New Year, New You, New Me, New World

I work for a church – your standard American Episcopal (really Church of England in disguise) mainstream Christian Church, and we do magic there.  My job is not particularly magical – think contracts for weddings, workshops, recordings, and memorials, finding the microphone, locking up after the caterer has left. I got that job soon after joining the choir (I was a music major in college, and the choir is awesome).  But we do magic there: we enact rituals of blood and wine, flesh and bread, our prayers are really spells, our psalms and anthems are enchantments, and sometimes we even call them incantations.  Episcopalians are really Anglican Catholics, (that’s why you specify Roman Catholics) and to make up for the loss in status, they are often more magically catholic than the Romans, as the reputation for using “smells and bells” is not just a rumor.  The charism of this particular church is enchantment through music – by some accident of construction, we have beautiful acoustics, a beautiful Danish pipe organ, we have American Bach Soloists as our Artists-in-Residence, we are  the venue to  many recordings (including one winning a Grammy), and did I mention that the choir is awesome?

Magic is the How of God.  I’m currently in the middle of Liber Kaos, an explanation of Chaos magic, and its relationship to science, and it’s confirming my view that magic is really just the techniques and technology we haven’t invented yet (or think we haven’t, talk to a shaman!).  The technology we use today would be considered magic a century ago.  Think lasers – if that’s not Jedi magic I don’t know what is.

Religion is the set of stories, traditions, and peacekeeping morals we use in community to talk about how God does it (or is it, as in “I AM that I AM”). In the Episcopal Church there is less discussion of morals than there is about one’s relationship to God, and with this I keep coming back to the idea that we are “made in His image”.  I think of Jesus telling the amazed disciples who witnessed his miraculous healings, “all these ye shall do, and more”.  We’re meant to take God and Jesus as examples of what we can be and do.  Here, I am embracing Martin Luther’s take on The Priesthood of All:

That the pope or bishop anoints, makes tonsures, ordains, consecrates, or dresses differently from the laity, may make a hypocrite or an idolatrous oil-painted icon, but it in no way makes a Christian or spiritual human being. In fact, we are all consecrated priests through Baptism, as St. Peter in 1 Peter 2[:9] says, “You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom,” and Revelation [5:10], “Through your blood you have made us into priests and kings.”

Over the next four years, I’ll be making a twice-yearly migration to New Mexico, to study with author and Guatemalan shaman Martin Prechtel, at his school Bolad’s Kitchen, a kind of school for a new culture.  He won’t be teaching us any witch-doctor stuff, however, as he says that even once someone has been healed, our culture quickly creates new illnesses in people, and that it’s our culture that needs to be healed.  Our culture creates sickness, and war, and diaspora.  Environmental activist Derrick Jensen gets into it with Martin in this most fascinating interview.

We’ll be learning to understand our grief as praise, and to learn to praise beautifully.  The way you know you’re doing it well enough is when you’ve touched someone’s heart, and the tears drop.  We’ll be learning to metabolize the beast that is this culture, to digest it and give birth to a new culture that celebrates life instead of death.  We’ll be learning to turn our curses into blessings.

Charming Deb has issued a New Year’s Challenge, so 2012 is the beginning of that for me, my own Year of Enchantment, a year of enchanting for a new world, both personal and public.  I’ll be enchanting for personal energy, with sound and herb magic for better sleep (tea anyone?), singing to the plants I’m growing for healthier cooking, and doing more of that cooking, which I’m already good at.  I’ll be enchanted when I spend more time hiking and camping in Nature, which always boosts my energy.  I’ll also be enchanting for Bees, growing them some tasty flowers, and possibly learning enchantment from them, both mental and mythical.

