September 25, 2009

Lakeside thoughts

Posted in Parks and Rivers, Thoughts and Reflections at 9:47 am by

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.

September 23, 2009

Opet, Year 17

Posted in Festivals, The Wild Sky, Thoughts and Reflections at 12:34 pm by

Out of the overcast day, a moment of sun — brilliant white clouds pull together like slow Symplegades, thin swirls of cirrus curling between them like the spray of waves against stone. They kiss, and gray shadow falls again.

We’re in the midst of Opet, the festival of the Theban triad, celebrating the union of Amun and Mut, the bright promise of Their son Khonsu, and the renewal of the sacred kingship. Where the Lord of Thrones meets the Lady of the Crowns, where the hidden meets the manifest, where the Divine and the human worlds touch, we are in neheh, cyclical time, the spiral of becoming. The play of light waxes and wanes. But there will always be healing.

Dua Amun! Dua Mut! Dua Khonsu! Nekhtet!