Carnegie Hall

Here's a fascinating post by Star, from the Pagan "portal" at Patheos.com, concerning her recent experience being interviewed about Paganism by a certainly-less-than-friendly panel.

Let me start by saying that, as someone who frequently critiques Pagans who talk to the media, I'd give Star an unqualifed A on her performance. I think she does a pretty good job holding her own against four people who are clearly less-than-friendly to her cause. She certainly avoids the all-too-common mistake of starting off defensive and announcing, unasked, that Witches don't eat babies or kiss Satan's ass. And I think that Star does the entire Pagan community a real service by being willing to engage in some reflective self-criticism about her media performance, something that T. Thorn Coyle has also show herself v willing to do.

Star notes that perhaps she should have better understood the purpose of the interview and better considered whether or not to appear on this venue:

Having been to Jason Pitzl-Water’s talks I’m quite aware that there are times when you shouldn’t speak to the media. If you don’t have a genuine need, why risk having your words twisted? Even so, I agreed to do an interview that I feel may have been a mistake. I have a great deal of respect and love for Elizabeth Scalia, managing editor of our Catholic portal and famously known as The Anchoress. When she asked me to be on a cable show she is a frequent guest host on, I said “Of course!”

Maybe that wasn’t the wisest thing to do. I don’t know. I know the producer told me “‘Pagans, Wicca, Santeria & Voodoo’ is the topic for this half hour show.” [At that point, it would have been a good idea to ask, "And who will be on to talk about Santeria and Voodoo?" When the answer was, "Well, you," that would have been a good time to bow out.] That didn’t exactly jive with the topic I heard announced once we started recording. As the host announced the topic warning bells started to sound in my head. I had visions of a Jerry Springer Halloween special, complete with antagonistic Christians and Pagans getting in catfights and eerie warnings of the dangers of occultists. I felt they wanted an “occult expert” rather than an actual Pagan, and in those few seconds decided that wasn’t going to be how this was going down.

Again, I think that Star did a very good job of managing this experience. I especially want to commend her for her handling of the whole, "Do you call demons?" nonsense. (Honestly, could we please make 2011 the year when all Pagans agree to simply say, "Satanism, which focuses on two Christian entities, Satan and Jehovah -- in whom Pagans don't even believe -- is a branch of Christianity. Please start asking every Christian you interview whether they are Satanists"?) Star's got lots of facts and figures at hand and does a good job of discussing her own experience as a former Christian. She makes good points about the attraction of Paganism to women.

To echo a point that Star makes, I've said over and over that the first question that you need to ask yourself is how doing this interview with this segment of the media will serve your own objectives (which you, maybe not so obviously, need to be clear about before you even consider talking to the media). I'm not sure what Star's objective was, other than to be nice to Ms. Scalia, whom she perceives as her friend. If you don't have a clear answer to that question, maybe you don't need to talk to these people at all. Maybe some other Pagan should talk to them or maybe they don't deserve any Pagan participation at all. (I've been begging Democrats for years to just quit treating Fox as if it were a legitimate news organization. Just stop talking to them. (There's a reason why George W. Bush never did an interview with Bill Moyers.) I think that's what this panel, regardless of how much Star may imagine that Ms. Scalia is her friend, deserved as well.) Really, not one Pagan person on the panel? Really? Warning bells, just saying.

There's an odd notion in our society that talking to the media is cool, that it makes you important, that, of course, you should do it every chance that you get. In America, being on tv is supposed to somehow make you "real." That's what the media want you to think. But you need to approach the media with your own objectives clearly in mind. Will this interaction promote your book or event, or give you an opportunity to make your main point (e.g. Druids worship Nature, Pagans have a proud past, Pagans contribute to our community, etc.)? (Still not sure what Star's overarching point was. She seemed to be mostly reactive here.)

I think that Star's experience illustrates another point that I've made before. If you do decide that you can use an experience with the media to achieve your own goals, then you need to do a lot of practicing beforehand. Here's one example. Star gives really good, but generally nuanced and lengthy, answers to each question that she's asked. But she lets herself get interrupted over and over again. Especially for women in our society, being interrupted is a land-mine. If you talk over the interruption, you may be perceived as "too aggressive." If, as Star almost always does, you stop talking when you get interrupted, you come across as weak and you fail to control the message. (If you watch, almost every time that Star begins to score some points, one of the panelists interrupts her or the host (and, Mother, this is shallow, but who put that woman on a camera in that shirt?) calls for a "break," as if this show has a million commercial sponsors.) My firm pays a communications consultant to come in every year and work with lawyers and one of the skills that I've worked on for a number of years is being able to deal with interruptions. I'm still working on it. But it's something that you can practice for an hour or so before a media interview, even with a friend who has a iPhone with video. Just learning to say, "Let me finish," or "Please don't interrupt, I'd like to finish my point," can make you much more effective. Most Pagans aren't going to be interviewed enough times to learn on the job. Hence, you must learn during practice sessions.

Let me just list a few other points:

(1) This interview is 4 on 1. Those are ridiculous odds. I'd really hesitate before letting even a massively-prepared client face those odds. I've allowed it (ie, couldn't stop it) a time or two in group depositions, but you can't imagine how thoroughly prepped my clients were. On hearing those odds, 99.9% of all Pagans should decline the interview.

(2) Note the use of negative language in the beginning of the interview: "dabble" into Paganism (thanks Christine!) and "play" with Ouija boards. Doubt that converts to Catholicism would be described in those terms. Later there's a reference to "drifting" into Paganism. That's a perfect opportunity to bail. At that point, it's clear that this "interview" is rigged. Say, "I'm sorry; this isn't the interview I expected. I won't be participating." Take off the headphones and cut the Skype connection. The worst that will happen is that they'll show you saying and doing that and that won't hurt you.

(3) This is a subtle point, but all of the 4 interviewers are sitting around table, together, while Star is off somewhere else, on a Skype connection, wearing big headphones. Guess who looks weird and is the odd-person-out? Guess who doesn't see the signaling between the other four people? Again, find out ahead of time what the interview is going to entail and seriously consider your experience at handling that kind of situation. The situation here would challenge even a media-savvy, experienced person. Star may work in the media, but it's a whole different story when you're on the other side of the microphone. I've done depositions, but I'd demand a whole lot of preparation from my lawyer before I'd have my deposition taken (Bill Clinton, I'm looking at you.)

(4) And, this may seem artificial to you, but look at the other participants. The host is professionally made up and coiffed and wearing (what is supposed to pass for; sorry I'm a snob) a designer shirt. The other interviewers are wearing either jackets or a clerical collar -- all symbols of professionalism and authority in our society. Star, bless her heart, shows up in a do-rag, gigantic earphones, and off lighting. In the sub-verbal battle for credibility, guess who is at a disadvantage? I get that Pagans don't like this; that we believe that you should be able to wear whatever you want and that appearances shouldn't count against you. And, in a perfect world, I'd agree 100%. But imagine yourself as Mr. or Ms. Average American and ask yourself who in that interview starts off at an advantage and who starts off at a disadvantage, before anyone utters a single word. How would the interview have been different if Star had insisted on showing up at a well-lit studio, in front of a real camera and not wearing headphones, being professionally made up, and wearing a suit, even with a pentagram on a chain? What if she'd insisted on providing the pictures flashed at random during the interview or having editing authority over the crawl?

