Moura 2025 CE: Day 27

 It is almost Kala and my goal of having everything around here picked up by then is impossible. I'm not going to stop cleaning in despair. I did that last year and I think I have enough dust everywhere I could plant things in it. (I really was at a bad place last year.) I have decided that since the world is going haywire, I might as well let myself have some extra time to get the household picked up. It's not like dishes are going to go anywhere, if you know what I mean.

A small part of me hopes that within the coming days that we'll be witness to a miracle and the republic will be restored. It is the same part of me that hoped that Christmas would come with the miracle that life was going to turn around as a kid. I am fairly sure, however, that such a hope is foolish. There are forces at work that I can not fully fathom and I doubt that I have the capacity to effect change on that front, as much as I want to. I pray, but prayer feels useless.

Instead of mumbling pleas that the decay of the US pass me by, I am focusing on what I can do and what I can change. I continue to work on getting things ready for when my eldest son graduates high school. I'm planning a garden and I'm going to get supplies for preserving food. I intend to take time to put by food for my household and some of the extended family. Part of that process is going to be learning how to can tomatoes. Hopefully, I will find a recipe for canning fruit that doesn't require a super huge amount of sugar. 

I am attempting not to despair. I am resisting the urge to chronicle ever aspect of the political happenings in my country. I just know that would make everything harder. So, I am trying to refocus on practical things and what little things I can do to help people around me. I'm still making preemie hats. The rate had slowed down because of last year. But whipping those things off in a half hour does wonders for my stress levels. I plan on dropping off 90 preemie hats with the county hospital next month. I'm 2/3rds of the way to that goal. Focusing on things like that help ease some of my feelings of helplessness and gives me a bit of hope.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 26

 I have been struggling against the ritual prohibition of not contemplating the future during this month. One, there are many worrisome things happening that I am concerned jeopardizes the future of my children. Two, I have blog topics to plan for next week that I am struggling not to start work on. And, three, I have books that I am going to write this year that I want to get organized and such. I am impatient to get to work on the projects like blog planning and I am unable to stop worrying with each new development in the news here in the US.

I attempt to focus on the present. It is part of the reason why my kitchen is actually looking kinda decent right now. When I catch myself worrying, I go and start cleaning. My bathroom is still a disaster but the mirror isn't super foggy from whatever the kids sprayed on it when they last attempted to clean. I am probably going to spend a bunch of time working on handcraft projects today when my worrying begins to be a problem. 

I have a spinning project that has been languishing for months because I have been forgetting to work on it. Spinning yarn is a relaxing hobby for me and since I figured out how to do it as I am walking around, it makes for a good motivator to get some exercise. In fact, I prefer to take a walk and spin with a drop spindle over sitting down at my spinning wheel. I do love my spinning wheel but I don't have a good set up for using it at the moment. The chair that I sit in when I am working on fiber projects has arms on it and makes it hard to get a long draw going with my fiber.

The weather today isn't going to be that fantastic to go for a walk outside and spin, but I can walk around my apartment and do it. It's an ideal project for when I have to focus on the present because I have to carefully watch my fiber to make sure that the yarn I am making is even. I have one of the three singles done and in a ball. I have to make the second Alpaca fiber single and then the third single out of acrylic fiber. I am kinda worried that the acrylic fiber that I have has a ridiculously long staple length and it will be difficult to spin. However, when I get the three singles done, I am going to ply them together on my kick-wheel. It's a project that is going to take a little while to finish up.

I haven't decided what I am going to do with this yarn when I get it done. It is going to be my first 3 ply yarn. I want to save it for myself and when I do another 3 ply, I'll make something else out of it and give it away. I am contemplating selling some of the yarn I spin. According to theory I could fetch a good price for it. I am undecided on it all. But, Moura isn't a time for making decisions like that. It is for focusing on the present and the holy mysteries of the season. 

Moura 2025 CE: Day 25

 I woke early today. I hadn't planned on it, it just happened. I am not groggy, so I guess I got a full night of sleep. I'm hoping this isn't an indicator of heading into hypomania. I have to keep an eye on how much sleep I get. My body isn't exactly helpful on that front with this perimenopause business going on. That said, I am hoping that my migraine doesn't hit me in the face until this evening. This wild weather is wearing on me and it looks like this is going to be a long week due to it.

