Sometimes the hardest part of healing is getting exactly what we trained for, what we asked for, what we longed for. For the last six months, Venus has wound her way back and forth through Aries and Pisces, like a field nurse in a battlefield, taking respite where she can in boundless Pisces but with the shroud of Saturn hanging ominously overhead. 

You don't need an astrologer to tell you that shit's kinda weird, kinda bad, maybe kinda hopeful right now, depending on where you're sitting.

There is a peach tree in our orchard that became so heavy with fruit some of its branches snapped. When we moved here she was sickly, malnourished. Years of underwatering and blight left me hopeless that she was even worth hanging onto. Like the gardener in Luke 13, AJ begged me: “‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.”

Some of you may be surprised to know that in addition to ministering Christmas and Easter services here at the Lamy Chapel, I’m also the resident astrologer in the Lodge’s healing arts program. It’s unconventional, even heretical, some might argue, to be a Christian minister and also an interpreter of heavenly signs, but when put that way, is it so hard to understand? 

If you've been following along on Instagram, you might have seen my recent post on my journey of being forced out of the church, picking up astrology, and the eureka moment I had that would unite astrology and faith in my mind forever. 

A 14-year-old Jewish Palestinian girl finds out she is pregnant. Her fiance could be angry. He could turn her over to the judgment of her community. He is not the father.

Well, my previous post was on Dr. MLK Jr., and this one’s on Bob Belcher. Welcome to the realities of a Leo Mercury! I wish I could remember where I heard this—but if you feel a character is played well by an actor, the actor’s natal chart probably comes through the performance.

Between McGiffert Hall and James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary, there is an underground tunnel. It runs beneath Claremont Avenue alongside many 6-inch white and blue utility pipes. The passageway is dark, often steamy, and echoes beautifully.

On New Year's Day, Mars will move into its stationary degree (the degree where it changes direction from retrograde to direct motion, backward to forward) at 8 Gemini, where it will remain for a whopping 23 days. During those weeks the Fiery One is stationing, it may be helpful to keep the following in mind:

Well Starpals, I’m not a scientist, but a symbolicist (new word?), and as we head into Cancer season, I want to talk about crabs. No, not that kind of crabs. Well, actually, yes that kind of crabs, too. Buckle up.

Last year, many of you supported There Will Be Signs, an Advent Astrology Devotional. It was a little idea to which my friend Sarah Knoll gave a big yes! We're doing it again this year--more on that soon!

I can’t decide if The Ultimatum is the best or the worst tv ever made, but this is not a think-piece on whether the “Marry or Move On” show is our modern-day emotional Colloseum, Nick and Vanessa Lachey our spray-tanned Caesars. 

In high school calculus I learned a concept that would stick with me forever: if you travel from one point to another by dividing the distance between them exactly in half, over and over again, you will never reach the point opposite from starting. Calculus’ solution? Introduce the concept of infinity and, only by dividing the distance an infinite amount of times, can we even get a representation of the point we are trying to reach.* Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, eh? 

In seminary my thesis project revolved around improvisation, particularly vocal music improvisation. A small group of us gathered weekly for a year, and experimented chanting and singing biblical and extracanonical texts. Most meetings ended with a free improvisation, where we would sit in silence until sound would emerge from one mouth and then the next. The beginnings of these free improvisations were often discordant and chaotic, but we learned that this stage of the song would pass if we held on to each other.

I’ve been writing a lot this Virgo season about the mundane’s capacity to make space for and express the divine. In my last blog post I asked the question: how can you receive good things if you do not make room for them? 

Each full moon, in every season, shows up in the sign opposite the sun. Astronomically this makes sense, as we see the part of the moon in full light while we are directly in-between it and the sun

I woke up this morning with a question swirling like water down a drain. 

How can you receive good things if you don’t make room for them?

This has been an exceptional Virgo season for me as I’ve been listening for and reflecting deeply on new meaning and new life by way of the Virgin archetype.

Content note: this blog post contains mentions of rape in a theoretical, general context. 

Virgo season greeted us with highlighters and miracles yesterday, whether we feel it or not. Last night I watched Under the Tuscan Sun, one of those sweet classics I go to whenever I need a reminder about romancing myself. I curled up, naked and alone in the cool sheets late last night, heart half-aching and half-bursting, from everything and nothing in particular. 

It’s the New Moon in Leo, and the west is on fire. 

In northern New Mexico, a low haze hangs in the air. I’ve seen many report their losing hope the powers that be will quell the natural disasters falling around us like dominos. I spent a lot of time today with my feet in the small river behind the orchard to remind myself that not all is dry. And I still have a lot of hope.