Dear Feminist Spiritual Writers – Start Writing Accessibly
13 May 2012 6 Comments
in Jay Bull
Dear Certain Feminist Writers,
This letter is not to all feminist writers. Some of you are accessible, interesting, and fun to read. I love Jezebel. Some of the Feministing bloggers are also fun to read (although others are dry as dirt). There are many online feminist blogs that are intelligently written without being off putting. There are even a few books that are as well, although fewer than I’d like. This in no way is addressed to every feminist writer who tries to take on spirituality. Z. Budapest’s writings, for example, on feminist spirituality are accessible and interesting to read, as are Diane Stein’s, albeit to a lesser extent.
Starhawk, not as much. I love you, Starhawk, but your writing makes it clear that you are an academic and a philosopher, as you write in the dry, dense manner of philosophers. Your best work is when you break out of that mold of writing, which is why the books where you collaborate with others tend to be my favorites.
However, I just skimmed through a few essays in the book “Weaving the Visions” and as a college educated lit major my eyes glazed over. The rhetoric in the essays I picked was so thick that it simply was not worth the effort of wading through. When your philosophical rhetoric becomes jargon that is only understood by other academics, you’ve narrowed your audience to other academics, grad students, or people who already know what you mean. I know that feminism is about redefining our world, but when I need a glossary for most of the words in a sentence to see how they’ve been “re-defined” I simply stop caring.
I can be a feminist and a spiritual feminist without changing the structure and meaning of the words in the English language.
Preaching to the choir will not change the world. Often, preaching the choir simply alienates those you would like to be behind your cause.
This is not a problem simply for those who write about feminist spirituality, either.
People often talk bad about feminists and they use all kinds of methods to do so. The F-Word – people who are pro-woman often say things like “I’m not a feminist but….” to be followed by something completely feminist in nature. We, as feminists, wonder why this is.
A lot of it is simply patriarchy being too ingrained in people for them to embrace alternate views. Feminists have been maligned vigorously and often by damn near everyone. The media, politicians, preachers, pagan leaders – you name it. Wonderful, liberal men who fight for every other equal rights cause in the world still talk about humanism instead of feminism, because they love their privilege too much to give it up. (“What about how our current system hurts men? What about that?” Well, feminism addresses that, too, but you are too busy whining about your hard life to actually learn about feminism instead of just trashing it.) We pretty much have enemies on all sides – and if we are straight sometimes even in our beds. That is a huge and the predominant factor in people – especially women – shying away or outright rejecting the label of feminist.
But some of it is because we are alienating people simply by trying too damn hard to be legitimate. Where do most people get their feminist identities these days? College. Feminism has become Women Studies – and I believe that this is great. However, not everyone goes to college. Not everyone who goes to college takes a Women Studies class. Some women have jobs and children and go to college online and do not take anything but those classes related to their degrees. There aren’t feminist consciousness raising groups operating far and wide anymore – which is a damn shame, as this method brought feminist consciousness to a great many women without the crippling student loan fees or hierarchy of a college education.
By playing the game of making feminism a University major or minor, we are definitely grabbing the attention of many women, but at the same by writing everything as an academic treatise, we are alienating a large portion of the population. We strive for legitimacy and therefore write with our doctoral rhetoric in mind, but the only people who will care to wade through that dreck – and make no mistake, anything too filled with jargon to be immediately understood by the masses IS dreck – are other academicians. This means that only rarefied circles will understand or CARE what you have to say.
We live in a world where the line between rich and poor is expanding at a frightening rate. Getting a college education is no longer something everyone is going to be able to afford, as the middle class is disappearing. People who do not have the means may still be interested in feminism or feminist spirituality, but they are not going to read dreck. It may be smart and funny and witty dreck, but if the normal person, someone who does not understand your academic language and rhetoric, does not understand it, they will not care. More than not caring, they will then think negatively of feminism, because it seems like a foreign language instead of something accessible to anyone who wants to have equal rights for women.
Therefore, I humbly ask you, those writers who struggle to bring feminist spirituality to the masses – write for the masses. Write in words that everyone can understand. Do not overload your writing with jargon and rhetoric. No one but you and those in your immediate circle give a shit. When our basic rights to govern our bodies are under attack as they are right now, we need the masses to understand what we are saying, so say something that is easily understandable. Better yet, say something that is easily understandable AND interesting.
Sincerely,
Jayble
I’d Like Enlightenment, and a Side of Fries
06 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Divination, Divinatory esoteric and occult tarot, Religion Spirituality, spirituality, Tarot
Once upon a time, we were all newbies to this path. Unless you are born into it (lucky you), most of us had to unlearn what we had been taught to believe and restructure our beliefs to a new way of thinking. For some of us, this was easy to do as the path we are on spoke to us long before we realized that it had a name. For others, unlearning never really took place, and often times these transitional pagans end up finding solace and comfort in the religions they were raised in. All of this is fine – in the spiritual quest that is life, there are many paths that you can take to find what you are looking for, and being Wiccan or pagan takes work, effort, dedication, perseverance, and work.
It all starts and ends with work. Work, work, work. Work doesn’t have to be drudgery, but without putting in the work, however pleasant, you will never get the results.
