How Can I Help You?

Halloween

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About a week ago we marked the last autumn festival day and began our move into winter. In American culture that festival day is usually called Halloween, but it is similar in nature to the Celtic Sahmain and the Catholic All Saint's/All Soul's day festivals. It is the end of the year, the last harvest of animals, the time when the veil between the land of the living and the dead is thin and the beginning of the cold and dark winter season.

I marked the holiday during my last week of Outdoor School in both festive secular and a more religious manner. On October 31st we had a really fun Halloween party that included carving pumpkins, searching for beads in bowls of gross "guts", a haunted house and costumes. The four of us Field Instructors made capes out of space blankets and were Super Field Instructors all day. Too much fun. The next day the classes, all from Catholic schools, invited a priest to come and conduct an All Saint's Day mass. I made the time to attend that as well.

Taking the communion by amioascension

I have only attended Catholic mass one other time in my life, in the spring of 2005 when Pope John Paul II died. That was at the Catholic church in Ashland, Oregon and I remember the feeling of awe in looking at the program realizing that people all over the world were saying the same words, hearing the same scriptures, engaging in the same rituals as I was and that the older gentleman next to me had been doing these same things for decades. That kind of ritual and continuity are so very attractive to me, but that's another story for another time. This mass was different because it was in a lodge at a camp and the other attenders were 12 year olds. The nun who was their teacher actually did a really good job of reviewing some of the important parts of the mass which was helpful to me. I knew that mass was a reenactment of the last supper, but she explained it very clearly. She also introduced the topic of saints and how they become saints. During the scripture reading portion of the service a number of kids participated by reading singly or by being a part of a chorus of readers. It was interesting to see how into the whole process some of the kids were and how "along for the ride" others were.

It being an All Saints Day mass, the priest gave a homily about saints who are not yet canonized and the priest read a story about a man in a homeless shelter who acted as a saint, even as he was so in need himself. The priest was a bit of a doddering old man, but he asked the kids to share examples of people they know who are unrecognized saints and many of them had wonderful things to say about neighbors and grandparents. In summary, the priest reminded us that Jesus didn't ask us how smart we are, or how perfect we are, he only asked us to help each other. That was how he lived, and that is how he asks us to live.

Food Not Bombs by Ann Arbor Free Skool

There is a flip side to this idea of generosity and assistance. There are times when we are the ones who need to be helped, and it can be even harder to accept help than it is to give it. I saw this in action a couple days later when I was at the Food Basket, the little grocery store in the town near camp in the early morning. A woman, buying family groceries and struggling with her cart and walker, was terribly embarrassed that her card wouldn't go through. The checker was trying to be helpful but a line was building up behind the woman. The man directly behind her was a bicyclest, one of the many who do medium to long distance trips along the coastal highway, and clearly better off than the woman buying groceries. He tried to offer to pay for her things, handing the checker the cash but the woman just wouldn't accept his help. She insisted that there was money on the card and finally ended up not getting everything she had picked out so that she could afford it with the money in her purse. This interaction reminded me that it is not enough to help, but we must also come to terms with being helped in the winter. The woman could have graciously accepted the gift and been able to use her grocery money for other things, or even buy groceries for someone else next week. Instead, she got caught in her insecurity and shame and could not allow the bicyclist's generosity to flow into her life.

BIG RIVER
(one of my very favorite camp songs, sung this week at camp) 

There's a big river flowing, it'll be there tomorrow
It's time we should be going, there's no time for sorrow
The stars will light the way back home, the song will keep the fire
Remembering the days we've roamed, the song will lift you higher

So sing for the river, and sing for the stars
Sing for the friends you've made, wherever they are
Sing to bring you back again or to take you away
Sing a song for me my friend, sing for today

There's a big river flowing, and it's always in motion
It carves out its journey, on down to the ocean
Now you can choose your path alone, and take it to the sea
Remembering the song's your own, the song will set you free

So sing for the river, and sing for the stars
Sing for the friends you've made, wherever they are
Sing to bring you back again or to take you away
Sing a song for me my friend, sing for today

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Trick or treat by Mark J P

It is now winter, the cold dark time of the year when resources begin to run short. Thinking about how to help and how to be helped is natural at this time of year and one of my favorite parts of the Waldorf autumn and winter festivals is how they ritualize and make concrete this impulse to help. The autumn festivals begin with Michaelmas, at the Autumn equinox, when we receive a spark of heavenly light from God's own warrior. At Martinmas, in early November, we nurture that spark in lanterns and honor a man who cut his own cloak in half to help a person in need. As we get closer to Christmas, we light more lights, spend more energy giving gifts and energy to help each other through the dark time until the cosmic light is reborn at solstice and Christmas. By St. Brigid's day, or Candlemas, in early February our own lights are feeling weak and worn, but the light is taken up by the earth again as spring begins it's rebirth. Honoring this feeling of needing to help and encouraging us to take steps to actually help are important reasons for these winter festivals.

