Virginia Is For Democrats

My New Name For A Blog

What Molly Ivors Said

Friday Zip Car Blogging

They have hybrids, too! The Clarendon Whole Foods is doing a great event with Zip Car and the Animal Welfare League of Virginia.

My New Name For A Blog

What Atrios Said.

Just. So. Strange.

My New Name For A Blog

What Greenwald Said.

At the same time, MSNBC fired the only real war opponent it had, Phil Donahue, despite very healthy ratings (the highest of any show on MSNBC, including "Hardball"). When interviewed for Bill Moyers' truly superb 2007 documentary on press behavior in the run-up to the war, Donahue reported much the same thing as Yellin, Couric, and Banfield revealed:

BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.

PHIL DONOHUE: You didn't have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn't have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.

BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.

PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn't have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.

BILL MOYERS: You're kidding.

PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.

BILL MOYERS: Instructed from above?

PHIL DONOHUE: Yes. I was counted as two liberals.

A leaked memo from NBC executives at the time of his firing made clear that Donahue was fired for ideological reasons, not due to ratings:
The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war . . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
NBC executives then proceeded to hire Dick Armey as an MSNBC commentator and give a show to Michael Savage. Michael Savage.

And speaking of lying whores:

David Gregory Now:



David Gregory Then:


Hat Tip to E.

Mystical Experience

Carol Christ has more on process philosophy:

Embodied mysticism is felt in the body, for example in eating and drinking or in dancing or making love or in climbing the peach tree--not in negation of the self or the body through ascetic practices. Embedded mysticism seek does not seek to annihilate the self, nor to rise above the world, but to feel the feelings of other individuals in world ever more deeply. Embedded mysticism is the sense of being part of a larger whole that is infused with the presence of the divine. This larger whole includes both human and other than human life. There is no place in embodied embedded mysticism for the notion that the divine exists apart from the physical world and that our goal is to deny the self or physical body in order to connect with immaterial or transcendent divinity. In contrast to philosophies rooted in classical dualisms, process philosophy affirms all bodies and the world as the body of Goddess/God. Because it corrects the theological mistakes that arose from denying the female body through which we are born into the world, process philosophy can provide grounding for a feminist understanding of mysticism.

Go read the whole thing here.

Interestingly, given that her topic is philosophy, she begins her essay doing what Cat Chapin-Bishop urges: talking about the actuality of mystical Pagan experience.

There's Always More

I wish that there were a word to describe what happens when you're not actively "thinking" about something, but when you are aware that the topic is, I don't know, bubbling, fermenting, composting, working, just below your level of consciousness. Ever since Sunday when my wonderful circle of witches had our annual retreat, I've been -- composting? -- the idea of how complicated it is, and, yet, also, what a gift it is, to live within a circle of women. Real women, not the idealized ones you imagine when you come to Wicca and spend months and maybe years longing for a coven, but the real ones that you encounter when you finally do. I just am, for no reason that I can imagine, fortunate to find myself in a circle of maidens, mothers, and crones who tell each other the truth, even when that truth may wound, in the belief that we'll work through the truth faster than we could ever work through convenient lies:

I can't do ritual at your house because your life is too chaotic.

I may not be able to stay in this circle and have an infant and an job and a husband and another child and parents and a home.

I'll make whatever concessions I can so that you can stay in this circle with all those commitments and I'll love you if you have to say, "Time Out."

I want everyone to shut up when my cards are being read.

I need a real friend and not someone who just emails me once in a while.

I wonder at the exclusive focus on women in this circle.

Will you all still love me when you know everything about my sexuality?

Is it ok for me to be afraid at the role you've all asked me to assume?

Can we become more focused during deep magic and still like each other?

Am I asking for too much?

It's not that this process interferes with spiritual development, at least for me. It's that this process IS spiritual development. For several reasons, I spent the early mornings leading up to our annual retreat thinking of the women who've, over the years, left our circle and moved on to other things, for good and for ill. I am, my soul is, this trip around the wheel for me is, tied up with the women with whom I've done magic.

It's all real. It's all metaphor There's always more.

My New Name For A Blog

What the Snake Goddess Said.

My New Name For A Blog

What Cat Chapin-Bishop Said.

Don't tell me that community is important in Paganism. Tell me about finding your first Pagan community, and about that heady rush like first love you felt for it. And about the crushing pain that followed the first betrayal (the leader that was manipulative; the grove member who stole; the coven-mate whose oaths didn't keep her from outing one of you) and how you came to terms with it. How you learned to embrace the Pagan world despite its flaws--or dedicated yourself to eradicating them.

