Dancing Down the Moon

That's Me in the Corner...That's Me in the Spotlight

Here I am, on the precipice of 2010, looking back at a year gone seriously awry.  Between the disheartening political climate and Death working overtime to make off with people and animals we know and love, and my own personal roller coaster of emotional dysfunction, it's tempting to write off 2009 in its entirety as a 365-day catastrofuck and pretend it never happened.

Strangely, though, I don't want to do that. 

Things have changed.  The last month or so has been an initiation the likes of which I haven't seen since at least 2004.  Now that I'm on the other side of it, I find myself grateful both that 2009 is over with, and that it happened in the first place.

This year marked one of the most significant accomplishments of my life:  I wrote, and sold, a novel.  I discovered lots of new music, read some amazing books, saw some awesome movies, spent time with my friends and family, had some startling realizations, bought a Macbook, and even joined Facebook, which I swore I'd never do. 

I also allowed my health to decline to the point that I'm in near-constant pain and discomfort.  I spent a good 3/4 of the year mired in depression. 

And, essentially, I lost my religion. 

My patron deities are no longer with me.  It might have seemed based on my blogging that this was the case months ago, but apparently I was very, very wrong; Lilith and I had unfinished business, and that unfinished business nearly cost me my sanity.  Drastic measures had to be taken.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And now She's gone.  I realize now that Her absence is complete that when I thought She had left before, I was mistaken.  The difference is obvious.  The candles are lit, but nobody's home. 

Jeff is also gone.  We hadn't spoken in a long time, and I finally realized that He isn't coming back. 

The sense of absence in my house, and in my mind, is almost palpable, and while part of me is grieving, part of me is also incredibly relieved. 

I have no idea what happens now.  To tell the truth finding new patron deities is not my #1 concern.  The process of parting the ways was so intense, and the personal upheaval so complete, that my brain is basically running 24/7 trying to defrag itself and, if you were to look into my mind's eye, you see a spinning rainbow ball.  (Or an hourglass, if you're a PC.)  I'm not sure where my spirituality is going to go next, or what changes this will bring in what you read here. 

But even with all the drama, and all the pain, I'm grateful.  For all the turmoil, and the sleepless nights, I'm grateful.  For rediscovering the strength I thought I had lost, I'm grateful.  For having my entire being set on fire, I'm grateful. 

There's beauty in falling, and even more in rising up.

So, 2009, thanks for coming.  You can go now.  No hard feelings, okay?

Welcome, 2010.

_{(The above image is from Brian Froud's Faery Oracle.)}

On Being a Total Whackjob for God

Religion is kind of a crazy idea.

Think about it.  In the face of all rational thought and essentially zero supporting scientific evidence, the vast majority of humans on this planet—creatures capable of coming up with calculus, space flight, and the seven-layer burrito—believe in some kind of invisible superbeing.  Why?

Lots of reasons:  because the world is too awesome to be an accident.  Because we had some kind of mystical (therefore illogical) experience that convinced us God exists.  Because we were raised to believe.  Because a book told us to. 

A lot of us talk to this invisible superbeing, or beings, or force.  Sometimes out loud. We make offerings to it.  We believe it grants us special abilities or favors.  Most of all we believe that it takes some kind of personal interest in our lives.

That is just flat out batshit nuts.

The only thing I can think of that’s nuttier is believing that said invisible superbeing wants us to kill people who believe in a different invisible superbeing.

But at its heart, the amazing thing about this kind of insanity is that it’s beautiful and, if properly applied, it can make us better people or at least help us live happier lives. 

We make the mistake of thinking there’s something inherently wrong with being crazy when, throughout history, “crazy” has been mixed up with “genius,” “creativity,” and “inspired.”  How do you know what’s what?

Personally, I know by looking at the lives of the people who make claims about their God.  There are very pleasant forms of crazy—I’ve been known to exhibit a few.  Despite the pharmaceutical industry’s belief that anything “abnormal” should be medicated back to baseline banality, the fact is, there are some great ways to be insane.  It all really comes down to what you and your nuttery are trying to do with your life.  

Kindness and love = good crazy.  Blowing shit up = BAD CRAZY.

I’ve said many times that if religion were rational, it wouldn’t exist.  Spiritual beliefs aren’t meant to be held up under a microscope and proven to the world.  They’re meant to touch something that in itself can’t be proven or disproven. If people could just accept that all religions are equally crazy—and therefore equally valid—the world would be spared so much pain.

