Still Here (Midwinter)

Soon, I promise - promise myself - I will sit down and write a long update. Two months have passed since my last post, and so much has happened I hardly know where to start. Great changes both on our farm and in the outside world. A few of them good (adios, worst president in history! Hello, personal recovery!) but many of them terrible and dispiriting. 

Meanwhile, here is the new, post-Christmas midwinter altar. Usually this is a dark, rather frightening altar, with my Hecate icon or the storm tree paintings. But this year I don’t want anything gloomy. I swept the altar bare of all the Christmas gewgaws and glitter and place only three items. A silvery money plant, a garland of dried orange slices that Hope made, and my sleepy beast-man. 

The sleepy man is a ceramic figure I found in a thrift store many years ago. I love his gentle face, his whiskers, his strange paws, between which he holds a flower, and the generous mantle he is wrapped in. When I put him on the altar I think of peaceful hibernation, rest and restoration, and sweet dreams.