Myth, Magic, and finding Midsummer Joy

Today is Litha, the Summer Solstice. It is that time of year when the sun reaches its zenith, the longest day of the year. It is a celebration of light, fecundity and the abundance of summer. I look forward to these long days of light all year and when they are here celebrate!
This past weekend my husband and I attended the Scottish Highland Games in Chicago. This was our second games of the year, something we celebrate together every year with our extended Scottish family. Since it was so close to Father’s Day, that was just an added bonus. We saw a World Record set in the weight toss for height (56lb. weight tossed with one hand over a bar 18ft 11inches high). Truly an amazing feat of athleticism. Pure masculine power, raw and beautiful to behold.

How does any of this tie into a Father’s Day theme? Well, you’ll have to bear with me as I tie it up. Today, Midsummer, is very special. It is associated with the sun, male energy and all that is bright and beautiful about the male aspect. So I say thanks to all the males in my life. Fathers, brothers, sons, and most importantly those we call lover and husband. I am thankful for the many men in my life who make it better every day with their strength, their love and their masculine grace. I am blessed to watch the honorable path the men I love, both living and those who have gone before, have blazed through their lives. Further, I am happy to travel it with them. So instead of saying Happy Father’s Day, I will say: here’s a cheer for the best in men everywhere.
Midsummer is a time full of myth and magic and joyous celebration of the earth and her gifts. We celebrate the sun, the masculine, and also the feminine as the sun enters Cancer – a water sign. I love this part. Today is a day for water magic. It is a time to celebrate holy streams and sacred wells, giving offerings of coins or pins in Celtic mysticism. Chalice well is located in Glastonbury and has been a sacred place for Christians and Pagans for more than a millenia. Joseph of Arimathea was said to have traveled there. Its sacred springs are associated with the grail legend and are said to be healing in nature.

I write about sacred springs, myth and magic in Fighting Fate, my latest stand a lone romance in the Dojo Chronicles. I love Glastonbury Tor. The land there and the sacred waters, sing with energy. It truly is a magical place I wanted to celebrate. So, I fictionalized it and put it in a romance that celebrates not only strong femininity, but also the fierce loving heart of a man sworn to protect it. I love Fighting Fate, and I hope you will too.

Shakespeare wrote about Midsummer magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, That Scottish Play, and in The Tempest. The themes of magic and celebrating all the abundance summer has to offer are not new. They are eternal. So here’s to summer. Here’s to the festivals, the music, the plants and to all you hold sacred. Here’s to celebrating the masculine aspect of nature as we enjoy the longest day of the year. And here’s to holding the magic of summer in your heart.

Happy Midsummer!

Leigh Morgan

http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Fate-Dojo-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B008B8PXFA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1340196821&sr=8-3&keywords=leigh+morgan

Characters: the good, the bad and the beautiful

There are times in life when the road becomes clear although stepping onto it requires never going back. Scary, scary, scary. And yet, once the choice is made there is more relief than fear. I've found this to be true each time I've stretched into a new business or jumped into the unknown.

It's true with people and characters too. The characters we love to read about and, as authors the ones we create, who we take into our hearts and our lives who nurture us and comfort us in good times and in bad, when we need them most, can change our perspective, add to our lives or simply entertain us while we live in their world a while. Those who don't add to our lives are easily discarded.

With people, it's a little more complicated. But the same principal applies, I think. Villains are great in stories. They act as a foil for the hero, shining a light on the hero's best qualities, while making them stronger. Villains are even helpful in life when they help us achieve something wonderful we didn't think we were otherwise capable of achieving. They are not useful when they offer nothing of value, serve only to hurt, and cannot be redeemed no matter how much goodwill we may offer. Sometimes villains have to die.

Sometimes when situations or people serve only the negative they need to go. So, having jumped into that unknown place, I do so without regret and with much releif. Good-bye villain. Time to start a new story without you. Hello all of you characters who add to this story in positive ways.

Spring seems to bring the need for cleaning house, physically, mentally and spiritually. Part of that is re-evaluating how our time and energy is spent. Here's to making tomorrow more productive and healthy by leaving all that no longer serves behind today.Here's to welcoming the beautiful world of possibility and leaving the land of doom-on-you.

So my friends, what would you lose if you could and what would you most like see walk into your life?

Moving forward always,

Leigh

What would you do if you knew: Anything-Can-Happen?

Well my friends, it's the first week of Anything-Can-Happen month and I'm feeling the drive. The drive to write. The drive to create. The drive to (goddess help me) clean and paint and otherwise tidy my nest.

The up side? I've tried a couple of left-over cases. I've re-written some chapters in my current work in progress and I've written some new from whole cloth. Those re-written are better than what came before and I'm experientially optimistic about the new. I'm also wondering how my life got so...so...life-like.

I'm still straddling two worlds trying to figure out how to get paid for doing something I love and I believe in. It isn't as polarizing for me now as it was eight short weeks ago. Now there's more balance, more ease.

Wow that sounds weird. So does this whole blogging thing if you think about it. I'm not that interested in describing my favorite band or color or Packer for public consumption. But, I do enjoy sharing those bits of insight I think are meaningful with my rather limited, and by and large unsolicited, audience. Sometimes life just matters in the moment and that should be celebrated, however quietly.

