Whether you consider your craft to be artistic or magical, it seems as if someone is always telling you to Write Down Your Experiences.  Dream Journals, Rehearsal Journals, Books of Shadows, Books of Scripts—no matter what you call them or claim as their purpose they all amount to the same thing–extra time added to your daily practice spent writing down what you did.  If you’re like me, it’s also the hardest piece of that practice.  When I’m coming out of an amazing ritual/performance/rehearsal, I want to ride that experience’s afterglow.  The last thing I want to do is grab pen and paper!  The same is true when I wake up from an intense dream or have a spark of inspiration–I don’t want to stop and record it, I want to get right to processing.   We live in a short attention span world, and all this journaling is slowing me down.  Why the constant insistence that these books are important?

The first and most obvious answer is also the most cliche–we write things down so that we don’t forget them.  There is no worse experience than having a ritual in which we created this amazing hymn or a rehearsal in which we made a real breakthrough in terms of character or staging  and then not having the ability to recreate that hymn or that breakthrough because we’ve forgotten it and no one wrote it down.  Studies have shown us that writing things down actually has a twofold affect on memory–not only do the written records we’ve produced fill in the gaps in between what we remember, but writing also helps us to remember more in the first place.  Because writing is a physical process that uses 2 of our senses–vision and touch–it invokes our sense memory or physical memory as well as our rational or mental memory, and we are more likely to find a memory if it is stored in multiple parts of ourselves.

Writing is a bridging process between more than just our physical and mental memories.  The second reason that Magi, Mystics, and Artists are so keen on writing things down is that writing as a practice helps bridge between our creative/subconscious selves and our analytic/conscious selves.  Hayden mentioned this when he talked about dream journals–by writing our visions down we can start to track symbols and where/how they appear and thus begin to understand what those symbols mean to us.  Similarly, writing requires us to find a way to quantify and qualify our visceral experiences, to find a way of communicating them and that requires us to break down our right brain/left brain or conscious/subconscious barriers.  This is one reason why I personally find that a real “paper and pen” recording process works best for me in this sort of work–I can continue to communicate via doodles and diagrams when verbal communication methods fail to bridge that gap.  That’s not so easy to do on a word processor.

I’ve known the above reasons for the recording process of my practice for years, but just this past week I discovered a third reason that no one had really made explicit to me before.  I was going through some old papers when I came across a rehearsal journal from a previous show I worked on.  On the very first page I found this written as the initial concept for the performance:

In many of the old religions, GLBT persons held special roles as shaman/seers/etc because they were perceived as taking part of both male and female spirits.  In modern times, however, we are by and large a secular community, ostracized by the religious systems that have come into power in the past millennium, and frequently considered frivolous in our pursuits of pleasure.  But are these pleasures we pursue so frivolous or are they simply a modernization of the rites of old?  Sacred or Profane, who are we?

Sound familiar?  It’s awfully like the concept for Yes They Are! Meeting and Greeting the Queerest of the Gods, last year’s performances of which propelled the Circle of Dionysos into becoming what it is today.  But the concept above was written for a never performed dance piece I was developing back in 2003, before The San Francisco Gay Men’s Open Wiccan Coven, which was my first queer spiritual community, even existed.  The day I found this journal I was feeling depressed and questioning a lot of my decisions over the past year or so.  It was lovely to find such a clear message that yes, I am on the right path!

The following is a poem I wrote back in 2004 when the Ca Supreme Court shut down San Francisco’s Same Sex Marriage offerings and annulled the marriages that happened during the Spring of Love. Reading it reminded me of how joyous and painful that experience was, a mingling of joy and pain that we experienced again in California in 2008. Whether or not each of us believes that the fight for Same Sex Marriage is one that we as individuals would have chosen or we as a community should have chosen, I think it is important to acknowledge the wounding that this battle has caused to our community. Because I want that wounding (not to mention the billion dollar political industry that has grown around Same Sex Marriage initiatives and drained our community dry of resources) to end, I send all of my best wishes and support to those arguing in the current federal court case about the constitutionality of Prop 8.

“I’m sorry”, I cried as I plunged off the side

To ascend the precipice of hell,

“But I know who I am and I know what I want

And you won’t turn me into my shell.”

Pain drives toward excess

And shutters still hide

Though I learned how to act an emotion

Anger and bitterness,

Triumph and Pride

Deeper, wider than the ocean.

