Reintroducing Walhydra’s Porch: In which Walhydra reconnects with mortal life

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Who is Walhydra?

Walhydra became a storytelling alter-ego for me in the mid-1990s on the Crone Thread, an email listserv of mostly Pagan, mostly women elders, folk who understand, revere, and emulate the crone aspect of the Goddess.

The Crone is that feminine aspect of the Divine which, in the form of a human being past childbearing age, strives on behalf of the race to learn about and teach the terrors and blessings of mortality.  She does

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Further through the porthole

Still recovering from prostate surgery, I began this morning with another distressing incident of extreme urinary urgency. Very frustrating. But then….

I remembered that today is the 22nd anniversary of the deaths at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93. And then I remembered Friday’s earthquake in Morocco and February’s earthquake in Türkiye-Sūriyā (Syria). And then all 2023’s fatal floods, wildfires, and armed conflicts around the world….

No one person can fix all of this suffering; no

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Life without backgrounds or frames: “Time’s Arrow,” by Hiroshi Sugimoto

"Time’s Arrow" (1987), by Hiroshi Sugimoto (seascape: 1980; reliquary fragment: Kamakura Period, 13th century) Gelatin silver print, gilt bronze.

I first saw “Time’s Arrow,” the 1987 photo collage by Hiroshi Sugimoto, as an illustration in the Spring 2018 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly.

The image grabbed me, and I saved it as an image for contemplation.  It has taken me a while to grasp what the image suggests for me.

After a series of difficult personal losses and challenges over the past two months, I set the image as the lock screen for my laptop.  It is the

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Shadow: grief and matri

Shadow the cat, on his couch ramp

This morning, our crippled elderly cat would not eat.

In recent years we’ve nursed this 16-year-old through one crisis after another, always watching him rebound to his usual, sweet, attention-demanding self.  Now he’s on shots for arthritis and extensive intervertebral disc degeneration.

He gets around with a hind end that stumbles and flops. The vet says the palliative shot keeps him from feeling pain, but I imagine that he is doing more physical damage every time he moves—especially when he

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