Love is a Zephyr

Love is a Zephyr,
blowing in from the desert,
in a golden sunrise,
her lips part.

This loving life

This morning I pulled the 10 of Cups. To me this card speaks to the fulfillment of our loving journey. When I speak of “my loves” this is my loving family inclusive of lovers present and past, other friends, logical family and others on this healing journey called life.

I am invoking the World because this is how I envision it: my loves present (and loves gone from this world) together at a giant kitchen table enjoying a meal and all the love and joy and memories of this wonderful love we share or have shared together.

--

As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

10 of Cups is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony

The World is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris-Anne

Love is a journey

"Most people are going to have two or three marriages or committed relationships in their adult life. Some of us will have them with the same person." - Esther Perel, LMFT

Today I pulled the Ace of Cups, this card symbolizes to me all the potential of the element of water — love and movement. Unconditional love is the grail we seek and often fail to find: to be loved unconditionally, exactly as we are and exactly as we are not. In response I am invoking The Fool in recognition that love, and the quest for love, is a journey. --

As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Ace of Cups is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony

The Fool is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris-Anne

Lovers and Partners

 

I pulled The Lovers today. I find this card interesting. In my life I have had long term romantic relationships that were not sexual and I have had sexual relationships that were not romantic. I don’t define the term lover or the term partner to mean person I am having sex with. For me long term close friends are life partners too. So, I am invoking the Two of Cups to cherish sweet intimate loving relationships between people, no matter what label or degree of physical intimacy. -- As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Lovers is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony

The 2 of Cups is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris-Anne

The relationship

 

Today is finding sanctuary with someone you love (and this can be your own sweet self.) Today I pulled the Four of Wands. I read this as coming home to that person you are in emotional alignment with and having your batteries emotionally recharged.
I am invoking The Lovers. I don't use the term to be exclusive to people who are having sex. I use the term lovers to indicate people who have close/emotionally intimate relationships. This can include close friends, family, companions and other outside-of-the box relationships. I call these people my/your loves. Loves may or may not include people you are having sex with and definitely should include your own sweet self.
So, today I am seeking to be there for and with my loves and yes, I am including my own sweet self.
--
As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Four of Wands is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony

The Lovers is from Gold Lyre Tarot, by Lacy Martin and Christine Scanlon

Every castle falls

 

To Love Someone Long-Term Is to Attend a Thousand Funerals of the People They Used to Be

The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer.

The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore.

The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.

We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out;

to become speedily found when they are lost.

But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.

It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.

Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.

Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.

- Heidi Priebe

Today I pulled the Five of Cups and thought of what Heidi Priebe wrote.  A lot of people think of this as only applying to long-term romantic relationships. I think of this as applying to all relationships, including family, friends, pets and ourselves. For me this is not a poem about growing apart (though it can be). To me it's more a poem of accepting the nature of impermanence — this constant evolving and churning and beginning, middling and ending that is the nature of everything.

I am invoking the Tower in recognition that every castle falls. It may be it will fall in a crash and a bang or it may be that it will fall slowly, over years, one brick at a time.
--
As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Five of Cups is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony
The Tower is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris-Anne

The Wheel Weaves

Today I pulled The Wheel. We like to think of the wheel as turning in a predictable motion, balancing highs and lows. In my experience it's not quite that simple. Sometimes the wheel changes direction, sometimes abruptly and goes in a totally unexpected direction in ways that can sometimes be miraculous, sometimes tragic. We plan for the direction we anticipate, knowing it can all change, knowing it can all go away. Our plans may be for naught.
“The wheel weaves as the wheel wills,” said Robert Jordan in The Wheel of Time. We play the cards we're dealt knowing that sometimes the deck gets reshuffled. The game is changed by things like a bad diagnosis, Covid, car accidents or perhaps unexpected windfalls.
I am invoking the Two of Cups. Couplehood has been on my mind and in my heart lately so that's what I am seeing. But, know — the Two of Cups is not always a card for romantic partnership. Partnership is interesting. People ask who is your partner?
We can have many partners in life. First, I believe we all need to be our own primary partner. So whether this card represents your lover(s), your family, your friend(s), companion(s) and/or your own sweet self. Be a good partner. Be there for your partner(s), all of them including yourself.
Be in love with your partner(s), no matter what the wheel weaves. And, nothing bad that can happen can erase the miracle of love.
--
As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Wheel is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony
The Two of Cups is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris Anne

Soothe with love

 

Today I pulled the Five of Swords. In this time, this time that sometimes feel like the endtimes, it's easy to sink into despair and be in conflict with those we love. Defeat, failure, frustration and chaos ensue when fear takes root. When we can't take flight, we fight — sometimes we fight with those we love most. Sometimes we fight with ourselves.
I am invoking The Lovers. In this case I am not just invoking it as a binary (as the lovers are most often depicted.)  I am invoking it thinking of love of self, love of those we love romantically and/or platonically, this includes family, friends, pets and acquaintances. Be one who loves. All relationships start with having a loving authentic relationship with ourself. Love yourself and soothe yourself with love. 
Breathe, be here now. Love you for the awesomeness you are. If you don't know where to start, start there. Start here...
May all beings in this world live in peace.
--
As always when I speak of life, love and Tarot I speak only for myself. This reading is part of my Divination/Manifestation Practice.

