and the ten rolled over and one fell out....

so we had our first real new initiate meeting today. It was interesting. I really like our group of initiates- apparently we have a number of type A folks, so we got a lot of planning and scheduling knocked out, which I think is all for the best. The longer you wait to get things scheduled, the harder it is. If they're already scheduled, you can always change them later, but if they're not even on the calendar, it's just much harder to squeeze them in.

We lost our first initiate- one of our sisters has decided that it's really just not feasible for her to be an initiate right now because of the demands of her job and family. As much as I absolutely respect her decision, and think it was a wise one, it's still sad to lose her. I suppose better sooner than later, but I hadn't been expecting it.

We talked a bit about a lot of things. Lots of bureaucratic preliminary stuff. It was really nice to have it all laid out though. I always feel so much better when I know what's coming. One of the things we talked a little about was owning your own personal shit. It's a good thing. We talk about it lots at seminary too. Lots and lots of the formation my classmates who are going into the priesthood do is about figuring out what your shit is and then what you're going to do about it. Point of interest- in order to become a priest in the Episcopal church, you have to go through no less than three different psych exams. And you have to pass. It's not a "if you've ever had any mental problems ever, we will not pass you" sort of thing, it's more a "we want to make sure you're fairly stable and have a plan to stay that way", but I still think it's absolutely a good thing. Anyway, it hit home for me. I've been running up against an old problem of mine again recently, which is that when I finally get comfortable around a group of people, I have to start remembering to watch my mouth. I start to lose the line between confident and cocky, and I also start to take the funny/sarcastic too far. I'm very good at sticking my foot in my mouth, and the more relaxed I am, the more likely I am to really say something I'll regret. Stands to reason, I suppose, but it means I have to actively remember to behave nicely.

Another thing that we've been talking about is deity. "what exactly is a goddess", "how do you find a deity", etc. It's interesting. To me, that sort of thing is all about research. Find out as much as you can about something, and then decide if it's for you or not. I read about Paganism avidly, taking notes etc., for a good two years solid before I self-initiated, and then I read about it for another two before I even began to set up an altar. I really like to feel like I know what I'm doing before I do it. But I think that there is something valuable to the idea that a deity can pick you. It's not something I've really experienced. Certainly I have affinities for some deities over others, but that's not quite the same thing. So I'm trying to discern any patterns in my life that could be an indication. The problem, of course, is that it's hard to say if something is just a feature of my personality or tastes or if it's something from outside myself.

The one thing that's sort of cropped up is peacocks. I had never noticed it before (which really is starting to sound sort of dense), but apparently I have a thing for peacocks. When I was 16, I bought a peacock wallet, which I still use. Since then I have also acquired a peacock purse, t-shirt, dress, earrings, two blank books, tights, and nailpolish ("mystic peacock", in case you're wondering). Now, that may not sound like a whole lot, but you have to remember that until the past year or so, it's actually been fairly rare to come across peacock stuff. It's not incredibly common. I'm not sure what to think of this.

I did some research on peacock goddesses, and came up with a few. Hera, obviously, and Juno. Oshun. Also Isis, apparently, and Saraswati. I like them all, but none of them seem quite right. Saraswati has the most reasonance for me, both in her Indian form and in her Japanese form as Benzaiten, but still...

I dunno.

Thoughts?

some thoughts on deity

THUNDER!!!!!

ahem. sorry.

so, this is totally unrelated to the rest of this post, but someone the other day was saying that the mid-20s are a hard age. This surprised me- I've always thought that they were supposed to be a sort of ideal time for most people- you're out of college, but may not have kids yet; you're supposed to be playing and drinking and carrying on, and enjoying being young. It's like the extension of being a teenager, only with more money. Not that this is necessarily the case for me, but it's the impression I've always had. What do you all think? People who are older than I, what did you think they were supposed to be? Did that play out in reality?

So, deity. One of the things that we're supposed to do as initiates is pick/be picked by up to three deities, one of which must be a goddess. Naturally this is something that I am looking forward to, as it presents me with the opportunity to research obscure and arcane things. Equally naturally, I am already chock full of trivial facts about random deities from various cultures, times, and places. Shocking, I know. But I'm trying to come at it in a somewhat new direction. While it would certainly be convenient if someone appeared in one of my dreams at night and said "ahem.. ME", and though I'm certainly not ruling it out, I also think that there's a certain amount of discernment that goes into these sorts of things. It's my job to learn about who I feel an affinity for, and why, and then see if they reciprocate. Thus, I have a few criteria.