It Wasn’t Enough.

I searched through the bars, I played in the clubs,

Drank myself dry, tried all the drugs

But never could I find the peace

That comes with a care that will not be denied,

The love that refuses release.

And then you came–

And when I shrieked my pain into your darkness,

You would not let go.

And when you tried to spare me life’s hardness

I did not except your no.

A moment of hope, a faint ray of light

Quickly covered, plunging again into night.

What my parents obtained

The courts have retained

And the president preaches must always remain–

Recognized love we can’t own.

A mere slip of paper, professional, sleek,

Stating not business but family I seek

Denied–

Else nations will crumble, society fail

Communities crumble, civil life pale

For reasons myriad and unknown.

Four thousand coupkes laid across their altars

Knives to the chest, all movement falters.

Eight thousand hearts fed, still beating, to wolves.

That should teach those who seek similar moves.

And our friends?  Where are they?

Except for a scant few

Who dare to espouse the unpopular view.

“That’s not important,” they say,

“Just a distraction from the big moves at play.”

Bull shit.

Since when is my status as a second class citizen

Any less important than that of any other?

Cause and effect are still kith and kin–

Brother is taught to kill brother.

The shutters once again rise

To buffer against anger’s tide

And I shriek agai into your darkness

As I flip through the new Modern Bride…

So how do you work with dreams? There’s lots of material out there, but what’s the best and most sound approach? Well that’s part of the problem. Even modern science can’t tell us definitively what purpose our dreams serve. How then can we expect a $20 encyclopedia of dreams to really be in anyway definitive. These are your dreams and you have the definitive voice on what your dreams mean.

However there are some ways that are helpful in uncovering what your dream does mean to you. It is helpful to record your dreams. I personally dream so much and so vividly that writing down everyone of my dreams and including all the detail I can remember would take on the characteristics of a job. No thanks! I record only the dreams that, upon waking, have a really strong feeling of importance about them. Those are the dreams that usually contain the big messages for me. You however probably have a different experience with your dreams than I do. I behooves you to really understand how you dream, and recording your dreams helps with that understanding. If you only remember partial dreams or pieces from dreams, then please do record as much as you can. That practice alone will actually help you to begin to remember more about your dreams. Recording your dreams also provides you with the content of your dreams, namely the dream symbols. This is where the sticky wicket of dream interpretation comes into play.

This is actually where having access to collections of interpretations of dream symbols can be helpful. Helpful not in the sense that they can tell you what your dream is about, but they can give you ideas about what your dream symbols might mean. For example I could have a dream where I inherit a red car. I could look those dream symbols (inheritance, red, automobiles) up and determine whether the meaning given actually “feels” right to me. This is an intuitive process. You have to connect with that part of yourself that knows your own truth.

Lastly the technique that I like to use the best is sharing my dreams with other people. I am an external processor which means I need to talk out my experiences of life before I can integrate them. The process of sharing your dreams maybe a frightening one if you are not like me. However there is still great value in fighting that fear and sharing your dreams with others. My dream teacher, Jeremy Taylor (www.jeremytaylor.com), believes that each of us have a particular kind of blinders on when it comes to fully being able to see what our dream symbols mean. In sharing our dreams we open up the symbols to interpretation by others. Scary yes! However when we open our dreams to another person or persons we have the opportunity to see what our dream symbols mean to them. If I tell 5 people my dreams, that gives me 5 possible interpretations to draw my own meaning from. Add to that whatever I’ve gathered from dream resources and I’ve given my psyche a significant vocabulary with which to interpret my dream.

If you do choose to share your dream make sure that you choose people that have a gift for listening to others. Choose people that honor the process of dreaming and honor the fact that you have ultimate say over what the dream means. No one likes a dream bully!

So remember 3 great ways to help you work with your dreams:

• Record your dreams
• Utilize resources
• Share your dreams with trusted others

Happy Dreaming everyone!

File this post under Spell Crafting 101–Banishing and Binding are generally the first things a magical practitioner learns how to do regardless of their path or preferred magical practice.  In fact, banishing and binding is so easily understood and readily practiced in our culture that even those who would claim that they absolutely reject any notions of magic routinely practice banishing and binding spells (New Year’s Resolutions are a prime example).  Because we’re still in the period of making resolutions and/or trying to find ways to make our resolutions stick, this is a great time to review the basics regarding banishing and binding.

