I Can't Live Outside of Time or Place: Why there are Mysteries I Won't know and How That's a Gift

Two weeks ago I got three quarters through writing blog entry about how my perceptions of the weather and reality are different. In this case I was writing about how warmth and more daylight don't correspond and what that might me for mean in my practice. I have to put some of that writing a side as no longer relevant to the season or to my mind set. But the were a few kernels I still thought were pertinent to my practice and perhaps others.

I am not a farmer. I'm not dependent on the state of the land, the weather, or my crops for life. While I am effected as we are all effected by food shortage and drought it will never be the way our ancient ancestors were. I personally will probably never be living of the land in any way that resembles the farmers or trappers of ancient times, where so much of our faith's inspiration is pulled. Those mysteries are closed to me, are always going to be closed. I get a lot from the land. I forage (or wild craft or whatever we're calling it). I feel called to the land and moved by it. My heart is utterly pagan and multiple with depths of varying measures and traditions of both long lineage and dubious new beginnings.

I've known I'm not a farmer and still I've longed for lost knowledge. Perhaps it was my inner bookworm or the selfish greedy bit of me. I used to think it was just my thirst for knowledge, even as a little kid, I was creating binders and one stop all information shops. I loved books and the kind of abstract power they could give you. Now I've begun to see that part of me, hoarding and demanding all the power as something within me that may be slightly malicious. Sure, Know It All was always willing share but she didn't just want to know some stuff of value, she wanted to know it all, to be the source, and for others to have to come to her to know it all, to be grateful. It's a little sick. Sometimes I see Know It All's stamp on a blog post and wonder if I am truly informing/trying to start a conversation or trying to be an authority. It's hard to let go of that want and even harder to recognize it driving me in ways that people would otherwise say are good but to know the ends have a big Ego Goal waiting.

Funny how its this aspect of me that I dote so much self love and value on that the Gods have never shown much affinity for. There was a point where Their dismissive nature regarding this aspect of me hurt. I was too vested in being/gaining/growing authority through knowledge and grabbing at what I could to have it. I couldn't see what was wrong about knowing, about being able to consider all the angles, about having a deep through passionate understanding of all aspects of the Gods' traditions, desires, wants and needs.

They told me, it wouldn't have meaning. I could know it and really never understand it. I've never be able to use it or express it. Knowing these mysteries lost in part in time but more so in life style shift which the mysteries did not grow would be worthless to me and to others like me. They kept insisting this was Knowledge I was not to have, that at best it would be meaningless and at worst it would drive me mad. Since I thought not knowing was driving me mad, I was able to pretty well ignore Their underestimation of me. Besides, I've lived without gods, surely I can gain a little information without Their approval? Doesn't there have to be some text that hints to the path to gain mystery x or can't I splice enough information together to spontaneously create the path to mystery y? It had to be possible and attaining it could only be a good thing.

I'm several years into creating my own personal calendar based on the Wheel of the year as it applies to me locally and am beginning to integrate Roman, Greek, and Etruscan holidays and themes where I can. Just as it was clear to me that a British seasonal calendar would not fit a southern location seasonally and I'd have to alter things, I can see how the Mediterranean weather is not 100% a match plus I can see how socially, politically, ethically I am not where these ancient people were and I don't necessarily plan to return to their state. Still their religion was a living breathing shawl wrapping up their realities. It's not something easily or entirely able to be separated from their lives and as such some changes are inevitable. I've come up with hundreds of uses and alternative rituals and thoughts on when celebrating x or y holiday would be appropriate and when it would not. I can feel the little pings of approval when I grab an applicable droplet, and when I can sift the gold from the silt. It has never silenced the part of self that thought we/I could resurrect and modernize these faiths in a way that we'd all know what Right.

This revelation about how I still have trouble discerning aspects of time and weather has made it clear to me just how different an era I live in. That I can argue the semantics of daylight vs warmer weather and assign value and meaning to each that is mostly personal and very little based on survival is too far removed from the lives of some of my source material. They knew and experienced things I won't be able to touch, and likewise I know the divine in a way they could not. Our ways are just too different. Our Gods might be the same and some of the feeling we get could be the same but how we knew it and what we needed to know is just different.

While I'll still study, research, and reflect. There are just things I'll never know and for once that thought isn't driving me face first into the books. It's a perfect Imbolic present.

Reflecting on Dismal Weather

It's been unseasonably cold here in the lovely Alabama. Actually, the cold is entirely within the normal range, but it's a sudden cold snap compared to our previously delightfully mild winter. It warmed briefly this morning and the temperature is already dropping again. Nothing but gray skies, freezing rain, and wet icy wind for the next few days.

I've finally braved the cooler temperature to return to my little study. The smallest room on the far side of the house is often coldest. Even my bright child like decorations, and the warm glow of salt rock lamps couldn't lure me back in. Yesterday the mate brought me a space heater and told me to return to my “room” cause I'm junk at writing or drawing when I'm not in my space for it and I'm useless when I want to be working in my studio but am doing something else for whatever reason. He's the best and I'm very blessed to have a little space to work and keep my all my stuff in stasis.

The dog is half in my little studio giving me a guilty stare that tells us we both know she's not supposed to be in here at all. I'm too happy to have reclaimed my work area to care, so long as she stays away from my work strewn across the room.

I've wanted to talk about Spring, because it's my season and it's coming. But it seems ridiculous now. There are little flashes of green in my grass (perhaps the tips of wild onions?), alerting me to the shift. My allergies are already miserable and nothing is even budding yet. I killed my first house fly at work yesterday. It's waaaay too early for those things to try to over run my coffee station, so I've completed my first round of super intense cleaning seldom looked at areas of the work station. An infinite number of those deep cleans is to come. The rain is here, pattering promises for a wild green spring, though it's too early to do more than tease. I'm planning my Imbolic ritual and anxiously awaiting for a time when it's not darkish around 5.