The Five of Swords is from The Modern Love Tarot, by Ethony
The Lovers is from The Light Seers Tarot, by Chris Anne

Bubbles and Buckets

 As Andie Nordgren said in The Relationship Anarchy Manifesto, "Each relationship is independent, and a relationship between autonomous individuals."

All relationships count. Sex is not a sorting hat. Love is a shapeshifter and takes many forms. We call this friendship, that romance and yet love is constantly reimagining itself. Who's to say what shape is the most valuable, at least beyond our own individual bubbles?

If you tear down the hierarchy of relationships and toss away the buckets we tend to sort relationships into a lot of the labels like "exes", "partner", and "lover" either gain new meanings or cease to have any.

Love Without Sex by Sophie Lucido Johnson, Review

I have just finished this awesome Audible Original: Love Without Sex by Sophie Lucido Johnson. It really explores the relationship of love and sex by looking at folks in both the polyamory (many+love) community and the asexual community and exploring the Venn Diagram of where those circles intersect. This raises lovely questions about love, sex, platonic relationships and friendships and the assumptions we make and how we experience and value all these beautiful human experiences. I highly recommend this!

Love is love

Love is love. Love is many things and one thing. Love is a shape shifter. We love our family, our deities, our pets, our partners, our friends and ourselves. We love each differently, we each love differently and love each one differently at different times. There is no litmus test that applies to all people or even to ourselves. To define love and say “this is love” is to restrict it and to create a way to say to others “that which you’re experiencing as love is not love.” The only definition of love for me that makes sense is, love is love.

Remembering

Remembering my best friend ever who would have turned 66 today. She's been gone about 11 years now.

Emotional Polyamory

In the universe of consensual non-monogamy; that polyamory is based on romantic connection is evidenced by the fact asexual polyamory is a real thing. Emotional polyamory is a real thing too, in my opinion. I believe emotional polyamory is the consensual, lovely and loving (non-sexual) equivalent of an emotional affair. Love is love.

Love Is

Every person I love is different and I am a little different with every one of them. We are different each time we're together. Love changes, evolves, is new, is old and always is love. Love is a shapeshifter and yet — love is love.

About Partners

Why is the label "partner" as applied to relationships so loaded? When people hear the word partner, as in they're a partner of mine, it's often assumed this is a sexual and/or romantic relationship. But, isn't that privileging sexual and/or romantic relationships? Where does that leave asexual and/or aromantic people? They don't get to have partners?

Isn't it enough that an awesome person is someone who is special enough to be a life partner? To me a partner is somebody I am sharing this amazing, beautiful adventure called life with. Platonic Partner is an expression that's gaining traction. But, why? Why, if I say someone is a partner then other people assume I am saying we are having sex, unless I specifically say, "no we are not" by adding the word platonic.

Ultimately whether or not I'm having sex with this person who is a fellow traveler on this journey we call life is nobody's business but this person and I (and possibly our our other partners.) Love and/or sex does not owe anyone else an explanation.

Sigh, but, I just say friends. It's just easier. Sometimes though, that doesn't feel like it's enough. I guess it's enough, though. It's enough if we know how special we are to each other.

That's all that matters I guess.

I'm Poly

"I'm poly, but not because I'm looking for multiplicity, or indeed, even anyone, but because I do not limit myself.

I'm just feeling the bubbling joyous aliveness of feeling supported... I see you, I admire you, I love you, I respect the work it takes to be you, I support you, I thank you."

- Thomas Seaman‎

Two Rings

I wear two rings for a reason. The ring on my left hand is for my family, my wife and children. It has five stones, two sapphires for she and I and three diamonds for my children. The ring on my right hand, my dominant hand, is for me. It’s become a reminder that I am my own primary partner. I got it in Galway. It serves as a reminder of my Celtic heritage. It has a heart on it to remind me that I have the power and the right to love who and how I love and that love is really why we are here. It has two hands coming together holding that heart, my heart. I hold my own heart in my own hands. I own my heart and I own my power.

My beloved ghosts

When we fall in love with someone and they depart from our lives, we still love them. At least, I do. But, it changes. If the separation is through death or irreversible estrangement and they are gone in a final way, especially. All beings change over time. They change as we change. They change as our memories change. They change as our perspectives change. We love that part of our departed loved ones that's remained in us. We love the spirit of them that fused with our own spirit. Knowing that everything changes, if my own departed loved ones were to reappear in my life, would they be recognizable? When I look on my own beloved ghosts. It's like the part of them in me has become separate entities, still separate from me but separate from my actual loved ones too. My beloved ghosts are neither me nor my departed loved ones. My beloved ghosts that come to me now, and then again, and again, are my own and their own. I cherish them just as they are. I cherish them just as they have become.