I've been getting a lot of calls from folks asking about when this year’s Winter Solstice is.

“It's this Sunday,” I tell them.

“Oh, great! Sunday!” they happily reply. (Meaning “Finally a day when I can actually come, because I don't have to work.”) Then they ask, “What time?”

“The ceremony starts at 6:30 AM,” I cheerfully inform them.

“Oh. Well, have a good time!” (Meaning, “I'll think of you out there in the freezing snow as I roll over for four more hours of sleep.”

Every soulstice for the past 34 years I have trekked out — no matter what time, what weather, what infirmity — to invite the sun back into our lives.

Every year, I think that I will be all alone in the dark-freezing-wind-rain-snow at some weird inconvenient hour. That no one else will get up out of their flannel sheets to drum and chant the sun back.

But every year, people do come. And you know what? The toughest, hardest, worst weather, worst-timed events are always everybody's favorite. They are the best memories!

And there is always something hard about the Winter Solstice!

“Remember when it was pouring and we fanned the flames of the fire with our umbrellas?”

“Remember the time the ritual bus broke down in Brooklyn? Broke down in Staten Island? On the Verrazano Bridge?”

“Remember when I wrapped the cast on my broken ankle in a garbage bag so I could walk on the sand of the Atlantic Ocean beach for the solstice fire?”

“Remember when we were all arrested? And ultimately vindicated?”

Oy! During the past 34 years I have learned that it is a very difficult thing, indeed, to bring back the sun. To encourage light and warmth in a cold, dark environment.

But it is so worth the effort!

The exact solstice moment is 7:04AM EST this Sunday morning. Adjust the time to your local zone.) You can celebrate wherever you are. Just get up and go outside, preferably somewhere green. And greet the sun. Align your energy with it. Pledge to be a light in the world. What better ritual could there be?

With bright soulstice blessings,

xxQMD

Tags: Spirituality Solstice Ceremony Ritual

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My birthday is rarely a party time any more. Cake and low-fat frozen yogurt are now longer the fulfilling richness I seek in my birthday celebrations. A party just doesn’t feed me, although last year on my birthday I made a dinner party for all of the dear ones in my life who do feed me, help me in all sorts of ways in every aspect of my living — my work assistants past and present, my acupuncturist, my hair cutter, my car mechanic, my mentor, my agent, my oh so ever-helpful lover. I wanted to thank them with conviviality, good food and spirit.

But normally I prefer — crave, actually — solitude and silence. For me, my birthday is a profound opportunity to take serious personal stock. It is the perfect time to check in with my deepest and best self to evaluate the past year and to project the next. “How am I doing?” as old Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. How have I coped? Changed? Succeeded? How am I stuck? What have I learned? And what can I just not get through my thick skull?

For the past thirty years, I have retreated to some extent and fasted to some degree for a one-to-two week period around my birthday, during which time I devote myself entirely to purifying my body, my home, my thoughts, my emotions, my intentions. I keep a series of Birthday Books in which I process my impressions and my lessons, plot my progress, ponder my problems, plan my goals.

I scrub my house. I cleanse my toxins with juices, broths, teas and herbs. And release my tensions with long walks in nature and luxuriantly long baths. I release my inhibitions with yoga and trance dance. I purge my possessions along with the detritus of my mind by culling files, by pruning irrelevance. I plan potlatch giveaways, and extreme throw aways.

This introspective birthday ritual is my way to center myself. To sharpen my focus, realign my perspective and rededicate myself to living the very best life I can. I emerge with energy and enthusiasm, my path re-consecrated with purpose, passion and power. This annual reunion with myself is crucial to my well-being and the purity of my spiritual work. And attendance is required. Or else!

Because of a crazy schedule of personal and professional commitments, I couldn’t do my customary birthday fast and retreat in September this year. And I have really been paying the price for having missed it. For these past two months I have been out of sorts, out of patience, out of my body, out of steam. Generally down and out.

Now that the mad rush of September and October are over and I am feeling so soul bereft and bone weary exhausted, I am determined to have my deferred retreat. I hereby claim the next ten days as mine and mine, alone. Starting now!

