When Our Troubles Began

Ken McLeod has some interesting things to say about the Bush junta's desperation for war with Iran:

I'm not saying that doesn't add up to a lot of things that could go wrong, any one of which could flip the world on its back, but hey. It could work. The Islamic Republic could fall, or fold, and the US bestride the Middle East like a colossus.

That victory would be the moment we'd some day look back on, and say, 'And that was when our troubles began.' Fortunately for America and its allies, such a victory is unlikely. What is far more likely is an ever-widening catastrophe across the Middle East if not beyond. But if a US victory does come about, the rest of the world would find itself facing a lone superpower that had successfully carried out an attack, perhaps even a nuclear attack, on a country that had no nuclear weapons and that had not attacked or threatened it. From then on we would all be living in interesting times; and on borrowed time. The time to do what we can to stop this is now.

Lots more here.

Sacred Spaces In The Modern World. Who Owns Sacred Space? Who Gets To Control It?

The Wild Hunt has the story about Greek Pagans who have been fighting for the right to worship at ancient Greek temples. (The story has recieved a fair amount of attention, but the reporting suffers from some of the usual flaws. For example, one widely-quoted AP story says that: A woman who called herself the high priestess said, "We are Greeks and we demand from the government the right to use our temples." Yes. And every xmas, a man who calls himself the pope gives a blessing from the balcony of St. Peter's.)

The situation raises some interesting questions that remind me a bit of the squabbles that Virginia's Episcopalians are going through: Who "owns" church property? Who owns sacred sites throughout the world? And who gets to control what goes on there?

Many Pagans claim that we are the heirs to various ancient Pagan traditions. To what extent do the places of worship attached to those traditions belong to modern Pagans? And, even if ownership isn't in question, to what extent can the government deny Pagans access to such sites? What if I want to do ritual at Lascaux? Perhaps more interesting, what if i want to do ritual at many of the sites that were originally sacred places of Pagan worship that were stolen by the xians? Can I make them take down their church so that the sacred spring of my foremothers can once more bubble free, surrounded by a grove of trees? I imagine Native American readers can provide plenty of examples of losing control over their sacred sites and their fights with the American government for the right to worship where their ancestors worshipped.

England has allowed Druidic and other Pagan groups limited access to Stonehenge for some time now. But my understanding is that British Druids and other Pagans would like much more access than they have, while the government worries that the site will be damaged by continued use.

Xians have skated around some of the more difficult questions that face Greece and the Greek Pagans. Notre Dame de Paris, an important French tourist and cultural site, for example, is open to tourists (and the catholicchurch profits from that - perhaps Greek Pagans are entitled to the entrance fees to their temples, as well?) but also used for religious ceremonies.

To make clear: my sympathies here are with the Pagans. And there can be tremendous power in worshiping the old Gods and Goddesses at the old sites. Governments are going to have to adjust. We're here and we're not going away. It would be wonderful to see a world where sites sacred to various religions were shared and enjoyed by all. (Seems as if there are one or two places in the ME sacred to several Abrahamic cults that could be better shared, as well.)

On another note, not everyone is adjusting well at all. I admit that I take the most perverse pleasure from this quote over at the Wild Hunt:

Obviously, officials from the Greek Orthodox Church were apoplectic.

"They are a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion who wish to return to the monstrous dark delusions of the past" - Father Efstathios Kollas, the President of Greek Clergymen.

Father Kollas can bite me.

Talking Self And Younger Self

So may things fail to interest us, simply because they don't find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a plane in it at the same time.

~Ortega y Gasset

Whenever we refuse to be knocked off our feet (either violently or gently) by some telling new conception precipitated from the depths of our imagination by the impact of an ageless symbol, we are cheating ourselves of the fruit of an encounter with the wisdom of the millenniums.

~Heinrich Zimmer

both quote in The Possible Human by Jean Houston

How Magic Works

The more complex a structure, the more energy it must dissipate to maintain all that complexity. This flux of energy makes the system highly unstable, subject to internal fluctuations -- and sudden change. If these fluctuations or perturbations reach a critical size, they are amplified by the system's many connections and can drive the system into a new state -- even more ordered, coherent, and connected. The new state occurs as a sudden shift.

from Brain/Mind Bulletin, May 21, 1979, as quuoted in The Possible Human by Jean Houston

Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap

Here's what I have to say about this post-abortion trauma bullshit.

Once an unwanted pregnancy happens, there are basically three choices:

1. Have an abortion.

2. Bring the pregnancy to term and arrange for an adoption.

3. Bring the pregnancy to term and raise the child.

The only person who can decide which of those options is the best is the woman involved.

Might she later regret her choice?*

Maybe.

It's easy to regret a previous choice and to forget that the alternatives might well have caused as much, if not more, regret. Giving a child up for adoption can lead to a lifetime of regret and longing. Raising a child is far from easy even under good circumstances and it's easy for the single, teenaged mother to regret not going to the prom, not having a social life, not being able to give her child the benefits that she could have given if she'd been older and more financially secure before giving birth.

But we don't have an industry and a movement devoted to making women feel guilty about adoption or motherhood.

It would be wonderful if we lived in a society where every pregnancy was planned and no woman ever had to experience even a moment's regret over an unplanned pregnancy. Modern birth control, sex education, health care, and equality for women could get us very close to such a world. The same creeps push the abortion-trauma-bullshit do everything that they can to keep us from achieving such a world.

So, abortion trauma people, please, bite me.




*Obligatory notice that most women don't regret their abortions at all. However, even assuming arguendo that a given woman might later regret that choice, it's important to understand that this doesn't mean that, had she chosen differently she would never have had any regrets. That's way too easy to assume when you haven't lived through the other choices.

On Walden Pond

Via Witchvox, here's an article that comes pretty close to describing heaven on Earth to me. Well, ok, I'm old and I need a firm mattress. And an internet connection. But otherwise, heaven on Earth.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Courage

We know what trembles on the scales,
and what we must steel ourselves to face.
The bravest hour strikes on our clocks:
may courage not abandon us!
Let bullets kill us -- we are not afraid,
nor are we bitter, though our housetops fall.
We will serve you, Russian speech,
from servitude in foreign chains,
keep you alive, great Russian word,
fir for the songs of our children's children,
pure on their tongues, and free.

23 February 1942

Bush: No Need For Sacrifice

What NTodd said.

American Gulag

Via Miniver Cheevey, Here's a letter from a detainee in Guantanamo:


At Guantanamo, soldiers have assaulted me, placed me in solitary confinement, threatened to kill me, threatened to kill my daughter and told me I will stay in Cuba for the rest of my life. They have deprived me of sleep, forced me to listen to extremely loud music and shined intense lights in my face. They have placed me in cold rooms for hours without food, drink or the ability to go to the bathroom or wash for prayers. They have wrapped me in the Israeli flag and told me there is a holy war between the Cross and the Star of David on one hand and the Crescent on the other. They have beaten me unconscious.