(5) As I've said before, insist on making your own recording of the interview. You can negotiate this and other points ahead of time. If they're not willing to make reasonable accommodations for you, bells should start going off and you should seriously consider not doing the interview.

Kudos to Star for being willing to criticize her own performance. I'm going to keep harping on this stuff because it matters.

Hat tip: The Wild Hunt

Picture found here.

Get a Lawyer

Here's a thoughtful, well-written article about religious discrimination against a woman, Carole Smith, due to the fact that she's a Wiccan. If you watch the included video interview with Ms. Smith, you'll see that she does a pretty good job handling the media interview. This is one of those rare cases where it, sadly, is necessary to deal, head-on, with the notion that Witches run around casting evil spells on people, as Ms. Smith was apparently fired, at least inter alia, due to a co-worker's complaint that Ms. Smith cast a spell on her car and made its heater malfunction. (I discussed another such instance here, where Katrina Messenger also did a good job managing the topic.) I think Ms. Smith does a good job and then skillfully turns the conversation around to what Wiccans do believe in a very positive way.

I don't think that I've ever said this before, in all my discussions about how Wiccans should deal with the media, but I want to make sure that I say it now, loud and clear. In any kind of legal situation (and the article explains that Ms. Smith is planning to appeal a negative ruling by an administrative law judge), for the love of the Goddess, please get legal advice early and certainly get it before you talk to the media. Until you get clearance from your lawyer, do not say one word to the media, no matter how earnest, helpful, and decent their representative may seem. As a layperson you've got no idea (no, trust me, you really don't) what innocent thing you're going to say that will hurt your case. Heck, I'm a lawyer and, because I don't practice employment law, I'm not qualified to judge what Ms. Smith may or may not have said that will hurt her case. Nor whether even doing such an interview was helpful or not. But I can guarantee you that, come Ms. Smith's appeal, the employer's attorney will go through her interview with a fine tooth comb and use it against her. To be clear, Carole Smith needed a lawyer from the minute that her boss suggested that she go into a mediation session to "explain" her religion to the complaining co-worker. The correct response would have been, "Thank you for suggesting that. I'd like to think about your suggestion for a day or two and get back to you," and to then make a mad dash for a lawyer. That would be true even if Ms. Smith, herself, were a lawyer. There's an old saying in the law about a lawyer who represents hirself. It's an old saying for a reason.

I'll also say that this case is yet another reason why I'm less than 100% enthused about "Out Yourself as Pagan Day." Ms. Smith was a new, probationary employee. She told at least one person on her job that she was Wiccan. I don't know why she told them, or in what context, but what happened to her is a good example of why many people choose to stay in the broom closet at work. I understand all the good reasons for people to come out of the broom closet, but, in today's employment market, there are real dangers to discussing your personal life, including your religion, with other people. And it's generally not necessary. Even a direct question, "What religion are you?" doesn't warrant a direct response (nor does any question that seeks personal information). A simple, "Well, I have a deep respect for nature," or, even better, "I really consider that a personal subject," works just as well. Whether, and when, to come out at work is a personal decision. People should make it carefully.

Beyond that, as sympathetic as this article is, there are the usual capitalization problems:

Judge: Let's take the witchcraft out of it. If someone complains to you, he's Jewish, and refers to a stereotype about his Judaism, go to mediation and work it out? Is that management's response to that?

To be fair, it's possible that, here, the reporter is quoting from a court transcript that screws up the capitalization and that Ms. Smith wasn't legally savvy enough to demand revisions. But, even so, the reporter should have used brackets to correct this. For example:

Judge: Let's take the [W]itchcraft out of it. If someone complains to you, he's Jewish, and refers to a stereotype about his Judaism, go to mediation and work it out? Is that management's response to that?

Since Judiasm is capitalized, Witchcraft should be capitalized, as well.

But there's also this:

Here's a situation for all you aspiring managers: If you were the boss at a U.S. government agency and one of your employees complained that she was afraid of a co-worker's religious practices, what would you do?
Would it change your decision if the religion were Wicca, and the employee feared her co-worker because she thought she might cast a spell on her?
Here's how the Transportation Security Administration handled it:
It fired the witch.

Let's substitute Jew for Witch. In that case, would the article have read:

"Here's a situation for all you aspiring managers: If you were the boss at a U.S. government agency and one of your employees complained that she was afraid of a co-worker's religious practices, what would you do?
Would it change your decision if the religion were Judiasm, and the employee feared her co-worker because she thought she might make matzo from the blood of Christian children?
Here's how the Transportation Security Administration handled it:
It fired the jew"?

Of course not, it would say, "It fired the Jew."

And, there's the failure to capitalize Voodoo:

“I was dumbfounded,” Smith said. “I told him, that's not what Wicca is. We don't cast spells. That's not witchcraft. That's black magic or voodoo or something else. To put a spell on a heater of a car, if I had that kind of power, I wouldn't be working for TSA. I would go buy lottery tickets and put a spell on the balls.”

Not to mention Ms. Smith's own apparent conflation of black magic and Voodoo.

I hope that Ms. Smith gets the legal help that she needs; her case is pretty egregious.

hat tip/ The Wild Hunt.

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Earth Hour

At 8:30, I will turn off all of the lights in my home, shut down my computer, go off the grid.

I will go to my altar and chant for a future that conserves energy and that gets energy from clean, renewable resources, that consciously honors its sources of motive power. Is Earth Hour the complete answer? No. But any time that millions of people work together for a better world, I want to add my body, as a Witch, to the cause.

You come, too.

May the Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way to the Summerlands. May Her Friends and Family Know Peace.

Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman named to a major-party presidential ticket, has died.

The former three-term House member from Queens, New York, was 75 years old. She had long been suffering from multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. A statement from her family said she died at Massachusetts General Hospital. More from the statement:

"Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed."

Ferraro was an assistant district attorney in the borough of Queens when she decided to run for an open congressional seat in 1978.

When I was a young woman, struggling to make it in a world where being a woman was even more of a handicap than it is today, Ms. Ferraro's run for VP gave me hope. I thought of her when I voted for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. I still hope that I'll live to see a woman become President.

Picture found here.

What Does "Hope" Mean to Pagans?

Here's more from Derrick Jensen concerning hope.

Not believing the culture will undergo a voluntary transition is not the same as not having hope. The question, again, is what do I hope for? I hope that salmon survive no matter what happens, and I hope the same for grizzly bears. I do what I can to help. Most of the activists I know do not believe a voluntary transition will take place, but they are hoping--there's that word--that if lynx and bull trout can survive another forty or fifty years, until, they hope, civilization collapses, then these creatures may be able to sustain. If they do not survive till then--whether or not civilization is still standing, whether or not our culture has undergone a voluntary transition--they will not survive at all. An activist friend often says to me, "As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure that some doors are open, and some doors are shut."

