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Maintaining a healthy balance in your friendships is essential. Occasionally, a friendship takes on an unhealthy aspect and there is no choice but to leave it behind. Ideally you will perform this rite after you have discussed it with this person. It will be mutually healing if it can take place with both parties present, but as often as not, you will perform it alone. You will need a black candle for protection, a gray candle to help you keep a low profile, and frankincense incense. You will also need a sharp knife and a length of cord three feet long. Light the incense, and holding your right hand aloft, say:

May the place this night

Dreaming about being headless is often a sign that there is a disconnect between your head and your heart (what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling). For example, you might be thinking so much about an upcoming match of vocabulary test coming up and doing so much memorization and study that you are living temporarily mostly in your head and thinking, thinking, thinking. When I am consumed with a project and forget to eat, that is when I know I am too much in my mind and head. You may be lacking a sense of balance in your life. Try to identify the role that your heart and mind play in your life. Is one taking more control than the other? You may be so focused on common sense and logic that you have started to neglect or suppress your emotions. On the other hand, it’s possible that you are letting your feelings dictate your actions without thinking things through.

Even if you already have some plans booked for the Fall Equinox, it’s never too late to schedule some pleasant activities just for you. This is in fact, the optimum time to focus on balancing areas of your life. First up, examine where you could de-clutter. I’m not just talking about a general all-over abode sweep and tidy – although I would advise that, as it always less stressful to have a clean home base. I’m talking about mental clutter, paper pile-up, and time wasters. Remember that nature tune, “Earth my body/water my blood/air my breath/and fire my spirit?” Well I’ve concocted a nifty regimen to address each of those elements and how they connect to you. Ready, set, go!

THE HOMESTEAD

Putting up the Samhain lights yesterday, I found an egg that had lain undiscovered since our egg-hunt last spring Evenday.

Not to worry: it was a plastic egg. (For just this reason, we don't hide the real ones.) Orange plastic, in fact, with a black dragonfly embossed on it.

Interesting, that.

Rattling around inside, like the yolk of a dried-out old pysanka, was a chocolate-covered malted milk ball.

I ate it, of course. A little oxidized, maybe, but for a moment, I closed my eyes and savored the sweetness anyway.

The trees are wearing their autumn gold; the ground is carpeted in yellow. Samhain is coming.

Back in the 70s, I was a good, doctrinaire Diet for a Small Planet vegetarian.

Frances Moore Lappé's epoch-making cookbook was based on the notion of protein complementarity: in order to get a complete protein, you need both beans and grains. Eaten together, you get more nutritional benefit from the combination than you would if you ate them separately.

So, religiously, I ate my beans and rice together at meal after meal after meal.

Since then, we've learned more about how the body handles these things. In fact, the body and its digestion is more flexible than we used to think. If you eat, say, your whole wheat toast for breakfast and your lentil soup at lunch, you'll still get the full protein benefit from the combination.

And that's another thing that the tribe does for us.

Fall is my favorite season.  The cooler weather (not that we've had much of that yet) is a relief after the stifling heat of summer.  The colors, the sense of the season all appeal to me.  This fall I've been so busy writing and editing, I've not had any time for much else.  

My harvest is my writing.  I'm focusing on getting the stories in my head down on paper so I can share them.  It's not tomatoes or corn or pumpkins.  I stopped gardening years ago when my legs stopped working well.  But it's still a harvest for me.