Beautiful Uncommon Night

            It is 4 AM and I am wide awake. At one time I would’ve called it the curse of the insomniac, would’ve been angry, and spent the rest of my allotted sleeping hours in front of the television—seeing nothing, learning nothing, knowing nothing. That was before I realized how uncommon life is and that when something unusual happens (like waking up at 4 AM although you’ve taken your prescribed medication for sleep at midnight and have only been in the sleeping realm for 4 hours!) it’s best to check around and see what that thing might be. Obviously there is something that the Divine wants me to experience. Must I not be about my Creator’s business? Yes I must.

            So, I dressed myself in warm socks, untied tennis shoes, a pair of pants over the jammies and a couple warm hooded sweatshirts. Last but not least, I wrapped a quilt that my grandmother made from scraps of fabric around my body and stepped out onto the porch.

            It snowed last night. Only about two inches that will be gone by noon tomorrow but tonight it is creating a magickal space of the entire outdoors. It glows you see, in an eerie and very unusual way. It reflects the starlight and makes everything brighter out here even though the moon has set. I can only imagine how bright it must’ve looked when Luna shone upon it! It must almost have seemed like the day.

            We are more than a dozen miles from the nearest traffic light and for some reason, in this community, people do not opt for the “dusk to dark” lights that the power company could come out and put on poles to push back the darkness around our homes. No, for some reason folks around here embrace the dark or at least tolerate and accept its presence in their lives. That’s sort of a strange decision for a bunch of contemporary humans to make, especially in one small community, way out in the country.

            You see, we humans have some kind of genetic memory about certain things and one of these collective memories we have is a fear of the dark. A History Channel special back in 2010 collected the research and made their own documentary using all the proof of past human behavior to support their theory. If you’re interested in watching the special here’s the URL:

http://www.amazon.com/Afraid-of-the-Dark/dp/B004G7EU4U# . It’ll cost you a buck ninety-nine but you can watch it on any supported device so I guess you could watch it at noon on your cell phone if you’re really afraid of the dark.

            Me? I’m a lover of the night. And this one while cold, is magnificent. It’s not perfect; there was only an inch or two of snow so not everything is “buried” under the white stuff thus creating a new landscape all together. But it is changed, magickally, gloriously, undeniably changed. And it seems to glow. By just the starlight above, it seems to glow! I can’t seem to get this notion of glowing snow out of my mind. I believe, if I wanted and were dressed more properly, I could walk right out into that snow and see exactly where I was going. I could walk to the barn and back without a flashlight and without a mishap.

            Then I begin to wonder what it is about snow that makes us believe such things? The rational part of my brain knows there are several places that a misstep would be easy to make and ankles easier still to break. Then the snow might be the last blanket I would ever have. Still, it doesn’t frighten me, this knowing that like the Moon card in Tarot, snow hides as much as it reveals and it doesn’t reveal 100% of the truth about the things in its domain.

            It’s so beautiful, so uncommon to see in this part of the world. It’s hard to believe it could be deadly. What in the name of all that is good and right does that mean? A beautiful thing that lights up the darkest part of the night but also has the potential to be deadly?

            Oh come on! It isn’t the first thing that is “natural” to the planet to be both beautiful and deadly. Some of the most beautiful creatures we know about are incredibly deadly. We don’t want to pull away from them. We even house them in zoos and lots of us go to look at them, to admire their beauty from the safety of the other side of the glass. We do this over and over again.

            This thing, though, this snow, this eerie, glowing, beautiful snow lighting up the depths of the darkness before dawn, singing a siren call to a few who can’t sleep but who can hear the call. This wild thing we cannot capture. We cannot put this snowy night into a cage to visit when it’s convenient. This is something else. This is a gift from God/dess, whatever and whomever you perceive that to be. And let me tell you something about such gifts. Come closer, it’s a secret….shhhh…..none of these kinds of gifts can ever be caged or bottled or convenient ever.

If you want the uncommon, you’ll have to abide by its terms. You will come to it when it isn’t reasonable or comfortable to do so (although my grandmother created this quilt with layer upon layer of fabric remnants—no fluffy stuffing bought by the sack full at WalMart for her, oh no, just layers and layers of remnants—though it is heavy, it is no match for the icy temps outside on my front porch). You will wake up and recognize that no two people brush their teeth the same way. You will begin to notice the cracks in your life that, when you peer into them, reveal the uncommon that has always dwelled there. Then if you are very, very smart and very committed to walking a spiritual path in life, you will follow the uncommon to see where it leads.

It often leads to front porches at 4 AM. Or to cars pulled off the side of the road at midnight where you watch the shooting stars that weren’t predicted by the weatherman and that 99% of people didn’t see. Or you will find yourself sitting in some lonely place considering…nothing at all and being very content with that.

All you little witches are uncommon, even if you are not little witches. But it is your job to find and appreciate your uncommonness. To embrace your other. To look unflinchingly at what is unusual about you, about your life, about everything. Sometimes those looks will break your heart. In fact, in the beginning it is almost a guarantee because we humans will often find the unattractive “other” before we notice the otherworldly landscape of starlit snow at 4 AM. Go ahead and cry your tears, then get up and find the uncommon again. And again. And again.

It won’t be very long, Aunty Selene promises, until the uncommon reveals itself with the beauty of a flower unfurling before your very eyes. And you will be awake to the uncommon in your life. You will see that your cubicle or work area is NOT the same as the others. Yours is uncommon because…….well, you will see for yourself.

In the meantime, Aunty Selene sends out an invite to those who might stumble upon this little blog. When you find the uncommon in your life, send a photo of it here to this blog. Tell Aunty Selene all about the uncommon life you are living, show the world the photos of said uncommonness. Show us all the joy of your uncommon life. And if you have photos of a landscape of snow lit only by the moon and stars, a backyard that glows from the interaction of moon and stars and snow, send that as well for that is a most uncommon and wild event that should be shared with all who would break free of their prison of banality. A beautiful first introduction to the wild uncommonness all around us.

Now Aunty Selene is going inside because, heavy and warm as grandma’s quilt is, my toes are uncommonly cold and my warm bed awaits. 

Uncommon Weather

I’m sitting here in my home “office” listening to the cold February rain fall through the boughs and branches of sweet gum trees and Southern pines before it dashes itself to death on my metal roof. The sound is like static with all the sharp edges filed off. It is white noise of the very best kind. It makes me want to make a cup of hot tea, wrap myself in a blanket in a comfy chair and while away the afternoon reading a good book.

            Or, I could turn off all the lights here in the “office,” tuck myself under the electric blankie and with only the light from the screen of my laptop write about the exceptional nature of this particular rain. Even the weather in my life is uncommon. But, then again, so is yours only, maybe you don’t know it…yet. Never fear my little witches, Aunty Selene is here to point out the singular spectacular uniqueness in all our lives.