I have always wanted to read tarot. Since I was a child, there was something about “fortune-telling” that called to me. I like the arcane and the occult, and tarot readers seemed to me to have a foot planted in those worlds of secret spiritual knowledge. However, even though I had tarot decks, that did not make me a tarot reader. Learning to read the cards, both on an academic level (what the cards mean) as well as a spiritual level (what the cards are saying for this particular instance) takes work. You have to put in the time. I read book after book after book on tarot. I consider myself to be an excellent tarot reader and I still read every book on the subject I can get my hands on. Each book expands my knowledge, and each time my knowledge expands, I give better readings. Constantly improving, constantly studying. With any art or skill, you have to hone it, sharpen it, and keep it sharp.
When I was a newbie, a baby pagan, I was merely a book pagan. I read every book I could get my hands on. Tried a few of the exercises, but was a bit too intimidated by the myriad things that could go wrong to do anything much on my own other than visualize and occasionally meditate. I spent 4 years reading, and 1 year with my first hands-on learning group. I learned more in the year with the hands on group than I did in the entirety of the 4 years spent reading.
As with most things, the best way to learn is to do it. The same is true with tarot. I tried for years upon years to memorize the meaning of each of the 78 cards in the deck. Their meanings, their reversed meanings, what they mean when with other cards… I did not succeed at this method. I learned the tarot by reading tarot for anyone who would let me, looking up the meanings in the book during the reading, and gaining proficiency in that manner. After less than six months of doing this, I did not need to reference the book any longer. I had the practical experience I needed. I will say that I missed many parties, as I was stuck in a back room reading tarot for people. Totally worth it. Many of my casual friends would get readings from me for fun, and I steeped myself in reading tarot as much as I could. It stuck and stayed with me.
Practice, practice, practice.
The same is true when it comes to simply following this spiritual path. I have people that I will work with, but for the most part my practice, my work, my spirituality is all on me. What I do in my own time, the work I take on, the every day spiritual practice that I perform, over 90% of it is on my own.
Too often what I see lately are people desiring the outcomes of spirituality without actually participating in the work of it. This simply will not work effectively for anyone. If you want to have a meditation practice, learn Reiki, read tarot, trance dance, do yoga, or whatever you feel is calling to you – you have to put in the time, work, and effort involved to make it successful. You cannot simply order up a satisfying spirituality as you would order a Big Mac at McDonald’s. It isn’t McSpirituality.
Anything worth doing takes time and effort. Anything worth doing takes work and dedication. Anything worth doing takes your willingness to actually DO it. No one can hand this to you. People can teach you the tools you need to get what you desire, but they cannot do it for you. YOU have to put in the effort in order to see the results.
Love Does Not Always Conquer All, Unless it is Love for Yourself
01 May 2012 1 Comment
This is going to sound like heresey, but the Beatles lied to us. They said, “All you need is love” and I am sorry to say that this is simply not true. One of the saddest truths about adulthood is that love does not conquer all. Sometimes you may love someone, but you are not compatible. Sometimes you may love someone, you are compatible, but they are actively drug addicts or alcoholics and you have to move on in self preservation. Sometimes you may fall madly, deeply in love with someone only to find out that what you want out of life is so completely different, that there can be no compromise. Sometimes you have love for another person, but it only leads to misery. Love should not make you miserable.
Love is powerful, it is wonderful, it is great. However, many people treat love like it is an incurable disease. Why are you still pining over that man who treats you like dirt? “Because I love him.” Why are you still with that alcoholic who just drank all the bill money? ”Because I love her.”
Great. Wonderful. What about you? Do you love yourself? Because if you loved yourself, you might not put up with this kind of thing. If you loved yourself, valued yourself, you would not allow someone else to treat you as valueless.
One of the things very few people realize about tarot reading is that it is often a form of counseling. As a tarot reader, I have no judgment. People tell me all kinds of things, their life experiences, their actions and reactions, and as their tarot reader, I tell them what the cards have to say about it without judgment or opinion. My path is not your path. My judgment means little when people are looking for answers from a higher power – as a tarot reader I am merely the channel information passes through. However, one of the things I see over and over again is people excusing a loved one of truly heinous behavior and then simply waving it all away with one hand saying, “No, but I love him/her.”
Loving another person doesn’t mean jack unless you love yourself first. I know. This is cliche. People have heard this over and over again, but it is one of life’s mysteries. Mysteries, in my experience, are those universal truths that you do not understand until you have that epiphany “Aha!” moment where it sinks in, often after kicking your ass.
For me, I had a best friend I loved dearly. She hated herself. She hated herself to such an extent that she did not believe that anyone else would love her. Because she did not believe that anyone else would love her, because SHE didn’t love her, she made those that did love her miserable. She was my epiphany moment. She was the person I loved who I had to stop spending time with because my love did not conquer all. My love would never be enough because without her deciding to love herself, my love fell into an empty abyss.
There is a great line from that horrible show, “Ally McBeal”. Ally’s love interest, who left her in college for another woman, tells Ally the reason why he left her. ”Love is wasted on you, Ally.” When people do not love themselves, often love is completely wasted on them as they do not accept it, understand it, or allow it to thrive.
For some reason, and I have seen this played out over and over again, there are two reactions people who do not love themselves have to being in love. In the first, they disbelieve that anyone would love them, so they are horrible to the person who loves them until they have either killed the love, or chased the person away. It is kind of like that old joke – I do not want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. Because they feel that they are valueless, they are convinced that anyone who would love them must not be truthful, will leave them – then they set about making sure these things come to pass. Those self-fulfilling prophecies are a real bitch to deal with.
