bloodteethandflame

There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or to be the mirror that reflects it. – Edith Wharton

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy. –Mohandas K. Gandhi

I’ve been thinking a lot — and writing a lot — about how service is a major apect of my spirituality. 

I’ve been reluctant to share, because…well, because there is so much in my head that it becomes difficult to condense it into something resembling coherence, lately.

What I can tell you is that I woke up this morning with this particular phrase in my mind:

“Your role is not to be, but to make the space for others to be.”

There’s more, but that seems to be another handy, albeit raw, condensation of what I had been struggling to convey.  And I want to say, that role – of making space for others to be — is just as important as the role of being.

So now that the month is halfway over, I think that I can safely point out that there’s been a few changes from this time last year :

-Even though on this date last year, my husband was unemployed, I am happy to say that he has has held positions with three separate tech companies since then.   As a matter of fact, there’s the further change that his latest job is with a company based out of Washington, DC…and it’s not virtual office as the others were, so my husband is maintaining both a home office and an office in DC.

-Second change is that my oldest son doesn’t live at home any longer.  He splits his time between work and school, and he has been living in his own place since May.  I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with the extra space, formerly referred to as his bedroom.

-Third change, which is rather recent, is that my husband and I broke it off with our long-term girlfriend two weeks ago. 

Yeah, it still hurts, but we’re getting through as best we can. 

And in a way, there seemed to be foreshadowing to that:  Four weeks ago, around the same time that I was collecting supplies for a necklace that I was making for the Yule gift exchange, I commissioned with another craftsperson to make a custom necklace for said girlfriend, to be completed by January 4th.

Turns out the craftsperson — who was also a friend of mine — had a sudden family emergency on Dec 29th, which made it so she could not even begin to create the necklace, let alone finish it, by January 4th.  She was so apologetic, and very worried because of it; her email to me asked outright if she’d “ruined my holiday’ by ‘inconveniencing’ me this way. 

After what happened on January 4th, I don’t know if my friend would have been a little relieved that she didn’t need to make anything for anyone, after all.

Anyway.

Here’s to experiencing more positive changes in the New Year.

So.

Yesterday, someone had mentioned Lussekatter buns in one of the groups on FB.

Having never heard the term before, I Googled as to what a Lussekatter bun was, and found that they are saffron-flavored sweet buns that are made in celebration of St. Lucia’s Day on December 13th.  The buns are often shaped like double S’s/figure 8s — which are evocative of cats/cat eyes, I suppose.  (One quick web translator defines lussekatter as ‘Lucia’s cats,’ for example)

Looking over the recipe, I was glad to realize that the recipe is rather straightforward, and I already had everything I would need on hand, except for saffron.

So, this morning, I went out to buy saffron.

And I discovered that saffron can be hard to find around this area of the country.   But I eventually was able to find some ‘Spanish saffron threads’, and I was on my way.

The bread dough for these buns is very buttery and sweet, and so, this bread smells wonderful while it is baking.

(Actually, if I was going to caution anyone about making these, I would point out that one whole package of saffron threads (little under 1/2 ounce) is exactly the amount needed…and as the reviewer on the above recipe points out, try to get saffron that is the highest quality that you can afford, if you really want the saffron flavor to come through in this recipe.  I don’t know what Europeans use, but the Spanish saffron that I found and used wasn’t as flavorful as I’d hoped.)

Here’s a picture of how mine came out:

OK…maybe not.

If the pic ever does show up, you might notice that the buns are a little flatter than they should be.

It’s that damned Florida humidity is what it is.

But they taste good.

On my way to the supermarket, I noticed this sign:

It got me to wondering.  What if this sign meant what I’d initially thought that it had meant, and Denny’s had suddenly wanted to appeal to linguist nerds?

How long do you think that it’s going to be before Denny’s puts out a menu in Classical Greek?

Or how about ancient Hebrew?

Gaelic?

Or best yet, Proto-Indo-European?

