Saturday 31 October 2015

Dedication.



I come here at this festival of Beltane,
to dedicate myself to this Path.

I dedicate myself to the honour of my ancestors,
both those I know and those I don't.
May their heritage never be lost,
so long as I am alive.

I dedicate myself to the honour of Earth
and all who call her home.
May I learn to leave a light footprint
on our Mother, and may I never take her beauty
and blessings for granted.

I dedicate myself to the honour of the ancestors
of the land, wherever on Earth I may be.

I dedicate myself to the honour of the Divine,
may I always be open to its mystery.

I dedicate myself to the honour of the
Wheel of the Year. May I keep its festivals holy,
wherever on Earth I am.

I dedicate myself to the honour of all
who walk this Path with me,
whether or not they call themselves Pagan.

May I walk my Path with
truth, beauty, passion, kindness, and honour.


Blessed be.


{Wishing you a blessed season, whether you are celebrating Beltane, Samhain, Hallowe'en or All Saints Day.}

Thursday 29 October 2015

The Great Mystery.



'"I don’t pretend to understand this great mystery in which we participate.  Whether we call it life, cosmos, creation, Allah, God, or some other grand name, no label is large enough. I merely try to learn as much about it as I can, during my brief time under the sun. So I study what the most perceptive of our ancestors have discovered - artists and scientists as well as spiritual seekers.  I turn outward to nature and to human artifacts, and inward to the images and voices that arise in silence.  The louder the world becomes, with its relentless demands and messages, the more precious silence becomes. I can’t prove that what emerges within me arises from a source beyond the boundaries of my own skin, but I believe this is so. Simone Weil wrote that 'Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer'. What I pay attention to might be my breath, a sentence in a book, a butterfly on a zinnia blossom, my granddaughter’s face, a skein of music or a skein of geese. I may do my seeking outdoors or indoors, alone or in company, but always the goal is the same: to deepen my awareness of this encompassing mystery."

-Scott Russell Sanders, in "The Spirituality of Nature," Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2013

Sunday 25 October 2015

The curse of high apostrophe intelligence.



"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further." - Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

I found this cartoon on Facebook earlier this week, and it gave me a good laugh.

I think people are either born with the curse of High Apostrophe Intelligence, or they're not; and if you were born into my family, there's a good chance you have High Apostrophe Intelligence.

I was correcting my teachers' punctuation by the time I was about eight {yes, I knew how to make myself popular}.

The only time I've experienced road rage was when I was stuck behind a poorly-punctuated truck on SH2 between Hastings and Dannevirke. For about 100km I gripped the wheel and looked for a place to pass so I didn't have to keep read the four lines of writing on the back of the truck. The first three lines were separated by commas; the last line had no punctuation at all.

WHY?! Why would you bother putting in commas on three lines and not put a full-stop at the end of the fourth?!

If you think punctuation doesn't matter in this day and age, I recommend you read Eats, Shoots and Leaves - it's funny and it's informative. Or try reading a piece of writing which has the punctuation taken out, or is poorly punctuated. Poor punctuation can slow a reader down; and no punctuation at all makes writing almost unintelligible.

Those of us with High Apostrophe Intelligence know ;-)

Anne-Marie x