Hecate

Keep Your Nativity Scenes On Church Property: How Difficult Is That?

2009-11-27T10:55:00.013-05:00

The same scenario apparently needs to play out over and over again before people get the message.

The latest battle in the "war on Christmas" has come home to Franklin County's seat, and it comes down to the baby in the manger.

The borough has a decades-long tradition of allowing the local garden club to place a Nativity scene, depicting nearly lifesize statues of a kneeling Mary, Joseph and a swaddled Jesus, shepherds and kings, on the ground surrounding the Memorial Fountain. . . . Earlier this month, PA Nonbelievers Capital Area director Carl Silverman wrote the borough a letter stating its intention to erect [a sign reading "Celebrating Solstice -- Honoring Atheist War Veterans."]

While the group believed it did not need the borough's permission because the creche required none, it was submitting a proposed design in "the spirit of cooperation," the letter said. . . . "We didn't want to take Jesus out of the public square," Silverman, of Camp Hill, said. "We want to put atheism in the public square."

Bill McLaughlin, president of the Chambersburg Borough Council, said that after discussion with the borough solicitor, two practical options emerged -- officials could allow everything or allow nothing to be displayed at the fountain.

The council chose to allow nothing, he said.

McLaughlin said he took PA Nonbelievers' letter as "a demand, with an implied threat of legal action."

The council came to the rather unstartling, but apparently difficult-for-xianists-to-comprehend conclusion that: "The downside of 'everything' is it means everything," McLaughlin said. And, [t]hat was something council could not live with, he said.

I've recounted before the story about a xian group that sued the local public school system and won the right to force the local public schools to send home announcements about church activities in kids' bookbags. Yet, when a group of local Pagans took advantage of the same ruling to send home notices about a Yule celebration at the local UU church, the xians went ballistic. Eventually, the school system decided, reasonably, to just not send home any kind of non-school notices.

In Chambersburg, as everywhere, there's a simple solution to the xians wanting to put up nativity scenes: Central Presbyterian Church, located on the square directly across from the fountain, is considering construction of a perch on its property where the creche could be displayed. That won't satisfy the xianists, though, because what they really want is to impose their religion, and only their religion, on everyone else via government property and action.

Xians upset over increasingly vocal atheist organizations might do well to consider that their own attempts to force their religion on everyone else is likely the cause for what is starting to look like an increasingly organized and vocal atheist movement.

Another Dispatch From Our Glorious War On Xmas

2009-11-27T10:50:00.003-05:00

Ya Think?

[W]hy do Christian groups insist on this campaign year after year? I think the answer to that question may be, alas, crass commercialism. A 2006 story from the Religion News Service reported that the American Family Association sold more than 500,000 buttons and 125,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan “Merry Christmas: It’s Worth Saving.” The Alliance Defense Fund sold about 20,000 “Christmas Packs” that same year. The packs, available for a suggested $29 donation, included a three-page legal memo and two lapel pins.

The bottom line here is, well, the bottom line: The Christmas wars are a financial windfall for the organizations that whip up this frenzy. The Christmas wars have become, ironically, the ultimate commercialization of Christmas.

I’m not saying that there are times when we Christians shouldn’t stand up for our rights, but when we fire all our weapons in such a meaningless skirmish, we alienate potential allies, and we have no ammunition for the battles that matter.

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

2009-11-26T11:42:00.004-05:00

This video is long enough (almost ten whole minutes!) that, if you're like me, you'll get multiple opportunities to notice how monkey mind keeps trying to take over, to breathe, to bring your attention back to your present, and to relax again. Isn't it interesting information?

Home For The Holidays

2009-11-26T09:45:00.003-05:00

Breathe.

Center.

Remember who you truly are.

Can you find 10 minutes to go outside and feed the birds? Some seeds, some bread crumbs, a bit of apple spread with peanut butter.

Fill your lungs with the cold Air. Notice your feet upon the chilly Earth. Connect with the Fire deep inside the planet. Watch the Water of your breath turn into mist when you breathe.

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

Picture found here.