. . .

I would rather die than stay here forever, and I have tried to commit suicide many times. The purpose of Guantanamo is to destroy people, and I have been destroyed. I am hopeless because our voices are not heard from the depths of the detention center.

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. Please remember that there are hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo suffering the same misfortune. They have not been charged with any crimes. They have not been accused of taking any action against the United States.
***************************************************************************

As Miniver Cheevey notes, this-- the creation of a place that has as its purpose the destruction of hman beings, the deliberate attempt to start a war between xians and Moslems, and beating people until they are unconscious -- is done in our name, with our tax dollars, in my name, with my tax dollars. As Miniver Cheevey also notes, the fact that it is still going on shows that I am culpable, that I haven't done enough to stop it.

Let The Conversation Begin

Hillary Clinton's running. I like her list of priorities. First, end the war in Iraq. Second, develop an energy policy that sets America free from foreign oil. Third, address the Bush deficit. Fourth, provide health care for Americans.

I would have liked to hear her specifically include global warming as a problem, separate from energy independence, that must be addressed. One of the few things that could get me to vote for someone else in the primary would be if there were someone else making a stronger case on the need to protect the Earth.

Hillary comes back, in her announcement, to a point that has long been one of her themes: in America, if you're willing to work hard and play by the rules (as, for example, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling weren't), you should be able to build a good life for yourself and your family. I think that's the whole purpose of a government, what a government is supposed to provide for its citizens.

I've maintained all along that she would run. So today's announcement wasn't a surprise. ( I do imagine that she'd originally planned to hold off a bit longer announcing her bid, but that Obama's early announcement got her to make her announcement now, rather than later. ) It is, though, in its own way, amazing. When you think about how much abuse this woman has taken and about how much abuse will now come her way, aren't you amazed at her steel constitution? I am. I want a president like that, rather than the thin-skinned little man we've got now who can't even sit through a half an hour of Steven Colbert.

I'm 50, almost 51. In all my life, there's never been a woman candidate for president with a real shot at winning. Until today. America is ready for, and, I believe that America can benefit from having, a woman executive. (And, is it too much to hope that her candidacy will give Alito and Roberts pause on their headlong rush to institute a unitary executive (aka dictator)? Go ahead, boys, give President Clinton all that power. Wingnut heads will explode.) What a great year for the little girls of America, who see a woman Speaker of the House and a woman candidate for the Democratic nomination. I'd like to see a woman president before I die.

Cat Head Theatre

Happy Friday.

You're Fired

OK, Technically, it's "impeached." But we didn't think you'd understand all those syllables. Go home to you fake ranch in Crawford.

There She Goes Again

Like the crazy aunt at the family gathering who goes around saying things that make everyone uncomfortable, I'm always going on about the fact that there are too many people here on planet Earth. Whenever I bring it up, there's usually an awkward silence in the room (meat or silicone) and then someone says, "Hey! How 'bout them Yankees!" or something very similar.

I understand the discomfort. Issues related to procreation go straight to the heart of human liberty, of what it means, for many people, to be fully human. No one wants Big Brother in their bedroom, telling them who they can have sex with and when and under what circumstances they can procreate. The potential for abuse is almost 100%, and every minority group on Earth worries that they'll be targeted. Gays worry that as soon as a "gay gene" is identified, no one will have gay children any more, especially if couples are limited to one or two offspring. African Americans can see who'll (blondes) be allowed to reproduce and who'll (people with kinky hair) be edged out. Women just know that they'll be marginalized and controlled as they are everytime that any issue related to sex or reproduction is decided by a society that is (still)patriarchal to its core. Just look at China, where the one-child policy actually meant the one-son policy. And on, and on. I do understand what it is that makes people uncomfortable.

But discomfort won't change the basic fact. There are already too many people on the planet. Yes, Europe has begun, to the consternation of wingnuts everywhere, to reign in its population growth. But we're headed for a cliff and we're headed there pretty fast. This article, which Prior Aelred sent to me, does a very good job of explaining the problem.

The Population Bubble
by David Bacon

In the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons there is usually a scene where Coyote, chasing Roadrunner, runs off a cliff. He continues on a horizontal line for a couple of seconds, looking increasingly puzzled and concerned, until he realizes his predicament, tries vainly to reverse course, and falls to the desert below.
This is symbolic of the situation ecologists call "overshoot." Overshoot is when a species reproduces to a number that its environment can't sustain.

In 1944, for example, 29 reindeer were introduced onto St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. With few competitors, no predators and plenty to eat, the herd increased to about 6,000 by the summer of 1963, consuming almost all available food. That winter most of them died. The surviving population in 1966 numbered 42.

And now the species with the unique ability to change the environment on a colossal scale appears on the verge of making for itself a St. Matthew Island worldwide. At the end of the 19th century the human population was 1.6 billion. It is now 6.5 billion.

The food that made this amazing increase possible -- there's also sanitation and modern medicine, but food is the base -- came primarily by boosting crop yields with petroleum. With fertilizer from natural gas, with crops bred to capitalize on that fertilizer and with petroleum-powered machinery and irrigation wells, we can produce huge yields -- more than 7,000 pounds of corn per acre, for example. Just one lifetime ago, corn yields were one-fifth of that. Wheat yields have almost tripled. Similar comparisons can be made for other grains.

But, this can't last. The aquifers, oil and natural gas that made possible a fourfold population increase are finite. Over the coming decades petroleum will become harder and harder to find, extract and put to use, until eventually it becomes unavailable for agriculture in any significant amount. Meanwhile, another 2 billion people are predicted worldwide by 2050.

Increasing attention to the so-called peak oil problem focuses on its impact on airlines, car makers and the stock market. These will suffer, but not on the level of malnutrition and starvation for many, and a continuous struggle over decreasing resources for all.

Is the situation really this dire? Agriculture accounts for a fraction of petroleum use in industrialized countries. We might reduce use elsewhere -- more efficient cars, less plastic -- and use the savings to keep crop yields high enough to feed everyone.

But to make that work, short-term and local self-interest must yield to a long-term, global consciousness -- a tall order. Increased efficiency and alternative fuels might for a time fill the gap left by petroleum's decline. But we have yet to devise an alternative as versatile as petroleum that can fill its huge role -- especially in the face of relentlessly growing demand for energy. And whatever we do to support population growth will only make overshoot worse in the end.

In addition to unique abilities, we have a serious shortcoming. We are unwilling, perhaps unable, to see ourselves as subject to the same constraints as Earth's other inhabitants. But in our dependence on the environment for food and water, we most certainly are subject to those constraints. Without a solution, we will die just as surely as the St. Matthew reindeer.

Given Earth's limits, there already are too many of us for the long run. But the day of reckoning is many years away, and it is notoriously difficult for political leaders to seek moderate sacrifice today to prevent terrible sacrifice tomorrow when there is too little general recognition of the trouble ahead.

