http://www.redding.com/news/2009/dec/08/redding-womans-christmas-carol-initiative-picks/

Merry Hyatt has found allies in her quest to put an initiative on the ballot next year requiring public schools to play Christmas carols.

Hyatt, who moved to Redding four months ago, said she joined the Redding Tea Party Patriots and recruited several members to help her collect the 433,971 signatures needed by March 29.

Hyatt said she has partnered with a couple of churches in Redding and one in Wildomar in Southern California to collect signatures. All the signature pages must be turned in together to the Shasta County registrar, she said.

The initiative would require schools to provide children the opportunity to listen to or perform Christmas carols, and would subject the schools to litigation if the rule isn't followed.

Schools currently are allowed to offer Christmas music as long as it is used for academic purposes rather than devotional purposes and isn't used to promote a particular religious belief, according to an analysis by the California Legislative Analyst's Office.

"Bottom line is Christmas is about Christmas," said Erin Ryan, president of the Redding Tea Party Patriots. "That's why we have it. It's not about winter solstice or Kwanzaa. It's like, 'wow you guys, it's called Christmas for a reason.' "

Ryan said Hyatt's initiative falls under the umbrella of causes the group supports, which concern limited government, following the constitution and fiscal responsibility.

But some groups say the initiative represents quite the opposite.

"I have two words to say about Ms. Hyatt's proposal: blatantly unconstitutional," said Rob Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is based in Washington, D.C., and has a local chapter in Sacramento.

Boston said he heard about the initiative in the news, which isn't surprising considering national newspapers such as The New York Times have published articles on Hyatt's efforts.

"In the unlikely event she got enough signatures to put it on the ballot and the even more unlikely event California passed it, it would be struck down by the courts," Boston said. "The courts have been very clear that public schools aren't supposed to be in the business of promoting or advocating religion."

Boston said he thinks Hyatt's initiative represents a larger issue of religious conservatives being unhappy with the changes resulting from American society becoming more diverse.

"The frustration some religious conservatives have is they want a mythological religious America that probably never existed," he said.

Hyatt, a substitute teacher who moved to Redding from Riverside, said her motivation for the initiative was to help restore children's moral compasses by inviting Jesus to school Christmas parties.

"He's the prince of peace; he's the only one who can get these kids to stop being so violent," she said in November.

Hyatt said she believes it is Americans' First Amendment right to worship.

"It's our right to have freedom to worship," she said. "That's why we came to this country. They came to be Christians and they're trying to take that away. They're out of line; we're not."

Boston said he believes proponents of Hyatt's initiative have unrealistic expectations.

"They're looking to the public schools system or the government to provide them a religious experience at Christmas," he said. "If you want a full-throttle religious Christmas experience, it's at church ... there's no shortage of those."

If kids want to sing Christmas songs, assuming they're not disrupting normal school activity, by all means let them. But for fuck's sake, public schools are not church. I'm not terribly worried about this passing into law, but it still pisses me off that someone thinks that she has the right not only to shove her religion onto other people but that she can coerce a public institution to do the work for her.

Christmas is a specific holiday, it is called Christmas for a reason. Yes, just like they said- it is. But Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice are also called those things for a reason.

Things like this just tie me up with inability to express how stupid they are. No one's preventing anyone from celebrating Christmas, why the fuck is it such a big deal if some people want to do something different at the same time of year? And where the fuck do you get off shoving your activities down other people's throats? Just.....gah....Get the hell over it already. Go to church to sing religious songs or sing them in your own fucking home, or even in the town square if you really want to. I won't stop you. But don't try to force everyone else to do what you want to do.

AND READ THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION, PEOPLE. Keep in mind that it applies to EVERYONE, not just you and the people that agree with you.

I have a new theory: The so-called "War on Christmas" was invented by people who want to shove their stuff on everyone else as an imaginary threat against which they can "fight back". Who's with me?

Thank you to the majority of people who DON'T try to impose your winter holiday and your god and views thereof and what might prevent violence on others.

Incidentally, it's the religiously-themed Christmas songs that annoy me the least. Some of them I even like. (In small, seasonally-appropriate doses.)

so I've had this idea kicking around for a few days and am thinking more and more of details of how to approach it and I think I'm starting to zero in a bit more on what to do.

Basically, I've been considering my fascination with random, usually fairly obscure deities who have little to no mythology and sometimes not more than a few cursory mentioned in ancient texts. I see a name, a few lines of information, and I want to know more but...there is no more, so I sometimes ponder what their mythology may be like and what stories there might be.

So...that's the project. Writing about what their stories might have been. Speculative Mythology is the term that's formulated in my brain.

For this and a couple of other things, I think I'm going to start a second blog, to keep Pain and Light a devotional blog for Apollo.

Watch this space for details.

Speaking of which, I have a new post over at http://painandlight.wordpress.com

I FINALLY decided that I'm going to go back and start working on ADF's initiate's program. Going to start with the trance segment...Gavin's got a copy here of one of the books on the list (Diana Paxson's Trance-Portation) and a group of folks over on The Cauldron forum are starting a discussion thread to work through it and discuss it, so it seems like a good place to start. I'll probably also start with some of the Bardic stuff since some of things I've written in the last year fall under that, as well as bits of mythology and divination.

On Tuesday evening, I was walking to the train to go to work. From where I was to the nearest train stop was about a twenty-minute walk. When I had last glanced out a window before leaving where I was, the sky was clear with jsut a few clouds. In the twenty minutes or so from that point until I got outside, the sky had suddenly become heavy with very dark, ominous clouds- large patches of a very green tint to many of them suggested strong tornado potential- though that didn't bother me too much, since it is a fairly rare thing for tornadoes to touch down within large cities. The clouds though were pretty impressive. I tried to take some pictures with my cell phone camera but they didn't come out very well. There was this one large swirl of clouds that curved across the sky like an immense, sweeping arm- that and another cloud formation that I can't really easily describe also looked like strong indicators of tornado potential.

But beyond that...well, I've never really gotten a sense of Zeus before, and I had this sudden "knowing" that he was behind all this- it didn't feel anything like what I feel in the presence of the gods that are more familar to me, like Apollo, Hermes or Dionysus- I can only really describe it as feeling as if there was a distant, over-arching sentience to the sky, and one of the thoughts I had was that the long, sweeping arm of clouds that I saw was one of Zeus's arms.

The last stretch of my walk to the train stop took me down a long, winding hill which was rather busy with traffic at the time, and rain was starting to fall and I didn't have an umbrella on me, and REALLY didn't want to be stuck out in the sort of rain that was on the way. So I did the best thing I could think of- I had a drink in my backpack side pocket, pulled that out, and poured a bit out, asking him to let me get to the train stop- or at the very least to the bridge before it (the walk to that train stop takes me under a raised section of Interstate 83 and over a stream it's pretty cool, so that's either six or eight lanes of highway there, can't remember exactly- provides considerable shelter. I was about a hundred feet from there when the rain started to get heavier and just made it as it really started pouring. Thankfully, l I only had to wait a few minutes before it let up and I could continue to the train stop, another fifty yards away or so. Thunder, lightning and the occasional splatter of rain continued and trains going in my direction were rather heavily delayed for reasons unknown to me, but only for a brief few minutes did I have to duck under an overhang again, and for a decent chunk of the time, I was able to talk to Gavin on the phone. Unfortunately, while I was sitting at the train stop, most of this had left my head on all but a very basic intellectual level and in the midst of training a new guy at work and being ridiculously tired for a few days, I forgot about all this until I was on my way back to work this gorgeous, sunny afternoon, and I wrote this:


Hail Zeus, Labrandeus, whose furious storms race across the sky!
Hail Zeus, Skotitos, whose swirling clouds gather and darken the sky!
Hail Zeus, Keraunios whose crashing thunder echoes through the sky!
Hail Zeus, Astrapaios whose flash of lightning tears the sky!
Hail Zeus, Ombrios whose falling rain pours down from the sky!
Hail Zeus, Euenemos whose fair winds come again to clear the sky!

http://forum.hellenistai.com

newdance recently decided to put together a Hellenic web forum because there are so few of them. The Cauldron and Mystic Wicks have Hellenic Sub-forums. The Cauldron's is pretty good, though it's not very big and the one on Mystic Wicks, despite being an extremely active forum overall (I think it's actually the largest pagan forum that I know of- it has over 26,000 members) is extremely slow and for a while there, discussions were getting largely dominated by a few people. Other than that, there's one forum that's mostly Greek-language and one English-language forum that sends most people running- either of their own accord or because they've been banned- very quickly.

And he made me moderator. (Be afraid, be very afraid.)

So for anyone who is interested in Hellenic religion (strict reconstruction, Hellenic neopaganism, syncretism, etc, there are several different sub-forums as well as a whole list of sub-forums for specific deities) come on and check it out. Religion is the main focus, but there are also sub-forums for philosophy, culture, language and history. Come check it out.