He and I both, for example, want to make sure the "door" representing the evolutionary potential of salmon remains open. Two weeks ago I watched wild coho salmon spawning, albeit in a stream clogged with sediment from logging. Coho--and these particular fish were two and a half to three and a half feet of muscle, beautiful gray sides and white bellies, fins frayed from their journeys home--have survived for hundreds of thousands of years, swimming out to the ocean, gliding on deep cold currents, smelling the faintest traces of the places they were born, then following these traces home to spawn and die. They will almost undoubtedly be extinct in the continental United States within the next decade or two. Mine will probably be the last generation of humans ever to witness them cleaning algae off rocks of their redd--their spawning bed--scooping out spaces for eggs, cleaning away sediment with their powerful tails. But I do not want--will not allow--that door to close during my lifetime, on my watch, as it were.

There are intellectual, emotional, and perceptual doors, too, I fight to keep open. For example, the understanding that alternatives exist to industrial capitalism. The knowledge that cultures have existed (and still exist) where women aren’t treated as inferiors. The capacity to feel wonder and to experience beauty in encounters with others--human and otherwise--who are wild and free and different not only from us but from what we expect them to be. And most especially the ability to envision and live relationships (with humans and nonhumans alike) based not on bending others to our wills but on cooperation and mutually-beneficial sharing.

To eliminate false hope is not to eliminate hope altogether, it is merely to remove barriers that blind us to real possibilities, and bind us to unlivable situations. For example, my father was violent, and it was the false hope that my father's violence would miraculously cease that allowed my mother to remain so long married. Early in her marriage, back in the 50s and through the 60s, when battered women's shelters did not exist, perhaps that hope--that false hope--allowed her, and us, to survive. Because we were essentially at the mercy of someone else, with few options for meaningful change--because we were powerless or perceived ourselves as powerless--false hopes saved our lives by helping us to emotionally survive in otherwise untenable circumstances. But what if your life is not immediately threatened? What if you do not merely wish to survive, to get along day after day? What if you strive for something else? What if you wish to live fully?

Do you have hope for the future? What does your response have to do with your Paganism?

Derrick Jensen is one of the very few people on the planet named in my will. He won't get my Hermes scarves, but he could get most of the rest.

Madison

Thanks to Hraefna, in Canada, for alerting me to this in Comments. The other day, some of my friends from the Madison protests sent me an Ian's Pizza t-shirt. I really treasure it.

The Madison Protests (along with the brave actions of the Madison 14, who will never buy their own drinks when I'm in the room) did something that Saul Alinsky (my parents pushed me read exactly 3 books in my entire life. One, via my mom, was Kon Tikki, which I refused to read. One, via my dad, was Great Expectations, and one, also via my dad, was Rules for Radicals. So you can see, I come by it honestly) said good political action can do: it forced Walker to act precipitously, and it showed his actions for exactly what they were. Forcing a tyrant to act as a tyrant is a powerful political act. And it was effective here.

Now, a judge has stayed the implementation of Walker' act, based on the precipitous manner in which it was enacted and the likelihood that those challenging the act will succeed on the merits of the case once it comes to trial. There's a huge campaign (already halfway there) to recall the Republicans who supported Walker, and Walker, who is entitled by Wisconsin law to one year recall-free, is dead in the water come next year. Yeah, he'll go on to wingnut welfare on Fox or at the Heritage foundation, but he'll never eat lunch in this town again. As I've been chanting most of my life, sometimes on marches and sometimes at my altar, "The people, united, can never be defeated."

I am more proud than I can say of my friends who were there and of other friends who supported them. For a while, following the massive, and massively ignored, anti-war protests, there was a lot of buzz about how protests were old school and could never be effective in the modern world. Well, Egypt showed that for the lie it was, and so did Madison. Never doubt the power of people-powered political action. Never doubt that, as Margaret Meade said, "A small group of thoughtful people c[an] change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Pagans were involved in the Madison protest, both as simple people occupying the beautiful Wisconsin State Capitol, as clergy, and now, via Sharon Knight's participation in this stirring video, as performers.

On, Wisconsin!

Jensen on Hope

So Easy

I keep hearing that the inventory of unsold homes is going to last for years. I would love to see communities begin clearing lots and turning them into community gardens.

What This Witch Is For

A while back, John Michael Greer wrote, "The good times aren't coming back." He was talking about the good economic and lifestyle times that were fueled by the amazingly rapid use of Gaia's petroleum reserves -- a resource that took Mamma Earth thousands of years to make and us only a few years to use up. Those words struck me at the time and have stayed with me, and I've recalled them as we've watched disasters exacerbated by global climate change and overpopulation. I've recalled them as we've watched America's economy consume the middle class and as we've seen the beginnings of political unrest fueled by high food prices (which, in turn, are fueled by global climate change and overpopulation). I recalled them the other day at work, during a discussion of the "new normal" for law firms, mere days after another DC powerhouse firm collapsed, dumping more lawyers into an already overcrowded job market.

And I recall them whenever I'm in a crowd of people, as, boundary-poor Pisces that I am, I can feel the worry, tension, and free-floating fear just below the surface in almost everyone around me.

And those words cause me to mediate again upon a deep question that Sia once asked: What are Witches for? The Talmud says that every blade of grass has its own angel that bends over it and says, "Grow! Grow!" And I believe that every place needs a "Witch of This Place," and every time needs many who will be a "Witch of This Time."

And sometimes, being the Witch of a place means doing deep trance and connecting with the tree roots, substrata rocks, water table, ancestors, fireflies, foxes, crows, and land spirits of a place. And sometimes, like this evening, it means being outside in the cold and wet and covering up tender plants to protect them from the coming frost.

And sometimes, being the Witch of a time, especially a liminal time such as this one, means doing strong, persistent, and serious magic to protect demonstrators in Wisconsin or nuclear plant workers risking their own lives to save Japan. And sometimes it means bringing some hot biscuits to the homeless vet who stands at the TR Bridge. And sometimes, it means being extra kind to everyone you meet, because you are aware that they're worried, coping as well as they can, frightened.

More and more, I think that, in the next couple of generations, we're going to see priestesses called to do the specific work of serving the species and groups of humans going extinct as global climate change speeds up. I'm starting to spend some time each week in trance on that issue and I'm planning, by Lughnasadah, to begin sending magical energy into the future to them. That's not going to be easy work for anyone, sitting by the bedside of and doing funeral rites for so many beings.

And, yet, at the same time (and here's the beauty part about moving beyond the either/or of the patriarchy), each of my cells cries out the words of Holly Near's song: "I am open and I am willing, for to be hopeless* would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us, so lift me up to the light of change." I am open and willing and hopeful for the tender plants of this Place and I am open and willing and hopeful for those of us beings incarnate at this immense crossroads of a Time. I've been called to be the Witch of This Place and a Witch of This Time, and I am going to meet those callings, as often as I can, with grace, courage, good humor, and tenderness.

To what place and time are you called?

*(I am aware of, and appreciate, Derrick Jensen's distinction between hoping for something (over which one has no control) and doing something (over which one does have control) and the need to be clear about the difference. I think that here, though, Near uses the word in the sense of "optimism" -- but "hopeful" works more poetically and, me, I will always side with the poet.)

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Here's a fascinating article about Media Matters for America doing some intense training in how to handle the media. Their particular focus is how to handle being on tv talk shows, but much of the advice is relevant for dealing with all forms of media. One of the weaknesses that MMFA identifies for lots of liberals is shared by many Witches and other Pagans:

The problem for the soldiers of the left, according to Media Matters instructors, is that they are just too smart for their own good. The traditional dependence on facts and figures, on being right, is no longer germane. Too often these wonks disappear into the policy weeds or fall through the cracks of nuance.

