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.

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?

Offerings and Whether or Not I'm Doing it Right

What, if anything do you offer to the Gods or to your Guides or to your Ancestors? What do you do with the offering after the ceremony/ritual/presentation? How do you is your offering enjoyed/received and is this always the same reaction? When do you make offerings? Does your deity/guide/ancestor ever make demands of offerings when you had no plans to give them?

I ask because the concept of offerings fascinates me. It seems like every book or ritual I read right now no matter the source, integrates offerings on the most basic level. Usually the offering is some kind of food/beverage. I understand how this idea came about. Most pagans have some value on hospitality, and when inviting a deity into our home or lives or practice, it seems best to offer them something to eat or drink as we would any other guest. Beyond that, if we are asking something from a more powerful knowing being, it only makes sense we offer up something of ourselves in return. How else do we demonstrate respect if we offer nothing when meeting a deity?

My problem with offering food/items to another being is what do I do with this stuff after the ritual is over. Especially food where it can not sit an indefinite time inside and will attract unwanted critters if it's left alone outside. What do people do with this stuff afterward? It seems disrespectful to throw away a portion of something I've assigned to deity and it seems a waste of the food. In the case of my land gods, I suppose I could ritually release my offering to the sewer system, via the garbage disposal, is that like a cosmic doggy bag?

In the case of items I offer to Gods, am I supposed to hold onto all that forever? I mean if I make an offering for ever ritual have that's a ridiculous amount of stuff to build up. With coin and money offerings, should I be able to donate the money after a certain time and which charities would my Gods accept? Am I just going to have a small dragon's hoard of quarters and dollar coins around my symbols of deity, and do my deities even value a concept of human wealth?

Personally, I think I'd like to offer more to my Gods, guides, and ancestors, but I'm unsure on how to implement it. There's a lot of talk about how to offer in ritual, and very little about what to do with the stuff when the ritual is done that is responsible (I don't think leaving food outside or leaving non-organic material outside is responsible and further I don't think most pagans have access to an outside space to worship so this plan isn't really a feasible premise).

What I do offer is often candles and incense. I like the ritual of dressing the candles, blessing them, charging them, and lighting them. A lite candle can give me a focus point in a meditation and it can feel like opening a door into deity. I like the symbolism of offering my Gods light, power, heat, passion, and hope. I can use the size of the candle to dictate the length or a ritual or period I plan to make offerings. The best part about a candle, is that I can just keep lighting it and enjoying it until it burns out, in which case, I may dispose of the candle.

With incense there is a similar blessing, charging and lighting process. The stick lasts for shorter periods than the candle does, and the scent can correspond to deity, mood, or type of offering. Again the best part about this sort of offering is that when it's used, I can dispose if it. I suppose I could store he ashes for some kind of religious use, but if you can't tell from this post, I don't like to collect things either for myself or my deity.

I prefer to make offerings of my time and energy, in the form of meditation, hiking, or wandering sacredly lands mindfully. Occasionally I've been moved to make an offering of writings or sacred words. Those experiences are entirely different than the experiences I have with objects because they are rarer, more spontaneous, and are clearly required by my deity, they're almost puled from me.

With candle offerings, it's a ritual respect thing, the same way I offer someone a drink when they enter my home. Deity, especially the one which values hospitality wants it but Ze doesn't compel it. I often wonder if I'm offering the right things. When I offer someone something to drink at my home, sometimes I can tell they've picked the least offensive of the choices instead of choosing what they wanted to have. I wonder if deity is ever doing that too.

At the same time, I always strive to be the best host I can be, and sometimes it isn't about what is on offer but that someone made the offer regardless of the cost to them.

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Pre-Samhain Local Land Worship Meanderings

The pagan adjacent boyfriend wanted to help me celebrate the autumn season, so he suggested we go to a haunted house. I went and I enjoyed it, but of course wandering through an abandoned school that's been purchased and re-vamped into a Haunted House that predominately features cannibalism of different genres, ax murders, insane asylum patients, and clowns has nothing to do with my holiday. He sort of know that, but he feels lost in helping to support my faith where he sees I'm not doing what I've talked about doing back in Massachusetts.

I think it's hard for him to grasp the concept that my Neo-Paganism is locally connected and I will celebrate seasonal changes differently in Alabama vs Massachusetts. It's true this time of year was magnificent in Massachusetts. It was starting to get cold, there's about a 50% chance that a frost has happened already (it has this year). All these local farm stands and harvest-ish themed things seem to appear over night. There were a lot of hot drinks and hot fresh meals. Apple donuts, pumpkin donuts, cakes, pies, fresh acorn squash and butternut squash. Apples as far as the eye could see!