First, and this is important in all spell casting, really think through what you are seeking to accomplish and what you are actually willing to do in order to accomplish that goal.  In my experience this is especially true when considering a banishing.  It is very easy in a fit of pique to say “Oh My Goddess, I’ve put on 20 lbs again!  That’s it!  I hereby banish junk food from my life!”  But do you really want to banish junk food from your life entirely?  Have you thought out what other areas in your life that such a banishment may affect?  What about those game nights with their requisite bags of chips, those birthday parties and other social gatherings with their cakes and cookies, the weekly office meeting with its trays of pastries?  Are you willing to give up your social life as well as your consumable delights in order to lose a few pounds?  Or do you need to refine your parameters to reflect what you are actually willing to do in order to reach your goal?

Perhaps banishing binge snacking or the eating of junk food in non-social gatherings combined with a binding to actively pursuing a more healthy diet and/or exercise regime would be the better choice of casting.  Successful spell casting relies upon the marriage of words and intent.  When the two do not match we will either circumvent and block the spell’s success through our unspoken desire for failure or we will allow the spell to succeed and become bitter and unhappy about the situations we created for ourselves.

The second important thing to remember about banishing and binding spells is that for these spells to be completely successful they must include both banishing and binding.  Too often in our spells or resolutions we try to focus on just one half of the equation even though we know intellectually that we have to have both.  We tend to be a bit better at remembering to include the binding after a banishing–it’s easy to remember that Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill any empty space that we create in our lives.  Anyone who has fought an addiction knows this firsthand–when I was quitting smoking, finding appropriate outlets for the hand to mouth/oral fixation that I had developed by smoking cigarettes for half of my life was a key element to my battle.  Fortunately that was understood by many of my friends and well wishers who offered substitutions ranging from the mundane (gum) to the erotic (use your own damn imagination) to the herbalist’s expert choice (licorice root, which I still use in almost every tea I make).

In my experience it’s much easier to forget to balance out our spells when we are focused on binding rather than banishing.  I believe this is because we live in a society that emphasizes accumulation.  We are taught at an early age that we should want and have every right to get the newest toys, the most toys, the best toys.  It isn’t until much later in life that we really start to learn that having means spending, that energy in a system is neither destroyed nor created.  So when we resolve to go to the gym every week or bind ourselves to a life of prosperity, we tend to forget that we need to let something go in order to bring the new in.  Where is the time to be spent at the gym going to come from?  What effort is required to gain and maintain prosperity?

Finally, remember to make your banishing and binding equivalent. Binding yourself to something that is unrelated or pales in comparison to what you are banishing still leaves a void which nature will fill for you with something you would likely not have chosen for yourself.  Similarly, when the focus is on the binding half of the equation, make sure that you are banishing something that is equivalent in type of energy and value.  For instance, in order to bind myself to a resolution to become a better read witch and get through some of those books that I’ve never opened, I have to banish my need to read Mercedes Lackey novels for the nth time as my way to relax before bed.  To make room in my life to write on a regular basis, I have to give up an hour of online gaming each day.

For all that I said at the beginning of this article that banishing and binding is spell crafting 101, it’s also one of the main tricks in any witch’s bag of spells and a major aid as we look to make both small and large changes in our lives.  What do you want to achieve and what will you give up to achieve it?

Yesterday I mentioned the big push of astro-energy that jumped us into the New Year.  Today I want to touch upon the other bit of astro-energy that is with us as we embark upon turning our resolutions into realities and that is the current retrogrades of Mercury and Mars.

To preface the article, I am not an astrologer (if you are looking for someone who really knows what they’re talking about when it comes to the stars, visit http://astrobarry.com/), but I do recognize that the movement of the stars and planets affect our lives.  Mars and Mercury are two of the three closest planets to Earth, so when from our perspective they are both moving backwards that seems to me to be a pretty clear message that we too should be looking backwards to find some clues about where we need to go from here.

I’ve also noticed that a lot of my friends and family are having a rough start to this year–missed connections, crazy weather, hard drive crashes, lost jobs, exploding energy plants, even just a general feeling of malaise seems to be stopping us all in our tracks.  How do we deal with these setbacks?  How do we reconcile them with a belief in a purposeful Universe that rewards positive energies?