This is where, as I've discussed before, knowing your objectives for the interview and having your simple, short, well-thought-out statement makes a lot of difference. You can always add details and more information if asked. And a pithy, planned close is good, as well:

Shuster asked how Brenner could advocate foreign aid during a budget crisis.

“Well, David,” he replied evenly, “I understand everyone is hurting” and went on to calmly explain that foreign aid pays for medicines for children and early warning systems for tsunamis. In a second round, Shuster hammed it up as an aggressive Fox host and asked Brenner, “Why do you love the children of Africa more than the children of Alabama?”

“I want it to say ‘Made in America’ on medicines rather than bombs,” Brenner replied coolly.

“Ooooh,” the participants in the control room hummed approvingly. “Did he have that in the can?” one asked.

“He did,” nodded Kohut.

I get that, with a few exceptions, most Witches and other Pagans aren't going to spend time on national news shows, nor will they have access to the level of training described in the WaPo article. But everyone who talks to the media can spend some time practicing, and even a few sessions with a friend, videoed on an iPhone, can make a big difference.

Here's a great example of a Pagan doing it right. Note that Reverend McCollum had three clear, positive goals (none of which were "and I want people to know that we don't worship Satan or eat babies").

I had set out with three main goals to accomplish for our community which was the real focus of my trip. My first goal was to have us seen by others as a community with valuable things to contribute to the world. My second goal was to make alliances with other world spiritualities to join together to become a more formidable force for positive change in the world. And my third goal, was to include Pagan ideals into the mix as world leaders strive to construct a plan to achieve world peace and a sustainable planet.

Clear. Simple. Positive.

And, as an exercise, see if you can re-write this closing sentence in an otherwise outstanding media presentation concerning recent (and wildly successful) Pagan efforts to raise money for relief efforts in Japan: "And we are getting rid of the myth that Pagans cannot act together." (Remember Lakoff's point: When you attempt to negate a frame, you invoke it.)


Picture found here.

Things That Make This Urban Witch Smile

Mark Bittman:

We’re not just buying, we’re growing | Urban agriculture is on the rise. If you’re smirking, let me remind you that in 1943, 20 million households (three-fifths of the population at that point) grew more than 40 percent of all the vegetables we ate. City governments are catching on, changing zoning codes and policies to make them more ag-friendly, and even planting edible landscaping on city hall properties. Detroit, where the world’s largest urban farm is under development, has warmly and enthusiastically embraced urban agriculture. Other cities, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (more on Philly in a week or two), New York, Toronto, Seattle, Syracuse, Milwaukee and many more, have begun efforts to cultivate urban farming movements. And if local food, grown ethically, can become more popular and widespread, and can help in the greening of cities — well, what’s wrong with that?

More, including a great Wendell Berry quote, here.

It occurs to me that Beltane would be a great time for Witches and other Pagans to do blessings for local, community, and urban gardens and farmers' markets. (Although performing the Great Rite at the farmers' market could be dicey. ;) )

Picture found here.

Here, Have a Hellebore

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

What Cenk Said

Monday Poetry Blogging

What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison

~CAMILLE T. DUNGY

I.
Only now, in spring, can the place be named:
tulip poplar, daffodil, crab apple,
dogwood, budding pink-green, white-green, yellow
on my knowing. All winter I was lost.
Fall, I found myself here, with no texture
my fingers know. Then, worse, the white longing
that downed us deep three months. No flower heat.
That was winter. But now, in spring, the buds
flock our trees. Ten million exquisite buds,
tiny and loud, flaring their petalled wings,
bellowing from ashen branches vibrant
keys, the chords of spring’s triumph: fisted heart,
dogwood; grail, poplar; wine spray, crab apple.
The song is drink, is color. Come. Now. Taste.

II.
The song is drink, is color. Come now, taste
what the world has to offer. When you eat
you will know that music comes in guises—
bold of crepe myrtle, sweet of daffodil—
beyond sound, guises they never told you
could be true. And they aren’t. Except they are
so real now, this spring, you know them, taste them.
Green as kale, the songs of spring, bright as wine,
the music. Faces of this season grin
with clobbering wantonness—see the smiles
open on each branch?—until you, too, smile.
Wide carnival of color, carnival
of scent. We’re all lurching down streets, drunk now
from the poplar’s grail. Wine spray: crab apple.

III.
From the poplar’s grail, wine spray. Crab apple
brightens jealously to compete. But by
the crab apple’s deep stain, the tulip tree
learns modesty. Only blush, poplar learns,
lightly. Never burn such a dark-hued fire
to the core. Tulip poplar wants herself
light under leaf, never, like crab apple,
heavy under tart fruit. Never laden.
So the poplar pours just a hint of wine
in her cup, while the crab apple, wild one,
acts as if her body were a fountain.
She would pour wine onto you, just let her.
Shameless, she plants herself, and delivers,
down anyone’s street, bright invitations.

IV.
Down anyone’s street-bright invitations.
Suck ‘em. Swallow ‘em. Eat them whole. That’s right,
be greedy about it. The brightness calls
and you follow because you want to taste,
because you want to be welcomed inside
the code of that color: red for thirst; green
for hunger; pink, a kiss; and white, stain me
now. Soil me with touching. Is that right?
No? That’s not, you say, what you meant. Not what
you meant at all? Pardon. Excuse me, please.
Your hand was reaching, tugging at this shirt
of flowers and I thought, I guess I thought
you were hungry for something beautiful.
Come now. The brightness here might fill you up.

V.
Come. Now the brightness here might fill you up,
but tomorrow? Who can know what the next
day will bring. It is like that, here, in spring.
Four days ago, the dogwood was a fist
in protest. Now look. Even she unfurls
to the pleasure of the season. Don’t be
ashamed of yourself. Don’t be. This happens
to us all. We have thrown back the blanket.
We’re naked and we’ve grown to love ourselves.
I tell you, do not be ashamed. Who is
more wanton than the dancing crepe myrtle?
Is she ashamed? Why, even the dogwood,
that righteous tree of God’s, is full of lust
exploding into brightness every spring.

VI.
Exploding into brightness every spring,
I draw you close. I wonder, do you know
how long I’ve wanted to be here? Each year
you grasp me, lift me, carry me inside.
Glee is the body of the daffodil
reaching tubed fingers through the day, feeling
her own trumpeted passion choiring air
with hot, colored song. This is a texture
I love. This is life. And, too, you love me,
inhale my whole being every spring. Gone
winter, heavy clod whose icy body
fell into my bed. I must leave you, but
I’ll wait through heat, fall, freeze to hear you cry:
Daffodils are up. My God, what beauty!

VII.
Daffodils are up, my God! What beauty
concerted down on us last night. And if
I sleep again, I’ll wake to a louder
blossoming, the symphony smashing down
hothouse walls, and into the world: music.
Something like the birds’ return, each morning’s
crescendo rising toward its brightest pitch,
colors unfurling, petals alluring.
The song, the color, the rising ecstasy
of spring. My God. This beauty. This, this
is what I’ve hoped for. All my life is here
in the unnamed core—dogwood, daffodil,
tulip poplar, crab apple, crepe myrtle—
only now, in spring, can the place be named.

Picture found here.