With blessings of centeredness,

xxQMD

Tags: Centeredness Spirituality Soul Ritualsilence Solitude

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It is so **bleep** easy to feel depressed, frustrated and disillusioned right now. These are terrible times of artificial division, manipulated resentment and palpable fear. The real dynamic being played out right now is not about warring religious, economic, political or nationalistic factions. Not about the economy. Not about war. The struggle is actually between those who believe that the world is defined in terms of opposition — war or peace, right or wrong, rich or poor, with us or against us — and those who are able to see things in a more holistic, congruent manner.  

These are deciding times. It is imperative for those of us who see the big picture to decide, to commit, to make a concerted effort to reach out in ever-expanding circles of affinity and embrace. Now is the time to create healthy, functioning networks in recognition and in honor of our mutual state of being and our common fate. 

Because there really is still a chance for peace — and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. It is ultimately up to us, each one of us, all of us, individually and together, to create the kind of world in which we want to live — starting right here, right now. Within the context of our immediate lives, within the concentric circles of our ordinary interactions.

I once gave a presentation in Washington, D.C. about creating peace in our world and in our lives. During the question and answer period, a woman commented that she wished that she could drop her job and just devote herself to working for peace.” “What do you do?” I asked her. “I’m a therapist,” she replied. Surely she has many opportunities in her professional capacity to create peace every day.

Some might argue that we don't have any choice in this upside down dangerous world and that we can't effect what will happen. But even if we can't immediately alter the course of human events on the world stage, we can certainly create change in our own lives and in all of the lives that we touch. And our thoughts are the seeds of that change.

Dr. Christiane Northrup writes, “Use your thoughts wisely. Understand
their power. Thoughts have a tendency to become their physical equivalent. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Another one is the law of attraction, which states that 'like attracts like.' Because it is consciousness that creates reality, the kind of consciousness you hold — your vibration — actually creates the kind of life you're living.”
 
So our first order of business must be to stay positive. To entertain only positive possibilities. To imagine only affirmative alternatives. To surround ourselves with wholly uplifting, life-affirming people and influences. To align ourselves solely with the greater good so that our actions will be born of only the finest of our best intentions.

What we all have to do from now on is to stay alert, stay centered, keep connected and most important of all, keep talking. Talking, writing, protesting keeps the light of truth and tolerance shining upon the hidden agendas of governments, industries, institutions and individuals. Silence, like the dark of night, shelters nefarious deeds. Silence forgives violence.

I have been haunted recently by the words written by a Protestant minister after the downfall of the Nazi regime. “First they came for the gays. I am not gay, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Gypsies. I am not a Gypsy, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Jews. I am not a Jew, so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the Catholics. I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t say anything. When they finally came for me, there was no one left to say anything.”

Be bold.
Make a statement.
Make a stand.
Make a difference.

In light of the widespread oppression, manipulation, intimidation that surrounds us today, we most certainly need to say something.  We need. In fact, to talk to everyone who we meet, actually engage on a human level with those who we encounter as we make it through our day. Not just our families, friends and colleagues — those of presumed like-minds — but also the shoe repair guy, the waitress at the coffee shop, the post office clerk, the bag boy at the super market.

A good example is Dianne, one of the wonderful people who regularly attends my healing circles. She not only prays for the homeless men and women who live on her block, she calls them each by name. I am so impressed and inspired by her personal outreach to the “untouchables.” Everybody is, after all, somebody.

If we ignore, exploit or patronize those people whose lives intersect with ours, how can we expect international relations to be more civilized? We need to walk our talk wherever we go, whatever we do, remembering always, that by doing so we do make a difference. Let us each be a sun, sending our caring energy out into the world, shedding light wherever we go. You never know whom you might touch with the radiance of your warmth.

I have an outgoing message on my answering machine that doesn’t even say, “Hello.” It just starts right in with, “You know there really is still a chance for peace and that chance will definitely increase if we each do our piece. So let’s make peace — in our homes, in our own hearts, in our relationships, in our communities, in all of our dealings and in the world. Peace be with us all.”

Much to my surprise, the very people whom I never would have thought would respond favorably have. The overwhelmingly positive reactions that I have received from workmen, telephone solicitors and service personnel has been an important lesson about the necessity to reach out beyond the boundaries of our biases, assumptions and expectations. 

A few weeks ago, I came home to a message from the plumber who was making an appointment to fix my sink. After listening to my taped pep talk, he answered in his gravely Brooklyn brogue, “Yeah, what is this war all about, anyway? Why are we fighting those people? They never hurt us.” This, from someone I would have assumed to be a proponent of the war.