Can we be wilier than Wile E. Coyote? It's hard to be optimistic. There is probably no real solution to this problem, only halfway measures to lessen the eventual impact. But every little bit will help.

David Bacon is a physician and retired Army colonel living in Aspen, Colorado. He wrote this for the Land Institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kansas.

I disagree with Mr. Bacon on several points. I don't think that the day of reckoning is nearly as far away as he imagines, especially as global climate change makes more and more land uninhabitable and as more and more people (think China) outside of the U.S. demand, as they have a right to do, living standards that equal those of people living in the U.S.

Finally, I disagree that there is no real solution to this problem, although I'd agree that there's likely no ONE solution to this problem. But we could, within five years if we wanted, turn this bus around and get it headed in the right direction.

Free, safe, effective birth control for everyone should be a focus of government spending, even if it means no more trillion-dollar wars. Actual sex education that includes education about the danger of population explosion must replace the nonsense, half efforts, and abstinence bullshit that we currently impose on our children. Tax incentives for those who don't have extra children and increasing taxes on those who have more than one child, in order to stop those people from externalizing the costs of their reproductive choices onto the rest of the planet, may be needed. Large lump sum payments for those who agree to be sterilized, especially after only one child could help. Beyond that, an attempt to change public attitudes, as we've done about everything from smoking to drunk driving to discussing cancer, has got to start now and has got to be a serious social priority -- a Manhattan Project or a race to the Moon level of social commitment is needed.

As the article notes, population problems tend to solve themselves -- it's just that they do so in particularly ugly ways and, I'll note, in ways that hurt children. We can do nothing and then face our own Winter of '63. I'll simply note that the St. Matthew Island reindeer didn't have nuclear weapons. I know what I think we should do and I'm willing to be the embarrassing aunt who makes everyone uncomfortable if that will help us to face this problem. Maybe it's the Bene Gesserit in me, hoping that we'll someday become human beings. Perhaps population overshoot will be our Gom Jabbar?

Save In My Breast

You realize right away that she started as such a Romantic.

Bresson

You don't have to read the whole article, but you owe it to yourself to check out the slide show. He was just.so.good.

A Threat To At Least Half The World's Population

Today's EEI newsletter reports that:

United Nations Head Urges President Bush to Address Climate Change
In his first meeting in the Oval Office since assuming the post of United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon caught President Bush off-guard by pushing for new U.S. policies on climate change, the Financial Times of London reported. In making it one of his top three priorities in his talk with Bush, Ban urged the U.S. to show leadership. The FT quoted a U.N. source as saying: "The president at first was a little surprised, as it was not on the agenda."

In a speech later at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ban was quoted as saying climate change was "an all-encompassing threat - to health, to food and water supplies, to the coastal cities where nearly half the world's population live. Acting on climate change will be one of my top priorities."

The White House, meanwhile, refuted reports that it was going to reverse itself on climate change and push for a cap-and-trade system, the FT reported. White House spokesman Tony Snow was quoted as saying: "I want to walk you back from the whole carbon cap story . . . The carbon cap stuff is not accurate. What the president has talked about all along is the importance of innovation."
Financial Times of London , Jan. 17.

Heaven forefend that the President of the United States should ever have to think on his feet and deal with something that's not on his pre-approved agenda. He can hardly deal with a topic on which he has been thoroughly briefed. You'd like to think that the leader of the largest, most powerful country on Earth would be ready to discuss "an all-encompassing threat," an issue that threatens the world's "health, food and water supplies, and to the coastal cities where nearly half of the world's populations live." I hope that the new Secretary General is serious and that climate change will indeed be one of his top priorities. I wish that we had a president who felt the same.

Albatross

I think this brief excerpt from Robert Novak's column says quite a bit, especially when your remember that various branches of the conservative movement often use Novak to talk to each other:

Iraq is a black hole for the Republican Party," a prominent party strategist told me this week. What makes his comments so important is that he is not a maverick Republican in Congress but one of Bush's principal political advisers.

As they adjust to the 2006 election returns, Republicans recognize that this was no isolated bump in the road. The loss of about 320 state legislative seats across the country to the Democrats classifies last year's election as a midrange electoral disaster.

The Republicans have a problem. His name is George Bush. He doesn't listen to them; he doesn't care about them. He had his accountability moment back in 2004, when they all backed him 100% and, as far as he's concerned, he'll never have another.

If the Democrats have the brains that the Goddess gave to garbanzo beans, they will tie the Republicans to George W. Bush. Then, they'll SuperGlue them to George W. Bush. Then, they'll weld them to George W. Bush. Then, they'll . . . . Well, I think you get the idea. Someone needs a database right now of every supportive statement that every Republican ever made about George W. Bush and his insane war.

Nice Pagan Ladies

Discussing an interfaith celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, M. Macha Nightmare raises an issue that I've struggled with in other contexts.

One of the speakers preached, and as preaching goes she was good, but I don't want to be preached to no matter how skilled the preacher. I feel that preaching is inappropriate in interfaith contexts, even ones that celebrate the life of another African-American preacher.

I must admit that when one man sang a song he'd written about 'the Lord,' I just had to walk out for a while. He was a fine singer with a good strong voice, but the song made me so uncomfortable. Daresay it offended me. I know it was meaningful to him. But was it appropriate to all present? I don't think so. Not to me anyway. I returned after he finished.

What should a nice Pagan woman do in such a situation? I felt the only option I had to address my own discomfort was to absent myself for the duration. I did mention to the Director of MIC, who was one of the main organizers, how I'd been put off by such overt religiosity of a particular stripe. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this kind of work. I don't seek it out. It comes to me -- not this particular event, but in general I participate in interfaith activities because someone asks me to. I pass such opportunities to others when I can, and generally I feel I do a credible job, but still -- I'm never sure I'm the best person to be doing it.

We share many values -- peace activism, concern for the poor and homeless, opposition to capital punishment, green concerns -- and when we work together on those problems, I'm just fine. But still I find that the majority Abrahamics tend to slip into their assumption that all the world's population is monotheistic. It bugs me. I feel I should try to bring it up in as constructive a way as I can. How do others deal with it?

I'm on several listserves that purport to be for members of all faiths devoted to liberal causes. Yet, when they need a quotation to illustrate a point, I note that it will either come from the bible or, when they feel very "inclusive," the quoran. Both of those exclude and offend me. It does get tiring to always be the one who emails the author to point out that we don't all worship "God" and that "his Son" is not a major prophet for some of us.

But I think that "nice Pagan ladies," and, Goddess knows, that's how I present, (at least initially!), in my grograin-ribbon Ferragamos, sensible ear-rings, ear-length bob, and Hermes scarves, have to speak up.

