Trillium's · Dedicant · Journal

( Samhain essay )

Comments welcomed.

I bought Skip Ellison's The Solitary Druid: Walking the Path of Wisdom and Spirit this week, and so far am finding it very helpful. Because of scheduling conflicts (my son's sports seasons have started and we only have one car), I've already missed two high day rituals with the local grove and am likely to miss some more, depending on what's going on each weekend. I need to be able to do ritual on my own in a pinch, but I haven't felt comfortable enough with the basics of ADF-style ritual to do my own rituals yet. (Simple meditations, yet; offerings and such, no.) I'm hoping the book will help with this.

I also read the rubrics associated with the essays for the DP work and realize that I spent way too much time focusing on my reaction to most rituals I attended and not nearly enough on responding to the details of the ritual itself. Since I know I'm going to be doing this program pretty slowly (easily more than a year), I may just start over with those essays and focus more on the ritual structure as asked for.

I suffer from carpal tunnel periodically and I must have been too active on the computer yesterday as I woke up about 3 a.m. with tremendous pain in my right wrist. I put on the recommended braces and even did some reiki on it for a while, but it didn't do much but make it quite warm - and still painful. I remembered that the last time this had happened, sitting up and starting a Two Powers meditation had worked, so that was what I did this time as well. My altar is literally next to my bed, just a foot away, so all I had to was swing myself up into a seated position right where I was. I then did the earth power grounding part of the meditation and before I had finished it, the pain was completely gone. At that point, I opted not to do the sky power and continue because the pain was gone and I was very sleepy, so I went back to sleep and was comfortable the rest of the night.

I don't know if there is a scientific explanation for the fact that pain has now vanished twice when I've done this. It may be that being upright and awake does something different to the nerves, although I don't know what. But whatever I did, it worked.

I've been reading the book The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919, and he made an observation in passing that really resonated with me. He was describing the physical structure of the human lungs and he compared it -- can you believe this? -- to an upside-down oak tree, with the trachea (windpipe) like the trunk, which subsequently separates into two main branches (the bronchial tubes), ultimately ending in the alveoli, or thousands of little air sacks "like leaves," which ultimately deliver the oxygen you take in through your mouth and nose to your bloodstream. He went into amazing detail in describing how the process worked. He also made a point of mentioning that every minute, your entire blood content passes through your heart to be oxygenated.

What I was left with was not only a clearer idea of how it worked physically, but a clearer image upon which to hinge my own meditation and breathing practices as I picture the tree inside my chest taking the air in and giving it to my body. It gives me a great way to also think of the Sky energy as flowing downwards and having a particular point at which "two powers energy mixture" might occur, as the air touches my bloodstream (the liquid within, which I can have filled with the Earth energy by then) and the two together send newly oxygenated, cosmically energized blood through my entire body.

At Beltane, I set the goal of trying to get two of my virtues essays done, plus my Beltane and Midsummer descriptions and essays, and, I believe, one book review, all by Midsummer.

What was I thinking?!?

I have come to realize that I was overly ambitious. I don't think the problem is laziness so much as perfectionism. I keep finding myself reading more and more, trying to get a handle on some aspect of something, and still trying to integrate it all in my head before writing about it, and it's all taking a really long time.

I think I have made the most progress mentally on the hospitality essay; I have been reading all kinds of things about hospitality and thinking about it and even dreaming about it. There are a couple more things I want to meditate on before I write it, but I feel like I'm finally almost there with that.

I also finally wrote a first draft of my Beltane essay last night, although I feel like I skimmed too lightly on some things, so I'm not especially happy with it yet. I know the DP asks for a minimum 125-word essay on the meaning of the high day, but I have been pagan for a dozen years so that the meanings seem almost too easy to explain for me. The actual historical practice, though, now there is a challenge for me since I've never actually addressed it before. I can't help but feel like I will get more from the essay if I take the research seriously and write about the things I didn't know about it before rather than recite only those things I already knew.

Of course, this means forgiving myself for doing all this more slowly than I had planned to six weeks ago. I guess the question is, do I want to do it quickly or do I want to do it right? Having just had the experience of an intern who failed to grasp quality over speed, I'm going to opt for thoroughness over rapid pace and just keep persevering.

Either I've been thinking about this waaaay too much in waking life so that it is creeping into my dreams, or Someone has noticed my earnest pursuit of this and is now tutoring me in the subject through my dreams, because I've had yet another hospitality-themed dream. (Even when I think about things a lot, they don't necessarily cross over into my dream life this way, so I find this significant.)

