Yes, I believe in God.  Actually I believe in many Gods, I believe they are male and female, Hindu and Christian, Jewish and Muslim, etc.  I believe that God is in all of us.  And that *if* we were created by any Gods, it was so that they could exist.  See I believe we create God in ourselves.  Some of us join together to talk about how we perceive God.  Some of us feel we need to be told how to believe in and  Love God.  Some of us don’t believe in God at all.  I believe that God purely lives inside of us.  There is no supreme being floating on clouds or waiting in the summer land.  We have made them, and they exist because of us and inside of us.

I think that the movie Stigmata, came eerily close to how I feel on many levels.  Firstly, it shows my disdain for the church on many levels.  Not all of it mind you, but it definitely strikes true on many levels.  Secondly it talks of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Which is supposedly in his own words.  And it starts…

The kingdom of God is inside you and all around you,

not in buildings made of stone or wood….

Split a piece of wood and I am there…

lift a stone and you will find me.

And that is more what I believe.  Not the whole Jesus Christ bit, but the within you and around you bits.  Do I think a man named Jesus lived many many years ago and was a religious man that led many people, sure.  Do I think he was an immaculate conception and son of a God…not so much.  Just like with the Greek and Roman Gods, I think their Gods are real as they existed in people, but do I think they hopped down off of Mount Olympus and begat humans…no.

See I was raised as an Emissary of Divine Light.  Which was once listed as one of the top 100 cults in the United States by the FBI.  I don’t live my life as I did then, except I still do. What I mean is, I don’t live in Community, (which I would if there was one I felt a connection with), I don’t go to Sunday services anymore, I am not part of that world anymore.  But I am because of what they taught me.  I live my life by the tenants that I was raised on.  Be good to others.   Live in One.  Find inner harmony and peace.  Treat others with kindness even if it’s hard.  Meditate when you need to.  Enjoy the Earth, she is our only one.  Attunement.  Love.  Life.  Joy.

I am sure, knowing you my friends, that some of you will go and explore the interwebs to see what you can find about the Emissaries.  And you will probably come across a page by two ladies belittling everything the Emissaries are/were.  (I will link to it here because I am going to talk about it)  I also know that most of you are intelligent enough to be able to hear the anger, slander, and rantings in their writings.  Now I have no doubt that they had a bad experience, that something someone did to them was hurtful and awful, and I have sympathy for whatever that may be, but I do not agree with their views of what EDL is/was.  And while most of you will disregard their ramblings as another exaggeration of the interwebs, ever since I read what they had to say, I have felt a desire to say something about it. (And here is a link to The Emissaries website)

I have put a lot of thought into whether or not their views were true and how I felt about them.  Do I think these women were hurt, by men while in the setting of the Emissaries?  Yes.  Do I think that any religion can and does have people in power who take advantage of people under them? Oh you bet I do.  But they talk about how oppressive and belittling The Emissaries were to women, and it just bothers me.  I was raised in this group of people.  I have to think that if that was one of the tenants they were teaching that would be in me somewhere.  And it just isn’t.  I am a strong and independent woman.  And I firmly believe that I owe that core value to my upbringing.  I look around at the women I was raised around.  I look at their strength, their no bullshit ways, their independence, and it just doesn’t compute that these fierce wonderful women at any point believed that they were subservient to the men around them.  I still know many Emissaries, and every time I am around them I am filled with a joy and light and happiness because of how wonderful and amazing they are.  These people were/are a joyous and love filled people, who lived in harmony with the Earth and the other people around them.  I often state that I was raised in a cult.  I am proud of it.  The Emissaries raised me as a community to be the woman that I am today.  I wouldn’t for a second wish that I didn’t have the upbringing that I had.

