Category Archives: Spirituality

Imbolc Joy

Dear readers…

Pagan Pregnancy has finally been released. It is an e-book, and there are no plans to publish it in hard copy. But I am so incredibly thankful that it’s at least been made available in any format after four years of waiting! It’s currently out for the Kindle, and it should be appearing on other platforms very soon. (The rest of my backlist is also available in e-book format.) Heartfelt thanks go out to my editor, Andrea, who fought long and hard to get this released after the initial publication was cancelled four years ago.

The bird book (it does have a name… Birds: A Spiritual Field Guide) is also now available, and is a real live book. I’d post photos of my box of author’s copies of the bird book, like I always do when I announce a book’s release, but as I said yesterday the USB ports are dead and I can’t get anything off the camera. Just use your imagination to visualise a box full of books with this gorgeous cover:

Imbolc, a festival of new life and creativity, seems a fitting time to announce these pieces of news, yes?

Welcome, Rowan!

It’s a miserable day out there today. The weather is schizophrenic, part fluffy snow, part ice pellets, part freezing rain, and part plain old rain.

But there is something wonderful that makes up for the misery outside my window.

Hail and welcome to Rowan Mark James St-Martin, newly born son of our dear and long-time friends Kristie and Rob, born only minutes into this day! May your life be full and blessed; may you know joy, weep only happy tears, and taste the entirety of what life offers you with enthusiasm, wisdom, and grace.

Newborn babies are wonderful things. Ours or not, we have the opportunity to celebrate the renewal of life, and the confirmation that new beginnings come again and again to lift us up and inspire us when things seem mundane. We are all blessed by sharing in the joy surrounding a birth.

In Which The Boy Hears The Christmas Story

The boy came home from his grandparents’ house with a 102.6°F fever this evening. He was complaining about being tired and hot when we arrived to collect him and was punchy in the car on the way home, rambling from one unconnected topic to another. He started working himself up about not being able to get a dog in the near future and about dying someday (talk about out of the blue) and so I said, “Why not think about something more cheerful, like Christmas?”

“I don’t know very much about Christmas,” he said. “Not like you guys. You must know all about Christmas, right?”

“Um,” I said. “We know… stuff, yes. Maybe not all about it.”

“Tell me something,” he said.

So in the dark on a relatively lonely highway, I told him about the reason we call it Christ-mas, and followed it with the story about Jesus’ birth. Try to tell that one to a kid who has grown up without being steeped in the Christian mythos. (I know I’ve told him the story before, but it obviously didn’t stick.) He was okay with Mary and Joseph looking for a place to sleep in a busy town because Mary was very pregnant, and the birth in the stable, and Jesus being wrapped up in a cloak and tucked into a manger because there wasn’t a crib ( “I think Jesus must have been very comfortable.”). But he needed context. So I explained that Christ was half a god and half a man ( “Like Hercules!”), and that the wise men who were mages and philosophers and astronomers followed the magic star to the barn where Christ was born and knew when they got there that the baby was very, very special ( “But how did they know?” “They were… very wise and knew a lot of stuff about things like God.” “Oh, okay.”), and that angels were so happy that Christ was born that they sang and led shepherds to the barn too, who loved the baby as soon as they saw him, and that the birth of the baby reminded everyone about love and hope and compassion.

There was silence in the back seat for a bit. Then he said suspiciously, “Is there more to this story?”

HRH cleared his throat, and I said, somewhat truthfully, “Well, that’s the end of the Christmas bit.” (It does sort of need the crucifixion story for the Christmas story to have the proper significance, but there’s no way I’m going to tell him that the Christian mythos also dictates that this wonderful Christmas baby grew up to be killed, and indeed was born for the sole purpose of being sacrificed to cleanse the stain of sin from mankind, thank you very much. Not until he’s old enough to understand that it’s a specific religion’s dogma and not a universal belief, because (a) he takes things very literally and is obviously having a problem with the idea of death right now, and (b) I am very much against the idea of people being born sinful, and indeed not a supporter of the whole Christian concept of sin or the need for salvation. There are some beautiful things about the Christian religion and spirituality that I love and appreciate. This and the accompanying inference that we should be guilty because this had to happen is not one of them. Tangent over.)