As I was staring at the ceiling, I was thinking about things like what guidance is needed for non-Madrian households. I have been struggling with this particular question for months. I have prayed for Déa to show me the way to approach this. I keep cycling back to the question, however. The only answer that I have is love. Then it occurs to me that perhaps a better way of approaching the question is how do we express unconditional love in a parental relationship.

There is an expectation of obedience on the part of the child. This obedience is not blindly given, however. It's often like pulling hen's teeth, in my experience. The kids challenge me on a regular basis and pretty much always have with the question why being at the forefront. As a person who's passion is for educating, I have a default response to explain things and do my best to make clear what's going on. My household isn't ruled by mood swings as much as by logic. No  matter where I am at in my bipolar, the kids can count on me to give them an answer that makes sense, as long as they give me the time to explain it.

Perhaps this is something that Déa does with us. She guides us through life and when we ask why things happen, she presents an answer to us. Sometimes we understand her answer and sometimes we don't. If we stay curious, however, things are made clear in their own time. I had a point as to how this related to relationships but I lost it. I fully believe, however, that Déa is always reaching out to us and pointing things out to us that we should focus on.

Things are scary right now and they're hard because of what other people have done. At the same time, however, there is hope because people are (as Chuck Tingle says) proving love is real. And love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 24

 Shufflemancy has struck again. I am listening to random music on Spotify and the bot brought up Gary Jules' song Mad World. I was thinking about the state of the world right now and that song is a good way to describe it. Living here in the US isn't that great right now, despite what some people want to say. We have a president that is batshit crazy and congress is doing very little to oppose him and his administration. He took a pot shot at the judicial branch yesterday and it was met with very little hue and cry. This entire business has been a disaster for civil rights and I am afraid for the future.

I try not to talk about politics on here because I know that mixing politics and religion is a very bad thing. At the same time, however, the malarky happening right now in my country's government is a real and potent danger to people like myself and my family. And it is happening because a group of people practicing an extremely conservative version of Christianity has seized power. I am waiting for the day that the president rules by fiat that Christianity is the official religion of the country. I'm not looking forward to it but I'm waiting for it to happen.

To some extent, I can mask as a generic, secular oriented Christian of a nameless protestant version. My boys, however, can't do that. We raised them outside of a Christian denomination, much to the annoyance and outrage of some relatives. Neither myself or Beloved are Christians and we felt it was wrong to push them into being part of a religion from the cradle. We have made a point of educating the kids in a wide range of religions as best we can, including the lack there of. We have continually espoused that they are free to believe whatever they want as long as they are being decent people. 

It seems, however, that our standards for decency are different from those of others. Which worries me and makes me concerned that my boys will be targeted for harassment and assault by people who don't like them. We've already had a public threat made against one of them by a kid down the road who opposes the fact that they refuse to stand for the pledge of allegiance. And when I say a public threat, I mean that the kid stood up at a podium and gave a little speech about how he hates people who don't stand for the pledge, got lots of applause from the neighborhood as he stared at my kids. My boys ignored him but it was deeply worrisome that it happened.

The lack of tolerance and acceptance of differing views is egregious and troubling. I have had people start off hostile when I openly wear my headcoverings and my pendants that show that I'm not Christian. There's a knee jerk reaction to a pentacle in this country where people insist that you are a danger to others. Never mind the fact that if you're cold and in need, I'd give you the shirt off my back to make sure you are ok. The necklace that I'm wearing makes me a threat to them in their eyes.

I've had people threaten me behind my back as I was out shopping or in the general public. I almost always turn around and glare at them. They tend to quiet down when I look at them. But if they think I haven't noticed, they get vulgar and nasty for as long as they think they can get away with it. It's as bad as the bullying that I had to deal with as a kid. I am concerned that at some point it'll turn ugly and I don't have the spoons to rearrange somebody's face for spitting on me.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 21

 Well, it is the day before the Full Sap Moon and the total lunar eclipse (which is happening so late at night tomorrow evening that I can't observe it with the kids). I have been busy with housework and scheduling things for family that I had quite forgotten about writing here. On the plus side, I have found the desk, paid the bills, and found a good portion of the living room floor. On the minus side, I forgot about writing stuff and my goals to be more social. However, because Déa grants us all grace, I can forgive myself like she does and work to do better.