This morning's dream had to do with the abuse of hospitality. In the dream, I met two shopkeepers who were exceptionally helpful at some point in the dream. Later, I am preparing to check out of the hotel -- which has become in my mind, theirs -- and am instantly presented with a dilemma. There is this fabulous box of complimentary teas in the room. I wanted all of them. But rather than just scoop them up into the bag (which is what my housemate was encouraging me to do in the dream), I found myself hesitant. I knew the people who had put these teas in my room and knew they would know it was me if I just absconded with everything. I also knew that they were a small outfit and while a big corporation might be able to "afford it" (and I'm even rethinking that a bit this morning), they would be financially hurt if every guest took everything every time rather than just selecting what they wanted from this lovely collection of offerings.

In the dream, I took the teas and my bags into another hotel room -- which was not ours! -- to sort this out and then suffered the extreme embarrassment of having someone try to check into the room they had paid for only to find us there. Fortunately for the sake of my possible humiliation, they assumed it was a computer glitch rather than our illegally having "borrowed" a second room and I didn't disabuse them of the notion but busily started grabbing up my things. I almost had all my things -- and my housemate was still gone and they were looking at all his stuff -- when I realized that if I walked out of this room into our real room, the "misunderstanding" would be revealed as no misunderstanding at all. That's when I woke up.

Now, I've never illegally used a second hotel room or taken more than the soap or coffee from a hotel, but this did leave me thinking about where I do abuse people's hospitality when it is offered. It also made me realize that just because I paid for "hospitality," maybe I ought to think twice about how I treat the offerings of hotels and similarly "impersonal" situations. There are people behind the company. What is my impact as a guest and how can I be hospitable in return?

I'm still mulling over hospitality as a virtue, and I had an insight this afternoon. I realized that part of the reason I have traditionally had a reluctance to deal with hospitality has to do with having grown up poor and ashamed of our home. Even though my house is fine now -- not fancy, but not a disaster area -- I still have this deep core of anxiety every time I think about having people over to entertain.

So, I have been thinking today about what I can do to address those fears that interfere with my ability to practice hospitality. Here's a short list of things I came up with to ease the anxiety:

1. Keep the house closer to guest-ready more often. I let it slide a little too far down-hill some weeks because I know that no one but us is going to see it. Of course, if anyone came in, I'd probably die of embarassment at the mess -- and want to do that on the lawn to keep gawkers away from any untidyness.

2. Think about keeping some standard "guest" treats around the house so that I'm always ready for unexpected company. Ice cubes. Coffee. Fresh fruit. Snacks in the cupboard. Doesn't have to be fancy. Just has to be something okay to serve.

3. INVITE PEOPLE OVER. I don't. I won't get over the paranoia unless I have people over and get used to them seeing my house as it is and learn to trust that they're not going to be horrified because we don't have leather furniture or a new carpet.

4. Remember that it doesn't matter how much money I have or what I have to offer materially, it's whether or not I can make people feel comfortable in my home that matters. And I won't be able to make the them feel comfortable in my home if I don't feel comfortable myself having them in my home. I know I can make people feel welcome in all kinds of other circumstances; I just need to learn to let down that barrier in my own home with other people other than family.

Still thinking about this, but it's a start.

Edited to add:

A dream the night after writing this also reminded me that hospitality can be taken into other people's homes without being too instrusive. I dreamed I was part of a group of people delivering food, beverages, and other gifts to families in an apartment complex. I think some of them may have just had new babies. It was sort of like a welcome wagon. We tailored what we gave to each family by what they needed/what was appropriate for the age of their kids, and the group of people I was doing this with were of all ages and races themselves. The last thing I remember in the dream was being one of two women who made sure an elderly African-American lady with us didn't slip going down the complex stairs leading to the street because the Atlantic ocean was just across the road, very turbulent and high with waves, and roaring with cold like it was winter, and everything was frost-covered and slippery outside. It made me homesick for Lake Michigan.

I include this last part of the dream, although the setting may not seem significant, because it reminds me of some of the things I have been reading about the origins of hospitality. In the Middle East, there was always the threat of the desert. It seems natural to me, having grown up in Michigan, such an obligation would have (if it had started there) grown out of the harsh winters, with snowfall that was fed by the moisture of Lake Michigan. I don't know how many might have died when the land was first being settled by whites, but I imagine you couldn't have survived a Michigan winter alone without the help of your neighbors or excellent planning.