            So for the last four or five days the weather men on the local ABC station have been doing a rain dance. It has looked particularly uncomfortable for them; first they jig this way then they jog that way. Back and forth it’s gone. They looked as if their meteorological prognostications were making them very anxious. They sweated, staining the underarms of their shirts and ruining the done-for-TV makeup. In short, they looked like small children caught in the midst of a lie. It has not been pleasant to watch. The reasons for their discomfort are remarkably clear…but you have to be “from around here” to understand.

            Snow in Alabama is not really snow. There is no powdery white stuff with which to make snowmen or lie down in and flap your arms and legs to make snow angels. No, gentle readers, Alabama snow is granular because it’s halfway to being an ice pellet to begin with. All of us who live here know that those of you who live north of us laugh because education and commerce come to a halt after a half inch of what is technically “snow” only because it fell from the sky that way. Once it came to rest on Alabama soil, it became ice. No, none of us own tire chains and even if we did, we wouldn't know what to do with them. So, sooner or later but probably sooner, the whole “snow” day will become an “ice” day, at least on the roads. What might seem humorous from way up there becomes deadly pretty damn quick down here. We don’t want our children riding on buses to and from school in these conditions and we don’t want to try to drive to our jobs either. We know we don’t know how to drive on snow but no one can drive on ice. That’s why the forecast is so important to us and to the meteorologists! Get it a little wrong and people could end up hurt or dead because they went out not expecting “winter weather.”

            Before I go further, I must tell you that the particular team to which I refer is as expert as they come. They are incredibly knowledgeable, proficient, and IMHO, the best in the business. Their senior meteorologist seems to know the name of every community and small county road in Central Alabama. He is a most beloved figure in our part of the state. I go to no other source for weather information when the weather here turns ugly which is pretty damned often. Though most of the rest of the nation doesn't realize it, those of us who live here know that Alabama lies firmly in Tornado Alley. Put your faith in some greenhorn of a weatherman and you might get to find out that Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton’s experience in the eye of an F5 was a Hollywood lie. While this post may be having a bit of teasing fun at the expense of these gifted men and women, make no mistake, Aunty Selene respects and appreciates this incredible team of professionals.

            I also should say that, like growing up with guns, growing up with tornadoes every spring seems so normal to me. Yes, I have seen a few from pretty close up and four years ago, the town that I call “home” was ravaged by a monstrous tornado. Forty-two people here died. And on that day, just before the power went out for us, I was watching the senior meteorologist on my local ABC asking anyone who had loved ones in our town to call them, contact them in some way, and tell them that something bad was walking into our town. For all of us to take shelter. While he didn't say it, I thought about the old Native American warning from the tribes who made the Midwest of what would become the United States their home. The warning was, “If you see the dead man walking in the sky, you will be the next to die.” We know now they were referring to multiple vortices tornadoes that spawn what can appear to be “arms” and “legs” that rotate within the core of the main tornado. The footage from the last large tornado in Jarrell, TX was just such a monster. If anyone can find the footage, I’d love to see it again.

Still, I find tornadoes beautiful in an awful sort of way. It is so unnatural, so uncommon, to watch the sky turn green and feel everything around you go utterly still, as if the World is holding its very breath. Then to see on the horizon, if you’re lucky no closer than that, the lightning begin to flicker almost constantly. And finally, to see the terrible magnificence of the clouds forming of themselves a spinning, churning vortex, like the finger of God/dess pointing down at the Earth. It never fails to remind me that I am only one small, young crone in a vast Universe not fully understood by any of us. Being reminded of this fact helps me to access my humility and to harbor hope. Life is still a mystery and as long as there is mystery, there is hope.

            But, I digress.

            The meteorologists have been doing their version of what I call the Snow Hoedown. It’s a plucky little dance that someone should set to fiddle music. It concerns itself with concepts like, is it going to snow? How much? Where? Is it just gonna snow or is it going to be one of those ice storms (God/dess deliver us from the ice storms)? Late last week it began, the Snow Hoedown, I mean. The “s” word was mentioned during the evening weather forecast along with much caution about not panicking, it was, they said, still too early to tell. By Saturday, the Conventional Wisdom was that North Alabama—think NASA Space and Rocket Center—would receive the “worst” of the snow and that we here in central Alabama—Roll Tide!—would experience sleet and freezing rain. There was the unspoken but very real possibility of the dreaded (cue the melodramatic scary music—dun,dun,dduunn) ice storm! The two other newscasters and the sports dude looked aghast at their weather brother whose tie suddenly seemed too tight. Now it was no longer a question of “if” but “when” the run on the grocery stores would begin.

            The only thing more dangerous than a snow and ice storm in Alabama is the run on the grocery stores. You take your life in your hands just driving to the store. Inside it’s like Black Friday just before the stampede gets started and the blood starts to flow. It is, in fact, one of the reasons our weather people are very careful about mentioning the “s” word (snow) or the “I” word (ice). There are people in this state very willing to get into cars during the worst of it or during the middle of the night and make an early run on the grocery store. They are usually the lousiest of drivers yet, somehow, always seem to make it back home unscathed.

            There are three things the majority of Alabamians buy when sleet, snow, or (shudder) ice is mentioned in a forecast: bread, milk and eggs. That’s it. Bread, milk and eggs. They don’t clean out the canned goods section, there will always be plenty of batteries left and the produce section will be largely ignored. But the bread shelves, milk refrigerators and cooled egg cases will be empty. If you listened hard enough you would be able to hear the sighing sound of empty Arctic tundra in these areas of the grocery stores. No, there won’t be any more “in the back” if you ask store employees. Don’t even think about going to the convenience stores, they were the first to be emptied out. At the convenience stores there is a fourth item usually on the snow day grocery list---beer. I could not make this shit up.

            When I got older, because I am a troublemaker, I began to ask why. Why bread, milk and eggs? Why? Nobody had a good answer. The only thing that comes readily to my mind that requires those three ingredients is…..French toast. Was everybody in on some secret French toast conspiracy that I was ignorant of? If we all must eat French toast on snow days or risk a fate worse than death, why have I not been made aware of this? If you live in Alabama and fail to eat French toast when snowed and/or iced in do you turn into something awful? Do you become (shudder, shudder) a non-Southerner if you fail to prepare and eat said delicacy? “Ye ain’t from around here, are ye boy?” (echo, echo) Why was I not told!? This could be serious!

            For one, brief, mad second the meteorologist put up a graphic of the state which I have named, The Bread Graphic, TBG for short. It was a map of the state divided into sections each section labeled with the number of loaves of bread that people needed to buy at the store. We were in the two loaf area. Seriously, I am not making this up; I wish I was. Even the professionals are in on the bread/milk/egg conspiracy whatever it’s about!