The electrician, another guy who really shocked me, loves the message and calls in daily just to hear it! Once I was here when he called and when I picked up, he complained. “Let me call back again,” he implored. “I want to hear the message. It makes me feel good.” The reason, he explained, is that it is not political. It is personal. And it touches his heart.  

But why was I surprised? People are just people, after all. When you think about it, all people are of a like-mind when it comes to living a life unthreatened by hatred and violence. The urgency for war only seems enticing when it is waged elsewhere. Ask anyone. "Do you want bombs and missiles to blow up your house?" 
 
Every parent has the right to put her/his child to sleep each night without any risk of that child being shot, trapped in the midst of some hostile crossfire — be it in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ireland, Angola or the South Bronx. No one wants to live and work in a war zone — in Palestine, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, the World Trade Center or East L.A.

So, buck up and say what is on your mind. The more you do so, the more empowered you will feel.
 
We become just by performing just actions,
temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle


With blessings of speaking your truth,

xxQMD

Tags: Peace Courage Truth Spirit

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It is hard to stay hopeful when you are worried to death. It requires determined attention and an exquisite combination of focus, concentration and surrender. It is an exercise of discipline, a test of faith, a karmic obligation.

During a recent ceremony of deep cleansing and release, I passed a set of Guatemalan worry dolls around the circle to help us relinquish the nagging apprehensions and insidious anxieties that sap our strength and resolve. All those sneaky, nasty, niggly worries that worm their way into our brains and take up our good time.

Worry dolls are wonderful. There is nothing you can’t tell them. Absolutely nothing shocks them, they’ve heard it all before. And whatever it is that troubles you, they take care of it. Get rid of it. Swallow it. Spirit it away. It is their job, and they are professionals.
What at tremendous relief it is to hand over your distress to someone else to deal with.

As each participant took the tiny figures into the palm of her hand,
s/he would allow the flood gates of her heart to open, and let loose a stream of sadness, stress, panic, guilt, worst-case scenarios, and   catastrophic fears.

When the dolls reached Anita, a woman in her late sixties, she calmly declared, “I don’t worry. I hope.” 

Brilliant! I felt five decades of self-conscious, conscientious pollyannaism vindicated by the tranceparent truth of that one simple statement. Talk about positive reinforcement.

There are those who say that hope is futile, a waste of time, of precious energy. They contend that hope is completely unrealistic. Simply wishful thinking, they insist. And I say, “Yes. It is, and thank goodness!”

Studies show that optimistic people consistently out-perform those who consider themselves to be more realistic, because they place fewer restrictions on themselves. If you don’t know that something is impossible, you are more likely able to be able to do it. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.”

While we often have little or no control over the situations that affect us, we do have control over our own perceptions of them. We do have the very real and extremely potent power of perspective. And we definitely possess the crucial and vitally influential choice of how we will deal with whatever comes our way. How we will handle ourselves.

In a wide range of happiness studies conducted lately, including several with major lottery winners, it was clearly demonstrated that professional, educational, or financial success are not predictors of contentment. Nor are gender, age, race, religion, health, or ethnic background.

The key, common factors across the board that seem to determine satisfaction, peace of mind, and yes, happiness, are: optimism, self-confidence, self-control, connection to community, and living sense of spirituality. And, I might add, the desire to be so.

Take me, for instance. I was the most miserable of children. Painfully shy, sadly confused, and badly bruised; constantly abused by great chilly blasts of debilitating negativity. All I ever wanted was to be happy. When an adult would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would — in my imagination where I dared — answer, “Happy.”

I hung hand lettered and illustrated affirmations (before there was a word for such things) all over my room: I WANT TO BE HAPPY. I WILL BE HAPPY. And then, when I was eighteen years old and living away from home for the first time, it suddenly, incredibly, indelibly occurred to me one marvelous morning that I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could be a happy person!

Happiness is fleeting (as is pain.) The trick is to court it, to recognize it — even in camouflage, to acknowledge it’s presence when and where we least expect it, to celebrate each second of the healing heart and soul of it, and to rejoice in our own exhilarating ability to create it for ourselves and others at any given moment, in any circumstance.