In the second reactions I have seen, the person loves people who treat them badly. After all, if you do not believe yourself worthy of love and respect, then you tend to not seek it out. In these cases, they excuse the fact that they are with someone who treats them poorly, ignores them, or who has even left them with this sentence that makes my inner self cringe, “But I LOVE him/her!” As if the mere fact that they love someone else makes everything else ok.
It doesn’t. Love is not a debilitating weakness. It is a strength.
One of the things that my husband and I have in common is that we loves ourselves. The other day, in conversation, I pretty much told him that I love myself more than I love him. ”Good,” he said. Because I love myself, I know that I am worthy of his love. I will not sabotage it, I will not test it to see if it is true, I will not feel the need to torture him endlessly so that he will prove his. I also will not allow him to treat me poorly. He will not be allowed to disrespect me. Because he loves me, he wants me to love myself more than him. If I love myself more than I love him, chances are I will take care of myself.
If you must treat love as an incurable disease over which you have no control, at least start with loving yourself, first. Let the love you have for yourself be the incurable disease. Let the love you have for yourself conquer all. Maybe my earlier premise here was wrong, maybe the Beatles were right and all you need is love, but we were wrong in thinking of it as love for other, when really all you need is love for yourself.
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Meditation Variations
26 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Jay Bull, Meditations
When I was a little kid, I had allergic asthma. I couldn’t eat dairy without running the risk of not being able to breathe. I was put on a medication to help my breathing – Theo-Dur - which was a central nervous system stimulant. In my head I always called it Theodore, you know, like in Alvin and the Chipmunks. As with most of my childhood memories, I do not know how long I was on this medication, but it feels like it was years. I do know that I was on this medication when I was supposed to be at an age where I got lots of sleep, including naps.
I did not get lots of sleep while taking a central nervous system stimulant. One of the side effects is even insomnia. However, my parents did put me to bed with the hope that I would sleep.
Instead, I sang, read books with a flashlight, worried about the monsters in the closet or under the bed, and generally stayed awake. At one point, either my father or my mother told me to clear my mind and think of nothing.
Sure. While I do that, go sit in a corner and do not think about a white elephant. Be sure to let me know how that works out for you.
I spent hours upon hours lying in bed, hopped up on this drug, thinking about nothing. I would try to think about nothing. Then I would think about how if I was thinking about nothing, I was still actually thinking about something, and I would try to blank my mind. I would then spin out into infinity, thinking about thinking about nothing, while thinking about thinking about nothing, forever and ever. Eventually, I got to the point where I was able to chase these thoughts of thinking about thinking about nothing to infinity away. I was able to let them go. Release them into the void. I would be able to blank my mind and find that calm. I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I was able to find a bit of rest. The nights I successfully let go of the thoughts of thinking about nothing, I did get to sleep much easier than the nights when I sang or read books or tried to discern what the monster in the closet wanted.
What I did not realize at the time was that I was meditating. As an adult who does not wittingly consume caffeine, I am able to meditate quite easily. From the many books and articles I have read on the subject of meditation, the hardest part in learning to meditate is the clearing of your mind. Thinking about nothing. However, the process of learning to think about nothing, even including spinning out into infinity, is training your brain how to reach that place of meditation. Many people try meditation for a while and give up on it after they do not think about nothing successfully. “I could never clear my mind completely,” people have told me. However, as with so many things, they are focused on the destination, when the journey is so much more the point. It is the exercise, not the goal of the exercise, that really matters.
Beyond that, simply sitting and thinking about nothing, clearing your mind, breathing deeply, may work for some people, but it is not necessarily going to work for you. Luckily there are many ways in which you can achieve a meditative state. I am still a big proponent of taking five minutes out of your day, sit quietly, taking cleansing breaths, and clear your mind. As thoughts rise up, acknowledge them and then let them go. Just five minutes will give you great results after a month. If you can up it to ten minutes, you are a rock star. Lately, I have been shooting for a goal of 25-35 minutes. I have a vitamin D deficiency so I have been going outside, sitting in the sun, and meditating. I figure if I need to be in sunlight for 30-40 minutes a day, may as well kill two birds with one stone. It is still a challenge on some days to clear my thoughts, but I always feel better afterwards even when I am not totally successful.
Focus on the path, not the destination. The journey is the majority of your time anyway. Might as well enjoy it.
That said, there are other really great ways to meditate.
Full Body Meditation
Lately, I’ve been going to yoga classes. There is nothing better for living in the moment, feeling the now, and inhabiting your body fully than yoga – at least in my experience. I am usually so focused on myself, how my body feels, and living in the moment that none of the other stresses in my life intrude upon me. One of the first exercises our instructor had us perform was to stand on a yoga block. Yoga blocks are rectangles of a sturdy foam-like material. The whole point was to balance on the yoga block. Once we had accomplished this, she had us close our eyes and balance on the yoga block.
This was much more difficult. Eyes closed, balancing on this block was an exercise in living in the moment. The meditation was simply one of keeping your balance. No other thought was in my mind. This was a great way of clearing my mind and an exercise I still do at home when I am feeling too stressed and want just a brief moment of not having to carry the worry of the day with me.
I have talked with people who do a variety of body meditations similar to yoga. Finding an exercise that works for you is just a matter of finding the body movements you feel clear your mind best. There are numerous exercises that can create that mind clearing, trance-like state of being that you seek through meditation. Dance (whirling dervishes, anyone?), tai chi, running, walking – the possibilities are as diverse as humans.
I have one friend that finds working a carpet shampooer to be very meditative. This is a particularly cool one, because you can meditate and clean at the same time.
The point with full body movement is to not be self-conscious, be focused on the body, and to let go of thought as you move.
