For a long time, I kept my altar in the corner of my home office.  Partially because it was convenient, but mostly because my home office is on the second floor of my house.  Out sight and out of mind.

There wasn't anything overtly wrong with that arrangement.  I spend a lot of time in my office and the energy there is usually pretty calm.  I have incense and candles and a recliner in the corner where I sometimes take a meditation break.  But it is a working space.  

The office is where I write and blog and broadcast and make and take all sorts of phone calls and file my taxes and budget and pay bills and work on my shop...and the list goes on and on.

Which is probably why setting my grandmother's sideboard up as an altar in the corner of that work space never felt quite right. And why (after a year of keeping my altar in the office) I decided to bring a few key items down to shared first floor living space.

In my old house that space would have meant the den or kitchen but here, in this house, we have a few very appreciated extra rooms.  One of these is my home office.  Another is a living room  with a big mirror in the space that would ordinarily hold the black hole of an unused TV. 

No available TV means that other family members don't stay in the living room for long and because of this the room has gradually become my space and the natural repository for my favorite things. And so, over the last few weeks, it seemed more and more appropriate that my altar items be among those things.

The only problem I could see was this the living room is where we entertain the occasional guest and (shades of my mother) I found myself worrying about what that guest might think.

Magical Cabinet on Display for All to See!

So I began to change things in a cautious way.  The first change involved a very inconspicuous wall altar (above).  The second placed some occult looking tchotchkes on an upper shelf.  I noticed that other people noticed these changes but I found that I really wasn't all that interested in the conclusions that were drawn.

Recklessly, I began to fill up my grandmothers old china cabinet (at right) with the accoutrements of the Craft.  In a few short weeks the majority of my altar items had made their way downstairs.

The living room is different, now, though the change is not extreme. I don't have a permanent freestanding altar, my Goddess statues aren't big enough to stand out and there are a lot of things I put away when they aren't being used.  

At first glance the living room seems pretty ordinary or at the very least subtly unlike other small town rooms.  But subtle isn't the same as hiding and hiding was what the office altar really meant.  So why was I okay with doing that for an entire year?

Maybe because I didn't know how freedom felt.

Last month when I went to Salem I walked the busy streets in the company of dozens, if not hundreds, of other witches.  It seemed like everyone was wearing pentagrams and I saw that some were even wearing cloaks.  Nobody seemed concerned with that.  Which, of course, wasn't always the case.

In between the witch trials of 1693 (when my own great aunt was hung) and the pre-Halloween celebration of 2015 Salem changed from a place of rampant intolerance to pretty open-minded place. Mixing with that crazy crowd it occurred to me, that in order for that to happen, a whole lot of people had to overcome their fear of what other people think.  And that was meaningful to me.

I am still mostly in the closet in my daily life. Nobody notices my herb garden. Or asks me why I don't go to church.  The outer changes I am making are tiny, insignificant, almost imperceptible shifts - but, for me, they are a start.

We began our new home search in late 2011 following the last flood evacuation I resolved to ever participate in. We did not have a lot of money - far less than any house meeting our criteria was likely to cost but we found one anyway. The downside was that it needed loads of work! We moved in in 2012 with only the bedrooms and den finished (and the downstairs bathroom in progress) and wrapped up the living room and loads of odds and ends after we had settled in. 

Delayed by other (really big) projects, we have just finished our home office and are now starting the kitchen.  As is so often the case my attention is focused on what remains to be done (front hall, upstairs bath, kitchen, and assorted bits and pieces) instead of what all we have accomplished.  So I wanted to take a moment to remember the work that has been done here. Current pics of our home office follow with a shot of the original room at the end of this post. 

As everyone who follows this blog knows, I am involved in the extensive remodeling of a sadly neglected old home.  Work on the house has focused on cleaning and rebuilding thus far and both have required more work than we anticipated - and we anticipated a lot.  Working long hours and seeing not a lot of measurable progress has been stressful for everyone.

I bought the house in a little over a month ago and I took my first break Monday to go to an auction in search of furniture.  It was a long auction and hot and I have to say that didn't enjoy it at all.  There was a chair there I loved - an old Morris chair in need of repair - and it would have been perfect for my new under-construction living room. I regretted having given up on it so easily.  

In the wake of the house purchase and paying for repairs we could not do ourselves, there is no money for retail furnishings.  I had firmly decided, however, that it would be silly to go the expensive and labor of moving our old worn out living room set.  I needed new inexpensive furnishings.  And I did not have the time to go from auction to auction hunting down bargains.  I had not only wasted an opportunity but an entire morning as well.  I felt inordinately disappointed.