How did you celebrate this Autumn-turning-to-Winter festival? Do you have a tradition of jack-o-lanterns and trick or treating or do you do a different celebration? Have you been feeling the pull of the season of giving? Do you have trouble letting generosity into your life? Happy All Saint's Day, Halloween, Sahmain and winter!

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Halloween 2011: Day of the Dead and Dia de los Muertos Altara and Nurturing Warmth at Martinmas.

Halloween 2010: Doggy Heaven (still chokes me up, years later) and The Power of the Dog and Martinmas. 

Halloween 2009: What Do You Really Want to Be? and Moving from the Season of the Dead. 

Halloween 2008: When the Veil Between the Worlds is Thin

I Make Bad Decisions

New Sorting Moon

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Oswald West State Park by Tapestry Dude

At the beginning of each week at camp we have a staff meeting where everyone does a body, mind and spirit check in. We get to report on how we are doing in the different aspects of our lives, and how we are feeling about the upcoming week. It is a fun and meaningful way to debrief from our weekend away, keep in touch with each other and share the things about our lives that are so important to share when living and working together so closely. Often people say things like "I had a great weekend, I got so much sleep" or "I had fun on the beach/in town/reading". Not me, though. It has become a bit of a running joke that I start my check in with a "I made a lot of bad decisions this weekend." We all laugh, I tell my tale and we move on with our morning.

Over the years I have learned that when a phrase comes to me often in a period of time it is probably important. Yes, "I make bad decisions" is a joke, but the fact that it keeps coming up means I should probably examine the sentiment a bit more closely. This week is the start of the Sorting Moon, the last month in Annette Hinshaw's calendar. It is the end of the cycle and the time to look at what we have done, make choices about what to keep and what to let go of, and get ready for the beginning of the next cycle. As I read through the Sorting Moon chapter in Earth Time, Moon Time I noticed that she talks a lot about decision making style during that chapter. Ultimately, the Sorting Moon is asking us to look at not just what we are making decisions about, but about how we make those decisions at all.

About the Trees by Dead Air

My work schedule is grueling these days and my weekends are short. In my 24 or 48 hours off I have to fit in seeing my friends, walking my dog, doing my laundry and taking care of my self care needs for sleep, alone time and reflection. There is literally no time during the week for any of these activities. The "bad decisions" keep coming in the form of choosing the seeing friends portion of the to-do list over the self care portion of the list, and that usually involves alcohol, late nights and other debauchery. When you add in the 2 hour drive from camp to town, that has turned into short nights and busy days when my body and spirit really need the rest. That being said, I don't regret the time spent with my friends or the fun we've had. Last weekend I went to a rock n' roll show, ate amazing Egyptian food at a late night cart and laughed with friends new and old. These memories are the mortar that holds the bricks of friendship together, and as I am spending so much energy here at camp I realize just how important having those strong friendships is to me.

Incoming Surfy by surfonaut

So maybe I'm not making bad decisions. I'm just making a decision. I am valuing my friendships and the (admittedly debaucherous) fun we have over self care. I am quite confident that these decisions will have impacts on my future choices and maybe even my future abilities or health - you can only burn the candle at both ends for so long. But what decisions don't? One of Annette Hinshaw's questions for consideration during the Sorting Moon is "what decision do you feel was most important in getting you where you are today?" I suspect it is rarely a lack of options that makes that question so thought provoking. Every decision we make puts us on the path that leads us to the current moment and into one of an infinite number of futures. I think, like is the case with so many things in life, it is not what you actually do but how you do it that is most important. How am I going about making these decisions? Maybe I'm just justifying gut level decisions, but I think I'm doing some thinking, too. 

As the autumn season builds to a crescendo here in Western Oregon the days are getting wet and dark. We begin to honor the seasonal impetus to turn inwards and to reflect on our choices. What have we done this year we like? What decisions do we regret? Were we able to gather the resources, physical and emotional, necessary for the coming winter? When have you made bad decisions, and how did that turn out for you? What process do you like for making decisions? What does deep autumn look like where you are?

