A Letter for My Husband Upon Our Anniversary

Eight years ago on this day, you asked me to go with you on our first date. Three years later, on this same date, we married. Every morning and every night, I wonder once more how I managed to get so lucky.

From the moment we first met, not a day has gone by when I have not thought of you. From the first time I told you that I loved you, I have told you every day. Every day it has been true. When I am away from you, I miss you. When I see or hear or learn something new, I want to share it with you. When I feel joy, I want you to feel it too. When I feel pain, I turn to you for comfort and support. When I first see you from across a room, my heart jumps, my stomach flips, and my mouth forms into an unbidden smile.

Every night when I go to sleep, I see your face in the streetlight, and I thank God for your presence in my life. In the night, when I wake, I reach for you- while you sleep, I dream of you. When you are gone, I miss you, and wait for your return.

I admire your brilliance, your wit, your cleverness, your style. Your smile charms me, your laugh warms me, your voice echoes past my mind and straight to my heart. The expression in your eyes when you really look at me makes me weak in my knees.

I appreciate all the things you do to make our life as good as it is- when you take out the trash, when you do the dishes, when you pet the cats, when you go to work every day. I know that I can trust you completely with everything- with all the things that matter, and all the things that don't. You care for me in a way that I can only endeavor to deserve.

We have been through so much together- surgeries, medical emergencies, moving, divorces, marriages, friends who came and friends who have gone, sick pets, bad apartments, difficult jobs. And we have shared so much together- pets, trips, friends, family gatherings, love, beauties, affections, moments of transcendent joy. I don't know who I would be without you, and I cannot imagine living my life without you.

If I am guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve, it is only because I never want there to be any doubt in your mind as to the depth of the feeling I bear for you.

Happy Anniversary,
Love Always,
Me

time, tengers, and tektites

so, yeah, i haven't blogged in quite a long time. there's been too much going on, and i've had too much to say, and have been in that place of trying to decide what to say and what to keep silent, what to discuss, and what to let lie. anyway, some things of note, or at least superficial interest-

1) so we moved, and got into the new place, and eventually started putting up altars. i'm sure it will come as no surprise to people who have done this before, but it had been a while for me, and i was rather surprised and amused to discover that my altars have multiplied. dear oh dear have they ever multiplied. i'm sure it doesn't help that k and i are both initiating, and are supposed to be exploring different deities, but good grief.
in any case, with the help of the lovely iris and branwen (who mostly sat around shaking her head and snickering at the ocd in process) i got my altar to stella maris/mary up. i'm very pleased with it- we'd gotten a large new blue dresser and set it in front of the outside door in our bedroom, and i've covered it with all my marian paraphanalia, as well as lots of blue bits and my jewelry boxes (suken treasure? maybe!) and seashells and so forth, and it looks just lovely. i've even managed to mostly convince matilda to stay off of it.
my main altar is up as well, but something's not right about it. i'm not sure really what's wrong, but it's just not working the way it did in the old one. i haven't gotten around to hanging all my icons up yet, so maybe that's part of it. it doesn't look right to me yet because it's missing its visual component. i'm not sure.
we still have the ancestors altar to put up, and the house altar, and we've decided we need some sort of small fey altar, so those need sorted out. additionally, it's become clear to me that i not only need to put up, but already have too much stuff for a shamanic altar. and then when i was putting up my main altar i discovered that i have a small japanese altar in the makings. where the hell did this come from? and does it go with my little elephant collection? is what i really have a small asian altar? or are they separate? and who the hell manifested this little japanese altar? ameratasu? benzaiten? inari? i have no idea....

(update- all my icons are up now, thanks again to iris and rowan, and the main altar is whole once again. also, my shamanic altar is up and strong, and flows nicely into the main altar and the massive icon mosaic. i'll post pictures someday.)

2) mongolia-
i take it back. this needs its own blog post.

3) totem animals-
i find that all my totem animals are large, and are mostly predators. why is this? i'm not an aggressive person. even my totem birds are large. is this just a reflection of my physical size? i'm not small, i'll definitely admit that. do large people tend to have large totems? even my large totems which are not predators are ones you wouldn't much want to mess with (the boar and the camel). thoughts?

4)priestess symbol- i take this back too. i was going to talk about the required symbol of my priestesshood as a CAYA initiate, but that means talking about my title, and i don't think i'm ready to share that with the general public yet.