Suddenly and inexplicably everything seemed insurmountable.  My new home was a mess and I wasn't sure I had the fortitude to finish what I'd begun.  I had started out with such high hopes.  Now every issue with the house was proving more difficult than I had anticipated.  Why is it, I asked myself, that things never work out?

I left the auction dispirited with a colonial (mahogany) secretary desk which did not match any of my existing furniture and a dark cloud hanging over my head.    I felt quite ready to give up on everything even though this was not possible.  

The following evening there was another auction, however, one I did not normally attend.  I was still down but I had regrouped enough to give it chance.  My partner and I walked around and looked at the furniture, writing down what we were willing to spend and vowing to stick to it. The same strategy which had lost me the Morris chair but a necessary one.

Unlike the first auction, this one was a success.  We were able to win every item on our list without going over our allotted budget on a single item.  We were now the proud owners of a camel back sofa in the exact style I had hoped for, two plum colored overstuffed easy chairs (in the very shade I had wanted to use in the new living room) and a beautiful colonial mahogany canopy bed and dresser which could have been carved from the same tree as our secretary.

I am not ordinarily a materialistic person but taking these new pieces of furniture to our new still uncompleted house was  incredibly reaffirming.  Looking at our new living 'set' swaddled in sheets, it occurred to me just how well things had worked out.  I had missed out on the Morris chair, yes, but as a direct result I had netted everything I needed to fill up our new living room and furnish a new bedroom as well.  What's more the house now looked like it could be home - with just a little more work.

I don't particularly believe in the spiritual route to material success and I don't think that the powers that be care about the size of my TV or the shine on my car or the numbers I write in my checkbook.  I do think, however, that I was in desperate need of a bit of encouragent.  And that it was no accident that I received it.

As David Bohm says, there is no safety in things.  But be this as it may, our lives are largely even primarily based on creating relative safety by way of the material.  To this end we consume vitamins, safety test cars and maintain the integrity of our homes.  And it is within this last instance, our homes, that our primary source of safety lies.

Shelter is an indisputable necessity in this sometimes inhospitable world and the loss of shelter whether through natural disaster, temporary evacuation or other circumstance is always a traumatic event.  Most of us here in the US have never faced this catastrophe and for most of my life I have been part of this fortunate demographic.  I live in the Wyoming Valley however, the site of what Richard Nixon called the worst natural disaster in American history - the flood of 1972.

Across Pennsylvania, more than 68,000 homes and 3,000 businesses were destroyed, leaving over 220,000 people homeless and a path of destruction that would be estimated at $14 billion dollars today. In our county alone more than 25,000 homes and businesses were either damaged or destroyed, and the devastation was estimated to be $1 billion in the economy of the day.  The valley as we knew it was gone and rebuilding was a long heartbreaking process.

Thankfully I did not live in the flood zone in 1972 but I have lived in it through the series of evacuation which have occurred since.  Our dyke has held but many unprotected communities were inundated.  And while we were fortunate enough not to sustain damage, the last 3 day evacuation of our family and 120,000 residents of Wyoming Valley in September of 2011 was enough for me.  

Hence my six month search for a new home out of the flood plain which ended this April with the purchase of a great old fixer upper on the near top of a mountain in a small town overlooking our valley.

The house was everything we were looking for - eight rooms, hardwood floors, original woodwork, big kitchen, great staircase, nice yard - but it was also in a sorry state.  The floors were stained and the woodwork was coated in paint. The wiring was antiquated, the plumbing blocked.  The garage was (and still is) semi-collapsing but the house itself is solid.

Divided into two rental units for many years, things were done to this once beautiful home that defy explanation.  Setting it right is an undertaking that is consuming most of time, putting me 'behind' here in this blog for the first time since its inception.  This update is my way of explaining.

Extensive remodeling is harder, at 55, than is was just a few years ago.  And the immersion in a world of physicality is challenging as well.  

Prior to this undertaking, a fair amount of my free time was centered on the metaphysical.  Life was light and airy and relatively happy.  Now it is tied to planning and building.  And there is nothing more 3D than hanging sheetrock or knocking out old plaster or framing a wall.

I will be happy when the work is finished.  When we are moved and settled.  When I can once again meditate at night or read instead of dozing off, exhausted.  Still I believe in what I'm creating now.  I believe in creating a safe place for my family.  I believe in restoration and the balancing act of making things right.

There is, of course, no real safety in it, no point where it cannot be torn apart.  But physical survival is part and parcel of what we have been charged with here.  It is the platform from which we operate and the base that we retreat to when the outside world is too much to take.