Now that he’s got the basic Christian Christmas story, though, tomorrow I’ll curl up with him and explain that the Christmas story is like our celebration of the winter solstice and the return of the light, that the world had become a very mean place and the Christian God wanted everyone to have light and hope in their hearts again, so he sent his son be an inspiration. We’ve explained Christmas as a celebration of love, family, and generosity to those who are less fortunate than we are, and we’re very satisfied with that; Christ’s altruism and desire to heal and encourage love ties in nicely. We can talk about other mythos that the Christian story maps on to as well, like Mithras (Sol Invictus, anyone?), and the general neopagan concept of the Sun God.

That’s what you get for being born the son of someone who has taught comparative religion, though. There’s never a dull moment when it comes to talking about religious festivals. We’ve already talked about how Santa is the spirit of Christmas, how he’s a twentieth century version of Father Christmas/Saint Nicholas, and how he’s portrayed very differently in all the different countries of the world, sometimes as a different person or figure entirely.

He didn’t want dinner. We gave him Tylenol and lots of water, read him a couple of books, and he’s sleeping hard. We’ll see how he feels tomorrow morning, and if he even remembers the conversation in the car.

Rewriting The Day

So! Today is one of our much-anticipated spiritual retreat days. From nine to five, we spend time with others of our tradition, sharing ritual, discussion, and presentations or workshops on different topics pertinent to our practice.

And as I am publishing this at three in the afternoon, you can see that I am not there. Nor is HRH. We’re at home in quarantine, with a little boy who has scarlet fever.

I know, I know. Like mother, like son, I suppose. Fashionably retro.

Yesterday was a ped day, and he and I meandered over to the bookstore as we’d planned. He was awfully quiet, and chose to go lie down on his bed of his own accord before we left. I knew he wasn’t feeling great, but assumed it was the cold both he and I have been fighting all week. He had a low-grade fever but nothing serious, and didn’t have much of an appetite. He did fall asleep while watching a movie and had a two-hour nap, but that didn’t surprise me; the cold had been running him down quite a bit. Then last night after dinner he undressed for his bath and HRH called me in to look at the sandpapery, goosebumpy rash all over his body. “That’s scarlet fever,” I said. (Trust me; I know.) And by the time he went to bed the rash was beginning to deepen into the flushed pink colour that gives the illness its name.

I called our local source of all information — his preschool teacher! — and got the address of the best local clinic to visit. (My first choice is always my own GP, but she doesn’t work weekends.) We considered leaving it till Sunday morning, but decided it would be better to hit it early. His fever wasn’t high, and once the rash breaks out it doesn’t get really worse; long-term complications can arise if it’s not treated at all, but this was only a day in one direction or another. However, we realised that the sooner he got antibiotics, the sooner he could go back to school. The decision to hit the clinic sooner rather than later was also influenced by the insane wait times out here. The general GP shortage in our province seems to be particularly bad in this zone, so there are lots of clinics and they’re always full. If we got out in reasonable time, we thought, we could take the boy to his grandparents as planned, and get to the retreat late.

We were there at 7:30 when the doors were unlocked, along with a small crowd of other people; the doctors arrived at 8:00 and started processing patients; we were home by 11:00 with a few bottles of amoxicillin (oh, the unpleasant childhood memories resurrected by that banana smell). And we also all had a 48-hour quarantine, because the boy would still be infectious, and HRH and I needed 48 hours to ensure we weren’t incubating it ourselves. No contact with children or pregnant women for any of us, we were told. And that’s what clinched things, because one of the attendees at the retreat is pregnant.

So we’re at home today. We’ve declared it a TV day, and watched the last quarter of Avatar season 2 all in a row. I’ve baked chocolate cake; we’ve had popcorn. We’re making the best of not being able to attend the retreat (always frustrating, but especially so when you’re the one who organised it) or spend the day with Grandma and Papa. We can’t go to the concert we were planning on attending tomorrow afternoon, either, because all the performers are children, which has disappointed us dreadfully.

