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.

It is always the same step, but you have to keep taking it.

As I mentioned before, I've been using the Stop, Breathe and Think app to work on my meditation practice. I've tried meditation lots of times in the past, but I was never able to stick with it - but I was trying it with just plain old "sit and think of nothing" meditation, and I kept getting frustrated that I couldn't, well, think of nothing. Then I read The Mindful Way Through Depression and finally understood that that was the point; then I started working on my Dedicant Path in earnest, including the required mental training practice. 

For years I thought that I couldn't meditate before bed, because surely I'd fall asleep. Since I always complain about how long it takes me to fall asleep I don't know why I thought that. A couple of weeks ago, faced with the requirement not only to meditate but to document my progress, I realized that if I didn't set a regular schedule it wasn't going to happen, and I added meditation to my bedtime ritual: after the shower, but before that last hour or so of reading. Turns out that works beautifully. I'm more relaxed and better able to fall asleep, I know I'm not going to be interrupted, and my mind has begun to fall naturally into mindfulness later in the evening (which also helps keep me from accidentally staying up past my bedtime).

And then, last night, something weird happened. I sat down to do my evening meditation and I didn't want to listen to a guided meditation - I wanted quiet. I wanted to sit quietly alone with my breath. I'd never actively wanted this before, so I was conservative and set the timer for four minutes, which is about how long I usually spend, but it wasn't long enough. I did another four and felt fully settled, but also like I could have sat there for much longer, watching thoughts go by, breathing. It was outstanding. 

This is one of those Mysteries, the moment of understanding something that you've been told countless times that finally makes sense in your bones. I love those moments. The more of them that happen to me, the more I understand that they only happen after you've spent time with something, and that by definition that means I have to spend time with things I don't really understand before I can reach them.

Something I haven't mentioned, either in this blog or out loud to myself just yet - I've been feeling very disconnected from the gods, since long before I started this Path. Doing ritual gives me a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, but that connection is still missing. I'm starting to see a glimmer, though, not of the connection itself but of the possibility that it's out there, if I keep spending time with the possibility. Is this faith?