Public enchantments?  Not sure how I’ll go about this, but my target is the Police.  As Gordon got me thinking, the outcome of Occupy Wall Street will depend a great deal on whom individual police officers choose to protect and serve.  At heart, I think I’m really an anarchist, and that a society that needs police officers is not one that protects or serves anybody, but I think that most officers want to be “good guys”, at least when they first sign up.  I think being in that job changes a person, the way becoming a drug dealer changes someone – first it’s a prestige thing with your teenage friends, eventually you’re ready to kill to maintain your territory.  The challenge will be disarm the police by touching their hearts, and I don’t think you do this by protesting, which is more an act of engaging them in conflict.  Sure, the first thing any prophet does, before anything else, is to deliver a suitably loud set of lamentations, so that listeners understand the gravity of the problem.  But then begins the trance, the delivery of divine words, the enchantment to look for and find something new (a star, a baby Jesus, a new morality, what have you).  The lamentations are here, the enchantment is coming.

Meet the Jumpiup Corn Doll Family!

In August I made my first trip to New Mexico, to attend Bolad’s Kitchen  (a kind of school for building a new culture, but I won’t get into that here).  While I was there I met Rose Tree and her parents, who had travelled all the way from Australia to attend.  Rose and I got on great.

Meanwhile, at home in my garden, my patch of Oaxacan green dent corn was ripening, although Mr. Sun hid his face so long this year, and the fall rains came so early, that not all of the corn quite matured, and many of the kernels did not dry out enough to “dent” properly.  This means that some of the ears will not germinate well for planting new corn next year, and may not have the right starch for tortilla and tamale flour, either.

This Thanksgiving weekend, I got a bee in my bonnet, and my hands felt restless once all the cooking was done, so I stitched up some outfits for a Corn Doll family.  Lady Angelica Sweet Corn is pictured on the right with her sexy green dress, showing off some cleavage.  Lordy Jim “Pop” Corn is pictured in his blue pullover and light blue overalls.  Young Pippi Longbraids is wearing her favorite pink frock.

Australian customs/import laws being what they are, I won’t be able to send these to my 4-year-old friend, but Rose Tree and I will be meeting up again in February, and hopefully we’ll be playing dolls.

A complete set of photos (the Jumpiup family in their beautiful outer garments, and a few closeups) can be found here: Jumpiup Family Slideshow

Sadie Lady

When I heard you as I came to your door
I thought you would eat me alive
but instead you !jumped me alive
and my heart barked back.

When I saw you I gasped
because I thought you were being electrocuted
but then I saw you wriggling and dancing and singing
and I realized that I
had been cuted.

When you told me to get you a treat
it’s right up there, up on the left, I thought pointy fingers
had grown out of your paw
but then I learned it was your Jedi Halloween trick
to get me to give you my fingers.

When I saw you, whispering with Kitty
I wondered what it was all about, but I was too polite to ask.
Kitty isn’t telling, but now I know that you two were composing a hokey-pokey love spell, enchanting our hearts to always hear your bark.

When I Saw Midnight

When I Saw You sleeping,
I thought that the shadows under the bed had made love, and had kittens. But then two Orbs gleamed and flashed, and I saw the Ocean bare her face to the Moon.

When I Saw You,
I thought the Sun had spread so much light that it had run out, and could no longer glaze the world but then I saw that sweet patch of black frosting soaking up so much light and warmth that Old Baker Sun couldn’t keep up.

When I Saw You, cringing, hiding, running away,
I despaired to ever caress your ears, rub your chin, and stroke your spine, and so I slunk into my own misery slumber.

But then I Saw You,
(or maybe I saw the Ocean and her sister the Moon) standing on my chest and holding me down, and I felt the warmth of black sand, a volcanic shore of delight.

When I Held You,
precariously on my lap I thought my knitting had grabbed its needles and begun to knit into my legs
but when I flung it off I realized that your claws had claimed me as one of your Blankets.

When I Heard You, year afer year, insisting,
SIT HERE, and DON’T FORGET THE BLANKET, and PET ME HERE, please
a plume of laughter erupted every time that earlier might have chased you away
but now only served to grow the loyal warm rock that held my heart in your grasp.

