Petals

Everything you want will come flowing in.

If you ask for it. But be careful.

If you want love, you cannot make a list of the traits you wish a partner to have. If you want money, you cannot think that hard work or losses, much more important than money, is also on the horizon. If you want health, you got to do the work that a healthy body and mind demands.

Everything you want will come flowing in. But wishing is not a shopping list. There is a price to every gift. The price may be high if you haven't thought it through.

What do you really want? Are you willing to pay the price? Is your wish pure, devoid of pride and petty return-to-sender sidenotes

Then, and only then will everything you want come flowing in, slowly but surely like petals moving gently on the water surface.

Petals by Jeffrey M Fletcher

The We'Moon Calendar 2024

Opening We'Moon calendar - Gaia Rythms for Womyn is like re-meeting an old friend. 

This is supposed to be a review but unfortunately, after that introduction sentence I have had the hardest time to continue. 

We'Moon is an old friend. A very old friend. When I started using it I just loved to have a calendar that celebrated the rythms of the earth wheel, the cycles of the moon and an array of pagan holidays. It was extra fun to bring this calendar to meetings of a more so-called mundane world. It inspired interesting questions to say the least. That was a long time ago. Another life you might say.

For the last couple of years I haven't used the calendar. Life hasn't really lent itself to the luxury of an inspiring and beautiful book of days and months. Or, so it has seemed to me. So, I managed with adecuate though somewhat boring calendars. Mostly to remember what month it was.

When I published The Echo World I did reviews of  We'Moon year after year, struggling to come up with new adjectives to avoid being redundant. I usually ended up focusing on the years particular theme, always well chosen and presented.

Theme of 2024 is Luminations. A beautiful theme and artists, poems, texts and illustrations are as always exquisite. 

What strikes me most, however, trying to write this review, is the persistence it must have taken for We'Moon's creators to hold this wonderful project together, to stay true to its purpose and at the same time evolve and keep going. Hats off for this and if I didn't say, the actual calendar for 2024 is great. With a spark of the product of visionary, brilliant and persistent women to light up my planning again I expect there's a good year ahead. You can find the 2024 edition HERE. Happy winter solstice.

Prayer for Any Crossroad

 Great Spirit

Save me from my own stupidity.

Release me from my fears - known and unknown - so I can take true part in Every Day.

I will be all here and do my parts, always present, always ready knowing that:

"What you are seeking is also seeking you."

I give thanks to my allies - visible and unvisible alike. I am alive.

I told many stories. I will tell many more. I will flow like a body of water in the River of Life (rocks and boulders eventually wears down.) I'll walk in Turtle strides. When you walk very slow you get to your destinations so much faster.

Idun make me young again in heart and mind. Lifeforce flowing freely,

until it doesn't.

So mote it be

Stage setting for Wicked, Saenger Theater.

Mid Life Prayer

 I'm working on a prayer. A prayer for now, to put up on the fridge so I can see it every day.

A prayer is important writing. Or, can be. If you use it right. So far mine includes the concept of turtle (the slower you go the faster you get there) and Idun, goddess of youth and immortality. As expected, it's becoming quite complicated. Or not. The best prayers are usually simple. 

It begins with: "Great Spirit, save me from my own stupidity". Or, something along those lines. I'll see where it goes.

Writing is fun and also immensly difficult. Especially when the writing is a prayer that is in itself a deeply magical way to use words.

A house of its own, just outside French Market

Creating Routines Is A Mighty Task

 Creating routines is a mighty task.

Finding routines that work is not something boring and tedious. It's what hold us together.

The real bravery then ... is to face who we are. Not who we were in some nostalgic past,. We are that too, but not right now. 

Not who we might become. We will always become something, maybe better, whatever better is. Maybe worse, whoever would have the right to judge what is better or worse.

We are what we are. To face ourselves is the bravest task. To create rotuines that holds us together, perhaps even bring some joy, that is a mighty, mighty task.

Windowshopping for present Self.
Royal street, New Orleans.

The Gift Is Time

To be thankful (here in America we do - for whatever dubious cultural background, presently celebrate Thanksgiving. Or, many do. It's present in the streets, in the movements of our neighbours, in the ads that play watching a movie through YouTube).

isn't hard at all.

I am thankful for many things. And even though I skip the turkey and the mashed potatoes and even the gravy (I have no need. I had those treats in several settings, for which I'm truly thankful. These treats were associated with people - sweet, lovely human beings. I'm thankful for the memories we created. "A sample of different kinds of Thanksgivings," said my love. So it was).

I am thankful for the most precious gift of life -

time. 

        Time to be.

Turtle time. From journal.

Thankfulness

Thankfulness

is a funny thing.

Cannot be forced, like too cold icecream

you swallow too fast

                      to make someone else happy.

It can feel tricky to muster,

In the middle of the muck, the almost impossible, 

difficult to even lift your foot over,

 challenges.

Though sometimes,

it just flows,

                     breathes,

                                  (because you can breathe)

pulsates in waves, in the slow moving pulse 

of living that can never, ever be captured by any camera, or recorder, or even the craftiest of artists.

It's just felt. It can never be static.

It moves when life moves in the right rythm.

I'm thankful.

Yemaya by the offering tree, Louis Armstrong's park, New Orleans.