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It seems like themes of sexuality and pleasure have taken on an increasingly important role in my life over the last year. A few years ago, I took a last-minute job teaching a course on the Anthropology of Sexuality, a topic in which I had grounding but did not consider myself an expert. In the intervening three years, I have increasingly been called on to teach similar courses and to speak on issues of sex, sexuality, sex education, and sexual empowerment. I have come to think of myself as a Sexuality Educator, rather than simply as someone who teaches courses that deal with the topic of sex. And I've become increasingly passionate about medically accurate, comprehensive sex education, as well as about sexual empowerment more generally. This past spring, I started my Internet radio show, All Acts of Love and Pleasure, which examines love, sex, sexuality, eroticism, and relationships in a Pagan context. I have become, in a very real way, passionate about pleasure.

Running alongside these themes has been the overarching theme of trying to find and live my passion. My career has been in flux, in various ways, for the last couple of years. I've been working to discover the passions that drive me, and to make my life and my living doing those things. This work has been some of the most difficult of my life, as it asks me to plumb my deepest depths and be unflinchingly honest with myself about my wants, my desires, my fears, and my expectations of myself -- as well as my Divine right to live a life that fills me up and feels good. I have been working to embrace the Divine Yes.

With Mardi Gras just around the corner I thought I'd share an excerpt from my first published book, Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations.  You see, I lived the first thirty years of my life in New Orleans without a clue about the Pagan and Goddess roots of Mardi Gras.  When you live in that Christian bubble, you tend not look beyond it, but then when you do, a tsunami of awakening might be the result, as it was for me.....

Vieux Carre
The essence of Goddess, as a celebration of life, holds sway in New Orleans at the very core of the people, even if they're unaware of it.  Life there moves at a slower pace and New Orleanians see no reason to catch up. It is a city proud of its diverse cultural and ethnic heritage, where people look for just about any excuse to indulge in the pleasures of food, drink, and partying. There is a sense of life being a bit more in-sync with the natural rhythms and life’s simple pleasures. Despite the influence of the Catholic Church, the lifestyle in New Orleans is hardly dogmatic or puritanical. In the Big Easy, as the city is often called, the spirit of the Feminine is also reflected in the Old World charm of the architecture in the Vieux Carre, in celebrations such as Mardi Gras with its pagan roots dating back to the rituals of the Lupercalia, Cybele and Attis, and in the worship of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and various goddesses in the Yoruban pantheon.