Today was the perfect day for garden clean up. Sunny and warm but not hot. Bright enough to give me a headache, by the way. We cleaned the little kitchen garden and then tackled the Italian garden.  Cleaned and renovated the beds. I watered the raise bed with its delicious spinach, carrots and radishes–I ate a sweet little French Breakfast radish.

And the whole time I was feeling the rise of energy from that waxing Moon. Mercury has gone retrograde, too, so there’s all that and the other astrological stuff that’s going on. Plus we’re in the last weeks before the Winter Solstice. Plus the Republic is in freefall. 

Add to that a nice thick layer of Tower Time and set the whole thing on a big pile of Patriarchy and you have a weekend fraught with drama, tears and a kind of mad twirling desperation. 

But tonight, at Mother Grove, the chapel was full of people who had come for companionship, for time spent with like-minded folk.  The North altar was set with Goddess figures and candles, and the circle of people faced the soft glow of it.

We sang to Hekate and talked about the uses of power and the strength of community.  We walked outside and sang the Moon into the Sky. And then I took them on a guided meditation that began with Bob Nagan driving the Cat Bus and all of us lying on the top of Mount Mitchell, pouring the power out of our hands and into the world.

It smoothed out the scritchy energy of the day and offered us all a chance to breathe and consider how the world is and how we can weather the storm. 

And that’s what we all need right now, I think. A sturdy layer of resilience, a dash of a sense of humor and a vision of how we can move forward, to survive, to thrive.