Tag Archives: contemplative

The New Year, the End of Reunion

As evening settles in I busy myself making a new type of pasta dish. Rather than straining the liquid from the noodles, the pasta is cooked in the liquid as if making a risotto. It may not be a traditional New Year’s meal, but it tastes good and sits, still warm, as I wait for my husband to return from work. Glühwein sits in the crockpot, heated and ready to warm us on this cold January night. Rain came down all day in gentle swishes of water. The air was cold and prickly but smelled so nice, seeping into the house through the open windows before I couldn’t handle it and had to shutter them up and warm myself near the radiator.

As the new year came in I sat, Otherfaith books on one side of my laptop, writing away about the prayers and devotions of the Other People. I sat for a good few minutes (or more) trying to figure out how to write about the practical aspects. Do I start with the shrines? Do I start with prayers? How do I break it all down?

Strong incense drifted from my shrine in the entrance room. I breathed in and centered myself. My skin was almost buzzing with excitement. I could break down the practicals, because I had to, and because doing so would solidify my own practice.

I am adapting previous writings of mine concerning the Other People’s devotional life. While many prayers will remain intact, the timing and devotional schedule will change. This is to accommodate the realities of my current life. It is also so I can more easily advise people how to begin practicing in the ‘faith. Rather than the devotional week being Monday through Sunday, it is shortened to Monday through Friday, with the weekends having optional devotions but more focused on integrating the gods into our general lives.

Of course I can’t share everything that I’ll be writing. It will be published in a few months as ‘A Brief Introduction to the Otherfaith’. Patrons on Patreon will get a first look as well as an option to receive physical copies if they want.

And now it’s time to get back to dinner and the house and enjoying this cold new year.

New Year Expectations

Happy November!

We are getting into moving properly now. Despite this, I have so much to bring you in terms of content and updates.

Wiki.wiki, the site that hosts our current wiki, will be shutting down on December 1. Because of this we will be going back to Wikia for our wiki-hosting needs for the foreseeable future. The good news is that Wikia is a bit more newbie friendly! I had been hoping to put a MediaWiki-like plugin here but I haven’t had luck with that. Wikia lets users create apps from their wikis, however, so that will become useful in the future.

I have already moved our sizable FAQs from Wikia over here. Not all the FAQs on Wikia were transferred, as some of them are answered elsewhere on the site or are no longer relevant. You can find all our current FAQs under our main page. We have a new FAQs page under Practice FAQs.

Life is going to become incredibly busy for me during the move. On top of the move is the post-move: settling in, settling down, setting up. I hope to bring updates on this new chapter of my life and how it impacts my practice, but actually living it comes before writing about it. All the same, I look forward to sharing my religious practice and developing the Otherfaith.

Mid-November into December will be the busiest time when it comes to moving. January and February will focus on my first impressions of my new living area, as well as sharing setting up shrine spaces and settling into a new religious grove with the spirits. I am hoping to spend these winter months honing info in the Otherfaith and writing up some much needed ritual practices that people have asked for.

March is the time I am looking forward to most. That will be the time we will have our household really swinging together, and I’ll have my dear sewing machine returned to me. Here in Arizona I’ve already begun working on sewing cloaks. Cloaks and capes in godly colors are items I associate strongly with the Other People’s spirits and a physical representation of, well, so many things! They can show godly favor or preference for a deity, or they may simply show that one honors a deity specifically. I am working on red ones currently (of course) and hope to make some nice, if simple, embroidered cloaks to give (and eventually sell) to Other People. I have also made my first fleece blanket and absolutely loved creating it. The one I worked on was for my spouse and themed after his favorite Pokemon. I would like to make more religious-oriented blankets and throws, though, and will naturally focus on the Four+ Gods.

I think it fitting that as winter settles into this town, and as I am about to embark to a place where winter is truly cold, there will be much of my life stripped away. It will leave time for contemplation and consideration and rebuilding my religious practice. And I must admit to a certain joy to escaping this desert land. I love Tucson for what she is, but she and I do not get along. This fall has been especially rough on my body, with the late season pollen absolutely devastating my sinuses. I may be allergic to the plants in my new home, but it will also be greener, and wetter, and cold, and an adventure. I’ve been melancholy about leaving Tucson, this city that has cultivated me, but by gods I am ready.

Ready for a new home and the many new years ahead.

[Early] Reflections from Tucson

Recently, I returned from vacation to Minnesota. My partner and I were visiting family up in the wet, wonderful north. This year has been especially busy as we have bounced from place to place.

