Everyday Magic

   I have a hard time sometimes, finding the magic in my everyday.  It should be second nature, but due to where I live (an overcrowded, overbuilt apartment complex near a college and a shopping mall) I feel like its tough for me to connect with nature.  There are trees and small fields between buildings, and nature all around, but there isn't silence, and despite knowing I shouldn't need silence, I have a hard time when I don't have it.  The worst part is I can't even get that connection in my own apartment.  This time its not because of the silence, but because of the environment. 

   The people below us smoke, and that smell seeps through the floors and in to our place.  The hot summer air rises right up in to our place so even on the nice days, its pretty hot.  One of our neighbors slams their door a lot and it shakes the whole place.  Most of all, I don't want to live in an apartment.  I want to live in a house, or rather a home.  We appear to be several years away from this, and that despair has caused a depression, which has caused apathy, and apathy is the enemy of all things, including faith.  

   I don't want to be apathetic in my faith.  I want my faith to bloom, to fill me and fulfill me throughout my every day.  If I keep thinking "It'll get better when we own our own home" then I'll be miserable here for two, maybe three years. I have to take each thing that bothers me, starting with what is out of my control (not being in a position to own a home) and I have to work through it one by one. 

   So I have taken to lighting candles everywhere to combat the cigarette smell and to make my home feel magical again.  I have decorated a corner of our office desk (our office being the corner of our livingroom) with signs of my faith.  Its like a mini altar.  Here, I'll show you. 

   Making this corner a place just for my faith gave me a sense of completion.  I have a prayer candle, the ribbons from our handfasting in the handmade box from my friend Ben, cleansing liquid (vinegar base) I made with the group I practiced with before we moved, the stained glass Pentacle from my step mother, my cauldron, some matches, a glass bowl with sprigs of evergreen plants from the floral arrangement from my father in law (he put "Happy Yule" on there for me, which I was touched by since my husband's family are all Christian.  It made me feel very accepted), and incense.  Everything an altar needs.  There's even a little sandcastle figurine, to represent that I'm a water sign without leaving water my cats will knock over out.

   Its a small step, but an important one, if I'm going to make myself feel better.