It’s a super New Moon in Taurus, with Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Pluto all retrograde – what better time than now to work on breaking harmful habits and creating helpful ones?
In this post I will lay out for you four simple, effective techniques that have helped me completely change my life over the last five or six years, and I call them: Gross Yourself Out, Psych Yourself Up, Redirect the Flow, and Make It Special.
We’re coming up on Beltane, that magical and fiery pagan holiday that I’ve always loved and was recently feeling strangely anxious about. I’m not a crone…yet. But I’m no spring chicken, either, and I was beginning to look at the brilliant, sexy, flirty day of Beltane for what it is: a spring holiday of fertility, and wondering to myself, how do I fit into this?
The moments that really matter, are the ones where our hearts change. I recently heard a former lawyer involved in fighting racism saying that she had been trained to think you can’t change people’s hearts, so you’d better focus on changing the laws. Then she discovered Theory U, a new business framework that acually fits like a glove to the sacred feminine- yes, a new tide is here! She discovered that in fact you can change people’s hearts, and those are the moments that really matter. Changing hearts is even more important than changing laws. Every time our heart changes, that will have a lasting imprint on our lives- and on the lives of those around us.
For me this gave words to something that has been happening in my trainings but that i never quite could pin down. Now I see: moments that hearts have changed! There have been so many of those! I challenged myself to remember them, and to start writing about them. So here is the first... the most powerful of all... and it was with... my dog!
It was one year ago today that my life changed forever. It didn't change as much as it could have changed, and for that I'm grateful, but nothing has been the same since this day one year ago. My own error resulted in my falling 10 feet onto the thin edge of the control panel of a spare washing machine. I broke 6 ribs at both ends and broke my left shoulder blade in half. I spent several days in the hospital, 2 months off work, and 6+ months in physical therapy. I would never have made it through all of this without amazing support from my friends, family, and co-workers. I am still paying off medical bills, but I am alive and healthy. I am nearly back to the level I was before the accident (and in some ways I am actually healthier). It still amazes me that less than 2 months after the accident I climbed on a plane and flew to San Jose to do my 3 workshop presentations at PantheaCon. I owe thanks to many of the people at that event as well. While lurching around with broken bones, trying to haul incense making supplies from one workshop to the next, a lot of people I'd never met helped me haul things around and set up or tear down. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED IN THE LAST YEAR.
But there was more help given to me than that and I want to try and thank as many people as I can from the Pagan Community. In less than 1 day after my accident I was able to get online and, very slowly, type a message with one hand. I sent out that email letting folks know what happened and asking for any spare energy to help me with the extraordinary pain as well as energy to heal. The response was overwhelming and nearly immediate. Within an hour of sending that message, I began to feel the energy pouring in. I know that there were groups or covens who sent me energy and that was an immense kindness that truly made a difference. Even more surprising was the energy that continued to come to me for weeks, much of it being sent by Solitary Pagans who had never met (or even heard of) me and who lived hundreds or even thousands of miles away. That Community of Solitaries, without any coordination whatsoever, continued this outpouring of love and energy for months.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...