Hola, Miracles,

Today’s letter is in response to a question I am often asked: how do I make Holy Water?

Gather water from a river or a brook or a frog-filled pond. Kneel on the muddy bank and plunge your entire arm into the cold depths until your fingers brush rock or sandy bottom, or water plants, sighing in the current. Fill your cup, your mason jar, your water bottle with the tiny drops of life that hold worlds within worlds. Say thank you. Say please. Ask permission. Leave something in return…a bit of your hair or a shaving from your nail or a few drops of blood.

Or, take in some of the snow that your children played in, that your dog rolled around in, that covers the rosebush your mother gave you the year before she died. Melt it down over a sweetly scented fire and pour it in a bottle of rock crystal or emerald-green glass.

Take the bathwater that you sat and wept in when you lost your lover, your child, your best friend. Take the water that you washed your child’s feet in, that you gave to your beloved on that hot and dusty day, that you cried in hot gushing tears when unexpected tragedy struck. Keep it in terracotta close to the entrance of your home. Spring it liberally on everything and everyone that needs a blessing. Share it far and wide.

You can always refill your cup.

Healing is a word we bandy about with the best of intentions.

How many times have we heard it said that we need to heal, or that we need to be open to healing, or that what is needed now is healing?

All of that is fine and good, but we may wonder, after years of healing, and perhaps even after little or no results: is it even possible to heal?

What does it mean to heal?

We might turn to the icon of the Sacred Heart for help.

Here we have the familiar heart symbol, but there is a fountain of fire pluming from within the heart’s division, and the heart is encircled with lines of radiance, or sometimes wings. When we see it in its radiant glory, we may easily forget that the shine and radiance is that of a heart and spirit that has been to hell and back.

In image and imagination, every possible wound has been inflicted on the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart speaks to the scarred heart, pierced by a thousand swords, cut by a thousand pieces of glass, wrapped in rusty barbed wire and a crown of thorns — and sometimes, at first, we think that those scars are something to hide from the world, something to keep quiet, keep covered up.

The Sacred Heart speaks also the scared heart, afraid because we know we can be harmed, frightened of our worst dreams coming true, scared that the wounds we are asked to face cannot ever, really, be healed.

Experiencing the traumas to body and spirit that cut so deep, the ideas that bind us to a limited view of life and love, the habits that keep us from not just living life, but living life well, we are afraid that we will only ever be broken.

Fleeing from our pain, we will reach out for healing far away from the scars and brokenness, to cover it up, to be free of it. But to flee from our condition in this way is to flee from what makes us sensitive and alive, from what transcends and supports our own mortality.

To the Sacred Heart, those salves and remedies for which we reach are a mirage: the greatest healing power comes from within the very brokenness of our condition, just as a lily flower blossoms from out of the muck. To the Sacred Heart, what we call broken shards and scars are crown jewels that bedeck and bedazzle.

The Sacred Heart will not be covered up nor will it be silenced.

Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes, it shines through fear and a forest of scars and the clothing that we wear and the protections that we weave about ourselves.

None of these matter to Sacred Heart for it is made to shine. And so, it does.

It shines out in radiant splendor, saying:

My blessedness is in and among the broken, ever, and always.

Dear Miracles: Let us now discuss one of the hardest words to hear and take to heart, short and phonetically simple, but one that most of us spend our entire lives grappling with — NO.

The guy that just won’t call you back.

The lady that gently refuses all advances.

The ex who isn’t going to return to you-not now, not ever.

The boss who sits you down to tell you why they went with your co-worker for the promotion.

Your friend who picked the other person to go to the party with.

The poem that got rejected.

Calls that weren’t made, letters that weren’t written, paths not taken. NO.

Sometimes the answer is simply no.

NO can be painful, soul crushing, a sucker punch to the solar plexus, a smacking your face right up against the sheer cliff of reality-where faith seems very small indeed.

NO can be liberating, freeing, a gleaming, bright truth that you can set your lights by and follow to a deep(er) & true(er) sense of direction, purpose, joy.

In my own experience NO is something I hate to hear…and when I look back a year later, I am almost always thankful that I did hear it — thankful for the doors that have closed firmly and finally in my face.

Thankful that option was taken off the table.

Happy to have that path once and for all decided on as the one I will not be traveling this lifetime, thank you very much.

NO requires a sharp intake of breath, a sizzle of electricity over the skin, the bottom of your stomach falling out, a moment to mourn for what could have been. You can stay there-in that hopeless place for as long as you choose.

Or you can rise up to meet NO with “what if…”, “could it be…”, “maybe now…”.