It was an upbringing of community.  The Emissaries had dozens of communities around the world.  Half of my youth was spent living with my family in the top floor of a house that we rented.  On Sundays we would go to the local community home and attend service.  I would also attend youth group meetings, where in we would sing songs (I still have the song book) and do activities together.  Then when I was 10 we moved to MD and moved into one of the two community houses that were down here.  For the next 7 years a was most certainly raised by a village.  Some of whom I liked, some of whom I could have done without, and some of whom I still love to this day.  Around this time in The Emissaries history Martin died.  Lord Martin Cecil Exeter, the head of the Emissaries of Divine Light, was a fine man.  He had a light that you can still see in pictures of him.  He was gentle, and kind.  He was soft spoken, and all encompassing.  He spoke and you paid attention, not because he demanded it of you, but because you had the honor of listening.  Martin came to see me when I was only 2 weeks old.  When I was 8 and got to meet him again, he told me what an honor it was to meet me when I was new to the world and that I was growing up beautifully.  Here it is 24 years later, and those ten minutes that I got to sit and eat cookies with Martin still bring tears to my eyes.  I can never put to words just how amazing that man was.  If you never met him, you will never really get it.

Martin’s son Michael took over, and slowly EDL lost what it once was.

But in the meantime, I was growing up with an amazing group of people in MD.  We would do community activities together.  Those that lived in the two houses and those that came to Sunday services.  We would all come together and go bond with the earth and the spirit.  I grew up doing trust activities for fun.  I got to spend a month when I was 12 at Green Pastures Estates in New Hampshire.  Best month of my youth.  Green Pastures will probably always be my favorite place on the planet.  It was a 222 acre farm.  There were horses, and cows, a pond, an orchard, acres of veggies, houses and playgrounds, and complete and utter joy.  To live on Green Pastures meant to participate.  I wasn’t there to run around and cause havoc.  I worked and I played.  And I enjoyed both equally.  We had a large dinning hall, with a huge kitchen.  Some weeks I would help prepare the meals, some I would help clean afterwards.  A few times I helped with the milking, a few times with the grooming of the horses.  I even got to throw the bailed hay onto truck as it moved through one of the hay fields, and then ride back on top of them all, bouncing away, to then help load them to the loft in the barn.  It was hard work, but it never felt like it.  I always felt honored to be a part of what I was doing when I was there.

There is something about an Emissary that I can try to describe to you, that you won’t ever get unless you know them.  Simply put, it’s Light.  The Emissaries of Divine Light are just that.  They carry this Light.  It’s Joy.  It’s Love.  It’s Acceptance.  It’s Patience.  It’s Giving.  It’s Receiving. It’s One.

I was raised in a cult and it was joyous,

~Cecily

There it’s been said.  Some of you already knew this.  Some of you are thinking, “me too!” And some of you don’t get it.  But there it is.  Social Anxiety Disorder, or SAD, affects different people differently.  For me, it is very hard to leave the house.  Parties, especially those of the large variety, are scary.  Even when I know everyone there, but even more so when I don’t.  Simple lunches with one or more people can be extremely difficult, depending on who the lunch is with.  I have some close friends that understand and accept my SAD as part of me.  I can call them and say, “I’m just not up for a large party” and they get it.  They don’t hold it against me and they love me anyway.  Then there’s the rest of the world.  A world where you have to make excuses and be secretly ridiculed for them.

I didn’t know that I had SAD for a very long time.  I didn’t know what the triggers were and what reactions I had from them.  I, and the people around me, knew I had behaviors, but they were all thought to be my personality.  For example one of my triggers, and probably the strongest of them is too much noise.  As in 5 conversations all happening in the same room, and everyone trying to talk louder than the person next to them.  At a certain point in the loudness of it all a switch would flip in me, and I would become louder and more obnoxious than them all.  I would get drunker, get stupider, and get flirtier.  None of this was helped by the fact that my ex husband was constantly telling me how much people pretended to like me and that no one was my friend.  In the state of anxiety my logic was if people paid attention to me they must like me.  We all know this isn’t true.  The problem is when that flip switches and the anxiety takes over, me, the real me, disappears.  So much so that I don’t remember a lot of conversations I have had or things I have done (in those situations, normally I have a pretty good memory).  It’s like blacking out when your drunk, you might have bits and pieces but no details.  This is a common symptom of serious anxiety attacks.  I have had therapists asking me if I had dark spots in my memory for years, and never acknowledged them because I was so afraid of what that might mean.  Turns out it means that I am normal and I can fix it.