Thursday Poetry Blogging

2009-11-26T09:39:00.002-05:00

On this wine bowl of pure silver—
destined for the home of Heracleides,
where discerning taste and elegance reside—
I've engraved flowers, streams and thyme,
and in their midst a handsome youth,
naked and erotic, dangling his leg
in the water still. I prayed, memory,
that I'd find in you an ally strong enough to render
the face of this youth, whom I loved, just as it once was.
It will not be easy, as it has been
some fifteen years from the day he fell,
a soldier, in the battle of Magnesia.

~C.P. Cavafy

Picture found here.

Yes, Let's All Get Worked Up Over The Pleasantries We Exchange With Shopkeepers

2009-11-26T09:14:00.005-05:00

I agree: Epic Fail. And if Bill O'Reilly is a Pagan, I am the Queen of Romania.

Yesterday, I was in line at the local sandwich place and the guy at the counter handed the woman in front of me her order and said, "Have a happy holiday." The woman, clearly a tourist and completely delighted to have a chance to get pissy said, "It's Merry Chirstmas, if you please!" Counter Guy said, "Oh, I meant the Thanksgiving holiday. It's tomorrow." Good on him.

Picture found here.

Gratitude

2009-11-25T18:52:00.003-05:00

And. so, when your family members begin, as they must, to push, push, push, push, push those buttons, you can ground. You can breathe. You can deliberately expand the space with your breath to give yourself more room to simply be, to give yourself an opportunity to be present and calm in the midst of a situation designed to take away your control.

May you find quiet time in the midst of frenzy, may you remember who you are in the midst of commercialism designed to make you forget, may you feel the deep peace of the ever-more-deeply-slumbering Earth in the midst of this culture's fear of that sleep.

So mote it be.

~Photo by the author. If you copy, please link back.

Throw Back Your Head

2009-11-25T18:49:00.000-05:00

An Idealized Small Town

2009-11-25T18:26:00.001-05:00

I have a Roycroft side table that I cherish. At least he was interesting. At least he was trying.

Maybe It's The Waxing Moon In Aquarius

2009-11-24T18:51:00.004-05:00

Suddenly, it's Talk About Goddesses and Gods Week in the Pagan Blogosphere.

My wonderful circle of amazing women is working this year with Columbia, especially in her incarnation as the Goddess of Washington, D.C. I'm really enjoying getting to know her, not least of all because she's a rather young Goddess, as Goddesses go. I recently did some dark Moon magic and she showed up, huge and solemn and strong, and said, "Here, I can make this work for you." And, then, she did. She doesn't talk a lot. But when she does, she means what she says.

Who's the youngest Goddess or God you've ever called?

Picture found here.

Really, Some People Are Just Assholes.

2009-11-24T18:31:00.004-05:00

In the Glorious War on Xmas, I am on Athenae's side. And it takes an entire boatload of stupid not to understand that Scrooge at the end of the story was happy, while Scrooge at the beginning of the story was mean, unhappy, petty, miserable. Kind of like today's "conservatives" and "libertarians." There's a message hidden a sixteenth of an inch deep there, boys. See if you can find it.

Picture found here.

The Stupid. It Burns.

2009-11-23T21:41:00.000-05:00

I Will Buy This Book

2009-11-23T21:26:00.001-05:00

Holy Shit. I pretty much am Mrs. Johnson. Well, my stash doesn't have its own shed. Yet.

Vast, Gorgeous, And Strong

2009-11-23T20:50:00.004-05:00

Thorn Coyle has up an important post today. You should go read the whole thing.

We live in the mitzrayim and we do not have to. Once we reach adulthood, no person or circumstance keeps us in the narrow place without our permission. The narrow place can be helpful during times of incubation: we may wish a bit of extra constriction in order to figure out where the new boundaries are, push against them, and learn how to stretch. But we cannot stay there forever. Sooner or later we have to move to bigger pastures, to well-watered fields and wider vistas - or heavier weights - in order to get a fresh perspective. Staying in the narrow place constricts not only our vision of self, but our vision of the world and our vision of possibility.

We can become vast, gorgeous, and strong. We can live fully and brightly. When we let ourselves out of the boxes of our thoughts, we can more clearly see what we can do and not only who we can become, but who we are.

