A Random Blogger Thought that has been Pulling on Me for a While

I miss Star Foster. I know she's controversial and that a lot of people found her mean spirited, attention seeking, and so on—I still miss her over at patheos.

I used to follow patheos regularly—probably too often. I'd check in two three times a day. I'd look up old posts and new posts and compare. I'd look to see what was trending, and I'd poke my head into other faith areas. What as neat about that time in Patheos wasn't just Star Foster, there was Theo Bishop with his very calm even kilter quiet presence, then suddenly there was the Wild Hunt, my favorite everything, and then the Pagan Soccer Mom joined the blog roll and it was like all my favorite authors had got together in one big tea party session. The site could only have been improved of Carol Schulz had a regular column.

There are better deeper bloggers and plenty of people I prefer to read now. I don't lack for quality in depth pagan or polytheist reading. But something about the way Star would dive in with this passion and red aggressive energy always kept me coming back to read or respond to. She took everything so personally and almost all of the time it was never about her or her religion—a pro and con because it certainly created drama but I always saw it as symbolic of her passion and her creative spark. She could take things so far removed from her and make them personal and pertinent. She had a way of writing that even when I didn't care, she would have my full attention and thought for at least a few minutes. It's an intensity that in person I think would be too much but written, where I could control the time and amount it could be inspiring. I loved how passions would just take her and spread across blogs. I loved how much of others work she read, and wished I could find the time to read as regularly as she does/did.

I used to think there would be nothing worse than silence from her. I wanted to hear about her life, and know she was doing well. I'd gotten so invested in the Star Foster life and brand that when she left patheos it was a bit like losing a friend. Granted, she doesn't know me. We've never met or even written back and forth. I'm a lurker in real life and on the internet, I rarely ask questions or want to discuss so much as hope that people will bring the info to me in time or I'll work out the problem on my own in my head.

There is something worse than the silence though. Ms. Foster returned to the blog world a converted Christian. And I want to say first and foremost that I wish her well in her new religious journey. I totally understand religion isn't a neat tidy thing. She isn't the first to return or go to Christianity and she won't be the last. But for someone who fought so hard again Jesus and God, she wrote an article entitled I Reject Jesus Christ hard for me. I found her relationship to Christianity and Jesus cathartic for me at the time. Her writing and the writing she inspired about both paganism as a whole and individual blogger's and people's interaction and experience with Christianity, Christians, and Christ helped me work through a lot of lingering hurt I had from my own conversion and daily Jesus-y interactions. I know it's her path and her choice and I want to respect that. Still I look at her writing now and her writing then and I can't reconcile the two. Two years later, I still miss Star Foster as I knew her.

It's fall and the time for honoring the death and granting ourselves release. I hoped that my need for some of the combative fire, which is so double edged and perhaps Star's ultimate undoing slowly abates. I hope there is a time where I can look at In the Garden and just care about Star as a person and not read what she wrote there and compare it to writings in patheos and wonder what happened and how. Until then, I guess let me just say that I miss Star Foster but wish her well on her spiritual journey.

Pagan Coffee Update

I find pagan coffee to be a very conflicting situation for me. I love the idea of a bunch of pagans showing up for coffee on Sunday and shooting the shit. I like to hear about how the others are doing, even though we almost never talk about our religions. The occasional reference is often enough.  That we enjoy the same activities, have sympathy for similar causes, and can mutually (mostly anyhow there's always go to be a few bad folks) respect where each  of us comes from job and resource wise is most of what I need in a community.

In truth, I find if someone starts talking about their religious experience in any depth during coffee meetup, I get uncomfortable. Part of me is always watching our venue, and while it's no secret we're a pagan meetup and where we meet is very relaxed, I worry about how public a space it is to talk faith. I don't know what makes me worried. Am I worried that someone else will be offended? Am I worried that we'll be judged? Am I worried we'll look dumb to strangers? Why do I have this need for privacy and a deep feeling of protectiveness over my faith? I know I don't want to share what I think or experienced in a coffee shop but I don't know why I feel that way.

When I share my faith in person, it's always in the privacy of a home or living area and it's often intimate between two or three people not a group of thirteen-ish people. There is a background of my experience already understood as I understand those three of so people's experiences. So when they talk about seeing fairies, or about their preference for natural remedies or their meditation I don't have a ton of follow up questions or corrections.