I have been doing my best to approach my efforts to improve myself like I would teaching my kids how to do something. I manage to have more patience with them than I do with myself. The focus when a mistake happens isn't on punishment of an error, but rather on teaching them how to self correct and make reparations for whatever damage is caused by the mistake. Most of all, I do my best to be kind in my approach towards it all, even when I am frustrated. (Being kind when you feel kinda mad is pretty hard but worth it.)

In attempting to extend that measure of grace and kindness towards myself, I have learned that I am repeating the harsh way I was raised in my self talk. I confess, I was rather horrified when I realized how deep the roots of my negative self image was due to this. The habit of cruelty toward myself has been a very hard one to break. I haven't succeeded yet but I am going to keep trying. 

Beloved told me at one point in time that I should treat myself like one of the kids to get better at being more self compassionate. It has made a big difference. As long as I continue to be relentless about my efforts, I think I will eventually find success in this endeavor. I know that I am imitating Our Lady in this (which is always a good idea). Anna is the image of the best of Marya's children and she embodies all things healthy. Healthy looks different for different people, which is why Anna appears differently to each of us, but the fact that she is reaching out to  help us reach our full potential in life is universal.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 17

 I would have posted yesterday but I was busy with family stuff just about all day. No great tragedy has happened. I just was busy with a doctor's appointment that was running almost an hour late and then clothes shopping for the kids. My youngest (about whom we have some weight concerns) has put on 10 lbs in the last 10 days since we have started pushing stuff like desserts in front of him. My eldest has some reservations about this push to get him and his brother to eat more. I want to kick the person who planted the idea in his head that being overweight is the worst thing in the world. As a result of that, both kids are anxious about eating too much. Add on top of that the factor that they're somewhat picky about what they eat and you can guess how much difficulty we've been having getting them to eat.

I try not to worry about them but when the doctors involved in their care get concerned, I can't help but worry overtime. It's rather stressful to raise kids no matter what age they are. I suspect I will still be worrying about them when they're grown and out on their own too. I can't believe that my eldest child will be graduating high school this year. It blows my mind. I look at him and think to myself that just yesterday it seems we brought him home from the hospital as a newborn.

Time is weird like that. I wonder if the Divine has moments like this? I have no clue if they experience time like we do or not. I don't know what happens when you go from 4 dimensions to something higher. Well, not entirely. I know it takes a lot of really hard math to describe the layout and the graphs of it look really funky. Trying to describe 4+ dimensions on a 2 dimensional surface is really hard and visually confusing.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 15

 I made the mistake this morning of listening to the news as the boys were getting ready for school. It made all three of us angry. Then I had to explain to the kids that they had to be cautious about what they said and posted on the internet because of the ramifications of saying things like how they wished people died. They weren't happy but grudgingly accepted my explanation of things as they stand. They asked me how long the president will be in power and I had to honestly answer that I had no idea. It made me feel bad to say that, but it was the truth.

There are people who seem to take pride in saying unpleasant truths. I may at times come off as one of them, for which I apologize. I may be proud of the fact that I am honest, but I don't want to hurt people with it. It is difficult to tell when honesty is going to be too much for some people. I try to gauge my audience before blurting out blunt truths but I have less success than I'd like to at that effort.

I suppose part of the problem is the fact that I tend to take stances and be a bit brash about it. Growing up, I was taught by some members of the family that I had to make myself smaller and put in effort to fit in better. It was painful and other members of the family told me that if someone could not handle me as I was then they didn't deserve me. (Can you guess who I am still talking to?) It's become reflexive to resist that pressure to conform as I've grown older. The more effort I put into accepting myself, the less I tolerate others trying to make me fit their preconceived notions about who I am.

