Archive | Spirit Matters

The Church of Rose Petals and Mother May I

Cherry blossoms in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Kehinde Wiley’s fancy ladies at the Brooklyn Museum of Art on Friday; lilacs and Lady Liberty yesterday morning; and, for good measure, a Beltaine ritual last night, with Aphrodite and rose petals and glitter and Stevie Nicks and persimmons and crimson-clad NYC fairywimmin and the High Priestess Magdalene (always Magdalene). I’ve cleaned my home with lavender and tea tree oil and saged every corner; I’ve bathed under the sexy Scorpio full moon in a tub filled with rose oil and the goddess circle-blessed petals. Mama May, Madre Miracle, Mothers Mary, I’ve honored your divine feminine with every cell of my brightened being. Now I gratefully bask in your scarlet kundalini–just what the magic back doctor ordered.

Grateful To Be Grateful

Sunday is a day for gratitude, and one of the grandest aspects of being alive is that, no matter how dire things seem, there are always reasons to be grateful. In fact, chances are good that the minute we start listing them we can’t stop. I make these lists not only to gain perspective but because they make me ridiculously, palpably happy—and stronger, too. Nothing empowers us like remembering the myriad ways we’re already blessed. It’s like asking for help and then noticing the wind already on our backs. One lovely side effect of my recent injury: It’s provided me with even more reasons to be grateful, since so many people have been above-and-beyond kind. 

1. I’m grateful for the strangers who carried my groceries today.
2. I’m grateful for the purple flowers by my bed.
3. I’m grateful for the beauty and big heart of my friend Rachel, who asks every week: What are you grateful for? Spill it!
4. I’m grateful to see Fun Home soon with my dear friend Jan, who bought the tickets after my back spasm made me miss the previews.
5. I’m grateful for my sweet-and-spicy god family.
6. I’m grateful for the mango I had for breakfast. Pure sunshine, that mango.
7. I’m grateful today marks my ninth week without sugar. This is the longest I’ve gone since my twenties and it’s starting to feel blissfully normal.
8. I’m grateful for Bruce Jenner’s interview with Diane Sawyer. There are many, many ways that our country is still deeply troubled but I’m grateful that we’re slowly climbing out of the Dark Ages when it comes to LGBT awareness and rights. Continue Reading →

Purple Rains, Purple Pours

My back is still in spasm (it gets better, it gets worse), which makes such tasks as fetching groceries, changing cat litter, going to the laundromat, cooking, and cleaning deeply challenging if not impossible. All the lightbulbs in my apartment have blown out over the last week and I can’t replace them in my current condition. My car battery died this morning. And though it’s not a color I normally embrace, I crave purple purple purple–purple nails, purple clothes, purple flowers. I am adamantly not an “FML” (Fuck My Life) girl; I consider that attitude such an ungrateful response to the gift of being alive. So I view these disturbances as indications of a serious soul transition I’ve yet to comprehend, let alone embrace. The question is: how can I?

Feel free to respond, Sirenaders. Though I’ve shamefully overplayed the damsel-in-distress card in the past, though I now firmly believe “metaphysician, heal thyself,” all this intuitive can intuit at this juncture is I can’t intuit this on my own. The universe is bellowing at me and I need a translator to grasp what it is saying. This is me, waving a white flag and pushing the “Uncle” button with the wanest of smiles. I guess if we understood everything about our own paths, we wouldn’t have to incarnate at all.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy