Nox Amicus

Last Tuesday afternoon the moon was new and the time had come to complete the past cycle and begin this one.

Last month I focused on Words – their audience, their intent, and their meaning. Words are at the core of my self-expression – I sit and think and craft what I’m going to say, mostly because I realized long ago that one of my two biggest fears is being misunderstood.

I was on the brink of using Words last Monday, and using them in a way that risked muddling the message I was trying to send. Someone had posted something on Facebook about an advance they’d made in their life and self-expression, and I was about to comment on a realization I had had several years before that prompted me to think similarly.

Then I stopped. How was what I was preparing to say serving HIS story? Was it doing anything at all other than promoting myself? Was I just trying to be cool?

Cool.

I grew up with Happy Days and Fonzie – cool was in my psyche at a critical developmental stage. In seventh grade, I knew I wasn’t cool – I had no hope of being cool. My parents were the ages of the grandparents of most of my peers. I had a world-view and priorities that weren’t at all like those of my classmates. Everything for me was cause and effect, everything was quantifiable. So I approached a classmate who I saw as “cool” and asked him what would qualify. I tried to establish some kind of scale where things you did or said accrued “points” and once you got enough points you were cool.

Hopeless. Utterly hopeless.

During my freshman year in high school I torpedoed any possible chance of “cool”. There was a talent show and I thought I’d enter and sing. I’d been in the grade school glee club, and I used to sing at home with my sister, so this seemed like a good plan. The downside was that I had zero knowledge of popular music. My dad was 63 when I was in high school – so the music at home was mostly his big band records. My sister introduced me to The Carpenters and Barry Manilow – but I knew they wouldn’t fit. My father’s favorite contemporary song was “If” by Bread. He also liked the jazz guitarist Tony Mottola, who had recorded a jazz instrumental version of “If”. So what do I do? Stand in front of my entire high school as a freshman and sing “If” backed by Tony Mottola’s jazz guitar. Thus ended any hopes of my ever being one of the “cool” kids. At least I walked away feeling like I’d honored my father and his sacrifices that put me in that school.

But time is a funny thing. The time at home getting lost in music helped me find my first group of real friends – oddly enough, met at a Halloween party trying to pick music for everyone else to listen to. It put me in the folk group at school where more friends were made. All of these people are still profoundly important in my life. This “outsiderness” also fed my fascination with computers, which led to my first career, which led to my first band. Fast forward to today and all of the gifts that made me an outsider then are the things I am valued for in my communities today.

So the theme for this cycle is Acceptance. To be cool is to find Acceptance – but to be able to be yourself and to find Acceptance is even better. When people of good character show up in our lives being unapologetically who they are they should be embraced, not questioned, because it is their very diversity that gives color to our worlds.

As Tuesday moved into Wednesday this week, at precisely midnight, the moon became New Again. It’s the first New Moon of 2021 and a time for new possibilities – and in this case, time to dig deeper into the work of these posts.

During this past cycle my focus was on the business of the end of the year – primarily Releasing that which did not serve me, and in doing so, welcoming either something new or the space to allow better things to grow.

One of the things I’ve wanted to Release from last year was fear and anxiety. The last few months of the year saw it consume me – all of it based on historical triggers that can’t be erased, just re-framed. I focused a lot on things I had done that I wish I could undo, and on wrongs that were done to me. All the scars that make up who we are. My goal wasn’t to get rid of them – they are woven into my fabric – but I wanted to blend and soften them a bit.

Anxiety isn’t always bad. When I was young, starting at about five years old, I rebelled against the Catholic Church – there was SO much incongruity and hypocrisy (some of you know the story of when, at a precocious age, I asked a priest why he yelled so much during a homily). Fast forward a few years and there was a priest in my grade school parish who was the first spiritual leader that made sense. There’s a bit in the Catholic Mass just after the Lord’s Prayer known as the embolism. The line, spoken by the officiant, was “Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”  Father Sullivan never said it that way though – he said “…from all undue anxiety…”. Suddenly faith could be malleable, even if it wasn’t taught that way. The addition of a single Word made me feel less edgy and more hopeful. Subconsciously, this was imprinted – “the words you use matter”.

A few years later my dad began working from home. He was a regional sales manager and traveled a lot – so why rent an office only he ever went to? I got to watch him at his IBM Selectric typewriter – typing letter after letter. Phones weren’t really his thing either – it was all about writing. I saw him type thoughts, crafting paragraphs on the fly. That stuck too. Words matter.

