Blogging Priest/essing and Leadership

I think I am going to change the tone of this Blog. I have used it for my portfolio of writing, to keep them all here in a nice neat package. I use my lj for day to day info and to keep my friends abreast of updates in my life. But I feel the need to have a much more personal space where I don't need to edit as much. But also I want it to be a public forum. I don't entirely understand why it is so important to me. I think it is about hiding who and what I am. When you say things out loud they can't be taken back. When you post things on the Internet they are out of your hands forever. Anyone who can find it can read it. It is like screaming it to the sky for me. The wind/ether remembers for me and will tell all those who know how to ask what I said. I wrote a lot as a teenager and then as a post adolescent in journals and all my writing is almost lost. I would write things that no one ever saw or read, and so they would sit. I want to create and express and part of that is sharing and vulnerability and showing that side you keep hidden. This is partly my way of making my self "Not hide that light under a bushel..."

Things I am thinking a lot about. Priestessing, I hate the gendered term, but I don't know of another one right now. Spirit leading or Working Priesting...I dunno. I am soooo close to my daily practice goal. I read a lot and every day I feel things niggle at my mind, like little bits and pieces of a puzzle of the answers. I am trusting my brain to hold on to these but well i want to write them down as well. And well I don't want to spam my lj friends with magicy stuff.

Leadership keeps coming up to me we hear about it at work a lot. I dance around it in my life. All my life as a kid and teen I wanted to be the power behind the throne, the advisor. But the more I grow the more I learn that is the easy way out that is not my path anymore. I am a leader at heart and need to accept it. I need to follow when others know better, learn from teachers, teach then asked and I find the student can deal with the knowledge and lead then I feel I need to. When my witchy friends talk about Priestessing, I hear leadership. Leading in faith, energetically and administratively. M and I talked about Power-Over vs. Power-With, and I feel Leadership is Power-Entrusted. I feel ritual priesting is Power-Entrusted.

Power entrusted. That says someone trusts you with power. It is easy to see when you lead a group of people. They entrust you with the power to make change and organize for a common goal. But what about physical power, and magical power, and social power, and intellectual power? If we agree that these are all equal then we are stuck with entrusted by whom. We can say we as individuals nurture our own power, so entrusted by us as individuals. We can say parents, ancestors and community. So we are entrusted by community and our fellow clan group. We can say entrusted by divine or spirit power. Gods and things. This leads us to who we owe our power to and what responsibility we have to those parties. I will assume that one common responsibility is to refrain from using said power to negatively impact the group we received the power from. I will further suppose that it would be seen as expected for the power to be used to the benefit of that group

I personally think it is a mixture of the three groups we talked about. Genetics and ancestry bless us with talents. God and spirits bless us with connections and abilities. We as humans can use and exercise these talents to become skills and evolve and work on them. We can be aided by the community or by spirit guides in these endeavours. I think however that the first and foremost we must thank and keep in mind is ourselves. We should use this power to aid and not harm ourselves, this includes not destroying ourselves trying to help others.

Thanks Giving

I feel filled to the brim with happiness. I am thankful for this weekend. I am more thankful for this thanksgiving weekend than any I can think of. I met my girlfriend's parents and ate their wonderful food. I took a road trip with her and introduced her to my relatives, parents, cousins of all stripes. The poor girl was introduced to both parents, 2 aunts, 2 uncles, 5 cousins, 4 spouses of cousins, and 6 offspring of said cousins. She of course handled it with the kind of grace and aplomb I have come to cherish in her. I love my family, every single one of them, I miss that my sister was not there again this year but I am so grateful to see them, to be welcomed by them. They are an impressive group of folks. They are all smart and educated, they are thoughtful and silly, we tease each other and the only time you can be there without hearing laughter at least every 10 minutes is while we are pigging out on the food. I am thankful for my family, my blood. I am graced and blessed with wonderful blood kin. They are not witchy or kinky or liberal as I would like.... :) But I am happy and content in who they are.

I am feeling very grateful for self. I am happy with my life and myself. I learned a new definition for Sadist, one who likes to inflict/illicit any extreme sensation in another. I feel that way as a writer and an artist. How could I not feel that way in BDSM. I am making positive changes and actively learning. I am working on being more honest and vocal with myself. I did a bunch of Fetch work this weekend, work I didn't know was going to happen, but it did and it was good and happy that it did. I fed the fetch so much that it was strong and willing to be in charge and make decisions for me for a while. I had great keepers at the time who never had to reign me in but I knew would if needed. My magical life and my non-work life are crashing together until they are indistinguishable. Everything can be work, every challenge can be a learning experience. All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. God Herself. That phrase makes me so happy. I cry and laugh every time I hear/read it, knowing that there is someone who gets me and how I feel about the divine.

I was blessed to become for a short while a beloved friend's lover's lover with my loving other ;) (say that fast biatch) Magical is all I can say, comfortable in every way possible, down to the naked time and the root beer floats. I was worried that the girls would hit it off better with each other than with me, that I would be left out, that I was accepted as a part of the package instead of wanted for myself. I am working on that because I know it not to be true. I think I didn't feel what I perceive to be “Want/Lust” the way I expect it. There was no seduction on my part, there was no fear and excitement of the chase or the loss of opportunity. It was a smooth transition of talk and play, and "Play", and sex and magic and silly and buffy and happy. I know that I connect only so deep because I allow it to only go so deep. It was my choice and my discomfort that did not allow for greater connection. I'm sitting with this and working through these feelings. I know they are just mine and I own them. And I am not ashamed or afraid of them. And I know putting them out in the open will allow me to work through them better.

It is funny how admitting to fear and worry can make it better. Having just written the last paragraph I feel better. Nothing has changed except I have pulled out the discomfort I put myself through with fear and admitted to it and looked at it and saw really that it was just fear. That the situation was different than ones I have been in the past. That the roles are more fluid than I was prepared for. And I am glad. If other people don't have to stay in their roles neither do I :) And that allows me freedom I didn't know I had.

I am blessed. I love my friends. And I love myself.