Letters from the Editor

This is reposted from a friend’s LiveJournal. And since this is a religious website and I am a religious person, and this is a religious blog, expect to see posts here about religion in this theme.

There are no real guidelines to this. The idea is to post at least once from Friday to Sunday Easter Weekend, April 6-8.

The post will be against theocracy, in favor of our Constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. But there are a LOT of issues tied to this, as is pointed out in the First Freedom First website:

• No religious discrimination.
• PRO End-of-Life Care (no more Terri Schiavo travesties)
• Reproductive health decisions made by individuals, not religious “majorities”
• Democracy not Theocracy
• Academic Integrity (like, a rock is as old as it is, not as old as the Bible says)
• Sound Science (good bye so-called “intelligent” design)
• Respect for ALL families (based on love, not sexual orientation. Hellooooo.)
• And finally, The right to worship, OR NOT.

So take your pick and write your post(s). Really, the wider variety of topics makes it all the more interesting.

When you’ve posted, email the url of your post to bluegalsblog AT gmail DOT com.

I just read a wonderful blog post over at Property of a Lady. If you don’t know this blog, please become familliar with it. Deborah Lipp is a wonderful Priestess, author of multiple books that I rated highly (and think everyone in Magick and Witchcraft as well as Wicca needs to read), as well as having been married to Isaac Bonewits while he was developing the ADF and so on. She has taught me a TON of stuff in the time I have been reading her blog.

Anyhow, the post that I’m talking about is in reference to sexism in Wicca. It is incredible that there are people that think women are repressed in Wicca and by Wicca. In my experience it may be the other way around.

And if Wicca celebrates the woman, then She should be celebrated in ALL Her aspects, From the barren female, to the Spinster, to the Sister, to the post menopausal woman who is still capable, to the Warrior woman, to the female who has no interest in reproducing. I have seen and learned from all these types of women and to think that only those women who are young and able to reproduce are good for anything is to discount about 80% of the women on the planet.

Yes, honor those who continue to keep the species alive. Have rituals for them and honor the fact that they go through hell to bring a new life into being. Help them as the child grows, but don’t toss her asside when she loses her looks and isn’t able to breed anymore. That is the same “excuse” that homophobes use to put down the homosexual population (the fact that they can’t breed).

It’s spurrious and stupid on the surface, and yet there are elements that want that to be part of the core beliefs of Wicca.

Anyhow, go take a look at her post:
http://www.deborahlipp.com/wordpress/?p=996. She states this better than I can.

I am, after all, pretty much a solitary Wiccan.

Okay, I wrote an article called “To Know” a few months ago. I had agreed to not republish it on my site until a month had gone by. That month was up some time ago, and I’m getting around to doing this. So, without further ado:

The Witches Pyramid, To Know

Today in the “Daven” household, things were pretty quiet. I did have some excitement though.

Mostly it was the shopping trip. It takes so little to make those we love so happy. I went grocery shopping with my wife. That was it. She was thrilled. Why? I have no clue. I think it was because we were spending time together, even though I was ranging around getting stuff and she was driving the cart from point A to point B. But we talked some and thought about things like we did when we were young (like year 1 or 2 of our 15 year marriage).

Then we got home and had dinner that she lovingly fixed for everyone, with help. Cookies came after dinner, again lovingly fixed by my dearest. If you ever get a chance to marry a Kitchen Witch, do so. You WILL NOT regret it.

While Saturday is “bonding night with the daughter” they had anime on that I didn’t like too much. So while paying about 20% of my attention to the TV and talking, I was reading on one of the review books, Taylor Ellwood’s “Pop Culture Magick”.

First approximation analysis? It is not a book for everyone. I remember the brouhaha when it came out several years ago. I managed to refrain from ripping it apart mainly because I had never read the book myself, and the concepts seemed somewhat “out there”. I met Taylor later that same year at a ball in Collumbus Ohio and was somewhat put off. It wasn’t anything that he did specifically, it was just something that rubbed me the wrong way.

However, these days he and I trade comments in our LiveJournals. I consider him a good acquaintance (and I won’t pretend to be more familliar than that), but I do respect him and his opinions and am honored when my comments provoke thoughts.

But the book itself so far is a good read. It is really an experimental concept book, and it is not for everyone, but in and of itself it is a very thought provoking read. I am looking forward to finishing it. I can already see a few concepts and thoughts in his writing being of immediate use to me. Anyone want to duel on the Astral Plane with Magic: The Gathering™ cards?

Then I was reading a post from Jason Pitzl-Waters in his blog, and it struck me as to why many fundamentalists see Harry Potter and non approved Christian material as so dangerous. It causes the reader to question themselves. It causes the reader to begin the process of asking questions of themself, looking for answers and not looking to the Minister or to God for those answers. Instead of seeking outside sources to tell them what to believe, they look internally and decide what to believe and thus start a whole cycle of changing absolutes which most often leads the person in question away from their faith, thus losing them the Kingdom of Heaven and their God.