            I know, my little witches, you all want to know if Aunty Selene caved? Did I dash to the store and for reasons I don’t understand buy the Holy Trifecta of food? Did I finally learn what larger conspiracy might be going on among us on snow days? Did I solve said mystery from the safety of circle, Tarot cards clenched tightly in my hand while the snow and/or sleet and/or ice fell from the depths of a lowered February sky?

            No, no. Aunty Selene did not, in fact, visit any store even though we are currently out of bread, have only powdered milk (which we use for cooking but have not yet learned to tolerate the taste of with our cereal), and are down to two eggs in the carton. Why, Aunty Selene? Why not indulge the little voice inside your head that whispers, “Milk, eggs, bread. Milk, eggs, bread. Buy and be fed; don’t and be dead. Milk, eggs, bread.” Because my little witches, that whole rush to the store is lemming behavior!  Besides, that whole chant thing I was hearing was in my mother’s voice so I knew it wasn't really Wiccan nor could it have been something left over from some previous incarnation. It was and is pure foolishness. There is no French toast conspiracy in Alabama (I can’t speak for the rest of the country on this one but there probably is no French toast conspiracy in the whole of the United States either).

            Late in the afternoon yesterday, there was a weather update on the local ABC website. It seemed the whole system had reconciled itself to staying tucked far to the North of Central Alabama. We would only experience “cold rain.” In February, the rain is always cold so, no biggie. And so, here I sit, telling the story of the uncommon rain that is whispering its way through my life right this moment. I am snug under the electric blanket, writing this post and thinking about the incredible number of micro-changes that must’ve occurred for us to move from snow/ice to “just cold rain.” I am grateful for those uncommon changes, grateful for the cold rain, grateful for the singular sound of the rain falling on the metal roof of my uncommon underground home.

While he will probably never read this post or know that I’ve done so, I dedicate this post to James Spann and the rest of the weather and news team at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, AL. You guys are the best in the business. Thank you for your dedication both to the profession of meteorology and to keeping us, the viewers in your market, safe from the literal storms we weather here in West Central Alabama.

BB-Selene

Uncommon Thanks

Dear CRPS, poverty, and all other poor decisions I’ve made that’ve landed me bed bound for 11 days now,

                I am alive, you fuckers, I’m alive. You didn’t kill me and you didn’t make me kill myself though I admit that was a close one. Some days I couldn’t confront the “take it a day at a time” mantra; it was a breath at a time mantra. In and out. In and out. In and out until something gave a little bit. I’ve made an extensive study of the wall beside my bed. The one the clock that ticks off the seconds of time until this is all over hangs. It is complete in its imperfection, like me. There are fingerprint smudges, small smudges of color where God/dess knows what swiped against it, and a couple of small dings that I have no idea of their origin. That damn wall is a lot like me, full of the smudges of mistakes, dings from passing too close to angry people with judgmental attitudes and the fingerprints of those I have loved that are printed on my heart. See, I am alive. I may, in fact, be more alive than I have ever been. So thanks for that.

                Thanks for the pain both from the disease and from the withdrawal from the meds I’ve been taking. It forced me to research my disease and thus find some answers to questions I didn’t even know I had. It made me take stock of myself, not my life, myself. Big difference there, huge difference. Really, focused my mind inward, down into the dusty corners people have inside them but where they rarely visit. There are gems and gifts and monsters down there. All the monsters look like me and I am no longer afraid of them. Am not sure if I can get the gems and gifts up and out but I know they’re there and monsters are powerful creatures so maybe I will liberate them and they will rescue me from this poverty that is frankly freezing my fingers on this keyboard at 4 AM. I am now also able to tell the difference between CRPS pain and the other, lesser pains of simple arthritis that NSAIDs will handle. So thanks for refining all that for me. It’s been an education and if you knew me at all you’d know the only thing I’m truly addicted to, is learning.

                Thanks for the friends I’ve been forced to meet. I had self-isolated which is never a good thing. Thanks to you, I’ve met people who are like ME. Some are Wiccan/Pagan and don’t judge my spiritual path; some are bed bound and disabled in the body like me and some have been disabled by that dirty trick you sometimes use on people’s minds. But make no mistake, they are my friends. They’ve accepted me and loved me and supported me right out of the gate. Without you I’d never have met any of them! I’d surely be a much, much poorer person if that had happened. It’s been their bravery, their strength, their belief, their hope, their courage that’s given me what I needed to find my own. I won’t thank you for the help of my Dear Son. He is and has always been my gift to myself. You can’t take credit for him. I won’t let you.

                Oh, and thanks for the insomnia. Without it, I probably would never have just said “fuck it” and started the blog or the website business. What else is a person who has no television service supposed to do at 3 AM except write and decide to take chances that the daylight makes seem silly? Oh, it exhausts me, weakens me, makes me cry but without it I’d never have watched the moon from my window as she’s travelled across the sky, waning, waning these last eleven days just like you. I also have learned to tell the time of the early morning by the amount of early morning light coming through the window and I can predict the sunrise almost to the minute. I don’t know if these things have any value now or if they ever will but somehow they seem important to me. So thanks for the insomnia. It fogs up my mind sometimes but I’ve learned so much here during these cold, dark, long nights alone with only you for company.

                Thanks for the weakness I’ve felt in my body. My knees are so weak, I can barely make it to the bathroom and I did do a header into the bathtub a few days ago that’s left a large bruise on my arm. It just reminds me that we are all weak at some time in our lives whether physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. I may fall but I will heal. I won’t thank you for not cracking my head open and forcing me to bleed to death before Dear Son found me. That was the God/dess so don’t expect any special kudos for that. But you should know that the weakness is slowly, very slowly, passing. One day, I expect to wake, probably at 3 AM, and find that my legs will carry me all the way to the kitchen and beyond. Then you’d better look out because I am coming for you and when I catch you (and make no mistake, I WILL catch you) you will be a sorry son of a bitch because I will do everything I can to make sure you and your influence is reduced among others who suffer the way I have. Fair warning; just thought you should know.

                Thanks for the unrelenting thirst and the loss of desire for food. I’ve lost ten pounds just lying in this bed, suffering yes, but still just lying here. I’m only thirty pounds away from what I always considered my ideal weight. Boy, what a jump start you’ve given me. The thirst is just awesome; it has stimulated some kind of creative problem solving inside me that I didn’t know existed. For example, well a person who’s weak and hurting and sleep deprived and scared half to death tends to spill things so I’ve learned to use the adult version of a sippy cup with a lid and a straw. And to keep me from knocking the damned thing onto the floor and out of reach I’ve used a roll of duct tape as a kind of coaster/keeper. The sippy cup sits in the middle of the roll. It fits perfectly! Duct tape really does fix everything…well, except pain and sleeplessness and all the other gifts of CRPS and its cohorts. But given time duct tape might just fix you too.