Sound Meditation
If sitting silently and clearing your mind is not your cup of tea, there are a wide variety of guided meditations out there. These are usually spoken meditations that take you through the relaxation and meditation process. I love guided meditations. Not all of them are created equal, and I have found a few unpleasant or annoying enough that I have turned them off, but for the most part, guided meditations are lovely as they take most of the thinking out of your hands. You listen, follow the instructions, and voila – you meditate.
For guided meditations, a good, free way to start is to search online for podcasts. There are a lot of people out there who host guided meditations via podcast, blogtalk radio, and other online venues. Try out a sampling of these free guided meditations before spending money on CD’s. Also, keep in mind that just because you like an author’s books does not mean you will like an author’s voice. While there are some great books out there with companion CD’s to listen to, there is one prolific author who makes a click noise at the end of each sentence. Drives me right out of the meditative state. Listen to samples, if you can, before you buy something.
Chanting is another way to meditate via sound. I am not saying sit at home, in lotus position, saying “Om…..” to yourself. I personally cannot get into lotus position as it makes my knees angry. However, for those who have done meditations using mantras, they are very helpful. One of my favorite mantras/chants to meditate to is to Ganesh – “Om, Gam, Ganapatye, Namaha”. Traditionally, you would repeat this mantra to Ganesh 108 times. The sounds resonating through your body when you chant do help induce meditative states of various kinds, depending on the chant or mantra you are using.
As with guided meditations, check out free sources online first. YouTube has a wide variety of chants and mantras to choose from. Everyone is different and what appeals to me is not going to necessarily appeal to you. Check around for something that you can sing or say to yourself that resonates and helps get your mind into the meditative state.
In addition, there is classical music, singing bowls, chimes, and many other sounds that may help you in achieving a meditative state. Experiment with sounds and see what you like best.
Visual
I don’t know about you, but if you sit me near a fire, it’s over. I am gone. Fire transfixes me. I may get up and play with the fire to get it rolling more, but for the most part I am totally zoned out if there is a camp fire to look at. Or a bonfire. I have even created the same effect with a single candle although it is less intense.
Some people can meditate upon flowers, trees, a picture, or other visual aid. For me, there are two pieces of artwork that can cause almost effortless meditation – Van Gogh’s Starry, Starry Night, cliché but true, and John Martin’s Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion. The latter picture is at the St. Louis Art Museum, and as a child and an adult that has been the highlight of visiting the museum for me every time. While I know what that painting is about, I do not care as my own stories for it are better. Also, the tiny man in the vastness of nature always made me happy.
Some people have had much luck with meditating on various screen savers.
Basically, as with the other venues, find something that you like, that inspires you or quiets your mind. The possibilities are endless. It can be a moving visual such as screensaver or fire (although I recommend fire, but that is because it works for me). It can be a still image such as a painting, or even an object you are drawn to. Experiment and find something that works for you.
What types of meditation work best for you? What methods of meditation have you loathed? Feel free to share in the comments section!
Disbelief is a Killer
23 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Jay Bull
I’ve decided that this spring/summer is going to have a Stephen King theme. I have a ton of books I am reading right now, mostly camping info and field guides, and for entertainment while I am geeking out over bugs, trees, and flowers I am reading Stephen King as well. The first book up is ‘Salem’s Lot, which I first read in middle school and have largely forgotten. Vampires are classic horror, I don’t care what Anne Rice and the other angsty romance novels of the day have to say about it. If they are a metaphor for rape, if they suck your blood, if crosses burn them, they are evil. Vampires = evil.
‘Salem’s Lot is scary as hell, as most Stephen King novels happen to be. Scary enough that I am reading it during daylight hours only. Scary enough that when Will comes home and I am in bed, he freaks me out just by informing me that he is home. While dead asleep, he says from the doorway to the bedroom, softly and friendly, “Hey, honey, I’m home.” My very reasoned and practical reaction is to yelp in fear while waking up immediately due to adrenaline flood and look for a weapon while my brain THEN processes that this is not a threat. Thanks, brain. Maybe process the not-a-threat sooner and create a little less drama for me and less humor for Will. Sheesh.
The body count in ‘Salem’s Lot is high. Very high. Most of these people do not listen to their instinctive fear reactions, try to be reasonable and rational and thus are killed. Two characters in particular die simply due to complete disbelief. There is evidence, there are people backing up the evidence, and yet they still refuse to believe the truth because their disbelief is so huge. They do not believe in vampires therefore vampires do not exist. So, these vampires that do not exist simply kill the heck out of them. Easy pickings, too.
My dad was a big reader of Stephen King. Prior to his death in 2010, he read every single book King wrote. Will and I were fortunate enough to receive these books after he was finished, so we have quite a few Stephen King novels, many in hard cover, on our bookshelves. This means that a Stephen King Summer (because the daylight lasts longer than the darkness of night, summer is perfect horror novel reading time) will be a largely inexpensive endeavor for me as I will not have to purchase any books.
One of the themes that King explores frequently is the notion of childhood belief and adult disbelief. There are quite a few stories where parents simply do not believe their children about whatever the supernatural bad guy of the novel is – therefore the children are left alone to handle these monsters. As a child, reading these books after my father had read them, we would talk about them. He was big on applying what he’d read to real life. He once told me that I could always come to him if I was being stalked by a monster (he phrased it differently, but this was the gist of a very long conversation). He said that he may not believe me totally but he wouldn’t disbelieve me. He said he would take it seriously and we would figure out what to do from there.