Still, the wind blows harsh stale and frozen breathes. The ground is brown mud and rusty leaves that look like dead mice litter my lawn. The birds haven't returned to my tree, and the rabbits still don't visit at dusk. Spring might be coming steady and fresh as the dawn, but I'm in the bleak witching hour. There is neither starlight nor the glow of the coming dawn in the sky above. Talking about Spring now seems treacherous at best. I can hope and dream but it wouldn't be the truth. I can't wait until I've a photo of my first wild flower of the year or until I've seen my first robin. I can't wait to plan my seeds—inside to start—and then out back just as soon as they're big enough and the weather will stand it. I want to frolic out in the green-ways with my dog on one side and my fiancee on the other. I want to be back in front of my Local God's temple in the lovely spring, just as we'd first met. I'd like it all so much that if I keep writing and speaking of it, I will completely skip the truth of this moment and dive full speed into a dream Spring that might be perfect in every way, but would be completely untrue. The winter has it's place, as does the waiting.

Even with the space heater blowing, wrapped in blankets, I'm still cold. The dog is all the way in my studio now, and her nose is just barely touching the first of my notebooks. She was careful when she crawled in, but in a moment she will lose focus, nose my things and I'll have to scold her. The sun finished setting as I wrote. It is decidedly dreary out and I can't quite yet speak the name of spring.

It's not spring yet, but it will be. And I have plans, such plans. Now is the time to draft those and re-draft them. To make lists of what I'll need and when I will need it. This is my least favorite time of year, but if I don't use it to sharpen my will, my favorite time will pass in a hazy sheen. Without purpose and meaning.

Winter is a clear cold song. For me it's only long note slowly changing into another note. So subtle and slow if you don't listen, you'll have gone through the whole scale and still have nothing to show. I dream of Spring, but right now my prayers have to be for production. May I plan wisely. May my studies be fruitful and reflections meaningful. May I stay focused and never surrender to pouting or frosty fingers. Though the dark is long and the gray of the day is suffocating, may I surmount the desire to hibernate and apply myself to all the diligence winter offers. Most of all, may I appreciate the current moment and learn to savor the anticipation of Spring enough to now weave an imaginary version that pulls me from truly following they seasons.  

Judge Not Less You Be Judged? Why Can't we Engage in Compassionate, Critical Conversation Regarding Religion and Our Personal Experiences

Back in December John Halsted wrote “TheFirst Commandment of Paganism: “Thou Shalt Not Judge” (and whythis is a problem)”, a brilliant, controversial piece that you should read if you aren't familiar with it. I've been thinking about the piece in detail for a few days now and decided there are some points that are worth sharing.

Actually that's my first point. I read the piece, I reacted to it in the privacy of my own mind, I straightened my thoughts out till I was happy with them and no longer in the position of sensitively clinging to them, and now I'm releasing them to a wider audience for their review and potential feed back. As a writer, this is a process I am intimately familiar with and used to.

First I write. Then, I adjust, review, and attack it with my own internal critic. I consider it's merit—and sometimes it's only meant for me or a small audience. Sometimes it's ready, but I'm too emotionally invested in it to stand critique.

Sometimes hours and sometimes months after creation, I release my writing for others to consider. I can of course continue to write and adapt my style on me own in a void without other input, but for the most part, I've grown the most in my writing and thought patterns through comments and suggestions from others.

I think the process merges perfectly with one's ability to evaluate others religious experiences.

That said let me drop a few disclaimers:

1   .Writing revision is not always done alone. Sometimes writing is done in teams or small groups where they limit judgment to help to improve the creative process and encourage each other to come forward with authenticity. To me, this is where/how we create safe spaces to listen to experiences of others without deconstructing. There is definitely a place in the process for safe space—I just do not belief this space should be the end goal or the default.\

2.  Not all critics are equal. Just because someone has feedback for you does not make it valuable on the face of it. I might encourage people to listen to all the feed back but that's not the same as incorporating it all. Even a qualified person may not have feedback that is relevant to your interpretation or experience, which is cool. Sometimes all we are meant to take from critique is a better understanding of what we emphasize and what others emphasize.

3.   There does need to be space between ritual and critique. Creating and performing group ritual is a leap of faith and trust. Creating solitary ritual can be a leap in faith and trust. Beyond that, ritual is a living breathing thing. It doesn't just happen and release immediately. It needs time to be and do. I've had rituals that felt like duds or felt stilted in performance but were powerful in return. Perhaps I wasn't meant to have my moment of the profound in ritual, but to experience it in pieces in my actual life. I've had experiences that were profound and continued to be deeply impacting for months afterward. How could I have given a constructive critique right off the nose? Further, though this has never happened for me, I am willing to believe that I could be part of a ritual with deep meaning for another that has no meaning for myself. And I am more than willing to perform work that is transformative for another with no benefit for myself, actually opening a ritual up to feed back so I know what another experienced would for me, be helpful to know what I'm doing “right” or “well” for them as well as myself. I would think instead of forbidding critique each group needs to state a time when they will be open to receiving said information. Or, if ritual is too personal to give feedback on directly, perhaps work-shopping past formats or generic formats for ritual.

We as pagans do not like to censor. We do not like to shut others down. I've often gotten the impression from pagans that we believe the judging state is a lower state of mind we have risen above. To facilitate this 'upward' movement, we tell ourselves lies like 'what does it matters if Bobby Q Crazy believes or does that in his practice?' he isn't hurting me. This statement IS NOT universally true and without critical review there is no way to discern which is harmless difference and which is dangerous.

To take from P. Sufenas Virius Lupus comment below John's writing he offers: “Three people see the same person walking toward them. A police officer describes them as "a mid-forties Asian male of average height and weight." A student describes them as "that quirky biology teacher who wears bow ties and sings Led Zeppelin tunes while doing labs." A daughter describes them as "daddy." All of them are right. All of them are interpreting this person based on their own experiences (or lack thereof) with them, their feelings about them, and so forth. If you started to criticize the daughter's description as incomplete or not the best interpretation because it's too personal and puts too much emphasis on her prior experiences with that person, and thus her biases and "orthodoxies" (so to speak!) that are based in her own particular context--i.e. the "echo chamber" of family life for her, her parents and siblings--how can that feel like anything other than critiquing her long history of experience with that person (who is her father)? “

I agree with his point, and in the case if these three perceptions all are true and acceptable and safe. While there might be further discussion with the daughter on what else “daddy” is or is not, and there might be discussion on what each job means to each person, no individual is wrong or should be scolded or whatever negative it is we're worried about happening.

