About Flame:2005
Altars,
Workshops,
Publishing Credits
Just released:
Celebrating the Pagan Soul
Links: checked, tweaked, & updated.
Lammas Update Letter:
Where I've Been
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Firepit Update Letters
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August 8, 2005
Where I’ve Been
The full version of the story behind why I dropped out of sight last winter, and what's been happening with my life, and the Firepit, since then.
Warning - long, personal narrative follows:
This has been a time of great changes, both slow and subtle, and sudden and dramatic. The last several years has seen me spiritually residing in a place of comfort, security, and joy. My intense years of soul-searching and striving for spiritual connection had led me to a profound sense of peace and oneness with my path and purpose in life. I feel like these past few years have been the reward for so many mirrored years of stress, uncertainty, and despair.
In my joy, I willingly offered my gifts and talents to the service of my Lady. It is Her call that I answered, and She called me to write. For years, the Firepit and articles that I have written for various Pagan publications have been the primary way that I have served my Goddess. I became Her "pen", and She inspired hundreds of pages of materials which have eventually built up the Firepit into what it is today.
Meanwhile, in my mundane life, I have been working as an educator in my local high school. More than just a job, deeper than a career, education is a direct part of my spiritual purpose in this life. Every conversation, every message, every encounter with the Goddess has confirmed that my role as an educator is an intimate part of my life's purpose. Both writing and teaching are hardwired into my spirit. It's what I'm put here to do.
Into our last Samhain bonfire, I cast my fears of returning to graduate school. In the magic of our Circle, I affirmed my desire to get my Master's degree in Education, so I could get my final teaching certification. That act set a lot of energy in motion in my life. Priorities began sliding around and rearranging themselves, oftentimes without my deliberate intent. I felt like my life was rearranging itself without me, and I found myself clinging to the comfort of the known, and resisting the changes that would need to happen to make this new reality manifest.
By Yule, I got the message. I needed to reevaluate where and how I spent my energy, so I could figure out how to fit in this next major step on my journey. After much contemplation and meditation, I reluctantly concluded that I was being granted a sabbatical from my normal duties to the Goddess. I put down my pen, and focused my energies and attention on grad school. (It's a good thing, too. I had to spend 20-30 hours a week on that one course, in addition to my regular full-time job. Yikes!) I stepped away from the Firepit, assured by the Goddess that everything would be fine without me. (An ego-check for me, to be sure.)
My first course ended in June. I had originally hoped to have a new update to the Firepit by Litha, the June solstice. Unfortunately, two weeks wasn't enough time to completely redesign the Firepit like I had hoped. My new computer can't run my old web-design software, so I was going to try and do a complete update by rebuilding the Firepit from the ground up using a whole new program. Ambitious (seeing as the current site is over 400 pages), and ultimately not do-able in the time I had. I have to teach myself a whole new way of doing web-pages, and it's a pretty steep learning-curve, especially since I don't have anyone at hand to show me the way. So June slid into July, and a busy summer schedule kept me from making any progress on a site redesign.
And then, in mid-July, was the Sirius Rising festival, and my life got jolted by a bolt from the blue. The festival was really amazing this year, with a lot of intense positive energy built day by day through daily community rituals. Each day of the week honored a different element: air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. The community ritual for spirit conducted on Friday evening focused on a candlelit labyrinth. I paced the labyrinth with intention and contemplation. When I arrived at the heart of the labyrinth, I sat down in meditation where I received the gift of a visit from Old Grandfather (one of the faces of God for me), who wrapped his arm around my shoulder and reassured me that everything would be all right. He was being very comforting, as though I were experiencing some sort of shock or trauma that required such direct support. It was a wonderful feeling, but like many such messages from Themselves, one that I knew would take me some time to figure out.
The next day, it happened. On July 16, a thunderstorm passed over the campground, and a bolt of lightning struck a tree alongside the site that had just been consecrated as a shrine to the element of fire a few days prior. The bolt of electricity traveled down the tree and through the ground to find 13 of us. I was among 13 people, all in different locations, that got zapped by the flashover. I was taking shelter in an airstream camper about a 100 yards away with 3 other people when, from my perspective, I saw an arc of electricity leap from the doorway into my left hand and travel up my arm. From the perspective of someone sitting across from me, he described it as "a fireball that leapt at me from the doorway." Fortunately, I didn't appear to be burned or harmed at all, just shocked… literally. I was a little shaky, but hid it, since my 9 year old daughter was a witness, and I didn't want her to be scared. As the storm passed, and the realization sank in that I narrowly escaped serious or deadly injury, I became euphoric. I felt truly blessed that I had emerged unscathed from the lightning.
The Lightning was a message from the God, who had appeared to me the day before and gave me such profound advance reassurance. It is clear to me that I have now been called into His service, just as I had been called to serve the Goddess. My predictable, comfortable, well-ordered path has been jolted and rearranged.
Since then, I have been experiencing a major psychic reorganization, as I try to serve the message in the lightning. Like the lightning-struck tower of the tarot, this event has created a major disruption in my spiritual "status quo". All assumptions about who I am and why I'm here have been called into question. I've been forced to examine all aspects of my life and challenge them to see if they still have a place in where I'm going. I have been jolted from my spiritual contentment and complacency, and forced to pick through the rubble and dark debris that line every pathway of spirit. I'm still in the "sorting" phase, and trying to figure out what ways He's calling me to serve.
That's where I've been for the past several weeks. However, emerging from the chaos of self-examination is a renewed commitment to the work I've been doing with the Firepit. I have seriously considered retiring the Firepit, and allowing it to be resurrected in a year or so when I finished my degree and my life settled back into a new routine. However, it seems like every time I've meditated on the matter of the Firepit in recent months, I get another positive message in the guestbook encouraging my efforts.
You see, maintaining the Firepit takes a lot of time and effort. Now that I've begun working on my Master's, updating the site at each of the sabbats takes time that I simply don't have anymore. So, although I have considered the possibility of stepping away from the Firepit entirely, I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm supposed to carry on. The Firepit will continue to be a beacon in the darkness for those who are sent to find it.
My service to the Firepit will have to be under new terms, however. For the next year or so, I can't guarantee that I will have regular updates at each of the sabbats, although that is what I will always aim for, whenever possible. At each update, there will probably be fewer pages added, since my Lady has put down Her pen to allow me to pursue my degree. (Mostly… some of Her thoughts still come through when it's important, but She's been generous with allowing me time.) And although I desperately wish to have the Firepit site redesigned and rebuilt, that will have to happen without me. I will be actively seeking a generous volunteer who would like to take a crack at redesigning the site for me. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please have them drop me a line.
Ultimately, I can only do what I can do, as best as I am able. I'm still actively listening to messages from Old Grandfather as He guides my steps along this next segment of my path. I'll try to keep in touch as best as I'm able, but I have no way of predicting how far or where my path will lead me.
Happy Harvest,
~Flame
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