“If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

With blessings of inner contentment,

xxQMD


 

Tags: Hope Worry Spirituality

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I have just returned from my annual 9/11 chant for peace event — A 911 EMERGENCY CALL FOR PEACE. For seven years, this day has been used as a call to war. I want to reverse that energy and use it as a wake up call, to prod us to think, walk, talk, act for peace.

Our ceremony was moving and sweet. We blessed each other with Tap Roots Oil to honor the fact that we are rooted in each other. That we are the support and sustenance for each other. That we are rooted together in the Earth.

We burnt herbs to dispel all the negative energy that surrounds us. And invited in the sweet spirits of peace. And offered thanks for our lives.

I gave each participant two shamanic amulets: one, a tongue of fire (lengue de fuego) bean seed to help us speak our truth. Every since 9/11, there have been signs in the subway saying, “If you see something, say something.” Yes! We all see so much that is wrong. It is incumbent upon us to speak up. To speak our truth. To walk our talk. To put our money where our mouth is.

The other amulet was a crystal from the last ceremony that I performed at the World Trade Center. A crystal that had absorbed the sunlight of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It is reminder of the presence of light in the dark. A metaphor for the possibility of hope in despair.

I created a labyrinth of salt. As we each walked into the spiral carrying our seed and crustal, we focused on our intention for peace. In the center, we lit candles and made blessings and prayers for peace. As we walked back out from the middle, we thought of ways in which we might be the instruments of peace in our lives and in the greater world.

We chanted and chanted and chanted for peace — for the chance for peace. And by the end of the evening, we were awash in the glow of loving kindness. Our group was a living legacy of that original 9/11.

*
    
Seven years ago, when the planes flew into the Twin Towers, I was out of the country. It took me more than a week to be able to get past the sealed borders and return home. One thought consumed my mind during that agonizing week of separation from my house, pets, friends and the city that I loved. I craved to be of service to my community.

For 26 years, I had served New York City as an urban shaman. The New Yorker magazine had even dubbed me “the unofficial commissioner of public spirit of New York City. The World Trade Center had been the site of half of the seasonal celebration rituals that I had facilitated and so I was especially bereft at the loss of my public altar.

So in response to the terrible tragedy and in memory of all died that day, I undertook a “Walk Your Talk Pilgrimage.” One by one, I engaged the people whose paths I crossed: friends, the UPS man, the guard at the bank, the waitress at the coffee shop, the washing machine repairman, the people who actually live, work and love in New York City. We shared amazingly intimate, sweetly profound conversations that inevitably ended in a hug or an extra-firm handshake. 
 
It was the human face of this tragedy and its resulting extraordinary state of affairs that I chose to focus on. I did not want to lose track of the myriad emotional and spiritual interconnections that people are capable of making — with each other, with their own best selves, with the greater universal good of all.

I experienced this kinder, gentler city the minute I got back to Brooklyn. A delivery guy was just leaving my building as I arrived home with all my heavy travel bags. When he saw me trying to wrestle them up the stairs, he ran to help me, thank goodness.

He wouldn’t accept a tip and insisted that he just wanted to help. When I asked him if all his relations were safe, he said that they were all fine, but that he felt terrible, because he wanted to do something to help. “You just did,” I reminded him. He was extremely pleased with the notion that this, too, was peace making.

On the way to the coffee shop with friends the next morning, I ran into my neighbor Monifa walking with another woman. We stopped right there in the middle of the street, traffic not withstanding. (And nobody honked.) "How are you?" "How are you?" "No one dead?" "Everyone OK?" We ran our eyes up and down each other looking for signs, for clues of damage. We all six embraced in relief and mutual comfort and then we introduced our selves to the ones in this circle who we didn’t know. We hugged first and asked names later! A sign, surely, of sanity in psychotic times. (And still nobody honked.)

I went to visit the 2nd Fire precinct in my neighborhood to pay my respects. The neighboring community had blanketed the sidewalk up and down the street with offerings of flowers, candles, cakes, tears and messages — one written on World Trade Center stationery and sent as a thank you for saving his life on that fateful day of reckoning.

I shook the hands of one traumatized but sturdy young man and thanked him. I engaged his misting eyes with my own and told him that I prayed that their dedication and sacrifice would be the foundation of a new way to live together as a world community. He locked my eyes and squeezed my hand and bit his quivering lip. He had seen quite enough of war, thank you very much.