The clinic was terrific, though: great atmosphere and people, and the boy was cheerful and entertained himself with books and crayons. He got a purple mask to wear over his nose and mouth because he had a fever and cough, and he has decided to keep it forever and ever. It’s reassuring to know we have a really good clinic so close to us.

We’re making the best of things. He’ll be at home with me on Monday but back at school on Tuesday, and thank goodness, because I’m on my last week before deadline with the repurposing project and need all the time I can get. He says he quite likes the banana taste of the amoxicillin (better you than me, kid) and that’s good, too, because we’ve got four bottles of it in the fridge and another nine and a half days ahead of him taking it. Good thing we don’t burn toys and clothing after scarlet fever like they used to, because we bought a new tiny stuffed owl at the bookstore yesterday, too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a cake to ice and an icing spoon to hand to the boy afterwards.

Brief Weekend Roundup: Halloween Edition

1. We spent Saturday in and around Alexandria/Maxville. We took Lady Jane, the 30″ Schacht-Reeves wheel, back to Bonnie and had a lovely visit with her, Rod, Darroch, and Carolyn. The boy quite enjoyed petting Kitten, their full-grown black and white cat, who responded with head bumps and purrs and entertained him by climbing into boxes. HRH scavenged some shutters from Darroch and Carolyn’s pile of water-damaged building supplies, and Carolyn led us to a place that had had shutters at a yard sale last week just in case they still had them, but they’d sold. We had a visit with Jan afterward, which was lovely, too. t! was absent at a meeting, but we met Whiskey, the lovely orange and white barn cat they’ve adopted, and the boy got to play with Carter, too. Not outside, alas; it was rainy, and we hadn’t packed the boy’s boots or rain slicker.

2. It snowed Saturday night, big fluffy Christmas-like flakes. There were about five centimetres on the ground Sunday morning, which prompted the boy to cry, “Come up and see! It’s January outside!” Most of it melted in the sun we had earlier in the day, but there were still snowy patches on the shady sides of roofs this morning.

3. Sunday morning we had our first family sabbat celebration with the Preston-LeBlancs. This is a direct result of dropping the pagan playgroup that we variously left because of travel time, conflict with choir, too many kids making concentration and discipline hard, and a general sense of losing the focus of the group’s initial mandate. We decided to do our own thing, and I think the first one was very successful. We did a brief talk on what Samhain was about, I led a very simplified version of an ancestral visualization that HRH wrote years ago, Paze read two poems and a storybook, we did a craft, and ended with a song. Without consulting one another overmuch we managed to use very similar themes in our units, and the kids seemed to enjoy it very much. Then we got to sit down and share a lovely lunch. I’d made vegetable cheese soup and biscuits, and Paze brought apple dumplings. It was all really lovely.

4. We headed over to HRH’s parents’ house for Halloween prep. The boy decided the pumpkin should have lightning eyes, a lightning nose, and a lightning mouth, so HRH carved it that way and it looked great. Despite being so thick it really glowed because the light bounced off the surprisingly pale interior. We were using a pumpkin from Jan and t!’s farm, and the flesh was very white. HRH left most of it in instead of scraping a lot of it out, as he would usually do to facilitate carving, so that I can hack it apart and cook it for pie fillings and soup.

5. This year, the boy finally got what Halloween was all about. I painted his face to look like two big dark eyes and paler feathers, but the detail was lost in the dark and he just looked like he had splotches around his eyes. He loved it, though, and enthusiastically trick-or-treated around his grandparents’ neighbourhood, chirping “Trick or treat!” or “Bonne l’halloween!” in his muddled fashion. The last couple of houses he waved at HRH, who had been walking up to the doors with him while I waited at the bottom of the driveways, and said, “You both stay here, I can go alone.” Back home he helped his grandfather hand out candy and got to see all the cool costumes (the undisputed winner was the guy who came as a bedside table, complete with lampshade on his head and a tabletop around his neck decorated with a tablecloth, book, glass of water, and pair of glasses on top). One parent cooed at him and said “Are you a dog?” “No!” he said, “I’m a owl!” and spread his wings, then turned around and did the most hilarious tail waggle at her.