From one of my hometown newspapers (Lancaster has three, though come June there will only be two as the morning and afternoon paper combine):

Editor, New Era:

I believe felicitations and best wishes are in order for all the atheists who are reading this paper today.

I understand that atheists are feeling left out because Christians and Jews have all their special holidays. But atheists don't realize that they also have a day set aside for them.

King David said the fool has said in his heart there is no God. So, here is your day, atheists. Most of the world is celebrating the day with you.

Happy April Fools' Day!

Anna Mae Ressler
Ephrata

*sigh* Who writes stuff like this? Seriously. (Apparently Anna Mae Ressler of Ephrata does.) I hope you're happy with your smug, superior self. But what would you say to Jesus if he asked you about it? Unless they were getting it completely wrong in Sunday school, the Jesus I was taught about, I think he'd be frowning at this.

To the Christians out there who don't feel the need to be such jerks, thank you. some of your co-religionists could learn a thing or two from you.

So I'm working on a ritual that we're going to be holding at the grove at the end of the month for a festival invented by erl_queen, Theoxenia Delphinia, which is in honor of all of the deities historically associated with Delphi.

So at the moment, I'm trying to learn more about the deities that I'm not as familiar with...Pan, the Korykian Nymphs, Trophonios, Athena, Poseidon, Gaia, and Zeus. For the moment at least, I'm reading about Zeus.

I will never have the same sort of relationships with these deities that I do with Apollo, and probably never even so much as I do with Dionysus and Hermes, but branching out and learning more is good, eh?

I am excited to be doing a group Hellenic ritual again. It has been too long.

If you actually read this post (and I won't blame you at all if you don't), please, I beg of you, do not try to address my issue of figuring out the ADF stuff with respect to what's going on in my own brain, that's not what I'm writing about here, and for reasons you will see below, I am liable to knee-jerk and rip your head off. Nothing personal but people have really aggravated me today.

In reference to this post: http://community.livejournal.com/adf/143425.html

So recently, in my attempts to figure out why I'm waffling so much on ADF and the IP for the last year, it finally dawned on me how much my experience with getting my DP approved has bothered me. I know I bitched about it plenty. I know I've said it made me mad, but I don't think I've really realized just how much until now. There is another person on my friends list, who shall remain anonymous unless he chooses to identify himself, who has been having communications issues with the clergy training program and has been writing about it on occasion. I've followed these writings wit interest. And after knowing other people who have had issues in the higher study programs too, one of the big issues in my mind is that I pretty much know that it's going to be the DP over again and on a grander scale- since the DP was one big submission, but the IP is multiple segments submitted separately. It's a lot more writing, so a lot more potential for repeat performances.

Finally, last night I got it in my head to make a post to adf. Now...I think I did a reasonable job of being very clear that I did not expect the impossible and that I understand that this is all volunteer-based. I also think I did a decent enough job of making it perfectly clear that The issue that I was posting about was the *only* question that I could not answer for myself.

So I express concern about such points as:

Having submitted my work already approved, but when it got re-reviewed (which to my understanding was just to be a once-over to make sure that everything was okay since I was the first DP for Caryn to review), the reviewer (Whose name I don't know and after this debacle, don't expect I ever will) had questions about my work but didn't bother to ask me- who wrote it all in the first place- or Caryn- who okayed it but took it to Raven Mann who also didn't bother to ask me or Caryn, but took it to the clergy council- well, took the questions, but not the actual work being questioned.)

Once I submitted my DP for review yet again for the CTP, I was asked to do some additional work on three essays, but no specifics given, basically just "add to this kthxbye". On the first two, I guess I got lucky, they were accepted without question on re-submission. The third, however, came back to me three times. The first two times, no specifics were given and it was weeks between sending them off and hearing back, never even got a "Received your essay, will review it as soon as possible" notice. Finally, on the third try, I was told what was wanted.

Now, for running on volunteer power, you'd think people would want to be as efficient as possible right? I mean, wouldn't it make sense to have added the one additional sentence to the first request for additional work on the essay so I could get right to the point to begin with? There would be a couple of times that they wouldn't have had to reread the essay, a couple of times that they wouldn't have had to think about it, a coupe of times where they wouldn't have to email it back to me. But no, they wasted their time and mine, and at the time, because of this one essay and the crappy communication, I was ready to give up. If I wasn't accepted wen I was, that would have been it.

I don't want to go through this again. I know someone working on the CTP who would submit her work and not hear anything for months, and get no reply when she emailed asking for a status update. I know someone working on it who gets his work rejected with no explaination why when it is comparable to other work that was accepted. I don't want to be in this spot.

So I made the post linked above, and the reaction is to blast me over the volunteer issue, to lecture me about how people have their own lives and how they can only do so much. Bitch, please. I don't expect a volunteer to work miracles. I expect that if I'm doing a study program and someone has volunteered to review my work that they will at the very least acknowledge when they receive it and let me know that they will be getting to it. I expect that if something happens to delay things, that they will have the courtesy to let me know. A two-sentence email "Hey, I was going to sit down with this last night but my kid got sick, I'll need a few more days" takes roughly thirty seconds to write (at least as I type) and lets me know that they're not ignoring me. Hey, if something comes up, I understand, but where my work is concerned, I expect to be kept in the loop.

This is not unreasonable. This isn't brain surgery, people. Hell, it isn't even rocket science.

Then there were several people who asked me what it was that I wanted out of ADF anyway. This was completely beside the point. I don't need help figuring that out. I mentioned my questioning of what I'm doing to give an idea of why I was posing what I did.

Another individual...and this one really pissed me off, came back with "Oh, maybe you just had a bad personal experience" and proceeded to tell me about her own experience and how she had to wait, but hew reviewer actually bothered to COMMUNICATE with her and ASK her the questions that they had oh my god someone was doing their fucking job, even if it was a little slow. Well golly geee yee fucking ha it must be nice! Oh, and it was a learning experience for you, it made you think. Well then I guess you're just a better dedicant than me. Here, please have a fucking cookie, would you prefer snickerdoodle or chocolate fucking chip?

Another person accused me of being antagonistic. Listen, if you have a better way to describe my experience and express concern about how many other people are having similar experiences and about the possibility of going through it all again than please...do feel free to rewrite my post with sunshine and butterflies and send it to me so I can repost it to your liking. Because I can't think of a better way to say what I had to say. I was very clear that I understand that people have lives to deal with and all that. I was very clear as to what my concerns are. I was very calm and civil and I even went back and edited myself several times to make sure that I wasn't sounding like I intended to rip people up for this.

I thank the people who actually had constructive and understanding things to say, or who will when they're able to respond. It's good to know that some people are actually bothering to read what I've said and respond to that, not what they've imagined it to be in their little brains.

I've spent a lot of brain-hours over the last few months hung up on the question of whether or not I still belong in ADF. I've been feeling very teenage-angsty-no-one-understands-me about it (this may very well not be true, but it is how I feel.). I might or might not write more later today or something. I've started a dozen posts on this in the past and never finished any of them.

The only thing I've really decide on is that I'm going to renew my grove membership, and since ADF is part of that, I'll renew my membership while I'm deciding what to do. But really, I don't know and it's bothering me.

I read somewhere that if you can't decide what you want, it's probably sleep. Those sound like very wise words right about now.

Someone posted this question on a forum that I frequent. when I first saw it, I ignored it because well, unless you're working in a system with some measurable benchmarks (degrees in Traditional Wicca, for example) there's no way of reasonably answering this. Then after a while, the thought of terms of "advancement" and not "being advanced" came t mind, along with yet more thinking about the last year, and how so much has changed for me spiritually. It definitely didn't come cheap and easy. This was my answer:

Let me just state, first off, that I have no idea what "advanced" really is. I have found that my religious practice and views are not particularly similar to a vast majority of other pagans that I've encountered (referring now to my strictly personal religious practice, not my group affiliation with ADF) and I seem to hold some rather unusual views and experiences of my gods, so that narrows down more there, so there's not much to compare to, even if I were interested in comparing. As a result, in my little world, "advanced" is entirely self-referential, I am farther along now than I was a month ago or a year ago. It's advancement, not being advanced.

In the last year, I would say that I've advanced much. Shortly after the fall equinox last year, a lot of things started changing drastically for me. I was introduced much more closely- and dramatically- to a couple of gods. I gained a completely new view of Apollo, to whom I've been devoted for some time now, not a view that I'd never known before, but one with which I was previously only aware of on a strictly intellectual basis, I gained a very sudden, up close, personal and traumatic familiarity with that view, with that, my life changed rather drastically in a few months time.

A year later, my life is far better in many ways. I'm living in a much better place. I'm involved in a romantic relationship with elements that I never believed in before it happened to me. I'm so much happier overall. While I was never particularly unhealthy, I know that I am healthier than I was, physically and mentally.