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New Sorting Moon 2011: Sorting it All Out 

New Sorting Moon 2010: Useful, Beautiful or Loved

New Sorting Moon 2009: New Sorting Moon

Outdoor School Harvests

Full Harvest Moon

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I'm falling behind again in my posting but this time because I am busy and working hard, not because I am off gallivanting. As my summer job came to a close I was lamenting my lack of employment for the fall and a friend suggested I apply for outdoor school. "You'd love it, and they'd hire you in a minute," she said. I sighed and agreed. "You're right, you're right... I know you're right."

Smith Lake, my office

For those of you who did not grow up in northwestern Oregon, a little background. Outdoor School is a residential environmental education program that started by the school districts in the counties around Portland in the late 1960s. It has grown into a beloved tradition for 6th graders to go to camp with their science classes and generations of high schoolers have come to outdoor school as counselor-teachers. Even with the budget cuts in recent years, the Outdoor School programs in the Portland area have survived and continue to give teenagers these really important and empowering experiences.

I went to Outdoor School as a middle schooler and counted the days until I could go back as a counselor, which I did 6 times before I graduated from high school and another time the fall after I graduated. I joke that I went to college to become a camp counselor and got my dream job working for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's science camp and outdoor school. I worked at camp for a summer and a fall before I decided that I wanted a kitchen, a dog, and a home in town rather than camp life.

Sunset from Camp

Seven years later, after a circuitousness route of work and school, I'm back at outdoor school. It's all the magic I expected and more. Within two minutes of meeting my co-workers I knew we were going to hit it off great and have a really fun fall. The work these last two weeks has been physically exhausting, emotionally draining and absolutely mind blowingly awesomely fun. The high schoolers rise to our extraordinary high expectations and the sixth graders bring energy like you wouldn't believe to our camp community. We adults pull together to support each other while making each other laugh until we cry almost every day. I can not discount the awesomeness of spending all day every day in the woods by the ocean surrounded by squirrels, racoons, chickadees and gulls.

The Harvest Moon

A touch of cold in the Autumn night

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Coastal Huckleberries, the best part of camp.

Coming back to Outdoor School reminds me of the harvests I have reaped from my own past experiences and the harvests I hope I am sowing now. I come back to camp because being a part of a community that really works feels so warm and loving. A good camp community is one where every person is working to make sure that every other person is succeeding and growing. Camp is a community pressure cooker, where we go from strangers to bosom buddies in the matter of a few days and where life long relationships begin. As a teenager, I met caring adults at camp who were able to identify strengths I didn't know I had and grow towards a wholeness I wasn't sure I could achieve. As I looked back over the evaluations my supervisors wrote and felt both intense gratitude and awe at how insightful they were. 

As I complete this week's round of counselor evals I hope that I can be even half as helpful to the teenagers I am working with as my staff supervisors were. I hope that these teen counselors can see a vision of themselves as confident leaders and knowledgeable teachers. I want everyone at camp, the staff, the counselors, the students, the kitchen staff and the teachers to see what a functional community looks like and maybe be able to take that experience into their futures. I want the students and counselors to have good emotional experiences in the woods and beach so they can begin to build a conservationist ethic. I hope that my actions here, and my part of this community, can do what Mother Teresa's words (which are posted in every bathroom at my camp) ask of us:

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."

My camp name and red vest of power

The full Harvest moon found me and my camp co-workers out on the beach for a bonfire. We played tackle catch with a glow in the dark ball, talked about the week and laughed a lot. The tide was exceptionally high (it was a spring tide) and we ended up having to move our active camp fire with our bare hands. The Harvest Moon asks us questions about the fruits of our labors in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms. Coming back to Outdoor School has left me thinking about my harvests this fall, and my hopes for future harvests. I really feel like I am working to make the world a better place when I work at camp. Even when we are at our silliest... or maybe mostly when we are at our silliest.

What are your harvests this autumn? What future harvests are you sowing for? Did you get to go to Outdoor School or other camps as a kid or young adult? How is autumn shaping up where you live?

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Harvest Moon 2011: C.S. Lewis on Praise and An Ill Harvest

Harvest Moon 2010: Harvest Moon 

Harvest Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon is New and The Moon When Squirrels Throw Acorns at You (Inexplicably, my most viewed post. Ir has been viewed over 500 times, more than two hundred times more than my second most viewed post. Curiouser and curiouser.)

