Pagan Prayers Gladly Accepted

Phoenix and I published a blog post entitled “Why I Am Still A Community Witch” in which we detailed how important it was for us to be part of a thriving, juicy, complicated Pagan/Polytheist community. Little did we know that that just a few days after publishing that piece, we’d be relying on that very same community.

On Monday morning, about 3 am, I woke up in excruciating pain. I recognized the symptoms immediately as me passing kidney stones. Phoenix grabbed her keys, purse and told the two very sleepy teenage daughters what was going on and bundled me into the car. Once we hit the ER parking lot, I collapsed and couldn’t walk. Phoenix practically dragged me into the emergency room, telling me I couldn’t just lay in the street (her compassion often looks like that and I wouldn’t have it any other way!)

Once we went through the ordeal of describing symptoms and handing over insurance cards and the rigmarole of getting checked in, I finally made it to a bed where

I was summarily pricked and poked and mercifully given a big dose of dilaudid. To paraphrase the late Rick James “Dilaudid, it’s a helluva drug!” Within a half hour I was still in pain but the pain was sort of over in the corner of room minding it’s own business and I was making jokes with the medical staff. Note here: I thought I was a comedic genius, you might check in with Phoenix to see the truth of the matter, remember, dilaudid. The subsequent CAT scan showed that I did, indeed, have a large-ish kidney stone trying to make it’s way through my innards and down to my nethers. Think tumbleweed going through a garden hose and you’ll get all of the visual you need.

Later that morning I was sent home with an armful of meds and instructions. The stone would pass “soon enough” and I’d be right as rain in a few hours. Those few hours turned into about 30 hours of total wall-climbing, deep moaning, man labour Note here: Man labour is apparently an official medical term as the nurses and doctors kept using it to describe kidney stones.

And this is where the Pagan Prayer part kicked in. As we do these days, Phoenix put it out there on Facebook what was going on. I would find out later that literally hundreds of people sent prayers, reiki, good thoughts, well wishes, and suggestions for making me comfortable. Many people from our local community checked in with Phoenix to see if she needed any help. The amazing goddesses (that’s the name for the folks that work at Phoenix’s shop Milk & Honey) rallied around to see if they needed to cover shifts. I received emails of support from witchy colleagues that I was working on projects with that things could wait, and told me just to rest up and we’d pick up what we needed to later. Community showed up and offered help in whatever ways they could.

And so Phoenix and I would just like to say a big “Thank You” to everyone that lit a candle or said a prayer or checked in or added me into their devotional practices for a day or two. To know that so many people were out there willing to jump in fills us both with such gratitude. But really, knowing the folks that we do, we shouldn’t really be surprised. I often say that we are an abundant community and I mean it. I understand that some folks have been let down my community (however that’s defined for them), and I know that’s hard. I’ve had my ups and downs with community over the years, but on the whole, I am amazed and humbled by how we pull together and help our own when help is really needed.

Now, I understand that while I was offline for a couple of days being supported by community, some bloggers were debating about which umbrellas the non-existant pagan gods were using to debate whether or not they were real? Hmmm…Perhaps I’ll check into that or perhaps I’ll go back and do some community work instead.

Thank you all again.