The lessons continued – public speaking in high school, radio in college, newspaper writing after that, the radio/television/film degree, the communications degree – words matter; what we say, and how we say them – right down to the nuance of choice. Sure – there have been times when I’ve spoken before I’ve thought and I really wished I could take something back – but I try to learn from those times.

A few weeks ago I started to explore TikTok. I had dismissed it – I just didn’t have time for the kinds of content I’d seen – but it’s tough to disregard a billion people. I created an account and let the algorithm guide me. I began to find “my people” – nerdy, geeky, shy, anxious, talented, confident – all finding new and different ways to express themselves. I liked, I followed, I chatted – I haven’t posted yet, but I already have 28 followers who are waiting.

The algorithm led me to someone who was singing an original song about their experience with bullying. Their performance was raw and powerful – if there was a genre for “punk-folk ukulele”, this was it. But there was a line at the end of the verse that floored me: “They don’t even have to hurt me to keep me in my place”. My years of fear and anxiety coalesced by someone else’s words. So I commented – like you do. My comment was basically “This powerful truth is resonant… thank you for putting words to my feelings too.” As of this writing 2100 people have ‘liked’ my comment. This person and their song touched tens of thousands of souls, and my gratitude was echoed by two thousand. Their words made a difference – and apparently, mine did too.

So the focus this month is Words. Which Words are used, when they are used, how they are used, who hears them, and what was their audience and intent? Sometimes the message is explicit, sometimes implicit, but every message eventually finds its audience.

No song this time – neither The Monkees nor Missing Persons fit this theme. But I will sign off with a quote from Rumi…

“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” -Rumi

On Monday morning the moon was New again – the last New Moon for 2020. Yes, we’re starting to talk about “the last [x] for 2020”.

During the last cycle, I focused on Motivation. I had acknowledged that Words of Affirmation were high on my list of sources of Motivation, but what else? And how could I be more self-sufficient in my Motivation? How can I make the most of the gift of time?

I ended up spending a lot of the last cycle listening – listening for cues to where the next step might be, listening to my intuition – seeing where I was drawn and where I was pulled away, and more than anything, listening to the silence.

I was also gearing up for the tooth extraction. I had been really disappointed in myself for how the first attempt went – but at the same time, forgiving. My body and my psychology have often had their own agenda and I’ve gone along for the ride. But I started to dig into that more – trying to find the motivation for the anxiety. I dug back – way back – to an incident from grade school and an incident from high school. Things that until now less than a handful of people knew – and even now, only a few more – but encounters that both shape and haunt me. I did my digging though – and learned to accept that the past is in the past.

It was interesting looking at these chapters and seeing how they had helped to adversely motivate me throughout my life. Holding onto a regret from grade school, and another from high school – all wrapped in “I could have been/done better”. Perhaps the analysis of Motivation wasn’t just what nudges me forward – but what also urges me to hold back.

Something interesting has been happening during the recovery from the extraction though. There was apparently a substantial infection under the tooth – something that could have been there since the audible root fracture earlier this year – but I suspect it’s been there even longer. I “feel” different now that it’s been removed – my brain is clearer, I have more energy (despite still being tired) – in essence, I feel like the toxicity is gone. I feel like a lot of my toxic internal dialog and anti-motivation has gone with it. I’m not as anxious – I’ve been taking my blood pressure daily and since the surgery, I’m down about 20 points.

Perhaps working through and targeting motivational elements of my anxiety, and then having a physical manifestation of that toxicity removed, has opened a new path on this journey.

Which brings us to the theme for this cycle – Release. There is so much to Release from this year – the year, to start – but the emptiness, the fear, the disappointment, the disenfranchisement, the longing. As we look toward 2021 and the easing of viruses and toxicity – both literal and metaphorical – how will we look back? It’s said that distance makes everything seem small – I am hoping that before we get too deep into 2021, toxicity at a global, national, and personal level are all diminished.

So this cycle I will work to continue to Release the things that hold me back, that stop me from being as healthy as I can be, and that hinder me from sharing my best with those around me. There will be new infections, new storms, new battles to fight; but maybe by releasing the emergency brake, I can navigate them all just a little more fluidly.

Shortly after midnight Sunday morning the moon was New again – so it became time to review the last cycle and prepare for this one.

Last month I spoke about Intention, and as I did, I said “It’s not enough to know what we do and why we do it – but it’s important, especially right now, to understand all the nuance around us.”

There is a German proverb that says “Der liebe Gott steckt im detail”, which translates to ‘God is in the detail’. There are other variants that say that the devil is in the detail – but the end result is that whatever will save or ruin you is not always what is obvious to you, but breathes in whatever is under the surface.

