June 10, 2009

Renewing the pledge

Posted in Tending the Shrine, Thoughts and Reflections at 2:20 pm by Shefyt

The temptation is very strong to delete the first line of the previous post, considering how embarrassingly I’ve failed to live up to that aim. But that would be sort of dishonest, so I’ll leave it. At any rate, I got lost again, which is always so confusing, because when I’m most lost it always seems as though there’s someplace else I ought to be, and it’s not here — it’s anywhere but here — and I go frantic trying to answer that call…but it’s only when I stop looking for the place where I “should” be that I stop feeling lost and instead begin to feel at peace. You’d think that I’d learn after the third or fourth or tenth time. And it all sounds so simple and obvious when I write it like this, but when I’m in the throes of that desperation all I can think of is escape.

I thought that I wanted a writer’s hermitage, spare and clean and far away, all twilight and simplicity. And when the dust settled, I looked around and realized how much I’ve been neglecting the home that I have now, the place of my shrine, that I dreamed of making beautiful for Bast. Those are the two poles that keep pulling at me — far flight into the abstract and remote, and settling into the specificity of honoring the place where I am. But it’s not really as simple as a straightforward polarity. I need to balance both, to thread them through each other, warp and weft.

Two weekends ago, finally in recovery after a long stretch of the crazy, I took on some very overdue yardwork, cutting back the multiflora roses and mowing the trails to the brush piles. As I worked, I pledged to Bast that I would reclaim the overgrown and weed-choked places, that I’d make this land her well-loved temple after all. And in the days following that — the songs! Suddenly the floodgates opened, new songs began to pour through, and old songs in progress leaped closer to being done. Clearly this was a step down a good path, or at the very least a creative one.

Dua Netjer, Dua Bast! Nekhtet!

December 30, 2008

May joy be your companion

Posted in Thoughts and Reflections at 7:02 pm by Shefyt

It’s the day after the festival of the Establishment of the Celestial Cow, honoring Ra’s departure from Earth into the heavens, the dividing line of mythic time and human time. It’s also the day before the end of the secular year, part of that funny little week between Christmas and New Year’s when hardly anybody is at work, or if they are then hardly any work is getting done — that stretch when the year isn’t quite done yet, but there’s scarcely enough of it left to count for anything. Sitting on different sides of two different borders, in a strange sort of liminal place, it’s a heck of a time to think of starting a blog. Or maybe it’s the best of all possible times. Who can say?

I started this blog once before, actually, but I think I was going about it somewhat wrongheadedly. I had a Mission to say Profound Things on a regular basis. And frankly, I think it’s good enough if I just say something true on a regular basis. Or even say anything at all on a regular basis. As long as it’s real and not just me fantasizing about being wiser and more insightful than I am.

So. Welcome to the blog. It’s blue. And it’s pretty. (And my brain instantly started trying to come up with a rhyming line ending in “kitty,” which…no. I’ll spare you the doggerel.) If you’ve happened to find your way here, I hope that you enjoy the visit. And for the Feast of Thanksgiving Offerings, running through these last days of the year, I offer you a wish: may you see beauty, may you hear beauty, may you touch beauty, and may joy be your companion all throughout the year to come.