On Father's Day

To everyone out there for whom Father’s day is tricky, sending you love, and I relate. Here is some honesty in some words for you, that you may feel less alone.

Father’s day brings mixed emotions for me, grief (it never does leave you), pride, anger, gratitude...
Grief...because you were my world. I was a daddy’s girl and til you suddenly passed at 52 when I was 14, my life consisted of trying to make you proud. Grief is simply a measure of how much we loved.
Pride...because you were the most talented and charismatic of men. St Germans Priory Church is massive and it was standing room only at your funeral. Your legacy continues to protect and provide for me when I visit a new community in Cornwall.
Anger...that you died so early, that you didn’t take care of yourself, that you were emotionally unavailable and that I feared you often. Anger that the maternal woman in me now looks back and does not approve of some of your parenting techniques. Anger at my lack of safety net and the ways I had to raise and protect myself because not even mum could replace you sometimes.
Gratitude...for all of the above because I would not change any of it. Gratitude that I have learned how to raise and protect myself. Gratitude for the fact that you played Star Trek computer games with me and built me an ever-growing spaceport out of packaging behind the sofa. Gratitude that you decided I was a leader the moment I was born and made sure I knew it every day. Gratitude that you educated me about the world, explained the evening news to me and made sure my life was full of fun and music. Gratitude for the freedom I gained when you died. People don’t like to talk about that, but it’s a thing. Gratitude to Vanessa Johnston Williams, for raising me without you through those tricky teen years and beyond. Gratitude to Jo Tyler, Tracey Spring, Liz Evans and others for welcoming me into your families when I needed it. It takes a village. Gratitude for my talents, inherited or nurtured.
Gratitude that I’ve grown into a woman I like, and that dad, I feel you around me every day. Thank you for the message you sent me through Jo soon after your death:

“Think of me, I’m as free as I’ll ever be.”

And I do. And I’m glad.
Happy father’s day all. May you find the magic in the mess and the gratitude in the chaos that love brings. ✨💕♥️
#writing #fathersday #dad #mum #village #family

Am I Christian or Pagan? I'm both.

It’s Easter and someone asked me yesterday how I reconcile my Christianity with my Paganism, having grown up in both traditions. I've not been well lately so this has been on my mind - especially since the recent visit of my cousin Mike Jones and family. He is a Pastor in Canada and I loved touring churches with him - and I also found that in tour-guiding them around Cornwall, my Paganism was also on display. So I decided to write this blog to try to articulate an answer, as I get asked this question about reconciliation every now and then. In doing so, I’m afraid that I’ll meander between my own emotions and my family history, and I'll probably go on too long - but that’s just the truth of my reconciliation journey, so thank you for reading.

I believe that Jesus was a real person, that he was a great spiritual leader, a talented healer, and a community activist, and that the prophets Muhammed & Abraham were equally important.

A huge part of who I am involves connecting with & humbling myself before God/spirit/source/the Holy Spirit/Gaia/the universe/quantum energy/Allah etc. To me, it’s all the same. I’m pretty sure that God doesn’t care whether we refer to God as he or a she, nor what name we use.

Christianity is important to me as a framework for community and communion, for praise and healing and for unification with others through art, architecture, song and music. My home Church (where I was baptised) is St. James Episcopal Church, Austin, TX, and my paternal Grandmother Nancy Belle Johnson (nee Lawrence) was one of the original members when it was founded. St. James’s connection with music can be best understood through the annual Jazz at St. James event. My Father and Grandfather have both taken turns as the Church’s musical director and I know more than one soul whose life and/or sanity was saved by that church.

The other important churches in my life have all been Cornish: St. Cleer Parish Church (many harvest festivals and much singing); St. Germans Priory Church (my maternal Grandmother was confirmed there and my Dad’s funeral was there) and St. Clement Parish Church (my Grandmother was married and laid to rest there with her husband, and I was married there).

My Cornish family (the Tregonings) also have a long Church of England tradition, and through their mining heritage, work for the unions and later through their tinplate/metals/shipbrokerage fortune they funded and drove a lot of Cornish Church of England activity. Consequently they also funded and led health, education, fair wage (the 1874 list) & charity work through the Guardians of the Poor, the Working Lads society etc. in 19th Century Cornwall (mainly Launceston, Lezant & Tregadillett) and South Wales. The Dolcoath window in Truro Cathedral was donated by the Tregonings (and the Edes) as a memorial to the miners lost. My ancestor John Simmons Tregoning (JST) was devout in his faith and his work in building houses, schoolhouses, libraries & reading rooms for workers and their families was a great example (paternalistic as it was) of how Christianity, applied with love, can result in charity, activism and progress for oppressed communities. I’ll blog about all this properly sometime but if you're family or an interested Cornish history buff you can google his name for more info.