Don't tell me that Pagans find our gods in nature. Tell me about the time you climbed a mountain to celebrate with them, but it turned cold and foggy, and you thought you were lost forever until you spotted that raven that looked at you out of just one eye. Tell me about the taste of the meat from the deer you hunted yourself--or about the look of kinship in the eyes of the possum you accidentally killed, which made you give up meat-eating forever.

Tell me about how hot your sweat lodge was and how thirsty you emerged from it, when you explore whether or not Pagan sweat lodges are cultural appropriation. Tell me about the first time you saw an aura--or the time you were the only one who couldn't see one, in your whole magical lodge--before you tell me about psychic phenomena.

Go read the whole thing. And then, post an answer.

But Once, In My Wicked Youth Or Childhood, I Must Have Done Something Good

Really, I doubt that. I doubt that, in my wicked youth and childhood, I did something good.

Grace really isn't like that.

And it's grace, pure and simple -- that well that is sitting there, waiting to be drawn upon -- that gave me a wonderful Son, a delightful DiL, and the sweetest G/Son in the whole wide world, and that brought me -- me, the loner, the INTJ, me -- to a wonderful circle of wonderful women and plopped me in the middle of, and along the edge of, and at the perfect spot in this Circle of Amazing Women. There's nothing "good" in my wicked youth and childhood (and early adulthood and middle adult years) that I ever did to deserve a draught of water this cold and this pure.

Once a year, my Circle spends a whole day on ourselves, on our Circle, on the kind of magic that we've done and that we want to keep doing. Every year, by the end of the day, I'm completely worn out. And, every year, I drift on off to bed amazed at my good fortune. Maidens. Mothers. Crones.

Grace.

May it be so for you. May it continue to be so for me.

Making Excuses

Light posting for the next few days; my circle's big annual retreat is tomorrow, here, in my mid-landscaping-mess of a yard! Datura seedlings need to be planted RIGHT NOW. Any of you with the keys, feel free to guest blog.

Here's a nice poem to hold you:

FROM FIFTH AVENUE UP

SOMEDAY beneath some hard
Capricious star—
Spreading its light a little
Over far,
We'll know you for the woman
That you are.

For though one took you, hurled you
Out of space,
With your legs half strangled
In your lace,
You'd lip the world to madness
On your face.

We’d see your body in the grass
With cool pale eyes.
We'd strain to touch those lang'rous
Length of thighs,
And hear your short sharp modern
Babylonic cries.

It wouldn't go. We’d feel you
Coil in fear
Leaning across the fertile
Fields to leer
As you urged some bitter secret
Through the ear.

We see your arms grow humid
In the heat;
We see your damp chemise lie
Pulsing in the beat
Of the over-hearts left oozing
At your feet.

See you sagging down with bulging
Hair to sip,
The dappled damp from some vague
Under lip,
Your soft saliva, loosed
With orgy, drip.

Once we'd not have called this
Woman you—
When leaning above your mother's
Spleen you drew
Your mouth across her breast as
Trick musicians do.

Plunging grandly out to fall
Upon your face.
Naked—female—baby
In grimace,
With your belly bulging stately
Into space.

~Djuna Barnes.

Here, Obama Campaign, This One Is Gratis. Get Way Behind The ERA.

Barack Obama has run an amazing campaign and he certainly doesn't need my advice.

But reading my good friend Sinfonian today, agonizing over what Hillary Clinton can do to advance the more deserving man's cause, (ahem, as if, were positions reversed, anyone would worry over that), I got to thinking. And I started thinking that there's one thing, beyond the blindingly obvious, that Obama could do to help us older women voters cozy up to the idea of, gee, one more time, supporting the man.

Obama could come out strongly in support of the ERA.

I mean, really, strongly in support. I'm biased, but I think this is a brilliant idea.

What got me to thinking of it was that I was listening to a radio news story about McCain on the Ellen DeGeneres show, trying to equivocate on gay marriage, and I was wondering, does anyone really think that gay marriage won't be the norm in, say, 30 years? I was trying to think of even one movement such as this where the conservatives were able to completely turn the tide. American independence. An end to colonialism throughout South America and Africa. Birth control. Loving v. VA. Lunch counters. Slavery. Environmental laws. And, then I thought, as is my wont, about women. Women won the right to vote a while back, but are still waiting for passage of the ERA. And, bam, it hit me. The Obama campaign has a serious problem with women, esp. we older women who watched the ERA bloom and fade. He needs to show as he really, really, really hasn't yet ("You're likable enough," "Absent" on choice votes, "Sweetie," a campaign full of men and based on his being a "committed xian" who is "called to serve") that he gets it. Serious backing for the ERA would go a long way for this grandmother.