That nuance bit me this month. I had been so focused on Intention that I had lost track of Motivation. To me, Intention describes what our thought process is AS we are doing a thing – while Motivation occurs before the fact, and provides the answer to WHY we are doing the thing. How did we get to be at Choice? What drives us to move in a particular direction? Who has the influence to Motivate us? It is interesting to me that Motivation is wrapped up in four of the six journalistic questions.

I have been feeling mired in doldrums for quite a while lately. I’m sure this isn’t unique to me, as I suspect much of it is pandemic related. I can usually self-motivate pretty well – but when there is a lack of positive feedback it takes a toll. Not being able to play music with the band has been tough. Also, over the last few months, there has also been a near absence of professional feedback.

This week saw a change though and opened my eyes to this lack of Motivation. I took a “tech support” question from a friend and spent about half an hour troubleshooting over the phone until we cleared the issue. The accomplishment felt great, but even better was a few hours later when I got a beautiful ‘thank you’ email. It was then that the prior lack of personal or professional feedback came into focus.

So this month I’ll look at Motivation. Just as there are ‘love languages’, I imagine there are Motivation-languages too – so what are mine? Words of Affirmation, certainly – but anything else? Also, I have always recognized that my needs are not as dire in these times as those of many that I’m close to – so how can I be more self-sufficient in my Motivation? How can I make the most of the gift of time?

On Friday, October 16th the moon was New, so eight days ago I was called to find a focus for this cycle. The last cycle saw my attention move to Stillness. Before speaking, I wanted to ask myself who or what would I be speaking for? Was I speaking an actual truth, or simply my truth? Would there be a benefit to these words or actions beyond my own ego?

There are a lot of words flying around these days. Politics has a way of convincing everyone that they are the ones with the moral high ground. Myself included. But I also believe that there is no such thing as a moral high ground – that everything is a matter of perspective. You are not absolutely right about anything. Neither am I. So that is where we can begin.

Finding this cycle’s focus was amusing. I asked what the Intention should be – and the word I got back was Intention. It’s a word I found trouble with some years back – I learned the hard way that it is dangerous to act and react without knowing what your Intent is. That differs from motivation – we act on motivation all the time – but to what end? And do we really examine the cost? We post something snarky on social media because we’re blowing off steam, but what if the eyes that see the post don’t share our snark? Words are powerful. And words are actions.

We know that every action has a reaction – but I want to share something from an old spiritual path. When we throw a stone – we change, the stone changes, the medium the stone passes through changes, and the place where the stone lands changes. There is impact to more than we initially see – this is why Intention is important.

It’s not enough to know what we do and why we do it – but it’s important, especially right now, to understand all the nuance around us.

No song this time – and that’s done with Intent too.

This morning at 7am (ET) the moon was new again – filled with possibilities for the upcoming cycle.

Last month I chose the Domino as a point of focus. As part of last month’s post, I was asked what happens if you get out of line, or get into a new line. I replied that being the Domino is more about what happens when we’re at choice. That we can arrive there when waiting is filled, or we can create our own inflection point. Either way – when it’s time to act, it’s time to act – even if action is inaction.

There were many opportunities to focus on that point of choice this past cycle. Whether to act or observe, whether to speak or be silent, whether to be in motion or to be still.

This is a time when many of us are moved by our passions or beliefs to rise and defend or proselytize our positions on the events of the day. Passions are running very high and there is little to no room for compromise.

In March of 2014, I locked into the spiritual path that I’m currently on, and one of the lessons that the Universe has been trying to teach me is to know when to “sit down and shut up”. It sounds a lot more coarse than it is – but that’s to provide emphasis. Can something really be gained by acting or speaking publicly or are we just looking to stand on a soapbox and be heard? Our opinions always matter – but that doesn’t mean they should (or even need to) be shared.

There is a four-step path to action in my faith – To Know, To Will, To Dare, and To Keep Silent. In my interpretation, this translates to having a thought, to decide or will to put the thought into action, to actually dare to commit to the action, and then to keep silent and not be boisterous about it. Energetically this last part sends the action out to its own fruition – where speaking about it might draw it back to us. It also dovetails nicely with my mantra to ‘want without expectation’.

To me, this silence is the most important piece – without it, none of the rest has much hope for success. So for this lunar cycle, my theme will be Stillness. Before speaking, I want to ask myself who or what am I speaking for? Am I speaking an actual truth, or simply my truth? Is there a benefit to these words or actions beyond my own ego?