That’s what I want to see:  a Denny’s menu in PIE.

Or, at the very least, a dessert menu.

Linguists don’t make much money, but linguists gotta eat.

So.

Here I am with things on my mind, and I’m feeling ashamed and ridiculous that I’ve allowed the situation in my life to come to this point.

I’ve no one but my self to blame, I know, and occurs to me that…maybe… what is about to happen to me is a lesson.   A lesson for me.  A lesson for my husband, V.   And, by association, my youngest kid.

And it is coming.

This post has been knocking about my brain for a few weeks, perhaps more. 

I’ve been having difficulty writing in this blog lately, and I’m not exactly sure why. 

I have no shortage of topics, actually, it’s just that once I sit down and start typing, things seem to go awry from there.

But I’m determined to write about my adventures learning about (Futhark) runes lately, because, dammit, I’ve been trying to learn about runes for a long time.

So here it goes.

~~~

I’m ashamed to admit that I bought a set of runes about six months ago. 

I’d initially ordered a set from a Norse shaman/craftsman around April or so, but after a few months, I received word from him that things weren’t going well.  The tree branches that he’d been intending to cut the blanks from kept coming up cracked and/or damaged, and therefore, the wood supply wasn’t any good for cutting blanks for a rune set.

I should’ve taken that as a sign that maybe this wasn’t the right time for me to learn about runes, but I’m an impatient sort of person, and I thought, well, I’d like to get a set to hold me over.

So I did this past June.

And when I took them out from the bag, I was immediately…depressed, for reasons that I’m not going to get into right now.  But I did what I had been told/read/seen that I was supposed to do next upon receipt of runes.  And everything seemed OK. 

Three different sources gave me an overview of different ways that one can ‘get to know’ the runes once they are in ones’ hands. 

One source said to say their names aloud, study them, meditate on each one, and that was that. 

One source said that I should sleep on them — one at a time — and write out the resulting dreams.

And another source said that the other two ways were fine, but the best way would be to do a ritual with them – involving fluids – that I’m still trying to sort out, because there’s debate on which fluids are best.

I don’t want anyone to think that I don’t take this seriously, because I do…  

But I will say this, it strikes me as very true that runes are interesting, and I’ve been having some very interesting times with the runes.

First, Laguz gave me some very interesting dreams way back in August.  Some of the ink came off of my Laguz rune when it got wet during that week when I first focused on it.  Somehow I wonder if that was, in some way, appropriate.

And the Ingwaz rune made for some very tasty baked goods, and an interesting time concerning yard work, physical work, and growth during the week that I first focused on it.

And then, Othala.  I would like to say that Othala upright is my favorite rune.  I’ve felt drawn to it the minute that I first saw it — but what Othala ended up being was a rather forceful representation of a few things that I *really* need to work on.   No matter which way I see Othala interpreted, it always seems to come up to remind me of things that I should work on, especially when I’d rather not.   Othala, I love you, but you can be a lot to take.

Kenaz is another favorite.  Kenaz, like Othala, could generate its own post, with all my feels about it.

Dagaz and Mannaz were tricky…as were Sowilo and Eiwhaz.  Just when I thought I was certain that that was the rune that I was seeing, I’d realize that it was actually another rune entirely.  Or maybe those four like to shape-change when I’m not looking. 

Fehu.  Fehu, no pun intended, is what started it all.   Because, if I never mentioned this, there is a mark on my bedroom door, that looks basically like Fehu.  I think that it has been here since the day that we moved in, almost 3 years ago.

But then again, there’s another person that lives in this house that thinks that it looks more like Ansuz.

And no, I haven’t focused on Ansuz yet, so I don’t want to speculate.  

The other day I wrote a post to open up the month of November as a month for Odin.

And now the post is missing.  It’s not even listed as a Draft in my Dashboard here…which is fucking strange, to say the least.

Did anyone see it before it disappeared?

Let me know.

Thanks!