So, don't listen to me. I'm only an old woman with a fat checkbook, an extensive address book, some weekends this Summer to spend handing out leaflets, and a house and garden made for entertaining. Don't address my concerns. It's better to make fun of me on blogs and make me feel even more disaffected from my own political party.

No, it's not.

The ERA. An idea whose time is now. Mr. Obama?

Tell The Story

Thou Art Goddess

The Goddess Is Alive. Magic Is Afoot!

So Many Books, So Little Time

She Who Changes is one of the more important books in my spiritual development. It's one of those too-rare books for Pagans that goes beyond Feminist Spirituality 101. Carol Christ, who now blogs along with Starhawk and others, has a post up that discusses her book.

While process philosophy agrees with traditional views that all human knowing is partial and fragmentary, it does not take the further step of asserting that therefore we can know nothing of Goddess or God. Process philosophy boldly affirms that the love of Goddess/God for the world is something like the love we can know in relationships in the world and that the care and concern that Goddess/God offers to every individual in the world is something like the care and concern we can offer each other. In sharp contrast to traditional theisms, process philosophy argues that Goddess/God is more known than unknown because Goddess/God is in the world and the world is in Goddess/God. Process philosophy rejects all language and understandings that suggest that God is any way a distant or dominating Other. He is not a king, a tyrant, a bully, or man of war. She is not a queen, a withholding or controlling mother, or a wielder of a battle axe.

More here.

Meanwhile, Jason at The Wild Hunt has an interview with Brendan Cathbad Myers about Myers' new book: The Other Side of Virtue: Where Our Virtues Came From, What They Really Mean, and Where They Might Be Taking Us. I ordered it right away. Myers says:

It's not well known, but Virtue was originally a pagan idea. It was not only an ethical idea, but also a spiritual idea. It had to do with the way people make choices, but also with the way people 'held' themselves and possessed themselves. It configured how they understood their relationship to other people, the world, and the gods. To most people today it has to do with Christian qualities like humility and chastity. But its original side, which has now become its 'other side', has to do with the means by which a person empowers and edifies herself, and becomes a complete human being. Pagans have virtue-concepts in some of our most important and most widely shared statements of identity. The Charge of the Goddess mentions eight of them. But when most pagans think of ethics, they usually think of the the Wiccan Rede -- a highly utilitarian idea which has nothing to do with virtue. I'd like to change that.

Burning Witches

BBC reporting that:

Eleven elderly people accused of being witches have been burned to death by a mob in the west of Kenya, police say.

. . .

Anthony Kibunguchy, the provincial police officer, told the BBC that the eight women and three men were all aged between 80 and 96 years old.

The mob dragged them out of their houses and burned them individually and then set their homes alight, our correspondent says.

Residents have been ambivalent about condemning the attacks because belief in witchcraft is widespread in the area, he says.

But local official Mwangi Ngunyi spoke out against the murders.

"People must not take the law into their own hands simply because they suspect someone," he told AFP news agency.

Villagers told reporters that they had evidence that the victims were witches.

They say they found an exercise book at a local primary school that contained the minutes of a "witches' meeting" which detailed who was going to be bewitched next


Irredeemably sad. See what Angela's doing about it.

Peonies By Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?


~from New And Selected Poems by Mary Oliver


***************************

I went out in the rain this morning and, even then, the ants were trying desperately to get INSIDE the peony buds. Peonies are quick to open once picked and brought inside, especially if you give them lukewarm water. You can almost watch them unfold.

From Six Recognitions Of The Lord By Mary Oliver

3.

I lounge on the grass, that's all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-where I have never been before

6.

Every summer the lilies rise
and open their white hands until they almost
cover the black waters of the pond. And I give
thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks,
it doesn't seem
festive enough or constant enough, nor does the
name of the Lord or the words of thanksgiving come
into it often enough Everywhere I go I am
treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and
am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given
the white lilies on the black water. My heart
sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey
half what it feels and means. In spring there's hope,
in fall the exquisite, necessary diminishing, in
winter I am as sleepy as any beast in its
leafy cave, but in summer there is
everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts,
the hospitality of the Lord and my
inadequate answers as I row my beautiful, temporary body
through this water-lily world.

*******************

Substitute "Goddess" or "the Lord and the Lady" for Oliver's "Lords" and this is a v Pagan poem, I think. It confirms for me that mystics do what mystics do and then they seek for some kind of language to translate the cannot-be-translated into words. The words can be xian, Hindu, Buddhist, Kabbalah, Wiccan. It doesn't matter. In the end, it's all just god pouring god into god, as someone once said.