All it cost me was a chunk of my self-identity, my "place" (Where I thought I was, what I thought I was doing, I was beginning ADF's Clergy Training Program after about eight years of being called to serve as clergy and then taking the steps to train as such, then realize I was doing the wrong thing), my sense of belonging to my grove, where I had been involved heavily for three years, a bout of depression and mourning, a large chunk of what had been my social life, and for a time, my happiness. I felt lost and aimless for months.

I have a difficult time relating to a lot of people in many ways. Not because OMG Im sooooo speshul, but because I think I'm coming from a very different place than a lot of people. I can't think of too many people who would be at all interested in living my life. Basically, my religion is the primary thing in my life. (That includes my relationship with my girlfriend One of the first things that we determined at the beginning of the relationship was that religion came before anything else fpr each of us, including each other. This probably sounds crazy to a lot of folks, possibly even harsh or cruel, but it works out for both of us, and is a condition that rarely needs to be invoked.) Sometime in the middle of last winter, I realized with a bit of a start one day that were I Christian with the sort of devotion I hold, I would very possibly be strongly considering becoming a nun. Knowing that no similar option is available to me, and growing more and more discontent with my job and some of the things that were happening there, that threw me into a period of time where everything was wrong, nothing was right and well, as I said, I was just lost.

This wasn't the first time I've had to deal with complete and drastic change like that brought on by religious/spiritual things. The cost was rather heavy, involved a lot of stress and upheaval. After a while, certain things fell into place, other things came up, they got all crazy and then they calmed down again. The last two months have been very low-stress and happy, but I'm not expecting that to last forever, I know the process is going to repeat and I'm going to have to deal with more of it on the way to wherever I'm going.

So...at what cost? For me, it was just about everything that's important to me, some of it on a temporary basis, some of it permanently.

So...I've been thinking.

Yeah, I know. Don't do that, it always leads to trouble. Oh well, too late, what's done is done.

Religion. Yeah, I know I haven't written much about that in several months. Not that it hasn't been on my mind...it has, constantly. It never leaves. (Well, maybe it does for a few minutes when...oh nevermind, y'all don't want to hear me bitch about how frustrated I get when something gets stuck in my teeth and I can't get it out and don't have a toothbrush handy or a toothpick or dental floss and OMG I really hate raspberry seeds sometimes...uh, yeah :-P)

Anyways. So it's recently occurred to me that the grove's Lughnassagh ritual is this weekend. No, I lie, I knew that for a while now, but what's just occurred to me is that the next ritual after that is the fall equinox.

I've had myself in a kind of limbo with grove involvement for quite a while now. ( Cut because reading this will take almost as long )
Ye, gads it's been crazy. I still don't have it all figured out, but I'm a lot more okay with things than I have been in a while.

And if I can manage to get it in before I leave the office, there might be another post on the woo filter to save those who don't care to read such things from rolling their eyes right out of their heads.

This is messed up.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25284886/

(If you follow the link, there is a picture of a kid's arm, with what is clearly a scar, and clearly in the shape of a cross. It's not a gory picture, for those who want to see for themselves. Unless you're extremely squeamish, this visual is quite mild.)

Teacher in trouble for burning crosses on kids,
Board votes to fire him, says he was preaching Christianity

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio - A school board in central Ohio voted Friday to move ahead on firing a science teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs in class and using a device to burn the image of a cross on students' arms.

The Mount Vernon school board voted 5-0 to pass a resolution of intent to terminate the contract of middle school teacher John Freshwater.

Board attorney David Millstone said Freshwater is entitled to a hearing to challenge the dismissal. A lawyer for Freshwater said he will request such a hearing.

A report by independent investigators found that Freshwater also taught creationism in his science class and was insubordinate in failing to remove a Bible and other religious materials from his classroom.

School board members gathered a day after consulting firm H.R. On Call Inc. released its report. The community is about 40 miles northeast of Columbus.

The report comes one week after a family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus against Freshwater and the school district, saying Freshwater burned a cross on their child's arm that remained for three or four weeks.

They're family values, friend says
Freshwater's friend Dave Daubenmire defended him.

"With the exception of the cross-burning episode ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district," he told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published Friday.

Several students interviewed by investigators described Freshwater, who has been employed by the district for 21 years, as a great guy.

But Lynda Weston, the district's director of teaching and learning, told investigators that she has dealt with complaints about Freshwater for much of her 11-year term at the district, the report said.

Science tool used to make crosses
A former superintendent, Jeff Maley, said he tried to find another position for Freshwater but couldn't because he was certified only in science, the report said.

Freshwater used a science tool known as a high-frequency generator to burn images of a cross on students' arms in December, the report said. Freshwater told investigators he simply was trying to demonstrate the device on several students and described the images as an "X," not a cross. But pictures show a cross, the report said.

Other findings show that Freshwater taught that carbon dating was unreliable to argue against evolution.

So what I want to know is...why isn't a bigger deal being made about the fact that he burned these kids? They're scarred. They were probably in pain. How did he convince anyone to participate in this? Why would a teacher knowingly burn their students???? Oh, and after all that, the superintendent tried to find him another job???? (On rereading, the finding another job looks like it was before the branding incident)

Okay, then comes the religion aspect of this nonsense. He burned what is clearly a cross on these kids. and then all the other religious details. Okay...keeping a copy of the bible in the classroom...that's a fine line there, but if the teacher was just reading it on a lunch break or something...not such a big deal. But I don't think that's what he was doing. Public schools, science class. Hello! McFly!

Last night, grove solstice ritual. I wouldn't call it my ideal ritual (No one's fault, really. while some have come much closer in the past, I would highly doubt that any collaboration would be. But it's a grove ritual, not mine.) but it wasn't bad. Maybe it was because I've been largely uninvolved since the fall, Or maybe it's me overall, or maybe somewhere in between, but it wasn't quite the same. I wasn't quite as in it as I've been in the past. There were some moments of annoyance (Kids in ritual not usually a big deal to me, but if they're not going to stay reasonably under control and make a whole lot of noise about it, it's probably best not to have them right in the middle of things. Kids do that, they make noise.)

All told, it went mostly well, but I just wasn't able to be in it spiritually. The only points where I was really wholly into it were when I made a quick offering to Apollo, and a little later on, a silent request. And that really wasn't so much being in the ritual as it was being in those moments (ha, how ironic, the ritual was about living in the moment....)

I did write a couple of off the cuff, short hymns for the ritual patrons, as well as a brief poem. Not my best work, but I wanted to have a few things prepared because it drives me crazy when a majority of the offerings in a ritual completely ignore the deities to be honored. I'll probably clean them up, maybe expand them a bit and post them. either way, they'll go into the book of hymns that I've slowly been writing to the gods, which I started "officially" as an offering to the Greek gods at the fall equinox. I read those, and sang a song that I had suddenly remembered from back in girl scouts that I had forgotten until just then.

At the moment, I'm feeling slightly blah and ambiguous about a lot of things, a whole lot of "I don't know"...but there is a lot that I've found of late that interests me greatly, so hopefully that won't last long....

The only way to truly believe in the equality of all people is to believe in God.

An atheist doesn't follow the command of some book, therefore cannot have any basis for believing in human equality. Because it's just not possible to have such a belief without being commanded by some supposedly omnipotent supernatural dude in the sky.

Emphasis and whitespacing mine.

This post is not quite coming out of the blue.

Some of Gil Smart’s columns have nearly prompted me to write this and now a response on TalkBack to one of my recent posts here has pushed me to do it.

I would not vote for a candidate for governor or president, and probably not Congress or the state Legislature either, who does not believe in God.

Would I press a candidate for the state House or state Senate on the point? Probably not but an espoused atheist or agnostic would probably have no hope of getting my vote.

Is this because I want a theocracy? No.

Is this because I believe non-believers can’t be moral, ethical people? No. (From all that I have heard about him and what I have witnessed in my limited dealings with him, I believe Gil Smart, for instance, is a wholly decent fellow — moral, ethical and all the rest.)

The reason I want a God-believing candidate for executive office goes back to the belief at the core of this nation’s founding: “That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …”

I would submit that this belief is key to the humility I’d like to see in elected officials, particularly presidents and governors, because they wield much of the life-and-death power of the state.

And I would suggest that a belief in God is the only way to believe in equality of human beings.

Let’s face it: Some people are smarter, better-looking and more physically capable than others. We can even objectively measure some of these things with IQ tests, physical fitness tests and games played by the rules.

The only logic that makes human equality work is a God-based logic that goes something like this: We are all created in God’s image and the differences in ability, beauty and intelligence between us are stunningly insignificant when compared to the gap between all of humanity and God.

And, so if God tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves (in effect, to acknowledge them equal rights), then we have no business doing otherwise.

I do not see on what basis an atheist believes in human equality and the granting of equal rights that flows from that.

Now, has every president who believed in God acted in a way that made his belief in God evident at all times? No, but at least a belief in God offers a chance for the humility I want in every president when making important decisions for our nation.