See previous post for the before pics.  Check back for the afters!

I started this blog in August of 2010 and I have never missed a week up until recently. My excuse? Moving or trying to move. Buying and selling property. Struggling with decisions that will affect my family going forward for the next several years at minimum and perhaps, at max, our allotted time as a cohesive family unit here on this earth. 

Not to mention, the eventual inheritance of those yet to come. It is a weighty decision bounded by hard rules, I cannot disregard, and the even harder limitation of money.

Additionally, I have found it surprisingly necessary to factor in my entire fairly complicated relationship with the concept of home. Having grown up in a truly unhappy and traumatic household, I became a person who forged ties to people, instead of place. 

This ability allowed me to almost effortlessly leave home at a young age, travel widely and live in more places than I can easily account for. When I became a mother, I changed gears, making only a few strategic moves within a defined radius I deemed advantageous for growing children but each move was little more than a calculation made with no real emotion. I considered each house a responsibility and an investment and occasionally a haven but never the heartbeat of home.

So while I decorated and remodeled and increased property values in the places I lived over the course of my life, I was never strongly emotionally tied to an address. In retrospect I am sure that this disconnect sprang from my childhood relationship with two very different houses. The first was the beautiful split level in rural Michigan boasting a wooded lot and built in pool which all my friends envied. 

Sadly, the beautiful woods surrounding our little acre were chopped down in the name of development - forever destroying the secret places of childhood. It was a long heartbreaking process which taught me a lot about the Western concept of ownership and the failure of stewardship. Eclipsing even the loss of our forest playground, however, the profound and unremitting unhappiness I felt in that house taught me a very important lesson about the relationship between material wealth and interpersonal well-being. But as important as this lesson was, my second attachment to place had an even greater affect on my development.

Throughout my childhood, I spent small slices of summer at my grandparent's old farmhouse. It was a beautiful old house with long dark halls and sunlit windows and safe quiet spaces. The big farm kitchen always smelled like fresh bread and you could feel the energy of true happiness the second you walked in the door. There was a wide porch with rocking chairs and a sunrise view of the river and you could see forever from the mountain behind the backyard. In difficult times, it was my paradise and the only place I was ever truly safe. Loving it the way I did made it almost impossible for me to connect to all lesser houses later in life. In the end, losing all access to that place and the fields and mountains that were part of the property apparently severed my ability to forge an attachment to any future point on the map.

In November at the very start of my house search, I thought about the impact all of that history and decided to drive by my grandparent's old house and make my peace with the past before I truly moved on. When I reached the place I remembered so well, I stopped and sat in the car for a very long time - too stunned to cry. The the hill overlooking the river was barren and the house was no longer there. I saw nothing but brambles and the hint of a foundation. The final and irrevocable loss was unexpected and disheartening.

To me, this meant that it might be time for me to finally make my own real time connection to place. And so a few short months later it seemed about to happen. I found a lovely old Victorian at a surprisingly affordable price. It had plenty of room, a rental unit and all of the lovely original woodwork including two beautiful fireplaces. It needed work of course but it was a house worthy of such devotion. Over the course of the negotiations however, a feeling of foreboding overtook me. I blamed my past. I blamed my inability to believe in my own good fortune. But I just couldn't shake it. 

I pushed the deal forward anyway and tried hard to ignore my misgivings. The unremitting insomnia and anxiety took its toll in the end, and I gave in and I checked and rechecked all the information regarding the purchase until I found the fatal flaw which made it impossible for me to go through with the purchase. While neither the owner or neighbors were aware of it, flood plain maps showed that the house was in a zone A flood zone due to its proximity to a nearby mountain and stream.

It was a hard blow but I am a survivor and I moved on. The second house I seriously considered was disliked by all family members excluding myself and I was able to let it go, having no real attachment to the property other than practicality. Within a relatively short time, there was a third house but the subsequent rebound deal fell through as well.

But I still believe the right house will come along!

I got to the river just before the sun crested, compass in hand to observe the southeast sky but saw no sign of the Dog Star. According to various internet sources Sirius was due to return to Northern skies today. Ancient people were very precise in their observations of the heavens. The internet, it seems, is not. But that was alright. Seeing the sun rise over the mountains was worth getting up for.

There is a resonant energy to the world just before dawn and there was a time when I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning just to feel the hum. On the way home from the river today, I remembered that time. I remembered how I used to sit in the kitchen and drink black coffee and write straight through until sunrise. I lived in the city then but I could see the better part of eastern sky above the vacant lot outside my back door. I got early up to write and see the sun come up almost every morning. In many ways, that place was my first real home and I made the most of it.