5) keys and doors-
keys and doors. doors and locks. gates and latchs. keys and doors. these have been coming up for me, mostly in dreams, but also just in general. i'm finding keys, items that look like keys, key stickers. they never present in my dreams as a barrier, per se; there's no sort of "trying but unable to get past" sort of feeling. it just seems that they are, somehow, significant. thoughts?

sorry guys, this was a dreadful post. i'll try to make the next one better, but i've been hanging on to this one so long that i just need to turn it loose.
pax,
t

Do you realize

that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize that we're floating in space?
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

What a Beltane. Rain, roses, and raspberry (finally!).

As I write this, the lovely Amazons are no doubt either finishing their revelry or just arriving home. K is on his way back from being with his brothers. I am here in my bed, in my moon pajamas, with my cats.


Beltane is never a holiday I paid much attention to- the spring holidays in general don't do a whole lot for me usually, I'm more of a summer and fall person.

When I was a kid we celebrated it as my ex-step-father's birthday. ( I always found it interesting that my father, step-father, father-in-law, and the serious boyfriend of my mom's who was almost my step-father were all born within May-November of 1954- anyone wanna run that six months past Astrobarry?)

I'm no longer in touch with my ex-step-father. Tom is his name. I've seen him a couple of times in the past ten years, but only when picking up or dropping off my little sister. He looks much the same, and has as little to say to me as usual. He is a strange man, and one haunted by many demons. He has beautiful eyes.

He married my mother a month before my seventh birthday, and divorced her the summer before I was seventeen. When I was seven and eight, before my sister was born, he was wonderful. He bought me a bike and helped me ride it. He made me stilts. He got me a softball bat and glove and played softball with me. He took me on a church canoeing trip down the rapids, just me and him and the other church folks. He taught me how to watch saturday morning cartoons on the two channels our tv got.

When my sister was born he was enraptured, but really had no idea what to do with her. He didn't know how to show much love or affection, especially to a small child. Or then to a teenager. I don't really remember how it happened- it seems sudden in my memory, but I'm sure that it wasn't- but gradually he and I stopped interacting. After all, I was nearly a teenager, and not really his child. He and I began to fight, as all teenagers and parents do, and he "gave up" on me sometime around age 15 or so. I guess he felt that nothing he said or did was going to have any impact on what I did or did not do, so he decided to do nothing. (for the record, I didn't really get up to that much. I ran around and drank and smoked pot and so on, but considering some of the things that you can get up to when you're a teenager in the backwoods, I was really pretty tame. I liked to fight and to run away, but I never so much as got a tardy in school.)

He was a complex man. He was given to petty fits of anger and violence- he would rip my books or break my toys when he got angry. He never "beat" me, but he would throw me up against walls and knock me around a bit. In his defense, he never really hurt me, and I always gave as good as I got- he was a forester and firefighter, so he was a burly guy, but I've never been reluctant to hit back. He was capable of great acts of care as well though- when I was ten and got head lice, he spent every night for a week coming nits out of my waist-length and very thick hair. When my mother had cancer he drove her weekly for hours to St. Louis and Paducah for treatments.

After my mother and sister and I lived in Ireland when I was 15 their relationship was never the same. It had been having problems before, but I think he began to drink a lot more while we were gone, and never stopped. In the spring of my senior year sometime, when I was 16 and off fucking my boyfriend somewhere, he and my mother got in a fight and he was arrested for domestic violence after throwing her about 15 feet across the living room. I am eternally grateful that I was not there, because though I had my own issues with my mother, I would have tried to kill him for that, and I don't think I would have come out on the winning end.

I don't think he ever truly intended to hurt anyone. He is an alcoholic sufferer of manic-depression, among a host of other things. I suspect he was abused as a child, both emotionally and physically. He just didn't know how to control himself and release his anger. Obviously that's no excuse, but I no longer hate or blame him the way I did when I was a teenager.

From time to time I consider getting back in touch with him. I did live with the man for nearly ten years, and I think in his own way he did genuinely care for me. I don't know if I ever will or not. We'll see.

I don't remember if I sent him a wedding invitation.

Tom, wherever you are tonight, whoever you're with and whatever you're doing, I hope that your birthday is blessed. I hope you can find some measure of healing and love and growth in yourself and in the universe around you. I forgive you, and I hold you in love.

****

I am so very grateful for my tribe today. This has been a long hard spring for me, and I can't imagine how I would have done without my clan. All my life I have been searching for my family, for the people who would love me fully and humanly, for who I am and who I am not, because of who they are and because of who they are not, for people to love and cry and mourn and rejoice and grow with, with whom I could write the verbs and nouns and adjectives of life on the loose-leaf pages of the future.

They are here.