Beyond that, there was this strong tie to colonial times in MA. There were Victorian homes everywhere. Pagan/new thought and the general population liked to connected modern celebrations with older ones. Honey sticks, herb gardens, ghost walks more information that scare , apple bobbing, donuts on the string. All the semi-traditional things were still celebrated by the general populace.

Also, because it was getting cold, there really was this sense of urgency to batten down the hatches and prepare for winter. There is a real concern regarding purchasing heating oil, wrapping up summer gear, purchasing enough canned goods that should one be stranded one could still eat. I associate all of this as part of what I should be doing and what I should be looking for in others this times of year. I can't say how much of a relief mild winters are and at the same time, how it leaves me both in me practice and life sometimes at a loss.

There is way less work involved. There is no sense of urgency along with the crazy joy that nature is beautiful and brutal. There is always thankfulness for lovely days, but the praise seems less meaningful when every day is beautiful and mild and the coming winter will be soft compared to what I know. It's true this year our summer was brutally hot and dry. I watched corn literally burn away over the course of a day in the relentless sun. In some ways, this winter will be a relief. Everyone here thinks it will be unusually cold and wet, which will kill all the extra bugs we have, restore our water table, and hopefully heal some hurting farms for the spring.

Some of my practices will be the same. My reverence for my ancestors is more or less the same. This year my celebration will be especially focused on my Grandfather as he passed in Aug of last year and his birthday was Oct 28^th, I feel particularly close to him right now. My reiki meditation will essentially be the same, though the themes, the requests, and the healing is somewhat changed.

My month of semi-public celebration is very different here. I am spending more time in quiet reflection before Samhain than I ever have before. This kind of quieted mind used to come as I burned out all my frantic energy in preparations for the fall. I am reminded of the fable of the hard working ant and the lazy grasshopper: all my life I've been the ant and now even though my preparations for the seasons are appropriate, I feel like the grasshopper.

I am walking out in nature more often. I spend hours at the Tennessee river where I feel particularly connected to the river's divinity. I walk slowly and thoughtfully. I wander off the path and through the woods or into the river to explore and contemplate. I feel like a baby who has to put everything in it's mouth to learn what it is and what it means.

Right now, I feel that Alabama requires more complex acknowledgments than MA lands did. There is death and decay in the land right now. I can see it in the trees, smell it in some areas, and I feel that old ending magic I did in MA in areas of the land. With that energy is the energy of life still in full bloom, berries are all over tons of the bushes an trees, cotton is in process of harvest, flowers are still blooming, the sun is still out for huge swathes of time, and the weather itself still gets up to the 80s most days. There's actually this sense that AL is a safe haven and that more life is coming in soon to partake in the offerings. Song bird and water bird migrations have just started in these parts and will be in their peak in November.

I'm still coming to terms with the idea that there will be more than snow for me to look forward to in November. I feel like that quiet shut down I expected to come at Samhain time, won't really hit until the beginning of December.

For now I'm going to try to keep my mind quiet and open. I want to hear what my Gods and the land is telling me. I'll leave this post with a few pictures I've taken of Alabama fall in attempts to see, understand, and worship the land. 

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Delpic Maxim: 7 Percieve What You Have Heard

 

This is part of my commitment to posting once a week on the Delphic Maxim.  This post was originally added to my personal journal, and I am cross posting it here for the sake of continuity.  There has been some editing on my part to clean up the writing, correct spelling, and properly credit others of ideas they presented me.

While this is a maximum I struggle with, I certainly think it’s crucial to Paganism full stop. One defining aspect of paganism is that we all strive to be more conscious in our daily lives. There’s a couple of key things one has to do if one plans to be an active participant in his or her own life and the world around his or herself.

First one has to pay attention to what’s going on or listen. There’s a ton to observe, hear, know, explore, and discover. Open one’s eyes, ears, mind, and heart and all sorts of new information, thoughts, and experience will traipse in.

Second one has to interpret what one sees and hears. For example, a co-worker may sigh a lot but is that because she’s sad, bored, frustrated, has a medical problem, or something else? These little cues are things one can pick up on, inquire about, or in some cases simply make a judgment on in one’s own mind. Step two is also known as perceiving.

Third, once one has observed and interpreted one’s surroundings, one needs to respond in a thoughtful and reasoned manner. The thing is that if one doesn’t first listen and second stop and interpret what one is observing, there is absolutely no way to make a thoughtful, reasoned, and conscious decision regarding the world around oneself. There is no magic, intention, or depth to life without these first two steps. 

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