I have been struggling with MYSTERY this month. I am at the end of my financial rope, and will be unable to pay my bills in January. I had a plan for contracting work, but the field was buffeted by lawsuits in 2019, and the job posting have disappeared.. So I must admit to being in panic mode.

My intimates fail to recognize the complexity and durability of the forces that constrain me, instead treating me like I am a stubborn child who is afraid of women. Conversely, I look at them and say “You know, everything you have – down to your very lives – you have only because of my alignment with the spirit that called them into being. If you force me off the face of the planet, BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.”

Having run up credit card debt, I am out nearly $5000 per annum in interest payments, which I cannot cover. Once the credit cards are frozen, I am out of luck.

This is leading me to sidestep MYSTERY. There are other pathways to lunar energy, and I have decided to tap into them before disaster befalls me in January.

There is a tree named Luna in Humboldt County that I got involved with in 1985 or so. The history is a little disjointed, but Pacific Northwest Lumber, practitioner of sustainable logging, was devoured by a Texan resource stripper name Maxxam. Maxxam set out to clear-cut PNLs holdings in twenty years. The response by the eco-warriors was a campaign of tree-sitting and spiking to slow down the harvesting.

Luna was the 1000-year-old matriarch of a stand that was targeted for clear-cutting. In 1997, Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years on the tree, until PNL agreed to leave Luna standing. A year later, a poacher attacked Luna overnight, cutting a three-foot-deep scar half-way around her circumference. Tree doctors and PNL rallied to her aid, installed a steel collar.

In considering a trip to Humboldt, I had a dream that Luna was dying, and I resolved to visit her to do what I could to strengthen her spirit. Today, as I was out walking and trying to figure out how to keep myself going until the pandemic ends, I realized that she was a living expression of yin/yang balance.

I will be heading up overnight on the 20th. The solstice, of course, is the 21st. The waxing half-moon – another metaphor for yin/yang balance will – be in the sky.

All through the month of January, Jupiter and Saturn will be close enough in the sky to be seen simultaneously through most telescopes. This brings back another memory: ten or so years ago, sitting on the couch in my empty apartment, I had the sense of a man entering my mind. He hunted around until he found Jupiter (head of the Greco/Roman pantheon) and then Saturn (head of the preceding pantheon of Titans). Seeking to subdue them, he pushed them together until they joined, and then began laughing maniacally. One of many such “WTF” moments over the last twenty years.

As well as visiting Luna, I hope to find a broad stump to dance on for a couple of hours. I will run some Christmas music on my sport phones and let it rip.

My WordPress subscription for the site will renew sometime over the next month. I guess that the site will roll over to a free format if I fail the payment. I have done the best I can.

Today I spent ninety minutes with Rob Bell, one of his “So I Have Something to Say” coaching sessions. I won’t go in to details. He told me that when COVID is over, people will be ready to hear what I have to say.

You know, that is the only meaningful encouragement I have received in twenty years.

Maybe I should figure out how to hang on until then.