I'd like to extend the example so I can highlight the potential for danger. What about the police officer's partner who saw the mid-forties Asian male of average height and weight with a weapon in his hand, who may or may not act based off of the perception of a weapon? Are we supposed to wait until the officer shoots and hurts someone to address his mistaken impression (assuming it's mistaken, which based off the three other witnesses who mention nothing in the man's hand, its safe to at least consider)? Granted in this scenario, there may be no other option, but this isn't the case in faith. We don't have to wait until someone does something extreme to intervene. We can not be so afraid to judge or interpret a person's experience that we don't step in when what the person is saying may lead to self harm, or dangerous action. Granted, we might have a long debate on what is harmful action. I suspect the pro and con modern medicine folks have a lot to work out before we can set real guidelines.

I further suspect that mental stability is very touchy in the pagan community and as such plays a complicated role in judging or not judging others experiences. Mental illness and the pagan community are not topics I'd like to combined into subject matter for group sharing at this point in my thought process because I'm certain to bungle it terribly. I will say that mental health and paganism has been muddy waters in great quantity because we as a community were misunderstood by the larger modern society, a problem the psychological community is still rectifying, but that doesn't mean that paganism doesn't have it's share of truly mentally ill people whom I worry we don't provide the correct support for.

Another argument I hear a lot to critically discussing religious experience is “who are you to tell me what I saw/heard/felt/know”. I am no one in particular. I consider myself someone with above average intelligence, good listening skills, and sometimes good insight, but I don't have like a special license or qualification for it. Still, we seek advice from unqualified people all the time. I talk with strangers fairly often in line to check out or while looking at items and ask them for advice on clothing or where to go to find X kind of food and do they like their dance instructor and tell me more about their home school program. I know this is all minor stuff, but I've had strangers come up to me and tell me their mother passed a week ago and they are having trouble dealing with it, or that they are pregnant they don't know what to do or that they're taking care of their kid's baby and their kid is into drugs and they don't know what to do. You do not always have to be qualified to help and sometimes as apparently was the case for these people who chose to confide in me, being silent was more damaging than sharing with another person.

What's key here is that I did not go to these people and demand they share and I never claimed authority when talking to them. They came to me and laid their situation out in the open with little more than a pleasant greeting to grease the wheels. People need and want feedback and will take it from almost anyone in desperation. I think the way we present the space to offer feedback, the polish of the feedback we give so it can be critical but not cruel, thoughtful but not condescending, compassionate but firm is far more important and interesting a conversation than whether or not we should judge others.  

Fear, Perceptions, Reality, and Seeking the Middle

“So I finally caught the Baptists yesterday who keep leaving all that literature in my doorway and told them to stop,” I tell my friend in passing. It's a big victory for me, they've been leaving this stuff for me at work at least once a day and at my house 2 or 3 times a week. There's nothing I can do about it at work, where the pressure to provide amazing service makes it too awkward to do anything, but there's no reason for these people to come up to my house. They aren't from within my neighborhood, but they van in and hustle from door to door dropping pamphlets with a train on it asking if I'm on the rails to hell and asking how can I be “sure” I'm on the right track. While amusing to view the first time with their Harry Potter-eque train stop asking what, to me, is the weakest argument to join a faith ever created, they become a nuisance fairly quickly. If nothing else, it's a waste of paper—and waste like that is against my religion.

“Wow, your balls. I'm always impressed how brave you are!” She jumps in. She's shaking her head, at me though and I wonder what's going through her mind. We might be best friends but she's in Massachusetts and I'm here in Alabama. The physical location distance makes guessing exactly her reaction and meaning harder than it used to be. I never thought that your physical place in the world would give so much context to my thoughts. Even being outside of modern culture as I strive to be, doesn't make me immune to it's projections or the subtle assumptions continually pushed on my thinking.

“Maybe it was too forward? Are you sure you're safe?” She continues.  My deep thought face usually give away when I need more context, and it seems my friend can see it just fine over skype. This is all for the best as her words prompt a visceral almost visual portal from her mind to mine.  I can practically smell what she's thinking and feeling.

She's seeing the deep south—the white cross burning Alabama. And of all the southern states, Alabama might as well be the poster child for the Bible Belt intolerance in the USA. The Alabama, that even in my liberal haven of Huntsville, just a few short months ago denied a Wiccan Priest the right to give the invocation at the town meeting (the situation has been rectified and it appears to be one man's prejudice as opposed to the community, but it doesn't mean we don't feel the blow less—after all it only took that one man to keep us away from our right to participate in the rotating invocation program). Even though I am white and my fiancee is white and we live in an upscale end of the state, she sees this simple religious difference and the attention I bring to it as threatening. She's imagining people stoning me and police joining in. She's seeing my home in flames and riots in the street. She's seeing someone grabbing me as I leave my job at night and taking me and doing terrible things to me because I told the Baptists “no” to any more literature at my home.

It's not her fault, it's part of our collective unconscious image of the South (an image that admittedly is fueled more strongly up north than here in the south, but southerner's are not ignorant of this portrait). Truth be told I have this same image in my own subconscious. It's why I knew exactly what she was worried about. She and I have seen discrimination of all kinds and people range from rude to scary. We think intolerant south and our mind jumps to violent-- an action that I'd be hard pressed to decide which of us fears most.

I weight every choice I make about announcing difference based off of this possible outcome. And it is totally crazy. I am not a prime target for any of these scary images. A young polite white girl in upper middle class suburban America, if a little rural, is perhaps as safe as you can be. My Hindu friends are in far more risk than I am. And yet I see their quiet guarded choice to share their food, their faith, and their culture, gently and carefully—and I think, if they can do it, the least I should manage is telling the Baptists to please stop leaving their literature at my door. I understand their mission but they need to understand a polite no thanks if they are ever going to be successful in their mission.

“You jump to the idea that I'd just tell people I'm Pagan too fast,” I tease my friend because again I can see what she's thinking. Up North, especially in college, I would just announce I was pagan when the topic turned to religion. I came out loudly and often. I never softened the blow and on a few occasions, I was intentionally inflammatory. I like to think I grew out of that before I moved, but what we would like and what is true is not always the same.