Courting, Courtesy, and Culture

If you are a queen, encountering another queen for the first time, how do you behave?    Do you ignore her?  Do you bow?  Do you wait for her to speak first?  Do you take up as much space as possible, or as little as possible?  Do you make sure she knows that she should scrape and beg for any favor from you?  Or do you perhaps exchange polite formalities, only to eventually more gently indicate that she may send you tribute in the form of deference, tokens of respect and flattery, and that if she would like any of that from you, she will need to provide twice as much.  Or, what if that queen happens to be 7 years old, and you are 22?  Do you condescend and manipulate, or do you resolve to welcome her to your court, realizing she may become a lifelong ally who may defend your right to rule when you are 80?  Is this my life?  Is this your life?

 

Let us say that instead of all of these things, you clap your hands and greet her with praise of this glad and lucky moment in which your realm may now glory in its new royal friendship.  Perhaps you throw a banquet, or maybe just invite her to your coffee klatsch.  The benefits of this may be increased commerce, safety, education, appropriate mates (finally!) for your royal offspring, and connections to realms on her borders but beyond yours.  She may turn out to have a formidable navy, or a reputation for her ability to persuade the Mongols to buy her lace instead of slaughtering her archers.  She may have underemployed musicians that she can send to your court in exchange for access to salt.

 

But let us say that instead of launching into a discussion of these benefits you may afford one another, you open wide your eyes, and look at this creature before you.  In the middle of exclaiming your poem about this day of great fortune to your entourage and hers, your voice trails off as you notice the exquisite tendriled embroidery on her iridescent gown, somehow mirrored in variation by the twists and plaits and spirals within her headdress, and you gasp as you realize that her entourage is in fact arranged, person by person, in a larger version of the same motif.  Your mind wanders, as your eyes trail this shape through her hair, her clothes, and these magnificent people.  You finish up your poem, as neatly and thoughtfully as you can, because you can’t quite remember what you were going to say anymore.  In response, a pearl-encrusted group of young musicians with curious instruments swings around and offers you a suite of what must be mermaid music, so smooth, undulating, and entrancing that you find yourself waving your arms in what you hope later is a majestic manner.  You swoon, in fact.  The queen begins a song in her language, whatever that might be, and while you understand not one word, the song, the shimmering warmth in her voice, and the quality of her expression let you know that your welcome has touched her heart.

 

We have all had meetings like this.  You meet someone, an equal of some sort, and instead of working to find a way to find inequality and a bit of a foot in the door to some kind of dominance, or instead of finding some kind of deal for future strategic enrichment, you simply gasp and hang your mouth open at the sheer luck of meeting such an entrancing creation.

 

Whom have you met lately?  Who touches your heart?

 

AB

Tidework – Prayer for 21 October 2010

Silvered orb shining through your garment of Night, you loose the armor of the sleeping seed, the youth inside, drowning him, tearing at him.  Your fearful grip holds his death, his only chance to grow the green grail, sweet tendriled wings of life and love, flower, fragrance, fruit, and seed.

Streamwork – Prayer for 20 October, 2010

“Like as an hart, desireth the waterbrooks, so longeth my soul for thee…” Oh heart that sings into my ear, waterspring that floods my eyes and opens my breath, let us part the grasses, brambles and vines to cause new streams to flow into parched land. Let us call the fishes, frogs, turtles, worms, rushes, slimy algaes, beavers, kingfishers and floating waterbugs to a congress of water wilderness, all working together to bring streams to life. Let us call to the sun to warm the waters and invite newcomers. As we thunder across the creek beds, cooling our heels, we give thanks for all that gives form, boundary, and echo to the bubbling Word of creation.

The Sincerity of Crocodiles

Some of my kin have made themselves unwelcome by their tendency to weep when the name of a dead loved one comes up.  Others of my kin express disgust that those weepy people have not earned the right to grieve so promiscuously, to indulge their tears ostentatiously, and to upstage the grief of those who hold a closer tie to the dead.

As stars within a galaxy explode into place, burn, collide, smash, ingest, implode, freeze, and scorch, as our star the Sun radiates its heat with tongues of flame, providing all our warmth and hope for life; as our Earth freezes into the goose-bumps of glaciers, bursts into tears, sloshes us in tsunamis, hurricanes, and ensuing mudslides, adjusts her fertility in a necklace of earthquakes; as our fellow Inhabitants swarm the earth, eat us and each other, destroy our food, become our food, eat our children even as they amuse our children; as we ourselves embody a galaxy of life to the one-celled organisms that inhabit our guts and membranous interiors such as eyes and noses in varieties greater than the number of the cells containing our own DNA; as such miracles come to pass, we struggle with the silly obstacle of Death.  What does our own death matter in the beauty and viciousness and miracle of all this?