Thou Shalt Not

I'm often baffled at Christians who insist that every single word in the Bible is a literal truth and that everyone has to follow rules developed thousands of years ago for people who lived in a nomadic society, want their 10 commandments inscribed on every square inch of government property not taken up with nativity scenes, but feel that it's ok to, for example, kill abortion providers or, in this story, steal signs from stores selling Pagan supplies. It's not as if those bits are ambiguous; "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and "Thou Shalt Not Steal" are pretty clear-cut. No exemptions for situational ethics or in service to some higher good. After all, "'Vengence is mine,' sayeth the Lord."

Speeding to get away from the police, ok, you can argue about whether that falls under "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," but the not stealing bit seems fairly unambiguous.

And, as always, if you're going, as this story does, to capitalize "Christian," then you should, as this story fails to do, capitalize "Pagan." Both are umbrella terms for a variety of religions.

Picture found here.

Ivo! Evoe! Hail, Kore! Ivo! Evoe!

One of the morning prayers that I say is, "Mother, Wash away from my eyes the enchantment of forgetfulness. Allow me, as much as I can know, as much as I can see, to realize that we are all connected. Remind me Mother, that it's all just You pouring You into You." A bit of this prayer is based upon a quote from J. D. Salinger and I forget the source from which I borrowed the rest of it, but I'm grateful to that person for helping me to articulate how I feel about those times when we allow ourselves to be ensorcelled by the Overculture into thinking that the world can be divided into the Sacred and the Mundane, that there are "muggles," that magic and mystery and connection to the Ineffable is what happens only inside a sacred circle, censed with sage and inscribed with occult symbols. And I work hard most days, I do, to keep my eyes open, to see with True Sight, to remember that it's all one immense and breathtakingly beautiful and dangerous and perfect and safe and glittering Web and that I'm a node on that Web, but also that I am the Web and the Web is me. I work at it and some days I do better than others.

And then some days, Grace comes flooding through some phloem in the Universe and I'm synchronistically, randomly, at the right corner, on the right street, at the right moment and there's no work involved at all. The Web is so real and visible and crystal clear that I can't imagine, literally can't imagine, how it can ever seem otherwise. And then I'm the Web wondering how that node ever imagined itself anything but a part of the whole. And then even that is part, a perfect part, of the Web.

I had to go to my office this morning, Sabbat or no, but I left at 2:00 to head home, do some errands, and make ready for Ostara. Sitting at the light, I caught a glimpse of her: a girl at that exact age after her childhood and before her teens. She was reedy and thin, not self-conscious, but unconsciously conscious of herself in the way that no child can ever be. She carried some kind of a book or folder, up flat against her chest, and was skip-running a bit to catch up to her father. I looked away, waiting for the light to turn green, thinking of what needed to be done when I got home. I glanced back; she and her father were now at the corner, waiting for the same light to change. She said something to her father, I could see her braces.

And, then, it happened. All in a moment, all of the enchantment washed away from my eyes, and my body and all my senses were simply, perfectly, by Grace, a mechanism for perceiving the Web from inside the Web, the Web's own unconscious self-consciousness of itself. The sun got inside the girl's hair, which was that heart-wrenchingly beautiful color of carroty-red that is not replicated anywhere else in nature. Her hair was simply, perfectly, by Grace, a mechanism for the Sun to make itself manifest and to show its beauty; without that hair, that color, at that moment, on that girl, at that corner, the Sun could never have been all that it was born to be, and the Sun knew it and I knew it and we were both awed by it.

And there, sitting at the red light, surrounded by the city, headed for the Teddy Roosevelt bridge, there, I was -- and best of all, knew myself to be -- in the presence of The Kore, in the sunlight, on the day of Osara. Not, symbolically, not metaphorically, not in any of the ways that it would make sense to say that I was, just a few feet North of that girl, in the presence of The Kore, but, simply, in the presence of The Kore. Not that The Kore "rode" her or that she somehow pulled The Kore down into her. Not that she stopped being a flesh-and-blood girl with a history and a future and braces. Not that she had ever not been The Kore and not that . . . . Well, that is why the Goddess says, "And you who seek to know Me, know that the seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without. For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire." Words stop working.

And the light changed and I turned my eyes, full of tears and light, back to the road and, shaking, drove on, deeper into the Web.

May your Ostara be blessed, may all that is good and healthy and fresh bloom into your life, and may you have reason to exclaim, "Hail, Kore! Ivo Evoe!"

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

A Poem for Ostara

The Enkindled Spring
~D.H. Lawrence

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

Picture found here.

Spring Reads

hat tip/SJ Tucker.

Thank You!

Many, many thanks to the very kind "Anonymous Reader" who sent me A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book by Ceisiwr Serith. Here's one of my favorites:

*Here in this city, surrounded by a canyon of
buildings that seem to block out Nature,
I pray to the gods of nature, who are present everywhere,
here no less than in the wild forest,
or the empty plains over which the storm winds blow,
or the ocean that hides its immense number of life
in its depths.
For we human beings are not separate from Nature,
and have our own nature,
and this nature is above all to gather into
communities,
and to form societies,
and to build cities.
So I stand here in this city and praise Nature,
present here all around us.
How could we keep Her out?

*Open my eyes, Dyeus Pter, to those around me.
Open my heart, Gouwinda, with your loving care.
Unite me with them, Xaryomen,
into a society of individuals,
based on reciprocal exchange.

Picture (of my city) found here.

Garden Dreaming

Hail Kore!

My New Name for a Blog

What Cenk Said

Synchronicity -- Wherever You Go, There It Is

There's this:

You don’t have to wait until things reach a critical point before you take stock of your life. Make it a habit to regularly sit down, be with yourself and ask yourself what you want, if you are happy with how you spend your time, if your relationships are strong or just a place to gossip. Go on a retreat, take a weekend to write in your journal and read inspiring books. Step away from your life in order to look at it more deeply. To paraphrase Michael Gerber: “Work ON your life, not just IN it.”

TAKE it off.

What are you still settling for in your life, in your surroundings, in your schedule? What’s draining you? What’s not a “hell yes?”

Be ruthless in answering these questions. And then, be ruthless in letting go. Take it off and feel the space that’s created from not settling for excess maybe’s in your life. Make your life one big YES – and live from that place.

How to Heal a Planet: A Give-and-Take Guide by Christine Kane

and, there's this:

And my time is particularly precious right now, because I’m not only writing but also teaching full-time and attempting to finish a doctoral dissertation. And I have a seven-year-old.

To be honest, I think what I did to make time for all those things is cut out the things that wasted time, that didn’t seem worthwhile. But that took looking at life a little differently.

So for example, once upon a time I used to make dinner. I would get home from the university and make dinner, which took about an hour. When we lived in the city, that was easy to do and still left time in the evenings. But here, after my commute, I am far too tired in the evenings. So instead of making dinner, I rely on organic frozen dinners. I know, they’re not homemade, but they’re as healthy as anything I would make myself, and Ophelia gets to try all sorts of things I don’t know how to make. . . . And while they’re cooking in the oven, I can write a blog post.