There is a full report on this in my regular LJ, but I just wanted to share at least one picture here of the beautiful land and water on the campus where I work:

If you'd like to see more, see this entry.

I read the cosmology part of the ADF manual when I first received it a few weeks ago, but I've been revisiting it now that I've gotten the more active logistics out of the way -- setting up an altar, and beginning the Two Powers meditation on its own, without any accompanying ritual, just to keep it simple.

I was thinking about the three realms before I started the meditation, so when I began to meditate, the first thought that popped into my head (beside the usual distractions one bats away, anyhow) was "I am the bile!" In meditation -- or is it always, as a Druid? -- I am the connection point between the Earth energy and the Sky energy, the Underworld and the Heavens. I am the Middle Realm, and I am the Bile which reaches down and reaches up and combines the energy. All of a sudden, the prominence of the Bile as the most important of the symbols on the altar made sense for me, and the mystery of why a "Two Powers" meditation was the center point of a religion so centered on threes was solved: we ourselves act as the third power during the meditation.

Of course, this is probably all explained somewhere in the ADF materials, but if it was, it didn't really register with me until I experienced it, which is typical of the way I learn.

I finally have photos of my altar. What you see is from left to right are a white triple-wicked candle, a "wicker" patterned glass bowl that serves as my cauldron, my bile (thanks, weya, for the definition!) with an offering plate in front of it, and a watercolor from Glastonbury Tor that a friend brought back on a trip to England many years ago which serves as my reminder of both my spiritual and physical ancestry.

And a close-up of my bile, which I am especially pleased with because it turned out so nicely. The artwork is actually a stained glass hanging you can buy from Target for around $180, which is simply beyond my budget at this time. (And it's also rather large -- about 22 inches across, which sounded kind of big for my altar space as it is right now, too.) So I took the catalog photo, removed the chains digitally, printed it on a heavy white paper and put it in an inexpensive but real wood frame.

Last night when we got home, as we parked in our lot outside the apartment, I noticed that a bird sitting on top of the light pole that lights our lot, and some other birds were gathered in the tree beside it. It was very striking to suddenly realize that this bird had chosen the highest vantage point -- which was man-made -- without making any distinction about whether or not it was man-made or "natural," so I sat in the dusk and made a sketch of the scene in my nature journal.

Then, this morning, there were two birds on the roof of the house as we left, which prompted Dan and I to talk about how animals perceive man-made items. I observed that it makes sense that some animals don't have an awareness because of their relatively short life-spans of which parts of the world around them are created by humans and which are there by nature. I just don't think they care or are aware of any distinctions; they just use what is there as it is without questioning its source. They don't categorize the way humans do. "Nice tall thing [wire poles] -- think I'll sit on it!" "Oooh, great material for my beaver dam home [a million dollars worth of $1000 bills, a la CSI] -- perfect for insulation!" D. brought up the hawks in NYC who had nested at the top of the apartment building for so many years. I'm sure they didn't think of it as "apartment building" but as "nest."

When I came into work this morning, the theme continued, with a squirrel poking its head out from within the large trash container just beside the back door, where it had obviously been foraging.

Of course, some creatures must associate human habitats with danger or threat on the negative side or maybe additional food on the positive side. I'm thinking of deer, for instance. Do they view hunters' deer camps as something to stay away from or just another part of the landscape? Or have I just seen too many Bambi-esque children's movies now where animals see the signs of man and take it as warning? Do animals really do that? Or do they view us as the thing to be careful of but our objects as part of the landscape and not necessarily associated with us? Or does it just depend on the animal?

Very different experience this time.

I began with controlled breathing, which is getting easier in part because I find myself doing it off and on throughout the day. At some point, I noticed my hips feeling heavier in my seat, which I took as the natural lead to begin the meditation. I felt the energy begin to flow from my spine/bottom down to the earth like roots and only secondarily added my legs this time, a complete reversal of what happened the first time. I felt just as solidly anchored, but it was definitely centered in my root chakra area rather than through my legs.

I just kept breathing, picturing my breath moving the energy until it began to feel like I was getting some kind of energy moving back up again. I moved the energy up and this time, it wasn't icy cold like last night, but warmer, more earthy and kind of thrumming. I found the image popping into my head of an oak tree in front of a house I once lived in in Michigan, very insistently, so I just went with it, and pictured my roots going into the earth like that old oak.

