Our Lady of Guadalupe-Dec. 12 2009

She was brown skinned & perfect
Like the woman who walked a while
beside me when we marched
for our lives on Washington in 2004
saving babies, Protecting the Unborn.

She was brown skinned & direct
Mexican- American, like my student
who needed her GED so that she
could become a Marine and help
preserve our freedom, Patroness of the Americas.

She was brown skinned & glorious
Like the woman I love who sings
when she sees me first thing in the
morning before she makes impact
getting grants of hope, Empowering the Downtrodden

I dreamed her once:


She was brown skinned, an astronaut
(Mae Jamison in a blue bath-robe?)
Standing on the moon with an American flag,
a crown of stars and all this Celestial beauty
bringing awe and peace, Apocalypse Figther.

scent of rose
ice rosary
a blush of innocence
tears from joy
fierce grace

I thought she was my Granny
come all the way from Glory
with memory gifts
and secret recipes
I thought was lost.


She was brown skinned & wise
like the woman who sits across from me
as we chew over well done truth
as I learn how to be good
and to be all right at the same time.

Blue Moon

This is a once in a Blue Moon moment.

This month there will be two full moons....

Any time there are two full moons in a month the second one is known as a full moon)

Tonight is the first of the full moons we will have in the month of December. The second full moon, the one that is actually called the Blue Moon will be on New Year's Eve.

Mmmm hmmm.....Now that is going to be some kind of something.

But until then.


Take a peek at the moon tonight.

Take a picture of it. Draw a picture of it. Make a wish upon it. Sing to it or of it. (Blue Moon....)

Sit a little glass of water or wine outside for a few minutes and let is soak up the beams of this Full Moon. Drink it down. Of course I will probably use moon shine to collect the magical rays. A little shot will do me.

While drinking you can...

Celebrate yourself and all of your hard work.

Set some intentions for the coming month.

Just appreciate it all.

Enjoy!

I will be praying while sipping :

Creator of the Universe, Artist of Beautiful Creation
Thank you for the signs and symbols that guide me
on my dazzling and sometimes crooked path. And excuse me
as I kiss the sky, taking my eyes for a while
off of pure purpose.
Bless my hedonistic heart
As I feast on Your good old undeniable Goodness
and stare without shame at your Glory.

Observing Advent

For people who don't know Advent is the season of anticipation and quiet hope that proceeds Christmas. For all of you who don't 'do' Christmas this is still a powerful time to invite the same sense of quiet hope that you feel because something good is about to happen.

I wanted to focus on Advent this year for a few reasons. Firstly, I lean towards sarcasm, which can foster some cynicism. I want to feel fresh and new, now. I want to gasp at sparkles every time I see them. I want to feel awesome because I feel awe. Secondly, I want to welcome A Miracle. I want to prepare myself physically, mentally and emotionally for Miracles in the upcoming year. I want to see the miracles and get close to them. This year I will follow a star and prepare gifts. I want to shift my lenses. I want to buy some rose colored glasses and view the world through them.


This is my challenge. Join in and be amazed....

Shape Shifters--Don't Go Changing

I spent most of the morning in the car repair center getting my steering fixed. (Everybody who feels like every challenge is some deeper than deep symbol can go ahead and laugh right now. Do it now and get that over with.) While I waited for my car I spent hours, yes hours (4.5 hours!) trying to ignore endless episodes of The Transformers, Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles. I did not consider how this Saturday morning programming was in accord with the post I was planning to write today. All of the animated stars of these shows are themselves shape shifters. In fact they are all shape-shifters who use there ability to change to thaw rt crime, help the innocent and repeatedly save the world.

So, it's Halloween today. I love the way the air feels. Early yesterday, I stood in the street for a long moment and tiny golden leaves swirled around me, rustling and airborne, spirits of the trees that gave up the ghost touching me, singing. My skin tingled with anticipation as I wondered about the ancestors who come a little bit closer than usual at this time of year. I planned to cook them some pole beans and corn bread. Then, still in the street like a shocked squirrel, I saw the children rushing to school in their costumes. Witnessing their excitement added to mine. I thought about candy and said grace for this time when we get to celebrate feeling fear. Our city has been scary lately. But, more than these things I've been thinking about shape-shifting this year.

Who are the shape shifters and why are they important? Shape shifters are people who are willing to surrender their apparent identity for a good reason. Shape shifters are important because they can walk between worlds, bringing information, wisdom, aid, traditions, etc. from one place to another. By shape-shifting they can share gifts from their world with the residents of their new world. If they did not shape-shift but tried to share such things they might be rejected as a stranger. The shape-shifters are pioneers. They learn quickly-new languages, new customs, new terrains and climates. They are very adaptable mainly because they aren't afraid to be schooled or to look like fools.

The trick is that shape-shifting can be frightening. Firstly is the un-grounding loss of identity. It's hard to keep your feet on the ground if you find that you don't have feet anymore, just some flippers in their place. Next, shape-shifters don't usually travel in packs; it can be lonely-all that walking between worlds. Plus, frequently, when you shift back and you try to tell your folks about the adventure their aren't even words to communicate what you've been, what you saw, tasted, listened to, braved. And then there's the inevitable difficulty that some shifts leave a mark and you never are quite the same. Everybody notices the change and might not accept the shifter back into the fold.

