spiritual practice

Just to give you an idea of what I mean when I say spiritual inspiration can come from anywhere, here are some examples from my own practice.

1. I use prayer beads, which of course are common to many cultures; I designed my own system, however, so it’s not a mala or a rosary.

2. I light a flaming chalice on my altar to honor my UUism, which was one of the first ways I altered my way of doing things when I joined the church. The chalice is a traditional Pagan symbol, but to me the church’s flaming chalice is the light of reason in the embrace of spirit–a flame in a chalice. That’s just how I view it, though, everyone thinks of it a little differently as a symbol.

3. I smoke cleanse my space, but usually with stick incense for practical reasons. I have been known to use white sage but I’m not buying any more now that I understand how threatened the plant is becoming. I’d rather the tribes who use it in their own traditions have it. There are a couple of Native-made stick incenses that I’m willing to buy but no more bundles for this Witch.

4. The goddess that I interact with looks almost exactly like a celebrity (Sara Bareilles, please don’t tell her, lol). I have no idea why! I am a fan of her music but if we were going on fandom levels alone she’d be Taylor Swift. That would be truly weird.

5. When I envison magical energy I use a modified version of a concept I found in a fantasy novel (Gael Baudino’s Strands of Starlight, which calls it the Dance; I just call it the Web of Life). When “hooking up” to the Web (you can’t be disconnected from it but your awareness can be) I experience and imagine how, in the movie Pacific Rim, the Jager operators snap into their robots and enter the Drift (see gif below).

6. Not long ago I was doing a meditative journey and found myself in the Forest of Spirits, which is where I sometimes meet with Persephone, but instead someone else showed up, and we’ve met a few times since. I don’t think he’s a god, just a teacher-type entity–and at least in these meditations, he’s Dream of the Endless from The Sandman TV series on Netflix. We talk about working magic through the visualization of the Web of Life, and I’ve learned quite a bit about, as he calls it, dreamweaving.

Full disclosure, this may just be because I want to bang Morpheus like a Tibetan temple gong, but even so, the imagery works surprisingly well for me.

7. Over the years I’ve used imagery from witchy and ritual moments of Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle, The Craft, Practical Magic, and Frozen 2 when casting circle or doing energy work. When I see something neat that looks like what I’m planning to do, I try it! If it moves me, I keep doing it. If not, I go back to my usual methods.

8. The images of Deity on my altar include a Funko Pop! of Te’Fiti from Moana.

Okay, so I couldn’t find the Pacific Rim gif I was looking for but I think you’ll agree this one is way better than anything I could have shown you related to the post.

From Wikipedia: Kintsugi (金継ぎ, “golden joinery”), also known as kinsukuroi (金繕い, “golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

I discovered the art and philosophy of kintsugi a while back and like many other Westerners found it intriguing. It’s certainly become more well known in the last few years, appearing everywhere from Pinterest to fan fiction. (It’s very popular with fan artists as well.)

While I feel that I’ve grown past my “broken” phase of life, I remember it very well, and at the time it didn’t feel like I was filling my cracks with gold as much as it felt like stapling myself together haphazardly, then slapping a coat of plaster over the whole mess.

Nowadays kintsugi has a different relevance for me. Even in a reasonably-together stage of life, I often have chips break off or a new crack appear, either in a spot I didn’t patch well enough before or in someplace entirely new. That’s often how life works, though. The first time an issue arises we say, “All I’ve got is mud and straw, it’ll have to do.” The second time we’re older and wiser (hopefully) and patch more skillfully, with cement. But eventually when the flaw comes out we’ve lost the desire to hide our cracks from the rest of the world and think, with a flick of our feather boa, “To hell with what anyone thinks, this time this bastard is GOLD.”

In October of 2018 my lovely friend Nan took her first trip to the UK and brought back a wee gift for me. She knew how much I adore pigs and found a wonderful locally-crafted pig ornament at the Spode visitor center.

At the time I was having another bout of depression that had knocked me off my vegan practice (and into a vat of queso). I have never claimed to be a “perfect” vegan because such a thing cannot exist; what most people don’t know is that I’ve been on and off the wagon for years, usually only off for a few days (sometimes only a single meal) then back on, depending on my mental health. I have been gradually shortening those episodes, but I still wobble. That’s why I call it a practice.

This is of course not what I want. I want to be steadfast and dedicated to living my values. When I’m on my game it’s actually pretty darn easy to be vegan, especially here in Austin; it’s me that’s the problem, not the lifestyle.

So, when Nan gave me my pig, I decided to use it as a talisman. I charged it ritually to help boost my ability to make good decisions and to walk my talk. Every month on the Full Moon I’d give it a refresh. Eventually, though, I missed a month, then another. As with so many spiritual habits mundane life got the best of my intentions.

You can probably see where this is going.

One day, while dusting and rearranging my altar, I knocked the pig off the wall and it broke into pieces.

Sometimes the Universe gives you less a Cosmic 2×4 and more a Cosmic Anvil.

I cried. I looked at the broken little ornament and thought about how shitty I am and how I have no integrity and I cried some more.

Then I got out the Superglue and fit the pieces back together. There were enough tiny shards missing that it didn’t look very well mended, especially on the back; I also glued my fingers to it at one point (don’t tell my roommate) and re-broke it while trying to free myself.

It was quite some time later that I made the connection between my busted-up talisman and kintsugi.

Once I did, however, the course of action was obvious. My piggy ornament had to have its cracks made gold.

I had already glued it back together, so instead of missing lacquer and gold powder or any other more traditional Japanese method, I bought a bottle of metallic gold paint and a tiny paintbrush and began applying layers of gold in the cracks. I’ve done this several times in the last few months, just adding a little more shine each time, and as I paint I reinforce my intentions to keep going, to do better and then better again, to become the person I want to be inside and out.

It’s not perfect. What is? Perfection is a lousy goal. You’ll drive yourself to an early grave chasing a toxic illusion. What’s far better, and better for us, is looking at all our failures and faults as another place where we can add something shiny. Or, to let a much better poet than myself say it,

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
“Anthem,” by Leonard Cohen

Tag: spiritual practice

A Few Influences

A Pig, a Paintbrush, and a Practice