There are all sorts of other ways in which I decided to simplify my life and make time for what I thought truly mattered. For example, I decided a long time ago never to buy any clothes that required dry-cleaning. . . . All of the dishes and utensils go into the dishwasher, including the silver plate. If silver plate is used every day, it doesn’t need polishing. I have furniture that doesn’t need a lot of care, solid wood pieces. The floor requires sweeping and the rugs must be vacuumed, but this is a small house, relatively easy to keep clean. (It could be both cleaner and neater, but here I’ve decided that I’m not going to feel guilty about spending time writing instead of cleaning. Because after all, everyone who visits tells me how neat my house is. So that’s good enough, right?)

. . .

I should say, too, that there are a lot of things people consider leisure activities that I don’t bother with, partly because to me they’re not all that interesting. Going to movies in theaters, for example. Any sport that involves a ball. (I’ve discussed, haven’t I, my experience with balls? We repel each other, like magnets. Imagine how difficult that made kickball, in elementary school!) Going sailing, just to go sailing rather than getting anywhere. Going to any sort of gym for exercise. (Why? I’d rather go to a dance class.) Going to a spa. (Why? I’d rather learn to spin wool, or fight with a sword, or just about anything.) And I don’t shop, except when I’m going to an old book store, a thrift store, an antiques market. If I’m going to shop, it’s going to be an adventure. (Malls. Why?) That’s a good rule, actually: don’t do anything unless it’s an adventure. The other stuff: what’s the point? (Unless you like doing it, of course, and then you should. But don’t do things just because you feel as though you ought to.)

Not that it’s effortless. There are days when I’m tired, days when I don’t want to write. But I do think that writing is not about having time, but about making time. It’s about priorities. It’s about doing the things that truly matter, and trying to minimize the rest.

Making Time by Theodora Goss

In the end, it all comes down to Mary Oliver's Very Important Question: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" (I'm not a tattoo girl, but if I ever did get tattoos, one of them would be that question, somewhere like on my forearm where I could see it all the time. (The other would be one of my favorite quotes from Rumi: "The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you./Don't go back to sleep./You must ask for what you really want./Don't go back to sleep."))

Picture found here.

Read for Me?

I know that one is supposed to pretend otherwise, but I love birthdays. I love to make a fuss when family and friends have birthdays, and I love my own. Everyone deserves at least one day a year to celebrate the fact that they were lucky enough to incarnate on this breathtaking Goddess of a planet and that they've made it for another trip around the sun.

I'm 55 today, and proud of every single wrinkle, grey hair, and scar.

Like a lot of people, I do a reading for myself on my birthday, asking for some guidance for the coming year. (I want to make each one count!)

This year, I pulled:

A quality I need to foster this year: Playfulness

A Goddess with whom I need to develop a deeper relationship: Pele

My body/health/physical existence: Page of Pentacles

My job: 3 of Cups

My family/home/garden: The Star

My spiritual life & circle: The World

If you feel inclined, I'd welcome your readings in comments. May you, too, enjoy many wonderful birthdays!

Wick

Loosen up the roots and let the Earth get warm.

Monday Poetry Blogging

I am continuing to sit at my altar for Japan.

A Song on the End of the World

~ Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

Picture found here.

Things Will Die

On Being a Gardener: From "And I Shall Have Some Peace There" from Margaret Roach on Vimeo.

Margaret Roach, reading from her new book And I Shall Have Some Peace There.

You've got to love a gardening book titled after a poem, especially a poem that includes the words "bee-loud glade," which I think make the world's second-best poetic description, just after the ineffable "wine-dark sea".

Sunday Ballet Blogging

Paying Attention in the Garden

Landscape Guy came over yesterday to walk the garden with me and make plans for this year. It's hard to believe that we began working together three years ago. I think that this is the year when the garden will finally begin to come into its own; the last three have all been about taking things out, getting structures in place, and putting in plants and trees. This is the year for things to begin filling in and growing out. One of the amazing things for me about walking the garden with Landscape Guy is how much he notices. I swear I wouldn't have noticed the tiny beginnings of drancunculus vulgaris or petasites hybridus that he saw as soon as we stepped into the woodland garden, nor the lilium 'Casa Blanca's, poking up like miniature chartreuse horns in the front cottage beds. I think it's a combination of experience (Landscape Guy's been gardening in this little corner of Zone 7b for years and years) and keen attention.

And that's true, in general, I think, of having a relationship with your landbase: experience and attention make a big difference in what you're able to perceive. You can have some relationship with your land (whether your land is a park near your apartment, a strip of weeds growing beside a parking lot, or a large tract of land) by showing up on the 8 Sabbats, but it won't be the intimate relationship you can have if you pay deeper, more frequent attention and give yourself the gift of experience. And those two things take time. They take carving time out of your day to become the Witch of This Place. And, as Annie Dillard told us, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." And so it comes down to asking yourself, daily, if you want to spend your life, for example, watching tv or developing a deep and ongoing relationship with the manifest bit of the Mother where you find yourself.

This time of year, for those of us in the myth-crammed MidAtlantic, is such a wonderful time to commit (or recommit) to paying attention to your landbase. Spring and Autumn are our two most liminal times, when things shift and change hourly and daily and reward us so intensely for our attention. I love to pick a small area -- a few inches, a square foot, a specific corner of the garden -- and see what changes I can notice. Sometimes, I take a picture of the same spot every morning and evening and use those pictures in my daily practice or for divination. (If I had an ounce of artistic talent, I'd draw or paint or sculpt it, but, well, I'm about to be 55 and I know my strengths and my weaknesses.)

Last Fall, Landscape Guy and I put in two new magnolias in the SouthEastern corner of the woodland garden. He reminded me that magnolias are originally swamp trees and said that it would be almost impossible for me to overwater them, especially as they were getting established. And I watered all Fall, until it was time to put away the hoses and turn off the outside faucets. (Actually, I managed to water one day past that date, but several hundred dollars of plumbers' bills later, we'll gloss over that little mistake, m'kay?) Over wine yesterday, I asked Landscape Guy whether I should start watering the magnolias again and he said, "No, not yet. I think you'll just know when it's time." And I was reminded of Wendy Johnson's advice:

Every garden is unique, quirky, distinct, and disobedient, just like every gardener, and no one can really tell you how to water your garden. Yet all well-watered gardens have a common song that greets you the moment you walk through the gate. Watering is a form of courtship rooted in affection and experience, and in the desire for the garden and gardener to know each other inside and out. ~ Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World

I'll just have to pay deep attention and keep asking the magnolias if they're thirsty. It will be good experience for me.

You come, too.

Photo by the author; if you copy, please link back.

Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare

Euclid by Thomas Lynch

What sort of morning was Euclid having
when he first considered parallel lines?
Or that business about how things equal
to the same thing are equal to each other?
Who’s to know what the day has in it?
This morning Burt took it into his mind
to make a long bow out of Osage orange
and went on eBay to find the cow horns
from which to fashion the tips of the thing.
You better have something to pass the time,
he says, stirring his coffee, smiling.
And Murray is carving a model truck
from a block of walnut he found downstairs.
Whittling away he thinks of the years
he drove between Detroit and Buffalo
delivering parts for General Motors.
Might he have nursed theorems on lines and dots
or the properties of triangles or
the congruence of adjacent angles?
Or clearing customs at Niagara Falls,
arrived at some insight on wholes and parts
or an axiom involving radii
and the making of circles, how distance
from a center point can be both increased
endlessly and endlessly split—a mystery
whereby the local and the global share
the same vexations and geometry?
Possibly this is where God comes into it,
who breathed the common notion of coincidence
into the brain of that Alexandrian
over breakfast twenty-three centuries back,
who glimpsed for a moment that morning the sense
it all made: life, killing time, the elements,
the dots and lines and angles of connection—
an egg’s shell opened with a spoon, the sun’s
connivance with the moon’s decline, Sophia
the maidservant pouring juice; everything,
everything coincides, the arc of memory,
her fine parabolas, the bend of a bow,
the curve of the earth, the turn in the road.