There have been a few bridges I have burned, and after being diagnosed and going through some therapy I have tried to mend them.  Some have, some haven’t.  I can accept the ones I have talked to and we are nothing more than casual acquaintances.  That’s fine.  What rubs me the wrong way is the people that refuse to talk to me.  The ones I have said “can we hold a conversation?” and they don’t even have the decency to say no to the request.  It’s just radio silence. It’s so pathetic, especially when the people in question are not without fault of their own, and have done and said some very hurtful things directed at me.   But that is a more specific thing, and I wanted to talk about my anxiety in general.

Over time, I have been able to learn what my triggers are.  Sometimes, I can shut them off, sometimes I can’t.  But now instead of turning into a sex crazed lunatic, I recognize that I am entering an anxiety attack and make my departure.  Now that doesn’t mean every time I leave somewhere I am uncomfortable, it just means that I have learned to leave when I need to.

I have also learned to not be ashamed of it.  It is what it is, and it is not my fault.  And to many people’s dismay, I have also become comfortable enough with myself to not give a shit if it makes you uncomfortable that I am willing to talk about it.  Everyone has problems, health or otherwise, and I truly believe that if we as a society stopped being so uncomfortable about talking about them openly and honestly then we will also stop feeling so alone.  I feel confident that I could say everyone reading this at one point or another has felt like they were ‘the only one’ or that no one in the room would understand.  Well you’re not, and I do.

Anxiously Yours,

~Cecily

So I have all these different things I want to blog about, but I often wonder if anyone wants to read them.  So here is a list of some of the stuff I want to blog about.  Please comment and tell me what you would be most interested in hearing about.

• Art projects I am doing or am considering doing
• My thoughts on God (More specifically the “cult” I was raised in) (I actually have one basically ready to go on that but have been worried about posting it
  
• Depression/anxiety/other issues of the mind
  
• Money Issues
• What the kids are up to
• Health status
• Short burst of stream-of-consciousness
• General bitching and venting
• House stuff
• Cats
• D&D and other geeekery
  
• Other
  

I know what Memorial Day is for, but I always think of my grandmother on Memorial Day.  I miss her often.  It doesn’t hurt as much when I miss her as it used too.  It still hurts when i miss my dad.  I know that eventually the day will come when it won’t hurt as much, but now it still does.  And today I seem to have him on my mind.  Of course he has been on my mind and in my dreams a lot recently.

There is a LOT going on in our lives right now.  We have been doing some house stuff, organizing, and painting and stuff.  And I know I owe you guys a post with pics of my finished hallway, but I have NO idea when I will get to it.

I have been working at home for the last few months, and it has been good, but it has definitely kept me busy.

We have some friends coming over today for the traditional food and fun of memorial…not quite sure why those things go together, but it should be nice.

Well this post has been scattered and not very deep, but it is something!

This is one of my favorite picture I have taken and of Trinity

It’s Spring break for the girls and unfortunately Trin has been sick.  She came home with a low grade fever on Sunday night.  Yesterday it went up to 102, then within an hour shot up to 103.5.  I called the doc’s office and talked with the triage nurse.  I basically continued what I was doing and the fever did break.  It has been low grade on and off all day today.  Her energy is back up and she has an appetite again, so I believe she is on the mend.  Unfortunately I think I may have caught it.  That or I am feeling sympathy crappy.

In other news I have been evaluating things that are causing me stress, and then in turn causing my fibro to flare up, and I have been removing what I can.  I have stopped writing for Sequential Tart, and dropped one of my D&D games.  Both decisions feel right, even if they do make me sad at times. I have also started exercising again, using the WiiFit Plus, which I adore and highly recommend.  I am really hoping that I am not sick as I don’t want to put too much of a break in my new fitness routine.  Speaking of which, the WiiFit Plus actually has routines in it, and the ability to make your own.  Which is awesome.  I did one of the routines the other night and was sweating my ass off at the end of it.  It really is a great way to have fun with exercise.

