Standing on the ledge

I'm feeling better physically today and the sun is shining again so my soul feels a bit better, too.  I had a good sleep with some nifty dreams that had little or no meaning except I do wonder about the baby I kept carrying around who kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn't walk while carrying him. I think I've got that one figured out, though.  I'm pretty sure that  has more to do with Zach going job hunting next week and me not making it my burden.

I didn't think too much about anything spiritual last night, focusing instead on just reading a biography and sleeping.  But it seems like the answers are following me around whether I'm looking for them or not.  It occurred to me that if I feel constrained in the Greek path to limit my pantheon, not practice magick or open myself up spiritually, that even though I enjoy the praxis, then where is the gain?   If all I am doing is going through the motions, no matter how much I enjoy the motions, then where is the growth?  However, if I follow a path that opens my spirituality up to more God/desses, more paths, and more growth, then how can that be bad? 

On the surface it seems like a no-brainer, but in light of my past, having been raised with no choices, having choices can sometimes be overwhelming.  And having too many choices can be as limiting as having none.  And I am pretty sure there are some readers out there who have lost patience with me, because I just keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again...over-thinking, over-analyzing, making it all too complicated.  I've made so many bad decisions as a Christian that I'm paralyzed by the fear of making the wrong decision again.  So I keep making the wrong decision.

Yeah, that makes sense. 

I keep saying I'm not going to think, analyze or complicate my path, but I keep doing it.  I do believe that things are improving even though you couldn't tell by what I write here.  But I'm not beating myself up as much anymore (really, I'm not) and I'm making myself transparent here so you all can see the process no matter how painful it is.  In the past I would have done a lot of deleting or wouldn't have written it in the first place. 

Going with my heart isn't as easy as it sounds when the heart has been scarred so much it's mostly just a callous.  I think I have to heal my heart before I can know just what it's saying.  And I think that's the path I need to walk down first, the one that leads to feeling again.  I've been avoiding it because I'm not sure I want to feel if pain is one of the things I'll have to feel again, but I can say that not feeling is a pretty miserable experience, too.  Maybe having to feel pain is worth the effort in order to feel joy, peace and love, too.

Opening up my heart is as frightening to me as stepping off a ledge without a safety line.  It may take me a few tries to actually take that first step.

Seeker me

I can't say anything changed overnight.  I didn't wake up feeling like a Druid or feeling like I knew the answers.  Nor do I feel particularly spiritual today as opposed to the past few weeks.  But I do have indications that I might be on the right path now...at least that I'm looking at it more closely.

The Tarot had been giving me gibberish lately, even after invoking Apollo and consecrating the deck to him.  And I mean complete gibberish.  I'm not great at reading the cards yet, but this was just not making any sense.  So I tried again today after lighting a candle and some heated oil (I water it down or it makes my eyes water) while trying hard to concentrate.  Initially I couldn't get the Greek path off my mind so I just did the cards asking if that was the right direction.  It was interesting that that reading told me that my past was strong, my present was weak and my future...well, I got the Death card.  And no, I don't think staying on the Greek path means I'm going to die.  But I did intuit that it might mean that this could be a spiritual death. Especially in light of feeling as empty as I do now.

So I tried again while focusing on the Celtic path.  I was amazed as the cards said my past was very weak, my present was in a good place and my future was going to be incredible.  Don't ask me what the cards were because I can't for the life of me remember now...just that I had swords for the past, and cups for the present and future.  I could look them up and figure out which ones I had but that would mean moving and I'm really tired right now.  This medicine is supposed to be non-drowsy but I'm sleeping a lot!

I'm not getting all giddy, figuring out that I know the answer yet, but I do think I'm getting close to the answer. Especially in light of finding out from Dark Mother yesterday that the owl is associated with Hecate, and as I had a connection with her before moving to Greek polytheism and none afterward, that might really be significant.  The "come home" request might have meant that she wasn't happy with me practicing Greek rituals in a Celtic pantheon.  But who knows?

As I'm not good at figuring out what's good for me, I'm going to just take it a bit easy and let this happen, if it's meant to happen.  I got my Druidry and Wiccan books out of the armoir and put them alongside my Greek books and I've got a book on order from the library on Celtic mythology.

But I must say that I never felt that charge of energy with the Greeks like I did with the Celts.  Even last night, when bringing out Cernunnos's candle, I felt a bit energized lighting it.