While I was doing that, the thoughts drifted by that while I'm not in Michigan any more, it was to my west and part of that same earth I was sinking roots into, so it was really all the same if I drew on a Michigan tree image or a NJ tree image. As I sunk my "Michigan" roots in, it felt familiar and was like drawing on a deeper sense of home even from far away, not just geographically, but drawing on my past and my ancestry and my old friends and everything that WAS, not just what IS.

As the energy came up my chest, again, I was very aware of it, although this time there wasn't that nasty, almost drowning in the cold water kind of shock, but more just an awareness of the energy swirling around in little nooks and crannies as it came higher. As it did so, I noticed that I was more aware of the candle burning on the altar as little flickers behind my eyelids; not sure what that means. Also, it felt as if the breeze from the fan picked up or was swirling more. Things just felt more turbulent, not in a rushing way, but as if a breeze were stirring leaves around and making them flutter.

As the energy moved towards my head, I noticed that it wanted to go up the front of my head, moving up past my throat and then over the top of my head, instead of up my spine. It was almost like there was a blockage in the back of my head stopping it from flowing that way. I tried to gently push it up that way too and it did go with some coaxing, but there was definitely a tendency to flow more freely at the front of my head, up my throat. (Throat chakra issues?)

Finally, it flowed out my head and just flowed down around me. This time, I just relaxed and let that happen for a while. I really had to concentrate on my breathing at this point as it got very quiet on its own. I may not have been breathing deeply enough because I was just coasting in the energy at this point. There was also a kind of blueish lavender color behind my eyes at this time.

When I pictured starlight eventually coming into the top of my head, it again was different from the last time. The first time, it was as if the earth energy was very liquid and emotional and soft and the sky energy was very logical and rational and scientific. This time, it felt as if the earth energy was more thick and heavy while the sky energy was light and delicate. It was a very light, warm touch that added additional warmth to what was already a warmer experience than last time. And yet, despite the sky energy feeling more delicate, it was again, sort of the calming, soothing, streamlining energy, controlling the direction of things, changing the more turbulent flow of the earth energy to be more in sync with... something. Not sure what.

I just let the feelings of both the energies flow for a while, and this time, I let the sky energy withdraw back to the sky and let the earth energy drain from me into the ground until I was just calm and relaxed and peaceful. No excess energy tonight, no sudden compulsion to suck it up like a thirsty person in the desert.

As I started to lose concentration (and I did, towards the end), I did have a brief thought pop into my head that this was somehow like a sea dragon. Now, I am not a dragon person. I know nothing about them except the most rudimentary mythology. I don't collect them, I don't read dragon fantasy, and I don't ever think about dragons. So, its not a thought that would normally occur to me. But I suddenly felt as if somehow, the energy I was experiencing was in some way akin to sea dragons, with scales, who live in the ocean. Maybe it was just one of those random hypnogogic blips that can occur when you're meditating close to bedtime, but I'm going to note it just in case. (Guess I should look up sea dragons when I get a chance; I know nothing about them. Do they even breathe fire?)

As I finished my devotions, I said a prayer to my Lady of the Lake that she please help my friend's 2-year-old daughter Maya heal quickly after breaking her leg today.

I decided to my first Two Powers Meditation before bed this evening. I began with controlled breathing, although I am still having some trouble on the outbreath with feeling air-hungry even if I keep it to a 4-2-4-2 rhythym. I pictured myself as having roots going from my feet and my spine going into the earth; unfortunately, they didn't seem to go in very far, but I did begin to feel a sensation of cold coming up my legs once they hit the "ground," so I just went with it. (To me, it seemed as if, with the recent flooding rains, it makes sense that the water is close to the surface, so it didn't take long for my "roots" to hit a lot of liquid quickly on this try. I expect that to change as time goes on.)

The earth power was very cold and wet, which was interesting, as when I've done tree meditations before, I always experienced more of an earth energy; I distinctly kept to a water power feeling this time, though, out of choice, which was much colder and more liquid feeling. I continued to breathe as it moved up my body into my hips and pooled and then up my spine, into my heart area. This was interestingly kind of uncomfortable, almost like when one takes a cold plunge into a pool. Not too horrible, but just not a *warm* sensation because of the cold.