I am grateful for my sisters, who have all traveled roads as hard and diverse as mine, and who are the wiser for it. I am grateful for their beauty and joy and strength and conscience. I am grateful for the courage and love and humanity of each and every one of them.

I am grateful for my brothers, who have taught themselves and others what being a man in a tribe is. I am grateful for their compassion and support and humour and grace. I am grateful for the courage and love and humanity of each and every one of them as well.

I am so, so, grateful for my husband, whom I love without reservation, well beyond the walls of reason and into the twilight of the world. I thank god for him each morning and each night, and pray every day that I can live in such a way that I deserve to be with the wonderful human being that he is and continues to grow to be.

I hold you all in the deep quiet piece of my soul. When I look at you, I can see the children you were and the elders you will become. Time sits lightly upon us all, and the myriad of faces you wear fade into the pure light of the souls that I know.

Blessed be.

to be or not to be- "how" is the question...

so i'm thinking about making a separate facebook page for my pagan self. it's something i've been thinking about for a while, but have resisted doing. here's what i'm thinking-

pro-

1) it would be easier to keep the pieces of my life separate, and i am comfortable with compartmentalizing.

2) it would allow me to have space to talk about pagan stuff with other pagans without worrying about what my lds in-laws are going to think

3) in this next year, in which i suspect i will be acting more as thora than as nancy, it would allow me to have a space in which i am only nancy as well.

con-

1) it feels a little dishonest at this point. all my caya friends are already my facebook friends.

2) i don't want it to feel like i'm embarrassed of my pagan friends- i'm not. i just also don't like making people unnecessarily uncomfortable, and my pagan stuff has the potential to do that for a lot of people.

3) on some level, i feel like i should want to not live two lives. but on some level i don't care. i don't know...


maybe i'll go ahead and make one, and then just see how much i use it. i do have several blogs under different names, and two myspaces, and two emails. i suppose two facebooks is the logical next step.

thoughts?

tuesday afternoon

this morning was a win! last friday when i went to my tues/fri class, my good seat in the back by the outlets was stolen by this schmuck who sleeps through class every day, and so then after having to sit near the front, i got taken to task by a self-righteous guy sitting behind me about how much time i spend on the internet during class. like it's any of his business- at least i'm awake!
this morning though i managed to get up early enough to not only get my good seat near the plug and in the back, but to get the even better one that is in the back corner with a plug and next to the window. WIN!!

let's see, other things.... it's been a while since i've blogged. i've thought about it a few times, but most of what i have to say is fairly disjointed, i guess.

artemisia and i did our hive presentations on sunday- i think it went well. everyone seemed to have a good time (if nothing else, getting to get out and walk in the woods and the creek was a good thing for all of us i think). we had originally conceived of our presentation(s) as a sort of survey of three different kinds of meditation, and it was that. we did a centering meditation, a walking meditation, and a plant mediation, and i think they were all a real success, but as we realized the day before, when we were doing a quick run-down, what we really did was liturgy. we're both ritualists. lol. it was such a great opportunity to work with her though- i didn't feel like i knew her that well before we started working together, but it was a really great opportunity to get to spend some time together and just talk, and be people together. it was awesome.
it was really good to get out, too. i forget how much i like being in woods and creeks. i had to take my shoes off (i'm an earth sign and a farm kid- shoes become superfluous about this time of year), and it was just so great to be able to wade, and to get mucky, and to do it with my friends.

i'd also like to say how grateful i am for the guys of caya coven. most of my friends growing up were guys- i was always hanging out with the boys, and in berkeley that hasn't been as true. i have one really good guy friend at school, but something like 80% of seminary students these days are women (won't it be interesting to watch how the churches change in the next 20 yrs once all these women take the places of power?), so that has affected it. don't get me wrong, i am very grateful for my women friends in and out of caya- very grateful. it has been really good for me to learn how to have close relationships with my sisters, and i love them dearly.
but i love the guys. i always wanted older brothers, and i got one when i married kyle- ryan, who i adore. but he's back in slc, and courtland and jack and mawi are here. i've gotten to spend a bit more time with the guys recently, and it's reminded me just how much i've missed it. i'm so glad that caya has such wonderful men, and that i get to spend time with them.
i <3 my bros.

omg, the radio is playing "secret agent man". so awesome.