My birthday is this month, but I am feeling very low key about it.  I am hoping that maybe some friends will like to go out to dinner here and there, but I am not planning a party this year.  I just didn’t feel like planning my own birthday party again this year.  But even with my birthday still being weeks away it has already turned into a spoil the hell out of Cecily type birthday.  My husband got me a new laptop, which I ADORE.  One of my lovely friends, Betty, bought me a pair of tickets to see Carol Burnett.  That was last Saturday, and completely amazing.  More on that later.  The weekend before my birthday I will be partaking in a photography workshop with the amazing Kyle Cassidy.  I am so beyond excited for this.  I have always loved photography, and often been pretty good at it, if I do say so myself, and I am really excited to learn some more stuff, especially from someone whose work I appreciate so much.  This birthday is going to be awesome, and if I find that I don’t miss having a party, I might make more of them low key.

So Carol Burnett…wow, what can I say about that experience.  I grew up watching The Carol Burnett Show with my family.  My dad was a HUGE Carol Burnett fan, and so turned me into one.  The evening was a question and answer period, where she shared some of her favorite clips from the show and took questions form the audience.  I didn’t get picked, but that was ok, because just being there was enough.  She told some great stories, made us laugh over and over again, and a few times the audience cracked her up, just like in the old Q&A’s before her show.  I feel so lucky and so loved.

Love and Laughter,

~Ceci

When I was posting my last post, I realized I went through the entire month of February without a new post.  Shame on me.  So today you get two.

I am sitting here with our new cat Harley draped across my lap.  She has been a very happy edition to our family.  She’s only about 4 months old and oh my goodness sooo soft.  She is named Harley because the very first time she was put in

This was in the first month together. They adjusted real fast.

my hands, at the adoption center, she started purring so ferociously that David could hear it several feet away.  She purred almost nonstop for several weeks.  Cuddle and purr, cuddle and purr.  We brought her to the vet for her shots, and found out that she had a severe case of ear mites and a protozoa.   We got those fixed up and then she started to run.  We realized she was so damned cuddly because she was sick.  She still purrs ferociously and cuddles a lot, but she is also a very active little kitten.  Westley didn’t take long to adjust to her and is actually quite happy for the company.  He was fairly depressed after Lizzie passed.  He has actually become a lap cat.  For those of you that have known him since he was a kitten you know that he was, well, a little aggressive.  Not towards us, just everyone else.  But now he has become incredibly demanding of our attention and our laps.

My little boy is very handsome.

In other news I am now working.  It’s a great job with great people. (Interior Footprints) I am drawing floor plans up in digital format.  I really enjoy it.  I am the type of person that as a child I used to draw floor plans of my room before I rearranged it.  While I have had a little bit of an initiation through fire, I think I have held my own.   The last floor I turned in had no mistakes.  And even the other ones only had a few small errors, so over all I am feeling very confident and excited about where this is going.

As I am typing this that kitten had gone away, only to come back with her favorite toy purring like a Harley.  This toy is one of those long fuzzy thing attached to a plastic pole, and is like 4 times longer than her.  So it is always amusing to watch her prance proudly around the house with it in her mouth.  Westley has also decided that it should be his favorite toy too, so it’s even funnier when his big doofy butt prances proudly through the house with it in his mouth.

I have been working on something else, but I think I will keep that under wraps until I hear back from certain parties with approval for use.

I feel like life is moving in the right direction again.  Everyone is more positive, energies are good, and happiness is easy to find. Life is good.

