One of the scariest things to face, in terms of readiness, is the prospect of children. I don’t know that ANYBODY is ever truly ready to become a parent. There is really no way one can determine the readiness for this monumental step in life, as there is really nothing else that can come close to this situation in terms of prior experience. I don’t care if you were a day care provider, foster parent, or raised your brothers and sisters almost singlehandedly due to some tragedy or neglect on the part of your own parents. Nothing can ever truly prepare you for what it’s like to help create a life, and then be responsible for caring, nurturing and loving that life. There is no prior experience that is going to match that.

I knew that I always wanted to have kids. Whether it was because of the masculine urge to further my bloodline, or my nesting urge to be part of a family of my own, or what, I just knew that someday, I’d like to have kids. I wasn’t ready for my first one. In fact, at the time, I was looking for a way out of my marriage. I knew I wasn’t happy, I knew it was over, and I had decided to ask for a divorce. On the day I decided that, I went home to do the hard thing and admit it. My wife had big news too. She was pregnant. Wow. Timing. We could make it work though, and having a kid would help. *rolls eyes* I won’t get into all of that. The point is, for that point in my life, I was definitely not ready to have kids.

Fast forward two more years. Wife and I were still together, we had somehow managed to raise our son to the ripe old age of 2 and a half. Things were looking up. We were getting along a bit better, getting comfortable in our roles as parents. There was a lot wrong there, that again I’m not going to get into, as it’s not relevant to this topic. But. It was Christmas. We knew something was up. Pregnancy test. Pregnant. Merry Christmas! This time, we approached the news with a lot more joy and cheer. We hadn’t been planning a child, we really weren’t ready. But here one was coming, and we were happy to be blessed with one. Wouldn’t say we were READY though.

See, both times I’d been greeted with the news from her, both were times in our life of some of the greatest suffering. I would lose my job after the news of an impending child, about 2 months afterwards. She would then lose her job, or be unable to continue working. We would be sitting there with no income, no health insurance, barely managing to scrape bills together, personal issues between us still growing and whatnot (though that wasn’t as clear at the time), and … here we were, about to bring CHILDREN into that. We weren’t ready.

Would I go back and change all that? I really don’t think so. Despite not being ready for either of my children, since they’ve been in my life, I wouldn’t really trade them for anything. To this day, I still don’t feel like I’m ready to be a father, at least not a good one. But, it didn’t matter if I was ready, or not. It happened, and I was thrust into it. So I try to be the best damn father I CAN be, and am always trying to be better, because… ready or not, I’m living it.

The same holds true with when my wife and I finally did split. I wasn’t ready or even really looking that hard to get out, though I understand now to a degree I was. I was still involved in actively trying to hold us together. I knew I was unhappy, I knew I would have rather been alone, but … we had kids together, we were married, we took vows, and I wasn’t ready to face the cold hard reality that we were done. Had been for quite some time. I wasn’t ready to put the work into saying goodbye, and walking away. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready for somebody new to enter my life, somebody that would turn out to be my truest soulmate in every sense of the word, and the woman I had always been searching for. Not ready at all. Timing. Ugh. When I realized that’s exactly what had happened though, I panicked. HARD. I had a complete and utter breakdown on the spot, and I wasn’t quite right for a long time afterwards. Some days I still feel the ripples of that day.

I think we can spend a lot of time in our lives helping ourselves out by becoming more ready to face the challenges in front of us. I think that’s a good, and responsible attitude. If somebody doesn’t WANT children, for example, then there are options available to avoid conception in the first place. And there are options available that I may or may not agree with in all cases, to end an unexpected one. But despite that, sometimes, the Gods don’t give a SHIT whether we’re ready or not, don’t care about the precautions we take, and things happen anyways. I take some small comfort in that. I may not feel ready for whatever life throws my way, but the Gods have enough faith in me to decide I AM ready, or they wouldn’t throw things my way in the first place. Sometimes they decide that I’m ready, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It’s like a giant game of hide and seek. Ready or not, here it comes.

I don’t think that life works in such a way that we’re only able to tackle things when we’re ready. Without a prior experience, you’ll never know if you are truly ready or not. How can one EVER be ready for the unknown? Being ready is all about preparing, of making sure that all your bases are covered, dotting all your i’s and crossing all you t’s, revising, rough draft/final draft, and all that. But when dealing with an unknown, you can’t be. Readiness is reading the strategy guide cover to cover, memorizing the instructions, and maybe even picking up a couple of cheat codes, before playing the game. Life is being thrown into the game with no strategy guide, no instruction manual, one life, and no save points.

