Home for a Weary Heart

 

The overturning of Roe, gun violence, climate devastation, the rising cost of food, professional dispiritedness, and a year marked by illness have worn away my stores of joy.  There are pockets of joy, but I am exhausted and disheartened. 

However, I believe in the magic of synchronicity. When I feel stuck in the world - helpless, frozen - I quiet my spirit and listen. There is a thin ripple of knowing deep in my most sacred and centered self. I bow to that stream of knowing and listen. When I am quite still and truly receptive, the world blooms with a slow yet assured beauty. It is a clarifying and renewing process. 

When I listen, energy answers. 

I stumbled across a Medium essay entitled, "What to Do When the World is Ending" and I read the following passage over and over.

"So what do we do when the world is ending? The same things that so many of the giants on whose shoulders we stand did when their worlds were ending. We choose to face our despair — to walk towards it and through it —choose to take action, choose to build movements. We do it because we don’t know how it ends, because there are possibilities out there that we simply can’t see from here." (Yotam Marom)

 I heard SARK on a podcast and went hunting down some of their writings and found this gem: 

"Why Dream?

Life is a difficult assignment. We are fragile creatures, expected to function at high rates of speed, and asked to accomplish great and small things each day. These daily activities take enormous amounts of energy. Most things are out of our control. We are surrounded by danger, frustration, grief, and insanity as well as love, hope, ecstasy, and wonder. Being fully human is an exercise in humility, suffering, grace, and great humor. Things and people all around us die, get broken, or are lost. There is no safety or guarantees.

The way to accomplish the assignment of truly living is to engage fully, richly, and deeply in the living of your dreams. We are made to dream and to live those dreams.” 

I ran across this quote by bell hooks:

"The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” (Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 2012)

Louise Glück spoke to me through her poem "Witchgrass"

It was not meant

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

I don’t need your praise

to survive. I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

I listen and I receive the answers:

Look despair in the eye. Hold space for the shadow of grief and the light of possibility. Continue to dream while engaging in the present. Cradle brokenness and tend to this bruised world with generosity and sincerity. Know that there is strong magic in community, in protest, in justice fueled rage. Resolve to stay. Constitute the field. 

But how?

When? 

What action can I take? 

Well, I sat on a metaphorical log and puzzled out what I could do as one person with limited means, small children, and a mental illness that often and depletes me. 

I can be a home. 

That is the answer my weirdo brain delivered. 

I can open my heart and hearth to others. I can practice nurturing and protection. Nurturing and protection are outward and inward actions. I think most people are aware of the act of outward nurturing; it is a sort of cheerleading others with cuddles to boot. Outward protection can mean physical safety or protecting a loved one's time or cooking nourishing food for others, etc.... I can protect the environment in which I live and nurture a wilder and more authentic green space. 

How can I practice inward nurturing and protection? I can speak kindly to myself and tend to my writing and craft. I can protect my energy and direct it towards growing what is good in my life. I can also choose to protect my time, mental health, and my spiritual and corporeal selves. 

As Arin Murphy-Hiscock states in The House Witch: Your Complete Guide to Creating a Magical Space with Rituals and Spells for Hearth and Home:

"Hearthcraft is a spiritual path rooted in the belief that the home is a place of beauty, power, and protection, a place where people are nurtured and nourished on a spiritual basis as well as a physical and emotional basis."

My plan is to use this space to write about the meaning and magic of home. I am hopeful that writing and reflecting on this concept of hearthcraft will sustain my will to nurture and protect all of my loves. 

Blessed be to your heart and homes.