December 5, 2009
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 7:24 pm
by Shefyt
I’ve been feeling lately like one of those acrobats who balance spinning plates on the ends of poles. It’s challenging to keep them all in motion without dropping anything. I’ve been working on my first novel, which means that this blog lost momentum for a while. Now I have a new freelance assignment, and I also need to prepare for the Bast festival that I’ll be hosting at the shrine in a couple of weeks, plus assorted other projects, as always. At least I’m never stuck with nothing to do.
But during this last week I managed to squeeze in Senut once, for the first time in a long while. And there was so much joy in it, so much that it made my heart sing. At the center of the spinning, there is this, this — the hush of Zep Tepi in the instant before the song of creation, the perfection of the single unfolding moment.
Today is the first day of the first month of Peret, the Kemetic season known as “growing,” the time of planting and tending the fields after the influx of the floodwaters has receded. And it’s snowing here, the first reasonably serious snowfall of our New Jersey season. It seems contradictory at best to honor the growing time as we sink deeper into the darkness of winter’s short days, as the last leaves lose their grasp and fall, leaving stark branches reaching up against the snow-heavy, cloudy sky. And yet, growing doesn’t start with the first green shoots. It starts with the bare field, harrowed and plowed, with the seed pressed down into the darkness beneath the soil and left to lie there in stillness and silence, the new plant curled up within, waiting for its time.
Tonight I’ll light a candle and offer perfume and cool water to Bast, in honor of the new month. And I’ll pray for the renewal to be found in rest, and the promise of the flowering that’s to come.
Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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October 22, 2009
Posted in The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 12:21 pm
by Shefyt
Last evening, driving home, was an evening of layers: blue sky high above great sheets of sun-and-shadow clouds; the late golden light cutting across the air to ignite the treetops, turning them into brassy many-colored fires, or striking lower, between them, to burn on houses, grass, cars; the transitioning leaves in all their autumn hues overlapping like feathers; and, most keen of all, my own awareness of existing on multiple levels, of making the everyday drive, part of the New Jersey routine of commuters, and at the same time being with the sky, and also every place in between, breathing between earth and heaven, like Shu.
This morning I got up early to offer to Heru-hekenu on His feast day: flame, cool water, a little Florida water for scent, and teriyaki chicken. His message to me in return was very simple: Fly.
What does it mean to fly? I won’t ever suddenly sprout wings, except perhaps in dreams. But even while my feet are on the ground (or the gas pedal), I can still soar.
What sets your spirit flying?
Dua Heru-hekenu! Nekhtet!
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October 19, 2009
Posted in Home and Temple, On Writing, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 4:43 pm
by Shefyt
On Sunday I went for a walk down the road and around the school, the first time in a long while that I’ve taken that particular walk. I often go for similar walks on my lunch break at work, around the university campus, down by the lake or along the canal, but they don’t have the sense of exhilaration that yesterday’s walk did. Was it something in the wind? Or was it because it was that wind, gusting down the length of the valley, that sky arching overhead, from hillside to hillside, that roll of the land and the rivers, the scattering of orange leaves like a drift of fire on the hill leading up to the cow farm’s main house, the pines along the athletic fields swaying against the ragged and illuminated clouds? Because it felt like coming home?
I’d never even realized that I’d been away, and yet, in some sense, I was. And is it a coincidence that I also spent much of the day writing, something that I’d been too busy or too anxious to do for a long time? There are a lot of distractions, a lot of ways to be absent to one’s self and one’s life.
O Netjer, may I be truly present. May I live. May I live.
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October 15, 2009
Posted in Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 4:53 pm
by Shefyt
Today on the drive to work my eye was caught by one of those maples that turn palest peach in the fall — just a glimpse, its leaves in the early morning half light like faint candle flames, luminous and hazy in the shadows beneath the taller trees. Soon their color will shift, soon the mornings will get darker, soon the leaves will fall entirely. It’s a reminder to treasure every moment of beauty as it comes.