When the Gods give me something I don’t feel I am ready for, my first instinct is to fight. Fight the situation, fight the Gods, fight to stand stock-stubborn still and wait until I AM ready. The thing is though, there are times when I don’t know that I’ll EVER be ready for what is being thrown my way. And through time, I’ve learned to fight less, and go with the flow more. So what if I’m not ready? It’s HERE, it’s NOW. It’s happening, and there’s no stopping it. It’s been decided that I have something in my life to face, ready or not. The only thing I can do at that point is soldier bravely on, and do my best. Maybe that means sucking it up and being the best dad I can be, no matter how much I’d rather be trotting across the globe, waking up in strange and exotic ports every day, or partying with the guys. Maybe it means having to face some of the hardest and most painful things I’ve ever had to do, not just to others, but for myself included. Maybe it means opening myself up to somebody else, before I’ve fully let go of who was there before. To me, it means acknowledging what is in my path, and accepting it for what it is. Ready or not, it’s here, and I’m at least ready to give it all my full self.

I see life like this, and to me, it goes hand in hand with what I’ve been led to understand is one of the keys of Paganism. We talk of turning the wheel. Of being TRUE witches. Of not only taking the time to mark the sabbats, working intent when needed. But also, of doing the hard parts. The daily chores. The parts that are less than savory, less than glamorous, the cold, hard, thankless parts that hurt us and take their toll. To quote a favorite series of mine, The wheel weaves as the wheel wills. Pagan life doesn’t only happen on a full moon, or a sabbat, or when we’re looking for it, or those rare numinous times where Deity directly touches us. It happens every day, in a thousand little ways. The wheel turns, with or without us, and it’s up to us to at least be ready to DEAL with what the wheel spits out at us, even if we’re not ready for whatever that may be. To me, Paganism has spoke to me so strongly, because we stand ready to deal with whatever that is, come what may, with strength, conviction, and willing to give the best of ourselves to that. Paganism is not a path of excuses, of doubt, of hiding or running. Paganism is a path of action, empathy, and choices. Of making choices, decisions, and dealing with the consequences. Ready or not. And always giving our BEST.

Are you ready?

Last night, I received two books in the mail. One, is a book I’ve been DYING to read for quite some time: “Celtic Tree Mysteries: Secrets of the Ogham” by Steve Blamires. The other was a gift from a friend of mine, and is the next book in a series I’m reading. The book is “The Singing Sword” by Jack Whyte. I’m really excited to have new books to read! I’m a voracious reader, and though I love all the books in my library, it wears a bit after the second or third thousandth time through them all.

In my last post, “The Numinous and Worship“, I mentioned a passage from the book “Contact”, by Carl Sagan, that dealt with the main character falling in love. I’d like to share that, directly below.

“Their conversations were a joy, with ideas flying back and forth like shuttlecocks. Sometimes they responded to each other’s uncompleted thoughts with almost perfect foreknowledge. He was a considerate and inventive lover. And anyways, she liked his pheromones.

She was comfortable describing to him her reveries, snatches of memories, childhood embarrassments. And he was not merely interested, but fascinated. He would question her for hours about her childhood. His questions were always direct, sometimes probing, but without exception gentle. She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. Ther was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. With her previous partners, it seemed, at most one of these selves was able to find a compatible opposite number; the other persona were grumpy hangers-on.”

As I had mentioned earlier, this had struck a chord for me, having found that within these past couple years ith someone, after a lifetime of searching, and eventually giving up. Man, but the Gods can be cruel when they finally give us what we most desire. Along with the joy of the finding, came a terrible fear and despair of ever being able to grab onto that, and guilt for having to extricate myself from the committed relationship I was already in to realize it fully. I guarantee you, I spent quite a long time hoping to find it with the woman I was already with, out of the love I still shared with her, and the love she still felt for me.

Why do we fight so hard, to force ourselves to go against what is obvious? What was awakened in me, was awakened by this new person, but I hoped maybe it could be transferred to my now ex-wife. She would tell me how much she was in love ith me, would tell me how much she ould change for me, even made certain changes. It was hard facing that, because the more she changed, the more she opened up her lines of communication, the more in her I saw the person I had initially fallen in love with, and the more compatible she became to what I was looking for out of life. Throw in the fact that she was and is the mother of my two children, and the difficulties in walking away from her were increased exponentially. How could I do this to somebody who loved and needed me that much? Did I not OWE it to her, to find the same feelings for her? And let me tell you, I came close to finding it. REAL close. Maybe we COULD “make it work”. Despite all that, I couldn’t seem to do it. Through time, I came to realize, that the feelings I felt, that I were awakened to, were not because of her, and aren’t transferable. And even though I could find almost everything else for her, I couldn’t find that one part that said, “Yes.”