1) I don't want to dedicate to someone well known. First of all, everyone and their sister dedicates to Brigid or Freya or Athena or Odin or whoever. That's fine. I in no way question their relationship to deity. But I think it's only fair to try to consider some of the lesser known deities, both because they deserve the attention and because they fascinate me. Besides, the more common deities most people have some sort of relationship with anyway because they encompass so much. Brigid is pretty much the goddess of all Irish women, period, and since I am an Irish woman, she's already my goddess. Likewise with Odin- my relationship with him may be wary, but I have one-I'm Norse, I can't very well ignore him. So it seems superfluous to me to dedicate myself to them.

2) I really would like at least one god. Though Thor is already my patron, and though I imagine I'll end up with likely two goddesses, that male energy is important to me. I've always been a tom-boy (though really I hate that word- it implies an inability of being feminine, which is not the case. I simply am most comfortable in a sort of gender neutral situation), and I find that the balance between male and female energies is an important one for me to maintain both in my personal and spiritual life.

3) I would like them to be from pantheons which I have a pre-existing connection with, either genetic, past-life, or scholarly. Or any combination thereof. Not that I don't want to work with others, just that I feel like there is something to be said for ancestral and/or past life memory, and I think that's an important thing to take into account when choosing someone you're going to pledge to work with.

Additionally, I'd like to also dedicate (personally) to one-three saints. Most christians in the catholic tradition (note-I am not Catholic, I am catholic- yes, there is a difference, if you really want to know, I am happy to explain it to you) select at least one patron saint at their confirmation. However, having been raised in an evangelical tradition, I have never done so and would like to. I have name saints, of course. St. Anne, the mother of Mary, and Mary herself. Also John the Baptist, because my birthday is the feast of his beheading (and isn't that just delightfully gruesome?). I like them all- Anne is traditionally a teacher, Mary is, well, Mary, and John is just wonderfully and deeply strange. But I didn't pick them- they were what I ended up with.

So, I'm thinking that maybe for a few posts I'll go through and spend some time talking about the deities and/or saints that I'm considering. I'm happy to entertain feedback!

t

so yeah...

... I don't know what the hell I think I'm doing.

I'm supposed to graduate with a largely useless degree in an obscure field in less than three months. We're in the severest recession in my lifetime. The best job I can really hope to get around here is flipping burgers or sweeping floors, and even then I'm going to have to beat back other grad students to get it. I heard a report on the radio today from an animal shelter that had over 70 applications for one position scooping poop, about half of which were from people with masters degrees.

I was going to get a PhD. That would have insulated me for a while longer. I had spent three years working myself up to the point where I could look someone in the eye and say "I am hoping to get a doctorate". I have been rejected by 6 schools so far. Including my own.

I may not even graduate on time. I can't seem to get a committee to form for me. One of the same problems that is preventing me from continuing at the GTU (lack of New Testament faculty) also means that there are no professors free to sit on my committee. If I don't get examined, I can't graduate. Not, at this point, that it will really matter. Just to my ego.

My depression has been acting up lately. Not in the sort of traditional cry-all-the-time, can't-go-out-in-public sort of sense. Just in that my base level mood seems to have dropped from "mellow" to "apathetic". I can still be happy. I still enjoy seeing my friends. I still pet my kitties. I just really turn off between happy moments.

It's mostly when I'm alone. I spent over ten minutes sitting on the bed the other morning with one foot in a pair of tights trying to work up the motivation to put the other foot in. I wasn't sad. It just didn't seem worth the effort. In January, bathing once every three days was a real achievement. It just didn't seem like going through all the trouble of taking off my clothes, getting cold, running the water, washing my hair, getting out, drying off, and getting dressed again, was really worth it. Such a large expenditure of energy for such a small payoff. I'm better about this now that school has started- never underestimate the motivational power of potential embarrassment. I'm going to all my classes. I'm doing my homework. I go to the meetings I'm supposed to go to, I do the things I'm supposed to do. It's everything else that's falling through the cracks.

There are probably lots of reasons for this. Multiple rejections hurt my little ego. It's the end of winter, which is always hard. I have senioritis. I've never fully recovered from coming back from Israel. I've been sick. I feel a lot of low grade anxiety about not knowing what I'm going to do next. Lots of reasons.

It will pass eventually. It always does. It is the ebb and flow of my life, and part of who I am. I think that I will be able to get most of the things I need to do done without too many casualties. I usually can.

But I don't think I'm alone when I say that June can't come soon enough.