When I was fifteen, during my Hebrew High School summer in Israel, we were coming back from a trip one night and stopped by the sea. The moon was full, the ocean was beautiful and the air balmy and intoxicating. I ran into the waves, still in my dress, with the skirt swirling around me. I remember feeling such a deep sense of oneness and connectedness with the night, the moon, the sea, and all of life.
I was an L.A. kid, and rarely got to experience wild nature. But when I was old enough to travel on my own, to hitchhike up and down the California coast, and spend weeks camping out in the wild, I again and again experienced that sense of oneness in direct contact with the natural world.
I felt as if everything were alive and speaking, offering deep compassion, beauty and love. I wanted to learn to hear and understand, to speak the ancient language of birds, stones and stars, and the whole world was infused with a sensual, spritual ecstasy.
Those were the experiences that sent me seeking for something beyond the Jewish faith I was born into, and that eventually led me to the Goddess and the practice of Witchcraft. When I discovered there was an actual spiritual tradition and practice that was rooted in the sacredness of nature, I knew I had found my spiritual home.
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