In any case, I did not tell the Baptists what faith I believe in, I didn't see how it was appropriate or their business.

“Here, you tell them you've found your faith already and they assume you're another kind of Christian. They don't tend to ask, usually telling them you are completely satisfied with your current faith practice and relationship with God/Divine sets them wrong footed,” I tell her.

“But you can't just tell these people no,” she begins.

“Why not? I'm sure they hear no all the time.” I ask, intentionally being dumb. I want her to either think about that fear or I want to actually hear her articulate that ugly horrible irrational fear we hold in our hearts of lynchings and brutalization because I won't accept an infinite number of pamphlets from a Baptist church.

“Don't joke,” she chides, “these are not rational sane people. These are not people you can reason with. These are not people whose next move you can predict. These are the kind of people who picket soldiers funerals, and who send their children out to preach the word of God as manipulative tools. These are people who attack OBGYN clinics because one of their services include abortion. These are people who preach abstinence only and would prefer people live in disease and poverty than offer out condoms and birth control. These are people who think they are warriors of God and are not afraid to inject violence into a situation to get what they think is right. These are not safe people to disagree with.”

The thing is: she's not wrong. I've never physically been to a soldier’s funeral, let alone one that was picketed but I've met people who proudly announce they've picketed funerals. I've met folks who will look you dead in the eye and wish violence and harm on homosexuals. I've know people who don't believe in vaccines or medicine or whatever for “religious reasons”. It's so common, the pharmacist who was offering me a free flu vaccine took my hesitation as a religious objection, she was quick to apologize if she'd offended me. I had to explain to her that I was not morally opposed to vaccines, simply afraid of shots. We laughed, but part of me thought it was more disturbing than funny that it's so common here to refuse medicine a pharmacist is prepped and apologetic if she stumbles into that territory.

Alabama only has two abortion clinics in the state. While there is a legal battle to rectify the situation, there is a law on the books that says all clinics which offer abortions have to have Dr.s that work out of the hospital (hence why we only have two in the state now). The one here in Huntsville is under 24hr surveillance by a church group that photographs everyone who goes in or out of the clinic and posts their picture online to alert people to who is “pro abortion” or “had and abortion” or “helps people get an abortion”. I don't know a thing about the Tuscaloosa clinic, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't have a similar group photographing everyone.

I've been approached by children with ages from 8-14 who want to let me know “God loves me” or want to “invite me to bible study” or want to ask if “I've accepted Jesus as my lord and savior”. Sometimes their parents are around and other times I've been alone with a wandering child. I wonder about these parents. How could they believe their children are prepared for contrary answers from strangers or do they assume that no one in their community holds a contrary belief or do they believe so completely in the persuasive power of a child to over ride contrary feelings? Oh, the stories of my “daring” with some of these children would terrify my friend. I don't want to scare her anymore.

But how do I let her know it's ok? Really, I'm going to be fine.

“These Baptists could be Those Christians but that's not the vibe I got from them. I think they just wanted to share the word,” I finally settle on, because there are Those Christians, and they are all around me. There is one of Those Christians at my work and she is technically my superior. The careful dance I have to do to not lie to her but also not reveal how scary, crazy, and inappropriate she is for work (to me for all settings) is something I'm making a mental note never to bring up to this friend as we speak.

“Well they shouldn't be going door to door like that,” she huffs, “it's crazy. It's intrusive. It's pushy.”

“I know and it's weird to go up to a stranger's house, knock on the door and share your most personal religious belief with a stranger and insist that your soul's truth is their truth. Not that these Baptists were sharing anything personal in their brochures. Do you think people really convert to avoid the potential of Hell?” I ask.

I already know what my friend's answer is. We are pretty much on the same page about fear conversion, but I want to hear the tangent again or any other if it helps move her from her own fear for me. She lets me change the subject and we go on.

Weeks later this conversation lingers with me. I don't think about it often, but I'm a Northerner living in the South. I don't think of myself as a Southerner, while I've adjusted to how things are here, they can still stir me up in a way only a Northerner could take affront. Door to door conversion happens up north. People handle it differently. Sometimes they are rude. Sometimes they are cold. Sometimes they are polite but not open to the message even when they agree to pray or listen to the bible. I assume sometimes they are open to the message and convert or churches would invest in a different method of conversion.

The point is that up North, people might scold you for being too mean to doorstep witnesses, but most people would think since it's your house it's your right to respond to the disturbance as you saw fit. Very few people would be afraid for your safety for rejecting the message or the visitor. Heck there are a lot of people I know who were Christian of some sort and claimed to be Satanists or Pagans just to shock the witnesses. People saw these antics as funny or mean or too much work, but no one came back and said, “was that safe?”

Northerner's don't look at door to door witnessing in the south the same way they do in the North. There is fear injected into rejecting the visitors. There is all this old news reel footage in the back of our heads from the 60s from the fight for racial equality—not even related really except that there is violence and Christian religious symbols overlapped. If the South reacted that way to racial equality, how would it react to religious—I guess that's the leap we make. What can I say to my southern friends, it makes sense in my head. I think the basis is that we've seen the south use religion as a weapon and we've seen the south be violently afraid of difference. Hence all Christian people may use their religion as a weapon and be particularly afraid of difference. Forget that this footage is from the 60s and never mind that the same can be said for people everywhere. We've seen it happen in the South and we're not about to forget it.

Southerner's do not look at door to door witnessing the same way. In my fiancee's work area along probably about a third of the people there have gone door to door or have programs in their church that does this work which they heavily support. This is a done thing that we are supposed to allow. When I talk with them about how unwelcome these pamphlets are, how wasteful all the paper is, how awkward the meetings are, I got blank stares at first. Sometimes I get a “who cares” question. I mean obviously I care and I would hope the people going door to door care too.

So here I am, a Northerner, who believes I should have a right to reject religious intervention at my home but paralyzed by a the monster of Violent South that the North has a love affair with and further hindered by the carte blanche acceptance of the practice in the South. I can't just shake off my perceptions or the perceptions of others but I have to find an truth within the tangle that will suit.

