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Email: bawriting@earthlink.netPhone: 562 628-9688
Get My RSS FeedI went to the Circle of Aradia’s Yule ritual last night. It was the 40th anniversary of Z Budpest’s invention of Dianic Wicca, and Z was there as an honored guest and she and I had a nice little chat. It was also the 25th anniversary of the Circle of Aradia, founded by Ruth Barrett, the best ritualist I’ve ever worked with. It was good to see Ruth and a whole bunch of other women I haven’t seen for various reasons in five or ten years. (None of us, of course, look any older.) Among the 200 or so women in attendance was a journalist for (I think) a website in the San Fernando Valley. She was looking very bewildered at the circle casting and the dancing and chanting, so because I don’t dance, I went over to her and spoke with her for a little while. “What’s going on here?” she asked. After I explained that I in no way represent COA in any official capacity, I spoke to her about the ritual year and the Yule celebration.
It’s a celebration of the light, I told her. Yule is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, immediately after which the earliest, tiniest spark of light is reborn. Then the wheel of the year takes us through the spring equinox to the summer solstice, which is the longest day of the year and gives us the most light. Then the light begins to fade again and we enter the “dark side” (no, not Darth Vader’s dark side) of the year, which takes us past the fall equinox and back to the winter solstice. “It’s both literal and symbolic,” I told the reporter, and I also suggested that she see the year as a day moving from midnight (winter solstice) to noon (summer solstice) and back to midnight.
We deal with dark and light in our lives, too—our careers, our daily work, our relationships, everything. Like all of us, I’ve had my dark times—mainly the whole decade of the 1990s when I was doing temp office work and living on meager unemployment “benefits” between temp assignments. I also lived a mile from the Nixon Library with a crazy roommate; after six months with her, I moved to Long Beach (a bright moment), but then I was evicted from the first condo I rented because the owners let it go into foreclosure. I was homeless for a month and lived for part of that time in an SRO hotel. I had to sneak my cats up the back stairs. The men gathered in the women’s bathroom to smoke, so I emptied the litter box in the trash in their bathroom. But the light came back on when I was walking down 2nd Street one day and came upon a yard sale. I asked the woman if she was moving, she said yes and showed me her apartment, then told me where the owner of that condo lived. I walked down the street to Mary's house. Mary said her cat never approached visitors. Within ten minutes, her cat was sitting in my lap. And I had a place to live. That’s how I met my friends Michael and Angelo, and now Angelo (who bleaches my hair) and I go to the theater together a lot. Today, a decade later, I’ve got it pretty good with my editing work and a new book published. Yes, of course, I’ll mention Secret Lives every chance I get.
I wrote about both “endarkenment” and “enlightenment” in Pagan Every Day and just posted the pages so you can read them again. (Scroll down past solar gods and Mothers' Night, December 25 and 24.) I also spoke about Yule and the light and Modraniht to my friend Pat Lynch a few days ago when she interviewed me on Womens Radio.
We’re in the holiday season and gazing at Hannukah (another celebration of the light), Christmas, and Kwanzaa with their family gatherings and gift exchanges. I bought Charles a couple books (no surprise there) and bought Phish a ceramic goddess she saw and coveted at the Long Beach WomanSpirit fair a couple weeks ago. I’ve also received several electronic Christmas letters—consider this my letter; I’m too lazy to write another one—and some real cards. One is from Michael Ball. Members of his fan club get a card from him every year. Michael’s a handsome man, an actor as well as a singer. But he’s doing Sweeney Todd now, so the fan club Christmas card shows him in full Sweeney drag. He’s almost unrecognizable … and his message says “Have a bloody good Christmas.” Hilarious!
Here’s the rest of my abbreviated holiday letter/blog. My major news is that I published Secret Lives, my novel about grandmothers who live in Long Beach and do magic. My Christmas wish is that you will buy and read and enjoy the book.
Tonight I think I’ll watch my favorite version of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, the one starring George C. Scott. I always enjoy watching Scrooge rise out of his dark nature and into the holiday light that presumably lasts for the rest of his life. He gets some really fast psychotherapy from those three spirits! Tiny Tim famously says, “May God bless us, every one,” to which I’ll add my wish for peace on earth. but in small, local packages. My wish is that we’ll end the other war in the Middle East and that everyone everywhere will have enough to eat and that the Goddess will bless Her daughters and Her sons with health and abundance. If we act locally by being courteous to the people we meet and paying small acts of kindness forward, we can add little bits of lovingkindness to the consciousness of the planet and work toward a critical mass that can transform the planet. Let’s all work on that. And buy Secret Lives !
Posted by Barbara on Sunday, December 18, 2011 | Read Comments