                Thanks for the sweats. At least they are happening in the winter during a time I cannot afford to turn on the heat in the house. All I have to do for relief is just throw the covers off. Of course, I still have to deal with the sweat but I have a towel that lives here in the bed with me to dry off all the places the sweat tends to linger. Then all I need to do to be comfortable again is to get dry and warm. I have the electric blanket and the heating pads for that and it is always, as the Australians would say, a two dog night here. They snuggle me and keep me loved and warm. I’m sure the sweats must be evacuating some kind of noxious “stuff” from my body, so keep ‘em coming, you bastard, because I know how to deal with them now.

                Thanks for the anxiety and the panic attacks that come out of nowhere and whisper to me that we are going to freeze to death or starve to death or that some of the animals will. Now I know that fear is just a feeling. It might raise my blood pressure but it probably won’t kill me since I don’t have heart disease, I have CRPS. We might indeed starve or freeze but now I know that I won’t let that happen to the innocents, my pets. I know now what must be done if it comes to that. So thanks for making of me a person who can face some tough decisions and act in spite of her fear. I think they call that courage don’t they? The feeling the fear but acting on it anyway? Now I know without a doubt that I do possess courage.

                Thanks for the bitch-o-meter that goes from zero to uber-bitch in one fifth of a second. Man, is that fast! It helped me defend myself against the attacks of my extended family. Helped me put up some real boundaries with them about my choice of how to worship the Divine. I think my mother now understands what will happen if she ever calls me a blasphemer again and I’ve learned NOT to read any of my brother’s emails that begin with the words “I know you’ll be mad after you read this email.” My bitch-o-meter kept me from playing “Whose Chronic Illness is Worse?” with my mother. So thanks for that.

                Thanks also for the diarrhea. I almost thought I was going to get out of this without experiencing it but the small bowl of Ramen noodles I was able to choke down tonight must’ve tipped the scales. Poop is a good thing, even diarrhea, because having it means I know that my bowels are still working despite the number you are doing to them with the whole neuron dysfunction thing. I appreciate the reassurance that my body, though hurt beyond my telling, though suffering through withdrawal too, though weak and thirsty and unable to bear much food, is still working. It’s doing its job to spite you, you cock-knocker. It may be hurt but it is not out of the game yet so you can wipe that smug smile right off your lips because the food is moving through me not putrefying inside a locked down stomach that refuses to accept new foods and throws them up. Given a choice between diarrhea and vomit, I’ll take diarrhea every time.

                So, yeah, thanks for it all and for all the lesser things I haven’t mentioned. I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and begin some kind of treatment for the pain that maybe doesn’t involve meds I have to withdraw from but the life lessons I’ve learned here in bed, the things I’ve discovered about myself and my situation and who I really am and what I will or won’t tolerate, those are mine to keep. You can’t take those from me. It’s been a really uncommon ride and it’s almost over. In the immortal words of Frank Sinatra, thanks for the (uncommon) memories. But don’t think I’ll miss you when you are gone. I am going to devote myself to educating people about you. I’m going to tell them what to expect and some ways to deal and what they can do constructively with your little “gifts.” And don’t forget my promise, I’m coming for you. I’m on my uncommon way right now.

XXOO (just kidding; I really mean fuck off)--Selene 

Uncommon Insomnia

This night--every night--seems to wrap warm, soothing arms around me. Holding me safe like the inside of the Mother's womb. But we're not supposed to love the night. We humans are supposed to be creatures of the day. And so I try. I try to sleep at night and get up to take care of the business of the day. I try to look "normal." But I'm not normal. I'm a witch and that fact alone excludes me from what most people consider "normal."
       I don't mind my not-normalness, my uncommonness, though it confounds the once borns who share my life through blood ties and history. They don't understand me at all. They deny my spiritual choice and, in their ignorance, in their refusal to let me educate them about who I am and what I believe, they "pray" for me. They pray to their angry Judeo-Christian God that I will come to my senses and fall to my knees in supplication. They pray that I will never be financially well off so that I will remain humble. I do not speculate about these things, my family has confessed them to me. I think about it often in the dark, when the Mother shines down on me as I watch her from the porch of my little house in the valley, barefoot, shivering. I think about it in the dark of my room while I listen to the clock on the wall tick away the seconds of the nights. The warm embrace of the darkness holds me, is my only defense against the sorrow and fear of it all. Here in the still of the night I can pretend none of it is real, I can find the hope and store some of it to get me through another day.
        I am often awake at dawn since I do not sleep well. I go back out on the porch at the same place that I communed with the Goddess a few hours previously and I watch the Sun, symbol of Her consort the God peek over my eastern horizon and set the sky on fire with his love. I try to welcome each day. Do the LBRP, welcome Deity into my next 24 hours but try as He may to burn hope and love into my heart, the days are when I am burdened most by my unnaturalness, by the price I am paying for my choice to live an uncommon life.
       I am, along with my adult son, walking the tightrope of life without a net. And it is a very, very long fall if I make a misstep. We have no family to turn to for help--they made that clear. They'll pray for me but I must figure out how to coax the manna from Heaven if I want to eat. I doubt seriously this is what my mother meant when she prayed her poverty prayer for me. But I believe that everyone does magick...they just don't know it. What are prayers but spells by another name? If energy and genuine desire is in prayer, it works just like a spell works under the same conditions. After all, any witch who has studied at all knows the only things you really need for a spell are the witch and her will.
       I am responsible for my own life. I made choices that put me in an uncomfortable place in my uncommon life but it does seem as though my efforts to improve my lot in life, magickal and mundane, have been blocked. As crazy as it sounds in the light of day, I think the people who were supposed to love me the most have been putting serious effort into keeping me down. And though those words might sound crazy in the light of day, at night when I submit to the uncommon insomnia, it sounds like perfect sense to me. All that remains is to figure out how to fix it, how to turn the bus around, how to stop the train wreck that is already in progress.
       If any of you read this blog post and have advice, I would so appreciate it. I may be a crone (a young crone, mind you) but I know there is so much that I do not know, so much that might help me. Even just knowing that someone else cares enough to read this post is so important because in my uncommon insomnia it's easy to believe I am utterly alone in this world.

