This afternoon my mother crashed her car into the sign at the local Baha'i Center.  I arrived for a baby shower with a plate of blue frosted sugar cookies to see a group of men standing around a crashed car buried in a pile of bricks.  It took my brain several minutes to process what they were saying.  I think I was trying to absorb that the wreck really was my mother's car.  There was the handicapped permit hanging from the mirror (she doesn't like to walk across the parking lot at Wal Mart and talked her diabetes doctor into getting her a permit. She has mild diabetes and there is no reason she can't walk except for her desire to have any advantage she thinks someone else is getting.  She rides around Wal Mart in one of those electric shopping carts too).  The men were talking to me all at once.  Mom was okay, sitting inside the center.  An elderly gentleman told me he saw her eating a petit fore a few minutes earlier.  Okay, sounds like mom.  One of the ladies came outside and told me in a conspiratorial whisper "The poor dear must have gotten confused.  She claims her brakes failed, but she must have hit the gas instead.  It's a full moon you know, that's probably what did it." 

I tried not to smile or worse yet, laugh at this well-meaning woman.  I wanted to tell her it wasn't the moon unless the moon was in the business of delivering karmic paybacks.  I was relieved to hear my mother was not hurt.  She didn't hurt anyone else either.  For that I am intensely grateful.  When I went inside to see my mom, she really was clearly upset, but not shaken enough to stop her from eating several stuffed grape leaves as she told me what happened.  She was worried that her insurance rates might go up or that the company might drop her, that they might cheat her, that she might need a lawyer to get full replacement cost for her car if the body shop deems it totaled.  Mostly she was complaining that she wasn't hurt.  If she had been hurt, even a little hurt, she could have at least gotten some decent money out of it. 

Who thinks like this?  A professional victim.  My mother.

My thoughts tonight are not so much about my mother; they're about the moon-- La Madre Luna. Tonight my husband reminded me that supposedly accidents and random acts of violence increase with the full moon.  While I see this idea largely as debunked folklore, I also do believe in the power of thought, belief, and intention.  In other words, if you believe you are happy, the chances of you being happy increase.  If you believe you are unhappy, that you're blocked in life, that people treat you unfairly or don't appreciate you, that you are unlucky, you'll probably experience this.  We don't have complete control, but what we envision, what we think of ourselves and others can be manifested as empirical and emotional realities.

In my faith and practice, the human power to experience the sacred, to make deep, transformative connections is at a zenith during full moons (whether I hold an esbat or not).  I remember a drawing down the moon ritual I held a couple of years ago.  My right palm was marked as I spoke unwritten, spontaneous invocations.  I still have new lines in the center of my right hand, forming a small diamond with a dot in the center, a shape remarkably similar to ancient goddess fertility symbols.  I remember feeling the cold heat from the hematite stone I held burn my hand and travel up my arm and through my body as I gazed at the perfect moon's reflection in a bowl of water, as I rededicated and offered myself as a servant to the Lady and her Lord. 

For me, the moon is beauty, compassion, creation-La Madre.  Men and machines have trod her surface, brought back bits for museums, planted flags and claimed ownership and mineral rights.  Her haunting halos have been rationally explained as ice crystals, not omens.  It's the moon's gravitational force that pulls ocean tides and in urban legend is linked to menstrual cycles (mine never have correlated in any way), and increased birthrates. We all know the moon brings out werewolves and LUNAtics.  

There may be scientific explanations and lore linking the moon to events and behaviors, but reason seems bloated with hubris when it attempts to neatly define all phenomena and lore without grounding in experience is cheap sensationalism. 

The moon has long been associated with the female and not just in pre-Christian western culture.   Even the Virgin of Guadalupe, an Aztec fertility goddess buried under patriarchal Christian raiment stands atop a dark crescent, which to the Aztecs and other ancient peoples was a symbol of procreation and fertility. 

You can accept the moon is a huge rock, a barren, cratered satellite in the earth's orbit.  You can accept the moon is a beacon, aspect, or manifestation of an earth goddess(es), of the Dao, of Ometotl, of other named and nameless deities.  Like me, you may accept both.  I believe the moon is conduit of power.  It can renew, enliven, and increase spiritual awareness. 

