Loves –
This week, I find myself less overwhelmed than last week – thank you, reminder of treating ourselves like cherished toddlers! But I am twitterpated.
What do I mean, twitterpated?
I mean there are things happening in my life that are my head spun, goosebumps on my arm, butterflies in my belly, and focus often anywhere but where it “should” be.
Sometimes that happens.
I’ve been getting “The Latest Kate” in my inbox recently, and really enjoying it. (Check her out!) She reminds me that who we are is just plenty. We don’t have to do anything to be valued – just like the cherished toddler is cherished, whether they’re “playing well with others” or not. We just are. And in just being, we are beloved.
Sure, I’m excited about Making Hard Choices, and I’m excited about Tarot for Discernment. In some ways, I’m even MORE excited about The Perfect Day, which I so very much help you’ll share with others you know. (Actually, I really hope you’ll share ALL these three links with people you know…I’ll make it easy: you can just forward this email or copy the links below.)
How’s that?
So those are three things I’m really excited about, and you’re going to be hearing more about over the course of July.
But I’m also in love with the roses outside my window – we have an off-white one now, did I tell you? It’s JUST outside my study window, and I didn’t notice it until this morning! The pink ones continue to burst out in groups, like little bouquets all on their own. The peonies were lovely and are now past. The handful of tulips our friends gave us last week finally got blousy and became compost—flowers supporting flowers, you know.
I’m also in love with new people, new friendships, new connections. I talked with someone I had never before met last week in a rapid-fire, delightedly extroverted back-and-forth about Aphrodite Pandemos, Yemaya Assessu (and other orishas and their roads in different houses), and especially about Inanna, the ancient Sumerian Queen of Heaven. (It was Inanna who was rescued by her right-hand goddess, Ninshubur, sending two “genderless beings” with the Water of Life and the Food of Life to Inanna as she languished in the Underworld where her sister-self, Ereshkigal, had nailed her to the wall…but that’s another whole story!)
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth we went. The labyrinth in the floor of Chartres and the labyrinths in Neolithic barrows and holy places. Santa Maria supra Minerva, the church I visited in Italy whose name literally means, “Holy Mary above Minerva.” The church was built on a site of a temple to Minerva, one of the wise goddesses of ancient Rome.
And I’m excited about a Presidential candidate – I’ll keep that to myself for now, but I’m excited to see that there are interesting Democrats in the race and that there are people who are pushing the conversation into places I believe it must go. For example, while I don’t intend to actively support his campaign, I think Inslee’s insistence that climate crisis be front and center is going to shift the conversation substantially from what it would be without him.
These are good things. Beautiful things. Fun things. Important things.
And I am a person of enthusiasms. A person of exuberance. I can fall in love with a tree; I’ve done so many times.
Enthusiasm – etymologically, to be filled with (divine) fire. As in the word, “thurible,” a container meant to hold something that is burning, such as the incense used to bless people and things in relations the world over. I think, too, of Shakespeare’s opening to one of my favorite of his plays (Henry V), “O, for a muse of fire!” Fire is the element of divine action. Of will put into reality. Of letting yourself burn without being consumed.
Today, I am aware of myself as a being of divine fire. I usually—you might guess this—identify with water, when it comes to the Classical Western elements. But today I, like the pre-Socratic poet, Heraclitus, feel the fire within me.
These days, many of us do. We feel a heat, a burning, a flame that threatens to consume us if we don’t act. Or if we don’t act MORE. And that impulse is a good one. Act to keep people safe. Act to raise your children well. Act to teach. Act to show. Act to build what needs to come into being. Act to destroy what needs to end.
Use the fire in your belly to appreciate, to love, to be enthusiastic—and yet not to be consumed. I know some of you are on the brink of despair, or in the midst of it, in these terrifying times.
But don’t give up, loves. You are a flame, and everyplace you enlighten is made better by your presence.
I love you.
~Catharine~