Why do we fight so hard to force ourselves to fill those roles that others hope for us? We show amazing compassion for others, and yet, we show very little compassion to ourselves. For me, the reason I could not tell my ex-wife “yes”, was because she was not the person that that part of my heart was saying “yes” for.. the same one that awakened those emotions in me for in the first place. It wasn’t her face I saw in those moments with her. The Gods are cruel. But, they also are kind, because I DID feel that for someone, in all those ways, even if it didn’t lessen the hurt or acceptance I still had to find. And they were kind, because they allowed my ex-wife to see that was what was real in MY heart, that while I loved her, I couldn’t love her in that way, not after being made aware of it more fully with somebody that TRULY awakened it in me. And my ex-wife, I loved her more than ever for allowing me to have that, for loving me enough to let me find that true happiness, even if it wasn’t with her. And you know, it hasn’t been easy, because when I see her with the man she is with now, she reminds me more and more of what I hoped she and I could have. But I’ve been chasing the future that is real in my heart now, the one that speaks to all those parts of me, and dealing with the pain that comes from walking away from my past as it comes. The pain lessens with time, the healing begins, when there is acceptance of the truth. Yes I love her, yes I see so much good in her, and yes, we could probably have made a better go at things, but no…. that is not where my heart was pointing me. Only after I acknowledged that direction, and she acknowledged my direction as well, was I able to truly move on. She made it easy for me, and I’m grateful. She probably could have sat there every single day from then until now, begging me to stay, and I would have not had an easy time at all walking away. To say the least.

Compassion is a good thing, but there comes a time when one has to let others deal with the reality on their own terms, without standing in the way of that. And here, the compassionate thing is to let them figure that out for themselves, without you trying to hold their hand through it, and without sharing your fears back and forth beteen each other. Feedback loops are powerfull, patterned, and cyclical. Just as there can be a loop and regress of love beteen true lovers, there can also be loops of fear that never move anybody forward. So sometimes, compassion in a situation means having the compassion to walk away, to be quiet, and to let the other person see the truth for themselves. It can mean having the compassion to put your own hopes to the side, and acknowledging that in reality, they’re not returned. Sometimes compassion is having to do the hard things, that hurt the most now, instead of the easy things, that hurt more and more in the long run.

Deep stuff, and stuff I’ve been working on in myself. Having the compassion to let others see the truth for themselves, and having trust that the Gods will bring me beauty, whatever the outcome. It’s hard, but I’m following an ecstatic path… with the ecstasy, comes the hard work. And though it’s hard, I can honestly say that I am truly living my life now, and not waiting on the world to make things happen for me. I’m taking control of my life, and it feels amazing.

ON TO THE RANDOMNESS!

My “W” key is on the fritz, and I never really realized how often that letter is used!

I hate Wordpress’s textbox for typing posts, as it is constantly scrolling back to the top of the post, and typing in it it seems to be about one character a second hitting the screen.

I’m considering removing email notifications of new posts, as I often think it keeps people from wanting to come and comment.

I’m trying to integrate Google Friend Connect, to make it EASIER for people to come and comment.

I like comments.

I’m thinking of creating a new blog to dedicate my posts about my relationship to Herne with.

I really like watching The Office, Bones, and Heroes.

Happy Thursday all.

Sometimes I feel like, just because I’ve found so much acceptance, that others feel like maybe I don’t get this way still, like maybe I’m just some cold, heartless automaton. Well… I’m not. I still feel the pain. There are days that are still hard. Sometimes that sadness creeps up and sinks it’s fangs into my heart, and I’m left with little choice but to grieve. To feel the sadness again, to relive it all one more time. It’s probably not the last time either. But life moves on, and so… I do my best to move with it.

So yes. It still hurts. But that’s ok. It’s supposed to. I loved her for several years of my life, and I still love her in my own way. It’s another nail in the coffin of us. Another milestone on the road leading away from our marriage, another signpost that reads: “FAIL”. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of what we used to have, and a reminder of why it couldn’t work. It’s a reminder that I do still love her, even if I fell out of love with her long ago, and that’s hard. No it doesn’t mean I wish we were back together, but it IS a headfuck. Today it’s exceptionally hard, because I’m still grasping for the future I saw when I walked away, and I feel further away from it than ever. It doesn’t change why I left, but it sure leaves me wanting someone to hold on to, to hold me back, to love me, to tell me everything is going to be ok. I need some smiles back in my life, some focus on the positive. Today is not one of those days that I’m going to get that. Maybe not even tomorrow. Maybe not in this lifetime. I really don’t know. All I know today, is that I’m in pain, and I’m all alone.

They came by, the parked their vehicle, and I realized they had gone to the back. I had brought the rest of the stuff she still had stored here down to the front. So I went out on to the front porch, and peered around the side of the house to let them know. They were pressed so close together, looking so warm and in love. It shouldn’t, but it hurts. I’m so happy they get to move on and live a new life. I am. They’re very lucky. I know it’s still hard for her sometimes, we do talk, and it comes out from time to time. But they’re getting to move on, to grab onto the future, to start something new, with each other. I’m not jealous of their love, I’m jealous that they’re doing what I wish I was.

