Are you sure it isn't the Cherry on top?

I just got back from New Orleans, Louisiana.  My husband Brian and I went there to get some “couple time”.  It is a funny thing that happens when you start running any kind of business or organization when you get married you get to running around so much you forget what got you propelled to where you are in the first place.  I have not forgotten.  Before I met Brian I was pretty cool.  After I met Brian everything fell together for me, and I relaxed into life. 

We fell in love.  I think we knew the minute we met each other that nothing from that moment would be the same.  We are still in love.  People forget this at times since we are just a 40-something couple and a High priest and Highpriestess of a Wiccan Temple.  No, we don’t bandy about naked underneath the full moon.  No, we are not swingers or in a cool “open” or polyamorous relationship we are just two people; who met and fell in love. In short very unusually boring for a Pagan anything especially in the year 2013.

We open and close the Temple of the Sacred Gift four (at least) out of seven days a week with a few other couples in the church.  It is hard to maintain a good relationship with your significant other when you both work all day, and then come home to grab food and run up to teach a class, shake hands with strangers, sell wares, run circles, bless homes, and banish spirits. Usually one of us has to stay home with our Pagan Toddler so the other can serve the community and maintain the ministry; but, somehow or another we have maintained it. 

How?  By feeding and filling our well.  Normal people, call it “hard work”  I will call it taking trips to New Orleans, trips to Nashville, trips to Gatlinburg, renting a Hotel room, going out to dinner, and buying each other things to express our love for one another.  When we chose together the Temple logo we placed in the middle the cup and athame; a symbol for the merging and interconnectedness of the God and the Goddess themselves.  Many look at this symbol for the “Great Rite” and laugh and say it is all about the sex.  Hey, I will not lie sex is a physical way of expressing the “Great Rite” in fact it is probablly the cherry on top of all of life.  However, after being married in more than one way to a person I will tell you it is more about the collaborations that occur between the female and male within each of us and being comfortable enough to share that with each other than great bedroom shenanigans that truly is the GREAT RITE.

We have collaborated on raising four children together Brian and I.  We have collaborated on paying bills together, on retiring together, on taking care of each other when we are sick.  We have collaborated on building a physical worship space together and a spiritual one not only for people that come and ask for guidance; but for each other.  He has his path, which is Eclectic and I have mine which is very much Egyptian Heka.  We collaborate on work schedules, and doctors’ appointments, and on insurances, and on who is going to mow the lawn and who will fold and put up the laundry.  In fact, there is not one area of our life that is not collaboration, and I feel that this is truly what the” Great Rite” is all about.  It is not about two people becoming one in a hot sweaty embrace it is about two people whose lives intersect and respect, love and admire one another in and outside of the sexual act.

 

 

Today, I read a prayer aloud to the Goddess Opis and re-minded myself who she was and what Opulence truly is.  It seems many people can define Opulence as being diamonds, pearls, fancy cars, chandeliers, and over the top “lifestyles of the rich and famous”.  Yet, it seems to me since very few of us will ever experience that kind of opulence that maybe what it really is about is figuring out what your Opulence is.  To me, Opulence is being married to and being the Highpriestess of Brian Miller.  To me, building a life with this person, sharing a world with him, living in a home with him, and co-creating a Temple and community with him is Opulence.  BTW so is the Great Rite with him…J 

 

Thank you for letting me share what I feel is the "cherry on top" of life!