned’ with excess hormones, pesticides, insecticides and who knows what else?
(If I were to follow this tangent, I would also have to investigate where I get my vegetables from. I’m not quite ready to go there yet. Also, there is the whole concept of if everyone where to hunt, we’d ruin the entire landscape and everything would die. Humans are a pox on the earth sometimes. Back to my debate.)

While studying the above, we did a number of necropsies – the scientific word for dissecting animals, or, performing an autopsy on an animal and not a human. Why they have to have different names, I don’t know. The whole process was distasteful to me, and I would think if I can’t cut into a dead animal, how can I eat one? Since it was unlikely that I could see myself becoming vegan right then, I got the idea into my head that I would learn to fish this summer, and possibly even hunt, so that I could be the one to kill the living flesh I would consume. While I’ve gotten as far as getting my WIN card, I still need to get a fishing license and rod. I am sure I still have a somewhat romantic view. After all, I have yet to kill something yet. And maybe the wild things would rather be penned and fed lovely meals than to have to search for their own food.

I am writing all this perched above the hoodoos in Dinosaur Provincial Park. After a day of work at my current job: field assistant for Burrowing Owl Research. Learning this has been fascinating. Thank goodness I am coming late to the project and do not have to handle the owls. I find it stressful just watching, and wonder about my path. Can you be a biologist without stressing or harming the life that you study?

I do not yet know the answer to that question. I do know I am going to do my best to find out. There is a bird calling, grasshoppers singing, and the wind caressing my face. I’m going to go enjoy that while I celebrate the life I find here!

Writing this has brought a few other topics to mind:
2. On harvesting wild plants
3. On eating organic and local
4. On offering libations – how does this effect the ecosystem/microhabitat where you do this?

I have also posted “the Creed of my Sacred Journey”.

The Creed of My Sacred Journey

I used a journal by Cheryl Thiele for a couple of years, called Sacred Journey. She had some prompts inside for writing, one of them entitled the creed of my sacred journey. As one of my mentors, Grant MacEwan, wrote his own creed, I decided I’d give it a go. I think this is relevant to the current discussion in the blogosphere on Pagan Values.

The Creed of My Sacred Journey

All Life is Sacred. Each Life form on Earth has their own essential role to fill, and we are all Interconnected; all Life should exist in community.

Divinity is Immanent. Every person can connect to the Spirit that unites all Life. Some call it the Holy Spirit, the Force, Universal Energy; I choose to refer to it as Spirit.

Know Thyself – if I know myself, I will know god. When I am true to my sense of Self, unwavering and steadfast in the face of challenge, I can offer more to the world.

Act Responsibly and be Considerate of others. It is important to look after my own needs and desires, but not at the cost of another’s feelings or safety.

Speak Truth – wherever I may be, whatever I am doing. Use honesty, compassion, and respect when dealing with others.

There are many Paths to Spirit. Any one Path is not suitable for everyone; I have chosen my own Path, and must be tolerant of others.

Use Wisdom and Reason to discern Truth. Always ask questions, and pursue lifelong learning.

Strive for Balance; Moderation in all Things. Our consumerist and materialist society encourages waste and greed, and this greatly upsets the Balance of the Earth. We take but do not give back. I hope that in striving for Balance, I can temper the dualities at work.

Exercise Love whenever I can. Love and accept all parts of myself, and give my love with an open heart. Do not deny beauty, joy, laughter, pleasure, or happiness in any form.

I believe in Mystery. I believe that neither religion nor science is infallible – there is too much that cannot be known, and that I am not ready to know. Energy is always shifting, creating Change in the Universe.

~April 20, 2005.