At the bank I greeted the lobby guard as usual. I asked him if he was OK. “Not really,” he told me as his eyes filled with tears. His stepfather had been in the building. He escaped, but was shaken to the core. The guard (who I talk to practically every day and whose name I am ashamed to admit I do not know) said that he felt that his step dad would never be the same, like some Viet Nam vets whom he has known who will never be the same.

Then he confessed to me something remarkable. Actually, it was the most profound thing that I have heard anyone anywhere say on the subject of peace. “I hate my uncle,” he told me. “And I have hated my uncle for so long that now I hate anyone who looks like my uncle. ‘Why for you got to go look like my uncle?’ he quoted himself in his West Indian lilt. “Now I have to hate you.” He looked me right in the eyes and said that he realizes now how wrong that is. That he can no longer hate all uncle look-alikes. That he is now even working on trying not to hate his uncle.

I called Judith, one of my counseling clients, who was feeling particularly despondent. A nurse, she had immediately ran to one of the hospitals on Tuesday morning to lend a hand, but after the first batch of the injured passed through the emergency room there was no one else to help. She was desperate to move out of this place of feeling helpless. “I wish there was something that I could do.”

“You could call Linda,” I suggested, knowing that she had had a recent painful falling out with a good friend of hers. She allowed as she had known deep-down all along that in light of everything that has just happened, she should, she wanted to call. But she couldn’t. “Just do it, honey. Make peace.” And she did! And they did.

I witnessed an intense white light, an inner glow that emanated from the people of New York City during the weeks of my walking and talking. We had risen to an unthinkable occasion and we liked ourselves for doing so. We reached out to our neighbors and we found that we liked them, too. And everyone really liked how good it feels to feel good about themselves and each other. People want desperately to do right, to do good, to be good, to live right.

In the hardest of times, we managed to transcend what makes us human and embodied what makes us humane. We saw the putrid smoke of destruction burn clean with the spirit of true communion. We in our beleaguered town have tasted grace. We recognized it for what it is and we cherished living in its beneficence. 

So many people have expressed to me their apprehension that as things returned to normal, people might lose some of their newfound consciousness of perspective and interdependence. But why go back there? What used to be normal didn’t really pan out all that well, it seems to me. That old normal isn’t nearly good enough for us who are divine and beautiful beings. Our challenge and our joy is to make this miracle of living in caring community be the new normal.

*

And tonight, seven years later, that vision was embodied in our dear, intimate, communal circle of chanting for peace. There IS still a chance for peace. We are that chance.

With blessings of harmony and helpfulness,

xxQMD

Tags: Community Peace Chanting 911

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September always feels like New Year to me. It carries so much more significance than does January 1. The first crisp hint of a chill in the air always shakes me out of my summer lethargy, wakes me, makes me more alert. It focuses and concentrates my attention. I can smell the possibilities of a fresh start in the air. 

Reinvigorated by the sunny days and laze of summer, life now begins again in earnest in schools, government agencies, cultural institutions and businesses across the country. There is an unmistakable aura of enthusiasm and energy in the air, a palpable sense of intensified determination. This annually renewed resolve seems so much more natural than the resolutions we make at the turn of the calendar year.

Fall jumpstarts everything, including itself. Labor Day has become the popular indicator of autumn, rather than the equinox, which occurs three weeks later. In the same way, Memorial Day, which predates the solstice by three weeks ushers in the civic summer season. By this reckoning, school starts in the fall, even though it is still summer.

Most of us have been indelibly imprinted with the excitement and optimism of the first day of school. There is nothing quite so inspiring as buying blank notebooks, pencils you have to sharpen yourself and some brand new white shirts. So clean, so fresh, so hopeful.

The Jewish New Year falls in the fall. My memories of the High Holy Days that I celebrated as a child with my family have little to do with organized religion. Rather, I remember a domestic sense of auspicious new beginnings: major house cleaning, usually a new outfit to wear to temple and, best, we ate off of the good china with the real silverware.

I think of my birthday as being in the fall, but it is actually four days before the equinox. Our birthday is our own personal New Year. It is an annual reunion that we have with ourselves, and attendance is required. Our birthday is our periodic opportunity to take serious personal stock. “How am I doing?” as Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. Like any new beginning, our birthday is an ideal time to sharpen our priorities, realign our perspective and rededicate ourselves to living the very best life that we can. 