The house does however, feel better now. A few more ghosts have been exorcised, and I have more closet space now. Gotta look at the positive right? She’s better off now too, she’s got a bit more financial help, and I don’t feel so responsible for her financial wellbeing. She’s getting her shot to find happiness with someone, and that’s one of the things I really wanted for her … to find someone that could make her happy, that excited her own spark and fire, that deep undying one that I never could. The one that you can’t help but feel everytime, that shines out without effort just by being close. I’m glad she’s found it. I’m still hurting, I’m still sad, but…. at the same time…. it’s time to look to the future, and it’s one I hoped she’d find, and… good. It’s the future she always wanted, and she’s found someone who can bring that to her. This is where I’m glad to be man enough to stand aside and quiet myself, and not impede that. This is where I’m glad that I did what I did, even if it does hurt. This is where I’m glad, that I’m free to find my own future now as well. The fear don’t stop that, the pain doesn’t stop that, the sadness doesn’t stop that … though it does fuck with me. This is where I breathe…. relax, and let go.

There will always be time to acknowledge the pain and the sadness, to take the time to listen to my grief, and there will always be time to embrace the positive and happy in my life as well. If I ever get to where I want to be, that’s something I’m sure my mate will understand. That even though I’m devoted to her, that there is still pain and grief and sadness left in this. Most days are good, some days are bad. Less and less bad the more water under the bridge, but still there and surprising sometimes in their intensity. But it’s those days where there’s so much love and affection and happiness with who I’ve found, my flame, that make it all worthwhile. I still got a lot of work to do on me. And that’s ok. I still have a lot of pain left to feel. And that’s ok. And there’s a whole lot of life left to live and sink my teeth into, a whole lot of joy left to be found. And that’s ok. The sadness helps me realize how happy the happy times are, and the happiness helpes me realize the depths of my sadness. It all just IS. This is my life. Unemployed, single, penniless, with more responsibility than I can handle and maintain my sanity, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is ME. And I love being me.

I’ve really been chewing on how to go about writing this for a few days.  I’ve known since Ryan first mentioned writing about masculinity that I have wanted to contribute to the discussion somehow, but my brain is so full of thoughts, I haven’t been sure exactly how.  I’m going to try to remedy this today and get some thoughts out.

For me, my spirituality, my views on gender, and politics all wrap together to help form my view of myself and the world. It’s hard to tease them apart into separate issues.  Some people cringe at the idea of politics and the spirit mixing, but when you are a person embracing your spirituality in every day life, why wouldn’t that inform your beliefs about society and how you envision the world at large?

Ryan is correct I believe, and I’ve had many of my male Pagan associates say similarly, that the God does often take a back seat to the Goddess in the writings and rituals of many modern Pagan practices.  At least ones that I myself am familiar with, I am aware that there are Pagan groups out there who take on a more balanced focus, and even groups that focus almost exclusively on the male principle, but those are fewer and far between.  Being from a feminist background myself, and knowing many, many good-hearted and beautiful Goddess loving women, I understand why some women choose to practice with women only groups, and choose to put the majority of their focus on the divine feminine.  They may feel that there is a distinct lack of honoring the female in other aspects of their lives or society at large, so they are seeking to correct an imbalance they perceive.  I would never begrudge them this.  I can appreciate women only space myself from time to time. I can also see the need for male only space in spiritual practice as well from time to time.

For myself as a general rule however, I do not believe that swinging the pendulum all the way in the opposite direction is a way to rectify the problem of living in a society that has traditionally undervalued the feminine and ignored the divine feminine.  For me, I strive to focus on balance, honoring both the feminine and the masculine in its myriad of forms equally in my personal practice.  They are two sides of a whole; you cannot have one without the other.

Now that being said, it’s important to take a moment to examine masculinity and femininity on its own and also how they function as identities for both us and others, as well as labels for helping us understand and connect with the divine.

It’s not a new concept for people to reach out to spirituality in order to help inform them of what “proper” roles are for women and men.  Christianity has been doing this for centuries, after all.  (And no – I’m not arguing that we should follow suit as a Pagan community, either =P .)  The thing that draws me to Paganism in this respect is that potentials are wide open.  When we look to the Gods as models of what a “man” or a “woman” should be, we see both males and females modeling a wide variety of ways to be.  We find Goddesses that are quick in intellect, industrious, crafty and who are brave and fierce warriors, as well as Goddesses who are the quintessential nurturer and the embodiment of the soft, mothering, creative principle.  We find Gods who all run the entire gamut from embodying the essence of machismo to those who are as soft and nurturing as any Goddess.  Paganism at its root acknowledges that both men and women are capable of taking on any role they wish.  Once we start putting boxes around things and saying to be male you can only be x and to be female you can only be y, we limit the human experience, stunt our personality and spiritual growth and deny the full range of what the divine is as well.  Ultimately, however you do it, if you’re living as wide open to potential and experience as you can; you are a “good woman” or a “good man.”  Whatever that means.   You are an earthly reflection of the Goddess and the God, (in whatever forms you observe) and as such that should be treated as sacred and honored.

