Land, Sky and Sea

From my earliest memories, I have felt both connected to and overwhelmed by the world around me. The roaring wind. The vast sea. The limitless reaches of the sky. This sense of connection is one of the things that first drew me to Druidry. I do not claim to be an avid outdoorsman, because I'm not (although sometimes I want to be), but I do attest to a feeling of continuity with nature.

I am not quite finished reading Emma Restall Orr's The Wakeful World, but I can say that her argument for animism makes sense to me, and puts a context around this feeling of connectedness. As she presents it, animism is the idea that all of nature is minded. Everything, even the things we don't perceive as animate, has some sort of perception and a place in the vast grandeur of nature.

I will have more thoughts on this soon, but I want to finish the book before I say too much. For now, I can say that it provides an elegant philosophical basis for pagan religion, and can enrich one's practice.

Good Omen

During the ritual that I mentioned here, I pulled a four-card draw from the Wildwood Tarot for my omen. I asked each of the Kindred, and then Cernunnos specifically, for guidance as this new year begins. I think you'll be impressed by the consistent message.

Ancestors: Ace of Arrows: The Breath of Life -- our minds are linked to a greater consciousness. When an idea begins to form, we can tap into the energies of that connection to give it form and power.

Nature Spirits: Six of Arrows: Movement toward new possibilities, or cycles.

Shining Ones: The Wanderer (the Fool in other decks): The beginning of a new phase, the end of one journey and the start of another.

Cernunnos: Five of Bows: Facing and defeating fears; empowerment, possibly through the mastery of a skill or discipline.

Altogether, it suggests that my spiritual growth is reaching a new level ... that my intuition, desiring renewed attention to nature, to earthiness, is movement in the right direction.

Playing in the Mud

I’ve had a lot of signs about mud lately.

I’ve been reading about animism, and am currently about 2/3 of the way through the marvelously dense The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature, by Emma Restall Orr. It’s giving rise to a new appreciation for nature and a desire to spend more time out in it. Then, last Saturday, a seer at the Grove suggested the same to me, without knowing anything of that recent reading and thinking.

While listening to an old episode of Druidcast, I encountered the song “Spirit and Soul and Handful of Mud,” by James J. Turner, which speaks powerfully to that same impulse.

Also, for the past few months I’ve felt some interest in Cernunnos, a deity whose wildness appeals although I have had no prior relationship with him. 

Today, I plan to make offering to him during ritual and try to open that door a bit. My practice has been centered on the intellectual and practical for a while. Now, the time feels right for earthiness.

A Reading for 2014

In my opinion, one of the best Tarot spreads suitable for annual readings (whether at the New Year, one's birthday, or other yearly milestones) is Joanna Powell Colbert's Out With the Old, In With the New Spread.  I did my reading or 2014 yesterday, using Zach Wong's Revelations Tarot.

 

1. What do I leave behind in the Old Year?
3 of Wands Rx
This year, I leave behind my tendency to let things go until opportunities fall apart - I will stop dissipating my energy so that nothing worthy manifests. I will stop expending my energy with no commitment to my goals.

2. What do I open up to in the New Year?
3 of Pentacles
This year, I open myself to accepting the mentoring of those who can help me grow and develop my ability to create something concrete of lasting value.  This year, I will learn what I need to to be able to contribute to our financial and material wellbeing. (we being at home, at the Grove and elsewhere where I share a group identity)

3. Key Opportunity of the New Year
6 of Wands
My key opportunity this year is to be able to achieve in a way that comes with public acclaim and appreciation - I should expect to find myself more in the spotlight this year, and to be a motivating force for improving the morale of those around me.  This is the year to get comfortable with being noticed and appreciated. (this feels so much more like a challenge than an opportunity to me!)

4. Key Challenge of the New Year
3 of Cups
My challenge this year is to maintain friendships and a sense of celebration.  I must be mindful of how work and play, friendship and conflict can overlap and not forget how much I like and enjoy the people around me.  My challenge is to approach our encounters with joy and gladness, but also to not lose sight of the distinction between playing as friends and working as colleagues.