What would life be like if our only boundary became the boundary of love?

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

2009-11-23T20:20:00.003-05:00

What Susie Said.

I'll just add, though: don't think for a minute that the catholics wouldn't love to execute and jail women who have abortions. They just understand that, for now, that's unacceptable to most Americans. They'll get their camel's nose under the tent by first criminalizing abortion and then, once it's illegal, they'll begin to advocate for "stronger measures to ensure complete compliance." These men have never had a problem burning women at the stake.

"Your Excellency" my round, sweet ass.

Sunday Poetry Blogging

2009-11-22T10:27:00.001-05:00

Winter Sleep

When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
It's not with them that I'd love to be,
But under the roots of the balsam tree.

Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.

O what a warm and darksome nest
Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!
It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,
Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!

~Elinor Wylie

Picture found here.

The Disappeared

2009-11-21T15:10:00.001-05:00

The Last Wild Witch

2009-11-21T14:57:00.001-05:00

He's Determined To Destroy Whatever Little Bit Of A Career He Has Left. He Is

2009-11-21T11:45:00.006-05:00

Cage in Season of the Witch is even worse, apparently, than Cage in a remake of the Wicker Man.

When two knights (Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman) return from the Crusades, they find their homeland ravaged by the Black Plague. The church blames the plague on sorcery, and orders the knights to escort an accused witch (Claire Foy) to a remote abbey , where monks will perform a ritual that they hope will put an end to the pestilence

I think that I saw this movie. It was by Ingmar Bergman. It begins with the immortal line: Jag var Doden. I'm not sure that it needed to be remade.

Merry Fucking Holiday

2009-11-21T10:23:00.011-05:00

I don't watch tv, and I work pretty hard at avoiding all the winter holiday commercialism, so, but for this Chicago SunTimes article, I'd never have known about the above commercial for the Gap. Since I don't have to see it a million times, I think it's kind of cute, as far as WesternCiv commercialism based upon exploiting third world laborers, promoting ageism and sexism, turning religion into commerce, and destroying the planet can be cute. (I am, I'm a regular bundle of optimism and joy.) The dancing's not bad, and my first reaction is to think it's cool that they even bothered to mention my religious holiday: are Pagans now a large enough demographic that we're worth including? Or, maybe we're thrown in for shock value; most folks in advertising think that a controversial commercial is great, as it generates even more interest than a "normal" one. So, cool.

But while Ms. Falsani, the religious columnist for the SunTimes, goes out of her way to not get involved in the "war on xmas," she does manage to harsh my ad-induced holiday buzz. While they all occur around the same time of the year, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice hardly carry the same spiritual weight. Oh, really?

I bet you're never going to guess, so I'll go ahead and tell you: the xian holiday carries the most spiritual weight, followed by the other patriarchial, monotheistic, Abrahamic religion, followed by the African Americans, followed by the Pagans. I know, who'd have thought?

Christmas celebrates the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world. Hannukah, while also commemorating a miracle (a one-day supply of oil for a lamp in the temple lasted eight days) and the victory of the Jewish rebellion over the Hellenistic rulers of Jerusalem, it is a minor holiday, not to be compared to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur or the major festivals, Sukkot and Passover.

Kwanzaa is a nonreligious festival, begun in 1966 and celebrated nearly exclusively in the United States, which celebrates African-American culture and values. Winter Solstice marks the shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year and is for many pagans and neo-pagans the symbolic and spiritual rebirth of the year.

Could her biases be more obvious? Interesting how "pagans" and "neo-pagans" don't get capitalized, isn't it? And does the "religious columnist" for the SunTimes truly not understand that "the miraculous birth of a savior come to redeem the world" is based upon Pagan themes, celebrated at the Winter Solstice? Does she not know that many African Americans churches do celebrate Kwanza, making it, indeed, a religious holiday? Give me a break.

In case you missed the fact that Paganism is not the "spiritual equivalent" of monotheistic religions, Ms. Falsania repeats: While each of these holidays, for lack of a more universally applicable term, is significant to different groups of believers (and nonbelievers, for that matter) they are not spiritual equivalents. OK, I think we get it.