The more I think on it, the more certain I am that I've done the right thing for the Baptists and for myself. I hope one day I can think of my mingling identities as a more unified compilation. I hope that one day all this baggage of prejudice and judgment will wash away, and that there won't be fear as a first or second consideration in my own personal decisions. Until then, I hope to continue to have a discerning glance that can review my own perception for prejudice and can pick at where there may be truth and where there just may be rampant unreasonable fear.   

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.

Sacred Moving?

Not counting moving in and out of college dorms in the last decade I have moved six times. The first four weren't easy per say, but I could feel the Divine calling me and encouraging me. My whole drive across the country, even on my own, filled with everyone else's fears about a woman alone on the road, I felt looked after. The three day drive felt like a meditative trance. I had completely surrendered to the rightness of this move and that there was nothing beyond this drive in this moment that I was meant to do. It was like coming into my birth right with all the pomp and privilege that the term implies.

I was in awe with the country's different landscape. It was late August and hauling through the Midwest was a sight for my suburban eyes.

I felt like I was chasing the sun and with each time zone I crossed, I gained on him. I was coming more to center. Now being in Wyoming was a totally different story. The land and elements spoke to me, but the people there often made me feel in danger for being who I was. Paganism aside, I am progressive, poetic, and just a bit odd in that harmless sometimes endearing but more eye rolling kind of way. Folks there were seriously threatened by different and that's something I had in spades before we ever mentions Gods.

Moving out of Wyoming was a sad farewell, but necessary. If going was a meditation, leaving was a dark dream, the kind that you wish you'd wake up, but know there's no way out but to play through the surreal landscape your mind has you roving. I packed in less than 24hrs, hit the road in literal darkness and never looked back after crossing the first state line. If the Sun had taken me in for the first move, the stars were guiding me back and keeping silent vigil over my tears. My heart was broken, and my aura colors were permanently changed.

Alabama was a family affair. I fought it as long as could, chased all the options there were to stay in Massachusetts, fretted over my Wyoming experience, and prayed. If the other two journeys had been self journeys, this was one of family and hearth. I'd never so fully surrendered myself to the needs of the family and the strong ties of hearth and home. Moving it all and cleaning it was beautiful and painful. There was meditation and there was sorrow. It was too blended a sensation to be reminiscent of either of my other moves. Traffic and construction played a serious role in our travel this time. There was a forest fire that stopped all travel on the highway for hours and eventually forced us to turn around and go a long backwards way.

Being in a family unit there was a lot of consideration for other people's feelings. Who was the worst off, what we could do to help, whether what you needed vs what the whole needed was more important. Gone were my 12hrs of driving straight.

Getting here, there's very little question that I had an experience with a local God welcoming me, guiding me in how to decorate, what to unpack, where to look for work. That feeling that I knew what I was doing and where I was going and someone else was traveling with me was back.

My other three moves have been nothing like these first three religious experiences. The first on was easy because I had so little stuff. But there's no sense of plan or guidance. There's no sense of this was meant to be or this is a building block in my life path. I was just flying blind.

Sure I tried to make it religiously meaningful. I cleansed and blessed my new dwellings. I set up shrines and said prayers and devotions. I worked tarot and tried to pick good days to move. The thing is, you can't (or at least I can't) force paganism. Divine in some form either comes and interacts with you, or it doesn't.

In the absence of the divine interacting with me in the move, I've come to realize that I don't like moving. It's stressful, physically demanding, and scattered work. I've been way less involved than the mate, and still, it's disrupted every aspect of my life. When I get home, I don't want to write or draw or story board, I just want to plop and zone out. It's been so hard to whittle the boxes down and carve living spaces out. It's still not done, and honestly, it won't be done anytime soon. I need to buy book cases and shelves, which just isn't happening on our current budget.

All of which is to say that my own personal internal stand alone strength has been on trial, and I haven't enjoyed it in the least. I have been surprised some. Turns out that quite a bit of my funky design idea and bright color coordination are my own. Even without the divine holding my hand, I have a recognizable distinctive style that gives me personal satisfaction. It's been so long since I've cut the personal me from the religious me that before this experience I couldn't tell you what is me and what is the divine that chooses to present through me. There's a different state of wonder to seeing one's personal depths, granted it doesn't tingle, hum, and resonate the way the divine does. It doesn't both sharpen and blur the world around me, but there is pride to knowing I have subtly, depth and insight that is entirely my own. I don't know, it's one thing to know the forces you work with chose you for your insight, and another to be left alone to see it in action. How much have I attributed to the presence of the divine because the resonate feeling was there, but was actually more my own contribution that I knew?

Perhaps this silence is a gift of it's own kind. I love my gods and my religion. I want and in someways need that otherworldly feeling. But when we work there is no ME just WE. I like to be the second in command, securely backing up a good general. To have that kind of mentality means that you're not just willing but find it comforting to share the credit. No one bit is yours but rather the sum total that is awesome and amazing was created together and so well fused that there's no telling what bit was yours personally, and as you are not the leader, it all falls to his or her capable crafting skills to move each player (of which you were the best one) in place to make it happen. It would be pure hubris to claim credit or any one park or skill. Yes you might have helped but the sum could never have been created on your own.

Yet I'm finding that I can a least decide what rooms will have what in it, where I will do what activities, and what directions I want to go in on my own. Part of me wants to pull a tarot spread right now just to see what will happen. But I think I'll leave divination as a collaborative work.

Anyhow, I'm about 75% moved and soon I'll be in a place to welcome the gods back to begin our work again, but as conflicted as the silence as been for me, I think it was as needed as any divine intervention.

Been Quiet for Quite A Bit

It's spring time and like every spring I've been particularly busy.  It's not an excuse, but I've been caught up with my friend's pregnancy (she's a month away from her due date), I've got engaged, and I've bought a house....which I'm still trying to move into some way, some how. 

I'm sooooo busy.  I say this every spring, and each year before hand I commit to being more religious and this crazy influx of physical change.  So my practice right now and my religious thoughts are very minimal, and will be until I move and reset my home base.  I guess it's appropriate,  if I were gardening this year, this is the time I'd start looking at transplanting my seedlings from my home to my garden.  It's ironic how closely my life seems to follow natural cycles.  I wonder how much of this is a subconscious doing and how much is energy relationship.  Not that it truly matters, I feel the power of the change and rightness of it regardless.

