Community and Health - Again

As a follow up to a post from a few months ago, I've been to a few specialists in order to figure out what's going on with my health. Right now there's a good bit of evidence pointing to an auto-immune issue. I'm waiting on another test result, and then in two weeks I'm due to see a rheumatologist.

I'm hopeful that I'm finally coming up on the end of a lot of wondering, and that I'll finally be able to begin some sort of treatment that will allow me to feel better. Being sick has, unsurprisingly, affected a lot of areas of my life - and that includes spiritually, which has been hard.

I still make the time to keep up with my minimum commitments, tending to Aphrodite's shrine one a week, and the other shrines once a lunar month (at least). It is very important to me that I keep up with the work I am doing with Aphrodite, and it's important to me to maintain some connection to my other deities, as well. However, there are other projects and goals which have fallen to the side for now.

The other issue has been with finding spiritual community. I mentioned before there is a pagan group here as part of a UU church, but since I would have to walk to the church I'm going to wait for my health to get a little better (or at least for warmer weather) before looking into that.

So for the moment I'm left with online fellowship. There are still a lot of days I miss my old forum hangout. It hit me the other day that it's been almost two years since the issues with ownership/activity on that forum began. It's been hard to lose that place, because even though we often believed in different things, and practiced in different ways, it felt like we were often all on the same page. Oh well, guess there's no use dwelling, huh?

Beyond all that, I also want to mention that I have not forgotten the 30 days of deity devotion, it's just been hard to get the thoughts together in my mind with all that's going on. I do plan on getting back to it this month, hopefully on Sunday or early next week, although I do think I'm going to have to say some of the days out of order, and save some of the longer topics for now.

Coming Full Circle

While I'm not ready to get into the reason why just yet, I've recently found myself planning a shrine for Aphrodite. While thinking through the details of the shrine last night it hit me that in a sense I've somewhat come full circle on my path, as Aphrodite was the first deity I remember ever setting up an altar for and trying to establish a relationship with.

Now nothing really came from that attempt, which makes sense when I look back on it. My reasons were quite selfish and misguided at the time - but hey, I was only in the 6th grade, pretty much brand new to paganism, I still had a lot to learn in a lot of ways!

Still, I find it interesting that some fifteen years later I'm turning back to the first deity I ever felt anything for. I'm back at this starting point, but this time I've learned and experienced so much, and I think if I hadn't gone out there and really explored so much for all those years, I wouldn't have what was necessary to really be able to be successful with my current path.

I had to get out there and see that there were other traditions besides Wicca, I had to explore the religions I did, honor the gods I did, build those relationships, fall into reconstruction and see what was good about it, and the benefits of learning the history, but also at the same time to have some of the more negative experiences I had, to know what I did not like, what did not work for me, to have those experiences with other people, with tradition leaders, to meet good and not-so-good people. Even on a more day-to-day basis, to build relationships with family, to know myself and my own body more, heck, even to fall in love, live across the country, travel...

So coming back to this starting point, it's like another turn of the wheel, and I'm very excited to see what the coming years will bring.

Community, take two, and health.

As somewhat of a continuation of my last pagan community post, I'm starting to wonder if part of the issue isn't just plain old burn out on my part. I've spent a good amount of time over the last several years on various forums and the like, writing articles, answering questions, and all that sort of thing... and don't get me wrong, it's not all self-sacrifice or anything, I have certainly benefited from the community and I generally enjoy helping people, but it's all something that takes up quite a bit of time and energy.

So maybe it's time to take a break, stick around the more casual spots, and start having some more 'alone' time for a while. Re-charge a bit.

Of course, while part is likely burn-out in this specific area, a lot of it is probably just fatigue in general. I don't usually like to write about health issues and other things like that here, but maybe it's worth making a note of. I've had serious fatigue issues on and off for a few years now, but lately it's become severe enough that I've needed to start seeing a doctor. I'm actually scheduled for a sleep study next month. I'm very hopeful that they'll be able to figure out what's going on, and start fixing the problem. It's definitely been an impact on my life, and of course that includes my spiritual life.

But back to community, I was also considering looking into the local pagan community after a bit of me-time, which is something I haven't done since moving back to New Hampshire. I don't have much interest in practicing in a group, but there are some more community based groups, I guess you could call them? They don't seem to focus so much on group practice, but more on community and that sort of thing, which does appeal to me. It's been a long time since I actually had pagans that I could interact with offline, so it might be fun to explore that a bit.