Ghosts of Christmas Past

One of the Secrets that They don't tell you is this: some of the pain you encounter in life comes not from discord with other people, but discord with your self -- or rather, competing versions of your self/selves.

I was always a romantic Christmas Nut. Most kids are, of course, but I kept right on being a Christmas Nut well into middle adulthood. The magick, the mysticism, the pageantry, the color, the music, the food: I could have been my own Lifetime Christmas movie. I followed my dear Aunt Nita in my love for Christmas, and following me was my niece Tina; all three of us worshipping at the shrine of Christmas, acolytes at the altar of Yule. Proof? Two boxes of ornaments, souvenirs from Germany, Hawaii, California, and various other locations. I hand-toted a bag full of precious blown-glass decorations from Rothenburg, Germany, in 1991, even making it off the last tiny prop plane with them unscathed when the plane caught fire on the runway.

But this week, I finally faced facts. I have become one of those Christmas curmudgeons who can't wait for the damn thing to be over; a Christmas minimalist who, in some years, shamefully doesn't even put up a wreath, much less a tree. I remember as a Baptist youth visiting old men and women in the community, and how sorry I felt for them; most of the time all they had was a small, shabby silver tree with a few threadbare decorations and a box of Queen Anne chocolate-covered cherries underneath. Never would I have foreseen a day when I would contemplate ditching all my decorations and taking a cruise.

There are a lot of life circumstances that have brought me here. Some are sad. My father died on December 23rd and although that's been nearly thirty years ago, my mother never regained her love of the holiday, and the last decade of her life was spent sunk in a miasm of chronic pain and depression; when Aunt Nita passed away, so did any feelings she had left for Christmas.

Other reasons are circumstantial. My husband and I are Pagan. We celebrate the Solstice and while that is fine religiously, opening presents on the 21st has always felt rushed and wrong. My internal rhythms simply will not adjust to having the Big Day be the 21st. He also works in the TSA, and so Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are frenzied workdays for him. Additional frenzy is that he provides most of the presents to his two autistic adult children, and so his focus is, rightly, on getting everything ready and delivered to them.

But even as I walked through all the mundane reasons why Christmas has lost the magick for me, I knew there was something else, some Factor X. Finally, I hit upon it. For a lot of folks, Christmas is when they experience Magick. But I live Magick 24/7. Every day I encounter Mystery. Miracles are not uncommon. I walk into a temple room filled with beauty and light and I call forth the holy Powers using signs and symbols as ancient and reverent as any Gregorian chant. I don't need Christmas magick anymore. What I used to get out of one season is with me now all the time.

I may still be on the Island of Misfit Toys, but .... I kind of like it here, with all the other misfits. This creates an internal friction as the old Me continues to reach out toward Christmas and the new Me shrugs and says, "meh." I do love the Otherworld energies of this time of year, however: so potent, so immediate. What I really wish is that I could go on some spiritual retreat from about the 20th to the 1st, not to escape per se, but to explore -- just strip it all down to the bare bones of who I have become, and encounter what this season really is, instead of the uneasy Ghost of Me At Christmases Past hovering about me. That's hard because the boundaries between Past and Future are so thin as to be vaporous at Yuletide -- one of the reasons why old family "stuff" rears its head now for so many people.

First Whirlings

O my Body! I dare not desert the likes of you... I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the Soul, (and that they are the Soul...) --Walt Whitman, "I Sing The Body Electric"

Yesterday, 17 July 2012, a profound thing occurred. For the first time since I joined the greater Pagan world in 2000, I witnessed an honest and moving discussion of one of our community's hidden problems: the high levels of serious obesity and the various co-morbid health problems associated with it. 

I say "hidden," but of course, it's really not. Anyone who gets out and mingles with other Pagans at all perceives that we surely exceed the national average in the number of obese people participating in our scene, and which says a lot, given that over one-third of Americans are now obese. We just haven't talked about it much. Why? Well, Pagans are a People who are welcoming -- because in many places, we have been made to feel unwelcome. We are a People who are tolerant of what mainstream culture views as different or eccentric -- because in many situations, our own differences and "eccentricities" have earned us scorn, derision, and persecution. As a People, we hate preaching, and we especially hate being preached to, because too often we've had other people cramming their "should's" and "ought's" down our throats. Many of us have a strong connection to the Great Goddess, Whose beautiful Body comes in all shapes and sizes and colors and qualities, as evidenced by the many different ways She has been depicted.  And there are more subtle reasons I suspect, having to do with wounding, and the nature of energy, and grounding magickal energy, some of which I'll talk about in future blogs.

So we have tended to ignore this Very Large Thing, pun intended, in the center of the room because we really have not figured out how to address it, nor even admitted that it needed to be addressed. This puts up in the very ironic position of loving the Earth as Divine, and cherishing the Earth, all the while ignoring those pieces of Earth most intimate to us: our own bodies. We claim Power and we study how to gather and store and wield Power, all the while depleting ourselves of the most basic form of Power, which is the ability to actually get up and do shit.