Picture found here.

Susanoo and Amaterasu

The shining sun Goddess Amaterasu had a brother, Susanoo, lord of storms and of the sea.

Susanoo was an uncontrollable man, often given to violence. When he quarreled with his sister, Susanoo lifted up Amaterasu's beloved pony and threw it at Amaterasu and her priestesses.

Amaterasu was so angry that she hid in the cave called Iwayado, and there was no warmth or light upon the Earth.

The other Kami, or Goddesses and Gods, tried to lure Amaterasu out of her cave, but her anger still burned, and she refused to come out. Ame-no-Uzume, the Kami of joy, knew what to do. She placed a mirror near the entrance of the cave. Then, she did a bawdy dance, which made all of the other Kami roar with laughter. Amaterasu was still angry at her brother, the Kami of the stormy sea, but she wanted to know what made everyone laugh. She crept to the edge of the cave and peeked out at Ame-no-Uzume and, angry as she was, Amaterasu had to laugh. In that moment, a ray of her sunlight escaped from the dark cave and reflected in the mirror. Amaterasu saw her own lovely face and could no longer remain angry. She returned to the world, bringing sunlight and warmth.

Today, in Japan, Susanoo's violence was great and the uncontrollable sea stormed over Amaterasu's land. It must seem to the people of Japan as if the lovely sun Kami has again withdrawn from them. My own heart is heavy with sadness at the loss of lives, homes, family altars, and pets and with fear for the damage done to Japan's nuclear plants. I'm going to go to my altar, light a candle to reflect in my scrying mirror, and dance like Ame-no-Uzume, in the hopes that the people of Japan will soon bask under Amaterasu's warm light, rather than Susanoo's angry seas.

You come too.

Picture found here.

For Wisconsin

I am so proud of each of my friends who've been at the Capitol for a month and who will be there until things are put right.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Heras

This is what brave women look like. Heras. How can you incorporate this into your life?

Link is jammed. Try this.

Shadows of Shadows

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the "House of the Gathering." Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.
Carl Jung in Psychology and Religion (1938).

In response to yesterday's post about the need to do shadow work, one of my readers asks about how one actually does such work. It's a good question. Jung, himself, is not particularly accessible to laypersons. So where to begin? A number of years ago, several friends and I worked through Dark Moon Mysteries by Timothy Roderick and I found it a good place to start.

While I am definitely not a psychoanalyst (and don't pretend to be giving psychological advice), I have spent -- and will spend, until I die -- a good amount of time doing shadow work. Shadows, by their nature, have this conflicting desire to stay hidden and, yet, to make themselves known. So catching one in action, shining a light on it, and inviting it to come openly to the table to share what it knows, is, in my practice, at least, a big part of the work. Once aware that there's a shadow in action, most Witches and magical workers are pretty good at figuring out ways to trance, journal, do directed dreaming, do Tarot work, dance with, paint, do spell work with, and generally tease the energy bound up in a shadow out into a space where that energy can become available for productive uses.

I've found two pretty reliable clues that I've got a shadow issue. When something always bugs me inordinately, the reason is almost always bound up in a shadow. For example, having to deal with customer "service" of any sort tends to drive me completely crazy. (Comcast, I'm looking at you. But I'm also looking at the IT folks at work, the receptionist at the dishwasher-repair shop, the person who invented "Press 1 if you want to . . . .", and, well, you know.) Lots of people get frustrated when dealing with this stuff, but they don't get almost hysterical and obsess about it. I do. All that excessive-to-the-actual-cause energy is coming from somewhere. In my case, I think it comes from a shadow issue bound up with feeling that I may be powerless and that I won't be able to get the help that I need. There've certainly been incidents in my life that I can point to that seem likely to have caused more suffering over this issue than I was able to effectively process at the time, which is often what causes a shadow.

My experience is that it's often a lot easier to sense when someone else has a shadow issue than it is to identify our own. But sometimes learning to see when others may be tripping over their own shadows can help me to realize how to look for my own. When I see someone who gets really worked up over some issue in ways that don't make sense, I wonder if there aren't shadow issues involved. The classic case is someone who gets hysterical over gay marriage. It's odd; other people getting married would seem to hardly impact you. What is it that makes you get so upset about it? What need gets served by trying to control that aspect of others' lives? What is it about sex, marriage, family, homosexuality, etc. that triggers such a strong over-reaction? Because none of the "reasons" offered -- it will destroy "traditional" marriage, it's bad for "the children," it will lead to polygamy, incest, etc. -- make any sense.

And that's the second sign, to me, that I'm probably dealing with one of my shadows: when the "reasons" that I give myself for why I just can't [do X, get over issue Y, face problem Z] simply don't make much sense, when I step back and cross examine them like the lawyer I am.

How do you do shadow work? What resources have you found useful? Do you agree with Vaughan-Lee about the need for shadow work?

Picture found here.

Shadow Work

Tuesday Poetry Blogging

Bees and Morning Glories

BY JOHN CIARDI

Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.

This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.

I’ve never seen bees more purposeful except
when the hive is threatened. They know
the good of it must be grabbed and hauled
before the whole feast wisps off.

They swarm in light and, fast, dive in,
then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy
with gold and sunlight. The line of them,
like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.

And back again to find the fleet gone.
Well, they got this day’s good of it. Off
they cruise to what stays open longer.
Nothing green gives honey. And by now

you’d have to look twice to see more than green
where all those white sails trembled
when the world was misty and open
and the prize was there to be taken.

Picture found here.

Jensen on Hope

What Literata Said

And I can’t find a way to understand my relationship with the earth that makes styrofoam carryout containers a worthwhile thing.

You need to go read the whole thing right now.

Picture found here.

Happy Women's Day

One percent -- ONE PERCENT -- of the world's property.

/hat tip to watertiger.

Sunday Ballet Blogging

The Glory of the Garden

The Glory of the Garden
by Rudyard Kipling


Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You will find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all;
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and the tanks:
The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.

And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick.
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

Picture found here.

Back from a day with my family and inundated with seeds, especially stinging nettles, which I'm trying for the first time this year. What are you potting up?

Friday Night Music

Talking to the Media

Kudos to KSL.com for the correct capitalization. And, the article manages to skip the "Pagans don't eat babies," trope.

However, I'd like to propose a tweak to this:

What do Pagan's believe exactly? That's hard to pin down. Gold says a lot of different philosophies and beliefs are accepted under the umbrella of Paganism, and he admits these beliefs are not always accepted by everyone.

"There is a stigma to the word ‘Pagan.' If people really understood what it meant to be Pagan, I don't think there would be such a stigma to that word," Gold said.

Well, then, help them to understand, rather than invoking negative framing.