The Morning Swift Show

Autumn Equinox

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Some people think the most wonderful time of the year is Christmas but I know it is September. Gorgeous weather, cooler nights, the colors of autumn starting to show. I just love it.

The Morning Swift Show

I have a long standing tradition of waking up for the sunrise on the equinox and a separate tradition of viewing the Vaux's swifts at Chapman school in September but this year I finally combined them. For years, I've been wondering if the birds put on a show in the morning when they leave the roost so this year I combined my traditions and went to see the Morning Swift Show. September 20th was a windy morning and cool, but the sky was clear and it was evident that it was going to be a warm day. I arrived at the school about 10 minutes before the official sunrise time and there were three other intrepid souls waiting for the bird, a hipster couple wrapped in a mexican blanket and an older gentleman with a notebook and binoculars. Just after the published sunrise time the birds started to come out of the chimney, not in the swirling mass they go in with, but like a fountain dripping over the side. The birds would leap out and fall for a couple feet before flapping their wings and flying off into the new day. The Peregrine falcons, a regular visitor to the evening Swift Show, was there with a mate or a friend. Both were very successful in nabbing breakfast. As the sun rose above the clouds the rush of birds ended and I walked across the park to the dog park. Now I know what happens to the swifts in the morning, and it was fun to have the spectacle almost all to myself. 

Steiner identified the archetypical festival of this season as Michaelmas, the celebration of the God's warrior overcoming a dragon or serpent. It is the time when we face our own fears and earn a spark from Michael's iron sword to light our lanterns through the winter. But first, we get to bask in the glory that is autumn. My favorite time of year.

What did you do to celebrate the equinox? What dragons are you facing? When was the last time you got up for the sunrise? How is autumn progressing where you are? Happy equinox!

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Autumn Equinox 2011: Michaelmas Season and Michaelmas Photos

Autumn Equinox 2010: Here Be Dragons and A Dragon Tale for Michaelmas 
 
Autumn Equinox 2009: The Autumnal Equinox and The Earth is Breathing its Soul Back In

Discerning No

Full Nesting Moon
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Summer is winding to an end and that always means my favorite holiday - my birthday! I had such a crazy summer that I didn't plan the annual camping trip like I have done for the last couple of years but I knew I needed to do something. I declared the whole week Alyss' Birthday Week and set about celebrating. The big party came on Friday night when I met friends at Chapman School to see the Vaux's Swifts come in to roost and then moved the party to one of my favorite Southeast Portland hipster dive bars. The swifts were fantastic as ever, putting on a really great show with spirals and swirls of birds. Anywhere a thousand people get together to be in awe of nature is a place I want to be. 

My friends and I are theme party people. Actually, my sister and I made a pact one year in college that every party we threw that year would be a theme party. We were successful even to the point of making our impromptu black out party a hurricane and rum themed get together. One of my best friends has a tradition of organizing a scavenger hunt on her birthday that has her guests running around Northwest Portland in teams finding things like a photo of someone in a tree, a fortune cookie and photo booth pictures. I knew I could not let my birthday party go on without some kind of theme or activity so I racked my brain for a week. Finally inspiration hit and I got myself to the dollar store for a pile of Mardi Gras beads.
 
The game I had my friends play was a simple one. Everyone starts out with some beads and if someone makes you refuse something or makes you say no or not, you give up one of your strings beads. If you lose all of your beads you can steal them back and keep playing by making someone refuse you something and I had prizes for the first person to lose all their beads and the person to have the most at the end of the game. It was perfect - some people loved it and played hard, others let their beads go quickly and enjoyed their evening. Everyone had a few good laughs.

After the party, one of my friends asked me why I had chosen that game. I thought for a minute and then did something I do rather often - said something I know to be true, but didn't know until the minute it comes out of my mouth. "Well," I said, "I have been having a difficult relationship with 'no' lately, so it seemed appropriate." Yup, hit the nail on the head with that one, Birthday Girl. 

