I must apologize, it's been way too long and when I got the mail today and saw the latest issue of SageWoman, and realized that I can't remember the last time I had received the magazine, well, let's just say that I was sad.
Where do I start?
...My path through discovering myself as a mother, teacher and self.
I must apologize, it's been way too long and when I got the mail today and saw the latest issue of SageWoman, and realized that I can't remember the last time I had received the magazine, well, let's just say that I was sad.
Where do I start?
...These past few months have been increadibly hard. I've tried throwing myself into various studies, using this isolation/quarantine time to my best.
Yet, I find that inside I'm hurting. I've loved having my family home and around me, yet, there's an ache.
...Finally, found a peaceful moment to take time to myself and write. I often push aside these moments to get other things done that seem more important. I teach, lecture, mentor and suggest the importance of self care, but so often neglect to take that time for myself.
I envy a friend of mine who takes time every morning to talk to her fairies and to sit and pray, send Reiki, and whatever else she needs to do to get her day started and centered.
..."Just breathe"
Such a simple statement. A reminder to just breathe. Why do we say that? Does it really help?
...It's hard, but I've adjusted to so many changes in my life. Job changes, starting a business, two high school graduations, son going to college - but doing so online. Then this hits me, my middle daughter, the one that has been nicknamed the emotional support child for so many - including me, has left for college.
She is my artist (painted the picture above), my crafter of jewelry, may painter of cups/ornaments/bowls, and has gown into my coffee/tea date, coworker at our shop, picker-up of emergency groceries, taxi for the youngest, and often comic relief. She was the one who was never going to leave me, telling her dad and I the dreams she had of building a house right next to ours and "borrowing" our land so she could have a couple highland coo and sheep.
...I’m not sure if you are like me, but I wear some type of stone every single day, even when I sleep. Now, I’m not including my wedding set, but other stones. I have a rose quartz bracelet, a red tigers eye bracelet, various pendants and rings.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed that I need to take a break from wearing them now and again. One day I noticed that the bracelets felt awful and heavy on my wrist (a new feeling for me) so I took them off and put them on the windowsill so they could catch the moonlight. I woke in the morning and went to put them back on and they still felt heavy.
...Today is a hard day. I'm glad it's raining. My middle child, my sweet shy,, cautious daughter is at her last day in high school. It is the ending of a phase in her life and the beautiful beginning of another.
This one is especially hard. I don't know why it is, it shouldn't, I have one more child to get through high school before we are "empty nesters". But this is my sweet Marie. My highly intuitive, empathetic one. She feels everything around her.
...
In the days of the emperor Arcadius, long after the rest of the region had been thoroughly Christianized, the city of Gaza remained proudly, defiantly, faithful to the Old Ways, its eight temples daily thronged with worshipers.
At the heart and center of pagan Gaza stood the Marneion, the marble-clad temple of Zeus Marnas, famed for its size and beauty. Though latterly identified with the Greek Zeus, the god of this temple (Aramaic Mâr-nâ, “our Lord”) was none other than the old Canaanite Thunderer, Ba'al Hadad himself, god of that place for more than 3000 years.
So few Christians were there among the Gazans that, when the city's newly-appointed bishop, Porphyrius, arrived to take charge, he could find only a handful in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.
In those days, when a new bishop rode into his city for the first time, it was customary to give him a triumphal welcome, the road before him strewn with branches and palm fronds, the air perfumed with incense. On March 21, 395, however, the people of Gaza gave Porphyrius a satirical entry instead. They strewed the road before him with thorns, fouled the air with burning cowpies, and met him with jeers instead of the expected hymns.
Porphyrius burned hot with anger, but the emperor would brook no interference with the city or its ways. Gaza was a wealthy city, and paid its taxes faithfully, fattening the imperial treasury with its annual revenues.
Porphyrius soon ingratiated himself with the empress, predicting that she would soon bear a son. When she did so, after the child's baptism, he was finally given the permission he had long sought to destroy the temples of Gaza.
Imperial troops entered the city on May 12 in the year 400. The plunder and rapine continued unabated for twelve days and nights. When they were finished, pagan Gaza was no more.