The patriarchy of our society has long tied both men and women down into tiny boxes, limiting their potential and their experience of life.  This is, as has been well established, harmful to women and just as harmful to men too.  This is where we get the concept of Ryan’s “Fallen Male.”  He is created when we provide only a small box of potential roles and attitudes for him to fulfill.  The whole spectrum of what it is to be male gets bottled up, concentrated, and subverted onto its head and what you end up with is an unhealthy version of maleness.  It is the same with femaleness.

By swinging the pendulum completely in the opposite direction, you end up with the exact same thing.  You get men denying parts of themselves, with few healthy examples of what it is to be a healthy, strong and well adjusted male in the world, and women denying parts of themselves.  We say that we can have it all, but can we really?

One troubling outcome I have witnessed in this situation is that you end up with women, albeit women who are very good people, don’t get me wrong, who have a real disdain for anything considered remotely, traditionally female.  Oh….you are a homemaker?  A stay at home mother?  You LIKE to cook and you enjoy sewing?  Oh…that’s….nice.  I personally refuse to cast off these things that have become very central in my life and my view of myself in order to receive approval from others.  This is part of my reality of being a woman too.  I also have a college degree and I also embrace the work I do in the paid economy.  But I would not believe it healthy to deny either way of being a woman.

I’ve also met some Pagan men who carry a real self-hatred complex.  They feel that in order to worship the Goddess and honor the Pagan women in their lives, they have to cast off anything associated with traditional maleness and they become excessive apologists.  I don’t think that’s what the Gods want either.

When it comes right down to it, wouldn’t we rather have a world where the entire range of being male and female is embraced, and where we can raise our children knowing that however they choose to embody their gender it will be honored as it is?

The spiritual work ahead of us I believe where it pertains to gender is healing these internal rifts of identity within ourselves, which means embracing the male and female in their totality, acknowledging the differences and embracing the similarities and honoring their connection to each other, whether it is between a human couple, in our worship of the Gods, or be it the intersection of male and femaleness within one individual person. I do not advocate that we break down the differences between men and women and work towards an androgynous society either, rather that we just embrace the differences and value them equally, as well as acknowledge  that the categories are far wider than what we try to shove them into.  Any time we limit this for ourselves or others, we do ourselves and deity a great disservice.

And yes, like Ryan said, I do believe that Gender is far more than the external (or internal) plumbing that we are born with.  That is biological sex.  Our gender is more social, more of a role and way of understanding the world that is deeply ingrained in our psyches from practically day one.  As such, I believe that our plumbing need not dictate how gender manifests in us and I see a full array of possibilities within individuals and couples.  In other words, I’m attempting to not write from too much of a hetero-sexist bent here, but also acknowledge the full range of possibilities in transgendered forms and in homosexual relationships too.  There is room for any and every possibility at the table of gender and spirit.

Wow. This ended up way different than I thought it would be.  I sat down under the impression I was going to wax poetic about how much I love and honor the Pagan men in my life.  Because oh believe me, I do!   I also love and honor the Pagan women in my life.  Perhaps something more poetic and sentimental will come later on in a different post.

Most people anymore, when they hear the words “masculine”, “male” or “men”, have associations of the fallen male. The one given to excess, to rowdiness, to coarse and disrespectful behavior, the rapist, the misogynist, the uncouth. As sad as it makes me, that does indeed seem to be the case with a large number of men. Perhaps this is the masculinity society has come to expect. Turn on the tv and watch any commercial dealing with a male/female interaction, and by and large we’re portrayed as bumbling brutes, stupid and juvenile, self-absorbed. This is the message we’re sending the future generations of men. “You are stupid, nobody expects you to do more than watch Nascar, drink beer, grill out, and be an insensitive prick. Live it up, you can be a little boy forever.” Ok… so maybe that’s what masculinity is viewed as now. Maybe it’s what we’ve come to expect from the ill-fitted representatives of this gender. We take the weakest denominator, and make it the standard to base all men off of.