5. Hidden concern (pull from bottom of the deck)
0 The Fool
My hidden concern is that I don't know what I'm doing, and that where I am not worrying it is because I haven't noticed the problem.  I don't want to land on my face or bring anyone else down with me.  I'm also concerned that others see me as a fool and too inexperienced to be doing what I am. I am concerned that others may be actively hoping I will fail.

6. Deep Wisdom / Advice from God/dess (pull from middle of the deck)
III Empress
The mother/queen goddesses (Juno and Frigga, primarily - but all of them in some way) are those that call to me - this year, I must lean on their wisdom and operate from within their guidance.  My role as mother is called on - to be a nurturing caretaker of those around me, and of the Earth itself.  To be firm, without being hard.  I should also remember to approach the year from a place of prosperity and abundance - of more than enough and plenty to share, and to help others to grow their own stores.

7. Key Theme of the New Year
2 of Pentacles
My key theme this year is Balance and Meditation - the ability to juggle multiple concerns without undue stress, to see the playfulness in all tasks, to learn to balance physical and material expenditure with recuperation.


Highlighted are wands (energy and will) and pentacles (concrete manifestation).  3s are strongly highlighted - III Empress, and 3 3s (missing is the 3 of Swords - heartbreak and unvarnished honesty).  Working with others to manifest results in a way that strengthens and nurtures the group is important this year - it is a time of teamwork, leadership as gentle guidance and diplomacy.

New Years Intentions and a New Moon TUSAL

My year end TUSAL.  What's a TUSAL?  Read on...

This past year has been really full for us - we saw improvements in my health (as much as chronic illness will allow), some challenges in his, we moved toward a more active and highly fulfilling relationship with Cedarlight Grove, I served on the Board at our UU church during a period of great upheaval that is ongoing, we GOT MARRIED, Michael's job of 11 years "downsized" him in a multi-person lay-off (the most recent of several), and that spurred us toward several decisions about long range self employment plans while he quickly took the steps he needed to secure new employment within three weeks.

Roller coaster ride, for sure, complete with scary and exhilarating bits.  I confess, my wish for this year - as it is almost every year - is for peace and quiet.  Peace from contention for myself and those around me, and quiet enough to be able to listen to my interior thoughts.  Of course, a huge part of achieving that is simply insisting on making room for it, and that is something I am always working toward, rather unsuccessfully.  And part of it is dependent on what life brings.  What last year taught me is that Michael and I, between us, can face some challenging stuff without unnecessary trauma.  That's a really nice thing to be able to trust.

I do not, as a rule, make 'resolutions' for New Years, but I do like to set a few intentions, and these are mine:

1.  This is annual - I'll be blocking out what stitchery projects I will be doing throughout the year.  This year, specifically, I want to do ornaments for all nine of my grandchildren.  It's been a few years since I have, and it is time.  Every time I do this, I consider it may be the last time my hands will let me do it for them.  Additionally, I have a couple large pieces for us that I'd like to finish, and I want to work on a couple auction pieces, starting early enough to get them done before various auctions occur. (In other words, plan ahead!)

2. Healthy eating - Michael and I didn't fully give up, but we did allow ourselves to ease up on a lot of snacking and carbs, with inevitable results.  He did such a fantastic job last year shedding weight that has plagued him for a long time, I want to ensure that isn't undone. (Meanwhile, my excess pounds seem to be plastered on with crazy glue, but even without weight loss, I know avoiding certain foods makes me feel better and it's worth it)

3.  Soap Making!  I plan to devote time each month to learning the art of soap making, from simple to progressively challenging.  I am very excited by this! I try to learn a new skill every year, and this is in for 2014.

4. My Dedicant's Program for ADF.  That was the entire basis for beginning this blog.  Michael finished his and is now preparing to work on his Clergy Training... and I'm still puttering along.  I am ok with that as the way it needed to be... it was helpful to me to simply experience ADF without worrying about formulized documentation.  But at this point, that's what's missing - my documentation  And there are so many truly intriguing study options available once this is done, so.... going to get it done.  I'm striving for before my birthday in early June.

5. Household organization - my lifelong nemesis, but becoming SO critical if we are to move forward on our various desires.  I need to set up a systematic plan for decluttering and then maintanence that won't totally run away from me when my RA decides that I can't manage a work day.

