Had a lovely festival yesterday, which ended up being a combination of Olympieia (a festival of Zeus) and Earth Day (on which it only makes sense to honor Gaia). Also, I finally got my phone to talk to my laptop, so I finally got caught up on the newsletter, which can be found here, for those who are interested in/amused by our modern ( Read more... )

Finished Cryoburn the other night. Even knowing a particular character development was destined to be coming up, even seeing all the foreshadowing for exactly what it was, that was quite the gut-punch. No wonder I put off reading it. ( Cut for a spoiler that really isn't a spoiler, since Bujold had said all along that the next book would contain this particular element. )

Yesterday was graduation. Yes, I graduated in December, but we only had the pinning ceremony then. This was the cap-and-gown deal. Due to having used up all my pool time (mostly on just getting through school in the first place without collapsing from exhaustion, but most recently brought the total down to near-zero by going to Aeternitas), I took ( Read more... )

So, bluedolfyn just reminded me that I never posted a follow-up on how that ritual went. Thus, here it is. Nutshell version: nervous firefly was nervous, but it all went pretty well anyway.

( TL;DR version )

Depending on how you count it, either today, tomorrow, or Monday is Kwan Yin's birthday, the first of Her three big feast days in the year. As I mentioned awhile back, one of my "assignments" this year is to lead a small ritual for Her at the Spring Festival, which we're actually doing next Sunday due to scheduling issues.

( Lengthy stuff about designing ritual, cultural contexts, and that sort of thing. )

I've been seriously resisting any and all suggestions that I ought to be pursuing clergy work as a thing. I mean, technically, I'm a minister of the Universal Life Church, which has so far led to presiding over one very nonstandard baptism in the past 12 years or whatever it's been, but that's about it. ( Cut for lengthy babble. )

Hoo, boy, have I got a lot of catching up to do! So, things that I'm grateful for, more or less associated with days on which I was particularly grateful for them ( Read more... )

Philokhoria (modern Hellenic summer festival based on an obscure bit of Callimachus*) was great. We had an unusually large gathering (six adults, surprisingly no kids) which was nice, if hot. Really, really hot. Fitting.

( Music as part of the day or In Which I Confound Others With My Idea of Music Appropriate to a Religious Festival )

Very, very different from last year, and yet very much the same. ( Cut for cryptic babble. )

Deipnon Saturday and Noumenia and Panaphobeia (Feast of Fear) on Sunday. Apparently we're not doing the dream incubation like last time, but I have a feeling I'm still going to regret not taking the night before off. I'd planned to, I just forgot it was coming up so quickly, and it's now too late to pull it off. I asked the hieros why we're ( Read more... )