Little Altars Everywhere

My title for this post is taken, of course, from the book by Rebecca Wells, who also gave us Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.  Her writing is so honest and sometimes so painful to read.  What I love most is not necessarily the nature of the relationships between the women in her books, but simply that they have a deep, abiding relationship.  I know that I am fortunate to have had several dear friends and a handful of sister-friends.  What I am trying to pay attention to now is how to build new friendships with the women who may be the next YaYas in my life. As those friendships are slowly constructed, I find that I spend quite a bit of my time with my own "Little Altars."  I have them all over my personal space:  a trinket, a photo, a collection of objects - so many things help me keep the physical and the spiritual worlds connected.

Growing up, I learned to associate the word "altar" with terror and death.  An altar was some horrible construction of rocks that was prepared for a bloody sacrifice in Old Testament stories, stories told to children as part of our Christian education.  Sheep, primarily, but also calves and birds were ritually killed to appease a god that my child's heart rejected and wanted no part of.  I vividly remember the picture in the Sunday School lesson book depicting the worst of these stories, the one about Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  The picture, big and in full color, shows a teenage Isaac, nearly naked and hands bound behind his back, being pulled by his hair, belly up, onto a stone altar.  Abraham, in flowing robes and long gray beard and hair, has a raised knife over his son, ready to plunge it into the innocent boy in obedience to God.  Behind his upraised hand is an angel, reaching out to stop the awful act.  Turns out the God didn't really want the sacrifice, only the willingness to make it.  That's how it was explained to me anyway, but I never did buy it.  This may have been one of my earliest clues that adults didn't always know what they were talking about.

I've since reclaimed the word "altar," taking it away from the themes of violence and domination and giving it over to the themes of connection, remembrance and embracing love.  Sometimes they are deliberately constructed, sometimes they are recognized as altars after they have been in place a while.  Sometimes they are elaborate, and sometimes so simple that only one or two people would recognize them as altars.

 This book, Beautiful Necessity:  The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars by Kay Turner is a 'must read' for any woman who recognizes that among the items she places in her home, either by design or unconsciously, are many altars.  A friend loaned this book to me several years ago and it opened my eyes to what I was doing with my collections of doodads and chotchkes.  They were altars!  After this revelation the altar building began consciously, and has become something that is an important part of my spiritual life.



Here are some of the altars that I see every day, and really don't want to be without.
                                                     
These pine cones were collected on our wedding day, June 18, 1977.  We were married at Camp Keola at Huntington Lake, California, a Mennonite Church Camp in the Sierra at about 7,000 feet.  Gorgeous spot, beautiful wedding.  The pine cones have been indoors for the last  36 years, which is probably why they have lasted so long.  I love seeing them, knowing they are a memory of and a tribute to the promises we made that day.

This Russian Icon is Our Lady of Tenderness.  I bought her at a convent gift shop in Fresno after I came to know Mary as someone who could comfort me and open my heart in ways that hadn't been opened before.  My attraction to icons was made more clear to me after I read Jim Forest's Praying With Icons, and this amazing tradition was introduced to me.  I'd grab her if the house was on fire.





This one is for the grandbabies.  It began with the nest and bird when my daughter was pregnant with Asaka. There is the dried husk of a sunflower, the first of the season, that bloomed on the day he was born, a tiger-eye stone (he was born under the sign of the Chinese Tiger), an amethyst which was a prayer stone during Kiyoko's gestation, and a small carved dragon charm, because she was born under the sign of the Dragon.  The glass piece in the background was purchased in Vermont when our daughter graduated from Vermont Law.  To me it looks like fiery, fluid spirit - just the thing to watch over these precious children.



The three cuties in this photo are my two sisters and I (Barbara, Pam, then me on the right).  This was probably taken on an Easter Sunday around 1961 or 1962, judging by the pin-curled hair and the starched dresses.  I keep it in a collection of special photos on a wall to remind me of my sisters and to remember that they, like me, were once little girls, entirely innocent of our place in the world and what would come in the life ahead.  I love my sisters dearly but often do not know how to reach out to them or how to keep them close.  The photo keeps me hopeful that someday we'll figure it out.

Every year in California I would collect a little momento of hikes and outings I had been on.  These natural treasures would accumulate until each December, when I would use them for a holiday centerpiece, and then sometime around the new year I would take them to the San Joaquin River and give them back to the earth.  This became an important ritual for me and one I treasured as part of my growing sensibility for earth-based spirituality. The collection in this photo is from my last year in California.  Rather than let it go, I opted to bring it with me to DC.  It includes seeds of the California Buckeye, acorns from Valley Oaks, shells from the California Black Walnut, shells and stones from Pacific Coast beaches, and cones from Redwood Trees.  They sit in a lovely leaf-shaped dish from Ten Thousand Villages, reminding me of my roots as well as my kinship with the whole world.                                                    

There are many more altars in my home, and even more that are ephemeral.  The blooming dogwoods, the mating song of the Carolina Wren, the early evening lightening and thunder.  All keep me mindful of the largeness of life, the unavoidability of suffering, the necessity of beauty, the oneness of who we are and who we will become.  Little altars everywhere.                                                                         
                          

Wildflowers

Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin

  Spring has come late to the mid-Atlantic.  I say   this only because those who have been here a while say so.  They say the snow that fell the week before Easter, the forsythia that bloomed a month past the expected yellow fire was due, the delay of the cherry blossoms, all of this is not normal.  What I know is that this long awaited spring exposes a rift in my heart.  I am excited to learn about this new season in my new world, and I miss - with breathtaking depth - the spring in California.

northern watersnake

This week on Wednesday, Dwight filled in for me on childcare duty and I went on a guided wildflower walk.  It was a welcome gift that allowed me to get outdoors with like-minded grownups to see what grows on the forest floor in early spring before the trees leaf out.  I packed my binoculars and my loupe, but my wildflower identification book is for the western United States, so I left it home.  We met at a park on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, a place our guide, Stephanie, told us would be awash in wildflowers.  She was right about that and about so many other things we marveled at on that day.  Stephanie is someone I have taken several walks with, and who impresses everyone not only with her knowledge but with her ability to share it well.  Her love of this landscape is something I can hear in her voice as she points out a tree, and see in her body as she bends to examine a butterfly.  Although I do not yet know this place well enough to love it, I understand her love for it.  It is the same love I have for the Valley Oaks, for the red shafted flicker, and for the rush of melted snow coming down from the Sierra Nevada.

An expanse of Virginia Bluebells

If geography and place shape us, and I believe they do, how do wildflowers contribute to that process?  How does the struggle between native flowers and non-native invasive species speak to what I'm doing here?  How is it, in this crazy weather, we were able to find so many true ephemerals at just the right time when our walk was scheduled months ago?  What does it mean when a band of flowers a hundred yards long elicits amazement from my fellow walkers, when what I am looking for is the scale of the west, the vistas of flower covered hillsides with no boundaries other than the horizon?  Already I appreciate - truly - the beauty and uniqueness of this new home.  When will I fall in love with it?

Here are some of the delights we saw that day: 

Virginia Bluebells

Spring Beauties

    

Dutchman's Breeches

Bloodroot

                          

Trout Lily

Trillium

                            


 These and so many more!  It was an eye-opening, heart-expanding walk into a flower land I had never seen before.  By the end of the day I knew that while I still have most of my two feet in the California poppies and lupines, at least one toe is here, in the Virginia Bluebells.

Sigh . . .