Monasticism and prayer beads.

I have to start by admitting that, despite a strong sense of calling (or at least of a very strong suggestion) to monasticism, I’ve felt a lot of ambivalence about it. I’ve had some strange and meaningful experiences as I’ve engaged with some of the practices, and in general the “techniques” (of specific practices as well as the general structure of living) are effective for making space for encounters with the Gods in a loud world. There are parts of it though, at least as monasticism is generally understood and described, that feel like they would be a prison if I did them. I don’t feel I would be wholly happy (or effective in what I’m doing, either) to limit everything in my life to be related to my religious practice, to have a strict, externally enforced routine, or to ever feel again like I am doing my practice “because I said I would” to the point of growing resentment.

But to be honest, minus some silly internet videos, some of the songs I learn on ukulele, and the work that pays for living, I can’t think of off the top of my head of many things in my life or in my daily thoughts that aren’t, or haven’t become, somehow at least a little related to my religious practice or the vision of this bigger project. I also don’t do social media anymore, haven’t watched TV for many years, have blocked every internet ad that I can, and I really don’t have social contact nowadays outside of the Druid/pagan group I help steward. So… joke’s on me, I guess.

I think I would still rather, at least for now, call my practice contemplative, or maybe monasticism-inspired at most. I don’t feel a need to make vows or write a formal Rule. I’m ADHD, and while I think I’ve done fairly well with maintaining a routine of practice considering, attempting that level of structure would be setting myself up for misery and failure. I can promise to do my best, to get back up when I fall, and to keep learning to open my heart and moving towards Them, because I love Them and want to. I think that has to be good enough. I am also learning that I have to let things emerge naturally over time rather than “creating” them, and I think that will be a continuous and slow process that I simply have to wait for as it wants to come.

One of the things I’m working on this year is establishing a better energy/magical practice than I’ve had in a while. I haven’t yet been able to make having that plus silence and waiting meditation happen on the same mornings, and that’s been a fruitful practice for me, too. So, I’m trying to work towards having an evening practice when I get home at night.

One of the things I’ve done towards that end is to create and dedicate some prayer beads for Hermes, which I now keep, along with a printed sheet of the prayers I use for them, next to the couch in a small ceramic bowl. I’ll have them as a visual reminder to do the practice, and the barrier for getting started is very low. I’m hoping it will open the way for a more robust practice to grow over time. I’m also trying to incorporate the silence meditation into my lunar cycle offering days.

Orphic Hymn to Hermes (for the Mercury dime)
Hear me, Hermes,
messenger of Zeus, son of Maia,
almighty in heart, Lord of the deceased,
judge of contests,
gentle and clever, O Argeiphontes,
you are the guide
of the flying sandals,
a man-loving prophet to mortals.
A vigorous God, you delight
in exercise and in deceit.
Interpreter of all you are,
and a profiteer who frees us of cares,
who holds in His hands
the blameless tool of peace.
Lord of Korykos, blessed,
Helpful, and skilled in words,
you assist in work and you are
a friend of mortals in need.
You wield the dreaded, the respected
weapon of speech.
Hear my prayer and grant
a good end to a life of industry,
gracious talk,
and mindfulness.

Sacred Bee*
Hermes, Speaker with Bees, God of Prophesy and Dreams, I listen and seek to understand.

Orange sunstone beads
I adore You, Hermes, gentle and clever (4x)
I adore You, Hermes, bringer of dreams (4x)
I adore You, Hermes, who stands at the crossroads (4x)
I adore You, Hermes, Guide of Souls (4x)

Black onyx beads
Beloved Hermes, thief of my heart, patient teacher and dearest Friend,
I honor and adore You.
I seek to follow in Your footsteps.

*The bee as a symbol is one of those things that keeps showing up and has seemed important, maybe to the project, but hasn’t really unfolded for me yet despite looking into it. I wanted to acknowledge both that it’s been there in my life but that I don’t yet think I “get it”.

I suspect that the wording of some of these prayers will change over time. We’ll see. An imperfect start’s better than no start.

I also want to include some other photos that are only a tiny bit relevant to the conversation. At my favorite forest, someone stacks stones dug up in recent trail rerouting, and whenever they appear on the sides of the paths, I pour a libation and say a prayer to Hermes, once represented by piles of stones at the crossroads to help travelers navigate. They get knocked down every so often, maybe by park staff, but they eventually come back. It feels a tiny bit subversive in a way I think He would appreciate. Hail Hermes, guide and protector of travelers!)

Collecting water.

Last weekend, for the start of the Imbolc season, I took a long drive to get to a state forest with springs, to collect a little water for ritual use.

The sun was bright, and despite it still being winter and the trees being mostly leafless, because of the presence of springs and their many streams, it was a surprisingly green place. The ground was covered in green club mosses, and there was an abundance of American Holly.

When I found a small, clear stream, I sat next to it, sang some songs as an offering(I’ve found that singing is almost universally well received by trees and places I go), and offered some thyme and lavender from my garden and some red yarn I spun and dyed (cut into small pieces to not harm wildlife). When it felt okay to do so after asking, I took a few ounces of water in a small jar.

(I didn’t take this picture until later on the hike, of what I had after that offering.)