This full moon is the Nesting Moon, the moon that asks questions about how we prepare for the future, how we help our community and how we relate to physical, emotional and social resources. Preparing for the challenges ahead, be they winter or other hard times, requires both the acknowledgement of resources and the discernment to recognize things that are a burden rather than helpful. When stocking a root cellar, you need to be able to toss out the apples and squash that are not going to keep - one bad apple ruins the barrel is not just a pithy saying. When getting ready for an adventure, you need to choose your companions and supplies with care. When going through hard times it is important to spend your physical and emotional energy on activities and people that help you, not those that burden you with their own problems or insensitivity words. 

I suspect I have not been doing a very good job of discerning the things I should say no to from the things I should say yes to recently. Rob Breszny, my personal hero and astrologer, challenged me earlier in the summer to say yes at least 51% of the time. I find this an interesting challenge because I tend to be a knee jerk no person. New things are scary and I tend to build a schedule for myself and then not want to change it. At the same time, there are plenty of things in our culture, and my life in particular, that do not need yes said to them. They are draining, harmful and distracting despite their ubiquity and downright pleasure. The Nesting Moon is asking me these questions and more, and it is the season to examine the answers.

What is the Nesting Moon asking you? Do you have a healthy relationship with "no" or do you tend to excel at discerning useful from draining? What is your favorite theme party or party game? How is Autumn showing herself in your neighborhood? Happy Nesting Moon!

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Full Nesting Moon 2011: Weddings
 
Full Nesting Moon 2010: Spider Moon

Full Nesting Moon 2009: Hey.. It's My Birfday!

The Grasshopper and the Ants

New Nesting Moon

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IN a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”

“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.

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Douglas Squirrel by Powerkey

Can you feel it? The change is in the air. The light is a bit thinner, a bit more golden and the sun is lower in the sky, shining right in my eyes for more of the afternoon. There are more leaves on the trails I walk every day. Mostly Indian plum and Big Leaf Maple, the early changers, but more leaves on the street trees are turning red and gold. Every stump and log in the park I work in is covered with the ripped apart Douglas fir cones left behind by the Chickaree squirrels. The coastal forest we hiked in today is chalk full of ripe red huckleberries and salal and a few acorns can be found on the ground in other forests. Mornings are cooler, despite warm afternoons, but the real signs of autumn include the winter flock of bushtits and the first wooly bear caterpillar sighting. 

With the first signs of autumn come the first inklings that my season of frolicking and play might need to come to an end. My summer job ends in a very short number of weeks and I have nothing lined up for the fall. As I analyze my complete and utter lack of taking responsibility for my career path since graduation, I am coming up against some big fears I will need to work on this dark season. It isn't the introspective season yet, but I see it coming.

via Dierken

In another version of the classic Aesop's fable, the grasshopper "perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food." When they learn that he did not store treasure in the summer, they deride him by saying "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter." I hope that the winter, and the ants I may run into, will be a bit more forgiving of my summer of singing than the ants in this tale. But I guess we'll have to burn that bridge when we get to it.

Have you been an ant or a grasshopper this summer? What signs of autumn are you seeing around you? What work do you see in front of you for the winter? What is your favorite part of summer that you will miss most?

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New Nesting Moon 2011: Golden Autumn and The Book of Nature

New Nesting Moon 2010: Ramadan 

New Nesting Moon 2009:  Breathe a Sigh of Relief  

Living on the Lip of Insanity

Father's Moon

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We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes

rise into the atmosphere,

and even if the whole world's harp

should burn up, there will still be

hidden instruments playing.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge

of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive

from a slow and powerful root

that we can't see.

Stop the words now.

Open the window in the center of your chest,

and let the spirits fly in and out.

Rumi

The father's Moon has come and gone and I was busy. It was Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. In past years I marked this holy month strongly in my own calendar, but this year it mostly slipped me by. It was a hot, fun, crazy, big, exhausting month and much slipped me by. I was busy grabbing that tiger by the tail for all I am worth. You shoulda seen the other guy!

I have lived on the lip of insanity,

wanting to know the reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens.

I have been knocking from the inside!

Rumi

For my thoughts on the energies of the Father's Moon see past posts with this label as well as posts about August Eve, which is the solar festival so closely aligned with this lunar month's energies. I have a lot to say about this time of the year and the energies manifest here, so do go back and check out what I've written in the past. The blazing days of August and the blazing time of All That Is Manly and Good In the World are manifest these days. How are you seeing them? What does the Father's Moon mean to you? What were you up to this month?

