Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal

A Meme for Book Lovers

Beth OwlsDaughter, she of the lovely daily devotional Owl's Wing blog, has tagged me with a book meme, which has nudged me to post a blog entry for the first time in two weeks.  Just when I was getting ready to write about 2008 being my Hermit year and how I'm craving more and more time in sacred solitude . . .  ah well, that can wait a day or two. Or three. Or fourteen.

Here's the rules of the meme . . .

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

I reached out my hand to the credenza behind me and pulled the top book off the haphazard pile sitting there waiting to be shelved.  Ah ha!  It's Waverly's juicy new book, Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythms of Life  . . .

"The farther north you go, the greater the likelihood of developing SAD, whose symptoms include decreased activity, overeating, oversleeping and weight gain. Now don't those actually sound like the normal reactions of an animal to a period of cold and darkness? Hibernating animals need stores of fat, both to protect them from cold and to provide energy during the long winter sleep."

Hmm . . .  I tag Waverly, Lunaea, Cate, Jade and Chavala.

Eight Random Facts about Me . . .

I was tagged for this meme by Kris at Inside Art and Words . . .

1.  I've never lived farther than 50 miles or so from the beaches of the west coast (and usually much closer), except for 10 months in 1973 when I lived in Denver, Colorado. (I grew up in west Los Angeles.)

2.  I became a born-again christian in 1972 and spent most of the 70's in church, so I don't recognize most pop songs from that era.  I left around 1980 when I had the revelation that the church was about power, not love. I used to sneak into the local community college and read copies of Ms. Magazine, which radicalized me.  The book that turned my life around at that time was:  From Housewife to Heretic by Sonia Johnson, the woman who was excommunicated from the Mormon church for supporting the ERA.  (Remember the ERA?)  I wasn't a Mormon, but her account of her experiences with the church had many parallels to mine.  That book introduced me to the feminist concept of patriarchy.

Kris Waldherr's Art & Words

Kris Waldherr very kindly highlighted my work on her blog, Inside Art and Words, today. I'm sure you've seen Kris' work before, in the Goddess Tarot, the Lovers Path Tarot, and the children's classic Book of Goddesses.  I'm excited about her illustrated novel, The Lover's Path, and am looking forward to her Goddess Inspiration Oracle which will come out this fall. I confess to visiting this page regularly to pull a Goddess Inspiration card. Check it out and pull a card of your own.  Thanks Kris, and blessings to you!

Siren Song

"Sing, dance, create. If you have to choose one, do all three at once."
—Sister Bridget Mermaid, Church of the Old Mermaids

I've been inspired by Cate's weekly postings of the "Mama Says Om" themes for months now and finally decided to give it a try myself.  This week's theme is "song," and the first thing that came to mind was Sister Kim Mermaid's excellent revisioning of the term "siren song."  Wikipedia tells us that "the term 'siren song' refers to an appeal that is hard to resist but that, if heeded, will lead to a bad result."  And we all remember those nasty stories about mermaids luring sailors to a watery grave with the haunting melody of their songs.  Definitely a demonization of the sacred feminine.

But leave it to the Old Mermaids to uncover — recover — create — a new meaning for the term.

A new Old Mermaids story

I just finished reading Sister Kim Mermaid's birthday present to me.

I chuckled, I chortled, I giggled and laughed out loud.  And at the end, I cried a little bit too.  Then I went to the stove and brewed up a blend of Old Mermaid Tears Tea and Reading Magical Tales Tea and poured myself a cup. 

Magic is afoot here, sister Mermaids!  My heart is full.

What I'm Reading in January

I decided to take a page out of my friend Julie's book — er, blog — and do a better job of noting the books I'm reading this year and commenting on them.   "Too many books, too little time," that's my motto.  I've been a booklover all my life and I see no reason to stop now.  (caveat:  links go to Amazon)

A Mermaid's Tale by Amanda Adams

My mermaid sister Carol gave this one to me and I wanted to like it more than I actually did.  The author is an anthropologist and that's where she shines — she does an excellent job of recounting various mermaid folk tales and myths, and relating the archetype to her personal experience.  The problem for me is that since she is only about 30 years old, most of her life experience falls into the "maiden" category. The books ends with her wedding, for Pete's sake.  I'd like to hear more about the mother, queen and crone — the "old" mermaids! :-)  I did read a review somewhere that this book's target audience is 18-35 year-olds, so that makes sense.  Kind of a chick-lit memoir with mythic overtones.  I'd like to read an updated version in, say, twenty-five years or so.

A Wise and Luminous Novel

I read.  A lot.  But I haven't been commenting much on what I read.  Thought I might give that a try now and then.  I'm always looking for novels that entertain and feed the spirit.   I can usually count on Charles de Lint to give me one of those.  The one I read this weekend is another. 

It's Kim Antieau's Mercy, Unbound.  When I first heard about it, it didn't really appeal to me because the blurb I read said it was a Young Adult novel about a girl who might have anorexia but thinks she's becoming an angel.  But I thought I'd read it anyway, because I love the Old Mermaids so much.

I started reading it at CornFest and finished it when I got home, before falling asleep.   The last scene danced in my dreams all night.  Luminous.  Golden.  The setting makes me want to visit the Southwest.  And . . .  it's so  . . . Kim.   It's so . . . us.  The characters — especially Mercy's parents and her Aunt Lenny — talk just the way my friends talk, and about the same subjects.  On one level, the story is about teenage girls and eating disorders, but it's really not.  It's about our despair when we feel so overwhelmed by personal tragedy and global disasters that it seems like there's never enough we can do to make a difference in the world.  And it's about Grace. 

It's wise.  It's beautiful.   Read it.

(You can read the first chapter here.)

Naming the Great Mystery

Here's a journal entry I scribbled down in my notebook while waiting for the ferry on the morning of July 25.  I didn't know that my dad would enter the hospital later that day, and I didn't know he would die four days later.  But I did have Spirit on my mind.

Lately I've been thinking about the names that we give to the Source of All Things.  (I'm not talking about the various deities, which to me are like the color rays of a prism when the light shines through it.  I'm talking about the One behind the Many.)

"God" doesn't really work for me as it conjures up images of patriarchal oppression, although I realize that others use it with no problem.  "God/dess" is more descriptive but lacks elegance.  I don't really care for "Mother-Father God."  I used "Dearest Goddess" for many years.  It's a phrase I learned from Patricia Monaghan's book O Mother Sun (sadly out of print);  I think it's the translation of Her name from dozens of eastern European folk songs.   It's personal and affectionate, and female, and best describes how I relate to Deity (yet another boring name).  But lately "Dearest Goddess" has morphed into "Mama Gaia" or "Mama Ocean" or "Grandmother" depending on my mood.  I like the name Cate Kerr uses — the Old Wild Mother.  I like the quasi-Native American name I learned from my Kamana nature studies:  "The-Spirit-Who-Moves-Through-All-Things."  I love all the names, or titles, that Caitlin Matthews comes up with in her Celtic Devotional (which I read out loud every morning and evening).  Here's a few:  "Brightener of Mornings, Singer of Summer, Hastener of Dreams, Gatherer of Dew, Keeper of the Heart, Kindler of Hope."  There's many, many more.  This is why, no doubt, that an intrinsic part of Celtic spirituality is writing poetry.  There are so many ways to name and describe the Divine. 

But the name that resonates the most with me right now is "the Grace."  It's from Charles de Lint's novel Medicine Road, and is used by characters who are shapeshifters.  They're sometimes human, sometimes animal. They pass easily between this world, the Otherworld and the one Inbetween. 

"The Grace" — it's so personal and so mysterious at the same time.