Over half my lifetime ago I met a skinny little girl by The Wall.  She was a freshman and I was a sophomore, and she had oodles more confidence than me, and seemed to already know everyone, even though I had been at our school for the last year and she hadn’t.  She had very straight and very long brown hair.  She was a vegan, she was cool, she was intimidatingly intelligent, and over the next few years became my best friend.  We spent many years playing Dr.Mario, trying to look cool by The Wall, and various other extra curricular activities.  Maia and I, as any good friends, have had ups and downs, laughs and tears, months of silence and then picking up like it was the next day.  For years Maia was adamant that she would never get married.   She started dating Paul, who was just as adamant.  Then one day, they both agreed that marraige was the right path for them.  Who knows where the future will lead them, but I am sure it will be amazing and wonderful.

I wish you both as much happiness as I have found with David.

I love you Maia.

88.

This is a picture we remade, on my handfasting day, that is very similar to one I have of my grandmother on her wedding day.

The other weekend we loaded everyone in the car and went to NY to see one of our favorite families, The Appel’s.  It was a joyous weekend.  The Appel’s are unique people.  They exude light and love.  Ilse is one of the most amazing women I have had the pleasure of knowing.  She is a holocaust survivor. I have known them my entire life, but did not know this fact until about 7 years ago.  I went to NYC with a friend to see a read through of a play Ilse’s son, Randyl, had written.  The play was about Ilse’s experience in the holocaust.  She was just a child and went through more traumatic things then any of us could ever conceive of.  But yet she is full of joy.  She sat there at one point in the weekend looking at Trinity and Jacquelyn and wondering in almost a disbelief that people could do the things that they did to her and other children that age. I won’t go into the details, because really this is a happy post and we will talk about those horrors at another point.

So onto the happy.

©Cecily M. Israel

After the rehearsal was over we had to entertain the kids until the show actually started…at 7.  So we got gelatos, and sodas, and chips.  Trin and I played hot lava every time we left our seats.  I should mention that the day before I finally got my z-coils and walking didn’t hurt.  Since I wasn’t in pain, I was feeling real good.  Probably too good.  I did a lot of jumping from square to square to stay out of the hot lava.  And eventually wrenched my knee a little.  Then a calmed down some.  Luckily it was towards the end of the night most of the hot lava had dissipated anyway.  David took Trin and Jackie outside to run around for a little while and Chris and I talked with Anna.   It really was a lovely afternoon.

©Cecily M. Israel

I love this picture here to the right. I know he isn’t, but it looks like he is looking straight at me, which I think made for a beautiful pic.  Of course it’s kinda of hard to take a bad picture of Neil.

Anyway, the entire performance was an hour long.  After a few pieces Neil came on stage to read Peter and the Wolf.  He did a fantastic job.  When he first announced the performance I sent him a message asking him about which ending he would be reading.  The one where in the wolf is killed, or the one where he is taken to the zoo.  He posted my query on his blog and answered that he didn’t know of an ending other than the zoo one.  The reason for this is because there apparently isn’t one.  I felt a fool.  But I still recall an ending where the wolf is killed.  And so does almost everyone I ask about it.  No matter what their age, almost everyone I have asked about the ending of Peter and the Wolf, they all just as vividly remember the wolf getting shot, then triumphantly carried through the town.  While waiting for the performance to start, Liz, another friend I met at the Housing Works Event, brought over her phone and showed us this video.

At about 6:10 you see the wolf being taken through the town victoriously.  He is hanging limp from a pole and his tongue is dangling from his mouth.  The narrator (Sterling Holloway, one of my favorite voice actors) says that the wolf is captured, but never says anything about a zoo.  And as you can see the wolf looks quite dead.  So I am guessing that somehow this has translated in so many minds as the wolf being killed.  The power of Disney is amazing.  So I feel a little less a fool, but still a fool.

©Cecily M. Israel

Later Trin told me that after she asked Amanda to dance she replied, “I was hoping a little girl would ask me to dance.”  I don’t know who was more excited about the whole thing, me or Trin.  I had motioned for Christina or Jackie to come out and dance with us.  I don’t know why Jackie didn’t come out, but I hope that Christina has taken away from her missed opportunity, that just because she’s 12, that doesn’t mean she can’t be seen dancing with her mom in public. (Because I know that’s why she didn’t come out).