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October 14, 2009
Posted in Thoughts and Reflections
at 12:13 pm
by Shefyt
Sitting in shrine this morning, I found myself fascinated by the candle — the flame utterly still, seeming to float upon a pool of deep blue wax. It made me think of Isheru, the lake where the Eye of Ra is cooled and purified after Her raging. A perfect, timeless hush, the fire resting on the water, at peace yet holding the potential for action — a sustained note of tension held in containment and thus in exquisite balance.
May I be pure as well, O Eye of Ra.
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October 13, 2009
Posted in Being Kemetic, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:31 pm
by Shefyt
It was a good weekend — a friend and fellow Kemetic priest came to visit, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and also simply spent time together talking about our practices. On Sunday, after the grocery shopping, I usually make offerings to my Beloveds, the God of the Year (currently Djehuty), and my Akhu; he sat in on that with me, and we added an offering for his Mothers, Nebt-het and Serqet. I’m used to doing offerings by myself, and it was an interesting and pleasant experience to be able to share that with someone. I think that there’s a lot we can learn, too, from watching and participating in each other’s rituals. Even if we’re working within the same basic framework, everyone brings their own touch, their own emphasis, their own poetry of gestures, words, and silences.
Another gray, cool day, a chill in the air that says autumn is here in earnest. It occurred to me just the other day that the colors of my state shrine — flame orange for the naos cabinet, shades of green and brown-gold for the curtained backdrop — echo the colors of this transition time, when the trees are just starting to catch fire. If you had asked me, once upon a time, what my least favorite color combination was, the answer would have been orange and green. It made me think of lurid fashion, of acidic day-glo and neon. And yet at Bast’s inspiration it’s become a thing of beauty for me. Now I see it with new eyes, a vision of fire and life and burning; now I associate it with the season that I love.
Tomorrow the House of Netjer will be holding an online oracle of Amun for its membership. I’ve been trying to think if I have anything to ask the God. Everything that’s unresolved for me right now is internal, not a question of “what should I do” or “what do I need to know” but of learning to be still with who I am and to see what’s truly around me. The secret of learning patience is to be patient.
O Amun, O Hidden One, may You help me to see what’s hidden from my view.
Dua Amun! Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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October 12, 2009
Posted in Tending the Shrine, Thoughts and Reflections
at 2:45 pm
by Shefyt
Sometimes when life seems too busy, when it seems as though there’s so much to do and so few hours in which to do it, this anxious and rebellious small voice pipes up to protest spending time in shrine. So it was at the end of last week. I was sitting before Bast’s icon, having just come to grips with the fact that I’ve been letting resistance get the better of me lately and that I need to put more conscious effort into all the many facets of tending the shrine. Somewhat plaintively, that inner voice blurted out, “Does that mean I’m supposed to live my life in the shrine?”
No, Bast replied.
Live your life from here.
Begin it here and end it here.
Trust a God to turn your perspective sideways. Consider the difference between spirituality that takes the place of day-to-day life and spirituality as a ground and context from which that life arises, between ritual as obligation and burden, something that consumes you, and ritual as source of renewal, that which gives life and energy, and as a source of rest. Like a home that you go out from every day and to which you return, again and again…that’s the distinction I need to embrace, as a palliative against that resistance, which ultimately arises from nothing more than a mind clouded by tension and fear.
So for the present I have a new practice, where every day I go to my shrine as the first thing when I get up and as the last thing before I go to bed. It only needs to be for a few moments, just long enough to calm myself, to remind myself, to center myself by touching that wellspring of life. We’ll see what comes of it.
Dua Netjer! Dua Bast! Nekhtet!