6. Finally, this year, I will not only be serving on our UU congregation's board (until summer - I will not be re-running for next year), but I was elected Member Advocate on Cedarlight's Witan (their board).  It's a new position, and that's intimidating enough, but my continuing to feel like I am very new compared to so many others there is also intimidating.  But my intention is to do my very best, and I am humbled by being allowed to serve in this capacity, and very grateful for the opportunity to do so.  I'm thinking a lot of Isaac's Bonewitz' delightful maxim, "Why not Excellence?".

~~~

Sooo... TUSAL??  It is the Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long, where each New Moon, stitchers show off not their work, but their jar of thread snippets, or ORTS (Old Ratty Threads).  Why? Well...why NOT?!

Above is my jar over the last year - minus those threads that wound up in little pill bottles when I was out and about and forgot to toss them back into the main jar.  The threads will be set out for birds for nesting materials - I've done various things with them over  the years, from offering them to a good fire to using them to stuff ornaments, but I like offering them to our local birds best.

And so, on this first New Moon of 2014, my totally empty jar awaits a year's worth of filling up.  Into this jar will go the labor of my hands, the love I send to those I stitch for, the meditations that come while hands ply the needle, and the frustrations of threads frogged out again when a mistake has been made.  I look forward to it all.

Happy New Year!

~ Lynda

To Eat or Not to Eat

First, Tess Dawson wrote an entry for people who believe they are perceiving a god’s call, but are not sure. Her advice, in part:

Find something to represent the deity in question: picture from the internet, a symbol, a rock, a book, a cup, a doll, whatever. Set the image up on a table. Pour wine, vodka, good fruit juice, olive oil, milk, beer, kefir, perfume, or another fine beverage or liquid in a bowl or cup before the image. (Unless the deity in question has a history of wanting something like kool-aid or soda pop, you may want to avoid these.) If you’ve not been able to find out what liquid would be appropriate, go with your gut feeling. Bow down, prostrate yourself before the deity’s image, and pray. If you’re in this situation, the best prayer you can make is the one that is honest—there’s no formula here, no magic words, no formulaic incantation. 

Do not consume the liquid that you pour for the deity. Wait a cycle of a full day and night, then pour the liquid into the earth outside. Yes. Pour it into the earth. It is not "wasteful"--it was given to a deity and the deity consumed the essence of the liquid. By pouring it out, you are completing the process of sending it on to the deity. By drinking it instead, you may have interrupted this process (again, it can depend on context). 

Then she got flack from various quarters, offended at the idea that they should not consume the offerings themselves.

Galina Krasskova came to Tess's aid. After pointing out that her entry was specifically about deities one does not know -- and not those longstanding relationships where sharing the offerings might be an established practice -- she concludes:

(W)e act as though it is such a burden to give the least amount possible to our Gods. It should be a joy to give as much as we possibly can. ..and we wonder why our community is so fucked up. To my mind, it starts right here: with the penury, stinginess, and downright hostility toward sharing anything with the Gods. It starts right here. We have the community we deserve and oh we are so incredibly fucked.

Tess wrote a follow-up here, with links to some of the criticisms.

I generally don't share in the offerings I give to my gods, although we do allow our household canine nature spirit to consume offerings to Frigga after a period of time. It's not because I fear the gods would be offended or insulted so much as a desire for the gift to be a gift. However, we have ample evidence that offerings to the Greek and Roman gods often came in the form of a public event including a meal shared with the gods -- i.e., the people ate the meat, the gods got the bones and fat as a burned offering.

So I come down right in the middle on this topic. I do not agree that offerings should never be consumed by the offeror, but I do think it's a very good idea to not do so until you're sure it's ok with the deity in question.

Mostly, I would like for everybody to stop fighting over such things. Eat or don't eat the offerings as you choose, and let others find their own devotional practices. There is no pagan Pope or Magisterium to divine proper doctrine and enforce it on the laity in our religion. Discuss, debate and disagree as needed, but then go forward as fellow travelers on the path.

Multiplication Problem

Sermon delivered at Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church

Dec. 1, 2013

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void, and the spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God said “Let there be light,” and there was light.

These are familiar words to most of us, the first lines of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It establishes the primacy and power of God at the very start, as he wills into existence the heavens and the Earth.

