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The month without gods

In Japanese the tenth month is Kannazuki, the month without gods. The story goes that the kami from all over the country travel to Izumo to meet, so they're away from their local shrines. In Izumo itself they call it Kamiarizuki, the month with gods. My grandmother said not everyone leaves. Ebisu stays behind to look after the house and the business. So every October she set an extra cup of sake on the kamidana for Ebisu, as thanks for staying home and minding things. I live in Seattle now, in an apartment where nothing about the season matches Nagano. But the extra cup went up this morning. It felt like her hand on my shoulder.

What I chant when someone asks

As a hospice nurse I don't bring my practice into patients' rooms. That's a firm line for me. Their faith, their dying, their way. But last week a woman I'll call June asked me, around two in the morning, whether I prayed. She'd been raised Methodist, hadn't been inside a church in fifty years, and didn't want the chaplain because 'he'll want me to say things.' She wanted something with no strings attached. So I asked if I could offer her the words I say for myself every morning, and she said yes. I sat down, rested my hand near hers on the blanket (not on it; she didn't like to be touched), and said the metta phrases very slowly: May you be filled with loving-kindness. May you be safe from inner and outer dangers. May you be well in body and mind. May you be at ease and happy. She closed her eyes. After the third round she said, 'Do it for my son,' and gave me his name. Then her sister. Then the night nurse who'd been 'a bit sharp' with her. Then, quietly, 'And for you.' We went around like that for maybe twenty minutes, adding people. I have sat thousands of hours on a cushion and I'm not sure I've ever practiced so well. She died two days later, on a Thursday afternoon, with her son beside her. I wasn't on shift. When I heard, I washed the mugs in the break room slowly, the way my teacher taught me, and said the phrases one more time with her name at the front of the line.

Eight years crowned

Today is my eighth birthday in Ocha. What happened in that room eight years ago stays in that room. But I can share the prayer I said at my front door this morning, in Spanish because that's how it came out: Gracias por mi cabeza, por mi casa, por mis muertos y por mi gente. Que nunca me falte el agua fresca, ni la humildad. Thank you for my head, my house, my dead and my people. May I never be without fresh water, or humility. Then I called my godmother, who cried, and my mother, who asked if I'd eaten.

Fresh sakaki on the fifteenth

The 1st and 15th are when I change the sakaki on my kamidana. In Nagano my grandmother cut it from the bush behind the house. In Seattle I drive to a grocery in the International District that gets it maybe half the time, and the rest of the time I ask the neighbour's camellia hedge to stand in, very politely. This morning: rice, salt, water and a little sake in their white dishes. Two bows, two claps, one bow. Rain loud on the skylight, the cat sitting under the shelf like a small guardian. It isn't a big ceremony. It's more like opening the window in a room you love.

The red bird on my old route

Thirty-one years I carried mail, the same route for the last nineteen. My Loretta packed my lunch every one of those days, and there was always a little note in the bag. Mostly scripture. Sometimes just 'Don't forget the Hendersons' dog bites.' She passed in March. I retired in June because I couldn't stand opening that lunch bag. Now, folks around here say when a cardinal comes close, it's somebody you love paying a visit. I always nodded at that the way you nod at your aunties. Polite. Last week I drove the old route, just to see it. Stopped by the Hendersons' place (the dog is gone too, God rest him). Got out to stretch my legs, and a male cardinal landed on the mailbox. Not the fence, not the dogwood. The mailbox. Looked right at me and tilted his head the way Loretta did when she was about to tell me I needed a haircut. I stood there so long Mrs. Henderson came out to see if I was alright. I told her yes ma'am, I was just getting my mail. I'd put a dime in my shoe that morning like my uncle taught me, and said Psalm 23 like I do every day. But I'll tell you, I said it a little louder on the drive home. I don't know all the whys of this world. I know who packed my lunch for thirty-one years. And I know she never could stand me being sad for long.

One breath at the door before every patient's room. In: I'm here. Out: you're not alone. Twelve rooms today, twelve breaths. Some days that's my whole practice, and it's enough.

Sweetening things with my sister

My sister and I haven't been right since Mama's house was sold. Too many words at the closing table. We're talking again, but stiff, like two people who learned each other out of a book. So I set a honey jar. I told her I was doing it and she laughed and said "go on then, do your thing," which is the most she's said to me in weeks. Our two names on brown paper, written crosswise, folded toward me, pressed down into a small jar of honey with a cinnamon stick and a few dried rose petals. I read Psalm 133 over it: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is..." Every Sunday I burn a little white chime candle on the lid, set in my cast-iron skillet on the stove where I can watch it till it's done. Three Sundays in. Yesterday she called to ask for Mama's cornbread recipe. Slow is how honey works.

Three staves for the turning year

I cut my ogham set from fallen hazel years ago, twenty staves, each with its notches burned in. Every autumn I draw three: what to let fall, what to keep through the winter, what to plant in spring. This year: Beith (birch, beginnings) to let fall, which made me laugh, because I've been starting new projects compulsively. Coll (hazel, wisdom) to keep. And Ailm (pine or fir, depending on who you ask) for spring: clear sight, the long view. So: fewer beginnings, more finishing, and a long look ahead. The trees are blunt when they want to be. Back to my half-laid hedge, which I'm going to finish before I start anything else. Probably.