We spent our days relaxing in the green landscape. It was stunningly different from my own homey Tucson. We spent an entire day on a lake, messing around without a care in the world. As I lay on an inner tube, with the birds singing around me, the sounds of friends laughing and talking, I felt wonderfully, entirely Dieric – like the Dierne.

It helped that I had booze in hand, a substance that I strongly associate with the Dierne and their spirits. While I tie tea and coffee to the Clarene and Laetha, the Dierne is all about cocktails and beer and wine coolers. In more dignified aspects, she sips mimosas or wine at ten in the morning. With the fun days and easy evenings in Minnesota, I was living quite the Dieric life.

Yet the Dierne is also the city, partying until dawn, and ‘club drugs’. She is tied to substance abuse and recovery. She is not so much tied to the fields and farmlands of Minnesota where we stayed. Even the cities we visited made me think more of the Laethelia than the Dierne. My own Tucson had Dieric pockets, though I can sense all of the gods here.

The gods I felt most strongly, even while avoiding most of my religious duties, were the Clarene and Laetha.

the Clarene is a god of farmlands and orchards, harvest and slaughter. Visiting the cows in the fields made me think of the Clarene, made me consider sacred animals, along with more practical considerations such as what I want to do with my life as I age. Time on the farms also made me consider Aeron (also called Aaron), a spirit that grew up in a farming town before coming to the West. Seeing farming towns, as well as mining towns, towns where their large populations would be a drop in the bucket where I live, put in perspective many ideas I had in relation to the gods but lacked experience with.

the Laetha is a multifaceted god (as all are, though the Laetha a bit more obviously), one I had associated with suburban areas and rather posh living. I was surprised to find her connected so strongly to ‘simple’ living, with a focus on the domestic art. I had previously considered my love of the domestic to fall under the Clarene. But the Laetha has strong connections to the rural landscape, likely from their tie to the Clarene.

It was not the first time I had visited Minnesota. There was one time before, but my religious life was different at that time, more fraught. Now, returning during a calmer tide, I was amazed at how receptive I was to the land’s energy. I was also, rather unfortunately, more sensitive than I would have wished. By the end of my trip my nerves were quite fried!

I have been back in Tucson for a week now. The monsoons have started and brought their heavy rains and thunderstorms.

Minnesota’s heat has nothing on Arizona, but even Arizona’s death sun is giving way to the rains and to what we call fall. Regardless of Minnesota or Arizona, the water and rains are dangerous. Rivers hide death traps. The rains flood mercilessly.

It has taken a week to feel ‘at home’ again, able to pray and settle into this house. And in a few months we will leave this beloved home for a new home. I will learn a new way of the gods and spirits, just as my two weeks in Minnesota revealed new forms and meanings. Though part of me wishes I could rush the process, understand and comprehend immediately, it is by its very nature a slow, contemplative one. The gods cannot be rushed. I too cannot rush.

I must take each step, and each day, thoughtfully and consciously, and in doing so will bring forward more knowledge of these holy ones.

[Friday] Reflections from Tucson

By seven in the morning, the sun is heated the neighborhood with a vengeance. I was up with the dawn (as I was yesterday). Then the light was softer, not yet blistering. The greens were deeper. Now the leaves on the trees seem almost neon. The world is turning to shades of brown and grey.

When I woke yesterday – having finally passed out around the time I am writing this today) the sun had heated our busy city to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. I had spent the blessed time as dawn set in walking around the neighborhood. The birds sang and chirped and crowed. My eyes ached when the sun illuminated them. The world felt so much slower.

This morning I went for my stroll later, having been occupied by some frustrating technology. The bunnies were well hidden in their bushes by then, and the birds taking flight from their nests. A woodpecker picked at a metal street post. The sun had a slight bite to it as it hit my back.

But before all that, my morning devotion begins. As the sun breaks the night, I light a candle and open the blinds to let in the natural light. The windows have already been opened, wide as they can get, since the evening when the temperature dropped. Once the light settles in further I return to my sewing-shrine room and kneel before my prayer books.

The simple brown Otherfaith prayer book sits under the smaller green Pagan Book of Prayer. I pick up the latter and read only one prayer from it before switching to the Otherfaith book.

I should be ringing a bell, but I don’t want to disturb my husband. Not to mention the bell sits in the other room, the hectic office I inhabit too many hours of the day.

I return to the green book and flick through the morning prayers. My eyes light on one I said during high school. The words flow from my lips, still familiar. Once, a long time ago, these prayers would fall from my lips as I woke. I intend to return to similar dedication.