I'm on an email list for the local farmer's market and the woman who runs it always posts lovely poetry with her weekly emails. But one week, she made some point about how so many different faiths celebrate around the Spring Equinox, noting that some farmers were coming back to the market after being gone for the winter. She listed lots of faiths, but no Pagan ones. I had to email her back and point out that many of us don't celebrate a religious holiday around the Spring Equinox. We celebrate the Spring Equinox. She emailed back a nice response, but I swear, it was the FIRST time that it occurred to her that some xian, moslem, jewish, buddhist didn't completely cover everyone who came to the market.

Interfaith is supposed to mean interfaith. If we can't be, as I noted below, a religion that's under the radar, then I'm going to insist on our place ON the radar.

The Goddess Weeping

On the one hand, I find that the WaPo's "On Faith" section has a pretty high squick factor and I kind of feel weird about Starhawk giving it legitimate Pagan cred. (Yeah, well, bite me. I kind of liked being a hidden religion, even though I know: things change.) On the other hand, it's the only way that many xians and other Abrahamists will ever hear from a "real" Pagan, rather than hearing from their minister "about" Pagans.

Today, I think she does a good job answering the latest (stupid) question: Is the war in Iraq a "just war"?

The whole thing is good, but here's the money quote: Religion should not be a set of earplugs to deafen us to the cries of children, nor a sedative to ease our consciences as we survey the graves. Religion should challenge us to be more than we are, to deeper levels of compassion and love than we have yet reached. The Goddess, the deep interconnectedness of all being, does not cheer on one team to kill and maim another. She is weeping.

Escalation

The McCain plan is bad for America, bad for Iraq.

For Rynee

Merry Meet And Merry Part And Merry Meet Again

Webb, You Better Fucking Have Meant It When You Said That You'd "Grown" On Women's Rights

Oh yeah, oh yeah. That's my Senator talking, bitches!

Webb's upset victory over former senator George Allen (R) provided Democrats with the sixth seat they needed to take control of the Senate. "In a call echoed by Americans across this nation, the people of Virginia sent Senator Webb to Congress to help take our country in a new direction," Reid and Pelosi said in a joint statement.

Webb serves on the Senate Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Joint Economic and Veterans Affairs Committees. At a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq last week, Webb chastised the decision to go to war.

"We went to war in Iraq recklessly; we must move forward responsibly. The war's costs to our nation have been staggering. These costs encompass what we hold to be most precious: the blood of our citizens. They also extend to the many thousands more Iraqi people killed and wounded as their country slides into the chaos of sectarian violence and civil war."

Several Democrats said the decision to have two Virginia lawmakers in a row give the speech highlights the party's efforts to continue to make inroads into what has long been a conservative-leaning state. Some political observers believe Virginia could be competitive in the 2008 presidential race, even though the state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.

"It's a wonderful recognition of the state of the Virginia Democratic Party," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Arlington), chairman of the House Democratic caucus.

Virginia. A blue state. Get used to it, bitches.

Yes.

What Mad Melancholic Feminista says.

Someday, I am going to start a blog called What Mad Melancholic Feminista Says. It will consist of links to the Mad Melancholic Feminista's blog. It will be the best blog ever.

Spinster Aunts Unite!

So by now, when I finally get home from work and can blog, this NYT article has probably been commented upon to death. But I do have a few things to say (my point, and I do have one!) about it.

The NYT reports on the amazing fact that a whopping 51% (well, according to the boyking, that's a mandate) of women now live in -- gasp -- an unmarried state. Full disclosure: I am a member of the 51%. I've been married twice. Both times, it made me fucking miserable. I never, ever, plan to be married again.

The NYT notes that: "[T]here is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people'’s lives," said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. "Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage."

Further, "Although we can help people 'do' marriage better, it is delusionalusional to construct social policy or make personal life decisions on the basis that you can count on people spending most of their adult lives in marriage," said Professor Coontz, the author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”

I think this article is important because it points out just how wrong the wingnuts are. Continuing to insist that our society is "founded" upon a nuclear family is just wrong. Insisting that "marriage, between a man and a woman," as they always intone, must be "protected" because it is "crucial to our society" is bullshit.

Interestingly, in spite of all the propaganda that our society throws at women insisting that to be an unmarried woman is to be ugly, unfulfilled, unhappy, and a failure, women are slower to remarry after a divorce than are men. The article is replete with examples of women who are quite happy no longer being married. This has got to scare the crap out of the wingnuts who have (I'm looking at you, Elizabeth Edwards) invested all they've got in the myth that an unmarried woman is an unhappy (less joyous!) woman.

I can count on one hand the truly happy marriages that I really know. I'm not anti-marriage. But there are a large majority of us who are not married and who live in this society. It's time for society to take notice. And it's time for us to stop raising girls, from the cradle onwards, as if they were going to spend their whole live married. They're not.

Get over it.

Rain Subpoenas, Rain, Rain, Subpoenas.

Hat tip to KyleasSuch.

Mobility -- And Damn The Cost!

THE SUMMING-UP

When young I scribbled, boasting, on my wall.
No Love, No Property, No Wages.
In youth's good time I somehow bought them all,
And cheap, you'd think, for maybe a hundred pages.
Now in my prime, disburdened of my gear,
My trophies ransomed, broken, lost,
I carve again on the lintel of the year
My sign: MOBILITY!—and damn the cost!

~Stanley Kunitz

I had two very contradictory experiences today.

This morning, I was in a meeting, with two men I consider brilliant, discussing strategy for a rather complex Supreme Court case. And, I had this moment when I realized, removed a million miles from the conversation, this is why I went to law school. This is the kind of work that I love to do, this is the glass bead game I can play for the rest of my life. For this "one white singing hour" of intellectual stimulation, I'll "count many a year" of traipsing up the road to school "well lost." Being a witch, my first reaction was to ground. To dig my roots deep into the Earth, to bind myself and my future to that experience.

But, coming home, I was thinking about early retirement. When I was younger, I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to retire early. I'd read articles in, say, Fortune Magazine about people who did all this mad planning and investing so that they could retire at my age, 50, and I'd wonder what was wrong with them. Why would they want to drop out of life so early??? What I couldn't imagine when I was young was that there would come a time when it would make me very happy to never have to do another day's labor for someone else. It's irrelevant now; I spent too many years in public service. I'll be working until I drop. But now that I'm 50, I understand the urge, which is more than I ever understood before.

So, all in all, I count it a very good day.

Help Us, Obi Wan. You're Our Only Hope.

From today's EEI newsletter:

Ex-VP Gore Invited by Rep. Dingell to Testify on Climate Change

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., has crafted an environmental agenda memo to members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, which he chairs, making climate change the top panel priority of the 110th Congress, Greenwire reported. Dingell plans on inviting former Vice President Gore to testify in support of new federal climate change legislation.