He had an odd breakdown at bedtime last night, crying because he didn’t want the weather to get colder. “Well, there’s Christmas,” I said, and he sobbed that he liked Christmas, but not winter. And no, he didn’t like making snow forts and snowballs and snowmen any more, he never wanted to go outside again, he wanted to stay inside where it was warm all winter. I can’t blame him, really. I suspect this came about because he was tired and overtired, really, from a long intense day with lots of excitement.

And now I get to have a bowl of that incredibly delicious leftover soup. I’m on my third pot of tea, trying to cut through the yuck in my sore throat, but the cold I woke up with today has left my head blessedly clear, thank goodness. I’ve been handling my to-do list quite capably this morning, and all that’s left is work on the repurposing project and some celloing this afternoon.

Wedding And General Weekend Roundup

I conducted my sixth rite of passage ceremony of the year this past weekend. (The current score is two weddings, four baby blessing/namings, if you’re filling in a scorecard.) It was a particularly meaningful one, as it united two dear friends whom I’ve known for a combined total of about forty years in front of 120 people, and it was beautiful in several respects. The wedding party (and some of the guests) chose a medieval/Renaissance theme for their dress, and the effect was very pretty. We told the boy everyone was dressing like knights and ladies and he got very excited, so I found him a small basic shirt and HRH made him a wooden sword and shield that he painted and varnished, which were a huge success. Had we more time, I would have tracked down some Buchanan tartan fabric and made him a tiny kilt to match HRH’s, but my local fabric shop yielded nothing but every other tartan under the sun and I didn’t have time to go into town to track some down.

It was really special to conduct a ceremony for an audience of that size. The compliments we got on the ceremony were very gratifying, and went beautifully apart from one or two minor hiccoughs. I’m used to being in the north for a ceremony, so of course west is to my right, yes? Except I was in the west, so south was accidentally designated west, and west was, well, west prime. I believe the two pieces of music for the attendants’ entrance and the bride’s entrance were switched, but it worked very well. And in general, it was just wonderful to be able to priestess such a special ceremony for people whom I love dearly, and then to see so many old friends and spend time with people I don’t see often enough. Also, it’s always great to see one’s friends all dressed up. The boy had a wonderful time running around with a small army of children, too.

There was car drama this weekend, too. We had a nor’easter hit Friday afternoon and evening, and our car chose that particular time to die. The battery, we discovered, was the original one, and no longer held enough of a charge to turn the engine over, even when boosted by another car. What was curious was that all the accessories such as headlights and radio still worked. Fortunately HRH’s parents were on their way over to stay with the boy while HRH and I went to the wedding rehearsal, so they rescued us from sitting in a parking lot in the storm and took us home, then helped call a tow truck for the car (who hooked its leads right up to the engine in the back and kicked it into operation, though it tried to die whenever HRH slowed for a stop sign). HRH bought a new battery but we didn’t have time to install it before we left (very late!) for the rehearsal in my inlaws’ car. The next morning HRH installed the new battery and everything worked perfectly. As the tow driver had said, seven years on the original battery is a pretty darn good run. As much as it played havoc with our schedule this weekend (we had to cancel the boy’s follow-up appointment with the behavioural psychologist researchers at McGill on Saturday morning, which disappointed both of us) we’re very, very thankful that the battery didn’t decide to roll over and die on our Thanksgiving drive either to or home from southern Ontario.

I finished my proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a book project my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing, and she likes it, so we shall see if it’s ultimately approved. It’s a relatively short book that would be due in May of 2011, it’s a topic that interests me, and it would require research, something I love to do. I’m in the home stretch of the repurposing project as well, due on November 15.

The boy is doing splendidly. School is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, get him excited about discovering new things and giving him tools to do it on his own. He sounds words out everywhere, and makes lists of words that begin with the same sound. His drawing skills have gone up a level or two as well; he uses a pencil to draw an outline and then colours it in carefully, and his art is getting ever more recognisable. He loves taking different things and mashing them together to make something new and creative, and that goes for three-dimensional building toys as well as two-dimensional art. He’s coming home with poems and songs, French words and rhymes, and it’s wonderful. He has even done two book reports; the kindergarten version, anyway, consisting of drawing a map of the places in the story or a picture of something he learned from the book. These reports are kept, and they eventually form a record of all the books the child reads from the school library. He loves school, and I love that he does.

