Light

The Being of Nothingness

Dreams of taking teaching
Wrapped in shawl on dew kissed grass,
Then rise to whirl in ecstasy.
Wide open arms and upright neck
Not thinking of my dervish foot
That reached to touch the ground.

This morning's meditation
Burned gold energies and heat.
No specks remain upon the open one.
Sex open. Will. Then heart and mind.
All lifted to the teaching
Of the nothingness of light.

Upon high plinth, it's morning cry, a crow.
There is this day.



Blessings to you. - Thorn

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Johnny Got His Ghost

I saw Trumbo yesterday. The film chronicles Dalton Trumbo's life after the House Un-American Activities hearings and the blacklist of the Hollywood Ten. HUAC ruined many other people's lives, some of whom later committed suicide. The movie caused me to ask my friend, "Do you think you are brave?" as we ate gelato afterwards.

The movie made me think of brave people. Of Paul Robeson. Of Ida B. Wells. Of Dorothy Day. It made me think of ordinary people doing extraordinary things because, whether in the moment or over time, something in them stood up and said "enough."

If you think you will never have to face such a thing in your life, I want to remind you that neither did those people I've listed above. And neither did Jeremy Lassen.

"Who's that last one?" You may ask. Oh he's just an ordinary guy who runs a small publishing house and works in a bookstore part-time. He lost his other job because the US Secret Service knocked on his door one day for posting inflammatory art on the internet. How did the US government find out? Because, like in the HUAC hearings, someone turned him in. In the end, Jeremy decided to take the art down. I can't say that I blame him.

We pick our fora and we decide what to do. Ordinary people decide every day.

Principal Doris Hicks spearheaded rebuilding her school for the children who wanted it, when the government wasn't going to do anything and the Chicago School vultures were selling out the rest of the Louisiana school system.

The Huon Valley activists try to save Tasmania's ancient forests through education, action and art.

And then there's my friend Sister Pat who died this month. The judge who sentenced her to prison acknowledged that it would not rehabilitate her, but urged her to get counseling so she could tell the difference between following her conscience and following the law.

Pat Mahoney knew the difference. So did Dalton Trumbo. Trumbo also knew the the US government was placing itself above the very laws it had set.

What is our line? What do we stand for? When do we say "yes" and when do we say "no"? It doesn't have to be about politics. The yes and no can arise in us at any moment, and if we are clear enough to listen for it, something in us will respond.


If you haven't read Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, I recommend that you do. And while you are at it, you may wish to pick up Shock Doctrine by Naomi Kline.



["What has this to do with Ghosts?", those reading on LJ or myspace may ask, apropos of my title, Johnny Got His Ghost. Yesterday evening, after returning home from the movie, I was interviewed by the Shock Jocks of the Paranormal aka Ghostman and Demonhunter. You may listen to the podcast here. It is a strange ride with me edging some serious answers in amongst good-old-boy banter. I put in a demand for high quality cupcakes in there, and gave them my spell for the good life. Sorry in advance for the "fat" comments one of them makes. The sound quality is not so great, which convinces me that I need to buy a better head-set for my phone if I'm going to do more interviews. My portion starts an hour in, so you may want to download it and skip the first half in which they talk about ghost movies and Sasquatch. Or maybe not.]

10:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Yes and No

The world feels in a difficult spot right now: economy is in dire straits; chair of the Arkansas Democratic party just shot and killed; international aid workers in Afghanistan killed; Georgia and India reeling from violence... I could go on. And always, there is pain and bewilderment closer to home.

So what do we do? How do we live our lives?

We do what we can for those in need. We practice non-violent communication with friends and family. We get involved in political or environmental action in whatever ways feel right to us. We keep ourselves as healthy and happy as possible, so we can give back as much as we can to this world. We seek out and create beauty.

We say no to those things that sap our life force and yes to those things that feed us. We do not dwell on things we have no power to change, and work to change the things we can. This includes both the large and the small, politics and e-lists, refugees and friends.

I was just speaking with a long-time activist yesterday, en route home from our volunteer work. Freshly returned from Vandenberg Air Force Base, he had gotten two hours sleep the night before and has trouble resting because there is always so much work to be done. I counseled him toward a bit of selfishness, a bit more self-care. We are useless to others if we are not good to ourselves.

This planet will keep turning. I suggest we enjoy what we can and work where we are best able.

Good night, and good luck.

6:07 PM - 8 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

We Will Lift Each Other Up

What is strong in you? What shines? What draws you to your best, most honorable nature?