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October 7, 2009
Posted in Netjeru, Stalking Beauty, Thoughts and Reflections
at 3:00 pm
by Shefyt
I went out for a walk along the canal today — a perfect windy autumn day, leaves flying, the sunlight glittering from a thousand ripples on the riffling water, a day that was made for joy. And as I walked, I began to pray to Heru-hekenu: “May You lift me up. May You lift me above fear, above depression, above anxiety, above anger — may You lift me on Your shining wings as You soar toward the sky, singing the praises of Netjer, Your beautiful fragrance pouring down onto the world.”
Netjer praising Netjer? came the response, soft and subtle.
“Everything,” a pause as the thought unfolds, “…praises itself.”
And then an impression like a slow, quiet smile. True.
So praise yourself today, as the tree revels in the arch of its branches, as the drifting clouds sing the glory of water and air, as Netjer loves and honors Itself — praise yourself as a child of God, beautiful and beloved. Even if something within you refuses believe it, say the words anyway. Words have power — what you speak moves that much closer to reality.
I praise myself as a singer of songs for Netjer, as a dreamer, as a good friend, as a lover of cats, as one who serves with joy. I praise the legs that carry me, the hands that do Netjer’s work, the senses that perceive, and the mind that remembers, draws connections, and invents. I praise the lungs that breathe and the heart that beats, giving me life. I praise all my hopes and longings, all my strivings and surrenders, and all the possibilities hidden within me that are yet to be born.
Dua Heru of Praises! Nekhtet!
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September 29, 2009
Posted in The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections
at 7:39 am
by Shefyt
Yesterday afternoon was very dark, and then on the drive home from work it rained, but at the end there was a strange sunset light, the sky like champagne, pale gold where the clouds broke. Like that, clarity emerges, a glimpse, a snatch of music, a fleeting instant that clutches at the heart.
What is my intention? Do my actions support it or undercut it? What have I forgotten in the busyness of the day? The light breaks through, and suddenly I feel it again, that call, that promise of delight, almost near enough to touch. And I pledge myself once more.
Last night I lit candles and poured water for my Beloveds, for my Akhu, and for Djehuty, the God of the Year, even though I was tired and resistant — “I have too much to do” — but then, what more important than this? Right now, Djehuty affirms, I need two things that intertwine with each other: discipline, to settle myself to my work; and coolness, to soothe my agitation so that I can find focus and calm. It comes back to holding that energy within myself, containing it so that I can make good and appropriate use of it. So this week I work on loosening the grip of my two addictions, both of which make me restless and “hot”: caffeine and Internet surfing. And although I’ve addressed this issue before, and “forgotten” with passage of time, I haven’t given up on it, and that counts for something — a reaching for the light, however fumbling; a link in the chain of effort; a repeated opening to the brilliance of the sun.
I dreamed once of a yellow bird that was also a prayer, released to skim upward toward the sky, and of a quiet man who told me, “Keep sending it up.”
Again and again, a return to the center, to intention, to the still point of meditation, to the heart’s sweet, piercing longing.
Keep sending it up.
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September 25, 2009
Posted in Parks and Rivers, Thoughts and Reflections
at 9:47 am
by Shefyt
I went down to the lake at lunchtime yesterday, to sit and watch the reflections of the willows, the sun, and the passing clouds, to drop leaves into the water and watch them turn in the slow, eddying currents.
Sometimes patience is so hard. Taking time is so hard. It seems as if it should be easy, just living, just letting things come. I know that there are ways to rest, even while in motion, but somehow, far too often, I don’t.
This week has been about finding that rest: playing with the new kittens, sitting and reading in the evenings (more pleasure reading than I’ve done all summer!), doing the one thing that just has to be done each day. This week has been about kindness to myself. And I think I’m starting to feel the fruits of that kindness: a little more clarity, the feeling that I might be able to start writing in earnest again.
Tonight I’ll pour water for Khonsu, beneath the waxing moon, and for the Seven Arrows of Bast, in thanks and in prayer.
Dua Khonsu! O Shining One, Great Healer, may You watch over me.
Dua Bast! Beautiful Mother, may I rest peacefully in Your embrace.
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