Month: November 2014

Small Business Saturday, Mumblesomething Sunday, Cyber Monday!

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Click here for my Etsy Shop: Essentials by PJ

~*~*~Two discounts for you!~*~*~

This one is still going on! LIMITED TIME OFFER – $5 off purchases of $24.99 and up until DEC 15, 2014. Use coupon code 5DOLLARDISC at checkout. Time to stock up for the holidays!

~~~AND~~~ Mention you saw this post on Facebook/Wordpress in the message area of your checkout screen and I will give you an additional 10% back to you as a refund!!

*****PLUS***** If you have seen this on Facebook/Wordpress and mention it in the message area, you can still get the 10% refund EVEN IF you don’t spend enough for the $5 discount! How cool is that?? SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS! They can get it, too! The 10% REFUND is good THRU MIDNIGHT EST MONDAY DEC. 1st!

NEW! Knitted pouches! Runes, tarot cards, jewelry, prayer beads! On Sale!

2014-11-21 19.48.13           2014-11-23 12.10.54

Update: Alive but not particularly social, Work, and an Anniversary

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Soooooooo many things. Mostly, things are happening spiritually that are very important and some of that involves human tasking to complete Work. Good things with Blossoming Bones Mystery School as the class Amoret and I are facilitating is going well and people appear to be running with the Work in wonderful and interesting ways. We have a team of “student facilitators” assisting with the discussion forum and that is wonderful, too. Amoret and I meet weekly to further the class, adjust to any changes in focus needed based on participant responses, etc.

I’m on the RAT (Ritual Arc Team) for next year’s summer intensive so Skype meetings for that. Spiralheart organizational meetings, via Skype, also. Initiate in-person and Skype meetings. Spiritual counseling. Mentoring get-togethers. Deep Listening group just getting off of the ground. And other not for public talking about Work.

All good things! But tiring. And with my neck and back screaming at meetings I am again readjusting my attention to self-care. Because hey! Still! I haven’t learned that I am not a robot! (Even though I know I am not. Stubborn streak?)

Still going to Tai Chi. In the fall my buddy and I moved to Sun 73 forms. It is pretty! It has kicking! (Sorta. Not huge kicks, but still – kicking!) I’m learning round loom knitting. I’ve made a cowl scarf! And it looks like a gift, not a practice piece. ~glee~ I’m now working on a hat, which is a gift for the hubster. Not a surprise gift, though he never reads my stuff, anyway, trusting I will inform him of Important Things. (He is so kind to think of me in this way even though experience has proven him wrong again and again.)

So with the busy I’ve dropped off of the social networks with occasionally sharing on FB and little original posting even there. Time, self-care, my students both online class and initiates, my marriage partner, my kids, my working partner, my coven members, my Gods demands (!!s) – so many pieces and they all work and I even have time for more stuff if I slack on social networks. And so I do.

Plus winter came early.

Plus today is 8 years that my mum died. It is an anniversary that stings greatly this year. You just never know when it will and when it won’t. I am again so grateful that she and I repaired our relationship in the years before she became ill and died. I am acutely aware that the reason this could occur was not only because I wanted it, but because she was a willing participant in healing it, too. I know this is not so for everyone who wishes such a thing and that always plops an extra helping of sadness on this day. Yet I am okay, in spite of the sadness and the big twinge, because I honour Death that is part our cycle, the same as I honour Life.

Blessings all around.

Advice to myself by Louise Erdrich

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http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2007/05/29

Poem: “Advice to Myself” by Louise Erdrich, from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003. Reprinted with permission.(buy now)

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Two and a half years ago, I was reminded of it today

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An Unlikely Trio

Stir the soil and wet the ground to await the root,
stir the cauldron and scrape the sides to await the brew,
stir the hairs and part the knees to
await the seed.

Beltane flickers, white side of the veil to Samhain’s black,
Amid the grays of the in-between
The Ancients mix my blood, wash my marrow, and mend my flesh;
In pewter folds of silk spun with gossamer thread
The pulsing howls of orgasm echo the first wails of the newborn.

Through Life comes Death comes Life again.

Anubis to the left and Isis to the right,
masks and breath and scales and wings;
Embalming fluid in Cerridwen’s cauldron,
preserving not my body
that grows then sags and disintegrates like old paper;
but preserving my Self,
that glows then sings, folds and unfolds;

Origami of my Soul.

The damp scented air releases names
not quite spoken and barely heard,
mute and blind
the blade queries,
Truth revealed in mirrors and glitter bombs.

© Pamela V Jones, Beltane 2012

When the Dead tell Boneweaver Samhain is about the Living, too

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This past week has been an interesting flip on what has traditionally been my Samhain focus. As I connected, sure and happy in this potent time, I was reminded the thin veil is transparent from both sides. As I stepped forth to be with my Peeps in what is usually a celebration of the endless cycle and the Great Dance with my Beloved and Mighty Dead, I was gently turned around, hands settling on my shoulders as They stood behind me, and directed to see Life from Their side and not the Otherworld from Life’s side.

I had occasion earlier in the week to hold space for 2 people, one an adult and one a child, as great pain washed over and around them. I let it flow over me and pushed it far out to join the ether-ocean where it could be transformed by Those on the Other Side of life. Though a few tears slipped down my cheeks, they were short-lived, my Job that day was to direct and push away, not absorb and join the emotional waves. Oh, I had them, those crashing waves, but I commanded them in-and-down, in-and-down, away from the upper world. I “lost it” as the saying goes, in a wee corner of my soul, boxed for a purpose until the work was done. I know me and I know how this goes. I knew I would “crash” the next day, full of fatigue and sorrow. I boxed those things because who I held space for are about as near and dear to me as is possible to be. and the way of being useful and showing my love in a situation where there is no quick fix was to just be there, and hold space.

The next day was a blur as it seemed every time I sat down I fell asleep, exhausted from the energy requirement of the day before. I do not regret holding that space. When loved ones hurt from things that are simply deeply painful and that only time can ease, one of the things we do in my tradition is hold gentle loving space for them. And so I did.

I sent 2 text messages in the subsequent 3 days, remaining mindful of the careful balance between allowing folks room to experience what only they can while not cutting them off altogether. So I held a much larger, more loose space in the following days. The fatigue lingered in lessening amounts each day up to yesterday, which was Samhain. I was away from home last night and I admit I checked my phone 3-4 times for my own peace of mind, but I sent no more messages, continuing to allow space for the other person and to allow myself space to celebrate Samhain in divinatory comradery.

It was a late night. I am once again sleep-deprived, but content. The message I received this Samhain? “Turn around. Look at the fullness of what Life holds from Our side. This is why we repeat – death, to life, to death, to life – to feel the richness from both sides.”

Through Their eyes,

Bone