Many paths allow for meditation or silent reflection, and this year has certainly brought its share of opportunities for solitude – but I have to wonder if I’ve actually used that effectively. For all of these reasons, I feel that it’s important this month for me to really learn to be still.

https://youtu.be/WejIlP5nFxo

It’s been a week since we were last visited by a new moon – making me seven days overdue in posting the focus for this coming cycle.

I had ruminated a lot on topics of Faith last month, and the role it plays in both shaping and distorting our reality. When I was wondering about this month’s focus, I was thinking about how Faith can help lead us toward answers in our lives. As I was thinking the focus could be answers, I started to reason that just as data leads to information, with the right perspective, answers can lead to solutions. So was the focus to be Answers or Solutions? When looking at that choice I thought, “well, maybe I’m supposed to be looking at Questions”?

I sat with that for a few days. I was reminded of an event during my first Christmas break from college in 1981. I came home for the holiday, flush with new ideas and new ways of thinking, and went out to lunch with my girlfriend. As we sat and I was thinking about my first semester philosophy course, and as we were surrounded by the trappings of Christmas in a shopping mall, I asked her “why do you believe what you believe”? When she answered “because they told me to”, I should have known to run then.

How can Faith exist without being questioned? How can we do or be anything in our lives without pushing the limits, without testing, and without probing? Faith is a great path – but it is only the hypothesis, it is not destined to be its own proof. For the New Testament fans out there, we can even look at John 20:27 where Jesus beckons Thomas to test and prove rather than just rely on Faith.

Questions lead to theories which lead to answers which lead to solutions. Each are Dominos – one knocks down the next which knocks down the next. Following the path is predestined, but what we take away from the experience isn’t.

So after all that, the focus for this month is Domino – and yes, it was partially inspired by pizza too – but I want to turn to the band Genesis for a set of lyrics queued up in the attached YouTube clip (“Domino Part Two – The Last Domino” from Invisible Touch):

There’s nothing you can do
when you’re the next in line
You’ve got to go domino
Do you know
Do you know
Do you know what you have done?
Do you see what you’ve begun?
‘Cause there’s nothing, nothing, nothing
There’s nothing you can do
There’s nothing you can do
Do you see, do you see what you’ve done?

“Domino Part Two – The Last Domino” by Genesis from the album Invisible Touch

What’s the next step? What’s the next challenge? Where do we grow from here?

There’s nothing you can do when you’re the next in line.

Have a safe month!!

The moon was New at 1:33pm this afternoon, and while thinking about this coming cycle, I realized that I had no idea how to follow up last month. The last focus was on Light – which brought thoughts on the power of illumination and the contrast offered by shadow and relief. It also enforced the realization that our perception of a thing is governed at least in part by the Light with which it is viewed.

I feel like a lot of things have been exposed to Light for all of us in the last month, and for the months before that. I’ve always believed that bringing something to light was the first step in healing. So I had held a silent intention last month that by focusing on light, on discovery, and on revelation that we would all start to collectively rise out of the malaise and make positive changes in our local and global realities.

That didn’t quite work. Entropy has a lot of influence this year – and while we try to excise some of it, it counters and tries to grow back like weeds invading a garden. Weeds make use of the light so that they can grow too. Welcome to the paradox.

Even though I don’t follow an Abrahamic tradition, I still believe the bible is a fine ‘book of ancient wisdom’ – so in that spirit, I found myself quoting Hebrews 11:1 to a friend last week, which reads: “Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” As I was relating this conversation to Laura during a phone call on Sunday, it occurred to me that this might be a solution to the paradox, and the focus for this lunar cycle.

Sometimes when reality doesn’t work, we need to transcend truth. To me, Faith is an active word – having Faith in an outcome is not “letting go and letting god”; it involves effort, attention, and intention. We can’t just say “I have faith that everything will be okay” and then go make a sandwich. If you put more effort into the sandwich, that’s what the gods will focus on too.

To me, any reward from Faith is based on our treating Faith as a roadmap and then building the necessary infrastructure around it. As Sophocles is purported to have written in Philoctetes: ‘And heaven ne’er helps the men who will not act’ – or more colloquially ‘God helps those who help themselves’.

To look beyond the obstacles that confront us, and see the paths to transform our realities, I believe we have to start with a Faith that our destination waits for us. Whether that destination embodies good health and peace of mind, freedom to be accepted as ourselves without prejudice, or simply the enjoyment of the benign influence of good laws under a free government – Faith can be our walking stick. We still need to take the steps and do the work, but maybe the Faith that there is ‘better’ can offer a bit of support along the way.

Last weekend brought us another New Moon. To steal a line from “What’d I Miss?”, from Hamilton: “there is no more status quo / but the sun comes up and the world still spins.”