Following the different streams and watching how they meandered reminded me of Starhawk’s description* of the movement of water over earth, how the rolling circular movement digs soil from one bank and deposits it on the other, creating the winding back-and-forth pattern that streams so often do. I also remembered a comment from another book** that aboriginal Australians consider it crazy to travel in a straight line. At the time I enjoyed but didn’t think deeply about that comment, but it starts to make sense to me.

I was a little surprised when, as I was sitting next to the little stream, I thought about how I’d driven over an hour to get here, how driving is the only way I have to get to even a small forest reasonably, and how, even to places I visit frequently, I still feel like-am-a visitor. I think that it isn’t entirely true to say I’m rootless. I’ve spent a good deal of time learning about the plants that grow here, learning to grow food here, trying to spend time in the neighborhood parks and scrappier in-between places just being and listening. But while I can say my city is where my home is, I can’t really say that these places I love are my home, exactly. 

The earth is my home, and this region in terms of relating with the land is more home than I’ve ever been elsewhere, except for maybe my parents’ yard when I was a kid. But I still sometimes have this sense of no-home. I think largely it’s because of how living in denser areas is structured – a third floor apartment, a lack of feeling of neighborhood and connection while living among all the apartment and condo buildings and parking lots and cars. I think I am making a decent effort to build connection in spite of that, even if those connections are more broad and infrequent rather than specific and daily. Anyway, as I sat by the stream thinking about this, the song “Orphan Girl” by Gillian Welch popped up in my head, so I shared some of these thoughts to explain myself and why I was there, and sang two verses of that song as part of the offering. It was subtle, but I felt some sense of kindness and understanding in response.

A few other photos:

*Starhawk’s “The Earth Path”. I recently picked it for the book discussion group in the druid-y pagan group I help with as an introduction to nature spirituality. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would when I picked it up after many years on my shelf.

**Tyson Yunkaporta’s “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Will Save The World”. Cannot recommend this book enough. 

Thoughts about direction.

Well. Over a year after my first blog entry, here I am. I feel as if I owe an explanation (if there is anyone to explain things to.)

A year of processing, thinking, living, and working through my fears, I like much of what I wrote for the first entry. I think there are good reminders for myself in it, at least, and it’s reasonably well written. It took me over six hours to write, which is not something I have the mental energy to do with any sort of regularity, and between that and my fear, I couldn’t follow it with anything. I think the big issue I have with it now is that it set a different tone than what I now want to do here, a year later, and leaves out a rather large part of why I’m writing at all. It feels extremely vulnerable to publish this for strangers to read, but I think it’s necessary to make the wide range of things I want to write about make any sense. (It has also been expressed to me that I need to practice letting myself be seen. Hopefully this isn’t too much too soon.)

About two years ago, following the pandemic and some difficult personal losses related to my health and the direction I thought my life would go, I read the book Polytheist Monasticism, then started experiencing a large number of coincidences around the idea of monasteries and monasticism (to the point where I sometimes felt I was being chased down) for several weeks in a row. One of the ideas I encountered that stuck with me persistently since then was a passage in a Joan Chittister book about the role of monasteries during the fall of the Roman Empire in preserving and developing religious culture, stewarding land, and being a place of refuge during war and chaotic times. I felt a deep sense of resonance as if stunned, and since then, I haven’t been able to shake the idea off. It hasn’t faded a bit.

During the same time, after applying for a community garden plot a couple of years in a row, I finally got a garden plot to grow some of my own food. I wasn’t prepared at all, but a lot of obsessive reading and video watching later, and also after the generosity of neighbors from a local giveaway group, I learned and got started. My first garden wasn’t very good, but my second year was a lot more successful, and other gardeners started asking for advice. I found a profound sense of connection with the living world, meaning, and often joy, and it felt directly related to the rest of what I was experiencing.

So, this blog will be about my trying to figure out what these experiences mean for me. In addition to spiritual practices and contemplation, I plan on sharing a great deal about physical skills that are religious or spiritual for me, including gardening, foraging, and preserving food, creating a festival calendar that is rooted in this land and ecology and my cultural ancestry while still including traditions from ancient and modern polytheism (I’m a Greek polytheist, but perhaps a bad one by some standards?), learning to honor the spirits of the trees and land I live around, what I learn from books I’m reading, and, eventually, building an intentional community. 

The long term project I’m aiming for is to start a pagan/polytheist intentional community that outlasts me. (Some friends and I call it the “pagan hippie commune”.) Frankly, I move often between thinking it’s quite doable and absolutely nuts. However, whether I was shown the idea or made it up myself or just picked it up from different things I was reading or whatever, I think it’s a worthwhile and meaningful project to spend one’s life on. I’m also not doing anything else, and I can’t get it out of my head anyway. Worst case, maybe I can share skills that I believe are powerfully connecting and needed with someone who can use them, and compile information and resources that will help someone else go on to be more successful than me.

So, despite the entire first blog hinging around a different blog name, after a lot of thought, I decided it needed to be changed. “Becoming Part of the Land” reflects the things I’m working on in my personal practice, as well as seeking a life more deeply connected with the land, the land spirits, and my Gods. I hope that what I share will be useful, or at least interesting.