I’ve written before about the Law of Attraction and how I think many of the people who teach it in our communities today do a disservice to their students by treating the Law of Attraction as if it is the Midas touch that turns everything to gold.  Personally I believe that the Law of Attraction is more about learning to find the positive aspects of everything that happens in your life, learning to accept life as it comes, and learning to live from a place of “No Regrets.”  That can be really difficult in the present when we are going through a tough time.  The present seems almost designed to make us question our choices and learn to regret them.  But before we drown ourselves in the ecstasy of “should have, would have, could have” let’s follow the lead of  the planets and really look back at our pasts to figure out when and we felt the way we want to feel and why.

One of my biggest goals in life is to live purposefully and make positive change in our world at large.  When I look back over my life to see when I felt most effective and guided by purpose, the first period I look to is when I was in college. I had grown up in a severely religious right home, and when my parents learned I was gay they disowned me personally and financially.  That experience was one of the most painful and traumatic events in my life, but not only did I still finish college in four years, I wrote articles that are still being published and republished to help LBGTQ youth and their families.  I found myself speaking and performing at national conferences and events.  I was interviewed and profiled in national publications.  When I look back at that time I am in awe.  How did I manage to raise and channel that much energy into positive change?

There are other periods of my life when I felt both effective and affective and all of them have been marked equally by pain and success.  My first (and to date only) tattoo marks a period of my life five years ago when I both lost my former husband and had breakthrough productions as both a performer and a director that have defined the course of my artistic career to date.  Even this past year, which was marked by amazing successes and development for the Circle of Dionysos, was personally and financially excruciating for my partner and I as we dealt with unemployment, eviction, and major health scares.  Frequently I had friends marveling at the creative life I was leading last year, and my response was that it’s easy to lead a creative life when there is no other choice but do nothing.

As I look forward to 2010 I do hope and pray that the current struggles ease and we all begin to make the sorts of breakthroughs that will assure our security in the long run.  But I also offer thanks for our hard times for they keep us truly alert and invested in both life and our communities.  The Latin root from which we derive the word passion is also the word for suffering, and it is from our passion that we truly derive fulfillment.

So here we are about a week into 2010.  How are those New Years Resolutions going?  I can hear the guffaws already.  Most people fall into two categories when it comes to New Years Resolutions–either they make New Years Resolutions every year in hopes that *this year* they’ll succeed at keeping those resolutions or they have given up on the notion of making resolutions altogether because they always fail to hold to those resolutions.  But the problems we have in achieving the things that we resolve to achieve at the New Year has almost nothing to do with resolutions themselves and a whole lot to do with our modern expectations and means of trying to do the things we resolve to do.

The notion of making a New Year’s Resolution has strong pagan roots.  Wiccan traditions start the New Year at either Samhain (Halloween) or Yule (Winter Solstice) depending on the tradition, and even today during the rituals held on the “New Year” Sabbat, participants are generally asked to state their intention (or resolution) for the year to come.  This actually comes out of our agrarian history–One can imagine our ancestors calling out that they intend to build a new barn this year, or they intend to double their harvest.

There are a few important things to note about these supposed ancient “resolutions.”  First, they are declarations made about tasks that will take all year.  Building a barn before modern machinery took a lot of work–chopping down trees, processing logs into lumber, then nailing each piece of lumber in place by hand was a task that took not only time but lots of manpower.  Harvesting twice the crops of the year before similarly required not only significant planning and double the work, but the time of an entire growing cycle (aka the entire year) to accomplish.  Yet today when we make New Year’s Resolutions, we expect to jump right into the task and see results within weeks if not days.  We don’t plan, we don’t gather our tools, and we don’t give our efforts time to produce results.

Second, declaring intentions in communal space made the community aware and responsible for helping the individual achieve his/her goals.  The person who declared that they were going to build a barn put the thatcher and carpenter on notice that they’d be called on to help, the person who wanted to double the harvest similarly asked for aid both from those who may have advice to give on better crops to plant or means to grow them but also those who could spare a hand or a horse to help plow.  That community sensibility is something we have a hard time tapping into today in our urban centers, but it is still vital that we find friends/family/community that can guide and aid us in reaching our goals .

And finally, by declaring their intentions in sacred space, our ancestors called upon whatever higher powers were out there to aid them.  By doing this they acknowledged the importance of providence (or alternately chance) in the achievement of their goal.  The farmers who wanted to double their crops needed the cooperation of the weather to succeed; the barn builder would get no where in the face of a giant fire.   But when circumstances lead us to fail we tend to blame ourselves or completely lose heart.