Finally, thinking about why my mother barreled her car into a brick sign today seems not to be a question of the moon's power.  It's a question of power repressed.

At take off I slip the beads from round my neck

and begin praying the Tibetan Rosary.  

Aum Mani Padme Hum.  

I hum softly below the drone of the engines

As we climb higher,

As silos and ponds glisten

like belly jewels In green pastures.  

Into the turbulence and clouds we climb,  

Aum Mani Padme Hum  

Into the illusion of nothing

But dense white light.  

The flight is only half-full;

most passengers doze in their seats near the front.

Back by the lavatory and serving area I am  alone.  

The shaking increases and

the plastic dome above me looks ready to crack.  

I wonder if I could reach the nearest passenger,

A young Indian man, four rows ahead.

If I stood up and leaned over  the seats,

could I ask him to hold my hand if we begin to dive?  

I'm acutely aware of this desire,

this impulse to touch and connect,

to keep remembering all I love below.  

Aum Mani Padme Hum  

I push away these maudlin thoughts

as the shaking subsides

and begin to pray the second 54 beads.  

The steward's voice is coming over the speakers. T

hey'll be serving beverages,

complementary sodas and coffee

mixed drinks for $4 new energy drinks for $3.

Correct change is appreciated.  

Aum Mani Padme Hum  

"Please keep your seatbelt fastened and remain seated. 

All electronic devices

not listed in your in-flight magazine

must be kept off."    

The clouds break.

Out my window

 I watch them cast great shadows

 on the softly muted green squares below,

deepening the color

from fertile fields to island waters.  

I close my eyes.

The plane is rocking gently now,

A flying womb.  

Aum Mani Padme Hum  

I am a vapor cloud trailing from the engine,

I am mist.

Floating free behind the plane,

the land below and sky around,

disorienting, disjointed thoughts rush through me,

overwhelming sensations.

I am not cold, but I feel everywhere

all at once.  

Understanding, interpreting,

voicing this experience in my head

is taxing.

Why am I trying so hard?

What is this me,

I'm struggling to maintain?  

There's no need to struggle;

it's so easy

to just stop.  

Aum Mani Padme Hum  

Releasing thoughts on a sigh,

I break away from the contrail,

feel myself smile.  

I am a single droplet of mist,

floating, drifting

purely and wholly, aware.  

Suffused by sunlight

I am full, complete,

Shining in the radiance.

My joy the light, the sky, the earth below.

I am all.  

An eternal instant of clarity before I evaporate,

releasing,

becoming  

Aum Mani Padme Hum.

On the courthouse steps

the assistant DA takes a drag on a menthol Marlboro,

inhaling another two hours of fortitude.

Her patent-leather heels

Reflect high-rise office buildings

In glossy black,

sleek, dark mirrors

giving a view of the world

from the gummed marked sidewalks,

A child's view.

 

Across town, black and silver glint

From knife blades and guns barrels brandished

In charades of honor and respect

Below the rush of testosterone

And hate-filled high

every man child buries what he is afraid to ask,

"Will I walk away tonight?"

 

In an apartment building two blocks away

In any direction

A gagged woman

lies on the floor

In the aftermath of rape.

Vomit covers and drips and burns

Her throat her mouth her nose

Through the grimy rag

The rest of her is numb.

 

In a fourth grade classroom in PS 384,

Mrs. Horn's students assemble

a mesh tower butterfly garden

for a waiting jar of Painted Lady caterpillars

Ordered from Amazon.com.

 Gracie Lattimer gives the young teacher a hard look,

"What will you do with them once they hatch?"

"We'll take them to the playground and set them free.  Won't that be lovely?"

Gracie gives her a tired look and shrugs.

"They won't live long, you know."

The teacher looks away, quickly masking a frown

With a tight little smile.

"Yes," she replies,

"I know."