There’s nothing wrong with sprinkling a little fairy dust on the mundane.  Life is a big ball of awful sometimes, and sometimes the only thing that gets me through is that fairy dust.  But I can’t prove my Goddess exists empirically any more than someone else can prove Allah or Yahweh or Odin or Isis exists; neither can we really prove they don’t.  That’s the neat thing about science, actually—in the end nothing can be absolutely proven, because all it takes is one contradictory piece of evidence to send a hypothesis back to the drawing board.

All we know is that we as a species don’t know everything; given the vastness of the universe we don’t know much at all.  The concept of subatomic particles would have been laughed at back when they were burning Witches and bleeding people with leeches.   Yet as backward as that era seemed there are still doctors using leeches in modern medicine.  (Burning Witches, thankfully, has not proven useful in modern medicine.)  No one person, time period, or school of thought has a monopoly on wisdom.  No one religion has the one and only direct hookup to the divine. 

That’s just my opinion, of course.  But then again I’m a total whackjob for God.

The Curiously Sacred Mint

I tend to get weird obsessions.  The latest?  Altered mint tins.  Since Altoids became so popular tins of mints have become a staple of the grocery store candy rack, and they come in all sizes and flavors; I've used a few to carry pills in my purse over the years.

Recently though I stumbled across the altered tin phenomenon.  Apparently making cool things out of mint tins is all the rage among the DIY and crafty crowd.  Who knew?  The most popular hack is apparently the survival kit, but Instructables.com has myriad things you can do with an Altoids tin, raging from the useful to the wacky:

Altoids Tin Watercolor Paint Box

Altoids Tin Emergency Bread Maker

Bicycle Survival KitTiny Catapult

Anti-Boredom Kit

Tackle Box - (I am of course against fishing but I have to admit I would have loved one of these as a kid.)

What really interests me, however, are the artistic tins, especially those used as miniature shrines and altars or for other sacred purposes.  With my newfound attachment to Flickr and a bit of Googling I've been able to peek into the altered (and altar-ed) tins of lots of extremely talented folks.

(Click on the pictures for more views and full information from their creators.)

1 ~ A Besamin Container, which holds spices for the Hebrew Havdalah ritual.

The cover is hand-embroidered. 

2 ~ A portable smudge kit from a site that has several pretty and simple ideas for Buddhist tin shrines--including how to make a Tibetan prayer wheel from a round Altoids tin.  I also like the idea of putting a set of magnetic poetry words for mantras and meditations in a tin to carry along. 

3 ~ A lovely wee shrine featuring a compass and a bottle of shells (origins unknown).  This blogger also created an adorable kitchen shrine out of a salt container.

4 ~ Kwan Yin shrine; this artist has a set of several on her Flickr photostream, including a fantastic shrine (also to Kwan Yin) made out of a sardine can. The only problem with that one is, it isn't as portable as one you can close; that's why I like the altars made of mint tins, as they have attached lids.   

5 ~ Portable meditation kit from Instructables.com. 

6 ~ Goddess Shrine - a polymer clay goddess figure inside with a mirror and the phrase, "The Goddess is inside you and She is smiling!"

7 ~ Last of all, a wee Green Tara shrine of my own creation.  I had a ginger Altoids tin laying around that I couldn't stand to throw away, and all the other examples inspired me to try my hand at the craft.  (You can see pics of the outside and details with notes on Flickr.)  On the left are two mantras I often use in my practice, with a hand-drawn lotus flower; on the right is an image of Green Tara surrounded by amber chips, flower-shaped beads, tiny shells, and stones.  Her mantra is printed in Tibetan at the bottom.  The shrine holds a tealight and a small lighter.

(Note:  I did not draw the Tara image; it's a color copy of a gorgeous print I bought from DeviantArt. I couldn't bear the thought of actually hacking up the print, and since I have no intention of selling the shrine I figured it would be better to use a copy.  I'm sure this is non-kosher for art, but at least I didn't just gank the image off DA.)

Now, of course, I'm hooked on making these little guys.  I was thinking it would be cool to make a travel spice box like the Besamin--north of Texas apparently nobody's ever heard of cumin. 

