Changing Paths challenge day 31 — where I am now
Nowadays I am fairly and squarely a Pagan and an inclusive polytheist Wiccan, but one who has been enriched by my wobble.
Paganism
Memories
Looking up at the stars makes you realize the sheer size of the universe, and how magnificent it is in its own right — and much larger than most fundamentalists could possibly imagine. This reminds me of the awesome quote from Douglas Adams: “You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Crossroads
Changing Paths challenge day 28 — the crossroads
“Only one heart had to find its true position and travel on from there and all the rest would follow, for no matter how isolated the one felt itself to be, in the deeps of all life all were united and no one could move accurately without all ultimately moving with it…”
—Laurens van der Post, A Far-Off Place, p 304
Change
Changing Paths challenge day 27: change
My favourite times of year are the transitional seasons of spring and autumn, when everything is changing rapidly. In spring there are new blossoms and new leaves emerging, and the days lengthen rapidly. In autumn, the leaves turn red and yellow and orange and are blown away in the wind. The smell of bonfires is in the air, symbolising the transformation of decay into the bright energy of fire.
Her eyes are flowers
Her eyes are flowers
That turn towards the sun
Her hair is tangling vines that run
Over your carefully manicured lawn
After the rain. She wakes at dawn
Hungry for the kiss of sunlight.
She is the shadows of leaves
The sound of roots pushing into the earth
She is the silent ancient mirth
Of ivy gnawing at buildings
Of the conquest of bindweed. She never
Yields an inch of ground.
She is the smell of wet earth,
Compost and leaf mould and worm-cast,
Her love may be slow but it is vast.
Her hour is always now and never past,
She will endure. She scatters her seeds
Over the whole earth, an endless dance.
Her speech is the pollen carried
From flower to blossom to flower
Whispering her vast design across the land.
Her songs and sighs are carried by the wind
Into your carefully sealed houses,
Into your dreams.
©️ Yvonne Aburrow
25 May 2023, 12:50 pm
Wandering
Changing Paths challenge day 25 — wandering
Wandering, like wavering and wondering, is a good thing. There is a whole genre of songs in German called Wanderliede, about hiking.
And as JRR Tolkien wisely remarked, not all those who wander are lost.
Nature notes (May)
Wonder
Changing Paths challenge day 24 — wondering.
There’s wondering in the sense of asking questions about the nature of things, and then there’s wonder in the sense of amazement.
Longing
Changing Paths challenge day 23 — longing.
There are various words in other languages that can be approximately translated as longing or yearning. Sehnsucht (German), a longing for a person or a place. Saudade (Portuguese), melancholic longing for a person or a place. Hiraeth (Welsh), a longing for home, possibly unattainable since we cannot revisit the past. Tizita (Amharic-Ethiopian), a longing or yearning, which has given its name to a style of music. Romanian has the word dor, which comes from the Latin word dolus which means “pain” and is related to the Romanian word durere (which means “pain”).
Unexamined baggage
This is an excerpt from my book, Changing Paths:
“Changing your religious or spiritual path can result in unexamined spiritual, emotional, and intellectual baggage from your previous tradition, which can cause all sorts of issues from depression to anger. We all need to unpack and deal with our unexamined baggage. The Tarot card of the fool traditionally depicts a small dog leaping up and biting the Fool’s butt. The dog can be seen as representing material from the unconscious trying to attract the attention of the conscious mind.”
Dowsing for Divinity 