Both JST’s example and that of my Grandmother in Texas have played a part in my belief that Christianity, and organised religion in general has a purpose and positive role in shaping modern society and in positively influencing the actions of humans - despite the many violent examples throughout history of religion’s negative effects.

All of that said, it's a fact that much of Christianity is based on ancient Pagan rituals and festivals - even the date of Easter is still dependent on the date of the full moon. Other examples of this are abundant, including the sites of our holy wells in Cornwall, many of which were built on Pagan ritual sites.

Paganism is also an important spiritual framework for me, especially when it relates to my relationship to the natural world, the seasons, the collective, and for answering day-to-day emotional questions/my own introspection. I’d describe my musician mother as a pagan, though I’m not sure she would describe herself at all. Labels aren’t really her thing.

Growing up, we celebrated the solstices, we spent a lot of time at stone circles, went to spiritual events and festivals all summer and many of my childhood games where concocted using medicine cards, quoits, streams, or the art of Carolyn Hillyer. Most confusions were explained by the moon’s phase or by someone’s planetary birth chart. I feel Paganism on a more instinctive level day-to-day, but actually my most transcendent spiritual experiences have been in Church. I tend to cry when singing in Church, but then at home tend to meditate over tarot cards rather than pray to God for wishes to be granted. But also, attendance at midnight mass on my birthday (Christmas Eve) very often happened growing up.

I dislike individualism in both Christianity and Paganism. Witchcraft is very much still alive in Cornwall and though it’s not my thing, I know some very wonderful witchy women. Wicca, the occult, spell-casting and all that goes with it feels to me way too much like worship of one’s own will. I find that the worshiping of one’s own will (as opposed to trusting in something higher) is counterproductive at best, as a worldview. At its worst I have seen it become very self-serving and destructive. I put praying to God for “wishes to be granted” in that same category.

Asking a higher power for strength, grace or guidance, and practicing gratitude for all we receive (whether we wanted it or not) makes much more sense to me. We have to trust in God’s plan (aka The universe’s power to balance) in order to commune with it/him/her and in order to commune with each other. I find this helpful when answering the question “how can God let this awful thing happen?!” When we view God as the ultimate balancing power, and believe that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, then actually, the injustice of some of God’s “actions” suddenly makes sense. This balancing force could also be interpreted as quantum physics or as karma - depending on whether your belief system is science, Buddhism or a mixture of many. Or just “The Force” if you’re a Jedi ;)

I also dislike some of the rules and martyrdom in Christian teaching. Parts of the Bible read like a manual for a codependent relationship with an abusive spouse. There is humbling yourself, and then there is martyring yourself (or even punishing yourself) and I don’t think that the latter is healthy.

As an aside, Buddhist teaching is useful in finding balance between attachment to outcomes and giving of ourselves to others.

We also have some Judaism in my family a few generations back. I don’t know enough about Judaism, but like Islam, (which I know a bit more about), I respect it as another framework for spirituality. Also while we’re here - did you know that Muslims also believe in Jesus? They don’t believe in the resurrection, but they believe that he ascended to heaven after being raised there by God/Allah. To each their own and peace be with each.

As a mixed race woman, I identify as black AND as white, but not if one excludes the other. I feel the same about my Christianity and my Paganism. I will not be one if it means I can’t be the other, because I am both. I can’t deny my Paganism any more than I can deny my whiteness, and I can’t deny my Christianity any more than I can deny my blackness. And neither would I want to. So I claim all of it as part of who I am. Along with being Cornish and Texan, too.

Happy Easter, Happy Spring Equinox, Happy Passover, Happy sunshine...

No thanks

Perfect is the enemy of good

And perfect is the enemy of done

Love doesn’t care very much for perfect 

And perfect isn’t very fun

Life

There are great loves and good loves, painful loves and swift loves, life-long loves and momentary loves, learning loves and safe loves, passionate loves and comforting loves, vain loves and selfless loves, hot loves and mild loves, blinding loves and enlightening loves, whirlwind loves and meandering loves, quiet loves and triumphant loves, but as long as there is love, there will be life.