The Beauty of 52nd Chances

It's never too late
to start the day over
it's never too late
to pick up the phone
it's never too late
to lay your head down on my shoulder
it's never too late
to come on home

~Michael Franti


I assume you woke up this morning.

If you did, that means you had a chance to start over.  If you wake up tomorrow morning, you have another.

(If you didn't wake up this morning I'm guessing you have more pressing concerns than reading this blog.)

When you're learning to meditate one of the techniques you may encounter is "coming back to your breath."  You sit and focus on the in-breath and out-breath, perhaps even counting them.  When you're distracted by thoughts, which is pretty much inevitable, do the great sages tell you to throw down your mala and give up?

No.  They say, "bring yourself gently back to your breath and start again." 

It goes that way for a long time before the practice begins to sink in.  Inhale, exhale...oh, look, a bunny!...wait...inhale, exhale...inhale, exhale...I should paint this room...wait, start over...inhale, exhale...sometimes I feel I have to (BOM BOM) get away, I have to (BOM BOM) run away...shit.  Okay...inhale, exhale...

As with meditation, so with life.  As long as you're still alive, you can start over.  A season of sorrow can give way to a season of joy, or at least a season of recovery, day by day, choice by choice.  No matter how often you've screwed up in the past, you have another choice right now.  You may make the positive choice right now and a less-than-positive one in ten minutes, but after that you get to try again.

The best part is, you don't always have to start from scratch.  Often it feels like you've completely screwed the pooch and are back at zero, but before you begin again, ask yourself: what did I learn from the last try?  What can I apply to the present moment to help me stay on course this time? 

Perfection is not the goal of life.  Evolution is.  We will never be perfect, because as we evolve, the whole universe does, and "perfection" evolves too.  But who says perfection is something to reach for anyway?  It's boring.  It doesn't move.  I want a life that moves, and to move is to change. 

Rock your imperfection until you fall over in a sprawl.  Then shake yourself, get back up and keep on dancing.

Sometimes all it takes to get back in your personal groove, whether that's a meditation practice, an exercise routine, or whatever, is to just pick one thing to start doing again and lean into it gently, letting that one small change tip over another and another. 

As long as you're breathing, the gods are saying, "Try again.  You've got time."

It's never too late.

What's in a Name?

Once upon a time, when I was a fired-up young Wiccan still trying to create some space between myself and my former religion, much like a dog who slowly straightens out his legs thereby pushing you off the bed an inch at a time throughout the course of the night, back when I was new to the idea that Deity could be a variety of things besides a beardy white guy in the sky, and when I was also new to convoluted sentences boasting way too many commas, I had a really hard time figuring out how to talk about the Divine without sounding pretentious or using the G-word.

Just saying, "Oh, Goddess!" never rolled naturally off my tongue, and exclaiming "God and Goddess damn it!" was just silly.  I didn't even want to use the word "god" because in our culture the default interpretation is "beardy white guy in the sky."  In my earliest Pagan days as far as I was concerned masculine deity could go get eaten by a goat and shat out over a cliff.  Nope, I was done with that God guy.  A vagina for every altar!   Phalli need not apply!

I used to be really uncomfortable with using the term "God" to describe divinity, and hearing other people use it ticked me off because I knew that the word excluded my own concept of God, and that I was expected by society to toe the Beardy Guy Party Line.  That one three-letter word carries thousands of years' worth of baggage.  I harbored a lot of anger toward Christianity for a long time.  Most Pagans do.  A great many never get past it--they continue to condemn an entire religion based on the lunatic fringe. 

I don't blame them, honestly.  It's hard to overlook the scary, batshit-insane factions within Christianity that dominate the world stage these days, just as it's hard to look past the jihads to see that there are plenty of perfectly well-adjusted Muslims in the world.  And let's not forget those militant Unitarians:

Militant Unitarian:  YOU WILL JOIN US!
Other person:  But I don't wanna.
Unitarian:  OH!  OKAY!  HERE, HAVE A DONUT IN HONOR OF (INSERT YOUR CONCEPT OF A HIGHER POWER (IF ANY) HERE)!

(Rather like the Church of England Inquisition a la Eddie Izzard:)

At any rate, in the last year my personal concept of Deity has changed a lot.  I've never been a hard polytheist, but I'm becoming less and less of a polytheist at all as the months go by; I am fast approaching a place of, "It's all God, and it's all good."

