coins for the river, fruit for the Abundant One

I have many kitchen spirits following and wandering about and many deities connected to my kitchen and work therein.  Usually, I dedicate tea-crafting and baking to Brighid, the making of herbal healing remedies to Airmid and things that involve abundance, liquor/spirits and fertility to Rosmerta.  

These change depending on everything; the time of day, the season, my mood, the sunlight- today, I was called (quite loudly) to answer to Rosmerta.  Her altar moves around the house- all of my altars do.  Not just because I am in the transistion of moving, but because no one place ever feels permanently right to me.  


I follow daylight and the wind, I follow the call of crows in the evening as they fly from pear tree to pear tree out back, or the gentle chirp of robins beneath the guelder rose.  Sometimes my altars are out on the stumps of long dead trees, or on the boughs of nursing logs in the forest, or even on the moll-hill mounds in the patches of herb Robert and creeping buttercup by the garden gate.  In the kitchen, the altar is wherever the clearest space is!  What isn’t cluttered with antique teacups and saucers, or potato bags and apples, or even the coffee maker and magic bullet, becomes a space for the altar.

Rosmerta’s repaired statue stands anywhere she likes.  Sometimes on the secret cabinet compartments above the sink or on the counter-top where I bake my tea cookies and grind my herbs.  Recently, I’ve been going through a transformation of the self and the home- Andrew graduated from his program, my sister came back for a visit which gives me a world of inner peace, state budget cuts put me and my department on the chopping block and I’m being tormented by the strangest paranoia.  It doesn’t seem like the end of the world, and I don’t think it is… it’s all just an awful lot of change, and anyone who knows me personally knows that I possess a visceral and almost violent fear of sudden change heh…


Setting up and dismantling altars is one of my forms of meditation.  Not only do I get the outlet to exercise my aesthetic, my desires and feelings but I get to connect and watch the energy of creation build and be destroyed all of the time.  Sometimes I do it without thinking; with no intention, reason or desire- I just start throwing things together until it feels right, and I’ll find something beautiful, peaceful, and powerful standing before me.


In these times when the whole world is being loaded with stress and everyone feels so alone, misunderstood and disconnected I think it’s important that people find something to believe in that is good, find something that gives them a sense of belonging and worth.  Even if I feel surrounded by disingenuous asses, arrogant she-devils and all manner of cold and self important individuals, I remember that everyone is as misunderstood and unknown as I feel most of the time.  


It’s okay to feel misunderstood because you’re probably being misunderstood by one person or another, especially by those more ego-driven than you think you are personally.  The people you call important are probably as flawed as you, and those who find the time to put you down or resent you do not have the monopoly on whatever it is that makes them feel so important.  


We all have the same problems with different manifestations, so I think it’s vital we find our own peace in the world and acknowledge the abundance we really have.