To a little girl with an active and treacherous imagination, this was hugely comforting.
This is also a philosophy I’ve applied to my life. As the bard says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Do I believe that vampires roam the earth? Not particularly. I do not disbelieve that they roam the earth, either. I find it interesting that every culture has tales of vampires, in one form or another. If someone were to come to me and tell me that they have seen vampires and are afraid, I would not necessarily believe them, but I’d sharpen some stakes, get holy water, and generally prepare for vampires.
As sci-fi and horror fans, Will and I watch a lot of movies and television shows where the main stumbling block is disbelief.
“You won’t believe me, but I am from the future,” says the hero of the story, sent from the future.
“No, you don’t! Shut up!” says another character who then proceeds to run away.
Good job there, idiot. Way to shut down what could have been a really interesting conversation.
This is a scene that happens over and over and over again, much to my dismay. Where are these characters’ intellectual curiosity? I would have a lot of questions for someone who told me that they came from the future (or saw a ghost, or vampire, or zombie, or Whatever Else). Beyond that, how can you deem someone to be crazy or a liar without gathering facts first? I mean, at the very least, I need to know what kind of crazy they are. Paranoid? Delusional? There are varieties and flavors that are interesting to explore in the realm of nutjobbers, so even if what they are saying is not true, it is not a waste of time to gather more information while they are in a confessional mood. Also, always hedge your bets. Chances are they are mistaken, but if they are not you need the intel to survive the story. Furthermore, the gathering of information often provides great anecdotes.
I once had a friend who had a bit of difficulty in spending time with me and then going back to her “main stream” friends. There was a bit of mental culture clash for her. I never thought of myself as not being main stream, but apparently reading tarot for a living, not actively disbelieving things, and having a large amount of knowledge about various occult subjects makes you auxiliary stream. However, if being main stream means that you shut down something simply due to it not fitting neatly into your worldview, then I am more than fine to be outside of the main. I am always better at being support staff, anyway. I can lead when necessary, but I never wanted to be king – I prefer to be the king’s adviser. More fun, less responsibility and who likes the limelight?
As I am reading about vampires, I am also going through vampire attack scenarios in my mind. What would I do if vampires attacked right now? What weapons are nearby? How would I survive it? How would I convince Will that I wasn’t insane? Although, I think he may have less disbelief than I do. Or more paranoia – one of those.
Will does not simply answer the front door. He always asks, “Who is it?” When he and I first started dating (and really it was less dating and more him showing up at my door after work everyday – my running joke is that we are still on our first date, he just never went home), he would knock on the back door, I would open the door and he would proceed to lecture me about how I should not simply open the door to anyone. I finally humored him by asking “Who is it?” even though no one other than him visited. Will still asks “who is it” when anyone knocks on the door, even when we are expecting company. He often follows this question up with “Are you a vampire?” People laugh and say no, but he is at least partially serious. If I happen to say “Come on in” he gets a little mad at me because what if theyare vampires? If they are, I just invited them in.
I asked him the other night what he would do if I told him that I saw a vampire. He did that thing that many men of my acquaintance do, where they inspect you like you are an interesting but unidentifiable insect, it is this suspicious what-are-you-on-about look and then he asked me a bunch of questions that basically sum up as who, what, where, when. He said that he would probably grab another person or two and go out hunting for the vampire. He wouldn’t necessarily believe me, but he would not disbelieve me, either. In Will’s mind, spending time hunting for a vampire that may not exist would not be time wasted. It would be an interesting exercise in vampire preparedness, with the extra added bonus of the interesting possibility of being able to kill a vampire.
I found this hugely comforting as Will would not be one of the people who died simply due to disbelief.
So, my advice to main streamers everywhere – suspend your disbelief. Ask questions. Gather information. Do not simply disbelieve because information clashes with your view of the world. This could kill you if the zombie apocalypse occurs and you spend the majority of your time saying “This is not possible.” That is time wasted and time wasted could mean a zombie chewing on your arm.
Church-Hopping
03 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
A lot of my present life is informed by my past. I was raised by an Atheist and a Catholic, so in many ways, I was left to my own devices when it came to finding a spiritual path. I church-hopped in high school, trying to figure out what church God went to, to no avail. I did not find God in church. When I was 19, I was given a copy of Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance and this opened up a whole new world to me. Wicca spoke to me in a way that Christianity never could.
A little over a year ago my father died. This part of my past is what is most immediate in what informs my present. Most of the things I am working towards in my life currently come from trying to crawl out of the very dark time after his death. The time after his death is not very well remembered by me as I spent a lot of it high off my gourd. Kite flying high, blissfully unaware.
There are a lot of legal options for getting high these days, but many of these synthetic drugs that give you the high of marijuana go a bit further in addictive properties. You are not going to spend two weeks puking if you quit pot, but with these synthetics, often times you will. The addictive properties are much higher as well, although, since they are new, they are not very well studied. I speak merely from experience.
Once I realized that I was spending more time high than sober, I tried to quit. It was amazingly difficult to do as the physical addiction was severe. I quit smoking cigarettes years ago, but that was an easily kicked habit in comparison, and for the smokers out there, you know how hard it is to quit. With the help of NA, my wonderfully patient husband, a few close friends, and a stubborn fuck-you streak, I did manage to crawl out of this dark, fuzzy time in order to deal with life as it came at me. When things are rough, and I feel like going back to the lovely numbing the drugs provided, I remember what physical withdrawal feels like and I am dissuaded. I think about my father and what he would want for me, and I persevere.