In writing for the most part I still say the Divine or something similar in order to be inclusive, and specify gender or name when needed; in general discourse among mixed company I just go with "God," because I'm a lot more interested in the relationship and the experience than I am in the vocabulary words.  What do I care what you call it?  God, Goddess, the gods, Odin, Bob, the One, the Two, 3.14159, the All, the Vast-y Awesomeness...whatever blows your robe up is fine by me.  Suffice it to say, I'm not talking about the Beardy Guy, but if you're talking about the Beardy Guy, hey, more power to you.

My experience of the Divine has gone beyond gender and beyond name.  That is not to say I don't think the names and facets have meaning--of course they do.  All are equally valid to me, although I do have different emotional responses to some and find others, well, personally repellant.  I personally do not associate God with strictly masculine deity, because I don't think God has a penis or a vagina.  The word "god" can (possibly) be traced back to Sanskrit for "that which is invoked," or a variety of other concepts with no gender assignation. 

Sometimes I capitalize it, sometimes I don't.  Sometimes I say "Goddess" instead.   If I'm referring to a specific facet of deity I'll say so; if I mean to speak specifically of masculine or feminine, I'll say so.  But for the most part, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I've gone a bit New Agey with my vocabulary, so if I say "God" and it bothers you, feel free to read it as "God and Goddess" or "the Divine" or whatever keeps you from changing the channel.  I assure you that, whatever word I might use, I haven't converted to Christianity or any other monotheistic faith.  I'm still very much a panentheist.  God is everywhere, nowhere, in everything, beyond everything; possessed of a thousand names; all genders and none; shaped like me, you, animals, rocks, molecules, empty space; black, white, brown, purple; and above all, magnificent.

Dyslexic Cows Make Great Meditators

Let's say you're drawing a picture of a giraffe:  a four-legged ruminant mammal with horns, a superlong neck, and spots.  You draw a lot of giraffes.  You love giraffes; in fact you become well known for your depiction of giraffes in your giraffe blog.  You even write a book or two about giraffes. 

Then one day you draw a giraffe with a shorter neck.  Next you draw one with shorter legs.  A week later you shorten the neck even more and make its horns longer and curved.  The next giraffe you draw has a few large spots instead of lots of smaller ones.  Finally you draw a giraffe with pronounced udders and hooves instead of two toes.

You realize at this point that it's not a giraffe.  It's still a four-legged ruminant mammal with horns, but definitely not a giraffe anymore, and while you can label it "giraffe" all you want, deep down you know it's a cow.  Cows are awesome and giraffes are awesome, but cows are not giraffes and giraffes are not cows.

That's really all that happened to me.  Over the years since I wrote my first book I've been tweaking and reinventing tiny parts of my spiritual practice and cutting out bits that didn't work for me.  Finally I looked at the picture as a whole and realized that while I've put together something pretty nifty, it's really not Wicca anymore.

I say that as someone who's always championed the idea of eclecticism, and still do.  I really think that as a religion Wicca has a lot of room in it for a wide variety of beliefs and practices, but still, at some point you have to draw the line for yourself or your tradition.  Staunch traditionalists have been saying this all along, albeit to a much narrower set of criteria.  I'm not saying they're right or wrong, I'm just saying that eventually your giraffe is a cow and it needs to find other cows to graze with.

Religion is the public face of a community's spirituality.  Spirituality is much more private and individualized.  Religion is what people agree on when they're in a room together partying with God; and regardless of the rules, any religion can become dogmatic even when it's supposedly dogma-free. Does that invalidate it?  Of course not.  We're lucky enough to live in an era when we have a choice what religion to practice, or none at all.  We can choose our community and choose to either work within an established system or cut-and-paste with care to create something just for ourselves.

Wiccan belief is not what trips me up; it's a problem of practice, focus, and attitude.  In my ideal version of spirituality I am a mystic, not a magician.  The influence of Ceremonial Magick has always kind of...well, not bothered me, but definitely not spoken to me either.  Rituals based on the Wiccan framework with Circle casting in a dozen steps and Quarter calls and all of that almost always leave me bored and disconnected. So often the attention is all paid to the steps themselves that the actual center of the ritual, the part that's supposed to do something, gets neglected. This isn't to say great rituals don't exist, just that even the vaguest formality is too much for me these days. Besides, I'm not afraid of being eaten by psychic oogy-boogies while I pray.