I’ve arranged to buy a friend’s used iPhone in January. It just makes sense. It will replace my iPod, my cellphone, I will be able to make voice memos with it (something I dearly wish I could do easily while driving), record cello lessons and practice sessions with it (something I can’t do with my first-generation iPod Touch), play podcasts away from the computer without having to find speakers to wire into it (again, the first-gen Touch doesn’t have a built-in speaker), and take decent photographs with it. All I need is a pay-as-you-go voice plan, because I work at home and use wifi, so a data plan would be pointless. It means I don’t have to buy a Mac-compatible microphone that the Mini will recognise or a new camera (I may want a better camera than the iPhone eventually, of course, but it will serve my basic needs as well as or better than the eight-year-old borrowed camera I’m using now, and the battery will last longer!).

What else? I think of things to journal about now and again while I’m doing stuff but don’t have a chance to make a note before I forget them.

It’s getting colder and colder. I got an earache from the wind at the boy’s bus stop the other day, so I am knitting a hooded scarf. The house seems to be holding heat pretty well. I’m about halfway through spinning the 8oz of wood violet-coloured fibre, and I’d better get a move on if I’m returning Lady Jane in a week and a half. I pulled out a piece of fabric I’d woven early this year and laid it over the middle of the white chair in the living room, because it’s getting coffee drips and crayon marks on it as well as general dirt from cats and people, and I quite like how it looks. So does HRH, who, when I said I would weave a wider piece to cover the whole chair, suggested I weave another matching one to go on the settee. (The sheepskin is currently on it, and Nixie won’t touch it; she stretches and contorts herself to step around it. Odd little cat.) Good thing the yarn is a Zellers standby. This time, though, I’ll use the same yarn for warp and weft and weave it on the 32″ rigid heddle loom, and make the weave a bit less loose.

I had a cello lesson today, and orchestra is tonight. I’ve tried to avoid driving out there twice in one day, but it’s an exception; my teacher’s substitute schedule went haywire. Cello is going all right. I feel like I’m on the verge of grasping something and I can’t quite do it, or even put it into words. I feel as if I’m juggling a trillion tiny balls — rebalancing bow hand, rebalancing left hand, minute shifts with thumb, practising vibrato, minute movements of the left elbow to readjust left hand, large movements with right elbow to propel the bow while not allowing the wrist to get the upper hand (so to speak), minute adjustments to extensions from one position to another… and then handling subtle dynamics, being musical, and precise with phrasing on top of it all. Sometimes I almost get it. Then I have to think about one of the balls and a bunch of others drop. I”m trying to get into the habit of playing the cello first thing in the morning before turning the computer on to handle correspondence and news, and it’s tricky because it takes my hands and fine motor skills a while to rev up in the morning; always has.

Okay; that’s all I’ve got right now. Time to go meet the boy.

Weekend Update, Concert Reminder, Etc

Back home safe and sound from our clan gathering in PA. There was a five year hiatus between the last gathering and this one, and we missed that thanks to a little man who was overly insistent on getting involved in the world, so it’s been six years for us. We saw much-loved faces, made new friends, and are revitalised. I’d like to try to do a point form roundup so as not to forget some of what happened, but that will probably have to be tomorrow. I’ve spent today so far unpacking and handling the pile of correspondence and house chores that accumulated over the past five days, including the e-mails from one work department that got more and more frantic when I didn’t respond. (I promise, I did notify the appropriate people; apparently no one else checked to see if I was on vacation.)

We picked the boy up this morning and I got lots of hugs. Not clingy hugs, but very-glad-you’re-here hugs. Like us, he had a great time, but it’s always nice to be back with one’s family in one’s home. We promised that he gets to come with us in four years’ time for the next gathering.

And now: Concert! (Did I remember to post this here? I know I did in a couple of other places.

Canada Day! Thursday! 20h00! St-Joachim in Pointe-Claire Village! Free admission! Freaking awesome music!

I should leave it like that. Heh. But here’s the more dignified version. No, wait, I’ll make it its own post.