Since that time, I have begun a challenging and rewarding exercise program, one that I feel really saved my life, which could be an entire blog post on its own and probably will end as one. When logic, reason, remembered pain of withdrawal did not work, I would think about how I needed to be well rested and clear headed to work out the next morning. When I wanted to do something horrifically self destructive, I would think about how difficult it would be to workout at Crossfit if I were smoking something, or otherwise fucked up. It worked where many of my other tricks would not. My husband asked me a few weeks ago if I just switched my addiction to Crossfit and exercise, and I told him it was likely, but I was ok with it. He was too. It is nice to have a productive addiction.
Part of the problem for me when I was doing the stupid drug thing was the isolation I felt. My father was dying for two years and during that time we spent half of our week visiting with him and my family. We would have to make 3 or 4 days enough to cover our work, our house upkeep, and everything else in our lives that needed attention. It was hard to do and we failed in some spectacular ways at keeping our life together, but for the most part we held on to what we needed to. This was not done alone, as if not for my family and my husband’s family, things would have been a lot worse all around.
During this time, I felt like my grief was boring. People would ask me how I was doing and after so many times of telling people how I was doing, how I felt, the incredible grief of watching my hero and champion wither and die and watching their eyes glaze over as they waited for me to stop talking, I just stopped. Told people I was fine, then got high so it would be true.
Immediately after my father died, I expected quite a bit more support from my religious and spiritual community than I received. My mother and sister had friends who would make them dinners, coming by to see if they were okay, and generally helping out during this time of grief. Logic told me that both my mother and older sister lived in close neighborhoods where people were friends, but during the dark time after grief, logic does not hold sway and emotion rules the day. I never saw a single casserole and out of my many friends, only two attended the funeral, but there is a reason why some friends have “best” in their title.
I should state that I tend not to allow people to be sympathetic to me. I prefer distraction with others, grief in private. I bristle at people looking at me with eyes filled with sympathy, and as I have a very sharp tongue, I am sure that some people thought about it, but then figured I would be happier left alone. The truth of the matter is that I would have been pissed no matter what anyone did. I was and still am pissed that my father died at 63. I have rage. In the first month after my father died, this rage was for anyone who crossed my path and behaved poorly, but there was a fair amount of it for my religious community.
I had a spiritual group that I was a part of but less than a week after my father died, that disintegrated. One of our members fell to a very serious mental illness and the people I needed help from rallied around her. She needed it; so did I. People are finite resources. The good news is that no one expected me to have the emotional wherewithal to do the same, but the bad news is that I felt let down by my religion, by my friends in spirituality.
During this time, in between bouts of getting high, I gave serious thought about whether I wanted to be part of a community that was so devoid of support. I knew if I had belonged to an established church, there would have been casseroles, there would have been support, there would have been people praying for me and helping me deal with the overwhelming and often debilitating grief. The only sympathy card I even received myself was from my husband’s pastor, a woman I simply adore. Pagan support or sympathy was simply nonexistent in any form I could see.
I thought about how nice it would be to simply go to church and enjoy a religious ceremony instead of having to constantly be creating them myself. I thought of how lovely it would be to have people who would send sympathy cards and give me words of support, even though I am somewhat surly. I thought of how wonderful it would be to simply go back to being Christian. One of the joys of being Wiccan is I can work with any pantheon I like, so why not the Christian pantheon? When I said as much to my husband he reminded me that in order to be Christian I could not have any other gods other than the Christian God, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” was even a commandment, one of the Big Ten.
That reminder pretty much killed any inclination I had to be Christian. When you are contemplating changing something as important as your set of beliefs, it should not be done out of grief, or simply because you are lonely, or because it would have been nice to not have to cook when all you want to do is crawl into ball and cry. It should be because your beliefs change, that some fundamental shift in consciousness has occurred causing you to eschew all you once thought to be true so that you could then embrace a new set of principles and beliefs. I was merely grieving and lonely – it was not enough to cause me to disbelieve all that I believe.
One of the best lessons I learned from my spiritual path is that I have to be all that I need. People can help, but ultimately, it is up to me who I choose to be and how I choose to deal with life.
There are many members of the pagan community that I have seen leave the community in order to become Christian. Often, these people are seen as defecting. It is seen as a betrayal when it happens, because for many of us, we truly believe in this path, so throwing away all tenets of one belief structure for another is seen as a betrayal of those very beliefs. I have worked with specific goddesses and gods and to turn my back on those Deities is a betrayal of them.
Furthermore, any time someone in a minority group simply abandons that group for the majority group, there will be feelings of abandonment and betrayal.
One of the things I realized after I came out of my initial bout of intense grief (because as we all know, grief goes on and on and never really ends) and drug haze was that Christianity has agency. They have buildings and structures and money. They have been established for hundreds of years. They meet every Sunday instead of once or maybe twice a month. Christians have an organized structure that comes with a certain amount of money, so that makes that path a much easier path to travel. Sometimes, life is too hard and we need to find a way to make our lives easier. I still find peace and comfort in a Catholic mass and I do not begrudge others that peace and comfort.
I do not believe that faith should go unquestioned. I do not believe that faith should be absolute. I have periods of intense scrutiny when it comes to my faith, probably because I was raised by an Atheist. There is a room in my mind where I consider all of this faith and belief to be bullshit that I embrace simply as a delusion to make me feel better about living in a difficult and hostile world, and I do visit that room on occasion. I tend to pray at the altar of logic and reason over emotion or religion in most situations, if at all possible.