There aren’t words I can use that will be thoughtful enough, descriptive enough, or delicate enough to include here about everything that’s transpired since I wrote my last New Moon post on May 24th. In fact, that’s been part of the reason that this post is so delayed – I kept writing… but I’d get two pages in before I ever got to the point of this post. So I am deliberately narrowing the focus. I am mindful of all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that is about to happen in the world – this post doesn’t address any of that directly. This is intended to be about my path and how I work with the changing cycles of the moon.

Last month, as I shifted my focus from Chaos to Conflict, I wrote:

“Conflict, and the tension that is part of it, is what propels us forward. It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited or aggressive, but it has to be genuine and asserted. There is nothing wrong with the initiation of conflict if it comes organically and is part of an over-arching process. If it moves the game forward and is mindfully woven with threads of compassion, then it is a natural, and essential, part of this thing called life.”

Again, I wrote that on May 24th.

Personally, I ran headlong into that sense of Conflict with my brother’s passing – my grief expressed itself as anger toward a variety of targets. I kept meditating on the concept that Conflict and tension were necessary regardless of how uncomfortable they were, but there has been a lot of it.

In addition to being a New Moon, last weekend brought the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, our longest day of the year. This is where this month’s focus comes in – but in a reversal of sorts. For this cycle, the song gave me the theme:

Give me the lights, precious lights

Give me lights

Give me my hope, give me my energy

You can turn the wrong into right

Precious lights

illuminate me, carry me away

~ “Lights” by Styx from the album Cornerstone

Light can be so many different things – it can be a candle or a flashlight, it can be solar, chemical or bioluminescent, it can be harsh or it can be calming. Light is also nothing without the relief brought by shadow. This afternoon I was talking with a trusted soul about how difficult it’s been to write this – when I remembered my brother talking about Astronomical Spectroscopy – how we can study the physical manifestation of celestial objects by the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum they radiate.

This reminded me that it can never be just one thing. You can’t have purple without blue and red. You can’t have orange without red and yellow. You can’t have full and brilliant sunlight without every color that makes up the rainbow – plus so many more that we can’t even see with our human eyes. And while we’re on the subject of rainbows this month: happiness and peace to all my LGBTQIAPK friends!!

Shining a light on our troubles is all well and good – but I think it’s important to be mindful of the properties of the Light we’re shining. Not all Lights are reflected in the same way, or seen similarly through different lenses. As we move through this cycle, it remains my goal to try to see as many shades as I can – to appreciate both the joys and frustrations through more than just my own lens. But I also want to echo that chorus – that Lights might give us hope and give us energy, transform us and our circumstance, and help to illuminate all of us.

At 1:39pm on Friday the moon was new again, marking the time to roll into another theme of focus.

The last lunar cycle saw me looking at Chaos – fitting since it seems to be more obvious these days. Over the past week I’ve felt more caught in the maelstrom than I remember being in a long time – as I said last month, I’ve been easily irritable lately, just very unsettled, and it doesn’t take very much at all to set me off. Usually, it’s “we need you to…” and I’m off. Requirements and expectations have taken a lot of effort for me to fold into the mix.

This led to me tilting at windmills a lot – fighting without direction or opponent. Then, last week, I started to apply a different analogue.

I used to think of chaos in terms of the [fundamental physical forces](https://www.space.com/four-fundamental-forces.html) (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and gravitational). I used to envision things veering close to one another and then peeling away – always swirling in the eddies of everything. It was gentle, it was elegant, and it was fascinating.

The new perspective is more of a pinball machine. Sure, there is the occasional magnet in the table that causes the ball to change course, and there is a strong reliance on gravity – but for the most part, progress is determined by what you do with the flippers, the angles of reflection off the bumpers and kickers, and how well you can manage all of them to hit the targets and advance the score.

And that’s when it hit me. Literally.

I have been conflict-averse all of my life. I needed to be. You can’t make everyone happy if you are in conflict with them – you have to be amenable, you have to be conciliatory, resistance isn’t just futile – it’s bad form.

But really – Conflict, and the tension that is part of it, is what propels us forward. It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited or aggressive, but it has to be genuine and asserted. There is nothing wrong with the initiation of conflict if it comes organically and is part of an over-arching process. If it moves the game forward and is mindfully woven with threads of compassion, then it is a natural, and essential, part of this thing called life.

So the theme for this month is Conflict. And no – you know me – this does NOT mean I’m going to pick fights every chance I get. But I will try to be more mindful of when I am feeling resistant, or insistent, and do a better job of advocating for myself.