Ronald Reagan, who I believe exhibited humility, said it best:

We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they’re sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

Amen.


http://blogs.lancasteronline.com/alwaysright/2008/06/03/why-my-candidate-must-believe


(For anyone who may wonder, Gil Smart is a columnist for the Lancaster newspapers, whose website on which this blog post appears. Gil isn't so popular with the more conservative set. Don't actually know if he's atheist as insinuated in this post though I could swear I've seen writings of his before that mentioned going to church and/or believing in God. Not sure anymore though, and I don't really care if he's atheist or not.)

The Betrayal of Judas

Did a 'dream team' of biblical scholars mislead millions?

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38b00601.htm

Interesting article about the translation of the Gospel of Judas released in 2006. It's fairly long, just so you know, but probably worth reading for anyone with an interest in the subject. It discusses how one scholar believes that there are massive translation errors after working on a translation of her own, as well as some of the more questionable actions taken by the National Geographic Society in getting the manuscript translated.

just a note to self before I forget, lose the bookmark or...something....

Burkert, page 224-225

Arright. I've sent my Initiate Program intention letter off to Skip. Hopefully this will be a painless process since I was already approved for clergy training and this is just switching focus. He said that there should be no problem to switch...

I will post it over at asthefiretree once it's accepted- I'm mildly superstitious and will not post it before.

Dammit, I'm really not in a good mood right now. I feel like I need to sleep. Or cry. Or...I dunno. Scream? Kick something? Pick a fight?

I've no idea where this came from, but today when I woke up (earlier in the day, not in the afternoon after that dream) I laid there on my bed, staring up at the ceiling and I found myself very seriously contemplating dropping the clergy training program.

I don't know why. but for a moment, the thought was so clear in my mind, and I remember thinking how it would be fine, the gods would be okay with it, and how whatever else is to come in the future would fulfill this damned inexplicable need that I had to pursue clergy training.

After about a minute, I shook myself out of it. It wouldn't be okay. Whatever happens, one thing is not a substitute for another and I endured too much headache and stupidity and time shaking my fist in the general direction of California as Raven asked me for more essay rewrites without being specific as to what the problem was.

I didn't start this to give up before I even got into it. What the hell, where did the idea that I should drop it even come from? I AM doing this the right way. Aren't I? Aren't I?

Dammit, I want to be home right now. If I were home, I could go to my room and turn off the lights and put a pillow over my head and go to sleep and hope that this passed in the night.

Dammit, this hurts. Badly. It'll pass. But I'm scared that it won't. What if I am doing this the wrong way? How much time will I have wasted? Am I wasting time?

My stomach feels like it's tied up in knots. I don't want to be here. On top of everything else, this office is sweltering. If I turn down the heat at all, it will freeze. I'm in a bad mood, and I don't feel like having earphones jammed into my ears, but if I take them out, I'm afraid that Tiffany will start yapping again (Brian left at midnight, so there's only me if she starts talking) and then I might actually make good on that desire to pick a fight. Which is a bad idea.

I'm going to find myself a cold caffeinated beverage.

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. ~C.C. Colton

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely. ~Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinthes, 1962


And I have to say, these give me a bit of a giggle:

Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them? ~Jules Feiffer

Christian fundamentalism: the doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life. ~Andrew Lias

When I was in PA, I made the mistake of getting into a discussion on religion with my mother. She's been saying for a while now that she is so proud of what I'm doing, even though she doesn't agree with it. But I could never get at what exactly she doesn't agree with, it just always seemed like she disagreed with whatever her idea of what I'm doing and what I believe is, as opposed to what I really do and believe.

I've told her on several occasions that I've no intention of trying to change her mind, however if she's going to disagree with me, I really would prefer that she disagree with what actually is, as opposed to whatever mal-conceived ideas she's got.

So we started getting into it and the first thing she said was that she doesn't agree with the idea of many gods because there is only one god. Okay, I can respect that. Her reason is rather insulting- that polytheism came about because ancient folks were too ignorant to grok the concept of a single god holding reign over everything.

But, ya know whatever.

I got a little irritated when she want on to say that every single major religion in the world has had some prophet who came along to tell people that there's only one god. Ummm....Buddhism? Hinduism?

*sigh* It would be so easy if she would just tell me I'm gonna die and burn in hell. But no...she doesn't believe that. She believes in reincarnation. She thinks that I'm attracted to the Greek gods because I had a past life in ancient Greece. But she thinks I have it all wrong, and that I have to keep "looking for the truth".

She says that she once asked to see the truth and is sorry that she did. Then she starts going on about how there's a war going on all around us at all time between angels and demons for people's souls, and how I needed to understand this, and to keep seeking the truth. (And by "truth", she meant what she was telling me.) she was also going on about how she knows it must be true because she could never make it up in her own mind. As if I would so easily make up my own expereinces...especially some of the more recent ones.

She also reminded me that she knows when she's telling someone the right thing because she gets chills (she used to say this a lot) I have a hard time taking that one seriously in the context of sitting outside in 30-degree weather for the last fifteen minutes with an open coat over a light shirt. I told her that I had chills too and could just as easily use that to say I was telling her the right thign too. Of course the response was "You know that's not the kind of chill I'm talking about."

It didn't really last very long, my stepfather came out to smoke (we were sitting outside) and I was NOT going to continue that discussion with Mike present because...it would have gotten REALLY ugly.

So...on one hand, I have to say that I find her angel/demon war for souls to be utterly ridiculous. At the same time, I know that I've had my share of plenty ridiculous-sounding experiences.

I don't believe in one single truth...and if there is one, I think that the odds of ANYONE actually having it right are practically nonexistent. I've said it a hundred times before...there's only one way to know that for sure, and I've no plans to do that anytime soon. She seemed to find it rather troublesome that I could be so convinced of my beliefs and still acknowledge that I could be wrong. I dunno what to tell you, I'm human, I'm imperfect. It's not logical, but...well, it makes sense to me.

I made no attempt to explain my own experience. I often have enough trouble reasonably speaking of things to people who do understand where I'm coming from. I wasn't going to waste my breath fumbling to explain the light of Apollo to someone who takes stumbling over words and the inability to immediately deliver just the right words as a sign of doubt or lack of knowledge and fumbling for words or not, I wouldn't even mention what I've experienced with Dionysus. I could see that going over well..."Oh yah, Mom so I had this dream that this god came along and got someone to tie me to a tree with grapevines, and then the god that I'm particularly devoted to shot me with an arrow. Oh and after that, the skin all over my arms and legs got all slived up...but it's ok because they said it was and that I would be better in the end."

Yaaaah. Like so many lead balloons. I wasn't even going to try. Oh well, I know where I've been. Not always entirely sure where I'm going, it seems to shift and morph from time to time. But I've no doubt I'm going the right way, this is the truth as I know it.

Charles is hellbent on me teaching a class at Ecumenicon on something or other Hellenic. Preferably, it seems, related to the Homeric hymns (this came up back in October after he saw some of the ones I'd written) and current;y has two time slots reserved for me.

Eep. Two. When I was talking to him before, he was talking about doing this for the 2009 conference. I had later emailed him with a different idea that was more apropos to the conference theme, he liked that idea and asked me to write up a proposal if I wanted to do it....and then a whole bunch of things happened and it fell by the wayside. Then I came into work tonight and found an email from him in my inbox saying that I have two spaces reserved. (Unfortunately, one is up against Jane Sibley's ritual, which I would love to take part in again. It was quite the experience last time.)

So I emailed Charles and told him that what I would want to do is one on a discussion of ancient hymns, and one on creation myth and the protogenoi.

So...it seems the gods want to keep me out of trouble. Arkon Polemakros, CLG Witan, clergy training, now this.

This all reminds me, I haven't been writing hymns lately. I need to start doing that again. I opened a notebook yesterday and found the beginning of one to Athena...I remember having a great idea for one and then losing it. Hopefully, I can recover it. Or come up with something else.

So I'm looking through the Ecumenicon schedule and seeing several classes on material apropos to the CTP- mostly in the realm of divination. That can't hurt. Pass up the opportunity to learn about rune casting with Jane Sibley? Not I. Ethnics of divination....yeah, very useful topics.

Wrote this a few days ago as a response to the thread on the Neokoroi list on people feeling sadness due to Apollo departing for his winter in the north with the Hyporboreans...

Hmmm....this is interesting. For some weeks now, I've been expecting to wake up and feel like something was different, or amiss. Ever since the dream I had of Dionysus a few weeks ago, the Delphic split has been on my mind to one extent or another on a near constant basis, and it made sense that perhaps Dionysus was coming to take a more predominant part of my life for the moment, while Apollo would step back but that's not happened.

Dionysus hovers close, I am frequently reminded of his presence, though I don't actually need reminders. However, it seems that Apollo has drawn even closer. I sometimes wake up in the morning feeling a similar semi-delirious languor as I did when he stepped from the shadows during the Dionysus dream and pulled the arrow that he had just shot at me from my chest. When I'm awake, I feel a nearly-constant, almost tangible-presence.