Greenwire quoted the memo as saying: "It is critically important that members of the committee gain a full appreciation of the scientific and substantive implications of climate change policy so that we can develop and, if at all possible, enact a sound and effective public policy that is environmentally and economically responsible." The newswire said Gore's staff was noncommittal about an appearance.

Frank O'Donnell, head of Clean Air Watch, said the Gore invitation was a "blockbuster way to kick off the House debate," while Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said Dingell was taking a leadership role because he recognized that there was a seachange in the House to push for some kind of legislation. Clapp was skeptical that Dingell went far enough, saying: "There's no commitment here to move legislation. 'If at all possible' distinctly throws cold water on the situation. This actually reads more like an assertion of committee jurisdiction."
Greenwire , Jan. 15.



I hope that Al Gore will agree to appear before the Committee and I hope that he will explain to it, in no uncertain terms, that we can't tolerate the "if at all possible we'll enact legislation" approach. We've run out of time for that approach. Mr. Gore, if anyone can convince the politicians to act now, I think you can. Please, go make it clear to them.

Strega Nonna

Always obey your Nonna.

Before Enlightment, Chop Wood, Carry Water; After Enlightenment, Chop Wood, Carry Water

This year, I'm working (and it is work, hard work!) with renewed fervor on demanding from myself an engagement in daily practice. There are so many reasons to skip a day -- I'm tired, I need to do X, or Y, or Z, I'll do it with real devotion tomorrow, etc. When I'm tempted to pretend that my commitment to my own soul doesn't matter, I pull out this paragraph from Twelve Wild Swans and read it out loud.

When I find myself unwilling or unable to set aside time for my soul-life, I sometimes ask myself the following question: if I had a lively and sensitive little daughter -- say four or five years of age -- who loved me dearly and longed for my attention, how much of my time would I make sure to give her every day? Five minutes of undivided attention? Twenty? Wouldn't i want to plan my whole day and my whole life around her?

But how much of my attention do I [who have no such demands upon my time] give to my own soul-life? Why is it so hard to give myself the love and attention I would willingly give to to others? It's a little sad isn't it? This is a question [that] I have asked many women over years of mentoring, and it is amazing how frequently we are determined to love, protect, and care for an imaginary daughter and yet are unwilling or unable to take the time to care for our own dear souls.

~Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawk andHilary Valentine

Bush & Cheney Are What Impeachment Was Designed For

Digby's right about everything except for this: we do so have the time. And the process of impeachment all by itself might exercise some of the restraint that nothing else has managed to do. Not only that, but it's the right thing to do. And there's a huge power in doing the right thing. And, hell, if we're headed for a Constitutional crisis anyway -- and, one way (implicitly) or another (explicitly), that IS where we're headed -- I'd like to have it while Justice Stevens is still on the bench. (And, BTW, this is what happens when you ignore the Constitution. SCOTUS ignored the Constitution and ordered Florida to stop counting votes -- sticking America with the man who was voted down. Turns out that the Founders were right: it's better to let Americans select their leaders. Not SCOTUS, not Diebold, Americans.)

So the Iranians are after our troops. Condi said so last week. Cheney and Hadley are saying it today. Sounds like CB (cassus belli) talk to me. We can't wait for the Iranians to shoot the American troops with smoking mushrooms. Or something.

I have long said that the Republicans are undemocratic, but now they're just coming right out and saying it: democracy is all well and good until the people and their representatives object to what the president is doing at which point the people and their representatives become a superfluous "committee." They have interpreted the words "commander in chief" to mean that the constitution gives the president dictatorial powers during "wartime" (which the president defines.)

These are two dangerous and selfish men who aren't running for office and so have no political constraints. Not even a 30% approval rating or 12% support for this decision has made them think twice. They are completely confident that history will vindicate them.

They are what impeachment was designed for, I'm afraid, although I doubt there's time to build a case, what with the endless executive privilege claims and stonewalling. (I don't rule it out, naturally --- let a thousand oversight hearings bloom and follow the evidence where it leads.) But whether they are ultimately impeached or not, it's clear that they are rogue executives who are impervious to the normal limits that inhibit decent men and political animals. This can't just be swept under the rug.

Bush made it clear a long time ago when he said to a citizen on a rope line: "Who cares what you think?" And when he quipped "A dictatorship would be a lot easier, as long as I'm the dictator," he wasn't really joking.

Pat Robertson Discovers New Method Of Birth Control

I realize that this may come as a surprise to those of you who believe in, well, biology, but apparently all it takes to keep from getting pregnant is to refuse to believe in the xian god. I know, it surprised me, too, but Pat Robertson says that it's so.

Also, and I realize that this may come as a surprise to Europe, but it's now become "statistically irrelevant" -- whatever that means -- because Europeans are doing a better job than the U.S. of controlling their population. Of course, the birth rate's down a bit in the U.S., but we've, according to Reverend Robertson, "made up" for that with a "wonderful f-f-flood of immigrants." Unlike Europe where there are now quite a few immigrants from places such as India and the Middle East, I guess. Who knows what the hell he's saying? That there aren't immigrants in Europe? That our immigrants are better than their immigrants? Does he start stuttering because he realizes that he's stepped in it and is about to piss off some of the poor slobs who send him their money? He's just batshit insane.

Who lets these people sell batshit on the American airwaves?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Would Have Been 78 Years Old Today.

We are all so much poorer for his loss.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Reading Hamlet

A barren patch to the right of the cemetery,
behind it a river flashing blue.
You said: "All right then, get thee to a nunnery,
or go get married to a fool . . . ."

It was the sort of thing that princes always say,
but these are words that one remembers.
May they flow a hundred centuries in a row
like an ermine mantle from his shoulders.

Saturday Goddess Blogging

Minerva Sulis:

Roman/English Water Goddess, who was worshipped at Bath, England.

Pan's Labyrinth -- A Review

I saw Pan's Labyrinth today and, oh my. It was complex, and dark, and wonderful, and magical in the dirty, rainy way that the real world is magical. And dark; did I mention dark?

It's "about" so many different things and it works on so many different levels. But what struck me immediately is that it tells a truth (as real fairy tales always do) about childhood that we're very reluctant to admit: children are really all on their own. The adults in their lives, even those who love them, won't/can't/don't help them -- not really. Adults are hostile, or powerless, or deluded, or just not capable of doing any better. They want children to be good, be quiet, be pretty. And even the forces of nature use them more often than they help them. (There is no fairy godmother providing magic carriages in this fairy tale. Pan is as scary and capricious as he is helpful.) And so, children, young, innocent children, just have to do the best that they can and try to cope with all sorts of powers, human powers and forces of nature, even though they lack much of the information that would help them to deal with those powers. Meanwhile, they have to sort of sneak in their "real" lives, their "real" work. It reminds me of a deep and scary poem by Mary Oliver.