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Father's Moon 2011: Blessed Ramadan, Fathering, Missions and the Father's Moon, and Courage, Bullying and Ramadan

Father's Moon 2010: Fourth of July (one of my very favorite posts of all time) and Robin Hood

Father's Moon 2009: The New Father's Moon and The Aftermark of Almost Too Much Love (another of my all time favorite posts!)

Portland Boys

August Eve

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Some people spend weeks preparing elaborate rituals to celebrate the sabbats, complete with memorized scripts, special clothes and props. I am not one of those people. As with my summer solstice "ritual", I didn't really know I was celebrating August first until I was up to my eyeballs in it. It turned out exactly perfect, though. It always does.

The first day of August is the date often given for Lughhnasadh or Lammas, the cross quarter day marking the end of summer and the first harvest. On that morning I posted a John Payne poem on Facebook, one of his series of month poems that I love so much because they seem to just perfectly reflect the way I feel about a given season. "And the sun blazing in the blue o'erhead, "Would God that it were night!" is apt to say And "Would the summer-heats were oversped!""

As I've told you, summer is a strung out, crazy time for me, and posting that poem was about all I could put together in terms of "celebrating" the festival. I can hardly get it together to clean the bathroom after a day of work and play, let alone plan or execute an extra celebration. And anyway, I was getting ready to go to a Timbers's game that weekend.

Portland boys, we are here – Whoa, Whoa
Portland boys, we are here – Whoa, Whoa
Portland boys, we are here
Steal your women, drink your beer!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

Timbers Joey! I'm leaning over the railing just out of frame to the right.

The Portland Timbers are the city's Major League Soccer team and are kind of a big deal around here. Years ago, when the Timbers were a little known, minor league team, a group of fans formed themselves into a supporters group that came to be known as the Timbers Army. Wikipedia claims it all started with 8 guys in 2001, but today the Army claims eight SECTIONS of the soccer stadium. Timbers tshirts, jerseys, hats, bumper stickers and other swag are de rigur for a certain type of Portlander and the waiting list for Timbers Army season tickets makes them coveted status markers in this town. The games themselves include loud and constant chanting, scarf waving, drums and trumpets, and other hooligan-esque characteristics of soccer supporters around the world.  

Burn, destroy, wreck and kill – Whoa, Whoa
Burn, destroy, wreck and kill – Whoa, Whoa
Burn, destroy, wreck and kill
Portland Timbers bloody will!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

I personally am not much of a sports fan so have not really followed this aspect of my city's culture over the last few years, but lately I've been more and more aware of the Timbers situation. My dad got a job working at the stadium a couple years ago, and lately I have made a number of friends who are Timbers Army fanatics. I have been thinking of trying to go to a game but without connections you have to pay through the nose for a seat not in the Army. What's the point of that? Finally, though, one of my friends got me a ticket for a game.

August Eve is the time in the wheel of the year when we celebrate All that is Manly and Good in the World. It is a time for competition and feats of physicality that show off strength, daring and skill. It is a time for celebrating the "bright, positive, masculine principle". I have been surrounded by young boys this summer at my work and see first hand how deeply ingrained being loud and physical, shooting and clashing is in them. In our feminist influenced culture of child rearing, we tend to want boys to be quieter, gentler and more in control of their bodies but without letting them experience their physicality, they will never be in control of it. And male physical power and testosterone driven competition are necessary elements in this world. Fatherlove and warrior power do not solve all problems, but we have enough problems in this world that we need all the tools in our toolbox. Including those brought by little boys who build forts, pretend sticks are guns and punch each other when they are frustrated.

Timbers Army! I'm visible on the lower left.

An afternoon in the Timbers Army is a full sensory immersion in the world of All That is Manly and Good in the World. Yes, there are many women in the Timbers Army, but the whole thing is so testosterone driven as to be essentially male in essence. The day was one of the hottest days of the summer so far, and the Army section is on the north, very sunny, part of the stadium. After a trek to get to the field, we proceeded to chant and cheer for two hours straight. It was a good game in a terrible season and the Portland Boys came back from behind to a draw. A highlight was the goal that tied the game up in the second half, complete with dark green smoke bombs and a crowd gone completely batty. I'm a tourist in the Army, here for the atmosphere and the fun, not the game or the players, but I couldn't help but being on the edge of my seat (er, leaning over the railing.. no one sits in the Army) when the play moved closer to the goal and the ball went zipping back and forth. Those men are strong and fast and skilled, Manly and Good. 