Since the most terrible fate that is possible to be visited on someone is that very sundering of the ties to their deity, this is a terrible thing. Having gone through this, it is hard.

And the great irony is that most often those who are going through this questioning do so in an attempt to strengthen their own faith, and they end up losing it.

So instead of chaing the faith path to more accurately reflect that which is the actual problem, the fact that many funamdntal faiths don’t allow for individual expression of that faith or deviation from minor points of dogma, they attack and attempt to suppress the instruments of research that are seen by them as causing the initial quest in the first place, completely ignoring the fact that even without those items the changes would still occur.

It is definately a form of mindcontrol, self imposed and self disciplined.

Also, when laying out the cookies and milk for Santa, don’t forget that while that large elf may not drink all the milk, eat all the cookies or take all the carrots/apples for the reindeer, the local strays will definately eat the apples/carrots, the birds will love the cookie crumbs and the feral cats will enjoy the milk. Giving those food items to the local animal life is one sacrifice that I think everyone can get behind, and it shares the celebration with them as well.

Okay, I’m going to guilt you out slightly. It’s a good one, probably blend into the background with the rest of the “Please Give” guilt you get this year, but I’m going to give this a twist.

Please do give to whatever charity you feel deserves your support. Don’t give because everyone else is giving, but because now is the time when 85% (more or less) of the operating budget of most charities and shelters is raised to carry them through the year. From beginning of November through Christmas, charaties and shelters get lots and lots of donations from people. And they need every dime to stay in business until they hit next November.

There are 11 other months out there. Giving now is good and it really helps. But after that, all the donations and voulenteers dry up in January, February and so on. The lines you will see pictures of with 25 workers and the Governor giving out turkey dinners to the homeless is good, but that drops to about 5 poeple in May and other months, and the numbers of people needing that doesn’t go down, it increases slightly because there are fewer services offering help. So the voulenteers are chronically overworked and they burnout.

Know what I wanted for my Birthday. I wanted to go and work at a shelter. I would take my family with me. We were there once and I didn’t want to forget that. Things happened though and we never made it and I still feel bad about that.

Yes, give generously now. That’s why the huge push happens now, it’s lots of little shelters and charaties competeing for too few dollars. So they all demand and some get. And maybe they will have money to help in April or August.

More than that, don’t forget that these groups still need help in other months. Go work, donate, give clothes and time. You’d be amazed at what a difference it makes.

Recently I was sitting around and thinking and it struck me that in a rational world, one of the worst things we can do is to lock ourselves into one vision of how things are.

I started on this train of thought by listening to “Istanbul (Not Constantanople)” By They Might be Giants. This lead me to where did their name come from which lead me to the Wikipedia Entry on the band.

From the article:

The band takes its name from the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward (based on the play of the same name written by James Goldman). The play (and movie) title is an allusion to Don Quixote, who mistook windmills for giants. George C. Scott’s character discusses man’s ability to invent and analyze past the obvious, saying:

Of course, [Quixote] carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But, thinking that they might be… Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn’t? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we’d all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

And then I found myself in the desert of the mind where very fertile ground resides. I planted the seed of that thought and it bloomed into a concept.

In magick we analyze past the obvious all the time. It is what a magickian does as a matter of course. If they didn’t, then you wouldn’t have all the books on magick that exist talking about clearing Chakras, spinning vortexes and so on.

What rational person who can see the life around them and dismiss it simply as mechanics. That is someone who has no creative spirit and who cannot see posibilities.

Self help groups and books advocate that we look past the obvious and think creativiely, but it takes time and effort to do so. Seeing a windmill, most people would see simply a windmill. A smart person would see a way of pumping water or grinding meal. They could see the internal mechanics and function further with that. But only a few insane or genius intellects could see a giant who is rooted to the spot it grew at who is waving its arms around.

It may be that the windmill is simply what it appears to be, a windmill, but it could be something else, and “could be” is one of the most powerful phrases we ever hear.

A picture drawn by a child of their family may be blobs of crayon on a piece of paper, but remember back when you were drawing that. Those blobs became environments, they became people, they were your mommy and daddy in a real sense. Your siblings and pet were captured in a picture for you to look at and to treasure forever. Your animal companion whom you snuggled with each night wasn’t JUST made of fluff and cloth, they had a soul and feelings, and they responded to you. They would get lonely without you and you told them everything.

Your invisible friend may have not had a body, but that didn’t make them any less real at all. Mine was a really good person, kind and generous who loved me simply because I drew a breath. He was honest with me and made sure that I knew that he loved me because I was myself, not because he had to or because I imagined him alive. When my mother would take the clothing off him that I had placed on a representation of him (a bear) I would get really upset, for she had undressed my brother, someone I cared about.

She saw a teddy bear dressed in clean clothing of mine.

So don’t discount the highly improbable. Don’t forget “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” — Sherlock Holmes

After all, they might be giants.