What I wanted to talk about though, is the DIVINE masculine. The ideal. The masculinity that many of us embrace and embody, try to live and emulate. A masculinity that has been handed down to us by REAL men, the so-called good ones that everybody wants to believe in, but we’re all too jaded to see. Divinity is something we aspire towards, and instead of brushing it under the rug so we can nurse our feelings of injustice at the hands of the fallen male, we should be embracing it, and using that as the example of what we should aspire towards. Gus had a good point that we’ve turned the masculine into a gelded male. A male that embraces all the feminine qualities, while denying himself the more uncomfortable aspects of masculinity. This isn’t right either. It’s just honoring the feminine under a different guise, it in fact, tells us that it’s NOT OK to be male. And that’s not what the divine masculine is about. The divine masculine isn’t a Horned God that has been castrated and put out to pasture. The divine masculine IS masculine, in raw, concentrate form. When one confronts that form, one often experiences a rising panic, terror, an almost unbearable galloping of the heart that makes the blood pound, and you know, even AS a masculine male, it can be pretty intimidating.

I’m getting off track. What exactly does masculinity mean? What is the ideal then, if not a gentle male that does what it’s told and denies itself?

In the interests of a little background, I have never really fit into the mold of tthe “typical” male that society likes to present us. I was never “one of the guys.” I didn’t ever really get the strong attraction to sports, to the point of forming strong connections with certain teams, treating statistics and accomplishments as quasi-religions. I never really chased every girl I could, anxious to sleep with anybody with a pretty face or give myself that way without love. I have to admit that while the idea of casual sex is definitely arousing, the reality of it leaves me feeling cold and empty. I am not afraid of commitment, I welcome it. I get along better with women, even if a pretty face can leave me tongue tied and babbling. I’m shy, though I try not to let it show. I wear my heart on my sleeve and my emotions show, and they are strong. Growing up, that was a source of amusement for others brought up to conform the societal standard of maledom. I learned to hide my emotions as well. I embraced my feminine side, and shunned my masculine, finding the definition of it unappealing, ashamed. Then one day, Herne found me, and I opened my eyes.

To any of those reading, that have had chance to come face-to-face with Herne, or Cernunnos (to me they are one in the same), you probably know that his presense is prefaced with a rising sense of unease, or fear, or even panic.  There is so much power there, so much raw essense, that one finds it hard to remain open, the urge to cover ones eyes or turn away or close off can be overwhelming.  It is hard to face him.  He is powerful, awesome and awe-inspiring.  He is sexual, and confident, and he can make your blood boil and your knees quiver.  There are no filters to the raw, concentrated maleness of him, and it is intimidating.  It is terrifying.  But it is never threatening.  While in his glory he may appear strongly, he also has love and compassion, and can be comforting.  He merely IS, as fully as can be, there are no filters to what he is or what he has to say.  He can be cold, and hard, and what he has to say can be brutal, but it’s not delivered with malice or contempt.  He merely acknowledges things as they are, and deals with them as such.  In my experience he isn’t one to mince words, or go into long diatribes, but instead gets to the point, quickly and honestly, using as few words as possible.   He is confident, serene, full of purpose, of passion, possessed of poise, comfort in himself, determined and resolute.  Not for him are the vague answers or broad general sweeping statements, but fact, cold, hard, uncut.  He is the hunter, and he is the hunted.  He has understanding of his quarry, compassion and even love, and as such is successful in his endeavors.  He is able to also strike when the need is true, without fear or hesitation.  He will strike true, swiftly and with grim purpose, if the need is required, with the same compassion and love.  And compassion and love aren’t always fluffy bunny rabbits and rainbows.  Sometimes that compassion and love are the stern words, the hard expression, the no nonsense, unfiltered truth, with no punches pulled.  He is animal, he is man, he is God, and he’s not an easy God to face.

So, that’s all well and good, but still … what IS masculinity? It’s more than a set of external and frequently unreliable organs. It’s more than copious body hair and strong musky odors. That’s just a physiological description. To me, masculinity is raw. It’s a driving force, a terrible sense of purpose and power, but with compassion and love behind that power to guide it. Masculinity carries with it an undeniable sexual urge.  Masculinity is the courage and compassion to be master over ones’ self, to exercise self control, to be able to follow through with purpose, conviction and determination.  It carries with it great responsibility, for masculinity is also passionate and violent.  When the moment comes there exists a power that can explode with blinding intensity, and this is where a lot of us fall down.  It can be very difficult to control, but it is there.  It’s part of the package, and as such, is beautiful, when used correctly, not something to be ashamed of.  It is something that is held in reserve for when it is needed.  The fear comes from so many lacking that self control.  Masculinity is visual and visceral, it’s very hands on, it exists more clearly in one’s outward actions than in one’s emotions.  This doesn’t discount the emotional aspects, we still feel, strongly and deeply.  But divine masculinity rises above that with the strength and courage to operate and do what is right despite those distractions.  It is about action, about being present.  It is also warm, and loving.  Masculinity is not afraid to commit, masculinity THRIVES on commitment, becomes itself more so through the act.  It nurtures, it loves, it protects and provides.  The urge to protect and provide is essential to masculinity, because of the depth and breadth of the  roots of commitment  and love it possesses.  The masculine is a lover, a husband, and a father.  Masculinity is also open, and honest.  It is forthwright, and unfiltered in its attempts to communicate.  The masculine strives to tell things as they are, plainly, without metaphor or worry of how it will be perceived.  This can be hard to handle, by any of us, but it is also essential at times.   Masculinity is not afraid to show emotion, or passion, but is also tempered by practicality.  It is not afraid to take control when necessary.  Masculinity has both a love of creation, and a love of destruction.  Both at times are necessary.  The masculine is not afraid of getting dirty, of standing knee deep in mud, or burying arms inside the bloody warm body of a slain animal, to remove the organs and harvest the meat when needed.  Masculinity does what HAS to be done, silently, quietly, humbly, without complaint.  Masculinity also thrives on recognition, on praise and thanks for the sacrifice of the hard job done, though it doesn’t expect any in return.

