Dionysia in the Desert

 It was pointed out to me that the First Annual Dionysia in the Desert Street Festival is planned for this December in Tucson, Arizona!  

 

"The goal of the event is to highlight the local Arizona economy through artists, performers, vendors, and sponsors from all over the state of Arizona while as they help raise funds that will support community developed and managed education programs that serve as supplemental alternatives to the current programs whose funds are drastically being depleted by our state leadership."

And from their Facebook event page:  "Come join us in this effort as we re-create the atmosphere of ancient Greece and Rome with a modern day feel and decompress our modern day cares and worries away with four stages, street shows, interactive art, a barter and trading village, beer and wine from our own brewers and vintner, and much much more!"

It is a fundraiser event put on by an organization called The Foundation of L.I.F.E. (Limitless Ideas for a Free Environment).  I'm not familiar with them, but it appears to be a worthwhile organization.  Their website defines them as a "charitable, educational, non-profit foundation...with the purpose of teaching people to love themselves, to love others, and to love the planet.  It represents Arizona citizens who are concerned with the direction that the economic and political structure in the U.S. has taken in terms of limiting the ideas, liberties, and freedoms of individuals, which has resulted in the abuse of human rights throughout the world and in the abuse of global resources."  They also add that they support not only local interests of Arizonans, but also "the interests of 'Gaia'".

Tucson isn't too far from me, and I'd love to go down there to show my support, but due to holiday plans with my family, I won't be able to unless they change their tentative date.  Nevertheless, very cool to see something this big being planned in the name of Dionysos!   Hopefully it will be successful enough to become an annual event.

Heart-joined & Hand-fasted

On September 9th I married my partner, true love and soul-mate.

 

I don't say soul-mate lightly.  I remember well an unexpected, overwhelming feeling of epiphany one day, so strong that I wept, that in my love for him and the subsequent choices I made, I had fulfilled something karmic.  And every day that I wake up next to him or see him smile, I know how incredibly lucky we are.

 

He asked me to marry him in February, on a devotional day to Aphrodite (though he did not know the day's significance at the time). 

 

Our legal marriage on the 9th was a simple affair at the court, but was just the first.  Our wedding is three-fold.  The 2nd was a private ceremony in the woods on the Autumn Equinox, and the 3rd (which was last weekend) was a public rite and reception for friends and family.  Doing it three times wasn't our original plan, but developed over time as we searched for ways to incorporate everything most important to us without compromising anything.  I've come to see it as binding on the physical, spiritual and mental planes, respectively.

 

Because of him, I became and continue to become more spiritual, and a better person, and closer to Dionysos.  These were not his intentions of course, but simply the side-effects -- of falling in love, of learning selflessness, of being torn apart and put back together, of riding the ecstatic highs and devastating lows.  (For our road was not always easy.)  He is Dionysian in his particular beauty, creativity, trickster nature, and all the ways he's liberated me.  Even his last name which I have chosen to share has Dionysian qualities.  Did I come to love Dionysos more because of him or him more because of Dionysos?  Such a question needs no answer.

 

And though I tend to search for definition, his own spirituality defies definition, is fluid and shamanic and highly personal.  I learn much from him though he would probably not call himself a teacher.  Sometimes I still marvel at the depth of conversation we are able to achieve about abstract things, particularly spirituality.  It's as if our similar viewpoints combined with our inherent understanding of each other can bridge the gaps when we reach things that are hard to explain in words.  We have been known to share dreams -- something we are still exploring, and which I have never had with anyone.

 

We both met in the shake up of our Saturn returns, and getting married feels like the resolution to that era.  Together we redefined ourselves, and now the future seems even more full of possibility. 

 

(And I have to add that during our wedding reception this past weekend, I was finally able to dance again - after over 2 months of recovering from a broken foot!)