Having the energy move up to my head was fine, and it felt much more natural there, and then it began to flow out the top and down my body like a fountain. I felt very cool all around and I was aware of a sort of purply color behind my eyes once the energy had moved up around my head entirely. (Before that, it had been lighter there, and I hadn't really noticed any colors.)

One other very striking thing about this first part of the meditation was that my feet felt positively anchored to the floor as soon as the energy began to flow into my legs, like they were glued.

Next, I pictured star energy coming down into my head. I pictured it as warm energy since I was kind of chilled at this point by the watery earth energy. It felt more...calm, rational somehow, than the earth energy, very much like light and "science" somehow. The lights behind my eyes lightened up and became more neutral again and I just let the energy sort of flow down and mix with the watery energy flowing around me.

I did not stay with the two mixing very long, but let them get kind of a good mix and the sort of 'shut off' the tap of the star light and then let a lot of the watery energy drain away. However, instead of returning all the energy return to the ground, which is what I would traditionally do in a tree meditation, I felt strongly compelled to keep a fair amount in my body, just enough to keep me "full-up" but not over-full. It was sort of like someone who had been thirsty finally getting a drink and not wanting to spit the liquid out again. It was entirely instinctual and not something I thought through as a logical choice. I just couldn't let the energy go again just yet. I felt like I needed it.

I'll be curious to see what kinds of repercussions come from that choice, especially in my dreams tonight. (And now I'm off, very late for bed!)

I spent some time earlier in the week setting up my first ADF style altar. I don't have a picture yet because I forgot to bring home the camera from the office, but I'll do that sometime this week.

What I ended up doing is buying a simple new bookcase for the corner right by my bed, so that the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning is this altar. The bottom two shelves now hold all the books that had been stacked up on the floor by my bed before, with the top bookshelf holding my ADF materials, divinitory cards and anything else associated with the altar or worship.

On the very top of the low book case, I put the following items:

- A picture of a stained-glass tree with a stream flowing by, which I had printed out on nice paper and stuck in a teak frame. The original stained-glass wall-hanging is something I could order from Target, but hey, don't have the extra $180 for it right now, so I just have the 'cheap' version instead. Maybe someday. It really is lovely.

- A triple-wicked white candle

- A crystal candle holder that is very rounded and shaped like a wicker basket. I asked Danny to help me pick out something that looks like a well and that was what he selected.

- A watercolor of Glastonbury Tor that a friend brought back from a trip to England many years ago, which to me represents the Ancestors, both spiritual and physical, since I have a lot of English blood in me.

- A flat candle-plate that is going to serve, for now, as an offering plate. It wasn't leaded as far as I can tell, so it should be safe for edibles that will be given outdoors after rituals. It's silver in the center with a sort of mother of pearl rim around the outside and four little rhinestones set in each of the four directions. It sounds gaudier than it looks and it reminded me of a fairy plate.

I tried adding a rock from one of the local mountains for the local spirits, but somehow, it through the symmetry of everything off just yet, so I put it on the next shelf down for later use.

When I woke up this morning, I started by trying just the breathing techniques in the ADF manual since I am sorely out of practice at meditating or daily worship these days. Interestingly enough, although I have done breathing practices before, no one has ever commented on the need to keep the throat open before, and what did I find? I was using it constantly to hold my air in. It took some practice, but eventually I got the hang of shifting my breathing down into my chest so that I was breathing from there without closing my throat. It felt very different from what I normally do. I did nothing else but that and it is something I intend to practice off and on even away from the altar.

I am doing a little dance of joy today because something has finally come together for me, confirming I am heading in the right direction with this program! I posted to the ADF Dedicants list about my experiences with the Lady of Lake Michigan as my patron goddess and Skip Ellison replied with a suggestion to read his class about connecting with the land. I also read his class on daily worship rites and in the process, recognized that my much beloved Lady of the Lake fits ADF cosmology as an Earthgoddess. My instinct has always been to honor her has such, but I can't describe the pleasure there is to find that I don't have to *defend* that perception as completely aberrant in a pagan worldview. For so many people I have encountered the past few years, the experience I described was unlikely because any spirit of the lake "had to be" a mere nature spirit and not a deity, local or otherwise. It feels good not to feel *strange* about this for a change!