NO can challenge you to stretch yourself, go upside down, turn it around, STOP engaging in actions and behaviors that do not serve you or those around you.

NO might just free up your energy to get on with doing what you really need to be doing.

My advice when confronted with a NO?

Don’t let it suck your faith out of you. Consider that your faith might be deeper & more full of grace than you ever knew-and that this NO might just be the beginning of you getting down to business and doing what you really need to be doing in this one, sweet, short life.

Meet it. Face it.

My prayer for you then is this: Take the power of NO for your own, put it to work for you and don’t give yourself, your passion, your faith over to it.

You never know what is just around the bend & its not what you are told — it is what you do with it that makes all the difference.

Dear Miracles:

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is: what can I do to make my magical work, or the ritual work you are doing for me, stronger?

My answer has become more and more simple throughout the years. The bottom line is that magic works when you do.

When we look at the history of magic-making and sacred ritual we see this very clearly. Never is there a time when the client on whose behalf ritual is performed is expected to just sit back and let their ritualist take care of everything.

Engagement…in your personal spiritual practices, in any follow up directions the ritualist has provided, and in practical actions that increase your chances for success and happiness are all required, they are part of the magic.

I would like to illustrate this point briefly with a tale of two clients: The first client was a lovely soul who wanted more financial support for her and her child. After assessing her situation I agreed to take it on, performed the work, and followed up with her including in my follow up a specific list of directions for what she should do next.

Months went by and I never heard back from her, only to receive an email last week telling me that nothing worked and she did not believe in magic.

I responded immediately asking her about her follow up — had she contacted the person in question, had she opened the road of communication by being kind yet firm, had she taken certain actions at her own place of employment in order to secure more prosperity on her own?

Guess what the answers were?

No, No, and No.

Contrast this to another client who was recently working on her financial situation. Specifically she was going for a very high-end job that had fierce competition and numerous interview stages. She got in touch with me after ordering her ceremony with the names, dates, and specific intention she had — and she did this for each phase of the (increasingly difficult) interview process.

Any recommendations I made to her were followed to the letter. She did not order work at the last minute but gave me plenty of lead time, and kept me updated on all of the changing dynamics.

Guess who got her dream job?

Does it always happen like this? I’m the first to admit that it does not. Sometimes we can pour our everything into a dream and the answer is still no. But I do know this: the best thing to remember when engaging in sacro-magical practices?

Magic works when you do.

Miracles,

In high school, I sang in the choir music, and I was pretty serious about it. Winning first place in the state soloist category for my grade two years in a row in the state of Texas serious about it.

I was blessed with an equally serious choir instructor. Our rural high school choir had a history of going to local, regional, and finally state competitions and walking away with trophies and medals every single time.

But it wasn’t about winning.
Not for him, not for us.

I’m convinced that we were a skilled – but not exceptionally so – group of students who had an excellent teacher. He drilled us, he made sure we could sight read sheet music (something many vocalists are not trained to do). We polished pieces of music, sometimes spending the entire period nailing a single measure. He had us all speaking like we were from the best English boarding schools instead of the backwoods country kids we actually were.

He made sure we had the technical skills, that we weren’t just depending on youth and enthusiasm to carry us across the finish line.

Then, usually right before we were set to go on stage, he would take our entire choir into a stairwell. For those of you who don’t know, the stairwell in your typical high school has excellent acoustics.

He would gather us together, tell us to put our music and our folders down, encourage us to close our eyes and sing. And we did.

(Pro tip: if you aren’t sure about all this magic stuff, head over to your local high school when the choir is doing this, and then come tell me how you changed your mind and realized magic IS real.)

Before we sang the first note he would ask us this question:

Why do we do this?

And he would answer the question:

We do it for the music.

I know that this meant something different for every single person in my choir and I also know we all understood it too.

The music is the notes on the page, the reason they were written in the first place, and the composer who wrote them.

The music is also the lineage of song, singing, inspiring deep feeling with the power of our first instrument, our voice.

The music is also coming together to create something bigger, grander, deeper, than what any one person could accomplish on their own.

The music is that which guides us and inspires us and depends on us to carry it forward.

It is different for each of us…and we all understand it.

We can give ourselves so many reasons for why we do what we do…but my petition for all of you this week? Do it for the music.

xoxo,

PS: This email and letter, like all of my writings, is written exclusively and 100% by ME, an organic, flesh and blood, human, lady. No AI, generative text, or Chat GPT-esque program has been involved in the crafting of these words.

If you like what I write then the kindest way to show that is to forward this to one person in your life today who might need to read it.