I am not one of those pagans who is burning with hatred at Christianity, as most of the Christians I have met have been decent people trying very hard to live good lives. I find that Christians who truly embrace their religion and spirituality have more in common with me than they realize. What is there to hate about someone who is muddling through, as I am, in the best way that they know how?
If your religious or spiritual path is rewarding, if you feel part of something greater than yourself, if it brings you joy and peace, if it brings out the best in you, if it makes you a better and kinder person, Goddess bless you and your spiritual path.
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Hecate Altar
20 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Jay Bull
Did a wonderful ritual with Hecate and the altar was spectacular. Thought I’d share it with you.
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The Crows Are Flying Again
22 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Musings
Sometimes I take a scenic route when I visit my hometown. This scenic route goes through Pyramid State Park, and I love driving through this area. I have seen countless birds, turtles, deer, foxes, and other wildlife when driving through and I thoroughly enjoy it.
Today I was driving through and saw many, many crows. In fact, this murder of crows was so large, I actually pulled over and got out of my car to look at them. In a copse of trees, almost every single branch was full of crows. While crows are one of my spirit animals, I couldn’t help but think a bit about Hitchcock’s The Birds simply because there were so many. More and more crows flew in to join the others as I sat and watched and listened to them caw to each other from seemingly all directions. When I stopped looking at the crows in the trees, I noticed that just over a small hill there was a black field full of crows.
I couldn’t count them all. I can’t even guess how many there were. I know at the very least hundreds, and I would wager maybe even thousands. This was the biggest, most impressive murder of crows I’d ever seen. If Crows have regional meetings or multi-state conventions, this was the convention ground.
I wish I’d thought to take a picture, or that I’d had someone else to witness this huge and wonderful collection of crows, but alas I was alone, too in awe to take a picture and have only memory. For some reason, I feel much happier knowing that there are huge groups of crows out there, blackening the landscape.
God Will Kill You With a Fox… Guest Blogger – Will Hunter
22 May 2011 1 Comment
in Musings
My husband, Will wrote the following. Keep in mind he is Christian, so this is very much from that perspective, but as I believe that all paths lead to Deity I think it still fits.
Try, for a bit, though it’s futile, to see things from God’s perspective.
Think about God, and all the implications.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: God kills everybody in the end.
Everybody who has ever lived, and everybody who has ever died, and everybody who will ever live and die, God kills ALL of us.
He kills us in the womb, in the crib, in our schools, in our cars, in our yards, in our homes or abroad.
He kills us with accidents, illness, and genetic flaws.
He kills us with cars, with cancer, with guns and with claws.
God would kill us with a fox.
God would kill us in a box.
God would kill us here or there,
God would kill us anywhere.
When you come right down to it, as I have said, God kills every single one of us.
I can’t seem to drive this point home hard enough, because people still keep focusing in on specific examples, like Soddom and Gomorah, like the firstborn of Egypt, like the Holocaust.
But every single one of these examples pales to the overall issue; God created death itself.
Citing specific examples of God killing people doesn’t make much sense to me, because of that fact; God created death.
The sons of Egypt weren’t the first innocent people to die; that would be Abel.
If you want to point fingers at God, start pointing there because God stood right by and let Cain murder his own brother. God helped, in fact, because God created the very laws of reality that allowed Cain to do the deed.
God invented blood, and God invented bloodshed.
Granted, I’m coming at this all from a deterministic point of view (actually, from a compatiblist point of view). Those of you who are big on Free Will being the end-all be-all of creation are probably taking issue with me putting things as strongly as saying, “God kills everybody.”
Don’t worry; we don’t agree on that, but I got your backs.
Because if you’re big on Free Will, then you’re probably big on the notion that God let Adam and Eve fall from grace out of an unwillingness to interfere with their Free Will decision to disobey him.
And THAT is where death really started, at least for humans.
Up until the Fall From Grace, Humans didn’t die- they ate from the Tree of Eternal Life.
So when you get right down to it, you can pin it all back on humanity.
Sure, God invented Death, but he told Adam and Eve the rules; if they ate from a certain tree, they would die.
And they did eat.
And they did die.
Because they chose to.
Which is the same ultimate reason why the sons of Egypt died; because Adam and Eve just couldn’t resist listening to that talking snake.
Anyway, back to my less Free-Will-oriented view of things:
Alright, so God created us all, every living thing that lives, that has lived, and that ever will live, just so He can kill us.
That must make him the ultimate villain, right?
I mean, he’s worse that Hi-…. uh, worse than some evil dictator who killed a lot of people.
He created evil dictators.
That must mean he’s worse, right?
Nope.
Not necessarily, anyway.
It all boils down to the philosophical Problem Of Evil:
“Why would a God that is all-powerful and all-good create a world in which there is evil?”
It’s a good question for people to think about.
Seriously.
But ultimately, it’s not a question that we can answer.
(I don’t buy the whole Free Will bit)
The only way in which we could ever get a meaningful answer to why God would create a universe that had Evil in it would be if we knew why the hell He built the damned thing in the first place.
Why would God, a perfect being, need or want a universe?
Heck, aren’t “need” and “want” loaded terms that ultimately stem from human failings?
If you’re perfect, you shouldn’t need anything.
You shouldn’t want anything.
So why DO anything, especially something as interesting as creating a universe?
Don’t bother to answer; you don’t know.
Neither do I.