We are green, we are white – Whoa, Whoa
We are green, we are white – Whoa, Whoa
We are green, we are white
We are bloody dynamite!
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa

The evening ended, as all good evenings do, with a party and a trek. After playing some bar basketball and drinking some more cheap beer my friend and I set off back across town. The day had topped out at 95 degrees, the first day to get so hot all summer, and evening was coming on. It was still warm, but lovely as we wove our way through downtown towards the river. We splashed through Salmon Street Springs, lingered on the Hawthorne Bridge and stopped at a food cart for late night poutine and people watching. By the time we got home, we were sweaty, beat up and physically and emotionally exhausted. Just as you should be at the end of a good festival, right? 

In the week since my Timbers Army Experience I have been enjoying noticing the subtle turning of the season into autumn. The days are getting shorter, the sun is lower in the sky and more leaves are tinged gold or russet. The harvest is in full swing with markets full of berries and tomatoes. And the Timbers fight on, maybe they'll win a game or two before the end of the season. Even if they don't, though, they will have fought the good fight and that's what All that is Manly and Good in the World is really all about. 

We’ll sing for you Timbers
‘Til you finish the fight
There’s a party in Portland
No one’s sleeping tonight

How did you celebrate the August festival? How are you celebrating the masculine principle in your life and the world around you? Have you ever been a rabid supporter of a sports team or known people who were? How are you celebrating the first harvest in your life? 

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August Eve 2011: An August Journey

August Eve 2010: August Eve, The Subtle Turning

August Eve 2009: August Eve In the Woods!

Dia de los Muertos Altara

Halloween

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It's been really nice to have the nature table set up in the dining room. It has become a real part of the house in a wonderful way. In the past, I have decorated an altar in my bedroom for the seasons, including Day of the Dead/Halloween/Samhain but it is really nice to have it in the main living space. Part of the idea of a traditional Mexican altara is that it is a place where the spirits of the beloved dead can come and visit the family, be invited back into the home. Having the seasonal table in the main living area really does that better than having it in my own room.

The altar cloth is a piece of crochet my mother's mother's mother made. On it is a Virgen of Guadalupe candle, seasonal nuts, leaves and feathers and a couple other candles.

The photos in the upper display are of my mother's mom and dad (Grandma Jean is still alive, but this was the best picture I could easily find of my grandfather), my mother's father's mother, Myrtle, and my dad's dad at sea in WWII.

Pictures of two family dogs, Lacey and Lucky are here as well as a little black lab figurine representing a number of other dogs I've known and loved who are no longer living.

On the left is a postcard I bought at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts. One of the coins is a Canadian coin with a polar bear on it. Samhain seems like an excellent time to remember the individual animals and entire species that are no longer living thanks to Western culture's actions and practices. The fossilized ammonite brings this same thought, only with more focus on the natural cycle of birth and death even beyond the individual level.

There is a wooden owl behind the red candle, almost under the oak leaf. Owls are often used to symbolize the passage of spirits into the underworld, and are always symbols of wisdom, knowledge and the people who seek those attributes.

There is a piece of tangarine quartz laying on the crocheted cloth. I chose it specifically because of its festive orange color, but tangarine quartz is also known for its healing properties. It is said that tangarine quartz can help a person see the underlying order in an apparently chaotic world and find compassion for the events and people who bring sadness or pain. It is said to help a person be able to leave the past in the past. All of these sound like excellent qualities to be mindful of during this season of commemorating the dead and working through grieving and questions about death.

My jade buddha is there on the right and the copper colored ganesh is over on the left. They, along with the namaste and gratitude engraved stones are pretty much always gonna be here :)

The skull card is an invitation to a Halloween party.

How do you celebrate Day of the Dead? What do you, or would you, put on your altara?

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Halloween 2008: When the Veil Between the Worlds is Thin

Halloween 2009: What Do You Really Want to Be?

Halloween 2010: Doggy Heaven (one of my all time favorite posts - it still makes me choke up a little every time I read it) and The Power of the Dog.

Halloween 2011: Day of the Dead

The Full Death Moon 2009 post mentions the Halloween season and the posts Martinmas and Nurturing Warmth at Martinmas are about another holiday associated with this point in the Wheel of the Year.