It made me remember a poem I wrote in 1995, when I was newly pagan but before I fully understood the nature of the Lady of the Lake:

IN THE LAP OF THE LAKE

Surrounded by cornfields and pavement
I longed for a glimpse of water
Not the puddles that passed for lakes
In the middle of the state
But the real thing, the "Big Lake"
Endless green to the horizon
Flecked with rolling curls tipped white
Its lapping rhythm like my own breath.

The shifting sands and quiet waves
Were the real home I came home to those weekends
I would sit on marble-like rocks or the soft sand
Just listening to the Lady of the Lake speak
Watching the sun grow huge and orange as it
Slid slowly down through the distant ripples of cloud
Until the water and sky grew dark and cool and purple
And the breeze would gently stroke my face, comforting.

Familiarity breeds familiarity
And I no longer hear the call of the water as often as I did
Though it now lies just over the hill
But every now and again the purple orange sunset draws me
To the west, to the water
And I sit in the lap of the lakeshore
Listening to the water's breathing murmur.

Home again.

I received notification earlier this week that my application to ADF had been approved and that my dedicant's manual is on the way, along with instructions on how to use the members area of the site. I snuck a peek at the online version of the dedicant's manual just to get a feel for what I'm getting into.

It was kind of mind-blowing that the first step of the process is Right Action, which says more about the gradual decline of my own spiritul progress the last few years as a gradually lapsing Wiccan cum pagan than it does about the program. Although this is exactly the kind of moral approach I've been looking for after wandering in the desert of Do What Thou Wilt Be The Whole of the Law (more than the Rede) for the last few years, it was still kind of a shock to the system to see actual *suggestions* for what consistutes virtue right there in print. And of course, as I was reading through the virtues, while there were some I think I've continued to work on throughout my life, lapsed in my spirituality or not, there was some that I've definitely ignored these last few years. Ouch!

One of the most intriguing ideas I garnered from my sneak peek at the manual was the idea that if one is virtuous, virtue becomes its own reward, not necessarily because one is rewarded in heaven but because right living has inherent in it the seeds of success. It's an old idea, but one that rank true to me, especially at this time, because I've seen that the corollary is true: wrong living has in it the seeds of problems. Not that I didn't know that for *other* people all along, mind you, but I've only recently begun to see that I have to apply it to myself as well. My body is getting all wacky and having increasing health problems as I'm getting older. And gee, why is that? Because I eat all kinds of refined sugars and carbohydrates that I've known for ages I'm not supposed to have. When I was younger, I could get away with it; I was a little overweight, but my blood pressure was great and I was in good health, so I shrugged it off. Now I'm finally paying the cost for that casual approach.

So, my first thought, before I've even got the manual, is that for all I've been pagan for over a decade, I need to start right at the beginning with this, and take the basics of Right Action very seriously.

One other step I took today was to start a nature notebook. I looked around in Borders for a long while trying to find something small with blank pages that I really liked that was affordable, but I ended up putting back the thing I almost picked up, thinking that it would be smarter for me to get a simpler notebook to start with instead of getting too fancy. I know myself: I have a collection of fancy notebook projects that have been half-finished, if even started. At this point, wisdom dictates a simple notebook. So I ended up buying a very simple, small notebook at the grocery store.

I had my first entry as well! On the way home from seeing "Ice Princess" with the boys, we spotted two geese flying over the woods just to our south. They really caught my eye because they were not flapping their wings; they were gliding, with their wings in a sort of curved, almost bow-like position. I had never seen this although Dan told me it was the position in which they prepare to land and one that men have tried to duplicate aeronautically for ages. It was very striking, so I added a quick pencil sketch to the notebook of the shape of their wings. Not fancy and not accurate since it was from memory, but it was my first personal observation.

As we were driving home from the grocery store, we also had two deer cross in front of us on 206, something that hasn't happened in ages. Another note for my notebook, and a little gift for my day since we saw them and yet neither animal nor people were harmed. (Much to my son's relief.)

My only other thoughts of the day were what to do about an altar. I already have an altar, although I don't use it much lately. I thought about breaking it down when the time comes to put up an ADF version of an altar, but as I sit and look at it, I realize I don't want to change it that drastically. I see it is as my altar to the Lady of Lake Michigan, who is always going to my first Mother Goddess, no matter how far I live from her. If anything, I feel as if I should show more respect now for the altar as Her altar and begin to make more consistent offerings to Her once I understand the ADF way of doing that. I am thinking of having another small altar right beside my bed as my daily general meditation altar, but I'm going to have to think about it some more.