Ideally, this is masculinity, as I see it, even if I feel like I still haven’t explained it well enough.  So many powerful tools it possesses, and so many chances for us to misuse them.  Without our love and compassion, masculinity has a greater potential to be brutal and destructive.  With the love and compassion, it is a duality of seeming opposides, working together to become more divine.  To be able to destroy to create, instead of creating to destroy.  To be able to be cold enough to live as we must beyond our most fevered emotions.  To be tender enough to love fully, while being savage enough to love honestly.

I was thinking too about how I find myself sliding more and more into a practice of Paganism, despite the fears and hauntings leftover from dogmatic Christian practices that really leave me… uncomfortable with some of it.  How I didn’t actively choose this, how it reached out and chose me.

I’ve wondered through a lot of this, “Why me?”  Why have I been chosen to have been shown some of the most amazing things ever?  Why have I been deemed worthy of a major kick in my life’s ass?  What did I do to deserve any of this?  Where did I go wrong?  What did I do right?

What, when you get right down to it, does it all mean?

Why now?

And the pattern that is building here… of being handed trauma after trauma, inconvenience and burden and hurt, but … then while absorbed in the pain and experience of that, being shown the most beautiful things in this world as well.  Nature, oh you are SO beautiful.  Hurt.  Joy.  Pain.  Thanksgiving.  Sorrow.  Tenderness. 

I’m feeling pretty battered these days, pretty blank and numb.  Pretty down.  I’ve spent a lot of time in tears.  The smallest happy moments I watch others sharing, have the power to reduce me to a sobbing form on the floor.  Why at this time, in this place, am I being handed more than I can deal with, and still being shown so much that is beautiful, that I don’t feel I can fully appreciate?

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m being shown that even in the worst adversity, that there is still beauty all around us.  Maybe these are the tools for dealing with life when it gets shitty.  It’s good things to know, though it takes a lot of work on my part some days to understand that.  Sometimes you really gotta force that smile on your face.  Sometimes you gotta tell yourself those little white lies, “It’ll get better” or ”I feel good”, before you can really embrace them and see the truth behind them. 

We have no control over a lot that happens in our lives.  Oh, I know we DO, but … so does everyone else.  And all these lives touching effect each other, a million interconnected butterfly wings flapping and changing the world around them.  We can rarely pick the moments for good or bad to happen in.  The moments choose us. 

When I find my life filled with all the negative that I wasn’t expecting, the moment chose me.  There is no re-do button.  There’s just… now.  It’s NEVER a good time for something bad to happen.  But… it happens.  The moment is NOW.  And I have to remember that and choose how I will react.  And then live it.

When I find my life filled with all the splendour and joy and love I wasn’t expecting, the moment chose me.  There is no re-do button.  There’s just… now.  It’s sometimes a bad time for something good to happen.  But… it happens.  The moment is still approaching.  And I have to remember that, and be ready to embrace it.  And live it.

In my life lately, there has been much talk of “home”. What’s home? In a post-divorce world, I’m struggling with the concept of what exactly home means to me. I’ve managed to end up with the house, minus pretty much all my ex-wife and I owned in the terms of material posessions, dishes, furniture, etc… all the things that made this house feel “homey”. No matter the things I’ve done to try to change the feel of this house, whether it be redecorating, repositioning furniture, incorporating some of the old I’ve managed to hold on to, cleansing the negative energy, having the kids over, etc, it just … doesn’t feel like home.

What does home feel like to me? Home is comfortable and safe, a place I can let down my guard. A place where I feel loved, and where I can love freely back. Where I can be myself, and be appreciated for that. A place that I look forward to coming back to over and over, no matter how bad my wanderlust may get, or how busy I might be at work. Home is more than the posessions I have, more than what is familiar to me. Even more so than what I’m familiar with, home is a feeling. It’s more the sum totality of what I own, what I feel, and ultimately, to quote the cliche, it’s where my heart is.