I'm nervous.  The dog did not take to our last move and I don't know how she'll do this round. 

I'm also excited.  I'll have my own studio area and the mate will have his own office.  We'll have an outside yard all to our own.

This post is really basic, I just want to let people know I'm alive, I intend to keep writing, but I am currently in the middle of a couple of large transitions that will keep me very busy for the moment.

Forgiveness and Guilt from One Faith to Another

For me spring is about freedom and life.  It's about energy and love.  My honoring the season change involves exercises like fairy joy bubbles, taking lots of photos of seasons' change, watching the progression of flowers' growth and learning something new about local flora and growing, if I wasn't moving yet again shortly I would be halfway through growing some flowers herbs and veges.  I go outside for walks and being grateful and I will be coloring eggs.  These are all my expressions of love and joy and being absolutely thrilled for the spring.  I don't think I can begin to put into words how sacred and joyful spring is. 

Now for Catholics, spring/Easter season (because nothing is supposed to be related to weather) is far more complex.  In my mother's case spring brings up a lot of concerns regarding guilt, forgiveness, and sin.  I suppose it's only natural, she's fasting right now in the lenten season.   She's meant to consider Jesus' sacrafice, and I know that Good Friday, the day Jesus was on the cross, has always been particularly hard for her.

As a child, I can remember being very confused over Good Friday.  My mother always took us out of school, whether we had the day off or not, which fluctuated.  We always colored eggs and baked sweet bread we would wrap around the eggs.  We would always refrain from using technology from the hours of 2-4 because apparently that's when Jesus was on the cross and you should spend time in quiet reflection. 

Everything about the time seemed so muddled to me.  Because this horrible violence is happening to the savior at our hands for our sins, but there's this deep excitement because on Sunday Easter is happening soon.  Without this horrible violence and betrayal there would be no miracle.  It's still very confusing to me, though thankfully no longer as painful.  Wouldn't the deeper miracle have been for the people to recognize Jesus and to save and protect him?  What could he have done with all that power if he didn't have to rise from the dead?  If he came for peace and a better world then how does this violence do anything but perpetuate what is wrong in our world?

It is a pleasure to me to not have to ask those kind of questions or have this worry that there is something deeply wrong with me.  I was horrified by so many aspects of Catholicism and not able to work through it the way other followers seemed.  I felt like I was bad and wrong twice, once for what happened and again for not being on the same page as other Catholics. 

My mom is still Catholic, we inevitably end up discussing guilt and forgiveness.  One thing she said to me that really struck me to core to our discussion was: "To be really and truly sorry and able to repent means that you won't do those actions and more.  So if you repeat the same actions again, it means you weren't really sorry and couldn't really be forgiven in confession."

To me, and I have no doctrine to back it up, we are most sorry for things we can not help.  I feel guilty and sorry that I have so much while others have nothing.  But what's the real solution to that, how do I "not do that again" or make that right?  Do I give up my position of privilege and join other people who are homeless?  How does that help?

I feel awful that two things I value most, my creative ambitions and my relationships with my family clash.  Each suffers from my experience with the other.  When I'm with my family, I think of the writing or the book assembly I could be doing.  When I'm working on my projects, I think about how long it's been since I've spoken to my family, but if I stop and have a word with them, how they will draw me away from the work I'm doing.  I feel torn between the two, and as if I must sacrifice or compromise one for the other.

I often feel morally compromised at my job, unable to give the best advice because it may look like the boss trying to dictate an employees affairs when really all I want to do is give the best advice in the most straight forward way.  To protect my own interests I stay silent, but it's not genuine to who I am or the most I'd like to give people.

I need/want/hope for compassion and understanding regarding these struggles and others like these the most.  Am I going to keep having these struggles?  Of course, the only way I know how to stop these struggles is to stop living.  That doesn't make me feel less sorry about them, or less like there is a sense of wrongness in our society that these are some of the choices and compromises we make. 

I might wish that if I were sorry for it, I'd be able to fix it or stop it, but that's not always my experience.  I think part of why my mother struggles so much is even though that's her doctrine, it's not her experience?  I think that's why each year we have the same hurt sad conversation.

 Beyond that, to me, forgiveness/compassion is a choice that we have to make to ease others and ourselves despite the fact that there may be nothing they can do to ameliorate of make the situation right.   We are all only human individuals, and singularly we can only do so much.  I think meeting people with both compassion and realism is needed to make the world a better place.  We don't have to allow wrong actions or be silent in wrong actions, but we need to see a whole picture of a person along with realistically what we can expect or do.  

 This idea that we can change everything that's wrong in our lives or ourselves is a great tool to critically look at every option we have and all possible solutions and I do think we need to be thorough in our search for self improvement.  On the other side we need to respect where each person may be and that we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world.  We would like not to repeat the same wrongs but sometimes, even when it's avoidable we're going to make the same mistakes.  It's more about what you as a person do next, than the kind of mistake you made to start.

Babies, Families, and Art Creation

My best friend in the entire universe is having a baby in a month.  I am over the moon for her.  My only regret is that we live so far away and I won't be able to see him until the summer.  I love him so much and have so many ideas for what we can do and experience together and he's not even here.Plus we'll be lucky if we see each other twice a year in person. 

My friend isn't pagan but she is feminist, counter culture, highly spiritual, and desperately missing the rituals of her Catholic faith in not the doctrine that goes with it.  I wish I could be there to hug her and throw rituals along side the celebrations for her.  In that stead, I've been consuming with a voracious hunger any information regarding raising children pagan.  Family trads have always been of interest to me, though often on the outer zone because while I love kids, I am not ready to have one and may never be.

I never realized how much we as a group had idea wise for children.  I think there is more diversity of information on how to healthily introduce kids to religion than there is diversity of rituals offered for adults.  Plus the kids rituals have less tools and are more intuitive. Not everything is a gem--I've read through a lot of kids myths and stories that are not my taste (though by no means bad).  Also I've noticed that all main characters in original works seem to be female, which actually is making is hard for me to present the little man to be with an equal gender assortment of books.  Yes I know the world at large is male dominated, but I want the male lead to be as progressive and multidimensional as my female lead.  I have time though, the little baby isn't born yet.  