My nonconformist attitude is running cross-wise to pretty much the whole cultural current of my local area. As such, people will do things like give me funny looks and mutter comments under their breath as I walk by. I keep my head held high and do my best to ignore them. It still stings, to be honest, when they do that. People have treated me in that fashion since I was young and it makes it hard for me to believe there is good in people at times. I am unabashedly liberal in my political leanings and that is a big problem for some of my neighbors, it seems.

Our place hasn't been egged yet. I think the reason why that hasn't happened is because we don't own the building and there are other apartments in it aside from ours. Someone did randomly smear dog feces on the door at one point. (That wasn't fun to clean off.) I've had people record me as I am about and doing things while they're making mocking commentary at full volume. 

Since the political climate has shifted, this and the muttering is becoming more frequent. It is concerning. I have to do my best to keep in mind that this type of harassment is not personal. To them, I am just a convenient symbol of what they hate. It still makes me furious. I try to put the anger aside, but it's really hard. I've prayed on the matter and the only answer that comes to me is to keep being myself. I guess that I can't change other people and I can't change how they view the world. Tolerance seems to be a luxury.

Moura 2025 CE: Day 5

 Not a very long post today. The kids are recovered from the flu. They went to school today. The weather was unseasonably warm for the last two days but it seems to have melted some of the ice covering everything underneath the snow. I'm not looking forward to later this week when the temperature plunge back down and things freeze again. 

There is a state wide road salt shortage. Stores are limiting bags of salt to two per household. Beloved tried to get an additional bag for his parents but was denied because the cashier recognized him from earlier. He may try again this evening on his way to his parents' place after work. The salt mine a few towns over is operating 24 hours in an effort to relieve some measure of the shortage. There's been advertisements in the paper that they're on a big hiring blitz. 

Working there is a hard job but they pay well and have a good benefits package from what I hear. Strong unions for the workers set up a good deal with the company. Snow plowing hasn't been like last year. The county roads are pretty messy because something was wrong in the language of the county's paperwork bidding for a contract from the state to handle the bigger roads. As a result, they've been paying their workers out of the county highway budget, not the package they were expecting from the state. It's been a challenge. Things are being renegotiated and I'm hoping it will get settled out before we get walloped with another nasty storm.

I've been resting a lot today because I am the last one to get over the flu. My guts are not in utter rebellion, which is a good thing. If this pervasive exhaustion would go away, I'd be happy. I almost didn't post my daily prayers on Tumblr but I got myself organized enough to do it by the time the afternoon rolled around. I figure if I get it posted before the end of the day, there's hope for me yet. I've been doing my best to put aside my anger with people from my Beloved's side of the family in the face of Beloved's father impending death due to complications from fatty liver disease. It's been a challenge but I seem to be pulling it off so far.

Snuggle Bug and Cuddle Bear (they're teens and are going to hate these monikers but I'm going to keep using them) are handling things ok. Snuggle Bug's immediate concerns are the kids at school that keep giving him grief over things like his style of clothes and haircut. Cuddle Bear has started talking about learning to drive. At 17, I expected the topic to come up. I am hoping that he can enroll in the school's driver's education class before he graduates this June. But that's what's on my mind today and how things are going.

Ah gods, has it really been that long?

Dear Reader,

I apologize that I dropped off the internet for over a month. I was severely depressed and dealing with a very challenging medication change. The side effects were the hardest part. Aside from the utter exhaustion that had me sleeping through the night and all day, I had a lot of difficulty focusing. The most exasperating bit about this new medication on the witchy front is the fact that it has filled my head with utter silence. I am head-blind and having difficulty connecting with the gods. 

As such, I have resorted to alternate means (which I will describe) and I'm trying to get a feel for using these means more often. They say that once you learn something, it is like riding a bicycle. They are wrong because you forget details and snippets of how it works depending on the length of time since you've done the thing. Astral temples, liminal communication where your mind meets the general psychic space of the area, and such are not easy exercises. It is, however, very effective once you get the hang of it and working while in trance states. 

In the grips of depression, I was struck with powerful waves ennui and I contemplated shutting down all my blogs. I didn't do it because I didn't have enough proverbial spoons to do so. I am not up to my full spoon count for a given day. I'm pretty sure that I am going to have days that a ten minute writing session is going to be too much. But this is the beginning, which is always hard. I anticipate doing my writing and getting some texts out for you all to read.