Uncommon Pain

            I’ve spent the last two days trying NOT to think about it—the pain—but pain has its own way of deciding whether or not you think about it. When it becomes a fixture of everyday life, it makes sure you don’t forget it. So, I am a chronic pain patient. No, I am not a drug addict. That cliché has been done to death—the person in long term pain who becomes addicted to their pain meds then decides to take more and more to chase the ever elusive high. I don’t get high when I take my meds. The pain just recedes and I function more normally.

            But pain is a motherfucker. It doesn’t play by rules, it doesn't respect boundaries, it is unpredictable. Especially long term pain. Long term pain is a bugger, it’s the ass fuck you never asked for, the ultimate motherfucker.

            Ah, Selene, you may say. Now you have become coarse, you’ve become profane. What happened to all the poetic language in your little uncommon life?

            Chronic pain takes everything good away from the person it afflicts. Chronic pain takes the sufferer to two predictable places: suicide or apathy; if it isn't controlled. And controlling it is way more than just popping a pill four times a day.

            But I think I’m ahead of myself. Anybody who really gave a merry fuck about another person’s pain would have the good sense to ask a simple first question. How did you come to be this way? Where did the pain come from? And is it all physical or is some of it psychological? And how are you dealing with both things, if indeed both apply?

            Fair, fair, fair questions, all of them.

            It started when I was six years old. For a young old crone like me, that was a lifetime ago. I fell down a set of porch stairs and broke my arm. It was a bad break, right at the elbow joint. The local doctor could not get the bones to set properly. After trying for an hour while I screamed and my family restrained my father, they took me to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, TN because we lived near there at the time. It was 1966.

            The doctors couldn’t find a pulse in my arm. They put me in traction for two weeks, then on the amputation list. The day before my arm was to be taken off, they found a weak pulse, put me in a cast and sent me home. Disaster, averted. Shriners paid off the monster hospital bill.

            But such injuries are rarely without complication. Neither was this one.

            When the ordinary circulatory system is interrupted, given enough time, the body develops coping mechanisms called collateral circulation. Basically, it grows new arteries and new pathways to carry blood and nourishment to the tissues. But these collateral systems are never as efficient or as complete as the original system. When nourishment to the tissues and other systems is less than sufficient, there are problems. In my case, I developed something called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. It has waxed and waned for a decade or more now.

            It’s just pain, you might think. But it’s not. It is pain that’s fucked up. Pain is supposed to tell you that something is wrong with your body, fix it or knock off whatever you’re doing. But this pain is different. This pain is injurious in and of itself. It attacks the very nerve fibers that carry it, it interrupts circulation, at its most extreme, it begins to devour bone. The pain itself must be managed. And there lies the root of the problem. The very medications needed to interrupt this cycle are viewed by society at large with very suspicious eyes these days. They make doctors very nervous because the feds are standing at their backs like rabid dogs frothing at the mouth.

            The story of my arm doesn’t begin to address what I did to my back while nursing. Let’s just say those problems are not going to get well either. When you have chronic pain in more than one area of the body, it doesn’t take long for the whole system to fuck up and the person experiencing the pain, and there’s always a person behind the pain, has trouble distinguishing where it’s coming from, how bad it is, or what to do about it. That’s why chronic pain makes addicts of so many people. They begin as simply goddamned confused and scared, trying to cope, trying to keep on keeping on, then one day, pretty soon into the whole mess, they take too much of one thing or another and get high.

            Can I even tell you how good it feels just not to hurt? I don’t think I can if you’ve never really hurt.

            Then they confuse the high with being taken back to a state of simply having no pain and, slam, bam, thank-you ma’am, they’re addicted.

            It’s a slippery slope. One you don’t want to go down if you have any intelligence at all because I know people, very smart people, nurses, doctors, engineers, who’ve had pain, got addicted and ended up dead. Chasing the high. See, it takes more and more to get high. One day they snap, take too much, and wake up dead.

            The problem with chronic pain is that it’s a slippery slope, too. It takes a while to find the right dose to control. I don’t mean days, I mean weeks of suffering with a dose or a drug that’s insufficient to control the pain you have. Weeks and weeks. Then, when you find the right drugs in the right doses, this could be a year or more in, the pain changes, morphs, moves, gives you other symptoms to go with it, like sleeplessness, depression, difficulty concentrating, the tip of the iceberg. You see CRPS spreads like cancer. I now have involvement in my throat, my teeth, my gut and my blood pressure. All from CRPS. Who can work like that?

            Not a young crone, I’ll tell you that.

            Then what?

            Then you gotta get drugs for the other motherfucking symptoms. Pretty soon you’re a walking, talking, fucking pill factory and your mother is looking at you like you’re an addict, talking to you like one, too. So do the people at some pharmacies. And you, yeah, you with the problems and the pain, you have to figure out how to pay for it all because let me tell you, my friend, pain doctors do not take referrals to treat Medicaid patients and if you have chronic pain but no pain doctor, all you’re left with is chronic pain.

            Yeah, that’s my rant.

            So, it’s been like waking up and realizing you’ve had the sword of Damocles hanging over your head for practically your whole life and wondering how much of it had to do with the fall and how much of it had to do with the five trillion times I heard after that, “Don’t do that, you’ll  break your arm again.” As if I planned it. As if, somehow, it was my fault. People cast spells every day; most of them just don’t realize they do it.

            It’s all over now though, all but the living with the pain. I mean, once you’re fucked, you’re fucked, doesn’t much matter if you figure out why—the fall or the constant negativity about it. And, truth to tell, I don’t think about that aspect of it much. Good for me.

            And how long have I been treated for this uncommon pain? About ten years, off and on. But here’s a secret about living with chronic pain. Knowing you’re never going to be well, that it’s never going to be over, well, that does a number on your head. Yeah, you saw the psychology going in, didn’t you?

            If you’re not hurting, you’re thinking about hurting. And, in the end, isn’t this pretty much just hurting all the fucking time? Yeah, yeah it is. The thing is, chronic pain doesn’t feel like acute pain. Not at all. Acute pain is sharp, cutting, right now. Chronic pain is deep and intense and the kind of sensation your body avoids acknowledging until you find yourself rocking on the bed wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Then after about 10 minutes or 10 hours depending on your experience with it, you sit up and say, “Well, shit. I’m hurting and I forgot to take my meds.” And it’s soooo much worse at that moment. So much worse. Because you know you’re now going to have to wait for the meds to catch up with the pain again. To chase it down and knock it in the head.

            If there is anything good in all this, and that’s a big if, it’s that pain is also an intense focuser. It forces you to focus. Now, not smart people will focus on the pain itself. And that’s not a judgment; it’s just a fact and it’s an easy thing to do. After all, pain is right there, in your face every moment of every day.

            A smarter thing to do with the focus is to turn it inwards—to shine a light on who you really are, what you really believe and think and feel. And to be honest with yourself if with no one else about what you find down there, past the pain, in the cellar of your soul where you live. Pain can create situations in your life where you make decisions and they will not be decisions to be taken lightly because pain will take you to the place where you really live.