My personal experience with successful resolution making was the year that I resolved to quit smoking cigarettes.  I resolved to do so at Yule, but instead of quitting that moment, I spent a month buying tools– patches and licorice root sticks, getting acupuncture points put in that would help with emotional balance, etc.  Then, when I felt ready, I quit…for month, but then got involved in a show with a bunch of smokers and started smoking with them.  After the show was over, I tried again…until my dad, who smokes three packs a day, came for a visit.  And then it was September, and I still wanted to quit but was starting to get disheartened; everyone I knew was still pushing me to try to quit but starting to feel like it wasn’t gonna happen; and…Providence happened.  I caught pneumonia, and smoking literally hurt so much that quitting was the easiest route to go.

This year’s New Year’s Eve was a heavy hitter as we opened a new decade with a Full Blue Moon Lunar Eclipse.  That’s a lot of numerological and astro-energy being put behind those resolutions, so  don’t treat them lightly, give them time to mature, get your community involved, and don’t be afraid to ask whatever else is out there to give you a hand as well.  It may be a bumpy ride, but change always comes with a price tag…

June Jordan, African-American Bisexual Poet and Teacher

Lawrence King, 10 year old who was murdered by a classmate for questioning his sexual orientation and gender identity

Gloria Anzaldua, Latina Lesbian Author and Teacher

Mark Bingham, Gay man and 9/11 hero

James Baldwin, African American Gay Author and Allen Ginsberg, Beat Poet and Counter-Cultural Icon

Lou Sullivan, Female to Male Transexual Pioneer

Brandon Teena, Female to Male Transexual who was murdered

Bessie Smith, African American Bisexual and ‘Empress of the Blues’

Audre Lorde, African American Lesbian Poet who linked the struggles of racism, sexism and homophobia and who died of cancer

Sylvia Rivera, Transgender Woman, Activist and Stonewall Participant whose work is being continued by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project

Billy Lee Tipton, American Musician and Bandleader who was born with female genitals and lived as a man for his entire life

Tyra Hunter, Transgender Woman who was in a car accident in Washington, D.C. She bled to death when paramedics refused to work on her when they saw that Tyra had a penis

Bayard Rustin, African American Gay Activist and Civil Right Leader, Confidante of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brenda Howard, Bisexual Activist and Organizer for Stonewall Gatherings which became New York City Pride

Scott Lofgren who worked at Anything That Moves, a bisexual magazine and to all LGBT people who struggle with mental illness

Wanda Alston, African American Lesbian and Activist who was stabbed to death in her apartment in Washington, D.C.

Gwen Araujo and Angie Zapata, Transgender Women and all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Gender Queer and Questioning people who have been murdered for claiming their authentic sexual orientation and or gender identity and expression

Randy Shilts, Gay Writer and AIDS Activist, who wrote the definitive book on the AIDS crisis and to all LGBT people who worked to raise awareness and change policies for AIDS patients and to those who died from AIDS

To the Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning people for supporting their loved ones even though their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression was different from their own

Matthew Shepard, Gay College Student who was beaten to death for being gay.  The current federal hate crimes protection bill bears his name and has been passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama

San Francisco City Council Member Harvey Milk, first openly Gay man who was elected to office in the United States and who was subsequently assassinated and to all LGBT people who have dedicated their lives to making things better for their communities and the world at large

Bobby Griffith, Gay Teen who committed suicide and all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth and adults who were driven to suicide by insensitive and unsupportive cultures

Del Martin, Lesbian Activist and Pioneer who with her partner, Phyllis Lyon, founded the Daughters of Bilitis, one of the first Lesbian organizations in the United States

To all the anonymous Jane and John Does who have been damaged and been killed for their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, who have been unsupported and abandoned by their families, friends and the world

Of course, it is terrible horrifying and sobering to me to keep in mind that even as we were bringing this ritual to life, we lost another young gay man to a horrifying death in Puerto Rico.  Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, you too are in our thoughts on this day in which we honor those we have lost.

Blessings upon their memories.

Is coming out the first time you recognize your self in the word gay, lesbian, bi, trans, homo? Is coming out the first time that you act on your self identification? Is coming out the first time that you tell someone of your new identity?