The movie is also clearly "about" what's wrong with patriarchy, what's wrong with the way that men living in the patriarchy wound their sons and how that wound hurts everyone in the vicinity. Guillermo Del Toro says, using some lovely symbolism, that it's "time" for this passing on of the wound to "stop." In fact, once that wounding stops, our entire understanding of time can change, can become much more natural and less regimented. (Which, of course, is what magic requires in order to exist.) And it is, here, a peasant woman who says "No" to the passing on of the wound, who will not allow the wounded father to offer his son up to the love of machismo, war, intolerance, regulation, strict schedules. She says it before the wounded father can even finish his speech about ensuring that his son receives the wound of patriarchy. You believe her.

I also came away thinking how incredibly strong and vital the story structure of "perform three tasks" still is. I can't count the number of times that I've read that story, yet it still works. Three tasks before the moon is full. It works really well, here. Some say that there are really only two plots in the world: a stranger comes to town and someone goes on a journey. And, really, they're the same tale, told from two different perspectives. This movie is about a young girl going on a journey.

I'd read that Pan's Labyrinth could be considered a horror movie, and I admit that I'm not a big fan of horror movies. I didn't find it horrible. The scenes that I couldn't watch (I am a huge believer in closing my eyes; there are things I don't want to take away with me) were the scenes of torture and human cruelty, not the scenes with strange magical creatures. Still, it's not a movie for young children. They've got enough to deal with every day, as this movie reminded me.

You Know That He's Going To Use Nukes On Iran And He's Going To Do It Soon

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

~Terry Pratchett, Eric

Oy. Impeach now. We can send him to the Hague later.

Bingo!

And here is the problem with the big Man-God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam: he creates the world of his own will, and very much alone. Where a great Goddess once generated the world . . . now a masculine "God" has taken her place. Why? Because this is a reflection of the opinions of the masculine powers that took charge of the first societies to suggest such a blatantly counter-intuitive thing: that a "God" could "create" things out of nothing. It's not a statement of reality; it's a statement of politics.

This guy is long-winded, but unusually intelligent in his discussions of Pagan topics

MILF

So this post, concerning fundie art and its use of sexual imagery, has been getting some attention on Pagan blogs. But what caught my eye was this statement: "A Mother's Love," as this painting is titled, shouldn't be expected to bear the standard of female eroticism.

Why?

Because there is something about becoming a mother that, in our society, renders a woman no longer sexual. How sick is that?

But does it serve the "needs" of the patriarchy? Absolutely. By making it "ok" for men who have impregnated one woman to go off and have sex with other women.

Why do you think they've promoted the whole madonna/whore insanity for so long?

I have, however, hope for the young people, who've made MILF a recognizable acronym.

Were You There?

My madly creative friend K. and I went to the protest at the White House last night. I was at the front edge of the crowd and it was difficult to estimate crowd size in the dark, but K. guessed that there were about two hundred people. The organizers said that our protest was one of almost 1,000 taking place last night.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee addressed us and said that the voice of the anti-war movement IS being heard on Capitol Hill, but that the people need to keep "the heat on the street."

Our next big chance to let Congress know how strongly we feel about this issue will be Saturday, January 27th, when a mass protest is being planned.

I know there's some debate as to the value of protests. Maybe you've been to one or two big marches and, yet, here we are: waist deep in the big muddy while the big fool says to push on. But I think that protests are important. It's a way to physically put your body together with all the other bodies out there and say, "No. Not in my name. Not with my consent." It's like voting, in a way. You can tell yourself that your one vote won't matter. But you should still vote. And my spider sense tells me that the MSM may finally begin to cover protests seriously, for a change.

I noticed one thing different last night from almost all of the other protests that I've been to over the past several years. There were no counter-protesters last night, no one who stopped to argue with us. Of course, it was pretty cold.

Robert Anton Wilson Has Died

Wilson wrote: The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now.

May the Goddess guard him. May he find his way to the Summerlands. May his friends and family know peace.

Go Barbara

From today's EEI newsletter:

Sen. Boxer Plans Climate Change Hearing Jan. 30; EPA Faces March 1 Review

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct its first hearing on climate change on Jan. 30, focused on airing a wide range of opinions from colleagues that are designed to reduce man-made influences on the environment, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

Wrote the newswire: "There's no consensus on how to reduce emissions and several questions remain as to how and whether policymakers in Washington should implement a mandatory cap on carbon dioxide - thought to be the main global warming culprit - or institute a tax on the greenhouse gas. Either option would have a significant impact on electric utilities that rely heavily on coal. The fossil fuel releases substantial greenhouse gases when burned to generate electricity. Meanwhile, certain policies could boost nuclear energy, which is seen as an emissions-free way to produce power."

Boxer used a news conference to challenge the "Christmastime environmental massacre" approach that she says the EPA used to rollback several environmental standards associated with public health law. Boxer was quoted as saying: "We're going to shed the light of day on these rollbacks" and try to reverse them. "The days of these middle of the night rollbacks without scrutiny are over." A hearing on the EPA actions is set for March 1.

Dow Jones also noted that President Bush has again nominated Alex Beehler to serve as EPA's inspector general, Roger Martella to serve as an assistant EPA administrator and William Wehrum to serve as assistant EPA administrator of air policy. The nominations on all three were blocked by the Democratic minority last year, and Boxer signaled that she was displeased with the White House for failing to pick up on that signal.
Dow Jones Newswires , Jan. 10.

Pray. Just Fucking Pray.

Justice John Paul Stevens was born in 1920. 87 years ago.

Go get on your knees and pray. He's all that stands between us and the "unitary executive."

If he needs blood, get in line to donate.

Stem cells? Some of you still-fertile chicks better conceive.

Sweet mother.

A Hero Denied - Short Trailer

His last full measure of devotion.

A Healthy Priestess Makes All Things Whole

In the fairy tale Twelve Wild Swans, Rose, the heroine, asked a million persistent questions, until she found out what she needed to know about her past and her own purpose. Once she found out what she needed to know, she walked out the door of her old castle, away from her old life, into the wild. . . . The disturbing dream, image, or sensation is your personal doorway out of the castle and into the wild, into the work of the Inner Path. . . . Something of ourselves has flown into the wild, through no fault of our own, We must search for it and pull it back into our human lives. . . . We choose to commit ourselves to our own healing, to our own wholeness, because a healthy priestess makes all things whole . . . .

~Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawk & Hilary Valentine

Is This A Great City, Or What?

Imagine that I live in a city of Sufi podcasts.

All my life, I've been in love with Rumi, twirling and twirling and twirling around with him, while Rumi imagined that he was in love with Shams.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The Beckoner by Theodora Goss

She rises at night with her robes all around her,
Rises just like you rise from sleep,
In a fairness of heavy unbound tresses
So rich they could make you weep.

The moon is a pale and a horrified witness,
The cypresses moan as they sway in the dark,
And even the grasses lament in whispers
As she surveys the park.

Then she is away, and soon we will see her
Reaching her hand like an alba rose
To tap, so lightly, upon our window,
Holding an elegant pose.