So, this post is my holler out to all the shape shifters. To all the kids going into communities other than their own for better schooling, safe travels. To all the beautiful folks changing their gender identity, you are the brave ones. To all citizens newly naturalized, you are welcome. To all the black girls and boys who are frowned upon for talking white, you are heard. To all the ministers I know minding the spiritual gap between sects and denominations, you are blessed. To the missionaries and relief workers leaving hearth and home to help, thank you. For every woman who walks into a board room and is mistaken for someones assistant, you are powerful. For people who saw themselves as rich but have lost some of their perceived wealth, you are overflowing. To every chub on a low-fat diet,at the gym, or struggling to change your body, you are perfection. To all the cosmetic shape-shifters, eye-lash gluing, wig/weave workers, go-head with your bad, bad, self, you walk in beauty. The drag queens, actors, role-players and ren-faire goers, thank you for being fearless. To all the other shape-shifters, I see you. Your capes and masks, your super, super powers are the change we want to see.

Disguise is not a challenge. The truly brazen option is to become the Other. The shape-shifters are the ones who will lead us beyond tepid tolerance towards hot, passionate love for what is Outside. I don't agree with people who feel that we need to encourage tolerance...What is that? ( I tolerate tight pantyhose!) Love is the Challenge. The Ten Commandments charge us to Love our neighbor; it doesn't say to dredge up some tolerance. The act of shape-shifting breeds the compassion that will allow us to finally Love one another.

What is the Bountiful Bone Pot?

The Bountiful Bone Pot is

*the cauldron of magic
*deep creativity
*good ideas
*over-flowing
*licked dry
* always full
* the potential in emptiness, the void
*always simmering
*slow cooking
*always bubbling, somethings always cooking
* a place for experimentation and science
*filled with food
*where medicine comes from
*an incubator
*a place of transformation
*where stone soup is made
*where nothing becomes something and something boils down to nothing

The Bountiful Bone Pot is the name I give to my work and to the process that evolves as I do that work. The products that result are feasts, sometimes just little morsels, sometimes delicious or piquant bites that all have been baked up in my proverbial bone pot. When I embark on the creation of something new--- a class, an artistic project, a rehearsal process, the building of a ritual, writing a poem or story, the preparation to share healing--- I think to myself, "Okay, let me dip into my Bone Pot. Sometimes when I put labels on cosmetics, potions, medicines, or fashion accessories the labels will read "The Bountiful Bone Pot". When I say the words they sound like a bit of a mouthful but that seems somewhat fitting.

A friend actually came up with the term. She sent me a thank you note in response to a letter of condolence. (Yes, I have friends that I exchange actual letters with regularly. Old fashioned, we are!) In her note she referred to my words of comfort, couched in a compliment, couched in a joke, as being 'just one more from Kim Crutcher's bone pot!"


The Bountiful Bone Pot is my pet name for my creativity. I adore my gifts and and shouldn't everything that is adored have an adorable pet name? I do a lot of work in the kitchen and want everything I make to feel luscious, nourishing, life-affirming. So pull out a spoon, sometimes you'll need a knife and a fork to really get it. There now. Taste.

Something About Love

This is the kind of woman I am: I see patterns in the single file passage of a day's minutes. A red truck in the morning, a cardinal out the kitchen window around noon, and later a red ball bouncing down the steps. I see these things and I connect them the way my Daddy used to swirl my initial, a capital K, in ketchup on top of my potatoes. That's what I do, I connect the dots. I experience happenstance as the symbolic language it is.

And so I could not ignore the all of the communications that I've had in the last few weeks with friends and acquaintances. My goodness. I've had two people who've come right out and said to me that they are doing intense heart-work. But there have been numerous calls and conversations about mammograms, breast surgery, chest colds and even a one genuine case of classic heart break. I couldn't help but take notice. As sure as a tree full of cardinals looks like a burning bush the people in my life are my cosmic message. Its time for me to think about exactly what it is that know about love and loving. Maybe its time for me to have a change of heart.

The other thing about the kind of woman I am is that it can be a little isolating. All the chatting with spirits, prayer, writing, brewing of herbs, chanting and other mystical carrying on is somewhat solitary business. If you are isolated you can feel alone; even if you're isolated by choice. I feel like (see I'm trying to feel and not just think)...I feel like I'm being called on to stay engaged with people so that I don't drift into apathy. Apahty is a gelatinous green water, when you get out of it you might be jaded or envious. It can be a mess as messy as pea soup, but not nearly as comforting and only the truly bitchy find it delicious.

I'm not there yet. In fact there are some things that I know about love that are in my head right now, right on the tip of my brain. In fact I spent the summer creating a deck of cards for divination and meditation. I call them the Common Union Cards. The progression of 22 cards and 44 images detail the journey that begins when a person, even a salty and slightly stank person, lets go and falls in love. I could go on and on about the cards and probably will in later posts and I could go on and on about what my own falling taught me. But I want to go beyond what I know and explore the challenge that my precious messengers have put forth.