So I'm off on this new adventure of where the fu** do I go from here and I'm trying not only to have fun on the ride but to have something meaningful and lasting come from it. I guess we'll see. How many books of quality can I create in a year? How many organic farmers can I learn from and emulate? How many amendments can I suggest to the constitution? How many times can I have my parents, my in-laws and my children to breakfast? How many windows can I afford to replace in my house?

Some small questions. Some big. What will you choose as your questions for the next nine months of 2012? My life is shifting so quickly and yet so easily into areas of interest I wouldn't have contemplated a year ago. I hope yours is too, so long as that shift is moving in a positive direction for you.

Here's to your wishes, your dreams, your goals, large and small; may they guide you toward your best self and a life of balance. I know I'm still juggling. Peace.

Leigh

My Life in Photos of Others aka: I don't grow old, only my friends children do.

Today is Somerled: "Highlander's Earl of Somerled"'s Birthday.

This may not seem like much to the world at large but, it means the world to me. I had a black lab named Shannon that our family inherited from the Wilkes when I was 12. My world changed with that dog. It changed again when my neighbor ( I lived in the boon-docks so I had neighbors you could count on one hand) said to me after his constantly chained sheepdog died: 'It's just a dog'. That dog didn't deserve his chain or his owner.

Somerled is the second love of my canine life and the closest thing I have to a non-judgmental friend since my Grandma-Mac died. To say he is loved is to say I breathe.

We spent more than $3,000.00 in a weekend to keep him well when we were told his heart was giving out...thank God I had my 'what if' fund. That was four years ago. Somerled has owned my heart since we met. He's taught me love and loyalty matter more than where you live or how fine your mattress. He's kind and always greets me at the door. Unconditional is so trite when it's applied as a descriptive. Somer's more than that,  he's present. Every moment of every day he's present giving his support, his love and his humor. Beauty is a funny thing...when it manifests in your life and it greets you at the door, you are Blessed. 

I've been gifted with spirits human and animal who have graced my life and added depths to it. I thank you, One and All.

Happy Birthday Somerled. May I be as worthy a human as you are an ambassador for your breed (Scottish Deerhounds) and dogs everywhere. I'll see you when I pass, Dear One.

Day One and a little bit o' Burns

Today, January 25, 2012, is my official first full-time writing day. It's also the great Scottish Bard's birthday. Whether that will be significant in the days and weeks and years to come, I can only guess, but today I'm guessing I will remember it as an auspicious moment in time. A time when I chose the path less traveled and scared the sh** out of myself and changed my life in the process.

Sounds like an awful lot to live up to, doesn't it? Well, I believe small moments define us and our respective paths. As to it being Burn's Night well that could just be a happy coincidence or it could mean that the bard somewhere in the cosmos is smiling and perhaps laughing as I and others like me try to put pen to paper, finger to key-board, yadayadayada, and create something enjoyable.

So in the Spirit of the Bard and Creative souls everywhere I salute you and your efforts big and small, good and worthy of tossing in the trash and re-doing. Even those efforts mean we are in fact "doing".  Who knows where this path will ultimately lead, it keeps changing as I travel further along. I'm just glad on Day One that got up and started walking.  

In Honor of Robby Burns, may you:
"...catch the moments as they fly, and use them as ye ought, man: Believe me, happiness is shy, and comes not aye when sought..."  (1787) from A Bottle and Friend


Happy Burns Day & Night
Leigh

Cha-Cha-CCHHaannggess...

I've just ended a twenty year chapter of my life, seventeen of which I used to define Who I was and What I Did.

Strange, now just three days later, to think of the Momentousness of my decision to change, to risk identity and purpose, at this point in my life. Weirder yet is to think, if not Now, When? (For those of you frustrated with my arbitrary capitalization, I do so to emphasize my emotion or in the alternative for my more literal friends, to emphasize my intent to form a new path).

So, I'm moving forward with trepidation, hope and what I hope resembles Grace toward a New and hopefully more elemental self with the time and opportunity to care and change more than just the way I approach life, but the community out my door. I think it's time to stop and plant the roses, to write words worth reading and to make a difference no matter how small in our Universal quest to make Our World a more Welcoming and Holistic Community for each of us.

E Pluribus Unum  {From Many One}

Thoughts?

Life in Late Summer

At 7:50p.m. this evening I walked past my daughter's room and tried to shut off the light. She wasn't there and the light wasn't on. Just the echo of the late summer sunshine illuminating a now empty space. The cat waits in vain for her return and the papers, long forgotten, rustle on her desk.

To say I miss my girl is like saying it's hard to breathe under water.

At 7:51p.m. I'm sitting on my back porch with my son, enjoying the light as it filters through the trees illuminating the May Pole I made with my children in Spring and haven't had the heart to fully Autumnize yet. He isn't listening to me, he's got headphones on as he lifts weights to: EYE OF THE TIGER and envisions himself as Sly Stallone. If I were imagining a stud I wanted to emulate,  it'd be Jason Statham, but I get the Rocky thing. 

8:06 p.m. I'm trying hard not to cry. I'm looking at baby photos. I'm re-living everything I did right and the more than I'm comfortable with list of things I've done wrong, wondering, exactly, how does one summarize a few short years of parenthood where you hope to heck you got it right, and you're scared to death, and you just want to hold them close.  My God. My Goddess. My Infinite Consciousness, how do I do this job of parenting well?

I love my deck. I smell the roses. I enjoy the birds. I miss my girl. I enjoy my son. I live, I love, I slay...(my kids will get this)...therefore I AM.

And I miss my girl.

All thoughts on Love and Loss and Change Welcome.