Beauty is deadly – how well we know it –
Her cheeks have a treacherous living stain,
And we will kiss them, and come to her beckoning,
And never return again.

Why Witches Study Fairy Tales

If we set off on a path with nothing but courage, determination, and a kind heart, we will reach our goals no matter how impossible they may seem. [Fairy tales] promise that, in return for our greatheartedness, the universe will provide miraculous assistance that can bring about huge, impossible change for the better. . . . [E]ach and every story promises that we can become the main character in our own triumhant life story.

~Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawkand Hillary Valentine.

At Blackwater Pond by Mary Oliver

I drink a long time

Rev. Bill Crystal Interview - Pentacle Quest

Frightened of my government.

Keep it up DoD. We were here long before you existed. We'll be here long afer you are gone. We'll carve pentacles in places that you can't imagine.

I'm Appalled

There are some things that I simply accept as a matter of course. I'm a bit odd -- I don't "feel" odd to me, but, if "odd" means different from most other folks, then I have to accept that I'm a bit odd. I really don't watch much tv at all and, for most of my life, I never have. But I sometimes fail to appreciate just how odd that makes me.

I had a long, leisurely lunch today with a bunch of the people that I work with, all lawyers and legal secretaries. At least half of the entire conversation was based on tv -- either sports or other tv shows. I was amazed at how many of these people, all really smart, well-educated people, spend what must be most of their non-work time watching tv shows. Amazed is the wrong word. The right word is: appalled. Their days begin with GMA, they return home from work to watch some weird "reality" (hah!) shows, and fall asleep to some sports event or another. All of them! I'm the only one sitting there thinking, "Yeah, I've heard of that show, but I've never seen it."

Good grief, people! Turn off the goddamn tv set. For the love of god! What if this IS your only chance to go around the wheel? What if this is your only ONE and precious life? Is this really how you want to spend it? Didn't you read 1984 and Brave New World? Stop it! Just stop it!

Mamma's Boy

Pull Out Now (If Only Bush I Had)!

Goddess help me, I agree with everything Sally Quinn has to say today. (It's still, as it always is, ALL ABOUT SALLY, and it provides some interesting insight into a woman who married a man much older than she is, but, beyond that, she's spot on.)

After regaling us with several paragraphs about (natch) herself, Quinn explains what she saw as a child on an army plane full of soldiers wounded in the Korean War:

The thing I remember most vividly is the soldiers screaming in pain and crying out for their mothers. My mother went up and down the aisles holding their hands, stroking their brows, giving them sips of water. My sister helped light their cigarettes. Many of them were amputees. Some had no stomachs, some had no faces.

The soldiers in the litters above and below me both died, blood dripping from their wounds. Many other soldiers died while we were in the air. We had to stop in Hawaii overnight to refuel and to leave the bodies.

Turning to the boyking's plans to defy his own father and escalate the war in Iraq, Quinn says: I hope that when President Bush discusses sending more troops to Iraq, knowing that we will have to pull out sooner rather than later, that the conversation comes around to the human suffering. Does anyone at the table ask about the personal anguish, the long-term effects, emotional, psychological and financial, on the families of those killed, wounded or permanently disabled?

When I hear about the surge, all I can think of is those young soldiers on the plane to Texas. We have already lost more than 3,000 soldiers, and many more have been wounded and disabled.

Quinn then makes what I think is an incredibly important and almost-always-overlooked (or at least unstated) point about the situation in Iraq: We have three choices here. All three are immoral. We can keep the status quo and gradually pull out; we can surge [and then, Quinn doesn't add, but I will, pull out]; or we can pull out now. You know --and I realize that this concept is anathema to religious fundamentalists and producers of Hollywood westerns, but -- there are many situations in life where we can find ourselves without any completely moral choices. They usually happen after we've backed ourselves (and sometimes others) into a bad situation. Sometimes the only choice left to us is to try and figure out how to select the lesser of several bad options. I've been there; I'm sure that you have once or twice, as well.

We, as a society, are going to be facing a lot of these situations over the next couple of decades. We've backed ourselves into corners on this war, on the environment, on our economy, on our relations with the rest of the world, on health care, on education, on the role of religion in public life, on the role of corporations in our society. We need to face up to this fact and start figuring out now how to deal with these issues.

In the end, Quinn comes to the correct conclusion: When I think about those young soldiers on that plane coming back from Japan years ago, I believe pulling out now is the least immoral choice.

Still

We are SO not going away.

Santorum: Americans Will Never Be Conservatives

People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch publishes some comments from unhappy wingnuts concerning 2007. Most amazing, to me, was this admission from Rick Santorum:

Perhaps the most pessimistic response came from defeated Senator Rick Santorum who appeared to be so despondent that he could barely muster a few vague platitudes about making “judicial activism” a bigger issue – and even that was overshadowed by his own apparent sense of hopelessness:

Conservatism, of course, will never be the political disposition of a majority of Americans. Conservative objectives, however, will from time to time find the support of such a majority; the success of the conservative movement depends in large part on leaders taking advantage of such moments.



Did Santorum just admit that most Americans aren't conservatives and that the only way for the conservatives to impose their minority will on the rest of us is to "take advantage" of scams to get most Americans behind some vague "conservative objectives" coughhatethegaycough???

I bet a quick Lexis search would find dozens of Santorum quotes about how liberals are "out of the mainstream," and how conservatives express "the values of the heartland."

Confession

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

Two of the most thoughtful witches on the web, Sara Sutterfield Winn and Diane Sylvan have been writing about Pagan Dark Nights of the Soul.

I have to say that, since I realized that I was a witch, I've never had a Dark Night of the Soul. Maybe that's just how unevolved I am.

Nine years ago, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I did go through what I'd call a "general re-consideration of the purpose of existence." Heh.

I remember being in the metro station and thinking, "Well, shit. If all that happened was that I got to this point and then died, well, shit, what was it all for, any way?" And: Grace.

Standing there, underground, in the metro station, as clearly as if it had been written out in flaming letters in front of me, I knew. "It was all about what everything's about. It was all about what every life on earth, human and nonhuman, is, has been, and always will be about. It was all about Goddess finding out what it would be like to be Hecate Demetersdatter." And, somehow, that was enough. (I adamantly refuse to be one of those "cancer survivors" who proclaim cancer to be a "gift," (it sucks), but that realization has certainly become one of the bedrocks of my existence. Thanks. I'll take it w/o so much nausea next time, if it's all the same.)

It was the very moment in which I really understood that, as I say every morning in my daily prayer: I am a manifestation of the Goddess. There's really only one Consciousness; it simply enjoys -- maybe that's the wrong verb, maybe "needs to" is a better verb -- experiencing existence in as many different manifestations as possible. It's a good idea for me to enjoy being the particular facet on this diamond-- which is all, and yet, which is everything -- that I am. And to do that as much in MY OWN WAY as I can. Otherwise, the "point of it all" is defeated.