The signs all point to the need our hearts have for change. (I'm using a capital Our here, referring to all of Creation...I try not to leave anyone out of my Our or my y'all.) I know, I'm really not trying to shout continual 'Amens' from the Obama campaign mourner's bench. But last fall a lot of people did change the way they think. Now, we are ready to change how we feel. Hearts need changing. Some need to open, some need to be more discerning in what gets in to them. Some hearts need to slim down a little bit; they are too heavy. Pounding hearts can learn to ask gently, hearts in throats can return to their rightful home. Racing hearts can have victory and finally win. Yes we can.

Okay.

Socially, there is heartbreak and fear all out in the world. Money is whipping people and people are jumping every time they hear the crack. Fear. Racial fear is rippling the tall grass of the heartland. Again! Kids--the school issues, the violence; that is heartbreak. Oh I've got to stop for a second and sing some Stevie Wonder ...'Loves in need of love today...' Okay. I won't pull out my soap box or I could jump around it all night. But I will ask a question that's been put to me in the last few weeks. "What breaks your heart?"

Puzzle on that for a minute. Or a long whiles worth of minutes. A person might need a moon's worth of minutes or even more. But if that gets answered that's a good starting place for pasting up a broken heart.

So what do we do about heartbreak? How do we change our hearts if they need changing? I'm not that sure. I'm not an expert. I use prayer and art. I'm using a lot of flower essences too.
Here's a recipe and a prayer for heart-work...the intense kind and the gentle kind.

Heart Hearted Oil
1 oz. almond or safflower oil
5 drops of rose absolute
2 drops of mandarin essential oil
1 drop of geranium essential oil
1 drop of rosemary essential oil

I'm rubbing mine on my heart chakra, the space where my physical heart resides. I'm saying many prayers. The message for me personally is that I need to open, to feel safe, to be bold and to experience my heart as resilient. It can survive being broken.

Here's one of my many prayers for my heart and for y'all's hearts too:

Prayer

Oh God, as You love me, let me love.
Let my heart, under the warmth of your Sun,
flourish like brazen fruit.
Piece me back together Mother God,
make warm quilts of my relating,
make awesome mosaics of my offerings.
There is trust in my bones and graciousness in the broad span
of my tiny being .
Keep letting me see myself reflected this way in the eyes of your creation.
Let me feel it in my heart
as I move with my feelings, as I grow and expand and deepen in this love.

Amen.

Fall Equinox

It is the first day of Autumn. I'm sitting in the kitchen of course. The kettle is simmering. Of course. I am peeking out of the back window, looking at the deck. The garden is looking wild, absolutely wild. All the most brazen weeds have staked their claim in our pots, lots of tall stalks with full seed heads. The seed heads look drowsy, drugged out on the haze of the day maybe; they are slumped over heavily. But we don't discriminate against drunken weeds in this garden; we water all comers. The word must of got out, it must have been carried on the wind and everybody, cultivated or not, is having a hey (hay!) day out there.

I love fall. It might be my favorite time of year. Maybe I love it so much because I was such a nerd when I was a kid and loved going back to school. Every year I would get excited because I was getting a chance to start over and I knew that I was going to learn so much. Nerd. I also love the way the air and the light feel--anticipatory, tremulous, expectant. It feels like nature is about to jump into a freezing cold swimming pool. I like to stand in the street and just feel summer surrendering, the breeze moving through changing leaves. The leaves in response changing their timbre; the actual pitch of the rustle them make gets a little higher pitched, a little thinner. The song of the world changes. A new song is coming. Fall.

My fall this year, part of my falling, my surrender, is to take the lid off the bone pot. When people come to this blog with their bowls I'll be glad. The pot is always simmering. What's in the pot? The Bountiful bone pot is filled with words. If you stir it you'll find stories, songs, recipes, incantations, prayers, letters, opinions and more words. Enjoy. I will add salt and sugar and my own secret sauce.

Okay, let's start with a recipe:

I made this last night to celebrate the days of awe. This would definitely be listed as one of my Shalom Y'all recipes, my own Jewish soul food. I call it Claire's Kugel because it is inspired by my mother-in-law's kugel. She passed away a few years ago and we haven't had a scrap of rice kugle since. So, I tried my hand at it.

Claire's Kugel

ingredients (I don't really measure, amounts are approximate)

one small container of leftover white rice from Chinese food
2 eggs
1/2 cups of honey
2 tbsp brown sugar
2tbsp lavender sugar
1/2 cup of milk, soy milk, oat milk or other dairy sub
(I used hemp milk to avoid dairy...trying to keep it Kosher!)
1/2 c or so of dried cherries
a cap full of almond extract
2-4 tablespoons of melted butter
dashes of cinnamon, salt and cardamon

*mix eggs, sugar and dairy-esque ingredient into a mixing bowl, whip them up real good
*break up the rice into the eggy mix
* stir that up well, add in the cherries, spices, almond extract and finally the butter
*put the whole thing into a small, greased dish
* bake uncovered until brown (45 min- one hour)

Yummy, gluten and dairy free comfort food! Tastes like love.