In pagan coffee meet up, I don't have the luxury of all this complete understanding and when people speak often times I feel the urge to correct or seek to clarify but I bite down on it. I don't want to offend them or invalidate their experience no matter how bonkers is sounded.  Seriously, last week this guy went on a long rant about how depression can be cured with diet and exercise and how his medication made him into and I quote an "emotional zombie" and that it was just the stuff he would ask to take if "he ever wanted to go on a killing spree".  And I'm sorry he had a bad experiences with medication and perhaps in his case they doctors were too quick to write a prescription, but what he just said about how depression is pretty much all in your head and lifestyle shows that he KNOWS NOTHING about depression.  People sometimes feel down for no reason and yeah you can change that with vitamins and exercise or better yet a diet change.  Doing this can benefit a depressed person too, but if you're in the throws of actual clinical depression, you need minimally counseling and you may need medication at least to help jump start you.  As a person who has depression, social anxiety and a few other nervous disorders I can tell you it's not rational and it's not something more iron and b12 and some st john's wart will fix.  Yes I am currently medication free and I struggle at least two or three times a week to keep balance and I have an amazing social support system between my family and my mate who work with me to keep my above water.  I know the balance is very precarious.  Of course this same guy took one b12 pill once ever and immediately felt very sleepy which he believes is because the b12 produced so much energy regeneration for him that he had to take a healing nap to aid the cell regeneration going on in his body.  Perhaps I shouldn't let him rile me so with how he intersperses jung-ish gods, meditation, and holistic diet.

I figure the people there all feel I'm a pagan newb because when asked about my faith I brush it off as an eclectic pagan with ties to local gods and generally refuse to elaborate. It's so odd to me that I can write down and post about my experiences with my gods but if you want me to speak the words in front of an actual group of real people watching me my throat closes in anxiety. My face gets red and sweaty, I stammer and I can't hold eye contact with anyone. I mean it can't be that I'm afraid to share, because I do in perfect detail online, perhaps it's not being able to control exactly every aspect of what I say, or maybe it's just my social anxiety? I'm not verbose in the friendly large crowd about begin things let alone religion.

Of course, in some ways I find pagan group even more isolating because I don't see common ground in my practice and their's---and of course my own silence makes it hard for me to go out finding common ground.

A few weeks ago we had a new comer in our group. She's moved back to Alabama from Alaska, where she was part of a very active pagan community. She wanted to hear everyone's variety of paganism and she wanted to really talk about magic and faith. The group as a whole was not largely responsive to her entreaties. I could see her deflate a little and head back into herself some. She told us in the beginning that she wasn't sure how often she'd be able to come down because of how far she had to travel, but I feel like she probably won't come back based off of her experience with us vs what she's seeking.

I felt bad for her and was annoyed with her at the same time. We share the desire for a book group or a specific course of say divination or aligning with nature or perhaps different styles of spell crafting—though I think our styles are too different to share a group of that kind. And I was annoyed because she has that outgoing demanding personality that made me feel certain that while she wouldn't be able to get that with us she would seek until she had what she wanted. I'd still be sitting here with pagan coffee group more or less never speaking, hoping that I'd get comfortable and some magic force of will would make it so I was able to connect with these people. It's true that as I get to know them I feel like I could connect with some of them in meaningful friendship levels—which is new in my adult life too-- but I don't think we have enough in common for there ever to be a group ritual or for there to be a study group reading the same book and I'm sorry about that.

I've identified a new-ish woman in the group who may practice with me, but I think we'd have to take turns creating rituals in our respective paths style—which I'm good with as a start, but I'd love to actually have community where we could all be on the same page about what we are practicing and why we are practicing instead of just bringing respectful presence to ritual.

I guess I should count myself lucky that I have a pagan community and that they welcome me and that we could even have the potential for respectful shared ritual space. It all comes in time right? That of course doesn't make the wait any less frustrating.

List of Religious and Creative Projects I'm Currently Working on with Status Updates:

1. House Spirit Series: This is a series meant ideally for children ages 5-9yrs of age. They are picture books about hospitality and gracious behavior.
   1. The scripts for being a good host and being a good guest are complete and I had composed two picture books using common licensed material. Since then I've reviewed the two “complete” works and decided that the pages are too wordy and the graphics too busy.
      1. I'm in the process of making the two books longer with cleaner pages. To do this with my current creation software, I will be upgrading the works from their smaller half page format to a large full page format, as then I can create infinite connected pages. This should also give me opportunity to make larger fun text fonts and colors.
      2. I think I'm going to include my house spirit on each page so it's like he's talking to the reader on each page. This means that I'm going to print my graphic off and try to draw zim in different talking poses for scanning. Hopefully that goes well. The little rabbit sprite is very simple and cartoon-ish so I think he'll be easy enough to adjust.
      3. I'm also going to make the books more interactive for parents and co-parents by creating suggested areas with prompts where parents could break down house rules or expected behavior.
      4. Also, I've been reading through, and I'm considering keeping or including vocabulary stretch words with a glossary in the back because I think kids should learn about compassion and empathy both what they are and what the right words are.
      1. As far as furthering the series goes I would like to also cover how to handle different faiths and traditions. Right now I think it will be 4 separate books
         1. religion inside a multi-faith family: this one will cover the idea that parents may have converted from another faith that some or all of the rest of the family follows. It will talk about how everyone has their own right to follow a faith that makes sense to him or her but no one should have the right to tell others what to believe or how to believe. Challenges come over how to cover faiths that believe they have the one true path, possible adult bitterness/ attempts to convert, being respectful of beliefs that may not make sense to a child and balancing openness/respect /embracing a their family culture and keeping appropriate boundaries as needed
         2. religion among friends: this one tackles the idea that a child and his or her friends probably have different faiths. It will address how the pagan child is probably a minority faith and how his or her friends may look to them to be the pagan ambassador, which while not meant cruelly usually can still be a burden. It will go over tools the child may need and how to try to work past that person into being just one pagan as his or her friends are one Christian or whatever and not a representative of all of their faith. It will also talk about what is or isn't an attempt to convert, what is participation and a friendly invitation and what might not be meant so kindly.
         3. religion in society (like Christmas and Easter). It's impossible to miss Christian influence in our culture so explaining it some and what the family does instead or in addition is really the best way to go here. I'll probably write this one last because of all the pagan-ish kids books I'm writing, this one is the one that will probably be the most specific and therefor be of the least use to other people.
         4. ,religion in schools and when speaking with adults who are non-family members. This one is important because if a student and family decides to be “out” about his or her faith, there are things a student need to look out for and know how to handle. We always hope that it won't come up, but forewarned is forearmed.
      2. I have an idea to tackle starting school, deciding whether or not to be an “out” pagan, handling bullying both religious and other varieties and what to do when others are bullied and when you may accidentally be the bully. I want to work on it after I'm done with the other six books, and I think it will be it's own series that I'm going to call the Little Witching series. I want mirror books one with a male lead and the other with a female lead. Tentatively I think there will be 5 or 6 stories and if I make a male lead and female lead mirror it will be elven or twelve books.
      3. I'd like to work more with fantasy and myths for kids where the morals are less spelled out in step by step directions or advice, but I don't have any ideas brewing except that I'd love to have follow up questions and considerations.
2. Portraits of Roxi Starr: I love Roxi Starr and her story. I'm very pleased with how the characters are developing and painting a very real very flawed world. I am right at the point where Roxi will enter fairy world and I know how I'm going to work that part, but I Have about 8 more scenes I need to write first that are fighting me. Also to be honest, while I love my adult venue, the House Spirit Series and a few of my multi media projects have taken up most of my time because of the challenge involved in pulling so many different bits together. Fairy land is going to be rough on me, and I'd love any references people have to myth or lore that happens on or near fairy land to help inspire me.
3. Creating a Family friendly series of Spring Advent Activities: Reading all the family blogs creating winter advents to counter act Christmas culturally for their kids was really interesting reading, if somewhat perplexing to me. I understand historically why winter was a good time for huge holiday celebrations, but energetically, I don't in my own practice feel it's an appropriate time for a bunch of celebration and much anticipated count down the advent implies. To me, pagans, heck the world, should be breathlessly anticipating the coming of spring. So I've been putting together a collections of thoughtful child and adult friendly Spring count down activities. I would want to start Feb 2^nd on Imbolic and continue until the first of Spring in March. This is 50-52days so it's a lot of daily activities to come up with. Right now I have a list of 22 activities so I'm about 40% done with the list. Then I need to write an introduction explaining that the order I put these activities in makes sense for the Southern USA states but may need tweaking based off of the area you live, and I need to write out exactly what kind of meanings and follow up meditations, questions, and what not can be done with these activities to help create a thoughtful religious experience. The advent book perhaps full activity kit will be geared toward nature and self centered varieties of paganism but there is ample places to insert god and goddess myths of different faiths, which I'll try to make obvious and add suggests to as well.