Beyond that, I've had no Dark Nights. I've never doubted that divinity has a feminine face and that my purpose was to manifest and to worship that face. I've never doubted that magic exists --how could I? I've done magics large and small for lo these many years and, well, my magic works. I've never doubted that duality was the biggest lie they ever told me and that "yield who will to their separation, my goal in living is to unite, my avocation and my vocation, as my two eyes are one in sight."

When I was a teenager, though, raised catholic, I had a Dark Night of the Soul. The thing that made me unsuited for catholicism is that I took them seriously (won the Religion award, every year, to the consternation of several Christophers, I assure you). I assumed that they meant what they said and that sainthood was the (completely possible) goal. Reminds me of a great line from Thomas Merton that I once copied into my journal about there not being too many true believers in the monastery.

I became a catholic pentacostal -- of course: my sun is in Pisces. I developed an amazing prayer life and then: bam. I crashed into a wall. I hit my Dark Night of the Soul. There was an impenetrable marble ceiling between me and the deity in "heaven" to whom I was praying. I was, Goddess guard me, 16. The priests that I talked to about it couldn't help me; they told me to keep praying. My pentacostal advisors told me not to take myself so seriously. I decided to start having sex, which provided, on a basis that I wasn't ready to understand, some ecstacy, which is, really, nothing more than connection with divinity.

I can, again, so clearly, remember being in the bathtub trying to pray, hitting the slab of marble above me, and saying, "Well, fine. You're a full-of-shit god if I ever saw one. I'm trying to pray and this is how it works? Fuck you; that's a shitty way, in the words of St. Theresa, to treat your friends. No wonder you have so few." And, surprisingly, Deity answered me. Diety said to me: "I will surprise you."

And, for about 15 years or so, that was it. "I will surprise you."

I'd try to go back to church, or to pray, or I'd read something about deity, and, again, all I'd hear, although I'd hear it loud and clear, was: "I will surprise you."

For a few years, I won some middle ground by thinking of deity as a juggler who juggled the sun every morning with just as much difficulty and work and desire and care and uncertainty as I juggled being a single mother, teacher, student, young woman, writer, "wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving." I'd spend time with trees and wonder, "Does it matter to deity that we appreciate creation?" But, still, if I delved any deeper than that, all that I'd hear was: "I will surprise you."

Having been raised catholic, with a mother and several nuns who kept telling me that I was "destined for the religious life," I thought I knew what that meant. I thought it meant that I was convent-bound, although I couldn't figure out what or why or how I'd ever wind up in a convent, bitter as I'd become towards xians and their anti-woman ways. I even, and this is how dense I was, read several books by Zimmer-Bradley about ancient priestesses with the words "I WILL SURPRISE YOU" literally ringing in my ears, without figuring it out.

And then, just like that, a year or two later, having figured out, I imagine, just how dense I truly was, Deity surprised me.

By being cunt-blessed like me. By being womb-blessed like me. By lactating like me. By being a mother like me, a writer like me, a teacher like me, a learner like me, a lawyer like me, by being, biggest surprise of all, like me. By being a woman, like me. Diety surprised me, as promised so many times, by being feminine -- the one thing, the very ONE thing, that, catholic-raised as I was, I could NEVER have imagined.

Since then, I've been discouraged, thinking that I'd never find a coven to work with. I've been disappointed, usually in my own abilities, my own attempts to know myself, my own need for almost daily transcendence. But Dark Night of the Soul? No.

And, if I had one, well, I no longer deal in dualities, as that 16-year-old did so long ago. So how would I know? Trips to the underground, honorary recreations of Innana's long journey to the meat hooks: those wouldn't upset me any more. They'd simply be yet another way for Goddess to find out what it's like to be Hecate Demetersdatter in THIS situation.

I've been having too much fun finding out.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't a Dark Night of the Soul (I was raised catholic; I know that it was St. John of the Cross who coined this phrase) patiently waiting out there to surprise me.

But the words of Mary Olive sustain me:

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright 1997 by Mary Oliver.

So, this is what I say to the Dark Night of the Soul:

Let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

The Goddess taught me this. She taught me this on the day that she surprised me, as she'd promised me that she would do. I've worked hard at learning the meaning of that surprise. It's what Divinity wanted to learn in this incarnation, this time around. So mote it be. May it be so for you.

Oh, Disney? Heeeeeeee's Baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Get your daily dose of Spocko goodness right here. Do it just to piss off Disney. Do it because he listens to the right wing hate mongers so that we don't have to. Do it for Rachael Carson.

The Reason That Bush Wants More Soldiers Is The Reason Why He Mustn't Be Given Any

From Endgame, Vol. I:

[Leading consultant to Karl Rove and one of the most influential advisors on U.S. policy in the Middle East, Michael Leeden] wrote that "Creative destruction is our middle name. . . We do it automatically." he speaks of "exporting the democratic [sic] revolution," which can be done through a process called "total war," best described by his colleague Adam Mersereau:

"By 'total' war, I mean the kind of warfare that not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends that spawned the war in the first place. A total-war strategy does not have to include the intentional targeting of civilians, but the sparing of civilian lives cannot be its first priority . . . ."

[Leeden also says that]: "Societies with a majority of good people are rare and are constantly threatened by the evil-minded world outside. . . . Since we want peace, we must win the war. Since our enemies are inclined to do evil, we must win decisively and then impose virtue on their survivors, so that they can't do any more evil to us. . . . The only important thing is winning or losing. Don't worry about how the world will judge your strategy. Just worry about winning. Machiavelli tells us that if you win, everyone will judge your methods to have been appropriate."

No way should we give these people even one more American soldier to throw at their evil, disgusting, immoral, and completely unrelated-to-reality insanity. No way.

I'm sure Leeden's final sentence is what Bush has based his entire junta on, starting with the theft of the 2000 election. He thinks that if he "wins" -- whatever the fuck that means -- everyone will say that what he did was ok.

I won't. What they are doing is evil. They shouldn't be given more soldiers; they should be put somewhere quiet, and soothing, and safe, with padded walls and nice, friendly doctors to talk to. For their rest of their lives.

For Spocko!!

Disney sure does have some not-so-bright lawyers working for it.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

A Shadow

You swim up from the past, of all our set
the one most rosy, elegant, and tall.
Any your transparent profile -- how it sways
through carriage windows! Why does memory insist?
Angel or bird -- we argued which you were.
The poet said you were his girl of straw.
Through the black lashes of your Georgian eyes
Affection flowed on everyone around.
O shadow! Forgive me, but the clement weather,
Flaubert, insomnia, the smell of lilacs
have turned my thoughts to you, as if that day
could bloom again, cloudless and languishing . . .
your day, beauty of the year '13.
But I am troubled by such memories,
O shadow!