I'm very interested in these questions, both for myself and others. I love being around comrades - brothers and sisters - who challenge me, make me laugh, hold me while I cry, and celebrate my accomplishments. I love doing the same for them.

The other day, a friend called me to break the news that there was a rumor going around that I kick my students during meditation. I laughed, because the thought was so ridiculous. Kicking is not one of my pedagogical tools. Engaging in practice is hard enough, and ass-kicking enough, without the aid of my size 6 shoe.

Now, many can attest that I do have a silly sense of humor, and I do often quip, before a long meditation, "I'll kick you if you start snoring!" As it turns out, only 99.9% are aware it is a joke. There's another one percent, or even just one person, who apparently have taken me at my tongue-in-cheek word. And they spread that around. And what's worse? People must have believed them. No one bothered to email or call me up and say "Hey Thorn, I heard this weird thing about you. Is it true?" Nope. They just passed the word along that Thorn has taken to kicking her students.

This isn't just about me, or I wouldn't even bother writing about it. This is about how we treat each other in general. It is about how we tear each other down, rather than lift each other up. Why do we do this? Do we not wish to rise to our best? Do we not wish to celebrate each other's talents and successes? Why are we so invested in maintaining a status quo in which, once anyone excels at anything, we have to try tripping them in hopes that they fall?

If we are concerned with an abuse of authority - which is a valid - if actual abuse is happening, isn't it more effective to track it down and see what the truth of the matter is, rather than running with partial or false information? I don't know how many times I've emailed or called someone to say, "I've heard this, is it true? What happened?" Luckily, I have sometimes had folks accord me the same respect. But I've all too often seen the opposite happen. I've seen our teachers and leaders sniped at and griped about and undercut behind their backs.

Back in my early, Witchy days, my friends and I engaged in too much of this sort of malicious and weak behavior. Over time, it started to make me feel a bit ill, and I'm happy to say we have grown up and learned better social tools. We don't have to shore ourselves up by undermining others. However, the magical and Pagan communities, in many cases, don't seem to have grown beyond this behavior, and I don't think it is just that newbies are always cycling in and attempting to come into their power. I think that newbies are taught by example that ripping each other's reputations down is a good way to consolidate our power, and test the loyalty of our cohort. In order for us to be "in" someone else must be "out." As a community - if I may use that word - we are stuck in Junior High School.

As we know, this isn't actually strength, it is just a posturing masquerade.

If we are going to challenge each other, or fight with each other, let us do it face to face, or at least email to email, phone call to phone call. I've seen far too much malicious gossip, rumor-mongering, and attacks on public lists or blogs, and not seen an equal energy spent in actually dealing with one another. Are we really that weak? Are we really that scared? Is so-and-so really that much more powerful than we?

I want better from us. I want commitment, honor, truth, strength and deep compassion.

We all have so much to offer the world, and the world needs it right now. Our petty squabbles keep us from developing our true wills, our beauty and our strength. There is work to be done and we need real power to do it. We can disagree, but let us disagree with integrity.

And as Rob Breszny once sang: Kick your own ass!

3:29 PM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

My New Website!

Hello,

All of you not already reading this from my shiny new website, please check out my shiny new website!!!.

There are many new classes available and I will be teaching an online class for Maybe Logic Academy starting in October and just wrote a forward for my friend's tribal bellydance book.

My newsletter will be sent out around the Equinoxes and Solstices, so sign onto the mailing list if you are interested. Those of you on my old mailing list will need to re-join as the old list had problems and is now defunct.

hugs and kisses - Thorn

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Lammastide and RIP

Soon comes the Reaper.
At what price is our harvest?
Uncertain yield of hope.
Tilled in another time,
A gentler season.
What seeds are left on cracking ground?
Who mows the bearded grasses
Fragrant in the Summer's sun?
- from "Sickle"

Sometimes the harvest is of food. Sometimes it is of souls.

I spent today in San Francisco General Hospital with Sister Pat Mahoney and many of our extended family. Pat collapsed on the sidewalk yesterday at 24th and Valencia and went immediately into a coma. She'd been having trouble breathing lately and complained of lightheadedness. The crew at Martin's - the soup kitchen that was our family tie - had just decided to relieve her of crew chief duties at a meeting on Monday, because it was getting to be too much for her. Maybe Pat disagreed with that assessment. At any rate, she decided to move on today.

There were blood clots in her lungs and they found a large one at the base of her brain. When I got to the hospital, she'd been on life support for many hours already. As soon as I touched her I knew she was no longer in her body, but opening my senses, I could tell she was still in the room. Others concurred.