After the show was all over there was a dinner reception down the hall and while we didn’t want to stay for dinner we did stop by in hopes of the girls getting to say hi to Neil and Amanda.  We managed to find them before they were too bombarded with people.  Neil immediately rose from his chair and said hi to the girls, telling Trinity that he was so happy that she danced with Amanda since he wasn’t able to.  It melted all of our hearts.  Of course anyone that makes my children smile has a special place in my heart.  The girls stood there a little star struck as they are all HUGE Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman fans.  After Trinity and I had thanked Amanda again for the dance.  Jackie told Amanda that her favorite song of hers was Astronaut. Which then led to the other girls also sharing their favorites. (Trin’s is also Astronaut and Chris’ is Runs in the Family) There were some high fives and much happiness.  I think we all kind of floated away from there as we found a cab and headed back onto the Island.  I feel so very lucky and happy that we are going out to doing things that we haven’t done before.  Like driving to NY to see free show in the city.

(More pictures of the night can be found on flickr here)

(I had to close commenting on this post.  I have received hundreds of Russian spam comments and just want them to stop!)

Amanda Palmer has made a dramatic difference in my life over the last year.  Her passion and drive and beauty has inspired me to do many things.  And most importantly has helped me heal and grow.  I owe a lot to that woman.  Not because she was trying to help me,  she doesn’t know me, but because of her openness and willingness to be vulnerable and put herself completely out there, I have been exposed and inspired by her sheer beauty and fucking awesomeness.  I relate to her music, to her book, to her.

I made myself a grieving disc back after my dad died.  Early on it was Hurt, sung by Johnny Cash.  Whose version of it I believe is much more powerful than the original by NIN.  Well Ms. Palmer did her own version of it at her NYE show with the Boston Pops.  I didn’t think that anyone would be able to move me more with that song than Johnny Cash, she proved me wrong.   I bawled.  It didn’t help, that I am pretty sure she herself is crying while singing.  This woman is so amazing, so powerful, so fan-fucking-tastic.  I hope one day I get to share a bottle of wine with her.  Thank you Amanda.

I love being a homeowner.  That is not sarcasm.  Owning our own house and working on it is a pleasure to me.  Sure sometimes it’s very stressful, like when the water heater goes and there is water flooding your eldest’s room, and you have already used any extra money on an emergency operation for your cat, etc.  But DIY and construction and painting and decorating and redecorating and trouble shooting single pane windows, I actually find joy in.  I like the satisfaction of working with my hands and having something to show for my effort.  But there in lies the problem.  My hands.  Specifically my right hand and wrist.  Two years ago while spackling the additional room on the house, I managed to give myself tendonitis.  Now I physically can’t do the things I used to do so well.  Like spackling our hallway.  This is something that should have been done a long time ago.  Unfortunately it is incredibly painful for me to work on.  But I am doing it slowly, a piece at a time.  I know that the finished product is not going to be as perfect as I used to do, but right now I just want it finished.  I have one more space to sand down and then I can paint that wall, which isn’t nearly as painful. (Thank the Gods)

You can see the unfinished wall on the right.

I realized the other day that the hallway being the center of the house and all spackled and not finished was really unhealthy.  If you believe in Feng Shui at all, you will understand that the center of the house is for health, money, and security.  So it’s about damned time I get it finished and help get my house healthier.  The paint we have picked is a very rich green.  It’s quite vibrant and probably darker than most people would put in a hallway with no windows, but I think it looks good so far.  And the ceiling is a Chinese Jade, which I think is just perfect for the Feng Shui that I am trying to promote there.

I love our house so much.  I want so badly to get all of it fixed up, or at least not beige anymore.  I don’t like beige so much.  It’s interesting too, I actually never really cared for living in Maryland at all, until we moved here.  I think it’s a combination of being happy in my home life and living in a great community, but I really love where we live.

On a different topic, as you know this is a new site for me, and I would love to get comments and people reading posts, so please pass along my site, comment, and most importantly enjoy.

Joy and Health,

~Cecily