            Are you really a nurse, even though you were one for almost 20 years? Or are you a writer with minimal chances that anybody will read or care about what you wrote? Pain will take you to the place where the honest answer lies. And like it or not, you’ll know what you have to do. Are you a lemming or a troublemaker who isn't interested in being told what to think but only interested in having your own questions about God/dess, yourself, the nature of the universal, existential shit like that, answered?

            I have truly known only a couple people besides me who are in chronic pain. By truly known, I mean they were intimately connected with my life. Everyone, everyone, everyone I’ve ever known who has chronic pain sooner or later comes to the place of focus. Most of us come out the other side and can never be the people we were before we went in. The rest of us don’t come out. They cannot take the truth of what they find. They end their lives, either slowly or fast. Or they simply lose their minds. Stephen King said no one could chart what goes on in that lonely blue hell. We simply come out the other side, profoundly changed, or we don’t come out at all.

            I don’t know what I will do with this uncommon post. It seems too intimate, too intense, and yes, probably too vulgar to share…..that’s a lie. It’s my truth and if it can help anybody I will share it.

            If you or someone you love is in chronic pain but you don’t know what to do or where to turn, please google “chronic pain help.” It should take you to a list that includes legitimate organizations that can help people in pain. Look for the .org at the end to make sure you’re not being directed to someone selling something. These organizations are supposed to be uniquely qualified to help those suffering, both patient and family. I wanted to list them but when I called to ask was told to send a copy of this post so the PR person could decide if the organization wanted to be associated with it. Really? Really? Well, I don’t want to endorse on my blog any organization that needs to edit me before they’ll help anyone who reads this!

            Never forget my brothers and sisters who suffer you are not alone and your pain is uncommon because it belongs to you. And you also live an uncommon life.

BB-Selene

Uncommon Questions

            We all tend to get caught up in our own uncommon lives. That’s not a judgment or a criticism; it’s just a fact. The baby’s screaming, the soup is boiling over, there are too many bills and not enough bank, etc., etc., etc. We often count ourselves lucky to lie down at night and be done with the day just so we can get back up and do it all again tomorrow. ‘S’ok. I’ve been there, too. It’s like a circus without the colors or the ringmaster or anything to make us grown up kids smile. Life can suck hard.

            But, other uncommon lives are going on all around us. Most of us will never know about their extraordinary lives—and make no mistake, gentle reader, yours is extraordinary, too. But I’m a troublemaker, not a lemming, and sometimes I see things and hear things and I find I must ask questions. Usually they are hard questions that can only be answered by the Divine. Occasionally, they are questions about the nature of our very humanity and why the hell certain people are allowed to run amok and occupy positions of authority?

            There are never any hard and fast answers; at least not yet. But two stories made Yahoo today and one of them made me so angry I almost punched out my own computer screen while the other made me want to weep.

            I have questions, Blessed Divine Creator, and I would have answers, please.

Authority Amok

            In a grainy video released on ABC World News Tonight and posted on Yahoo is the unmistakable footage of two Philadelphia police officers chasing down a man on a motorcycle, nudging his bike with their car causing him to crash and then beating the shit out of him apparently because he ran. Excessive use of force by the police isn’t a new thing these days. It’s so common it’s almost become ho-hum. But the photo of this man’s face after his little “run in” with the law is appalling! This guy shouldn’t be in jail; he should be in a hospital! But, here’s my question. Why is it that the Philadelphia Police Department was willing to back these officers right up until the point that the victim’s girlfriend went door to door asking businesses about video surveillance footage of this crime—and make no mistake this was a crime—BEFORE said video was “discovered” by the authorities? The victim’s girlfriend? Really?

            Since when did we as American citizens begin to bear the burden of finding out the truth about what happens on the streets when something like this happens? Why weren’t these two chuckle-fucks (my son coined this term; I love it because when it’s called for, it really fits) being investigated by their own? Their captains or lieutenants or other higher ups?

            Go my little witches, go to Yahoo or the ABC site and look this up. Look at this man’s face after what chucklefuck #1 and chucklefuck #2 did to him! This should not be tolerable to us as a nation. What the hell does “to protect and serve” actually mean? To protect and serve our own asses while we beat the shit out of yours? And while you’re at it, gentle reader, go to YouTube and look up the other violence perpetrated by the police like the woman who is literally thrown through the air into her cell where she does a face plant into the concrete cot on the wall. Yeah, they paid her money but the problem is that the pay-offs don’t seem to be doing a damn thing to stop the idiocy.

            So, you may say, Aunty Selene, what are we to do about this mess? Is there even an answer?

            I think so. Did you know that the average street cop does not possess a 4 year college degree? Did you know that he can today be slicing meat at Kroger and tomorrow be carrying a badge and a gun? My solution? I believe all policemen and policewomen for that matter should be required to possess a professional degree. That does not mean, my little witches, that they just graduate a 4 year institution. It also means they must sit for a test from a professional licensing board, like nurses, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. It also means if after passing said exams they act like chucklefucks they will lose their professional license and never again work in the field.

            These people carry guns for the love of God/dess! Nurses, lawyers, engineers and other professionals do not in the course of their daily business carry said weapons nor do they have the authority to pull them whenever they damn well please! Why would we NOT as a society demand this from those who have vowed to “protect and serve” us?

            Oh don’t come at me with the whole police academy bullshit. It does not screen people who have violent tendencies well enough, it does not confer upon its graduates the responsibility to be smart enough to pass a standardized licensing test at the end of their training, and it doesn’t weed out the ones who just don’t need to be on the street.

            Lemme let you in on a fact I found out the hard way. I’ve already admitted I live rurally but I don’t live on the top of Mt. Weather or in the back of beyond, though sometimes it can feel that way. I live 20 miles from a town, less than that from a police jurisdiction. I had to call the police, actually the sheriff’s department, but that’s just splitting hairs, once upon a time on a matter of some urgency. It took them more than an hour to get here! They just mosied on in, hands on their weapons belts like the tough jocks they probably were in high school. An hour! Do you have any idea what can happen in an hour to a person? I’d been threatened with a gun, held at gunpoint for several hours along with my son, fought the man with the gun, managed to take it away from him and run to the nearest neighbor a quarter mile away where we waited an hour for the police to mosey on up!

            That my friends, is unacceptable. Just a little domestic disturbance. Really? Really?

            This silliness needs to stop. Law enforcement should be professionals and by professionals I mean they should sit a standardized board of examination administered by a regulating agency endorsed by the state and federal government. And another VERY important question, why are we not demanding this?