I find it fascinating that each has been appearing in a manner more obviously appropriate to the other. In my mind, the ideas of balance and binary opposition- two opposites, without the other, one cannot exist- which have always been interesting to me have jumped much more to the forefront of my mind.

And then there is this theory which I recently ran across, I think while reading William Broad's book The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, mentioned only very briefly but still churning around in my mind since then, that some scholars have had the idea that Apollo and Dionysus are two halves of the same god. To be clear, I do not believe this but it is a fascinating idea and I can see where it could come from. The related idea that I have settled on for the moment as my understanding is not two halves of one whole...but more like two atoms sharing a covalent bond, connected by common threads, very difficult to separate one from the other.

I don't know. Maybe I'm experiencing some sort of between-time overlap. I'm working on a ritual to celebrate Lampteria next weekend. Maybe that will trigger a more seasonally-appropriate shift in my perception. Or another possible cause is that it's all connected to some things that have been going on with me that I'll not go into now (though I can suddenly see inspiring an interesting work of short fiction...) in that I need to be seeing this intricate connection of one and the other, two separate entities that cannot be wholly bisected- seasonal events be damned. Part of me is hoping that the first is true, part of me is hoping the second. In any event, the gods will do as they will, I will (hopefully) see what they want me to see.

Do I sound like a raving lunatic here? At the same time, it's making perfect sense to me...but sounding somewhat ludicrous as I reread the words.


And after someone suggested the idea of twins, without a whole lot of elaboration as to what was meant:

I hadn't thought of this in the sense of twins...and I don't actually think that that's what I'm thinking of here, but I'm not sure.

It's like....ummmm...different evolutions of the same little slice of the divine? In one way, they're so different, but if you go 359 degrees from one, you come to the other. All the difference is contained in that 360th degree. Small, but still there and if you look closely enough, you can see the same inner core...

Question that came up from some discussion at the grove today...


Spiritual growth:

What personal responsibility does it bring with it?

So one day last week, I was engaged in a discussion on a forum where one of the other folks participating was, or at least seemed to be, insisting that if I worship Apollo that I just couldn't grasp "irrational" things, and that I shouldn't even bother to try. Needless to say, I was fairly irked, on top of being frustrated by some other aspects of the discussion that have no bearing here.

What follows is some of one of my responses (it might seem a little disjointed because it's taken out of the context of the conversation) Some of this I've actually thought about before, obviously. The part that I've bolded though, I find most interesting and I remember typing it, it was one of those moments where my fingers seemed to be acting somewhat independently of or perhaps just well ahead of my brain and while I was somewhat surprised at what had come out, it makes perfect sense to me. As far as I recall, I've never really considered the idea of rationality versus irrationality and the Delphic maxim of "Nothing in excess" before. Others may disagree with me. (And just a minor note of vanity...for raw typing in a moment when I was rather pissed off at the offending individual, I really like how the last paragraph came out. I didn't change anything before I posted it. Usually when I'm typing mad, I have to go back and correct mistakes, grammar, fix wording etc.)

It is my experience (and that of others I've talked to) that to be Apollonian is in fact, not to be to be strictly rational. Apollo has his irrational side, though it is not the face that is most often portrayed, it is there.

You've heard, I'm sure, of the Oracle at Delphi? All modern scientific knowledge aside, she was thought back in the day to have been possessed by Apollo, or to be breathing in his spirit.



You know...I understand what "Apollonian" most commonly indicates. I understand that you don't really know me to know otherwise. I understand that you're not intending to be argumentative, but it feels to me like you're trying to paint me into this uber-narrow-minded, can't-even-fathon-anything-less-than-completely-rational corner.

A majority of my religious experience occurred before I came to be a follower of Apollo. From him, I have gained not strict rationality, but a balance between rational and irrational- I actually tend somewhat towards the irrational and for a long time was afraid of forgoing all emotion in favor of logic by his influence, but once again, what I have gained is not one over the other but how to balance the two. To forgo all irrationality would be to go against the wisdom of Apollo himself, one of the Delphic maxims reminds us "nothing in excess"...to adhere to one and not the other would be a bit excessive, no? It is my personal feeling that a true Apollonian must be able to acknowledge this and have a grip on both the rational and irrational.

So I've realized more and more over the last year or so that I largely define myself by my religion and related interests. Anymore, a large percentage of my time is devoted to such things. Most of my friends are somehow connected to my religious life. It's constantly what's on my mind. At work, most of my time is actually spent reading and at times writing about just such things. (Quick, who actually knows what I do for a living? Oh, nevermind. I actually do mention it enough that I think most folks know.) And looking forward, I can only really see it taking up more and more of my life in the future.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'm perfectly okay with the idea.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to needa one night, and conversation drifted into the subject of dating, and whether I found it crucial to be with someone of the same religion.

Maybe it's kinda dumb, but this conversation quickly became very uncomfortable in my mind. It was a little much when combined with the fact that the realization of attraction for someone had just hit me like the proverbial ton of runaway lead mack trucks only a few hours earlier. (Okay, so I had actually realized it a while ago, and continually ignored it/brushed it off for several reasons. And then it just did one of those numbers where it punches me in the face and forces me to confront it. Or at least admit it to myself, cause so far there's been no actual "confrontation". Just a whole lot of facial contortions while pondering the thought and what to do.)

Wiskey tango fuck does one thing have to do with another? Hell if I know. Oh yeah...the idea of relationships plus the life-consuming religion thing. Gaaaaah. It's complicated! And it's only hypothetical! How the hell does that translate to real life?

I think it all comes back to one thing...I know that it's not exactly realistic to be willing to venture outside of my religion- Baltimore's not exactly hopping with Hellenics, I think that I and the roommate comprise a third to a half of the population- but anyone that I ever do end up in a relationship with will need to have an active understanding (or a pretty damned strong acceptance) of where I'm coming from. Otherwise, it just won't work.

In other news, I bit two fingernails off tonight. Time for nail polish again.

Um...I need to start finding other things to occupy my brain at work. Maybe I should try crime novels or word-search puzzles. Or maybe I should go back to day shift. Was I this dramatically ponderous when I didn't have 12 hours of silence at a stretch to be alone with my thoughts???

I am happy to know that I am not the only one who is not feeling like she can rightly be present for the grove's Samhain ritual this year.

To those of you reading who write frequently and openly about your relationship/s with the deity/ies of your choice...

Have you ever been reluctant to do so? Not because you're afraid of sounding silly or people who don't need to know finding out, or anything like that, but because you're afraid that putting things into words on a journal will somehow make it all less "real"?

There's a lot that I would write, that I want to, but I've got it in my mind that I'll "lose" it if I do. So I only write about dreams- dreams are easy to write about. Or the stuff that is absolutely undeniably concrete to me.


In other realms, I'm so happy that Ferarri isn't fazed by thunderstorms.

I had a "Duh, why did I never think of that before??????" moment a bit ago.

All this time I've been feeling that the gods of my ancestors have rejected me. I'm of Sicillian, English, Polish and Lithuanian descent and have nnver felt any interest whatsoever to the gods of the Romans, the Etruscans, the Slavs or the Angles, Saxons or Celts, and never felt that they had any interest in me either. All this time I thought I was "looking elsewhere" when I looked to the Hellenic gods. The only part of my ancestry that I've really had a strong interest for has been the Sicilian side of my mother's family. And I chalked it up to bring intrigued by the big mystery surrounding one of my maternal great-great-great grandmothers, the one that first came to the US (yeah, that's still part of it...)

I knew before, but it never really clicked in my mind...Sicily was once a Greek stronghold.

There was a temple of Apollo at Sarausa, an altar to Apollo Archegetes outside of Naxos,

Also worshiped as Apollo Libystinus all over the island, and Apollo Temenites at Sarausa...

I haven't been rejected by the gods of the lands of all of my ancestors...I just never looked far back enough to realize that some of them were the same as the ones I worship now....

I came into work, and at the beginning of my shift, one of my coworkers was getting ready to leave. He came up to say hello before leaving and I snapped my browser shut because I was perusing a pagan forum, and while I know that my supervisor and assorted office management don't give a flying rat's posterior, I don't know about this particular coworker and don't care to discuss such things at work.

Well, he caught a glimpse of it just as it was closing and asked if I was pagan. There was no way to evade the question, and if he made a stink, I don't think it would go far around here. So, I just said "Yes" and decided to leave it at that. But then he said "So am I!" and pulled a pentacle out from under his shirt collar, then tucked it back in, asking me not to tell anyone. He mentioned that he suspected that someone else around here was also but she never talked about it. I informed him that there are several of us. (Offhand, I know of no fewer than 5 others, myself excluded and I suspect that there are more.)

Turns out, he knows Caryn and Will and his ex-wife used to be a member of the grove (no one I know though).

At the grove, we have Walk With The Old Ones every Sunday during Rites Of Caffeina. For anyone not familiar, this is essentially our church service. It's a stripped-down version of ADF ritual, we don't usually open the gates, we don't invoke any deities, we make offerings, meditate and pray. Anyone can lead this, though it's usually Caryn, sometimes Deirdre or Kat.