I happened to stop by the ex-wive’s apartment yesterday evening to talk to my kids. You see, I’m getting ready to spend a couple days visiting with somebody very special to me who I am completely and totally in love with. It’s been far too long, and in my haste and anticipation of this event, I had forgotten to let my kids know that I wouldn’t be there to pick them up from daycare on Friday. That they’d be spending the night at grandma and grandpa’s house for a few days. In the interests of not disappointing my childrens’ expectations of their daddy, I stopped over there to let them know what they COULD expect, ahead of time.

It’s always hard going over there for me. She got to keep everything, it was a concession I had made for being the one who wanted to get a divorce. Going over there, I see all the bits of what home used to be… certain pictures and objects of art, all the movies we had collected over the years, the furniture, the pristine living conditions, the dishes we had aquired over the years. The kids, and the ex-wife, and myself, all sharing the same space. Granted, home back then still wasn’t the happy place that ideally I want home to be, but it was the closest thing I had found. It was better than living alone anyways. Funny that… I always figured I’d be better off alone. But I’m digressing.

I ended up hanging out with the ex for a while after I talked with the kids and we had put them to bed, just chilling and talking about nothing at all, enjoying the newer bonds of just having the great friendship we were always so much better at, now that the romantic relationship and bonds of marriage aren’t standing in the way of that. She is coupon crazy, and is somehow managing to get groceries for pennies on the dollar, or in some cases free, or even having the store OWE her money for buying a product. Despite myself, I was incredibly impressed. She provided me with some rolls of paper towels and tubes of toothpaste that she had in bulk, that she had gotten for free. I gave her some of the homemade bread I had made. It was a nice, casual time, with none of the headaches and arguments that normally mark our times together. And against all odds, it made me homesick.

I’m not going to lie. Sometimes I miss the life I had with her. I’m able to forget about the majority of nights spent not talking, sleeping in seperate beds, the days spent arguing, the neglect we both showed each other, the lack of any sort of physical intimacy that wasn’t planned out, and more often than not ended in being either unsatisfied or emotionally hurt. It’s easier now to only remember the good times, the times when it was almost perfect.  Times where we could just relax and “be” together.  Times like last night.  More often than not, I would come home to nagging, to being harped at for not doing this or that, to feeling like I was never good enough for her, to feeling inadequate. I always saw home as a place where I’d come back to, and the people in it would be HAPPY to see me, would greet me with a smile, a kiss, a warm “I love you”. It’s not to say that never happened, but it was rare. Increasingly rare as time went on. It didn’t mean she WASN’T glad to see me, it just… wasn’t quite the same as really feeling truly loved. Of feeling wanted, needed, loved, accepted, of feeling like I was home. It felt more and more like a prison.

So here we are, she’s showing me how far she’s making her money stretch, showing my her stocked refrigerator, her brimming pantry, her medicine cabinet full of toiletries (who gets 5 sticks of deoderant for free? I want in on that train). I’m surrounded by examples of where my life used to be, actually enjoying being with Jamie in this new role, co-parents and grudging friends, but little else. And yes, the homesickness washed over me, because it was a reminder of the GOOD times we USED to have. I left shortly thereafter, and had to take a few moments in the parking lot, sitting in the car with the engine off, alone in the dark, fighting back the tears.

Yet… as I started the car, I realized more and more, that although I miss a lot of that life, I wasn’t really, truly HAPPY there. It was familiar, and the taste of that familiar again from time to time, after living alone for so long now, can still tug at my heartstrings… but even then, it wasn’t TRULY home. Yes, it’s where I hung my hat, and yes, it was REALLY close. In fact, sometimes it DID feel like home to me. But what it really, truly lacked was somebody I could connect with on all those levels that I needed, it lacked feeling freely loved. How many times did we try to “make it work”.  At the back of the mind always ate that knowledge that even though things were going good “for now,” she had to WORK to make herself feel that way, to really show me what I needed to see. And, fair’s fair, so did I. We’d always end up reverting right back to our standard roles, her the queen of the harpies, me sarcastic and hurt… both of us distant, neglectful, and unaffectionate, even when we were interacting together. The best times we shared were the ones where we were just friends. I think it’s better this way, now that we’ve had the time to come to accept that.

I’m writing this so soon before I go to visit the woman I love now because  realized something on the way home last night.  I love her in such a way that all loves before fail to even come close to it, this woman who I share everything with, who lights me up and I, as amazing as it seems, by being just myself, find her loving me back just as intensely. On my drive home last night, I heard a song, and it explained how strongly I felt in a way that I hadn’t really appreciated for a while now. And it became clear to me, why this past week I’ve been happier, more buoyant, more productive, and why I’m looking forward so much to seeing her.  Why the spring in my step, why my head has been held high, why I feel so warm, loved and contented within myself.

For the first time in a long while, I feel like I’m going home.