While I hunt, I've also been piggybacking.  I took two of about.com kids' bedtime prayers and made the into kids picture books using public domain material.  It's got me appreciating the format artist in a way I never knew I should.  I didn't write these works, I didn't break the work up in any fancy way, just pretty much one line of the poem gets it's own page, and I had a software that makes creative layout ridiculously easy.  Still it probably took me about seven hours a book to put these two together (and these are short books only 12 pages including title page, name plate, and ending page). That time doesn't count the hours hunting for the right public domain material to accent the writing. 

It's helped me understand why there aren't more pagan kids books (or adult picture books for that matter) and why we need to support people who are doing this work. 

I'm really proud of the end results though, even the mate, who is not of the artistic bend or pagan or into kids things thinks the first one I did is amazing and the second one is solid.  He quipped that I should have presented them in reverse because then he would have found both books amazing, but I led with the stronger work, so he found the other one much less than it really is.  

It also made me hungry to create more of these little picture books. I'm thinking of creating a house spirit series where a local house spirit helps to explain some concepts that fall under Hir domain.  I've got being a good host, being a good guest, and maybe creating your own house spirit shrine.  I wrote out Being a Good Host, it's going to be 20pages long including title, cover, name plate, end plate and back page.  I've spent days looking through public domain art and I think I finally have enough to really work with creating the book.  I worry that the writing is kind of dry but I guess a lot of those manner-ish books are dependent on good presentation with interesting pictures to help with the potentially less amazing subject matter.  It took me a lot of thesaurus use to find smaller more reasonable words.

So Questions:  Is anyone interested potentially in a copy of these original kids books I'm working on (I can send the writing to you and I can alter some of it so it fits your family and faith better)?  Does anyone have a work they'd like me to adapt to a kids book for them or any ideas on what they'd like to see as a kids read?  Are there any readings or writings already in print of one form or another that you would recommend? 

The Pagan Vibe Opting In

I'm going to pagan meetup this morning.  I go every other week when I don't work because part of me really  really needs more community here in the south.  I'm a reflective, nature loving, sensitive, socially liberal woman in an area where as a whole I've noticed the people are kinder but usually less reflective and often wrongly categorized as less smart (even by me when I'm being lazy or when I'm in a fit of temper).  Long story short people here are even less like me than they were up north.  They are kind, they allow me to exist but often just as I'm getting comfortable with a person they start railing against abortion, talking earnestly about creationism, or the new hot button topic to hate Obamacare.  There are conversations I don't want to have, especially not in a "casual" setting where there is literally no way for me to shut these folks when they don't accept "I don't want to talk about that" or "we have to agree to disagree".

So I go to pagan coffee and we sit down and talk about nothing and everything.  Several people their open carry to coffee, they still rail against Obamacare, and their traditions are nothing like mine (last time I went someone even mistakenly said I was an eclectic without any practice--eclectic yes but I practice and experience the divine just fine).  You know what though, in the midst of this online battle of pagans not treating each other like we are all on the same side, these people do teat me well--like I am a welcomed guest.  We don't practice the same, but we already know that and we make space to listen to each other.  We don't have the same values, but we come to the table to express ideas earnestly, and we listen to out opposition as if the other person had a rational thinking mind and was able to come to their own equally responsible decision on a topic, even if we have to agree to disagree. 

That's my version of a pagan unifying theme.  We're a whole bunch of people who you know what honestly don't fit together most of the time.  We may look a like to an outsider (and my group doesn't even do that) but we have depths that divide us as deeply.  It's like ocean, sure we categorize it  all the same but what it's like at the surface vs the bottom is not the same--the sea floor is like it's own world really.

What unifies us is that we decided we wanted community.  We decided we were going to come together and do all the things you have to do to develop community like listen to each other and have genuinely open conversation.  We've decided to build on what we have in common, a love of the outdoors, in our case a sense of environmental responsibility (though I will say it is NOT religious for everyone), and an enjoyment of crafting/art creation. 

If opting in and being a good host is what makes us a pagan community, I can live with that.  It's more than some people have.  But it means that we as a whole do need to listen better to each other and think more before writing in our online community.  There are a million blogs I enjoy reading, but I realized that I don't consider a lot of them contributions to the pagan community and I've seen others that are contributions, even needed criticism that are treated as attacks. We don't have to agree and that's awesome because we aren't going to agree.  We don't have to choose kindness every time, but I would love to see more people stop to think.  As pagans we are only have community if we opt in.  What does opting in mean to you?  And how do you choose to approach someone forging as you are, to create common group and an open welcoming community?

Fairy Joy Bubbles: An Energy Technique with Suggested Uses

It's full on spring time here in the south. The weather is what I know as mild (though many truth southerns tell me its cold and unpredictable ^_^), the sun is out often and the light is returning to the days. Wild flowers are beginning to bloom and our tamed ones are beginning to sprout out. Bird song is waking me early in the morning again. It's lovely, I just hope that if I keep taking my local honey, the allergies won't also be in full force.

I love the spring with such fierce intensity. I love that it's always completely new. I love that spring is about life, light and energy. I love all aspects deeply, it's a season that knows my soul best.

With Spring I thought it was time to re-share an energy raising technique revealed to me called Fairy Joy Bubbles. I've written about this before on an older blog, but never in it's own post.  Further, I feel my writing style and ability to communicate has significantly improved since this older post.  In honor of the Spring I thought it was an appropriate technique to re-share.

I have always been a sensitive person when it comes to feeling and seeing energy. In particular as a child, I was more open to the experience than I am now. I used to often see these glittering circular balls of either pink, lavender, silver, or gold energy around flowers, trees, animals, certain natural places, and happy people. I loved these energy bubbles. They were beautiful to look at and they felt refreshing, energizing, and most importantly ecstatically joyful to be around and to see “pop” and release their energy.

One of my guides of the time took the form of a childerns' book good fairy with butterfly wings and long flowing hair. I don't see her any longer which makes me suspect she was meant only to watch over a certain period of my growth, but at the time we were very close. I called her Areiona.