For reasons that I can't figure out, I haven't been able to get myself to do this. I should, really. But I haven't. Yes, I'm convinced that I'll sound like an idiot.

General fear of speaking in public? No. And I have no problems getting up and leading a full ritual.

No wait, I lie. I did once. I kinda got put on the spot once last summer by Caryn. I think I sounded like an idiot.

I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that for me, religion is focused on the gods (and mostly on a few specific ones at that), and WWTOO drastically decentralizes that...I still feel very awkward making offerings to ancestors and nature spirits....actually, making offerings- feels kinda weird but not such a big deal. Speaking of it though, awkward.

Also, the Earth Mother part at the beginning....I do not see the Earth as "Mother". I can see where others might, but I just can't quite get it into my own beliefs. I've stopped trying because if I can't believe something, trying to make myself do so gets me nowhere.

I just got the most brilliant (no pun intended) idea for mirror-image solstice rituals...

More later.

http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=9077&JServSessionIdr007=2tvm1x6wc4.app5b

Settlement In Americans United Lawsuit Comes After Discovery Of A Pattern Of Bias Against Minority Faith

The Bush administration has conceded that Wiccans are entitled to have the pentacle, the symbol of their faith, inscribed on government-issued memorial markers for deceased veterans, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced today.

The settlement agreement, filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, brings to a successful conclusion a lawsuit Americans United brought against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in November.

The litigation charged that denying a pentacle to deceased Wiccan service personnel, while granting religious symbols to those of other traditions, violated the U.S. Constitution.

(The article is a good bit longer than that.)

Does religion change you or does it bring to the surface things that were there but hidden?

Have we actually freely chosen to worship the god/s we do or have we chosen to answer their calling to us?

Does it matter?

I don't have a clue.

Doorbell just rang. Guy in a blue jacket was at the door- for a second I thought it was the postman. I was a bit thrown buy the fact that he's wearing a surgical mask...but it is allergy season and some people get it that bad. He holds out a folded piece of paper to me and says that he'd like to invite everyone living in this house to a celebration at his church every Sunday.

"Thank you, we already celebrate at another church every Sunday."

Sometimes I really love that I can say things like that. Yes, I go to church. Yes, every Sunday. Yes, I really do mean every Sunday. It's a very small house church up in the northeastern part of the city.

It's true and it keeps things peaceful.

For two and a half years now I've been involved with the grove. I've attended every ritual and almost every other gathering that's taken place. There's been one aspect that I've really appreciated from the beginning, but lately I've been having mixed feelings.

That is humor and silliness. This isn't to say that I no longer appreciate them, and the fact that this religion allows such possibility for humor. I'm starting to feel somewhat of an aversion to humor in ritual. I don't know why.

I've said this before...not here, but in conversations with some people. I think I'm a bit of a ritual junkie. I like writing ritual, leading them, just being part of them in general. It's a very sad thing me when I don't feel like I can be part for whatever reason. Imbolc was one of those.

As I've said, silliness is the other thing. The farther I go along, the less interested I am in silly rituals or silliness in ritual. I start to feel like I'm missing something. Sometimes I find it distracting but more than that, I think it's just not the type of religious experience that I need.

Why has this suddenly become an issue? I don't know. Well, it's not so sudden really. It's been creeping up on my mind from time to time for some months now. But...why? Have I suddenly reached a point where I'm past a general desire or need for humor in ritual? Is it related to the nature of the god I worship? (That brings to mind another thought for another musing...) Likely some combination of things. I'm not particularly worried about the why's. I just need to figure out how I'm going to work with/around this. There is the obvious celebrating of rituals on my own, but solitary ritual does not fill the same need as group ritual for me. One thing I've been thinking of and even talking about for some time is organizing rituals for festivals other than the 8 neopagan days. It's not like there aren't plenty to pick from.

That said, adapting Thargelia to ADF format is an interesting process. I think it will be a very good ritual. I didn't get to post my notes to the grove forum today like I had planned to, but I can do that tomorrow evening in between working on the other computer (The XP machine, the one that just got working again last night, apparently is missing some file now and has decided to take a memory dump every time I attempt to turn it on. Computers hate me, it's official.)

In other news, I've found out that the client at work is talking about taking some of us up to Massachusetts to visit one of their offices and may end up using some of us as backup field techs when people are deployed to install some of the more major equipment. I've also been finding that it seems that they are going to trust a lot more to our judgement than giving us crazy regulations for every little thing we do like most other clients seem to do. I've met two people from the company so far and I really like them, especially the guy that's in this week, he's the supervisors for the level two techs up in Massachusetts. Very cool, very laid back, very "ask anything you want to know, tell me how I can help you guys learn this stuff." Actually started out this morning with "Well, I've got a ton of stuff that I can throw at you this week, but seriously, what do you want to cover?" The client hasn't given us a lot of stuff yet because they're asking for feedback on what we want and need. So far, everything we've asked for, as far as I can tell- especially when it comes to information- has been given or is in the process of being found out. Except that I still don't have my computer in the training room. However, I'm a bit hopeful...the company used to have a tradition of every training class having a meeting with the company founder/president. This meeting was a chance to ask anything (the only question that remained unanswered was his salary), express any concerns and problems, and talk a bit. Very infomal and laid back. This ended when he resigned and went to work elsewhere in the wake of Apple going south. ( insert boring details here. ) So Steve, the site director/VP of finance has carried on that tradition and my training class had just that meeting today. One of my coworkers, also without a computer, decided to air that particular complaint to Steve who expressed some worry about this and made a point of writing it down in his little book (Yes, I actually saw this written down, I was sitting right next to him as he did so.)

And another coworker has decided that he's going to teach me to speak Portuguese.

Time to sleep.

Earlier this evening, I went upstairs to lay down for a bit. I lit some incense (I do love the smell of wildberry brand awapuhi incense) and I was actually intending to read. I ended up dozing off, and before I knew it I was heading up a familiar gravel path. This time though, it was much more winding and hilly, and at one point led briefly through a very dense forest. I came again to the temple at Delos, but this time I did not try the latch on the doors. Instead, I put my hands up to their surface. This time, they slammed open, with such a force as if they'd been kicked, but I didn't kick them and there was no wind to blow them.

Again, I was expected, and was being pulled in. I felt as though something else was moving my feet. I was not resisting, but the fact that I was moving forward was not of my own will. The inside of the temple was much larger than the outside looked, and it was not dark. muted rays of sunlight streamed in though windows near the ceiling and the temple was essentially a cavernous hallway inside. I had the feeling that someone else was in there, but I did not see anyone

Periodically, there were cylindrical pedestals with basins of water on top of them, and after I had walked a bit, I saw a few people further in, here and there, kneeling in front of the water basins and praying. I stood at one and contemplated it for a minute, then looked towards the far end of the hallway, and then looked towards the ceiling. It was so high. It was so much higher than the roof had seemed from the outside. I felt tiny. I felt a sense of awe. It suddenly seemed completely improper to remain standing, and I fell on my knees, still looking up at the ceiling with amazement.

Then I closed my eyes and bowed my head, and knelt there silently and it might have been a minute, or it might have been an hour, but I felt two hands placed on top of my head. I opened my eyes and looked up, and here was a woman who looked a lot like me, but older...maybe 10 years older. She wore a white robe and a single thin, gold bracelet on her right wrist. She smiled but didn't say anything, and I knew that she wanted me to stand up so I did. Then she took me by the hand and led me to the far end of the hall where there was an altar the size of a boardroom table full of candles, fruit and incense. She stopped a few steps short of it, knelt briefly and stood back up. She did not get any closer and it seemed that there was some reason that she was not allowed to move closer I could see that she wanted to walk right up to it as I did and touched the edge of the altar, still awestruck, but suddenly moving forward on my own again. I was still somewhat intimidated, but at the same time I felt a slight, very slight, sense of entitlement. Somehow, being there belonged to me. Only then did she speak, she said "It is your turn now, younger one."

Then I woke up, just as the incense on my shelf was burning itself out.

My turn??? What the heck? Is this going to be another recurring dream? *Grumble*

I have found in the last year and a half or so that I am decent at writing invocations. By that I mean I can grab a notebook and come up with something passable or better in about three minutes. Tweak a few words here and there and usually within about 5 minutes, I've got something I'm happy with. (I generally cannot write anything else like this. Especially essays describing the evolution of my personal religious practice.) Even at times for deities with whom I am not particularly familiar, such as the one I wrote for Airmid at Lughnassagh.

I've another invocation to write to the less familiar. Water nymphs. I might take a bit more than 5 minutes on this one...lol...

I'm thinking I may use the Orphic hymns to the Nymphs and Nereids as models.