The community orchard had its last picking day on Sunday. When everyone had gone home with their bags of apples, I stayed behind with the old Bramley in the corner, the one that leans like she's listening. Poured a cup of last year's cider around her roots and thanked her for the crop and for shading the picnic table all summer. Left the highest apples for the blackbirds, and for the fieldfares when they arrive. Then I sat with my back against her trunk for a while and watched the light go gold. Wassailing is in January, but I don't think trees mind being thanked off schedule.

Please don't put that stone in your water

A customer asked me this week which crystals she could drop into her water bottle, so here's my annual shop-counter speech. Some stones are genuinely unsafe to soak. Malachite contains copper. Cinnabar contains mercury. Galena is a lead ore. Selenite just dissolves into a sad puddle. And plenty of the pretty stuff on the market is dyed or resin-treated, so you have no idea what's leaching out. If you love the idea of a stone blessing your water, use the indirect method: put the water in a sealed glass jar and set the stone beside it or around it, in sunlight or moonlight. You keep the ritual, the intention and the beauty, and nothing goes into your body but water. I sell rocks for a living. I'd still rather you be safe than sold.

My grandmother's lakou, rebuilt on the fourth floor

Growing up, summers meant my grandmother's lakou outside Jacmel. A lakou is a family compound, a yard shared by generations: houses around the edge, a big tree in the middle, and the spirits of the family woven into all of it. My grann knew which corner the old ones liked, which tree you didn't lean on, which songs went with which work. She passed when I was twenty-two, and I thought the lakou died with her. My mother sold the land. I was in Brooklyn, in a fourth-floor walk-up with radiators that clank like a drum line. It took me years to understand the lakou was never only the land. It's the people, the remembering, the feeding of each other. Now, every few weeks, my aunties climb those four flights with foil trays of diri ak djon djon and pikliz strong enough to wake the dead (respectfully). My cousin's kids run up and down the hallway. Somebody starts a song my grann used to sing at the washbasin and we all join in, off key. There's a small table by the window with her photo, a glass of water, and a white candle in a hurricane glass, up where little hands can't reach. With Fèt Gede coming at the start of November, I've been thinking about her more. The Gede are lwa of the dead, and they love a good laugh. So did she. When the aunties are loud and the pikliz is too spicy and somebody is crying from laughing, I feel her in the room. The lakou survived. It just moved up four flights.

Noon adoration in the stairwell

Four adorations of the sun a day: dawn, noon, sunset, midnight. Dawn and midnight are easy, I'm home. Noon is the problem. I work in an open-plan office. My solution for two years has been the fire stairs between floors 6 and 7. Face south, make the sign, say the words under my breath, note it in the diary at lunch. Last Tuesday a colleague came down mid-adoration and I froze with my arms at an odd angle. She said 'stretching? Same, my back is wrecked' and kept walking. People imagine ceremonial magic as robes and incense. Most days it's a stairwell, a quiet voice, and the small stubbornness of showing up when the sun reaches the top of the sky.

What I won't say at my counter

People are sometimes surprised that, in a crystal shop, I won't tell them a stone will cure anything. I'll tell you what a stone has meant to me, and what it has meant to people across the centuries, and then I'll tell you to see a doctor about your back. I'll also tell you where it came from, if I know, and I'll tell you if I don't. Mining is real work done by real people in some hard places, and 'ethically sourced' isn't a vibe, it's a supply chain. I buy from small miners and local rockhounds wherever I can, and I'm honest when I can't trace something. Stones are beautiful. They don't need us to lie about them.

Quakers famously have no rituals. Which is why every First Day I sit in the same creaky bench, by the same window, beside the same woman knitting, for exactly one hour of silence. Entirely unritualistic.

The twins have decided they're in charge of the home altar now. This morning each of them offered an orange to Amitabha, rang the little bell much harder than necessary, and bowed. Minh bowed so enthusiastically he bonked his forehead on the shelf, then looked up at the Buddha very seriously and said, 'That was a really big bow.' We chanted Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật ten times, then had the oranges for breakfast. Some days practice looks like a candlelit temple. Most days it looks like this, and I wouldn't trade it.

Three tosses of the moon blocks

Took my mother to the temple on Saturday to ask whether she should sell the old house. She doesn't trust anything that isn't jiaobei: two red wooden crescents, flat on one side and round on the other. You kneel, give the deity your name, your address and your question, then let them fall. One flat and one round side up is yes. Both round is no. Both flat means the gods are laughing, usually because you asked badly. First toss: laughing. My mother had asked 'should I sell the house,' when the real question was 'is it all right to let go of your father's garden.' She asked again, properly this time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Three in a row. She cried a little, then insisted on buying sesame balls on the way home. That's how you know it went well.

One kind of truth

Quakers have declined to swear oaths for more than three centuries, on the strength of 'let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' The reasoning is simple: swearing to tell the truth on special occasions implies a lower standard the rest of the time. So when I was a witness in a small claims case last month, I affirmed instead. The clerk didn't blink. But I've been thinking about it since. Plain speech isn't about being blunt, or about thee and thou (I only use those with my sister, mostly to annoy her). It's about having one kind of truth, for the courtroom and the garden gate and the email to the plumber. I fail at it daily. 'Fine, thanks' is my most frequent untruth. But I'm practising.