4. Pagan Calendar Project: So I've made a lot of head way on my own personal calendar including major holidays for different branches of paganism and for other religions. Working on it has really opened my eyes to what I am culturally and faith wise yearning for. I'm definitely searching for a more family/community centered aspect in my practice. It's also opened my eyes to how unfulfilling the wheel of the year has been in my life. I've been very loosely following it and really twisting the meanings and purposes of major dates to suit how I see the seasons (which is different here than how I saw them up north). So I'm in the process of reading and reviewing different cultural material to see how different seasons were traditionally viewed and celebrated and to gain ideas about what would be meaningful in a modern practice. I'm focused in on Etruscan, Greek and Roman practices because coming from a traditional Italian household, there are familiar and known ties so I'm not re-learning all this symbolism, plant meaning, design work, food preferences and what not. I've been reviewing the holidays to see what would be meaningful to celebrate yearly and what would be good to know about for specific life events or situations. I'm also looking into the dynamics in the Greek calendar and melding it so the current Alabama seasons matched weather wise as much as possible with the Greek calendar. From what I've been reading regarding calendar creation in ancient peoples more than the dates, what was important in marking time was when growing seasons and specific weather happened, rather than exactly following their calendar time, it makes more sense (to me) to frame days based off of when similar weather happens here. There is a big push to do this now in my life because I have a friend who would like to practice with me and she has a newborn, who when he's older may look for the structure in faith and religion that both my friend and I had in our own lives. Religion strongly affected us as kids and while we agree our birth religions are overall negative experiences, the ability to have holidays, structure, a way to act out express and show a divine narrative and know about the other world feeling is something I think kids yearn for. I hope to have studied enough to be able to fully update and start following my yearly calendar next year. Currently I'm looking to hold on to Imbolic, amd Halloween week (which I celebrate all funky which is why I don't even tend to bother with Samhain as a title), but otherwise I'm looking either making my own holidays for following Italy/Mediterranean inspiration.
5. My Wedding: Yeah, that's happening fall 2016 and I am currently planing to make it a blend of pagan and more traditional Christian themes. I do have interviews with a few pagan ministers, but the ceremony itself is mostly up to me to create along with whatever pre ceremony explanations I want to give out to my decidedly non-pagan guests. My friend is helping me with this. It's barely begun and I feel (hope) a lot of it will shape as I work my way through my wheel of the year because I'm having trouble find sources that are of any help in the creation process. I've never given my wedding a lot of thought, because as a kid I always thought it would be most romantic and preferable to elope. It's been a long road of reflection and pondering for me to understand that weddings aren't really about the two joining but about the families. It's hopefully an outlet for families to express joy regarding their family member's joy, to welcome a new extended family, and to feel still relevant and close to the newly married couple. That said, the actual marriage has meaning meant only for the couple and perhaps the divine which needs to be expressed during a wedding too. Or why I feel like the place the ceremony is at, what is said, who is invoked and so on is deeply important to me on a personal level and while I see the need to compromise that with family expectations and desires, they can only hold so much sway. The balance is very hard for me.
6. Photography Stuff: I find I do best on the photography and editing when I take the pictures in season and look at them critically after the season has passed. So I just completed looking through and editing my fall cemetery photographs. There's some really neat surreal creepy and sad looks that I'm thinking of working up into postcards and prayer cards. I have a good 100 or so spring pictures, but I'm not feeling inspired to work my way through them just now.
7. The Blog: I actually have another blog post about my family and my wedding plans written which I haven't posted because honestly it's kind of bitchy and emo and I'm not sure what kind of community value it has except to express clearly that the struggle to be pagan in modern society is an on going battle for everyone and often one that we have to fight even within the family unit. Whether it will make it on to the internet I don't know.
   1. I'd like to write about my experiences with the weekly pagan meet up group but that post is fighting me in creation. Right now it's a concept about my struggles to find satisfactory meaning within the group and why that does or does not sometimes work. I'm thinking about using the entrance of a new comer and how she made me feel as a vehicle to explore this aspect of in person pagan community.
   2. I'd like to write about animals and spirituality. What it means to see or used different animals in design or to feel drawn to different animal images/concepts.
   3. I'd like to write about my intentions to get married and my love life and how it's changed and what that means to me and in a broader context of the world.

And that's it, what I'm working on right now creatively. Is anyone else working on a million projects? Does anyone have any interest in on of these project over others? Give me a shout out and let me know what's going on in your own creative or religious life.