But this was another time.
When scents were devised with sensibility.
Mortar and pestle. Delights olfactory
Made with industry but no factory.
A time when the word "natural"
Was not needed before the word "fragrance"
Because what else would it be?
Kingdom of Priests
Mesopotamian and Canaanite cultures also had a priesthood function for people like me, for the girlymen who served the gods and goddesses dressed as women, called kulu'u in Babylonian and k'deshim in Hebrew, which again means "holy ones," but which was translated into the Latin Vulgate by St. Jerome in the 4th Century as effeminati (a term which I must immediately begin using to describe my own tribe).
Read moreAfter the Disaster
Noah and Na'amah bounced from house to house for some time. They weren't always easy to host. They would wake loudly from bad dreams; they were alternately controlling and passive, overjoyed and immobile. The Urartians didn't know whether they should ask what Noah and family had experienced, or whether they should keep a polite silence. And Noah, after a while, didn't want to tell it. After all, no one could ever really understand what they had been through. It became a story mostly discussed inside the family, and periodically presented as a special event for wide-eyed school children.
Read moreCreation Soufflé
But if we allow this part of our Sacred Myth, this part about all of it being God, all God, all the time; if we allow that to be "the greater story that is always happening," imagine how our relationship to this planet and to each other would shift.
Read moreTroublemakers
Now beware. There are risks associated with stirring the waters, as any activist knows. The thing is, when you stir the waters, the waters get stirred. There are ripples; and the consequences can be unpredictable. Other activists might be stirred up or stirring up in different ways, and the hulls of your ships might bang up against each other – the hulls of your friendships, your partnerships, colliding. This happens. And so it is important to remember that someone stirring the water differently is not necessarily your enemy. And that there is room on these waves for all of us to ride.
Read more