So I’ve been thinking about things. This is all going to seem unrelated, but it is. At least in my head it is. I hope you’ll be able to follow it, too.

An old friend who is also a Rabbi called to check on me after seeing my posts. He called me in between flights to Israel where he goes every year, and he said something about a general malaise that’s been happening since the election. Amazing that….in 50 years I don’t remember it being like this. People have always been angry about results, resentful about them, but never fearful, depressed, never in such numbers. My therapist says she’s seen it, too.

But also, he said, “I give you permission to just relax. You seem to need that. You need to hear that it’s okay to just be where you are without a goal. And if you decide on a goal and you don’t complete it, it shouldn’t be a really big deal. So what? I mean, really….so what?”

A long time ago when I was still at Stratton Oakmont, I was meeting with an ex-boyfriend for dinner and talking to an elder male coworker about it. He was from some island or another, Jamaica maybe, or Haiti. As he was talking to me he kept saying I was meeting with my boyfriend. “Ex-boyfriend,” I would correct him, and he laughed and said, “Same thing.” It is NOT the same thing, I insisted, and he laughed and said, “Sure it is. You just blow on the coals a little bit.”

Also a long time ago, I was asked to write something about Inspiration for a Pagan newsletter. I thought about that for a long time because Inspiration is something that kind of happens in a vacuum. You cannot force inspiration, you cannot make it happen by concentrating on the topic at will. In fact, that usually gets in the way and triggers writer’s block. I wrote,

“Inspiration is what Dr. Frankenstein was looking for when he raised the monster into the sky. It was the pause before the lightning crash—no, it was the moment after the crash, before the creature moved. It strikes in moments of stillness, when we stare off into space because some stray thought has triggered some other stray thought…neurons and synapses fire randomly away…and suddenly we have to write or draw before we forget.

I have a secret for you. Inspiration is not the sudden moment of movement or thought that we think it is. It is a vacuum. It is a blank space, devoid of thought or energy. Because as we all know, Nature abhors a vacuum. And she rushes to fill it, with light, with music, with pictures, with laughter, with anger, with rage, with fear, with poetry, with love.”

I was in a room where two elders were planning a ritual. They were talking about what to do with a bunch of bad stuff when they got their hands on it, and one said, “We’ll put it in the candle.”

“Are you sure the candle is big enough?”
“It’s as big as the heart of the sun.”

I learned then that fire is, by nature, this primal kind of thing that has a spirit that connects directly to that energy…the all consuming light/heat/transformative energy that started the universe. It’s a complex thought that I keep absorbing every day…because every fire, EVERY FIRE, no matter how small, tealight or bonfire, knows what it means to be the heart of the sun. Every match contains that potential.

Part of the issue with aging, I’ve decided, at least for me, is that it feels like potential is lost. Every child is pure potential, there is no telling what they will be, how life will shape them. But adults like me are pretty well-shaped by now. After speaking to the Rabbi last night, I realized that’s not the same thing…that having a shape is not the same as not having potential. It’s having magnitude. It’s not necessarily having direction. There’s still so many pieces of potential there, in words in deeds. Not heading in any particular direction does not mean I have lost potential.

So going back to my old co-worker….I realized at that point that it was the first time I had heard an Elder speak in a form I could listen to, that I was listening to something borne from life experience, and that it was likely very accurate. If I were to blow on those coals, things would possibly be different.

So how does this all wrap up into Solstice for this year? I have always lived my life somewhat like an ember. This has been pointed out to me by my Elders, that I could blaze if I wanted to, but I tend to smother myself to not be seen. It is difficult, sometimes, to not be seen. Respect in the Pagan community is earned, you get it from being competent, accurate, inspirational, knowledgeable. You can call yourself a High Priestess, but if others will not do so there is nothing, NOTHING, that you can do about it. It’s a nice series of checks and balances, really. I am respected and loved, and that is lovely, and it’s kind of snuck up on me the way someone does when they cover your eyes and make you guess who they are.

I have practically smothered myself. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s been going on since April or May. I went to Shaman’s Quantum Universe (edit – now called Midwest Shaman’s Conference) with a very different head. I came out of it changed. I was surrounded by people who not just knew more than me, but who were REALLY more knowledgeable. It felt like light-years more knowledgeable. And it’s not like they treated me poorly…they were excellent to me, and patient and kind. And they were all these instances of potential, healers, herb practitioners, crystal workers, artists, various forms of shaman…it was an amazing place to be. I feel like I can never be at that level. I don’t know if it’s true, it may or may not be, but that is what I feel, because they have spent so much more time heading where they are heading, while I’ve only spent about 30 years, and out of that 30, probably only about 15 or even 10 have been serious momentum. It feels wasted, this life, sometimes. Like I had so much potential and I blew it, am still blowing it. It’s not true, of course, it cannot be true…as long as I’m breathing there is potential for change, evolution. But the feeling is hard to shake.

Maybe I need a cleansing from the Elders. Take that shit right off of me.

So Solstice is here, and I’m here in the dark, and there’s only the barest of embers left. I can’t nurture it…I’m not sure even what it eats nowadays…but for Gods’ sakes I can uncover the damn thing. Let it get some air.

I haven’t been woodburning, so I think I need to make more time for that. I haven’t spent time listening to music, or watching the things I love, (though I thank the Bouillianes, as always, for a replenishing and wonderful weekend doing just that), or just being still. Reading, maybe. I read a comic this week and a couple of short stories. That was relaxing.

I’m more isolated than I’ve ever been before. I have one friend I talk to every day on my commute. One (two really, husband and wife) that I try to see once a week, but sometimes that only works out to once a month. That’s pretty much it. I see people on facebook pretty regularly. I guess that’s a thing. It’s something. People, myself included, have lives, and that’s a good thing.

I need people less than I used to. I’m stronger in myself than I have ever been. Each decade of my life has been a different thing, and my 50’s are all about me…not about what I want, but about what I AM. The real darkness and light of it. The good stuff the bad stuff, my strengths, my weaknesses, all of that. It’s an opportunity to really own it and look at it. I don’t always like what I see. But I own it, and I accept it, and I love myself as I am. I don’t need approval as much as I need to. But I do miss contact.

So here’s where I’m at for Solstice, and what I wish for you:

I wish that you find your embers, wherever they are. If you don’t have the strength to blow on them, at least uncover them, let them get some air. Why would you hide that potential? In this time of darkness, we all need light, and your light is so specifically YOURS, no one else can see the world from your point of view. No one else has had your experiences, lived your life, so your voice is needed to help explain the world. If you see injustice, no one else will see it through your lens. If you see joy, no one else will catch the nuances of it that your eye will catch. If you do not speak, we lose your vision, and all of us are required to have a unified voice.

Blow on the coals a little bit. Nurture it with Silence. Every single flame in the world started as a spark somewhere…every bonfire, every raging inferno, even the lava at the center of the earth, all of it started somewhere as something very small. You too.

There was a time when you were an infant, screaming, coming out of your mother, just a spark of possibility. You were determined to survive, thrive, get your needs met. There was screaming if you did not…you knew you were entitled to these things, and perhaps now you’ve forgotten. Perhaps it was beaten out of you, or neglected out of you. Perhaps you’ve had children of your own and you have subsumed your needs into theirs.

All fires start small. You are no exception. Remember who you are, and fan the flames. It is the Solstice, and it is time for the Coming of the Light.

Let there be YOUR light.

So mote it be.