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Call your soul tribe together when a loved one is ailing and needs a circle of support It can be at your home or any place that feels safe and secure. I highly recommend creating healing energy at the home of the person who is unwell, as it will create an aura of restoration. Ask each person to bring something to comfort, reassure, and cure the celebrant: soup, healthy snacks, a soothing eye pillow, sleep balm, a hand-knitted scarf for warmth, yummy body lotion with uplifting essential oils, herbal teas, books, or lavender-infused slippers are all wonderful gifts.

Form a circle of care around the celebrant and light candles. Unscented soy candles are probably best for health reasons. As you go around the circle, ask each person to give his or her gift of caring to the celebrant and say what it represents. Here is an example from a recent rite:

A friend had to remind me that yesterday was Hecate's Eve. As a crone I love Hecate,her dogs and crossroads, her ways and means, her lantern light. I wrote several poems back in 2016 when I was participating in Joana Colbert Powell's 30 Days of Hecate e-course. It was a wonderful way to stay sane in what was a momentous year for me - getting married, turning 60, my croning ceremony.

And just prior to that croning ceremony I wasin Knaresborough, Yorkshire at Mother Shipton's Cave. It was there I realised that, along with Biddy Early, that she was one of my croning confirmation sponsors. She lived in a cave in the King's Woods and prophesied. She is an Anglophone Hecate made flesh. Here cave is really very, very, woo-woo!

“Hi, this is Julie calling from Such-and-So Bank. I'm looking for Steven Posch?”

Uh-oh. The bank is calling, but Julie sounds amazingly chipper. Something's not right.

“Speaking,” I say, dubiously.

“Congratulations, Mr. Posch! You've won this year's drawing for a free organic turkey!”

I start to laugh, partly in relief, and partly in amused appreciation of Wyrd and her screwy sense of humor. Ah, the cussedness of things.

“Mr. Posch?” Julie sounds puzzled. Obviously this isn't the reaction that she expected.

“Sorry,” I finally manage to get out. “Of course it makes perfect sense that the vegetarian would win the drawing for the turkey, right?”

In this Land of Ten Thousand Storytellers, Kevin Kling has got to be one of the very best.

Here's a story from his boyhood.

When you're seven years old and growing up in a Norwegian Lutheran town on Minnesota's Iron Range, you know that there are certain things that you just can't do. One of them is to bother Pastor Lindquist—who is, after all, right up there next to the Big Guy—with theological questions.

But one night at the church supper Kevin finds himself sitting next to the pastor's wife, and he figures that she might be close enough to the Source to ask.

“Mrs. Lindquist,” says Kevin, “If Jesus and Buddha got into a fight, who would win?”

“Well, Jesus would win, of course,” says Mrs. Lindquist.

“Well, if Jesus and Allah got into a fight, who would win?” asks Kevin.

“Jesus would win,” says Mrs. Lindquist.

“Well, if Jesus and Odin got into a fight, who would win?” Kevin asks.

There's a long pause.

Title: The Unkindness of Ravens (Trickster's Mark Book One)