Reverse Holly Triscele by Ms. Lion King from the Internet
I am still baffled by Morgen’s word associations and what other sites and Blamires says. Blarmires goes on and on about the Holly being a substitution for the Oak. He also seems to suggest that every tree is some step toward ending and beginning.
I look for practical things when I am working with the Ogham. Practically what does Holly and Tinne have to say about what is important for my day. Sacrifice is often unjust. I had to go to my mundane work today – my little job that only takes up less than 10 hours per week but provides a monetary cushion that allows my family to live without worry and with less debt.
However, this keeps me from being as productive as a writer and that is irritating. Add to that the talk I had today about “living a token life”© and I find it challenging to find the justice in Holly.
I was talking with someone in community who had had a serious debilitating illness that has left them struggling with stamina. I commented the the balance point between pushing yourself so that you have greater stamina and over doing it is a thin one and hard to find as someone who struggles with chronic illness. My system of tokens is how I approach life. I wake, we all wake, up with a certain number of allotted tokens in our bodies to give – energetic coins for any expenditure required of us in a given day. From getting out of bed, to getting back into bed, everything we do has a energetic token cost associated with it.
I have learned to wake and check in with myself. How many tokens do I have? What do I have to do today? How long with my activities be going on? Is there ritual tonight? Is there something important tomorrow? All of these questions play into how I structure my day and what I plan for myself to do. I have learned that sometimes the day goes well and you find you had more tokens than you thought and sometimes the day goes badly and you suddenly are out of tokens. I have also gotten my immediate family coven to talk to me in terms of tokens.
Instead of saying, “You look like your too tired.”
They say, “It looks like you have used all your tokens.”
This difference may seem nominal to those who get up daily with a healthy number of tokens to spend, but to someone who is consistently shorted in regards to their tokens, it is an indication that the act of going through the day has taken energy – tokens, if you will – and is not a reflection upon the chronically ill that they are lazy.
It is a silent acknowledgement that sometimes getting up and going about your day is a win for someone who is chronically ill or recovering from serious injury.
So the challenge I face is one I face daily, how many tokens do I have on any given day? How am I going to spend them? What is the best use of my energy tokens? How can I save or conserve energy tokens?
And it may be unjust that some of us struggle and have fewer tokens to utilize than others; however, those of us who live that token life can learn to better spend the tokens we do have. This will allow us to have a greater impact than some healthy people who never spend all their tokens and therefore aren’t pushed into the frugal greatness token lifers are.
Do you live a token life? How can you re-frame how you think about your token life? How can you better manage your tokens to improve your frame of mind and your emotional feelings around being a token lifer? What challenges do you face as a token lifer? Do you get up with all the tokens you need everyday? Are you a good steward of the tokens you have or are you wasting them?
Dia Writes 