This problem -- and yes, I call it and claim it as such -- is personal to me. I have fought a weight problem all my life. Sometimes the problem was that I was too fat. Sometimes the problem was that I thought I was fat when I really wasn't. I was a chubby kid who would rather lay in bed and get a lost in a book. I was not one to go out and play, and in fact, I could not do some things that other kids did with ease; I lacked strength and coordination. I suffered through 40 years of low self-esteem, shame, and self-hatred as a result of my weight issues, real and perceived. Age combined with the love and validation of my husband helped me heal from this. I practiced a lot of self-denial and extreme dieting, although thank Goddess I never became anorexic or bulimic.

And yet, I'm still fat, and at age 51, it's easy to perceive the toll it's taken on me. I'm not exactly morbidly obese, but I'd feel better and be healthier if I took off 40 pounds and kept them off. My husband is also fat in that way. We've both made strides toward greater health by exercising more and limiting sugar and simple carbohydrates, but we both need to do more.

I am a Priestess. That is my calling in life. I did not bear children of my womb; I consider my tradition members and many of the people in the greater eastern NC Pagan community to be my "young'uns." It's very important to me that they be happy, healthy, and effective witches, priests, priestesses, and congregational Pagans. As this kind of "magickal mama," I have always felt it is my duty both to teach and to model behaviors that would help my community members achieve this. Now that both local and national conversations on the subject of Pagan obesity have been initiated, I feel it is important that I share my own thoughts and experiences with members of my community. They can benefit from my experiences and knowledge, and I benefit by having accountability. If I am blogging on Pagan health issues, I'll think twice before ordering that mocha frappe.

Here is what you WILL see on this blog:

• Thoughts about the energetic trappings around obesity and related health issues. I am a Witch. I see something, I think "what are the energetic underpinnings to this phenomenon?" That's how I frame the world, Seen and Unseen. Why? Because I am a Witch. 
• Archetypes/personality traits within our community and how they are wonderful but maybe not so much for vibrant physical health - and how to work on that.
• Musings about the national culture and how it contributes detrimentally to basic health - with suggestions on how to work with it.
• Lots of reinforcement about how absolutely miraculous, beautiful, and breathtakingly wondrous every single body is, without exception. Yes, that means you.
• Information about the body and movement I learned as a massage therapist; or, "Damn, I Wish They'd Taught Me That In High School."
• A focus on nurturing, on partnering with Shadow, and on effectively parenting the Inner Child in order to alter detrimental behaviors, achieve goals, and transform into even healthier and more effective witches, priests, priestesses, and pagans.
• Profanity. I enjoy cussing, and it's my blog, so I'm going to do it when I want to.

Here is what you will NOT see on this blog:

• Advocacy for one type of diet vs. all the others. I myself achieve my best health when I limit sugar and simple carbohydrates, and when I focus on lean meats, vegetables, and healthy fats in my diet. I think that is true for many people. It is certainly not true for all people. So while you'll hear me talk about this, I know that you might need to be a vegan or a vegetarian or someone who eats steak every day, or follow the recommendations for Type A- blood, or whatever. People are different, bodies are different, ethics are different, and our bodies needs often change over time as well. 
• Anything movement-oriented that has the words Insanity or Extreme or Exxxtreme or that is loud or that exhorts me (or you) to MOVE, MOVE, MOVE! I hear that shit and I just quail. Movement is hugely important but it does not have to EXXXTREEME! or insane or loud or nerve-jangly. If that stuff floats your boat, good for you! It sinks mine. (And when you blow out your quadratus lumborum muscle, come see me at my office.)
• NO SHAME. Period. FUCK SHAME. Shame is almost always inappropriate and toxic and leads down the hellish path to the very detrimental behaviors we want to transform.   Shame helped rob me of happiness for the first 40+ years of my life. It has NO PLACE with me now. I took first degree training with a man named Tiny, a man who weighed maybe 500 or more pounds and who'd had a really rough life: cigarettes, drugs, booze, carnivals, prison. His body was just about worn out, and in fact, he died two years later in his mid-40s. But his Soul, his "secret and most innermost self" was Pure, Lovely,  Old, and Wise. You could see it in his Light-filled eyes. You are beautiful. Yes, you. And you are still beautiful even if you buy a gym membership and never go, or start to eat healthy and then snarf down a half gallon of ice cream. Yes, you are still beautiful and wonderful despite all that and more. It's true, you know.
• Tolerance for trolls or inappropriate comments. What is inappropriate? Why, whatever I think is inappropriate. If you are an acquaintance of mine (virtual or real-life), you will not be doing this, of course, but rumor has it that many bloggers, especially female bloggers, sometimes get nasty comments. I will delete them and ignore them. I am Queen of my sandbox and I get to make the rules.

I would love to post daily but that is probably not realistic, so I'm going to aim for a couple of times a week, and perhaps I can exceed that low expectation. In the meantime, friend me on Facebook and scroll down to yesterday (7/17) and look at the discussion that tacked off of Peter Dybing's article, which I reposted.