Still, I don't want to keep hopping from one thing to another so I'm going to just drift down the river for a bit and see what happens.

It sucks to be so afraid of commitment.

Hawks and owls

I have epiphanies.  Well, truthfully, I think I have epiphanies.  I'm not sure what they are because they frequently contradict themselves.  Maybe I'm just crap at figuring out what the epiphanies are.  Or I'm not really having them.  Maybe they're just brain farts.

Anyhoo...I was driving home from my millionth trip to town this week and saw a hawk on a power wire.  I have seen many a hawk, even on power wires so I don't know why this particular one made me feel like I'd touched raw electricity, but it did.

It's not even been a while since I've seen one, albeit not on a power line so I can't figure out why this one made me feel like someone was peeking into my soul.

My first thought was...what made me think the woman in my dream was Athena?  Well, the owl silly.  And she said to come home.  So...duh!

Except owls can mean other things and come home can mean something different, too.

All the way home I couldn't get it out of my head that maybe that wasn't Athena, so I pondered what was going on in my life and how my spiritual life was doing.  Truthfully, I was stagnating.  Seriously stagnating.  Now, I loved performing daily devotions to the Greek God/desses.  Loved the mythology even though I'm still not sure what to do with it.  But there wasn't a spiritual bone in my body anymore.  I was just in love with the ritual.

I realized that I wasn't interested in knitting, crafting, my crystals, herbs, nature...nothing.  I wasn't even particularly interested in the gods themselves.  I just liked doing the rituals.

So I looked up the owl in connection with Celtic mythology and found that the owl has been associated with the spiritual and the magical.  It's also a guide to the otherworld.  So who was the goddess who was calling me home?  Not a clue. But I wonder if her identity wasn't important.  That the message was.

But you would think these deities would make their messages a little more clear, wouldn't you?

Or at least give me a clue.

Or maybe they did.

I'm not sure what to do right now, but I do know that I was a much more spiritual person before I flirted with the Greek pantheon.  Not their fault, of course.  But it does answer a lot of unasked questions about my occasional longing to go back to church.  It was the ritual, not the deities.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that I don't want to feel hollow anymore.

I swear that hawk looked right into my eyes, but I could be wrong.  At any rate, I intend to look a little deeper into myself and find the answer I've been keeping hidden.

It's got to be there somewhere.

edit:  and apparently the hawk is the messenger between the physical and spiritual worlds.  Do I need a bigger kick in the ass?

You want to see courage?

I am so overwhelmed by Dark Mother's exquisitely expressed and transparent picture of raw pain that I can only point you in that direction. 

Getting to grow you...needing to get my seeds in their containers

I continue to improve.  Especially in the sleeping department.  I got to sleep fairly early, for me, and slept uninterrupted until around 8:30 a.m. when I got up to go to the bathroom, let the dog out/in and went back to sleep for another hour.  I just wish I felt more rested.  The headache is still there although not nearly as bad as it was and better than yesterday.  The pain in my jaw is much less than it was yesterday.  I have no idea what the problem is and if it comes back, I'll hightail it to the doctor immediately rather than go through this again.

I got my book today and intend to get busy reading it tonight in addition to the other books I've got on the table by my bed.  I'm just trying to read the ones I was only able to check out for 2 weeks first.

I need to clean house.  It's gotten away from me again, as usual.  I mean, we're not in any danger from the health department, and if someone came over, they would see it just cluttered a bit and not filthy, but Clutter and I are not close friends.  In fact, we hate each other; I can't abide Clutter's presence.  So I hope to work on banishing her from the house permanently.

As soon as I take another nap.

I'm nearly done with the Greek afghan.  I just need to bind off the last side, tuck in the ends and maybe crochet a row all the way around so it looks more finished.  Then I'm back to work on the Navajo coat and whatever else I find to knit.  I'm just amazed I was so faithful to the afghan.  That's so not like me.

The snow seems to be melting slowly and the ground is mushy to walk on.  It's generally ugly out there with the dirty snow and muddy ground, but I still feel optimistic and plan on getting some seeds started next week.  Looks like I'll have to order some more tobacco seeds.  It might be June before I dig out the desk and there is no guarantee that's where they are.

I just ordered some but I couldn't remember who I ordered them from.  I think I found the company and got 100 seeds for less than $7 including shipping.  Not a bad price.  I will probably get them next week some time so the spring planting can begin.  Just as soon as I find room on the shelf for the containers.  It might take me all week to figure that one out.