 

 

 

 

 

One of my good buddies in the graduate program I am in is a bunny lover.  She's a high school English teacher and has two wonderful rabbits that she keeps as classroom friends and takes home on weekend.  In an email exchange I started to make a joke about fluffy bunnies, but thought better of it.  For one thing, my friend's a Christian and just wouldn't get it.  For another, she may be a bunny lover, but there's nothing fluffy about her thinking.

This thought brought me to considering fluffy bunnies in the Wiccan and Witch communities and the meaning of that label.  It's certainly not a "nice" thing to call someone, even if they are so nicey-nice and full of "love and light" full sweetness their bubbling personalities make you feel honor-bound to slap them.  What does the fluffy label mean?  In essence, I think calling someone a "fluffy bunny" is similar to the "dumb bunny" epithet, judging someone's intellect as inferior and their naiveté as hopeless.  Fluffy bunnies are seen as all this with a coating of sickeningly sweet goodness.  Their understanding of Wicca, we believe, requires that they wear a floatie in the shallow side of the pool. 

Here's the thing:   I think the labeling is something we need to get past.   I'm not fluffy, but I suppose I am an optimist.   From a very selfish perspective, I believe in the Law of Return and that thoughts have power.  There's the old story about the optimist boy in the room with the horse poop and the pessimist boy in a room full of toys.  The pessimist can only complain that the one toy he wants isn't there while the optimist boy smiles big and happily says "where there's horse poop, there's sure to be a pony close by!"  The thing is, the optimist boy will probably find that pony while the pessimist will never find contentment.

I know there's more to the bunny critique than being annoyingly positive.  The critique is also about a level of critical engagement or lack thereof and, as I see it, reducing sacred experience to glittering fairy graphics.  Okay, lest you think I am against these sparkly greetings (I love the pretty siggies) or kindness, I'm not.  I just don't want to think of sacred experience as reducible to a catchy bumper sticker slogan. I also think intellectual engagement and recognition of difference in values and traditions is important. 

So the fluff bunnies?  Let's leave them alone.  Quit picking on the nice people.   Are they doing any HARM?  In the first decades of the feminist movement a schism developed that has not been healed to this day.  The charge of "essentialism" (as in essential nature or essence) became a label that divided women.  Anyone who attempted to talk about "our shared experiences as women" or "universal sisterhood" was decried loudly by other women who argued these ideals gloss over the truth of painful, oppressive histories, and the experiences of middle class white feminists (the majority in the 1970' s through 1990's) did not relate back to poor women and women of color.  There's a lot of uncomfortable truth that still needs confronting there.  The problem is, the charge of essentialism was taken so far that NO ONE could possibly claim any experience was relatable to anyone else's.  At one feminist conference, an anti-essentialist went so far as to say, the word "woman" is a presumptive, identity-oppressing label.  This claim was made to a room full of women who must have wondered, "what exactly am I if I'm not a woman?" 

My point is this-let's not fall into what educational philosopher Jane Roland Martin calls "The essentialist trap."  Yes there are many different traditions in the Pagan community (and right now, I know I risk upsetting someone for using this essentialist or not politically-incorrect term).  Some Pagans may seem so different in their stated identities and purposes that they seem like groups you can't relate to.  This happened to me on a vamp/shapeshifter site that had focused discussions on drinking blood and groups who believe they trace their lineage to extra-terrestrials.  One group I explored claimed that the Rom (gypsies) were the only witches with inherited magikal powers.  These beliefs don't work for me, but what do I advance by dismissing them?  

