One thing I’ve always wanted for my religious practices is a bell. Not a huge bell, just a small hand bell that I can ring. I’ve never quite found anything that fits, though some thrift stores have offered interesting ideas.
Hopefully, today, I’ll be able to find a bell in one of the many strange and wondrous shops here on the ‘hippie street’. Incense and pot wafts out of windows, crowds of tie-dye, dreadlocks, and long, patchy skirts walk by. Heavy backpacks and unwashed (truly unwashed) people trod along, calling out greetings. One pizza place is completely solar powered and displays the stars and celebrates the solstices. Thrift shops, costume shops, and tattoo parlors dot the street. And somewhere, somewhere, I hope to find one, just one, bell. It seems ridiculous, but it’s important.
Yesterday winter came in strong. The air was freezing and painful and I realized, mildly horrified, that I had no proper clothes for this weather. At least, none that actually fit anymore. I had been wondering the day before when and how winter would hit this town, and it hit us hard. My eyes had streamed tears as I rode home in the morning and I wore a scarf for the first time in eight months. Somehow, the summer always erases the memory of the cold.
I was so, so happy that winter had returned.
The coming of winter is an important day in the religion of the Daoine Eile as I’m building it. It isn’t a static holy day, either, moving according to local weather. Even the meaning of it changes based on an locale’s ecology and cycles. Here, winter means green. Not just a burst of green plants, but actually greens – lettuce, kale, spinach, all those leafy foods that make me stick my tongue out even as I force them down. My household spent a few hours yesterday planting our first batch of greens, beets, radishes, and herbs. It also hails the return of snow-birds bickering with college students – the older tourists (who are not nor will be accepted by full-time residents) complain about the styles of the younger generation who often wear flip flops well into December. The snow-birds are also a part of this winter cycle, though they leave a sour taste in my mouth. At least half of the most destructive development that has occurred since I was born has been on their behalf. I watched this desert dry up as more part-time residents moved in.
The winter rains will be coming soon, though, and every year I hope the river (now a wash, barely if ever running) will fill up and perhaps drag one of the costly developments into its current. It did that once before, many decades ago, and no matter how much I love humanity and the city and growth, I also know a cancer when I see it. The winter season is my favorite, but it’s bittersweet. I see my favorite and most hated parts of humanity and myself at this time.
Yesterday wasn’t just the beginning of winter, though. It was also Veteran’s Day, another holiday I’m considering for this religion. Some of my favorite polytheists and Pagans have written about what Veteran’s Day means or can mean in a religious context, and I’m not interested in repeating them. But Veteran’s Day is very important to me, personally and communally. (My family jokes that we’re ‘farmers and soldiers and ain’t good at nothing but that’.) That wintertime and Veteran’s Day were the same this year is an interesting coincidence. I don’t think I’m ready to contemplate on it more than that.
Though I didn’t have a bell to ring in winter, we did light our first fire. It struck me how contradictory it is to bring in winter, in the cold, by chasing it off. My household huddled around the fire, and in the end I was left there, alone, with the coals, watching them die down. And I prayed. The prayer I repeat every morning, counting the repetitions of with my fingers, rocking back and forth. Watching the coals. Seeing faces, letting my mind see whatever images it could, letting the sensible part of me shut off. I stared at the fire and realized that, over and over, I saw a bird.
It seemed a good way to begin winter. It seemed, after years of loving the cold but watching as my life repeatedly fell apart, one cycle was breaking and another one was beginning, one with fire and warmth and bundled jackets and an inkling of self-understanding.
It was good, even without a bell.