oh, we got a wii. which is awesome. we got a wii fit too, which is both awesome and not awesome. it tells me that i am overweight every time i step on it. which is true, and which is my own damn fault, and which i really really need to do something about. but it's hard. some days it's really motivating, which is no doubt the intent, and which is excellent. other days it's just kind of discouraging. and occasionally it really really upsets me. for those of you who don't know, i used to have an eating disorder. i don't talk about it a lot, because it was a long time ago, and it's just one of those things that doesn't come up often, you know? ("isn't the weather beautiful?" "yeah, it's great! hey, did you know i used to not eat?"). it really doesn't affect me a lot these days, (obviously, given i'm now overweight), but it does mean that i am a bit hypersensitive. it also makes it hard for me to lose weight healthily. it's way too easy for me to fall into bad patterns, which i have to be careful about, and it means that on the days when i'm down anyway, having the wii fit insult me is really not helpful.
but i'm really trying to be positive. i NEED to lose a few pounds, it would be GOOD for me, and the wii is a good way for me to do it. it's just a machine, it doesn't mean to be nasty. i just need to get over my hangups and behave like a reasonable adult.

i've been thinking about deity a lot recently. i'm still torn about the "use the caya deity dedication to formalize longstanding associations" vs. "use it to create new ties" issue. i'm swinging back and forth. as it stands, i'm really pretty sure about stella maris. tying for second place are abnoba, taranis, and bear mother. but then there's isis, and nyx, and danu, and grainne/aine, and lugh.... i dunno. i'm also trying to decide if i really need a god in my trio. i think i might. but it's complex....

i've recently gotten some really got books that are awesome that i want to blog about. and i need to talk more about deity and altars and moving and so on. but right now i need to go get ready for class.
afternoon movies on a hot day FTW.

t

the roller coaster that is my life

let's put the good stuff first.

we got an awesome apt! hooray! it is bigger, it has wood floors, it has a brand new kitchen with a DISHWASHER. it is in a nice neighborhood, with trees and flowers and good neighbors. we have a nice and accommodating landlord. we have three weeks in which to move in. it's even closer to things we want to be close to than we already are. they take cats. it's close to friends.
it's exactly what we were looking for.
we are very blessed.

i was going to talk about other stuff. bad stuff. but i think i'm not.
i don't want pity, or concern. some of the things i could tell i think would make you not love me the way i hope you do now.
some things are best kept to yourself.

i have a house. i have a husband. i have friends. i am very blessed.
there is nothing more.

Ranty Thora is Ranty

So, my life has been a roller coaster lately. This is not a great thing for me- I love stability with a near frantic devotion. Thus, I am feeling discombobulated. And I need to rant.

Let me preface this by saying that there are many wonderful things in my life, and I am very grateful for them. My husband, my cats, my family, my friends, my coven, my church, etc. I am grateful every day of my life for these things.

But right now, I need to blow off some steam.

Item 1- The Job Search

I feel like I need a job. This is a somewhat irrational feeling- K, thank God, makes enough to support us on one income. Grad school would have been much harder if he didn't. However, I have a deep-seated need to feel like I'm contributing. And, since we'll be moving and have to pay more rent, this is probably not a bad thing. So I've been looking for jobs on craigslist. And looking. And looking. And looking.
Apparently, I am either under or over qualified for nigh unto every job anyone chooses to post. Great. Yay, grad degree. But that's not what really gets me- what gets me is this-
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GET A JOB TO GET EXPERIENCE IF EVERY JOB OUT THERE WANTS PRIOR EXPERIENCE???
It doesn't WORK!!! I can't have the experience to qualify for your shitty-ass desk job if all the other shitty-ass desk jobs out there require 2-5 years experience in shitty-ass desk jobs! It's a logical fallacy! I DON'T EVEN WANT YOUR STUPID SHITTY ASS DESK JOB. I JUST WANT SOME MONEY. SHOVE YOUR SHITTY ASS DESK JOB.
somebody will hire me...someday...won't they?

Item 2- The Housing Market in Berkeley

1475$ for a two bedroom apartment is considered more than reasonable if it's in a good location. Enough said.

Item 3- Laurie Cabot

So I'm reading Laurie Cabot's book The Power of the Witch. I liked it at first. She has a decent writing style, it was engaging, the material was interesting, it was fine. Then I got to the history section. Initially it was ok; she was making some speculations which I thought were probably a bit out there, but that's ok. I wish she had made it clear that they were speculations, but that's no big deal. A lot of authors (especially pagan authors) don't do that. It's a pet peeve, but certainly not something unique to her. She was also being a bit pejorative toward Christianity, but again, nothing new there. She had a few etymology problems in the Celtic sections, and a few historical inaccuracies, but nothing too huge.
Then I got to the section where she talks about early Judaism on pages 47, 48, and 49. Let me just say, WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW COMPLETELY WRONG SHE IS. THIS WOMAN IS UP IN THE NIGHT, SHE IS MAKING IT UP AS SHE GOES ALONG, SHE IS TALKING OUT HER ASS. *ahem*.
In case the reader is not aware, I am completing a Masters degree in Biblical Languages. I have certificates in Religious Studies and in Theological Studies. THE LINGUISTIC AND THEOLOGICAL CLAIMS THIS WOMAN MAKES ARE NOT VALID.