Some things clearly cross a moral line, any kind of abuse or worse.  By the same token, I was in a fluffy community that was completely willing to bash and supported the prosecution of a Vodun practitioner for her animal sacrifices.  This woman was being denied custody and visitation rights to her children in a divorce and the bunnies were all for it.  Any kind of animal sacrifice goes against my beliefs, but do I have a right to judge a religious practice that has a tradition much older than any form of modern witchcraft or Wicca?  The legend that animals are being stolen and slaughterered for Vodun rites isn't true.  A friend of mine is a Vodun priestess in Denmark.  She buys animals bred for this purpose at a special Vodun market, but those in her group who do not want to sacrifice animals don't have to.  Since I'm a vegetarian and a due paying PETA member, I can't condone this practice anymore than I can the meat aisle at my grocery store, but I don't believe I have the right to judge someone else's meaningful religious experiences.  Practitioners of Santaria and Vodun aren't widely running around putting curses on people either; I'm sure there are some, just as there are some witches who sell all kinds of services for fees, online sites that you can purchase your priest or priestess certificate from for a quick and easy Paypal payment (One of these diploma mills was based in my home state), and groups/solitaries that do other things I wouldn't do.  "Adult" rituals don't bother me either as long as there is no force, no threats, no violence, and no minors.  Again, there are things I don't engage in, but as long as there is no harm (serious pre-thought before action to weigh actions and effects), I don't judge. 

The charge of essentialism is all about judging.  It's about creating barriers of difference that makes no amount of empathy or understanding possible. 

Pagans come in many flavors and some of us may be softer and fuzzier than others, but finally, we are and will be a community that is stronger when it is more tolerant.  I don't really like the word "tolerance;" it suggests barely tolerable and, as Dr. Suzanne Rice recently said at a conference on tolerance and education, it is a minor virtue at best.  Tolerance does make conversation possible and if not conversation, at least mutual acknowledgement of a right to exist.  Are we, any of us, so powerful that we have the right to deny or devalue the rights of others?  Should we be so powerful?  It seems to me that many of us who landed on the welcoming shores of our beliefs came as refugees or immigrants from somewhere else, somewhere oppressive, hegemonic, assimilative, and silencing.  Yes, I'm taking that essentialist leap and lumping "us" all together now, even the fluffy bunnies.  We may not all hold the same values, but if we are true to our own values, we must accept that others have the right to belong just as much we do, even me with my great crone wisdom ; ).  Goddess of Pagan liberty, greet your wierdest and fluffiest, and welcome us all!

Diving with you

I go down

so

deep

I reach a place

below

language.

 

I feel so much--

It is hard to tell you

Thoughts are like sun dapples

Indistinct patches of light in moted water

 

The wreck lies at the edge of chasm

In closed darkness

Looking over at it, my heart speeds;

Fear doesn't need words.

 

But here, on the sandy, open bottom

I am giddy and playful.

I delight

In my buoyant

fluid life

I delight

 

In discovery.

 

A heavy chest

Crusted with the ages

whispers "open,"

"know."

 

In my joy

I don't see the chains

snaking round my wrists,

wrapping tight.

The chest and its chains

drag me

away from the open space

toward the darkness of the wreck,

I see the rotting maw and struggle

not to be devoured.

 

the chains snag on a cannon

half buried in sand,

a small reminder

what I'm clutching is part of wreck.

I want no part of

the violence

any canon inflicts.

 

I let go

But the chains don't

I struggle and I bleed

But I swim free

 

I'm alone and

I'm aware of being alone.

Down here

I live or die,

Rise up or drift

down

into waiting, waving green.

 

Examine the question

that draws my eyes back to the grass.

It matters.

 

I see my air bubbles

float up,

experience a fleeting manic longing

to be a bubble. 

 

With only my bubbles,

I realize a truth-- 

I am

here completely,

And this place

Is completely within

And without.

 

I am a blood cell

In a body stream.

The sandy bottom

The wreck

The living floatsom

The fish

And ocean flora

This is my womb.

 

I am an invader

Not equipped to be here,

but I am home.

 

There is

a you

I want to share this with

a you I long for,

feel joy for,

smile a radiant smile for,

pick a spiny shell for.

 

 

I wish you could see this

But I can't take it back

to be cleaned, sanitized, and preserved

under high gloss.

There is life here.

I'd share the wonder with you,

not the death.

 

 

I feel

a you that is here

and a you

that is not.

Deciding,

I put the shell back on the reef,

And give my answer--

 

I name you,

welcome you,

love you,

me, us,

kicking legs and pushing through,

surfacing together.