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…

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…

Like many people in the neo-pagan/alternative spirituality movement, as a matter of course I believe in the Law of Attraction (that the Universe responds in kind to the energies you send out via your outlook on life—for example, people who see their life as full of prosperity tend to become prosperous while people who see themselves as struggling always seem to be facing an uphill battle).  However, I believe that the way the Law of Attraction is frequently presented in this modern time is problematic.  Too often people start engaging with Law of Attraction material expecting easy success and quick rewards.  In fact, especially in the earliest stages, changing one’s life and finding happiness and fulfillment is a lot of work, because the equal and opposite principle to the Law of Attraction is the Law of Inertia.

Physics teaches us that an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force.  This principle is as true on the psychic plane as it is on the physical plane.  It takes work to get out of a rut of apathy, constant attention to uproot the weeds of negativity, and a strong will to prevent a return to “business as usual.”  Physics also teaches us that systems resist changes in energy.  This means that while you as an individual are working to change your attitudes and attractions, the energy of your community—your friends and family, your neighbors, your city, your country—opposes that change on principle.  Think of yourself as a match trying to light a fire.  If the wood is damp and there is no tinder, you have to overcome a whole lot of resistance in order to succeed.

Keep in mind that while the US Declaration of Independence declared our unalienable rights to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” our society actually takes as axiomatic Locke’s earlier statement that humanity’s unalienable rights are to “Life, Liberty, and Property.”  We’ve been taught not to be “happy” but rather to be “successful.”  That’s a lot of baggage, both personal and communal, that we have to get rid of as we move toward our paths of true fulfillment.  So don’t expect easy successes and immediate total gratification.  Instead seek out the moments of connection, focus on those sparks of pure joy, and nurture them against the overwhelming sense that “nothing can be done.”  Eventually those sparks will catch and the momentum will turn in our favor.