Day of the Dead

Halloween

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This Samhain season I've been called to explore more of the Day of the Dead aspect of this important holiday. I certainly picked out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch and dressed up and went out with my friends over the weekend, but the month of October has had a real theme of dealing with my ancestors and other beloved dead. My older sister has been spending some real effort to discover family stories and tracing our geneaology in recent months and she asked me to look through our dad's photos for a picture of our grandmother. That search spurred me to do a major overhaul of his photo albums which were in dire need of repair or updating. My grandmother had put two albums together for my father sometime in the 1950s and they were physically falling apart. I've spent many hours over the last month or so taking the photos off the disintegrating paper and putting them in new albums, a process that has led to a number of very fruitful conversations with my dad about his life history and family (Ok, those conversations have been as fruitful as possible with a man who generally considers "grumph" a reasonable response to most inquiries).

Neither side of my family really has close intergenerational ties. Both of my grandfathers died decades before I was born and my father's mother died when I was a young child and had lived my entire life across the country from her. Both of my parents were part of the Baby Boom generation that rebelled in many ways against traditional family structure and values, a movement I still believe is valid and valuable, but that has caused irreparable rifts in family ties. Two years ago, when I wrote about my Halloween altar I noted that I had a picture of an extinct species because I almost felt that loss more strongly than the loss of my own family members.

This puts me in a place that is inherently different from the vast majority of humans over time and across the globe. In many, maybe even most, cultures, ancestors are a close and vital part of each individual’s community. Grandparents and maybe even great grandparents would have played a strong roll in raising a child and those people’s deaths would give the young adult an intimate connection with other ancestors who were no longer living. People very often lived in the same community, or even the same homes, that their ancestors had lived in and followed daily practices and traditions that they shared with those ancestors. This is not, in any way, my reality.

My first real cognition of that strong, shared connection with my ancestors came from my study of cell biology and genetics. I realized that the mitochondria in every cell in my body was exacly the same as the mitochondria in my mother’s body, and those in her mother’s body and her mother’s body. Something as intimate as my own DNA was shared with these women who I knew only barely or not at all. Later in my life, through conversations with my father’s sister, I had a realization that habits of mind and speech, childhood baggage and other less tangible aspects of what I consider myself are passed down from generation to generation in a family.

won tickets earlier this month to see a play at a theater here in Portland that focuses on Hispanic culture. The play, their Dia de los Muertos production, was a billingual story about a young woman experiencing revolution in a 21st century middle eastern country being visited by her ancestors who tell their story of experiencing revolution in 19th century Mexico. One of the things that struck me in the play is how present her ancestors were to her, both physically and emotionally. This morning I listened to an interview with a prominent Mormon journalist and blogger and she said she felt the same presence of her ancestors. Their stories of conversion and migration to live out their Mormon spirituality felt very heavy to her and she said as a young person she experienced “visitations” and proddings from her ancestors who seemed quite invested in her daily life. In talking about difficulties in her relationship with her father she was very clear that her tradition believes that families choose to be together, that they somehow know each other before their earthly births and come together to have certain kinds of experiences together. This thought is held in Waldorf communities, too, and is one that, despite it’s issues (does anyone choose to be born in extreme poverty, with debilitating illness or deformity, or into abusive situations?) provides some level of comfort to me.

I don’t have the strong intergenerational connections of a traditional Mexican family and I don’t believe in eternity spent with my current family, but I do know we are in this particular journey together. My parents are a deep part of me, and through them so are their parents and their parents. Other branches of my family are a part of me, too, even the parts that I share no blood with. I believe that my purpose here on earth is to, through my incarnation into this body and self, have a physical and relational experiences that the non-physical spirit of god can not. Humans have their core physical and relational experiences within the family and so, no matter how difficult it may be, those relationships are vitally important.

What are you celebrating this Halloween season? Were or are you close to your grandparents and other ancestors or have you had a journey of discovery like mine? When do you feel closest to your ancestors? Is it now, during the time of the year when the veil is thin between this world and the other? Rob Brezsny's homework assignment this week was "Which ofyour dead ancestors would you most like to talk to?Imagine a conversation with one of them." Which ancestor would you most like to hear from this early winter? What did you dress up as for Halloween?


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These photos are my personal family photos. If you would like to know more about them please send me an email.

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Halloween 2008: When the Veil Between the Worlds is Thin

Halloween 2009: What Do You Really Want to Be?

Halloween 2010: Doggy Heaven (one of my all time favorite posts - it still makes me choke up a little every time I read it) and The Power of the Dog.

The Full Death Moon 2009 post mentions the Halloween season and the post Martinmas is about another holiday associated with this point in the Wheel of the Year.