But, she's open-minded, really, she is. Still, I have no problem with all four being mentioned in the same context when we're talking about the things people celebrate this time of year. That's valid and correct. Mighty big of her, isn't it? Well, no, it isn't, as her next few paragraphs prove.

Unless we're meant to be concelebrating Bacchanalia or -- and this is even a stretch -- Mardi Gras, nothing in the Christian, Jewish and pagan traditions or the African-American cultural ideals that Kwanzaa celebrates would encourage the faithful to throw all rules out the window and do whatever feels good, man. Again, with the capitalization problems. Christians get capitalized. Pagans don't. Not spiritually or grammatically equivalent, apparently.

Given the lack of "spiritual equivalence" between the holidays, you'll probably not be surprised to see whose holiday gets an entire paragraph and whose holidays get jumbled together all into one.

Christmas is about selflessness and transformative love, the improbable gift of a divine baby born into straw poverty in order to reconcile the world back to God. We do celebrate Christ's birth by giving something to each other to commemorate that epic, divine gift. But it's not supposed to pivot around the exchange of material goods, and it's definitely not about sweaters and turtlenecks.

Hannukah is about power of perseverance, faith and righteousness to overcome tyranny. It's about a small miracle that changes everything. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith. Those principles are pretty much the direct opposite of the idea of "do whatever you want." And Solstice is, first and foremost, a natural, communal, Earth-centered event. Nothing about ushering in the death of the old year and the birth of the new says "fleece hoodies" to me.

So some people's holidays are "about" selflessness and transformative love, improbable gifts (but not gifts of improbable hoodies!) of divine babies who are born to "reconcile the world back to God" and some people's holidays are about nothing more than "communal events" (which would surprised my closed circle) that mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. You know, kind of a communal, Earthy, early New Year's party. Not much spiritual significance, certainly not the "spiritual equivalence" of transformative love, divinity, selflessness, and divinity. And, in case you missed it, babies! And, divinity. All religions are equal, but some are more equal than others.

What's really interesting is that the thrust of the article, to the extent that it has one, is that commercialism and religious holidays don't mix. So the entire discussion of the "spiritual equivalence" of the various holidays is unrelated to, and a distraction from, the main point of the article. Yet, one gets the sense that showing how "unequivalent" some religions are was the point closest to the author's heart. Does this woman not have an editor? (I mean, it's obvious that she lacks a stylebook, but I thought the SunTimes still had editors.)

I have a suggestion for Ms. Falsani. Turn off the tv and go get a Comparative Religion 101 text. Then, read it. And either capitalize the names of all religions or don't capitalize the names of any. Oh, and Merry fucking xmas.

More peace on Earth and good will here.

Real insanity (Did you notice it? Gap compares Christmas to the pagan holiday called ‘Solstice.’ Solstice is celebrated by Wiccans who practice witchcraft!” (as opposed to, you know, those Wiccans who DON'T practice witchcraft) cried the AFA in a press release.) here. (Yes, Virginia, Paganism IS Nazism).

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

2009-11-19T18:00:00.001-05:00

Getting Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down" Can Be Difficult

2009-11-19T17:38:00.002-05:00

We all have a monkey, er, squirrel mind.

Obama Restaurant Watch

2009-11-19T16:24:00.007-05:00

Dear Mr. President,

Don't eat the lutefisk! I know, I know, I'm a traitor to my pipple, but, still, just don't go there.

But if you have any say about the menu, I'd go, as is often the case, for several of Aquavit's appetizers instead of the main course. GRAVLAX smoked salmon roe, melon, cucumber, LANGOUSTINE BISQUE crab and lobster salad, sea urchin, crème fraîche , and FOIE GRAS GANACHE pork and foie gras terrine, pickled apples, port wine .

As always, Obamafoodorama (my nominee for one of the best new blogs of the past year) has all the details.

Picture found here.

Here's Your Daily Dose Of "Slow Down"

2009-11-18T09:06:00.001-05:00

What Incredibly Sexy Hands She Has

2009-11-17T23:23:00.004-05:00

Harvard Law Professor. Oklahoma Girl. I love her.

Picture found here.