(Hardcore magical ritual is another thing altogether--I'm speaking mainly of celebratory and seasonal rituals here.)

The focus on fertility and sex in the community is also grating to me, as I've blogged about here before.  I'm sure plenty of people would chalk that up to personal repression, and it may indeed be, but you know? I don't care. I don't want to pretend my chalice is a big vagina. There's something inherently violent to me about the whole Great Rite in Token symbolism anyway, picturing the penis as a blade; my body is not a sheath. Neither is my Goddess. I understand celebrating sensuality and pleasure, but to me that's something that can't be done in the proper reverent frame of mind except in private.

But that's a rant for another day.  Suffice it to say that I'm a great lover of Nature and the seasons, not just the mating season. Add to that the squick factor of the traditional Wheel symbolism, and well, it just doesn't feel right with my own approach. 

That's really the point of all this babbling--I got my Wiccan education via people like Scott Cunningham who said things like, "if it feels right, and doesn't hurt anybody, go with it." Jettisoning the label feels right to me. As with veganism and all the other things I believe in, I don't expect everyone around me to do the same, or to agree with me.  I'm just speaking my own truth, sharing my experiences, and trying to honor my own evolution.

Most of my life I've been afraid to exist outside of categories.  Like a lot of people who turn to alternative mores I've struggled with the feeling that I never belonged anywhere--not at church, not in the cliques at school, not in my hometown, not at college, not in the Pagan community. Still, humans need to feel that sense of place and  unity, and often we cling to vocabulary words that no longer define us rather than risk going it alone.

My brain keeps begging, "But...but if you're not calling yourself Wiccan, then what are you?  You need a WORD!"

I wish there was one.  Pagan will have to do for now, although it's too broad; Witch is incomplete; Goddess-worshipper is too narrow and unwieldy.  Hell, if I can describe my spiritual path in 20 words or less I'll be doing better than a lot of people.  Maybe I'll invent a term.  Sylvan, 39th Priestess of the First Church of Awesome sounds pretty good. 

In the meantime, what I'm working on these days is stretching, growing past my old sense of myself.  In the painfully over-quoted words of Anais Nin,

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Cow, giraffe, zebra, elephant, hamster, ostrich:  whatever we are, whoever we want to be, may we all risk the blossom.

Spiders and Snakes and Deer, Oh My!

I recently joined a LiveJournal community offering Pagan writing prompts.  I'm looking forward to the suggestions offered--since I solicited suggestions here, I've been compiling a rather long list of possible writing topics to keep me inspired.  (I still welcome suggestions, incidentally;  comment on this entry if you have any.)

At any rate, the first prompt on the community had to do with animal totems in Pagan practice.  It got me thinking back to the early days of my training, when "what's your spirit animal?" was a burning question and I noticed that an oddly large proportion of Pagans were magically paired with wolves, birds of prey, dolphins, and dragons. 

Oh, and cats--let's not forget cats.  At the first student Pagan group meeting I ever went to at UT there was a girl in the corner who claimed to be a "cat spirit" and spent the entire meeting licking her forearms.

I shit you not.

The Rest is Still Unwritten

I've been working on a post about personal mythology--not stories of gods and goddesses, but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, that we base our world around.  I was planning to discuss how a myth, any myth, becomes dangerous when it devolves into dogma; when there is no room for any other ideas, our mythology can be used to oppress and malign, both on the cultural and individual levels.

For some reason I can't seem to get that piece off the ground.  I keep coming back to it, nudging the angle one way or another, tweaking the language, but it still comes off a bit...pretentious and intellectually overwrought.  Therefore, I've decided to leave off the theory (theory gives me hives anyway) and jump to the chase.

How Can I Keep from Singing?

The English language has, for once, failed me utterly. 

We have dozens of words and intricate turns of phrase to describe our misery, our longing; how do we describe happiness, except in cheesy glitter-crystal-twit terms that make readers roll their eyes?  I've always found happy people extremely annoying, and I think perhaps part of the reason is that the only words we really have to capture those emotions--whether the fleeting feather-touch of joy or the deeper long-term contentment so few of us grasp--sound trite at best and New Agey at worst. 

And so, to avoid the perilous shoals of the Isle of Cliche, I will refrain from trying to describe how great I've been feeling this past week.  I won't subject my experience to further analysis that might diminish or even kill it. 