Let me just lay one example out for you- on page 48, she claims that the letters for the name "Jehovah" (more correctly known as Yahweh) are " yod-he-vau-he". This much is true. She then goes on to say that "yod" means "I". This is not true. The letter yod is transliterated as "i" or "y", but that is simply the sound it makes. The word "ani" means "I" or "myself". She then says that the letters he-vau-he mean "life" and "woman". This is about half true, but it is misleading. The letters create a form of the verb for "life" (also found when God names himself to Moses as "I am"- this can be translated as "I am the living one" or "I will be what I will be"-Hebrew verbs have a vast range of meanings). But they do not spell "woman". The word for woman is "isha". The reason the first woman is given the name HVH (havah, in hebrew) is because it is a bad pun. It just means "living". In the greek version, they have to change the name of the first woman to "Zoe" to make the pun work- the Greek word for "life" is "Zoen". Then she goes on to say that the Latin letters are E-V-E, and this shows that the name of God is "I am woman. I am life" and that's what the word Jehovah means. And, for the sake of fun, let's just add the fact that since Hebrew was an oral language, and since the Israelites considered the name of God too sacred to write down, we don't actually KNOW what the name of God was.

So, she is using a mistranslation of an ancient word into an unrelated, millennium younger language to prove a point about what the original word meant, when in fact, we don't even really know for sure what the original word was.

I won't go into the other errors she commits. Suffice it to say that they are egregious. But the real problem for me is this- if you were reading her book, and didn't know this (as probably 99% of her readers don't), it would all seem to make perfect sense. And not only does it make me question the accuracy of all the other information in her book, but it makes me angry, because she's one of the people creating the misconceptions of Christianity that I have to battle against. All because she can't be bothered to check her sources or to make it clear that she's speculating rather than stating uncontested truths.

I haven't read the rest of the book yet. I will. I imagine when she gets into modern stuff, which I think is the bulk of the book, she is probably fine. But it will be hard for me to take her scholarship seriously.

Item 4- My School

In order to graduate, I have to pass an oral exam. In order to pass an oral exam, I have to form an oral exam committee. In order to form an oral exam committee, I have to get two professors (one from my school and one from another member school, both with tenure) to agree, and I then have to get them approved by the Area Coordinator and the Dean.
I have tried to do this. I have failed to do this, largely for reasons out of my control. People have been on sabbatical, people are not getting my emails, one member of my committee dropped out to have hip surgery. and so on. So it did not happen on time.
Because of this, I cannot graduate with my class. For some reason, this is really upsetting to me. I didn't think I was that attached to the idea of walking with my class, but apparently I am. It's been days since I found out, and I still can't type this without crying. I have to go file an extension to get my degree, and I'll be able to graduate this fall, but I haven't done it yet, because I don't want to be in the registrar's office snuffling into my paperwork.
Which brings us to...

Item 5- Myself.

I have dropped the ball colossally this past 9 mos. I'm not entirely sure why. The fall was very long and hard, and I don't think I ever really recovered from it. This spring has been rough. I've been managing to do my homework and go to my classes, but everything else has slipped through the cracks. My depression has played no small role in this- when getting up the motivation to get dressed takes an hour, running around campus hunting down signatures is a daunting obstacle. But that's no excuse. I've dealt with this before, I know what it's like, and I need to move the hell on with my life. I choose to stay off happy pills for several sound reasons, and usually it's not a problem, but I'm really annoyed with myself that I've been handling it so badly the past 6 mos or so.
I HATE talking about having depression, because it is so often used as a crutch for people who don't have their shit together, and I don't want to be one of those people, or seen as one of them, but I can't ignore the fact that it's messing with me right now.
I need to figure out a way to get myself back into the world of the living and the responsible. I've been really making an effort to see people, and that's been good. I need to get my diet back under control and start getting regular exercise. You'd be surprised what good nutrition and activity do for brain chemistry. But it's an uphill slog at this point, and I've got only myself to hold accountable for getting here in the first place.

ok. ranting done for the moment. Step one on being responsible again- getting enough sleep. Bedtime.
Night.