in all my weakness

I saved a bumble bee stuck between my upstairs window and the screen during this week's rite, or at least I hope I did. I caught it with a tupperware bottom and a wedding invitation top and set it free outside, where it zoomed off so fast I couldn't see the direction. It may smell different now, though; it could be torn apart at the hive.

It is that all-stakes queen-bee-of-the-summer-time: time to live, time to die, time to get torn apart limb by limb with bumblebees and dragon flies and raspberries and blackberries with their formidable thorns. Daisies are in bloom, Queen Anne's Lace; the droning choir of insects plays nightly. It is a time of birthdays - friends, sisters, mothers, grandmothers. It occurs to me that every dance, every show, every rite I do tries to get at this time, with its re-occurring majesty. There is no loss. There is only gain out of loss - over and over. What a relief. It's not that Jesus invented resurrection, he just did it dramatically. It's not that goddess-cultures don't have rebirth, it's that god-cultures believe in endings, necessitating out-of-nothing renewal. The truth is that life is always behind the scenes, working away, ready to come back - or wait a little longer, until the right time. Lastly, nature plays in strength but even more in weakness. Weakness takes the glory in the end. Our sisters in all their forms prove this to us over and over.

This is my last weekly rite.  I've been doing these rites every week now for five years and four weeks: a total of two hundred and seventy-two. There's completion of the collection at this point, though their work is only just begun. So, read back, read again, read over, read under. Watch with eyes open, watch half-lidded, watch with eyes closed. Listen. Sing. Dance. Play. Rite. The plot continues to thicken. The story isn't over, but all there.