I view coming out as a call. Calling or vocation is most often talked about in religious literature and usually in the context of someone moving into some kind of ministry. “I was called by God to become a priest.” “I felt a call on my life.” Coming out is a much similar process. There is this little voice inside that keeps pointing at things in the world and saying “you’re like that.” Now what we do with that call is up to us. I believe that a call to become more fully gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer is a spiritual call. As are all calls to further authenticity. As are all calls that help us peal back another onion skin layer of the being we call ourselves.

I believe that at the center of our being sits our connection to God, the Divine, the Universe, Mystery or whatever name you use to signify that which is beyond. At the center of our being is the connection and any self exploration and revealing of deeper truths about ourselves moves us closer to that sacred essence within. As we mover further in it also allows our truest essence to move out.

Coming out is a sacred event. Coming out moves the gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer person one step closer to living as they truly are. Coming out brings freedom.

Joseph Campbell writes about the Hero’s Journey in A Hero with a Thousand Faces,

The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.

This is what many of us face when we’re coming out. We don’t know what kind of reaction we’re going to get from our loved ones. We don’t know what kind of reaction we’re going to receive from the world at large. We may know that our immediate families of blood, or choice, will be super supportive, but we don’t know if our neighbor in 2B has some hidden axe to grind with queers. We don’t know who or what is waiting around the corner to take their fear out upon us.

Coming out is an act of courage. It is a move toward the truth. It is a move that strips away shackles and releases our ability to slay the dragon, or rather tame the dragon and use it’s power for our own.

For truly we are the ones in charge of our identity. As much as others will try to put us into boxes, literally and figuratively, we are the ones in charge of how we feel about ourselves. If we find the courage within ourselves to at first accept, then to tolerate, and finally embrace the things that make us queer, then we have taken our power back. No longer will anyone’s taunts have sway over how we feel about ourselves. And once we have taken our power back, we can use that power to build the kind of society where we are valued. Because with our own power back, we can finally show to our society at large, just why it is that we are so very rare and special, and how by embracing us the world at large becomes a better place for all.

Coming out is about peace.

Spirituality is generally defined as the quest to find “what is true,”  but we as human beings are tiny creatures on a tiny planet that circles a tiny sun at the edge of a tiny galaxy.  If there truly is such a thing as “universal truth,” we are far too small and limited as creatures to grasp more than the slightest edges of that truth.  What we can grasp and explore and develop are our own personal truths, and the first step of owning our personal truths is the declaration of our personal truths.  Undeclared identities–be they sexual, gender-based, spiritual, or any other–are unclaimed identities carrying potential power that we are not utilizing, and as nature abhors a vacuum unutilized energy will be taken and used by somebody.  It’s an unfortunate fact of life that the people who seek out unused power are frequently people who view unused power as a sign of weakness in their fellows, people who would use that unspoken identity against you.

I worked in a middle school for a couple of years, and this was something I saw frequently–when kids who were teasing a fellow student about being gay were asked if being gay was inherently a bad thing, they would generally say no.  The teasing was based on their perception that the possible “gayness” of their victim was something that person saw as a weakness in their character.  I’ve heard many stories that support this assertion from high school students who have come out–that while they were picked on before coming out, a lot of that went away after they came out, claiming their identity and power.  In fact, they often found a swelling of support for them within their social circles and acquaitances.

I’m not trying to say that coming out solves all problems.  My personal coming out story includes as much pain and loss as it does empowerment.  While I find that in many cases the above is true, there are unfortunately many other cases in which homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia have led to disenfranchisement, harm, or even death of even individuals that have claime d their identities and power.  But each person who comes out is engaging in harm reduction on both a personal and communal level, each person who comes out accesses the power of the identity they have spoken and claimed, each person who comes out moves themselves closer to their own personal truth, and in so doing grows as a spiritual being.

Water, wash away this night’s

Moments of fear, fancy, and flight

But do not lessons take away

As I turn to face the day.

Anyone who has lived with me can tell you that not only do I consider the day begun only after I shower, I’ll often use a mid-day shower to restart my day or reorient myself to a new set of tasks.  In part this is because I have a water dominated birth chart, but in part it is just good practice.  Many books on the craft emphasize the importance of bathing before ritual as a means of clearing and focusing your will and intent, and what works for ritual can certainly work for our daily practice of living!