As I glanced at my multivolume Book of Shadows, I realized that I had enough research in there to write several serious papers about occult topics. As such, I am going to and try to organize and filter everything so that it makes sense. I had been contemplating going back to school for my master's degree in divinity, but I don't think I have the energy to be that ambitious. So, I'm just going to crank out papers based on my research and peddle them to public resources where they can get peer review and basically do the work for a master's thesis on my own time. I was considering Cherry Hill seminary but the limitations of doing the work there is things like timing and technological resources.

I did not plan for a week to go by. Oiy.

Life caught up with me between appointments and catching this blasted cold, it's been bananas over here. That said, there's been some requests for devotional fiction. As we know, in fiction lies truths that we can not speak. I will be posting a video a bit later, but here is a story of the First War, as mentioned in the Children of Dèa Version of the Clear Recital. I hope you enjoy. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Celestial Janyati watched as Sai Vikhë set up a loom. It's frame was made of bone. The warp was the sinews of the dead. The warp weights were the heads of dead warriors. Her shuttle was an arrow and the weft was the guts of the dead. Sai Kala walked about the loom with fascination. Sai Werde frowned as Sai Maia wept.

"Sister," Sai Mati said, "What madness is this?"

"Something necessary," Sai Vikhë answered grimly. As she picked up the arrow and threw it through the open warp, in the worlds below something previously unknown began to stir. Sai Vikhë closed the first shed and opened the second. It seemed as though the worlds below groaned under a great weight. "She must rise before she falls," Sai Vikhë said, though her explanation confused Sai Mati, the wisest of them. Sai Thamë heaved a sigh of sorrow and reached to stop her sisters from interrupting Sai Vikhë.

"Must it be so soon?" Sai Thamë asked, "Can we not wait a little longer?" Sai Vikhë shook her head, tossing her black hair about her with the vigor of the motion.

Sai Sushuri gasped and put her delicate hands over her mouth as Sai Vikhë wove faster and gore began to drip from her weavings. Sai Sushuri turned and hid her face against Sai Raya's shoulder, desperately willing the image to leave her mind. Sai Raya watched all of this with a solemn expression as she ran a hand soothingly along her younger sister's back. "How long until it is finished?" Sai Raya asked, knowing what Sai Vikhë was fashioning.

"With the dark of the moon," Sai Vikhë answered, "And the earth turns to iron as snow falls for the first time."

"That is too close to when ..." Sai Raya started to say when Sai Candrè approached with a heavy veil over her and a dark shawl swathed about her body.

"It grows cold, even here," Sai Candré. The clouds about them began to form tiny, perfect crystals that floated down towards the worlds below as Sai Vikhë threw her arrow/shuttle through the topmost shed. Sai Vikhë turned to Sai Kala. Sai Kala put a pair of shears into the gore slicked hand. As Sai Vikhë cut the gruesome thing she had woven from its horrific frame, it changed. It turned into a gauzy fabric the color of fresh blood.

"You worked mischief this night," Sai Candré said grimly.

Sai Vikhë turned to her sisters with the fabric in her hands. "Behold, my sisters, the Flag of War. Fashioned to place one who reached too high into their proper place. This shall be my banner and arms. All who march upon the road of bones and answer to the beat of the war drums shall be under it's sign. Ever on will I bear this for my Enemy has taken their place. Our first battle is long in coming but not long enough."

This weather is stupid. Go home, Nature, you're drunk.

 Dear Reader,

It seems I've caught my son's cold and I'm dealing with pre-migraine symptoms because the temperature is going to jump from in the 20s tonight to near 50 deg F. These wild swings always give me migraines and render me useless. All I can do is lie in a dark room and wait for the medicine to kick in. And sometimes, it's not quite enough. It's all a crap experience. I have ocular migraines. The vision in my right eye goes blurry and then I feel like light is stabbing me in the face. I don't recommend it to anyone.