How about:

"What do Pagan's believe exactly? That's hard to pin down. Gold says a lot of different philosophies and beliefs are accepted under the umbrella of Paganism. In general, though, Pagans believe in the sanctity of the Earth and are open to various forms of deity"?

This article illustrates a point to which I keep returning. If you're going to talk to the media, you need to be prepared. "What do Pagans believe?" is the sort of question that any reporter is likely to ask a Pagan, regardless of the specific topic of the article. You can anticipate it and be prepared with a one or two sentence answer that focuses on the positive. There's no need to discuss any stigma. By providing a simple answer, you'll help people to understand Paganism in a way that ameliorates any such stigma.

Picture found here.

An Amazing Resource

Reuters reports that:

A 350-year-old notebook which documents the trials of women convicted of witchcraft in England during the 17th century has been published online. Skip related content

The notebook written by Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, recounts the fate of women accused of having relationships with the devil at a time when England was embroiled in a bitter civil war.

The document reveals the details of a witchcraft trial held in Chelmsford in July 1645, when more than a hundred suspected witches were serving time in Essex and Suffolk according to his account.

"Divers (many) of them voluntarily and without any forcing or compulsion freely declare that they have made a covenant with the Devill," he wrote.

"Som Christians have been killed by their meanes," he added.

Of the 30 women on trial in Chelmsford, 14 were hanged.

Wallington also recounts the experiences of Rebecca West, a suspected witch who confessed to sleeping with the devil when she was tortured because "she found her selfe in such extremity of torture and amazement that she would not enure (endure) it againe for the world." Her confession spared her.

More here and here.

The notebook can be viewed here.

Picture found here.

Things We'd Be Better Without

Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
— Dorothy Parker

Like the divine Dorothy, I suspect that I shall never attain sufficient champagne, but tonight I'd like to discuss two things that I believe the Pagan community would be better without: Witch wars and pointless discussions about which subgroup has been "the most" oppressed. Minority (and especially disfavored) groups often become enmeshed in Witch war-type battles. We fight with each other instead of standing together and establishing our place and/or bringing about the changes that we hope for in the dominant culture. Those of us old enough to remember the counterculture struggles of the 1960s still have sad memories of energy and time spent on battles over philosophical purity while war raged on and the planet was poisoned. And you'd think that we'd have learned from the French Revolution.

As magic workers and people who understand that everything is connected, we Pagans have a really good basis for breaking out of the cycle of attacking each other. I'd like to see that happen and I'm encouraged to see some community leaders stepping back, taking time to listen and think rather than reacting immediately, and modeling more Pagan, productive ways to deal with conflict when it does arise.

And, I keep hoping that we've gotten past the completely unproductive game of arguing over which subgroup of us has been "more" oppressed than the others. That's a practice tied to a belief in a zero-sum Universe.

Again, as Pagans and magic workers, as people who understand that everything is connected, we, of all people, should know better. Patriarchy has wounded many, if not all, of us. Why should we compare and try to rank similar-but-unique experiences of oppression, in the mistaken belief that it's possible to determine who has been "most" wounded? That exercise has as its only goal the determination of who "wins" the oppression wars (and is, thus, the most deserving, virtuous, able to make demands, etc.) I will never know your unique wounding, but I can use my own experience of oppression and colonization to give me a basis for listening to you and trying to understand. I can use my experience as the landbase from which my empathy can begin take root and grow. And you can do the same for me. And then we can acknowledge that when you are oppressed, so am I and when I am oppressed, so are you. And then we can work together, respectfully. Or separately, respectfully. There's no need for us to discount each others' experience, which is what we do when we start declaiming which oppressed group had it "worst." Nor is there any need for us to listen to those who would ensorcel us into believing that we inhabit the limited, disconnected Universe that would respond to such nonsense.

And, in the end, we can stop. We can breathe. We can examine our own role in perpetuating the dominant culture, Witch wars, and arguing about who has been most grievously oppressed. We can return to our altars, or walk in our woods, or work in our gardens and open our hearts and our minds to the divine while we hold our community within the crucible of our best intentions.

First of the Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

I know that a recent study indicated that early detection via breast self exams might not be "cost effective." I'm not a scientist, but when I read those studies, they appear to be saying that sometimes women find a lump during the BSE that turns out not to be cancer. Those women have caused some expense and have gone through some discomfort in order to find out that the lump wasn't cancer. I don't know about you, but when that happens to me, as it has a few times since my first mammogram found a small, curable, cancerous lump, I go out and buy a new scarf, take myself out for a decadent lunch, call everyone I know, and declare it a good day.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year. If you have a deck, pick three cards and e-mail me at heca tedemet ersdat ter@ hotm ail.c om. I'll email you back your reading. If you don't have a deck, go to Lunea's tarot listed on the right-hand side in my blog links. Pick three cards from her free, on-line tarot and email me. I'll email you back your reading.

And I Was Initiated by the Real Robin Hood

In Sherwood Forest.

On Beltane.

The Moon was Full and the Ley Lines were activated. The sex was amazing. So you should listen to me and follow everything that I say.

Really.

I loves me my Pagan pipple, I do. (OK, I love some of you much better from a distance, but, really, it's me; it's not you.)

But we are, in an odd way for a group so devoted to the notion that "an ye harm none, do as ye will," a guilt-haunted people. There are shadows that we haven't even begun to deal with because they are such deep shadows that we don't even see them as shadows. It shows up in the absolute inability of any Pagan, anywhere, at any time, to ever speak to any member of the media without bleating, unwarranted and unasked, "And we don't murder babies or worship Satan. Really!" I've said (and will continue to say) enough about that.

This weekend, at a delightful Pagan conference, I realized that we have another, very similar, tick. We apparently are constitutionally incapable of discussing the facts that we are creating religion and religious practice as we go, that we generally engage in a delightful syncretism (which I adore), and that, even when we attempt reconstruction, we are, even so, "making all things new," without ALWAYS having to genuflect and say, "Of course, it's fine, unless you pretend that you found it in an ancient grimoire or were initiated by your grandmother when you weren't." Two of the most brilliant and wonderfully Witchy presenters I spoke with felt the need to offer this advice, even though, of course, no one suspects either of them of any such thing.

You know, I've been a Witch for well over two decades, and I have never met anyone who told those lies. I am given to understand that in the late 1960s, early to mid 1970s, some people did tell those lies. I can, I think, understand why they might have done so (and I may write about that later), but I've been a practicing Witch for a long, long time and I've never run into anyone who told me that they were initiated by their grandmother or Gerald Gardner or an old woman living alone in a forest. Nowadays, people join traditions, create new traditions with abandon, hive off, combine traditions ("I'm a Witch and a Theosophist, a Witch and a Buddhist, a Witch and a priest of Bast, a Reclaiming, Fairie, RadFaey Death Priestess, etc." I love it. Let a million flowers bloom.) No one feels the need to pretend that they're revealing ancient secrets.

So why do we need to keep genuflecting and apologizing for the sins (if they were sins) of Pagans who blazed trails (sometimes pretending they were literally, rather than poetically, discovering, old trails) decades ago? Let's stop this. I think we all get it. It's wrong to lie about the literal origins of any practice or tradition. But no one is doing that, these days. We don't need to keep expunging the mistakes of our progenitors.

Picture found here.

Sunday Ballet Blogging