Capricorn season, aka baby-making season

How is Capricorn season treating everyone? In my experience as a Capricorn, people don't 'get' our sign. They're like "oh you're a stubborn goat" or "oh you're so ambitious" but they forget that we're the sign that starts the year, we bring the sun back when it disappears for a few days in the far northern hemisphere at the solstice, which kicks off Capricorn season. We're little combustion engines that can and we can't help it. We're cardinal earth. We're instigators. We're goats AND we're mermaids. It's in our nature to climb mountains and swim the depths of emotion, sometimes simultaneously. And I'm betting that's what everyone, regardless of your sign, is trying to do right now, with varying results, because we're now all deep into Capricorn season.

Sure, Cappys can be intense, and sure, we can struggle to live in the moment...but we're bloody good at forward motion and unblocking emotional barriers. Which makes sense when you look at our season. Everything is frozen rain but don't worry, we'll carry whatever you want from Christmas through to February. We'll get you through the darkness. We'll carry YOU if you like. And we'll help everyone process and feel their emotions while they're sitting in the darkness. We're perfectly adapted to January.

Any time of the year, we're the ones you want on your team when the proverbial is hitting the fan. Because we'll make a plan, start the task, make sure it gets finished and then our playful mermaid will come out and we will throw an awesome party to celebrate its completion. People think that we're the work hard, play hard sign. But what looks like hard to you is just our regular modus operandi. We don't know any different. We're moving to stay warm/alive. We were born in the freaking depths of winter. So that's why you're working so hard right now, in our season.

And I have lost count of the times I have been called emotionally detached or aloof. We may be good at your emotions, but we're told we're rubbish at our own. Being seen that way is a Capricorn thing, apparently. But we're just focussed, and earning our respect isn't very easy. If you're a fellow cardinal sign (Aries, Cancer, Libra) or a mutable sign (Virgo, Sagittarius, Gemini, Pisces), you probably think Capricorns are way aloof. But you fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) know. You see our inner combustion engines and all the emotion bubbling under the surface fuelling our trek up whatever mountain.

And that's the crux of it. What seems like Capricorn control-freakery/emotional detachment to most people is actually just an ability to harness our emotions and use them for fuel for whatever needs to get done in this frozen month. We haven't got time for your drama and we're so direct because those who don't DO in January are starved and/or frozen by the time Aquarius season rolls around. A conversation I had the other day:

Friend: Anna, you're a Capricorn, how do I know whether this Capricorn wants me or not?
Me: He doesn't.
Friend: What? How do you know?
Me: Because if he did, you'd know already. We're very direct like that.

And that's the energy we're all living through right now, in Cappy season.

Capricorns also age in reverse, so it is said. We start out all 'should' and responsibility in our teens and twenties and get mellower and more fun as we get older. This is definitely my experience. And so it is the same with Capricorn season. The season starts off all preparation and family pressure for the holidays, and by mid-January, everyone's throwing caution to the gale-force wind and leaping into bed with each other to make babies. As a dear friend just reminded me, September is by far the most popular month for birthdays (hi Virgos!) because Capricorn season is baby-making season. So there's also that. It's in Capricorn's nature to just effing do it AND it's in our nature to be sensual sirens. Therefore, forward-focussed Capricorn season being the month when couples not only look to the future but CREATE the future is totally logical. And when it comes to sex for Capricorns, it is also all about that Cappy combustion engine. This is true of every Capricorn I know. Capricorns will use that skill of harnessing all of that emotional energy to get whatever task done. And then if you're lucky, we'll harness it to get you done. But you have to be very lucky (and direct), because we are as picky as you'd expect a mermaid-on-a-mission (who doesn't really want to stop moving in case she freezes) to be.

Hey presto, Capricorn energy = baby-making season. Forward looking, sensual, combustable, but with goals.

Hope you're all snuggling and seducing and working and achieving and don't worry, the full moon eclipse in Leo is on the way and we'll all have a good and healthy cry about everything then. Until then, try to avoid the things we do in excess in order to numb our emotions. Whatever that thing is for you, be it alcohol, food, netflix, sex, exercise or something else, know that by numbing your inner mermaid this season, you also numb your inner mountain goat. Your emotion IS your motion. Your emotions are your combustion engine. So feel them, accept them and use them to propel you forward into Aquarius season...see you there <3