            Folks, violence and riots are NOT going to get done what needs doing. Only concerted, well thought out, grassroots political action is going to change this. Until then what happened in Ferguson, Missouri and in Philadelphia is going to keep right on happening.

            The guys on the camera have been, and I quote, “suspended” pending the outcome of an investigation. I urge everyone who reads this to take another look at the victim after what they did to him and ask yourself, “If these men had to keep a professional license would they have behaved as they did? If they did behave with such gross misconduct and they were professionally licensed, let me promise you they would NOT be on suspension. They would be fired and they’d never again work as police officers! And I should know because I am a professional. I am an RN. I did sit the board. I do understand “due diligence” and I know if I acted other than professional I would not be an RN today, though I am disabled and thus unable to work. I am still a professional.

            Here’s the Yahoo link for those who’d like to be outraged as well. I believe in sharin’ the love:

http://news.yahoo.com/video/alleged-police-beating-caught-tape-013739615.html

           

Bobbi Kristina Brown

            Many people in this country, including me, were so saddened to hear that the daughter of arguably one of the finest singers of our time, had suffered a serious injury in almost the exact way that her famous mother died. To add to the awful irony was that it occurred just a few days shy of the third anniversary of her mother’s death. Bobbi Kristina is just 21.

            It was widely reported that drugs were suspected as playing a role in the incident.

            I cannot imagine the anguish it must’ve cost her father. I would respect his wishes for privacy at this time. He and Bobbi Kristina’s entire family need time to process the incident, to grieve, to pray and hope and ask questions of God/dess whomever they perceive It to be.

            But today, February 7, 2015, the news is reporting that her husband has “lawyered up” and that she has “injuries that need to be explained.” WTF? That a friend came over at 9 AM, was told Bobbi K was upstairs in the bedroom but that when a service person called at 10 AM,

an hour later, the friend discovered her in the tub. Now the husband wants immunity before he’ll talk. I’m sorry to say that in my experience no one asks for immunity who is not in some way involved in what went wrong.

            But all that is beside the point.

            Included in the article is a photo of Bobbi K with Nick Gordon. It is at once beautiful and heartbreaking. She must’ve been very happy that day. I am an amateur studier of faces. Look at that smile! That’s no fake, for Hollywood smile because a real smile always, always, always includes the eyes. Bobbi K’s eyes are smiling. And look at her beautiful mouth, open, showing all her teeth; ah, this was not just a happy day for her. It was joyous, magnificent, without compare. The kind of day we have only a few times in the course of our lives but remember always.

            Here’s the link to the photo if you want to take a look: http://www.rickey.org/nick-gordon-lawyered-bobbi-kristina-foul-play-criminal-investigation-underway/276114/  I wanted to include the photo itself but this machine is acting up.

            Now my question. Where is she? Where is Bobbi K at this moment? As I understand it she has what the news is calling “minimal” brain function whatever that means and that she is being kept alive via a respirator that is doing her breathing for her. She is not conscious. So, as a nurse, it sounds to me as if she isn’t quite alive but she isn’t dead either. So where is she?

            Is she “sleeping” as we all do each night (or day, depending on when we work)? It would be a comfort for me as a parent to believe that. The oblivion of sleep isn’t such a bad place.

            Is she in some limbo place, aware but not understanding what’s happening to her? I can’t believe my loving Creator would allow such a thing!

            Is she dreaming? Of happier days, blissful moments such as she experienced in this photo, and being “engaged” by same said dreams? That would be a loving and comforting belief.

            The truth is, I don’t know where Bobbi K’s consciousness is at this moment. I only know her father and her extended family are gathered around her and they are scared, they are worried, they want more than anything else in this world for her to open her eyes and say, “Hi Daddy. I sure do love you.” I pray (yes, witches pray, we ask for Divine intervention, too) for that as well. I also pray that someone who has access to the family, someone with an open and loving heart, will take her father in his/her arms and will comfort him in this awful time, will give him strength to get through this, and will help him make any hard choices that come. In short, my friends, I am asking the Divine Creator of us all to send Bobby Brown…an angel.

            Angels, you see, come in all shapes and sizes. They may manifest as physical which is rare or as spiritual. But I want an angel for Bobby Brown! Bobby Brown needs and deserves an angel at this time. No father should have to bear such a burden devoid of Divine help.

            I ask every one of you who read this blog (both of you-lol) to also pray that God/dess, whomever you understand that to be, will mercifully send Bobby Brown an angel to comfort him and to help him through this difficult time.

            Selene, you might ask, what about the angel for Bobbi K.? I trust that the loving Creator has already sent such a one to her side the very minute she suffered whatever injury she suffered. And whether she’s asleep, in limbo, or dreaming, I believe it hovers ever near her, whispering sweet words of comfort.

            In June of 2002, my father who had suffered with Alzheimer’s for four years suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized. By that time he had almost forgotten how to swallow, could not talk, nor walk, nor tend to his bodily functions. We all knew those days would come and as a family we decided NOT to try to extend his life through artificial means. He was kept comfortable, given pain meds, a plain IV, and oxygen. He, too, appeared to be sleeping. But at around 4:40 AM on June 18^th he awoke suddenly, he looked at all of us as if he recognized us which he hadn’t done in months, then he sat up and began to reach for something in the far upper corner of his hospital room. Something none of the rest of us could see. It must have heeded his call for he lay back on the bed, a little smile on his face, and he died. He was buried two days later…on my 42^nd birthday. But I know my father saw his own angel at that moment. That knowledge comforts me.

            The angel of death is NOT the spectre in the hood carrying a scythe. She must be the most beautiful of all the angels or else my daddy would never have reached for her. And if there is an angel of death, there is surely an angel who comforts. I pray that Bobby Brown receives one during this difficult vigil and I am without doubt that Bobbi K has been constantly attended by such a one during this, her most uncommon of times.

Uncommon Spirituality

            The first thing that needs to be addressed before any of you, my gentle readers, go forth into my blog mining for the gold nuggets that might make life if not easier at least more tolerable, is my unflagging faith. Fear not, I will not be Bible thumping or Jesus bashing for that matter. I won’t be proselytizing or trying to convince you I am “right” (whatever that means) and you are “wrong.” I have always believed that it is an utterly stupid and pointless exercise in futility for people to argue, get angry, or fight over the nature and desires of the Divine. None of us know the ultimate will of the Divine so why fight over it? I frankly feel offended when I watch on TV the people who are still fighting wars over It.