Orphic Hymn to the Nymphs (trans. Athanassakis) - incense: aromatic herbs

Nymphs, daughters of great-hearted Okeanos,
you dwell inside the earth's damp caves
and your paths are secret, O joyous and chthonic ones, nurses of Bacchos,
You nourish fruits and haunt meadows, O sprightly and pure
travelers of the winding roads who delight in caves and grottoes.
Swift, light-footed, and clothed in dew, you frequent springs;
visible and invisible, in ravines and among flowers,
you shout and frisk with Pan upon mountain sides.
Gliding down on rocks, you hum with clear voice, O mountain-haunting
sylvan maidens of the fields and streams.
O sweet-smelling virgins, clad in white, fresh as the breezes,
with goatherds, pastures and splendid fruits in your domain. You are loved by creatures of the wild.
Tender though you are, you rejoice in cold and you give sustenance and growth to many,
O playful and water-loving Hamadryad maidens.
Dwellers of Nysa, frenzied and healing goddesses who joy in spring,
together with Bacchos and Deo you bring grace to mortals.
With joyful hearts come to this hallowed sacrifice
and in the seasons of growth pour streams of salubrious rain.



Orphic Hymn to the Nereids (trans. Athanassakis) - incense: aromatic herbs

O lovely-faced and pure nymphs, daughters of Nereus who lives in the deep,
at the bottom of the sea you gambol and dance in the water.
Fifty maidens revel in the waves,
maidens riding on the backs of Tritons and delighting
in animal shapes and bodies nurtured by the sea
and in the other dwellers of the Tritons' billowy kingdom.
Your home is the water, and you leap and whirl round the waves,
like glistening dolphins roving the roaring seas.
I call upon you to bring much prosperity to the initiates,
for you were first to show the holy rite
of sacred Bacchos and of pure Persephone,
you and mother Kalliope, and Apollon the lord.

(or anyone else with an informed opinion)

This is (obviously I think) not my original thought, but it makes sense based on what I know. What do you think? (The hurricane, in this context is just a random example, this isn't debating a particular occurence)

If you believe Jesus is our savior, a hurricane can't be interpretted as punishment by God. By doing so you denounce Christ as our Savior.

I finally wrote a personal religion essay that I'm happy with. Of course, I left it on my desk at work (reasonably sure I did anyway, really hope I did.)

Today at the Grove, we talked about the Spring Equinox and what we're doing. We've decided to do a ritual this time for the strengthening and protection of native trees against invading species like Aleantha. Everyone is supposed to research, looking for deities that are connected to the protection of forests and/or trees. Caryn seems to be very set on the idea of a ritual asking the assistance of Artemis, to which I said that we would definitely need to include the nymphs (more specifically, hamadryads) in this venture. The hamadryads' lives depend on the lives of the trees (Though, what about hamadryads connected to the trees of the invading species...?)

And folks are also researching other possibilities. We'll see what is found. I went looking for non-Greek stuff too, but haven't found any deities or spirits so far that are as intimately connected to the trees.

In any event, I am working up an adaptation of the festival of Thargelia, for possible celebration this year instead of Beltane. (The idea seems to be going over pretty well with people. Nothing is decided yet of course, but everyone that's heard it seems to have an enthusiastic response so far.) Since I am so interested in doing that, I will certainly be happy if people decide that two Greek rituals in a row are in order, but I would not be nearly as vocal in expressing a particular opinion for this one as I might otherwise. I would, of course, help out in ny way I could...but I would do the same for any other ritual.

After the Grove, Steph, Jesse, Dominic and I went to Barnes & Noble down at the harbor. I bought a new journal tonight, for a specific purpose. None of the blank books that I currently have actually suit my desires for this use- mostly in that none seem to have enough pages. I've been feeling for a while like I should be keeping some sort of track of my regular religious activity- daily, weekly, etc. and I got some more motivation this morning when I was reading over some thigns on the ADF website and found that a log of no less than four months' time was required for just this sort of thing.

I figure this one should last me a decent part of the year. Writing about this sort of thing on a mostly daily basis should take up, in most instances, less than a side of a page at a time. Though I haven't really talked about it, I have for a while now been working on daily religious practice. I've got the weekly thing down quite well by now I think :-P

On a different topic, I decided a while back that I was interested in learning about the Iberian Celts. There's something about obscure cultures that fascinates me. I was just talking to Jon a little while ago, he's going to send me a list of source information that he's got. He's a history snob, so I think I'm safe there. The only thing that I've managed to find myself was a single issue of a single academic journal online.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going down to Caryn's place with jackgreen60 to talk about the ritual upcoming at Four Quarters Farm in two weeks. I'm really on the fringes of this one, and I'm ok with that. Yeah, I have the day off work tomorrow. It's Presidents Day and I work exclusively with schools so no work for me. Oh, and I had volunteered to work on MLK day. So there you are.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,4-2007030603,00.html

TOM Cruise is the new “Christ” of Scientology, according to leaders of the cult-like religion.

The Mission: Impossible star has been told he has been “chosen” to spread the word of his faith throughout the world.

And leader David Miscavige believes that in future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.

A source close to the actor, who has risen to one of the church’s top levels, said: “Tom has been told he is Scientology’s Christ-like figure.

“Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”

Cruise joined the Church of Scientology in the ’80s. Leader L Ron Hubbard claimed humans bear traces of an ancient alien civilisation.



This article prompted someone on another forum to come up with a new song (Or at least twist the first lines of one preexisting)...

"Tom Cruise loves me, this I know.
L Ron Hubbard told me so..."

If you haven't caught this yet, according to this professor, Concerning Hellenic pagans, it's just "pagan-lite" without blood sacrifices.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/01/paganism_withou.html

(I don't claim to be attempting to completely recreate the Ancient Hellenic religion. However, I don't think that the fact that I'm not performing animal sacrifice means that my belief in the gods is somehow diluted.

For the record, I am not opposed to animal sacrifice. I also do not believe that anyone who thinks it's okay to eat meat should be opposed to animal sacrifice. No, I'm not talking about the senseless torture and killings of people's cats and various other animals that crop up especially at Halloween time. )


( Edited again to add this response from Oinokhoe )

For acousticdryad (And anyone else interested too.)

Encyclopedia of the Goddess Athena

http://www.goddess-athena.org/Encyclopedia/Athena/index.htm

This weekend was long, but went by very quickly.

On Friday night I stopped by Borders and picked up a new dayplanner. It's a small one, with a green, gold and bronze mosaic pattern and magnetic closure. After that, wet home and packed clothes and stuff for the weekend, ad when Jesse came home we went to Caryn and Will's (With a stop on the way at Barnes & Noble, since my Callimachus book came in.) Friday night we watched a videotaped interview of Isaac Bonewits from the mid-90's, and had some assorted dinnerthings and wine (Finally opened the bottle of Jazz that's been sitting around since I got back from Christmas...it was just as good as last year. AND there's still just a bit less than half the bottle left!)

Saturday morning we made it to VA just in time, though it didn't matter much because Isaac apparently decided that he needed to stop and make photocopies at the last minute, and we were well over an hour late in starting. There was plenty of time for socializing with folks in the meantime. Once Isaac go there and started talking, I tried to take notes, but I just can't transcribe that fast- thankfully, Jack took copious notes, as did Caryn.

The first day ended up being amost entirely about magic- and more specifically, spellcasting, which is't realy something I do. Some of his theories and thoughts were interesting, especially his little forrays into the realm of quantum physics (and by little, I do mean little, but quantum physics fascinate me, so any mention of the subject is going to get my attention.)

My only problem on Saturday was that I attempted to ask a question at one point, and before I could even get to the question, he interrupted me and started answering to what I can only guess he thought I was asking/saying/criticizing, which was a bit frustrating because I tried to explain that what I was leading in with wasn't what I was actually trying to ask, and I finally blurted out "Are you trying to make me forget my question, because if you are, it worked." I still haven't remembered the question.

Sunday was more interesting to me, in that it was mostly talking about religion, though a lot of it seemed to be devoted to jabbing at monotheistic religions and the dangers of dualism. Granted, I can see a lot of problems with dualism, because the world exists in shades of grey, not in absolute black and white. But oddly enough, his entire discussion seemed to be a dualism of dualism vs. pluralism. First of all, I don't feel the need to be constantly jabbing at other religions just because I don't agree with them, don't like them and wish certain segments of them would just go away. Second of all...the entire argument was modeled on the very thing that he was arguing against. Dualism vs. Pluralism. One or the other. It's like using a word to define itself. And when I asked about the segments of monotheists that don't believe that they are the only way, and don't try to throw everyone into the Us. vs Them laundry piles, his answer was that those folks are with "Us", the pluralists (Though he didn't actually say "us"). None of this really made sense to me because all day, he was saying either "the monotheists...." or "the neopagans..." which is a fairly clearly specified division. But, he did admit to being very biased- I appreciate when people acknowledge these thigns in themselves.

Overall, it was very interesting to attend this workshop, and meeting Isaac was fun. (As I've commented before, how many people actually get the opportunity to meet the founder of their religion? lol...) There was a little Cedarlight-style heckling. Much to our confusion, Nicole and I were both invited to join Mannaheim's listserv. (Mannaheim is a primarily Heathen/Asatru group with a fairly tribal mentality) But the people that we met were all really cool, and meeting new and interesting people is always a good thing.