The point is that the question of whether or not God is a bastard (metaphorically speaking) depends entirely on what the reasons are for His actions in the first place.
Just because we don’t know what His reasons are doesn’t mean He doesn’t have any.
But getting way, way, WAY back to the original conversation that I’m interjecting into:
Was it harsh of God to kill off (insert example of God killing one of the effectively infinite number of His victims)?
Is God Harsh?
Well, “Harsh” is a relative term.
Obviously, things could be much more pleasing for us.
Obviously, things could be a lot less pleasing for us.
I agree that a lot of His actions certainly seem harsh.
As my father has been getting older, I’ve been thinking more and more about his mortality and the fact that he’s going to die some day.
The fact that God is going to kill him.
It sure feels harsh to me; my father is a great guy, and it makes me angry that anybody would want the guy dead. Even God.
Especially God, since my own father will be just a drop in the ocean of corpses.
But then again, the level of harshness depends on what exactly death entails.
All we know is that it’s a cessation of life in this plane.
It’s unpleasant. Usually for the people who die, and even more often for those left behind.
But then again, if the whole resurrection bit is true, if we all get to go to Heaven or another eternal life, then it’s not that big of a deal.
The price of one death in exchange for eternity?
Not very harsh at all.
It just seems that way to us, right now, because we’re the ones in line to pay for the tickets.
Once we’re in the door to The Big Show, it’s not going to seem harsh at all.
(Unless, of course, those who believe in Eternal Damnation in a fiery Hell are correct, in which case death is pretty darned harsh after all, at least for some people.)
Ultimately, like most philosophical/theological questions, whether or not God is Harsh comes down to factors we simply do not know and can only guess at.
Tulips Thieves
26 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Musings
There are always harbingers that spring is here. The trees start blooming, flowers start coming up and the insects have returned. For me, the two tulips in the backyard have always been the surest sign that spring is here to stay for a while. We have one yellow and one red. They are gorgeous and every year they bring me great joy and I take pictures of them.
I believe that in life the little joys are often the purest sources of happiness. Looking out of the window and seeing those tulips, or my rosebushes makes me smile. Knowing that every year those tulips are going to sprout in the backyard is comforting on some very deep level. Tiny joys keep us going.
As I was going outside to take pictures of the tulips, I noticed that while the leaves and stem were there, the flowers were gone. I was hoping that maybe I was looking at them from the wrong angle (my brain handles disappointment with strong denial as a first response), but once I got close enough, it looked very much like someone had taken scissors and clipped my joyful tulips.
I am not a big flower cutter. I believe that flowers and plant life have feelings and I try not to do things to kill or upset the plant life. This is such a strong belief that when I gave a friend an aloe plant and saw that it was dying in her home after 2 months of no sun, I asked for and received the aloe plant back. I take my plant life pretty seriously, and unless I need flowers to dry for herbs, I try really hard not to pick flowers – I just take a camera. When I do cut flowers or herbs for use, I always make sure to do so with respect and reverence, as well as appreciation.
The tulips would have lived much longer in my backyard than they would in a vase, and while I enjoy receiving flowers as gifts, I am always sad when they wither and die. The passage of time can often be one of the sadder life experiences and cut flowers just seem to show the withering time deals to all of us.
Therefore, when I discovered that my tulips were cut, not by me, out of my own backyard, I was upset. Probably slightly more upset than I really should have been, but I just could not believe or accept that someone would go into my backyard and cut these flowers that bring me such joy and happiness. My thought was that it was probably a kid, but how many kids carry around scissors to cut flowers with?
In times like these, technology often comes to my aid. I bemoaned on Facebook the evil of the world, the wickedness of tulip thieves, and let the world know of my heartbreak. After all, while they come up every year, tulips are fleeting. They stay for such a short period of time and that time was cut even shorter.
As in most situations in my life, my friends came to my rescue. People were upset and outraged on my behalf, another friend of mine from the Murphysboro area said she actually caught kids stealing her tulips from the front of her yard, which left me with tons of questions. Who are these marauding gangs of tulip thieving children? Where are their parents? What parent receives a bouquet of tulips and does not tell their children that they aren’t to pick flowers from another person’s yard?
Then one of my friends told me to search YouTube for the video of the rabbit opening a letter. Apparently, rabbits are really good at chewing straight lines. So good in fact, that some of the pictures online of tulips stolen by rabbits looked eerily familiar.
I think that was when I remembered that my backyard doesn’t really belong to me. It belongs to the birds and the animals (who may eat tulips) and the insects and the rest of nature. The flowers I thought had been so callously stolen from me never belonged to me – they were a spring rabbit delicacy. Knowing that the incredibly cute bunny in the backyard – who could very well be the Easter Bunny – was the likely culprit helped me look at the situation in a much more favorable light. Instead of thieves, it was just bunnies.
This was one of those situations where what initially caused me great distress has actually brought me joy. I like bunnies and while I would prefer they leave my tulips alone, at least I know it wasn’t thoughtlessness it was just bunny-ness.
In addition, I am now going to be planting some flowers. Those tulips came with the house and while I immediately wanted to plant more, my husband eventually plans to raise the level of the backyard and would prefer I not plant anything he will inevitably kill. However, due to my tulip grief, my wonderful husband, who really tries his best to make me happy, is going to help me transplant some daffodils from his mother’s daffodil field (seriously, she has a huge field of them – it is simply amazing) to some of our planters. He is also planning to help me plant more tulip bulbs in the planters, as well. After all, we need to help feed growing bunnies.