Extinguishing the candle, I leave the house for my stroll. It’s intended to connect me with the natural landscape, to nature, to the world I walk upon. My mind is as hectic as one would expect. I’m re-learning how to be in the present moment.

I can’t spend too long on my walk, however. I consider my morning ritual a way of ‘opening the house’. With the summer heat in full swing I have to close it within the hour (perhaps more, if I were to rise early). The breeze fluttering the palm fronds and mesquites might be pleasant, but the sun is going to begin roasting our house. I return to the house – having made my way clockwise along the sidewalks – and squeak the windows shut after relighting the candle. I shutter the blinds.

I miss the natural light enough to keep one of the blinds open, but I’ll close it before the morning is properly done.

This is the morning ritual I’ve begun. I am unsure how long I can keep it. But going on the plodding walks, bowing my head as I light the candle, taking a moment to breathe as I make my coffee, all of this has caused a new bloom of religious ideas (perhaps even knowledge! perhaps even revelation!).

Unsurprising, nonetheless fulfilling.

[Friday] Reflections from Tucson

Journal Entry January 13, 2017

I’m feeling contemplative, as always. What are my goals? Who do I want to be? The question of who I am seems less important. Not unimportant, simply less so. Insomuch as I can know how to get what I want to be, I care.

The clouds cover the Tucson sky this morning, letting brief streams of sunlight through. Beside me, the dishes lay in the sink, ready to be cleaned. A rat, named Ghost, perches on my shoulder. Ghost tries not to let his anxiety get the best of him. He gives my chin and fingers small licks.

His whiskers start twitching awfully fast, and I know it’s time for him to go back home.

Ghost has a pretty mean vertical when he wants to. He can scale our play pen in a single leap, landing on top of the cardboard fence. He’ll perch up there, trying to balance, completely frightened and unsure what to do. Of all our rats (we have three), he’s the most anxious and frightened, even more so than our ‘baby’ rat Oreo.

It’s been a year since we moved into this house. We got our rats a few months after moving in. My spouse and I both wanted animal companions but weren’t ready to adopt a cat. With my husband’s job travel is also an issue, and smaller pets are easier in some ways.

I am just now getting used to the flow and energy of the house itself. Shortly after we moved in last year I began working near our home. That kept me busy most of the time and, because I was on my feet, tired the rest of the time. In 2015, my spouse and I married and had dealt with some severe family issues. Two years out I feel like I’m settling down, perhaps for the first time in my life.

Of course, all that is helped by the health care that I have now. I’ve suffered from depression most of my life, since I was very young. Part of that calmed after I survived puberty. But the rest could only be solved by more robust and more quickly available health care. Even then, it has been its own struggle. Finding medications that work, along with studying how to improve my habits and thinking on my own, has taken a long time.

For the past few years I have attempted to work through Francesca de Grandis’ Be a Goddess (and Goddess Initiation). Consistently, work or my own distaste for the material kept me from continuing study. In my senio year of high school and into my failed attempt at university I worked through Be intensely and had enormous spiritual and religious breakthroughs. Those breakthroughs formed what is now the Otherfaith. Yet my theology – and my arrogance – had grown significantly since I had read the book. I wanted to finish the work I had started with Be, as I had never finished, but always found myself in the foulest of moods when I tried.

This January I sat down, again, with Be. It had become comically routine for me to ‘resolve’ to read and complete these books by de Grandis.

From the start I should have known something had changed. Rather than my piss-poor attitude of before, I could relax into the text. I made space for my reading. And even if I didn’t quite buy what was being sold, I opened my head to listening. I gave my all to the prayers in the book.

Of course, it’s only two weeks into January. I still have plenty of time to fall flat on my face and eat all my words.

But my approach to this learning, and to my broader life, has changed. I can attribute that to medication. Coming to grips with the fact that I will need medication throughout my entire life does hit a weird note in my chest. But to have a clearer mind, to have the desire and passion to do so many things – cook, sew, write, draw, visit family, learn – is worth all those weird notes.

I’ve been hesitant, for the past year or more, to talk as openly about my mental health as I once was. I don’t gain anything by hiding, however. I may be a bit influenced by the latest piece I read in Llewellyn’s 2017 Witches’ Companion, Autumn Damiana’s ‘Pagans and Mental Illness’.

I look forward to learning as much as I can this year. I’m going to reclaim parts of my life that I’ve forgotten or left aside – including the Otherfaith.