Instead of driving from Baltimore both days, we stayed at Caryn and Will's for the weekend. Yesterday it started snowig in the afternoon, and by the time we were leaving, roads were kinda slippery, so we drove back to Glen Burnie from Springfield VA doing mostly no more than 25-30 MPH. This took us about 2 hours but we kept ourselves amused.

Today after work, I'm going to that bellydance class, I need to calland find out if its ok if I do the first class in street clothes- I forgot to bring stuff with me. I could do it in what I'm wearing, my clothng is very comfortable and easy to move in. If not, I'll have to run home and grab some stuff. Thankfully the studio is just over on Howard street. After that, I'm going to go home and watch Heroes and 24 with the roommates. And then sleep.

For now, I'm approaching lunch.

http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=90663


ATLANTA (AP) -- A suburban Atlanta mother who claims Harry Potter books teach children witchcraft said Wednesday that she will appeal the state’s decision to keep the best-selling books in Gwinnett County school libraries.

Laura Mallory, who has three children in elementary school, said she has requested an appeal of her case to Superior Court.

Mallory has tried to ban the books from Gwinnett County school library shelves since August 2005. She argues that the popular fiction series is an attempt to indoctrinate children in witchcraft.

School board members said the books are good tools to encourage children to read and to spark creativity and imagination. In May, the county decided to deny Mallory’s request.

The state Board of Education backed Gwinnett’s stance in December, voting without discussion to uphold the county’s decision.

Mallory said she’s ready for a legal fight. She said she’s already contacted a potential expert witness to lend support to her case. And she said supporters who urged her to continue the case have sent her “significant donations” to help pay legal fees.

Okay, dammit. My DP is finished before this month is out, that's all there is to it.

Had a Grove budget meeting today which was actually reasonably painless as far as such things go. There were only 7 of us there and I think we all wanted to get through it all as quickly and smoothly as possible, I think we were there maybe 4 and a half hours. The only real sticking point was easily clarified and resolved. And I got copies of a CD by Gjallarhorn and one by Garmarna from Crystal. Yay! Oh, and my main mission (Having the Spring Equinox celebrated on the weekend of March 17th because I won't be in town the next weekend due to having to go to PA for Mica's wedding) was accomplished. This makes me happy.

So...it looks like there's a high possibility I'll be going to the Washington-Baltimore Plagan leadership Conference at the end of next month. I've been interested in this since I first heard of it, so I'm happy for the chance to go. (On a related note, it was a bit of an exciting thing at Yule to have been introduced to a rather large group of ritual attendees as one of the Grove's new liturgists.)

In keeping with the agreement of the Grove payig for the class that I took in October, I have to do a lore meeting/workshop/something on the ancient Greek and Roman religion. Gah, that means I have to decide what will be covered and make it fit into the time. I made up a little questionnaire to give to folks tomorrow and actually get an idea of what topics people care about listening to me blather on about.

I just slammed my aichilles tendon against the wheel of my chair. For those of you who have never done such a thing, it is an experience best avoided.

At some point I should consider sleep.

Random thought: it's headless and armless, but I love the Nike Of Samothrace statue.

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images3/nike_samothrace.jpg

The Statue Of Liberation Through Christ???

(It's the Statue Of Liberty. With a few new accoutrements. For serious.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05liberty.html?ex=1152763200&en=201321768bfb4841&ei=5059&partner=AOL

( Or click here...I had some issue getting the link to work the first time... )

"This statue proves that Jesus Christ is Lord over America, he is Lord over Tennessee, he is Lord over Memphis."

This statue proves nothing.

Dammit, it's my Statue Of Liberty too.

Yeah, you know, I'm just not too jazzed about that.

On my various pagan wanderings, there have been two traditions that I have examined and had the opportunity to study with folks in that tradition- but rejected. The first was Stregheria, Italian Witchcraft. The second was Corellian Wicca.

I don't know when it was taken down, but the Correlians used to have a tradition listing at http://www.witchvox.com stating, among other things, that they emphasised education and learning, with spells and magic being less of a focus. That was what interested me about them. And then they started their witch school- It's been in the news lately, but it's been aorund for a while. They either bought or were going to buy a building a while back, but the residents of the particular location were particularly hostile, so it remained an online venture for a while...Way back, shortly after it first started online, I checked out the school website. I decided not to do it because even if the classes were free, I had no money to buy books or anything like that.

...now they've bought another building and are opening a school. Some pagans think that this is a really great thing, and it's going to make pagan religions more mainstream, or more respected...I can't find reason to agree

( Check out this essay written by Juliaki )

Reading this essay, and a discussion on one of the ADF lists has prompted me to go and look at the website again.

Here's what I turned up:

1. They can't decide how to spell "magic". Pages with multiple occurences of the word show it spelled both "magic" and "magick". can't even mis/spell consistently?? A bit of a red flag.
examples found all over this page

2. Their FAQ: you can't read more than one line from any of the answers (type a "%" to bring up all questions/answers)

3. Want to teach a course? There's not much to it really, Here's the page asking for teachers. Note how there's nothing mentioned about teachers' credentials. They talk about reviewing material for grammer, spelling atc...but not for content ("Any suggested changes of a substantive nature will be sent to you for review and will not be put up on the site without your approval." *might* refer to content...but it is followed with another statement about spelling that leads me to believe that it's strictly a language refernce.)

4. They call themselves "Correllian Nativist Wicca" but have a look herefirst they say that "Correllian Nativism" was established in 1897, which would predate Wicca by about 70 years. Then it goes on to say that it's debateable as to whether it's actually Wicca or not, but that's just "a matter of semantics anyway". According to the page, it started as "Nativism" until 1992, when they changed it to "Correllian Nativism". There NO explaination as to when or where Wicca comes into the picture. Googling the terms "Nativism High Correll" (without the quotes) returns 61 results- some of them not related. The results contain only information that is parotted from the link above. There is also this claim:

Lady Orpheis’ Nativism was a highly political and deeply synchretic form of Pagan universalism, which stressed the need for the world’s Native (Pagan) religions to unite in the face of colonial Christianity.

If they were so political, then why when I google "orpheis nativism" do I find only two pages of results- one of which the search engine says is duplicate information, and again all repeating the same information on the Correllian website- several of them word for word?

(This has nothing to do with the school...but has given me a headache looking over the website: They have their own special calendar. If you read the history page- linked above- you'll notice that they keep giving dates like this: September 4, 1479 Pisces (1879 AD). Why not just say "CE" instead of "AD" if you have such a problem with that designation? But here's a link to information about the calender: http://www.correllian.com/correllcal.htm)

This is one of the songs that was performed yesterday

"Symbol" by Celia

An American soldier came home today
Wrapped up as cargo in an American flag
He asked for one sweet silent symbol on his grave
But the pentagon said "Sorry son, request denied"

He served as any other with his hands and with his heart
He prayed to Father Sky, bowed down to Mother Earth
He honored air and water and the fire he danced around
but you didn't honor him before you put him in the ground.

It's a symbol it's a sign it stands for everything divine
Excuse me sir, I think you're wrong I checked and the last time
I read the doctrine it said practicing your faith is not a crime.
So let this soldier rest...honor his request.

You sent that little girl crying home from school
Told her she was evil and she disobeyed the rules
You took away her pendant, Grandmother's gift
But the other kids are free to wear their crucifix

And she knows that if you catch her, you'll have her expelled
She's frightened every member of her family's going to hell.
She's all messed up she's five years old, she doesn't know her rights
But her daddy is a lawyer, so get ready for the fight.

It's a symbol it's a sign it stands for everything divine
Excuse me sir, I think you're wrong I checked and the last time
I read the doctrine it said practicing your faith is not a crime.
So if you make thse children pray, let them do it their own way.

He's a believer so he wears it on his arm
First day, new job he set off all the alarms
The memo spread like wildfire that the devil had arrived
And the virus got to corporate and they fired him by five

Now all this misperception and everyone runs scared
Scared of the neighbors and scared to declare
Cuz the persecution's high, expelled or fired or denied
So what the hell did our ancestors fight so hard for?

It's a symbol it's a sign it stands for everything divine
Excuse me sir, I think you're wrong I checked and the last time
I read the doctrine it said practicing your faith is not a crime.
So if you make these children pray, let them do it their own way.


So raise up your chisel and carve next to his name
All that he held sacred and all that kept him sane
When you sent him off to war, you didn't care what he believed
now he served you with his blood, grant him his dignity

Freedom of speech, freedom of faith, freedom of religion
Freedom to stand up and fight for what we believe in
Freedom to die for your contry and be recognized
With a symbol of honor in your country's eyes

It's a symbol it's a sign it stands for everything divine
Excuse me sir, I think you're wrong I checked and the last time
I read the doctrine it said practicing your faith is not a crime.
So let his widow rest, honor her request.