Home Shrine (again)

I see last time I wrote I mentioned that I was moving. Well, I wound up not moving after all, and so my shrine is still the slapdash temporary thing I set up while expecting to be uprooting my life far too soon. I’m putting down roots now instead, and I’m not thrilled with my shrine. There isn’t enough room for it where it is, so there isn’t really space to add much to it - I have to clear off the rest of the table for ritual. My plant as the Tree was a nice idea, but the scale is all wrong; it doesn’t hold much meaning for me at the moment. And I liked the idea of putting it by the window, but it turns out that, living on the ground floor of an apartment building, there’s too much traffic just outside my window for me to be totally comfortable doing ritual there.

I think I know where I want to move it to, though - to the wall that separates my living room from my kitchen, just about in the middle of the living space in my apartment. I have a cabinet I’ve been meaning to move there for a while, and if I can clear off the stuff that currently lives on top of it, it’d be a nice place for an altar. (A good height, too, to stand at.) And I know what to do about the Tree, too - I’m going to make a gem tree with some old malachite and coral I have lying around.
I’m excited to start work, but it’s a long process. First I have to clean out the sewing cabinet that’s currently where I want to move the larger cabinet to, then I have to clean out the large cabinet, then actually move it (which will be exciting on its own, as it’s MASSIVE), then make sure I’ve got room to store everything there. Fortunately I have some vacation coming up this weekend, and I plan to spend some time on this project.

I’m sorry to say I’ve still not been spending much time in nature. The weather’s been poor (as it will tend to be, in Chicago in February) and when the weather’s been nice I’ve had to spend all day at work, which has frankly been making me a little resentful. Meditation has been going well, when I can sit down to do it - I missed three days this week, but I’m still finding that my average meditation session has stretched to over ten minutes at a time of silent meditation, which used to seem impossible.

I’ve also been saying a prayer from Ceiswr Smith’s Book of Pagan Prayer after I finish my meditation. I flip through until I find something that appeals to me, but I can tell that there are a few that are going to become regulars, and a few more that I can make regular with a little editing.

Also, a reminder to myself - I actually finished my first required book about a month ago, but I haven’t written it up yet. I’ll try to get on that this weekend, too.