Areiona explained to me these energies I saw were called fairy joy bubbles. She offered to teach me how to make these joy bubbles. They are still how my energy and expression of this feeling manifests, particularly in the spring.

Areiona's instructions for Fairy Joy Bubbles in regular font with my added thoughts in italic:

1. For your first tries: sit, stand, or lay in a peaceful area where you will be comfortable and undisturbed. You may need to set the mood first with music or candles or you just may need to sit yourself outside someplace quiet in the sun/shade as is your preference. The important part is that this place and position feel relaxed, peaceful, and safe.
   
   
   I am at a point now where I can skip this step. Most places and positions are ones where I can perform this exercise, but each person has his or her own level of challenge and is in different places in his or her own spiritual journey. Please use your own discretion.
   
   
2. Close your eyes and listen to your breathing. Take some moments to first listen to your own body and how you feel today. Take all the time you need to notice your feelings and aches and release those that are negative as best as you can. Some people do this through contemplation, others through meditation, and others through releasing or offering these aspects to their guides or their interpretation of the divine. Please use the technique here that fits your tradition.
   
   
   Personally, I take a body/emotion inventory in the morning when I wake up and I try to update it as the day goes on. There's an impersonal tally running in the back of my mind where it's more quiet that I go to through short meditation. I find it's easy to slip into this quiet place because I know it's always there in me, but that took years of creation and daily maintenance for me to achieve. If I am in no duress I can often reach where I need to be through saying a few gratitudes or focusing on one part of my life that makes me feel deeply fulfilled. I can reach where I need to be by placing my hands over my heart and/or power chakra and breathing deeply a few moments as well. If I am in pain or struggling with deep emotions often I need to sit and do a long through meditative process. This can take a good forty minutes or more. 
    
3. Pull out a memory of pure joy. This can be a true moment such as a happy memory, or a relationship that lights you up. This can be a moment from a book or imagination that left you with a depth of joy, excitement, or inspiration. This can even be as simple as a reflection on a sunset you enjoyed, a flower, or some other quick flash. Focus on the feeling these thoughts evoke intensely. Notice how your energetic field feels and shifts with these thoughts. Let this feeling fill you up to the point where you are brimming and overflowing with this energy and feeling. Some people may choose to actually overflow with this energy and create a large pool or other shape surrounding them with this energy that immerses the person. This energy surrounding you can be used as a barrier to keep out unwanted energy or it can be viewed as a more powerful energy that reaches out and transforms other natural forces around you or it could be an energy that hums and matches the natural charge of the place yo are in. The experience is going to be different because people and places are different. You are now generating the energy you should to create your own joy bubbles. 
   
   
4. Allow this energy and feeling that is flooding your body to pour out of you so it may have it's own separate life. Some people may need physical gestures for this, which I recommend visualizing this energy you're humming with to slowing collect at your shoulder area, from there all the energy to flow down your arms and through you hands. Use your hands to shape the energy into a sphere or any other creation you may be inspired to make. Size of the shape and density will vary, please use your own intuition on this creation.
   
   
   Other people will be able to imaging their spheres or shapes manifesting outside of his or her body without going through the physical motions. He or she may make as many bubbles as they want at at time in as many sizes, shapes, and density as desired. He or she may wish for his or her bubbles to begin existence somewhere farther from his or her own being. It's a more complex mediation to do this but possible (it is also possible to send more tactile made bubble to others, which we will walk through).
   
   
5. When you are done shaping your bubble release it. I like to hold my hands up to my face and blow the bubble out of my hands or toss the bubble up into the air and allow it to float by me. I also wipe my hands one over the other to cut connection with energy and to let any residual energy on my palms flow back into me and the earth through my connected state. If you want more than one bubble, keep repeating this process until you have enough. If you want to send this energy to someone else, now is the time to imagine it floating out to them. Otherwise sit back to observe your bubble. 
   
   
6. Watch the glitter and sparkle as it hangs in the air. Look into the pure sense of joy, creation, and peace you've made in the world. Given time the bubble will hang in the air and eventually pop, as all bubbles must. It will release a cascade of that lovely blissful energy down on whatever it is around. This can be very healing for people and it's also a great way to reclaim spaces that may have negative emotional connections This is a good simple way to introduce children and loved ones to energy work, that leaves everyone feeling happy and energized. Or this can be an exercise meant to hone your ability to focus and prolong your meditative state.

Some Suggestions I have in How to Use this Technique:

-Of course how I experienced and got this style of energy work makes me think of spring and summer celebrations as the perfect place to use this energy. I like to pair these energy bubbles with real soap bubbles to create a joyful, youthful experience of celebration and happiness in these seasons. I also like to release them when I'm in parks or at outdoor picnics, and other areas this time of year based off of how I feel called.

-I offer these bubble up to my house spirits and protectors when I am cleaning the home or thanking them with offerings. In this case I like to make hundreds of little bubbles that shoot from me like a bubble machine, cascade around and pop as they will. I feel like I'm making an indoor fire work display for them.

-I am occasionally moved to send these bubbles out distances to help heal or uplift other people. If I think all they need is a jump start of a little positive nudge, these bubbles are the right tool. They are almost always present in deeper healings along with other energy flows and techniques because underneath all the other work, we are looking for that moment in joy. Having a bunch of little moments of joy while healing helps motivate us to keep moving forward.

-I also use this bubble to help transform unreasonable fears and anxiety. This level of work though is very delicate and emotional. It's important you feel up to it, and have several techniques ready based off of how an individual responds to your energetic technique. Using the joy bubbles as self healing is also possible, though it took me a long time to hold energy to create the bubbles in the same space I found something upsetting. I think being able to balance the two like that helped provide as much healing as the bubbles themselves did.

-I think these joy bubbles are great for children. They naturally have that bubbly happiness and wonder. It's a great outdoor activity to put the meditation into kid speak and use the props of actual bubble wands, soap bubbles and maybe an appropriately themed bubble machine to create a little magic and a memorable happy afternoon. They really get in to the whole concept. Especially if you add flower garlands, wands and fairy wings!

I hope this techinque may be useful to some and I hope everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is welcoming and loving the Spring in his or her own way!