            You will read that I often refer to the Divine Creator, what many people call God or Goddess by the impersonal pronoun “It.” I do not do this out of disrespect but as a sign of ultimate respect because, make no mistake about this, the Divine Creator of us all is a being that is NOT human. Gender is a human designation and I feel that to assign the Divine a gender is disrespectful. That is just my personal preference. But when you think about it a minute it makes sense. God possesses no penis; it has no need to eliminate. Ditto for the lady parts. Humans have “humanized” Deity to help us better relate to It. Oh, and it allows the leaders of some religious faiths to scare the shit out of their congregants by making It out to be an old, bearded man with a bad attitude and a chip on His shoulder. I don’t buy that either.

            Lady Gaga, arguably one of the most popular entertainers of our time has labeled herself “Mother Monster” and her fans her “little monsters.” And aside from a few snickers at first which she wisely avoided noticing, these labels remain and are accepted. Let’s just think about that for a moment. Monsters. What are they exactly? Well, she began calling them little monsters over their tendency to crawl all over each other during concerts in their excitement to be nearer her. Later someone called her the Mother Monster and soon she adapted it for herself. But that’s not what most people have meant historically when they yell, “Monster! Run!” But suffice it to say that society is totally OK mingling with little monsters who have a Mother.

            Society is not in general OK mingling with Witches even though very few of them know who or what we are. Yes, gentle reader, Selene is a witch, has been a witch for 25 years and plans to be planted at my death as one. I’ll give you a minute for the shock to pass, for you to be aghast or have a frothing at the mouth fit or to turn off the blog and remain in ignorance about who and what we are. G’head. I’ll wait.

            Done? Good. If you’re still with me I want to tell you just a few things about us since so many people seem not to know or care to know because they’ve been so indoctrinated about us. First, and foremost, we do not worship “the Devil” whomever that might be. In fact, we do not recognize the Devil as an original spiritual concept. Many of us do however believe that when enough people put enough energy into any abstract concept it can become very real. So while I might not buy the whole notion that the loving Creator I know would create a being so utterly opposite Its own nature, I believe wholly that people over the last 2000 or so years have created a being of energy who wishes us all harm. Is it God/dess’ ultimate enemy? Probably not, God/dess being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipotent which I do believe.

            And don’t bother looking around for the “Head Witch.” We don’t have one. In fact, our religion is a very, very loose gathering of souls who more or less believe the same things but even that isn’t quite true. Some of us prefer to worship “skyclad” (that’s naked to you uninitiated). Others of us feel comfortable leaving our clothes on. Selene is a clothes on kinda witch. I don’t have a bad looking body but it is sick and reacts poorly to weather extremes, although I admit to being tempted while worshipping down here in the summer to stripping off completely. Some of us follow certain traditions laid down by witches before us and some of us prefer to integrate the parts of Wiccan belief into a hodge-podge that’s generally called “eclectic.” I am one of the latter. Some of us form groups we call covens and worship together and some of us prefer to worship alone. I’ve done both.

            Contemporary Wiccan religion was started by a man named Gerald Gardiner in the UK in the 1950’s. It quickly gained a following and has been on the rise ever since. But archaeology tells us that our ancestors hundreds of years ago followed the paths of the stars across the sky as they marked the seasons. They watched the Sun and the Moon very carefully for they were an agrarian society and the Sun, the Moon, and the changing of the seasons meant life to them…or death if the changes in any of the three did not come. So we know they celebrated the changing of the seasons and though we think of them now as semi-savage, they worshipped a Divine Creator who provided the miracle of the seasons, the Sun and the Moon. Knowing that makes them seem a lot less savage to me. Contemporary Wiccans also celebrate the changing of the seasons. We give thanks that God/dess in Its divine wisdom has provided for us the means to take care of ourselves by allowing us time during the year to plant and harvest and rest. These holidays we call Sabbats and occur 8 times during what we call the Wheel of the Year.

            Also, at least once a month, usually when the Moon is full, we meet in secret places and we praise and give thanks to the Divine. We do NOT sacrifice babies or animals; what an abomination to our Deity and to us personally! We do NOT engage in any sort of blood sacrifice during our monthly Esbats. We gather, we create for ourselves a sacred space where no negative energy of anybody’s construction may enter, we call our God/dess to be in our midst, and we praise It. We partake in sacrament and offer any of it left back to the earth which shelters us. Sometimes we sing, drum, and dance in our joy. Then we each speak from our hearts about our love and appreciation for the Creator of us all, Wiccan, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and Judaic. Then we go home. Really except for the pews and for listening to one man tell us what to think about the Creator, it is very like a church service.

            Do we cast spells? Do people of mainstream faiths pray? People are people. We have things we desire, things we’d like to be rid of, physical and emotional components of our lives we’d like to see transformed. What I am saying is that we are all the same! A spell just involves the inclusion of some physical things to help the witch focus on the goal but spells also need no such physical “helpers.” All that’s needed, all that’s ever needed is a witch and her will.

            Do we believe in multiple gods? Some of us do; I personally do not due to my own interaction with Deity. It has many faces and lots of helpers but it is a single being who yet manages to be Trinity. I’ve said before and I’ll say again here, God/dess is all things to all people. What I mean by that is that the Divine is EXACTLY what you need It to be for you. It has evermore been so and will evermore be so.

            Do witches worship the earth? No, although we believe it is sacred as are all creations. We do believe, most of us, that a spark of the Creator lies within each created thing on this earth. Science would seem to back us up on this since they’ve discovered that each of us carries within us the same “stuff” that makes up the Universe. All the other things on the planet, too. No, we don’t worship the earth; we honor it.

            Do we believe in Jesus? What on earth is there to believe? The man lived. It is a historical fact. That question is rather like asking if we believe in Ghandi or Mother Teresa. Belief has nothing to do with it! These people lived, they made extraordinary contributions to humanity. They are no longer among us and we are poorer for their passing. But do we believe that Jesus was God’s only begotten Son who died on the cross for our sins? You would have to ask other witches but most of us do not. Personally, I believe he was one of the most extraordinary men, perhaps the most extraordinary man, to walk the earth. His message was one of love, tolerance and forgiveness which is strange considering that most churches who label themselves as Christian practice very little if any tolerance of other faiths. I think that would make Jesus sad. But it’s only my opinion and what do I know? I never met the man.

            I’ve only ever met God/dess. In the quiet of my special sacred space we meet. I talk to It. I violate the rules of my fundamental Baptist upbringing and question It. I am angry at It from time to time. I am abjectly sorry at others. Then, I am quiet and still. Quiet and still. It takes as long as it takes the quiet and still. And I wait for an answer. The answer ALWAYS comes. I have never asked a question that was not answered by the Divine. Never. But they are my answers; they satisfy me. Your answers might be different because God is all things to all people. It is what you need it to be. You only must be willing to accept the uncommonness of the relationship to benefit from it. Since we are all living uncommon lives, that really shouldn’t be too hard.

Blessed Be--Selene