We cannot hope to avoid death, not even through a legacy that a generation can squander or forget, a genetic bloodline that can easily die out, or even by leaving the world “a better place” – unrelenting demolition of the world we love takes place now.    Eternal Life hangs on aborting that other kind of Death, the isolation of not belonging to the whole of this spectacular life.

A mama crocodile gives birth to horrifyingly cute baby crocodiles, horrifying because we know that not much time will pass before our own babies will qualify as lunch to this brood, but still cute, because we love babies.  Do the tears that gush from her eyes as she munches on some other mother’s baby come from her grief?  Do crocodiles feel grief the way elephants, primates, and whales do?  Even for members of another species, the way our children do for puppies and kittens?  Perhaps not.  But do not be so certain that her tears mean less than yours.

When we grieve, we pay the price of belonging to the beauty in all Life, belonging to the harmony of the galactic spheres, to the ornaments of birdsong, to the flowers that thrive in the snow. Grief comes as we perceive the beauty of what we have lost, what more beauty we lose at every moment, what beauty we will still lose, and yet treasures, indulges, and pays promiscuously the full measure of the beauty that belongs to all of us who have tears to pay for it.

Happy Birthday Jesse Pie!

To the Girl who just didn’t Stop

Who Would Not, Could not Sleep;

To the Girl who Wore Us All Out

Danced In Each of Us, her many Pairs of Dancing Shoes

To wear with her most BeautifulDresses.

Jesse had no Dresses, for only BeautifulDresses belonged to her.

And we pushed against her feet

Against her dance floor just to dance with her.

Her shoes, her friends, her dance partners

Her furniture – she wore us out!

Why would anyone sleep when you can run for your life, slam your body into your Nanny, your Dog, your Mom, your Dad, your hundred Best Friends, and squeeze the breath out of them with hugs made of steely 2-year-old arms and a Scream declaring your ecstasy at their arrival?

To the Girl with the Smile-and-a-Half, with sparks busting out her eyes, a screech of volcanic laughter, a rainstorm of tears and lightning,

To the Girl who just didn’t Stop!

Don’t stop!

At Seventeen, you’ve only just started.

Happy Birthday, Jesse Pie!

A Musical Invitation: Celebration of the Life of Taffy Glasner

 

Friday, the 13th of June, 2008

Good Afternoon! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Taffy’s niece, Anne.

I’m very grateful, that for the last 2 months, I’ve had the opportunity to stay with Taffy and Lanie, with the idea, as Taf would put it, of “making myself useful”. Mostly, I gave myself the task of making sure Taffy ate, and ate well. So she did, and generally, I made myself useful.

On evening, after dinner, as Taffy was coasting off to sleep, she asked me, simply:

“So where do YOU think I’m going?”

I thought for a minute, and said, “Do you remember those Madeleine L’Engle books, A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and all those? Remember how in her book, Many Waters, the twins move in and out of dimensions that are part of their Pattern? In other books, she calls that Pattern a Spiral, but now I’m thinking of it as a Harmony, a Chord, or even a Motif. Taf, “ I said, “I think you already ‘go there’ all of the time, in the dimensions that are part of your Pattern, your Spiral, your Harmony. You do it when you sleep, you do it when you sing, and you do it when you play piano. You do it every time you visit the music you love. Your Pattern, your Spiral, your Harmony, is revealed by what you LOVE.”

And, in her usual way, she said, “Well, that sounds reasonable.” And she drifted off to sleep.

So my invitation to you today, is to visit with Taffy in her dimension, but HERE, in all of this music that she LOVED. I invite you to know her fully: from the sacred, formal, intricate harmonies of Bach, to passionate love songs, to inventive compositions of young minds, and to the sounds of Pan pipes, at first pastoral, but finally, of another world.