Maritzia's · Thoughts

My sister-in-law is just an amazing individual.  She's one of those people with so much energy, you get tired just being in the same room with her!  But she puts all of that fabulous energy to good use.  She does management consulting in the video games industry, which, as we all know, is not exactly the bastion of feminism.  She does a huge amount of charity work (she was President of the Board of Directors for Room to Read Canada), and she is extremely active in the sport of Ultimate.  She has been on several championship teams, and last year in Finland, her team (the Canadian National Team) won the gold medal at the World Ultimate Championships.  And this was at the age of 41!

Anja has been working in England for the last year or so, and while there she has been active, of course, in the Ultimate scene there.  Well, I just heard that Anja has been asked to coach the British National team!  Hooray for Anja!

Ladies, if you want a female role model for your children, Anja is you gal.  She's smart, funny, caring, energetic, fit, and never gives up.  She works in a male dominated industry and gets ahead not by being catty and petty, but just by being really fabulous at her job.  Anja, this one's for you, hon!

Coming from a Catholic background and having spent time in the convent, I am obviously familiar not only with ritual, but with creating ritual.  However, when you step outside of a familiar belief system to create what is meaningful to you, in essence creating your own religion/spiritual tradition, it's hard to visualize what you want to do ritually.  I've performed a couple of rituals here and there that I've taken whole cloth from others, but I haven't really been creating my own rituals.

Fast forward to last week.  We found out that my husband's brother has cancer.  He will be having surgery next Tuesday and I want to perform a healing ritual for him.  I've been scouring the net for healing rituals or spells, and haven't come up with much that really speaks to what I want, so I have come to the point where I have to start creating my own rituals.  For those of you who have been doing this for years, you might think my hesitance is a little silly.  But coming from a Catholic background, where you are constantly warned about the importance of ritual and performing it correctly, it's a hard barrier to break through, to create your own rituals.

Anyway, I've got definite ideas about what I want to do.  This will be the first time I do a really full ritual, complete with calling of directions and casting a circle.  I've also been struggling with a deity to evoke.  Then I was reading a blog this morning talking about the history of Brigid and it struck me that she is a perfect goddess for this ritual, especially in her mother aspect.  So, I'll cast my circle and call the directions.  Then I will invoke Bridgid, cleanse my crystal and bless it, then light my candles with an invocation for healing and begin my healing chant.  I will close by thanking Bridgid and then closing the circle.  I'm still working on the details, but it's becoming pretty clear in my mind what I want to do.

This will be a new thing for me, but Cliff's illness has moved me to reach out of my comfort zone to help care for and heal him.  What better motivation is there than the need of a loved one?

I can't remember what movie or TV show that line was on, but it really struck me when I heard it.  It so exactly describes my relationship with my husband and his with me.  I've tried in my adult life to follow my intuition and the path laid out for me.  It's not easy when you're an obsessive over-thinker/worrier.  But sometimes things are so clear that even someone like me can see it and know it's time to move.

Both Mark and I spent our adult lives believing that we were meant to be alone, that was our destiny.  We followed our individual paths, went the way we were led, and while we were lonely at times, we were content with our lives as they were.

My path at the time was toward religious life in the Catholic Church.  At the age of 30 I entered a community but left before making vows.  It just wasn't the right fit.  I drifted for a while, got some desperately needed therapy *laughs*, pursued a fairly successful treatment for my fibromyalgia, and eventually, as I approached my 40s, I again sought religious life.  I found the perfect community for my.  They lived a close community life, which is what I sought, had retained some of the traditional practices of religious life, worked with the elderly, at least here in the states.  I seemed to fit in with them perfectly, and was all set to enter.

Then they asked me to wait for a year while they worked out some internal issues at the convent.  I was at a bit of a loss, because I had already shipped my mother off to live with my brother, had divested myself of a lot of the material junk that we tend to surround ourselves with, had withdrawn from ministries at church.  So I looked around for something to keep me amused while waiting for the year to pass.

I found EverQuest.  I began playing on New Years Day.  Believe me, that'll keep you busy *laughs*.  I was active in the game and active on the message boards for the forum.  I enjoyed myself, but I still kept my strong connection with the convent I was entering.  Everything was going well.  Then one day I posted something on the message board about missing EQ and the forums when I entered the convent.  A couple of days later, I got an e-mail from a cute little gnome that I met on the message boards.  And that was that.

He e-mailed me because he was interested in my decision to enter religious life, what it would be like, why I was interested, did I have any doubts.  He had a huge number of questions.  So I answered them and asked some of my own.  Thereby began the most voluminous correspondence of my life.  For almost two weeks, we kept the internet hot with our e-mails.  We discussed everything under the sun, life, religion, sprirituality, family, past experiences, everything.  I shared more with him than I did any other individual in my life, before or since.  We clicked, there's no other way to describe it. 

Next thing you know, we were phone callings as well as e-mailing.  Then I was flying out to meet him, and suddenly, 3 months later, my belongings were all packed up and I was moving across the country so we could be together.  That was almost 5 years ago.  As I said, I'm not one to jump without thoroughly investigating every detail, worrying and obsessing over every move.  But when you know something is right, you know it's right.

Over the years, I often pondered why God would put this strong attraction to religious life in me and never let it be fulfilled.  I was always delayed and put off by one thing or another happening in my life.  Well, now I know.  The one thing that attracted Mark and caused him to e-mail me in the first place was my attraction to religious life.  Because I followed the path before and kept at it even when I was constantly disappointed and delayed, I came to the path's culmination.

We don't always know where the path is leading us.  We might think we know, but we really don't.  All we can do is follow the path and trust that in the end, we'll know the reasons.  I found my reason, and he's all I never knew I always wanted.