Instead, I thought I would share some of the small practices that I have discovered lately, practices that are helping me hold on to my peace, in the hope that you too may find yourself at a loss for words as we fly headlong into this holiday season.

1 - Singing.  I sing constantly; in fact I am unable to stop.  I sing with the radio, I sing showtunes and oldies and Irish folk songs at my desk here at work.  When I am alone in Nature, I sit at the base of a tree and lift my voice in a wordless tribute to the day; all questions of being able to carry a tune in a bucket evaporate when there is no melody, no tune to begin with.  Lift up your voice.  Make a joyful noise, and moreover, let the joyful noise make you. 

2 - Prayer. Long have I advocated a life of constant prayer, but these days it comes far more easily.  I don't really have much to say to the Goddess except "thank You, thank You," and occasionally "Very funny, now where are my keys?"  But the important thing is that the conversation is ongoing, and that I am open to listen as well as to speak. 

3 - Significance. Live as if your every movement, every turn of your hand, is the turn of the worlds.  Imagine you are dancing through life; each time you reach for your coffee cup, you dance.  Feel yourself fully in your body as you walk down the hall.  Feel each muscle and tendon moving past each other, foot in front of foot, creating the miracle of motion.  Celebrate all the parts of your body that work just the way they're supposed to without pain or difficulty.  Obviously you're doing something right--you're alive, aren't you?  Every finger you lift has the potential to alter entire worlds.

4 - Sleep!  I've been going to bed earlier, and whether that's of my own power or with the aid of Better Living Through Pharmaceuticals, the difference in my mood and energy the next day is remarkable.

5 - Mantras and Affirmations.  I'm still an advocate of affirmations, and I find that the following help me through: 

I am open to the overflowing grace of the Divine.
Radiant health and well-being, within and without.
One way or another, all will be well.
Trust and take the leap, beloved; trust and take the leap.

Another thing I've found myself doing is mentally calling everyone "beloved."  I try to look at people as if we are kin, and as if that person--no matter who or where--is a dear and favorite cousin, niece, or nephew. 

6 - Patience. By the same token, I extend that sense of kinship and compassion to myself.  I was so prepared to be angry and depressed over my 30th birthday, so ready to rip myself apart for all my mistakes and failures, that I was almost doomed to have a terrible year just by default.  But then, thanks to the Goddess's unexpected intervention, when all was said and done, I looked at my life and thought, "You know what?  I haven't done so badly.  I have a roof over my head, I  have a car to drive, food to eat, my cat is provided for, I have a job that pays my bills, I have an iPod and a computer, books galore, friends who love me, a family who loves me, and God has my back.  I'm smart and creative and funny and powerful and have so much potential it's scary.  What the hell do I have to complain about?"  Now, when my mood starts to turn down or I find myself frustrated with myself (or anyone else for that matter), I try to treat myself with kindness, and patience.  "Beloved," I say, "it's all right if you screw this up.  So take a second and breathe, and think about another way to do it that you'll be more satisfied with."

I could go on for hours, but these are the most basic things that are keeping me, not just sane, but deliciously engaged, touched with equanimity and surrounded by calm.  I intend to enjoy this period of my life as long as it will stay with me, and hopefully take what I learn in this space forward, so that when the inevitable Suckage drops by to visit, I'll face it with new eyes, an open heart, and faith that the Goddess and God give miracles to those who court the miraculous.

Trust and take the leap, beloved; trust and take the leap.

I Know This Much is True

There are a great many things I want to say about the events of this past weekend and the sudden changes to my life, changes my mind still hasn't caught up with.  For now, however, I'd like to give my thanks to those who have commented here and on MySpace wishing me many happy returns.  I had a lovely birthday weekend, and a rather intense one, which I may one day recount in detail but at the moment am still processing.  A lot.

It's strange, stepping through a doorway between one phase of life and the next.  For many people turning 30 might not be a big deal, or it might involve the usual career-matrimony-life direction angst.  After what can only be described as a true Initiatory experience this weekend, I can say in all honesty that the anxiety I was feeling around my age has pretty much vanished.  At the moment I seem incapable of anxiety, period. 

In fact, for the last few days I have felt a strange, lovely peace descend upon me, and have wandered through this week smiling for no reason, singing to myself, and keeping a near-constant running dialog with the sacred in my head.  I feel calm and powerful, fully in my skin, possibly for the first time in my entire life.