We didn’t really get the crippling snow that a lot of people had this year. We had about eight or ten inches, but it had a crust of ice over the top of it, and because of the low temperatures and the high winds, it took quite a while to melt.
During the heart of it, it kept us homebound for a while, giving us time for quiet reflection, some deep spiritual work, and taking care of some things around here.
It’s good when those moments of solitude open up, especially when you make up your mind to use them. Those of us who learn to feel deeply when we grow up really need those times to charge our batteries, to rest up, to take care of ourselves, and to deal with a lot of things we couldn’t deal with when we’re in the midst of everything else that’s going on…
Grandfather Joseph Rael teaches us that ceremony begins as soon as you say “Yes” to it. And I really become aware of that about a week or so before our gatherings occur, which they do on the first Saturday of every month. I start to slow down. I start to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my environment. I start to take a little more notice of what I eat, what I drink, how I move through my day.
And then, as time draws closer, especially on this last day, it really begins to wind up. And the simple chores that we have to do, like putting an extra leaf in the table or taking out the plates and the silverware, getting the crockpot ready for the potluck after the ceremony, raking out the firepit, making sure that we have enough chairs…all those things that go into it, they tend to become more like prayers…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.
Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.
But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I stepped out onto the front porch at 4:30 this morning to catch a few breaths, and noticed Orion, prominent in the West – undaunted despite the orange glow of a streetlight in front of our house.
I’d already been up for a couple of hours, but the sky was incredibly clear, so I stood outside a little bit longer, then went back in to brew a pot of coffee.
Now it’s a few hours later, and I’m hip-deep into three big kettles of soup stock.
It’s a known fact in certain circles, that I plan on making soup stock every year on the day after Thanksgiving. The family pitches in with turkey carcasses, and my wife and I scrounge up every mushroom stem, onion skin, and vegetable scrap that isn’t composter-worthy. I also collect the juice from most of the meat that I cook, and strain it into ice cube trays.
Each year, preferably on this date, the entire mess goes into as many kettles as necessary, and what follows is a process that’s best described as equal parts alchemy and chaos.
When it’s simmered long enough, I strain everything into a single kettle, and render it down to somewhere between two and three gallons.
The ingredients vary from year to year, so it’s always a mystery until it’s done.
My wife affords me plenty of space, which is either deep consideration or a keenly honed sense of danger on her part. Truth be told, it’s probably a little of both. The first time I cooked in our kitchen, she took one look at my mandala of spices and oils, and an army of bowls filled with various ingredients – all laid out in the order in which I’d add them – smiled, and said, “I’m just going to walk away now…”
It’s been years since then, but as I write this, I’m thinking the exact same thing:
Well, the killing frost has finally taken the Basil.
The tomato leaves are turning black, so I was outside in the garden today doing my best to rescue whatever I could. Our plants were extremely generous this year, so there’s still a lot of unripened fruit on the vines.
I pruned the ornamental apple tree, and cut back the Russian Sage and the gigantic mum in the raised bed in front of the house.
It’s a necessary process, this killing frost; an offering up of what came before to open and sanctify space for what will come.
I’m thinking, as I write this, about a particular dear friend, Elder, and teacher, who, when his time came to step away from ceremony, relinquished his role with humility and grace – one final lesson for those of us ferocious enough to receive it…
There was always something that kept me just on the edge of it. I always felt like I never quite fit in…because the truth of the matter was, I didn’t. But I didn’t know that was because Something much larger than myself was looking out for me. In my own despair, I saw myself as always being just a little out of touch…
Sometimes in this work, we’re not aware of just how strong we really are; nor will we ever be aware of that strength unless we’re called upon to use it.
Other times, we claim strength – we claim power – that isn’t really there. And it’s brittle. And it’s arrogant. And it shatters at the first sign of difficulty.
Whichever the case, we’ll have a clearer perspective based upon how we react in moments of being tested…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about healing, about manifestation, and about clarity.
One of the things that my wife and I often talk about as being a highlight in our lives is the opportunity that we have to gather with our community once a month for ceremony.
We did that this past weekend. And as things usually go, I got out there about an hour before hand and took some time to walk the yard and pray a little bit, to meditate, and to get things ready. While I was out there, I was greeted by absolutely piercing sunlight, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And with the pristine quality of the light and the openness of the sky, I knew that the intention for our ceremony would be clarity.
Those of us who’ve had a challenging upbringing because we were raised in emotionally turbulent households – maybe with alcoholism or some other form of dysfunctionality, often pray for sanity. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know what sanity is. We’ve never really had a good example of it; or perhaps the few examples we have had of it have been fleeting at best.
But we do know what clarity is. It occurs every once in a while. We get to see our wound. Get to see the motivations behind our triggers. Get some insight as to why we act the way we do…
When we gather together in our circles, it’s quite common that people will begin to talk about initiation and the transformations that take place in our lives. And inevitably, one of the metaphors that comes up again and again is that of the butterfly or the moth; creatures that start their lives as one form, go through a huge transformation, and emerge on the other side as something completely different – almost unrelated to the thing that they were before…
I don’t know if the caterpillar envisions the butterfly when it crawls into the cocoon, but it does seem that there is some intangible force that drives the whole thing – that guides the process…
When you intentionally enter into space, into silence; and you sit with it, one of the things that begins to happen is that all those things that we keep buried down beneath the crushing weight – the purposely assumed crushing weight – of all the noise and activity in our lives, without any of that there, those things begin to stir. And if we really sit with the silence, they can come up.
Even the mind is going to turn against us. The Monkey Mind starts to chatter, to jam as much stuff, disconnected thoughts, whatever, between us and that silence. But eventually, if you can get beyond it, and you can really begin to work at it – to slip into the silence, those things move. We can find ourselves experiencing old body memories, somatic releases, emotional memories.
And that’s the other thing silence will do for us. It can act as a container. It can act as a vessel. And so those things that now have room to move, and to come up, now, because we’ve eliminated all the external noise – all of the external static – they have room to come out.
Bonja the Bodger 