Well, time to fix supper.  I'm not really hungry but I want to go to bed and watch Frost (I was able to renew it so it's not due until next Friday) and finish up my afghan.

TTFN

Feeling better

I'm feeling better today.  The sinus pressure is gone, thanks in part to an antihistimine and a lot of sleep.  The pain in my jaw just might be TMJ, as it does tend to visit people with fibromyalgia.  My sister has TMJ but not the fibromyalgia and these things tend to run in families.  It's better today though so I'm not certain where it belongs.

I thought I would get my book today from Amazon.com but it looks like it got to the post office too late.  It should be here tomorrow though.  I got Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White.  What I won't be buying are books about Hellenic Reconstructionism because I find the more I read about it, the less I like any religion.  I'll let the God/desses tell me where to go.  And there are definitely things from my Celtic path days that I would like to keep that the recons would go ape-shit over but I doubt the deities would care about at all.  Like magic.  Not that I do magic much, but I don't like the option not open to me. 

But I do want to read more about the history of the Greek religion and culture.  I got a marvelous book from the library this week on the new shelf about Greek and Roman mythology.  But it also talks about how the myths were viewed at the time and how they have carried over in art and society today.  Definitely not from a religious perspective at all, but oh, so informative.  And I'm all for the truth rather than urban or folk legends.  Not that I don't find gems in them, but I had enough of fairy stories in Christianity that were portrayed as the absolute truth.  Let me find my own truth these days.  The book is The Greek and Roman Myths: a Guide to the Classic Stories by Philip Matyszak.  Great book so far.

And no, I don't get a kickback from Amazon.com for links.  :) 

I still enjoy the druidcasts and Damh the Bard and  Professor Ronald Hutton and now I have new things to love and enjoy.  All without commitment. 

Have you noticed that I love long hair on men?  And my husband wears his hair like he did in the Navy.  :(

I just don't feel a need to be this or that.  I'm just who I am as the God/desses help me mold myself.  I'm trying to be open (although I do admit there are things I am absolutely closed to, such as anything rigid and exclusive) and let my spirit soar.  It's the journey, after all, not the destination.

Dreams are not legal contracts

Apparently, dreaming is in the air.  Tom's dreams have been vivid as well.  I had another dream last night about the 12 Olympians in their thrones in a semi-circle.  They were earnestly discussing something with each other and didn't seem to notice me.  Or they didn't regard me.  Either one.

I will acknowledge that I got the last Percy Jackson book at the library yesterday and read it all in one sitting so that might have influenced me.  But I can't say I had a dream about the Olympic Gods when reading the other books.  But you never know. Still, nothing happens in dreams that lock you in to a commitment.  Which is good since I'm so commitment phobic.

I'm so intrigued that it was Athena who came to me in a dream because, as I said in the comments of the last post, she's never been one of the Goddesses I would have considered.  Had it been Artemis, I might have thought it was wishful dreaming, but being Athena, I tend to take it more seriously.

Although that still doesn't mean I should walk the Greek path.  But I must admit it seems like I'm fighting a walk in that direction.  As Tana said yesterday in the comments, we're ruined when it comes to making commitments.  Does that aspect ever heal in a person?  Can you stop being afraid of making wrong choices?

I found an owl statue at the thrift store today.  It's tiny, about 2 inches tall (actually there are two owls, one slightly larger than the other) and looks like bronze, although probably not as it doesn't feel heavy enough to be metal.  Just the right size for my altar.  I noticed that I also have a stag bell and a sand dollar as well.   Hmmmm....

I've been pondering having an eternal flame.  I did something similar to this in the interim between Samhain and Yule.  I have a battery-operated candle that I used instead of trying to set fire to the house, but I have a potpourri pot that I have scented water in (mostly lavender or lilac oils...and believe me when I tell you two drops is more than enough!) and a tea candle lasts about 3 hours in it.  And since it is so nicely contained and can't tip over, it would be safe to use while I'm at home.  I can flip the battery-operated candle on for night or when I leave.  I like the idea of it, thinking of it as a line of communication left open with the Gods all the time, even if it is mostly symbolic.  But I happen to be a huge fan of symbolism.

I'll be able to be more articulate once my headache goes away and I can think again.  Another reason not to make any commitments right now.  Or burn any bridges for that matter.

I'm off for evening devotional time and then to bed.  I might have to get up early to make a doctor's appointment to deal with the sinus infection that will not end and that means a very early wake up call.