collowrath

So, I'm getting through the ASB202 work pretty easily - it's an introduction to race and ethnicity and the first part is just defining terms and some of the history behind them, and quite a bit of ensuring we understand that race isn't something biological or even honestly tangible (repeated ad nauseum in the reading).  I'm already very familiar with all of this content and I'm breezing through it, though I'm having trouble maintaining interest in the review. 

The new Arabic course is what's got me busy right now though.  Right off the bat I have a ton of things to study and to write and to practice.  It's really out of the norm for my family, but I really love lists - and this course has a substantial list of tasks to complete already.  I thrive on the feeling of being busy, so long as I don't cross that fine line into rushing.

Hopefully I'll make some actual changes in my personal life, which is kind of falling to the side currently.  We're coming up on a pretty important month for me, a time that's been pretty intensely spiritual in the past couple of years.  Despite the restraints put on me by my obligations in hospitality, I really am hoping that this will be a period of reconnection for me.  I really need that; I need to plant myself and establish some roots, even if the plan has always been to uproot and move again when the time comes.  I need to pay my respects where they're do and reestablish some relationships.  I've also been running into some conflict preserving my own culture and faith and the responsibilities that they demand of me.  I'm not sure what else to say about it now, but suffice it to say that I'm hoping in the next month or so I'll be getting myself back on track on the personal, private level.

Tomorrow, I'm making a good dinner and keeping an extra portion for my ancestors. We're going to take it outside and burn it and offer our prayers for them.

Wednesday is the start of the Feast of Svt. Paraskeva, Healer of the Blind. For those of us with a Dual Faith, she is also associated with the Goddess Mokosh, the weaver sometimes associated with Moist Mother Earth. We're going to make a pretty wreath and hang it by the ancestor space, and on All Soul's Day hopefully we'll be able to take a trip to where my grandparent's are buried (I live pretty far from it), and set it there. I miss them so much. :( After we make the wreath, I'm going to set up a space somewhere for Svt. Paraskeva.

Friday is when we'll have a dinner for her, light her candles. I'll give prayers and offerings to Mokosh then as well, saying a final good-bye to the fertile Earth and getting ready to say goodbye to my ancestors for another year. That isn't necessarily to say that they are going to make a complete exit, but after Monday, there won't be any more feasts for them, and after All Souls' Day, the world is walked by negative, impure, spirits, and thus is somewhat "spiritually dangerous." Nov. 3rd, after ASD, my ancestor space and Svt Paraskeva's space will be taken down.

The next week is going to be incredibly sad, incredibly happy, very meditative, and very busy for me. I'm so glad it's here.