All of this leads me to confusion as to the arguments that the visions of Hildegarde von Bingen were because of chronic, untreated ocular migraines. I've read a fair amount about her visions and compared them to what we know of ocular migraines. There's only the loosest connection that she had a headache and had to lie down in a darkened room. The rest of it just doesn't line up. Her visions are intensely detailed and dreamlike in quality. But they are not the same as what modern evidence of ocular migraines are like.

Yes, I am one of those who fall on the side of the ledger who say that either the Saint had psychosis or her visions are legit. I lean more towards legitimate insights. They're too organized collectively and internally to really qualify as psychosis. (That's an experience I don't wish on anyone. Did that as part of my post partum depression, it was awful.) 

Now, let's take a moment to look at the psychosis argument. If you are having visual and auditory hallucinations that are helping you become a better person and encourages you in your faith, is this a problem? No, they're harmless and, actually, to some extend beneficial. If your psychosis experience is discouraging your efforts to be healthy, to be a better person, and encouraging you to grow in your faith, this is a sign of dysfunction. 

From everything I have read of Hildegarde von Bingen's writings, there is no sign of dysfunction. It leads me to question of the psychosis argument, I wonder if it is counting on the popular opinion that psychosis is bad/dangerous and is an attempt to discredit Hildegarde von Bingen posthumously. 

I've got nothing witty or insightful today.

Dear Reader,

I was all set to write a post for some economical tricks you can use in your occult practices but that went out of my head as it became clear that I have some serious problems to deal with regarding access to some of the diabetes medication. Please forgive me for a moment as I veer a hard left from the typical topic matter of this blog.

Insurance companies are retconning decisions made by doctors on the basis of money, not anyone's health. We've struggled to get medications approved when suddenly they denied me access to something I had been on for the last four years. There was no reason given, just an imperious decree that I am no longer allowed to take that medication. I know I'm not the only person this happens to. There are literally millions of people with chronic illnesses that the insurance company yanks the rug out from under them on a daily basis.

Throw in on top of this supply chain issues and it gets ugly fast. Some people say this is all because of Covid. I think that Covid ripped the mask of security off of the pharmaceutical industry. I think these problems have always been with us. Covid made some of them worse. But, having our health held hostage by insurance companies that can randomly say we can't have our medication with out having to explain why is bullshit. For a long time I have said that health insurance is a protection racket. Sure, you could try to go with out insurance. That's how we lost all our savings when I first got diagnosed with my illnesses. We are slowly building it back up, since we have got the govt. run health insurance through the state, but it's going to take a while.

(Yes, I am disabled. No, I don't get Social Security. They decided I wasn't disabled enough to qualify.) 

I don't typically post on Sundays here, so here's a pretty picture.

 

Gods preserve us from Shopmageddon.

 Dear Reader,

In case you noticed it, the no man's land of Turkey Day has been breeched and winter holiday shopping season has descended complete with musical accompaniment. Samhain has been pushed back into September but it still struggles forth despite the encroachment of Bing Crosby's music. I am retreating into my hermit hole with my knitting and crafting.

Just today, I went to pick up a few things for Turkey Day and it looked like tempers were getting short at the self check out kiosks. The line went all the way into the produce department and was three carts (approximately four people) wide. There were only two cash registers open. With a little luck, I got the one with the small line.

Shopmageddon, also known as Black Friday, looms and it troubles me. If I have errands to run, I don't want to get trampled, nor do I want them to be instantly sold out of the goods I am searching for. I hear you can make a modest shield with a large Tupperware lid and a yoga mat. I don't know if I would need it as it draws close to Yule and everyone goes mad. I should have stocked up on duct tape to make one.

The holiday shopping season, in honesty, is one I hate the most because the focus is moved away from friends and family to stuff. It is a season of greed and excess indulgence. Since getting diabetes, I've become more aware of these things because people don't stop and think about others, except as potential customers or potential show pieces for others to admire their stuff.

This reduction of humanity by the forces that sell us stuff and advertise everything under the sun didn't fully hit me until a few years ago. Some may argue that this focus shift is evidence of a decline in humanity away from the Divine. I would argue this is the evil side of mass marketing, instant fashion, and decadence in what is offered for increasing prices.

May we get through this season when we're all but ordered to go and keep up with the Joneses.