Every September I take time out of time to evaluate my past experiences and actions and to prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the coming year. I usually retreat to some extent and fast to some degree during the two-week period surrounding my birthday. The new and full Harvest Moon, and the autumn equinox usually coincide.

This experience is intended to center me and slow me down. It is my birthday gift to myself. During my fast/retreat I devote myself completely to cleansing and centering myself: body, mind and spirit in readiness for the future. I rinse my system with fresh water and teas, I clean my house and altars and I use yoga, meditation and t’ai chi to flush my mind clear of the mental detritus that I have accumulated.

Since the early 1980’s, I have kept a birthday book. Therein, I ritually record an accounting of the past year. I process my impressions and my life lessons. How have I grown? What have I learned? And what is it that I just can’t seem to get through my thick skull? I plot my progress. I ponder my possibilities. I pour over my problems. I plan my goals.
       
This civic fall also marks the seven-year anniversary of September 11. Let us mark this poignant time by reflecting honestly upon our vulnerability in today’s terrifying political/economic climate, our culpability in the deadly repercussions that arise from our own chauvinistic attitudes and deeds, as well as our impressive individual and communal capacity for extraordinary acts of courage and devotion.

May this new season signal the beginning of a new era of planetary peace and plenty.

With blessings of best intentions and new beginnings,

xxQMD


 

Tags: New Year Fresh Start

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I am doing a yard sale tomorrow. A GIGANTIC yard sale. I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to purge this past while. To clean out, throw out, release, discard. To distill and streamline all of my possessions.

This is a huge task, because I have many, many, all too many possessions. I didn’t always have too much. When I was 22, there was a fire in my apartment building, which I escaped in my pajamas. Everything else I owned was burnt, including one of my three cats. After the fire, I possessed literally nothing.

A manuscript of my writing was lost to the flames. It was ironically called Burnt Offerings. Among my most precious offerings were my grandmother’s jewelry and the exquisitely worked infant clothes that she had sewn for my mother, her girl baby. The fire also took my personal archive that used to be stored in my mother’s house before she did the Grand Purge: my scrapbooks, report cards, drawings, awards, photos, etc. The real important stuff.

The fire drove me out to First Street in my nightclothes and in total shock. Luckily, The Catholic Worker charity just happened to be across the street. I ran there barefoot and they gave me a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a sweater. Now I owned three things.

The next day, I withdrew (with quite some difficulty, since I had no passbook or identification) my entire savings of $300. I went to a discount department store and bought underwear, toiletries and an outfit to wear to work. I paid for my purchases and left my wallet on the counter as I walked away, still in a daze. There was to be no more shopping till my next paycheck.

My boyfriend and I spent a couple of months in a Red Cross operated welfare hotel until we could save enough money to get an apartment, a furnished three room place in the Village where we lived for two years. Then I moved alone into a sublet loft for the next two years.

So when I moved into my new loft with my new boyfriend four years after the fire, I still owned next to nothing. I had a sleeping bag, an hibachi, which served as both a stove and a heat source, a box of books and a suitcase of clothes. Nothing else. Nada.

I have been avidly adding to my collections —furnishings, kitchenware, clothes, books, spiritual artifacts, art supplies, office paraphernalia, people, plants, pets —ever since. And now, 37 years later, I am moved to seriously edit and refine my needs and tastes. I want to be surrounded by only those things that are particularly special and meaningful to me.

It has become my practice to throw out, re-cycle, or donate one thing every day. This has been a great way to claim what is truly important to me and to discard what is not. But despite this daily ritual, I still am overwhelmed with accumulated items.

It seems to me that we spend the first half of our lives accumulating things and the second half getting rid of them, paring our possessions down to a manageable cache. This is prime time to check my baggage and lighten up my load.
 
With blessings of less, which sometimes really can be more,

xxQMD

Tags: Possessions Discard Releae

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My friend Kay is the official folklorist of Brooklyn. This winter she organized a month long Arab music festival. One of the evenings was a belly dance extravaganza, which I attended with my entire Goddess Group.

I was still on my cane following my fall a few months earlier, but that didn’t prevent me from getting up to swing my hips with everyone else during the participatory dance jam sessions in between the performer’s sets.

