Dear Friend and Reader,
THERE IS SO MUCH going on right now in the human world that I would like everyone to take a few moments to extricate themselves from their surroundings for one moment. Allow yourselves the pleasure of soul-suspension and enter the state of timelessness that Samhain, or Halloween, provides.
I was talking to a friend today about voting and he said something that I thought was very real, and very wonderful. Upon asking him if he cared about what was going on in the political spectrum, he replied, “Political concerns are short-lived.”
As angry as I get about all the issues coming to the fore, as frustrated as I have been at the stagnation of life’s progress, these words rang true to me, and they came from the very spirit of this Sabbath. The process of life is a brief one. In that spirit, the best revenge is living well and to the fullest. Like what King said, you cannot fight violence with violence, nor can you fightВ ignorance with ignorance. A warrior of Light must understand life’s brevity and gravity and have a sword tempered by heavy doses of joy. There are things much higher than what gets discussed at a table. The processes of the Sun, Moon, stars, for example, and the mysteries of the deep forest are a few.
But especially, this day is about those who have passed. And so, in that vein, I would like to tell you all a story aboutВ a loved one who has passed from this world in order to pay him homage. His name was Grendel and he was my first cat.
When I turned eighteen I decided it was time to get a place of my own.В My partner at the time was working on the road and I rarely saw him. It was only a matter of time before I decided to get a cat. It just so happened that a friend of mine’s mother had a kitten. He was under a year old and too mischeivious to keep in the woman’s house. I guess he was knocking stuff over all the time, getting into things that he wasn’t supposed to. In either case, my friend told me that his mother wouldn’t miss this cat much and so I could have him.