So we sang. We talked to her spirit. We prayed. We came in and out of the ICU. Finally, all of her blood family had arrived, as had the other sisters from her religious order.

I was privileged to be in the room when they stopped the respirator. Starting "Amazing Grace," we sang as the nurses removed all the tubes from her mouth and body. The energy in the room was huge. We then watched the heart monitor, until her pulse receded, slowly, all the way down to zero.

Lammastide is coming. A time of fog, in my part of the country, though tomorrow morning I leave early for the steamy Ozark mountains, and the good land of Diana's Grove. I had intended to write about them today, for they need help to save 800 acres of land next door from being logged down to the ground. This is a harvest that feels devastating and untimely. But then, when is clear-cutting ever timely?

But instead, I am writing about the death of an activist. Pat was a good hearted woman with an occasionally hot temper and a radiant smile. She lived her whole life for the cause of social justice and served two sentences in federal prison for anti-nuclear activism. She rabble roused in many other ways, too, and we worked together at the most beautiful soup kitchen in San Francisco. I was just there yesterday.

She was supposed to be there today. But, as I said, she made some different plans. Go in peace, Pat. And thank you. You lived a really good life.

What is remembered, lives.




[note: if you follow the top link to my poem, "Sickle," there is a typo. "Tiled" should read as "Tilled."]

5:27 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Quote of the Dei

When we come into the occult movement and begin our occult work, the first thing we have to do is to get rid of the rubbish built into our temple. We have to remake our foundations. That means we have to work on it while we are still living in it. - W. E. Butler, from Lords of Light


Thank you, Uncle Bill. The cleansing is ongoing work, of course, but far easier once the new foundation is set, than it ever was before.

7:31 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Joy and Sorrow

I read about Angie Zapata and feel grief. Another transwoman killed. Then I go outside and water the garden. Some baby plants need care.

People in the world are starving. I tell my friends in the US, when they want dinner, that they are only hungry. Never starving. I never will use that word to describe my state, though I've been chided for being particular about it in the past. I can respect the state of the women in Burkina Faso by not flippantly assuming I share one tenth of that kind of hunger.

There are more bomb blasts in India. I pause and close my eyes. Then I sit at my desk. Things need to be written. Emails answered. Contracts read.

Last week, I wrote this as an open question:

They teach about the supernal light, and the lifting of the heart, and the understanding of the bigger picture. They do not teach about the sadness…

And received this in reply:

Sadness is no different from the joy. Your sadness is for humanity, for the earth, and so is your joy. Your joy is also the Limitless, which is also in humanity. There is no difference. Do not try to make it so. Ease your heart and know that in its sorrow, it is perfect. Keep present with the journey of your soul. Do not worry. All is well. All manner of things are well. Drink from the well. Shine with its light. Praise the Gods, honor the ancestors, dance.

Life and death walk hand in hand. Joy and sorrow are held inside the heart. So I meditate. I exercise my body. I say my prayers. I light candles. I sit in the sunshine. I wonder. I get back to work.

Whatever you are feeling today, I hope that includes happiness. Take some pleasure in a moment. Right now.

In the midst of the sorrowing of the earth, something new is also being born. In Denver. In Ouagadougou. In Ahmedabad and Bangalore.

10:39 AM - 5 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Gratitude

At the soup kitchen today, I was washing a huge pot during clean up and a guest paused on her way out and said, "That man just told me to take care of myself, but that is a big responsibility!"

I replied, "Yes, and we all need to take that responsibility!"

She said, "But that means I need to deal with my pride over having to accept help from other people, and the tangled web that creates!"

I breathed in and said, "And we all have to deal with that, too."

The exchange made me grateful. Grateful for her insight, grateful for the opportunity to share a moment with her, and grateful for my life.

Other things that make me grateful today are:

Riding my bicycle to the farmer's market for organic, local, produce. Strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, peaches, cheese... Yummy.

Seeing the movie Chris & Don: a Love Story with my loves last night.

And the other usual blessings: Deep love, great sex, health, flowers, birds, a home, satisfying work, art, books, and people who keep showing up for themselves (and others) and trying their best.

7:28 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Watering the Garden (not only with our tears)

If you are against torture, you must also stop torturing yourself.

If you are against war, you must also cease warring with your friends.

Conflict is essential for growth, but not this slow wearing down of soul.

Cultivate joy, along with your garden - sun and water and laughter are also necessary.

Do two generous things today, one for yourself and one for another.

Re-enter the flow of All.

9:57 PM - 3 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment