Witchery

I've always considered myself to be a scientist. So it's a little strange that I also conduct weird and (until now) secret rituals including these:

The Vigil : watching progress or change as a way of participating to affect the outcome. Favourite is monitoring airport departure and arrival pages as my friends travel. To "see them safely there/home"

The Shrine : constructing arrangements of random, discovered objects. Outside the ballroom collecting fallen sequins, diamantés, hairpins and assembling them in a niche in the wall. Telling a story.

The Litany : composing and reciting speeches or conversations. Practice for communicating difficult topics, and for examining my own potential reactions.

The Revelation : wherein the truth is laid out plain by means of speech or letter - this is an example.

The Robe or Vestments : symbolic or significant clothes or shoes. Recalling a location, event or emotion.

The Amulet : jewellery worn to memorialise an event or invoke a special power. Current favorites are a series of astronomical objects photographed and printed on porcelain discs.

The Sacrifice : giving, destroying or disposing of an object as an imagined exchange for a desired outcome.

The Service : carrying out an activity for another as a gift or transfer of energy from me to them.

Crazy, superstitious stuff, for a scientist. But science has taught me that there is far more to the universe than we can yet describe, and even a cursory reading of history clearly shows that many of today's comfortable concepts were unthinkably strange until recently.  

I recently read some difficult physics showing that matter - that's EVERYTHING - is continuous. There is no separation between anything, including you and me. Or, as Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently put it:  "...the fundamental interconnectedness of everything..." That's a good motto for this mystic/scientist.

Memories for all time: #2, plane journeys

We'd been flying Auckland to Oamaru to visit grandparents as long as I could remember, at least once a year. A plane to Christchurch. A much smaller plane for the flight Christchurch to Oamaru - with a brief bounce at Timaru, if you can believe it. Grass runways at both these small airports.

The pilot stayed overnight at the only hotel, and flew back the next day. He (always a he!) was always a friend, and welcomed my small brother and me into the fascinating crammed cockpit for pre-flight inspection.

The little plane flew low and the South Island sky was always clear. We cherished our turns at the window seat and were utterly fascinated with the landscape - mysterious braided rivers, dry hills, endless straight roads, crawling cars and tractors, tiny cows and sheep. Later we would drive through that landscape - unbelted between the grown-ups on the front bench seat of Granddad's big blue Holden. To this day I cannot comprehend how anyone can be bored on a long car journey, or ignore the miracle of physics that lifts a machine into the sky.

Some early mornings on the return flight there were crates of tiny yellow day-old chicks in the rear of the cabin. Being ferried up to Christchurch to begin their miserable lives as battery hens, no doubt.  I can still hear their tiny peeping calls over the roar of the propellers.

Memories for all time: #1, the shower

Once upon a time,

...not a vague time, exactly remembered. I was 16, a straight-As student at Carmel College, in the home of my favourite class, the Biology lab, at the end of 4th period on a Thursday late in April.


Cleaning the blackboard at the front of the classroom. Behind the long teachers' bench that ran across the podium. So neat, that broad space. Territory of of our clever, confident, stylish young teacher, who could use words like "envaginate" without blink or blush and made us all feel we were capable of comprehending anything.

There on the scratchpad, in small flowing script:

I cry in the shower, the falling water hides the sound of pain

It was impossible to look away. My eyes were as caught as my breath, as my heart thudded with a strange mixture of pity, contempt and fear. I will never forget that moment.

Then, I didn't understand, though I felt the powerful pull of recognition.
Now, I know exactly that feeling.

Then, my teacher seemed another class of human, so far advanced from my own immaturity.
Now, I'm 20 years older than she was.

The great difference is that the contempt and fear are (mostly) gone, gentled with experience and compassion. And I've learned to let the water wash away the pain. I hope hers is gone too.

gratitude, again

I'm sure I've written about gratitude before. It's still a somewhat selfish activity - most times I'm deliberately practicing gratitude because I know it's one of my best strategies in the battle against gloom. There is nothing more effective in quelling a pity-party than counting your blessings, speaking aloud an audit of beatitude.

But sometimes, there's a spontaneous magical moment of simple joyous realization of how good and beautiful life is.  I like to think those moments come as a result of deliberate practice.

Thank you, holy universe, for those moments.