How could I stay in my seat? The music was so mesmerizing and the dancers so alluring. A sea of swaying, undulating arms, breasts and bellies, moving to the rhythms of the ages. That room was filled with fiery female energy. We were all, men and women alike, enveloped in the embrace of the Goddess.

“I want to learn how to belly dance,” I announced and Suzanne immediately said that she would take lessons with me. But I was hesitant about attending a class full of twenty-something skinny girls.

I really didn’t want to be the only zaftig mama old enough to almost be their grandmother in the bunch. But then, again, the Queen doesn’t deign to think such petty thoughts. Or does she?

Andrea, one of the women in one of my spirit support groups, a long time belly dancer who is twenty-something, lovely and lithe, directed me to the perfect class. A beginner’s class with women from their twenties to their sixties, every shape, size, color and aptitude.

And so, at the age of 62 I have taken up belly dance. Or perhaps I should say it has taken me up and held me in its thrall. It feels so natural, somehow. Sensual, earthy. elemental. Slightly sinful and delicious. It got my juices flowing big time.

I first saw belly dancing in Morocco thirty years ago. The women were  
much older than me, mature and fleshy. Real women who had seen a lot of life and who knew a lot of things. Secure in their own power, they danced with assurance, and emanated an authoritative energy rather like Gypsy flamenco dancers.

Belly dancing gets better with age. My friend Serpentessa is an extraordinary belly dancer who performs with her snakes, She moves like the serpents who are her familiars. She is no spring chicken, but a luscious juicy autumn hen. My teacher’s teacher is coming to New York this fall to give classes in double veil technique. She is in her 80’s.

Last summer I gave a keynote address and workshop about The Queen at the International Goddess Conference in Glastonbury. On the last day there was celebration to honor the 90th birthday of Grand Dame Lady Olivia Robertson, founder of the Fellowship of Isis.

She appeared in a transparent gossamer toga-like garment, trailing veils and her long flowing white hair behind her. She danced slowly, with a concentrated reverence. Every movement was a prayer — in touch, intense and internal. Essential. Archetypal.

A ceremony to crown the Queens and the Crones followed Lady Olivia’s awesome dance. The mature women at the conference chose whether they were Queens or Crones.

There were maybe a hundred Queens sitting in a large circle and about a dozen Crones in a small circle inside of that royal round of Queens. The Maidens and Mothers sat outside of the circle and bore witness to the crownings. Nonagenarian Lady Olivia, Goddess bless her soul, insisted on being crowned a Queen. And so she is! It’s got to be the dancing.

With blessings of supple grace and grandeur,

xxQMD

Tags: Belly Dance Goddess Queen Sexy

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Last weekend I spent three days and nights with four very old friends in a lovely country house in Connecticut. We were there to help Sarah prepare for the annual fair on the village green that she directs - a huge endeavor with zillions of details to attend to. Just like my public ritual events.

On the night before the fair we stayed up to all hours preparing the descriptive cards for the silent auction. There we were, five midlife women up way after our bedtime, drinking white wine and trying to come up with snappy slogans for all 90 lots in the auction. Well I tell you!

We were completely slaphappy. Shouting out these ridiculous phrases in praise of Dottie’s Donuts, The Well Manicured Pet, and the Agway. Punning around shamelessly. We just laughed and laughed. Huge, full, deep belly laughs. “When was the last time,” I thought to myself, “that I have laughed so hard for so long?”

I actually remember when. It was at a wonderful brunch that I gave for six friends. Diane, who is always funny, was on a roll that day and kept us in stitches for hours. We laughed the entire afternoon away. It was last fall. Totally wonderful, but entirely too long ago.

I have known Sarah, Erica, Daile, and Kay for decades. They are beloved family for me. Yet I see them for food and fun so rarely. We live in different places and we are all always so busy. It was such a delicious joy to have so much uninterrupted quality time together. Being in their company was like being in the embrace of the Goddess, Herself.

My all time favorite film is Jules et Jim by François Truffaut. There is a beautiful scene in it where these two men, a woman and a child, a loving chosen family, are sitting around after a meal. They are sated and happy, comfortably quiet and content. Safe with each other. Out of the sweet silence Oscar Werner says, “An angel is passing.”

That is exactly how I felt in Connecticut. It was a perfect time. Nothing could ever feel better. An angel definitely passed that night. 

Yours for love and laughter,

xxQMD

Tags: Angel Joy Pleasure Friends Lov

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