Now, there is good reason to believe, as most scholars do, that these words are not the oldest in the Bible despite appearing first. Nevertheless, they are there in those opening lines for a reason. Jews and Christians who seek to read their scriptures from start to finish encounter their singular God right away, in all his omnipotent glory, the one who makes worlds through sheer force of will. The first chapter of Genesis brings God forth in power, might and majesty, which colors every subsequent story about him. Muslims also share this mythology, with some variations added in the Koran.

Now, consider some words that may be less familiar, the story of creation that the Hellenic poet Hesiod relates in his work called Theogony.

At the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundations of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day, whom she conceived and bare from union in love with Erebus. And Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself, to cover her on every side, and to be an ever-sure abiding-place for the blessed gods. And she brought forth long Hills, graceful haunts of the goddess-Nymphs who dwell amongst the glens of the hills. She bare also the fruitless deep with his raging swell, Pontus, without sweet union of love. But afterwards she lay with Heaven and bare deep-swirling Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne and gold-crowned Phoebe and lovely Tethys. After them was born Cronos.

The differences between this polytheistic creation story and the Judeo-Christian monotheistic one are apparent in this comparison. There is no single God creating things. Hesiod tells us that Chaos “came to be” without further explanation, and through sexual union in the divine realms came Earth, night, day, heaven and ocean. These are the primordial gods of the cosmos, and from them come still more divine powers.

In an Egyptian creation myth, water exists before anything else. The god Ra emerged from the chaotic water and began to give it form, creating other gods and shaping the cosmos. In some mythologies, such as the Norse, Babylonian and Hindu, creation requires the sacrifice of a first being.

When we talk about different religions, when we compare faith traditions or individual beliefs, one of the aspects that we consider is the view of the divine power. We talk about monotheism, atheism, polytheism, pantheism and other prefixes for the word theism with an assumption that we all understand the definitions. One God, many gods, no gods, etc. However, the really important contrasts between these perspectives are not merely mathematical. It’s not about multiplying the number of deities from one to many, or subtracting from one to zero, not in its essence.

The creation mythologies provide an immediate example of this. The God of the Jews – and later, Christians and Muslims – is shown from the very first words of the scripture to pre-exist. Before anything else was, God is. God creates the heavens and the earth and then gives them order and form. God is omnipotent, able to create a universe from nothing. God decrees the way things are to be: there is to be light, darkness, a sun and moon, land and water, plants and animals and, ultimately, human beings.

None of this way of thinking has a place in Hesiod’s story. There is chaos, and it organizes itself enough to bring forth the Earth and the power of love – Eros – from which comes all else. We see a similar pattern in other mythologies, no matter what specific stories they tell. The gods may shape the entire cosmos after they come to be, but they do not exist apart from or before its essence.

So what difference does this make? Isn’t this still basically about a number?

In our lives, we experience death, pain, injustice. People lose their livelihoods or their lives. People are persecuted for their beliefs, or their race or sexuality. Natural disasters injure, kill and impoverish billions of people. Epidemics of disease, or famine and drought, cause untold suffering, sickness and death. In every way, the world is less benevolent and more capricious than perhaps we think it should be. Explaining why this is the case is a challenge for any theistic religion.

For the past few millennia, in the Western world anyway, the most common religious answer has been that this world is only an imperfect, fallen creation in need of redemption. Religion has offered a set of principles to effect that redemption, the salvation of the world, principles derived from the revelation of God rather than our own senses and observations. The material world is profane – that is, ordinary – while the sacred lies in heaven, in the God who created the universe but stands outside of it, transcendent.

The extent to which anything in the world can be held sacred, in this view, is only inasmuch as it reflects the will of God – obedience to God’s laws, submission to God’s sovereignty. It could be argued that this is the basis of a moralistic approach to religion, a binary division of right and wrong, sacred and profane, godly and ungodly, virtue and vice, sin and righteousness.

This dualism is the prevailing view of the world today, and it pervades even schools of thought that reject the idea of deities. Atheism is usually defined as the lack of belief in God, or a belief that there is no God. It is contrasted to the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and left at that.

As much as this monotheistic dualism has dominated the western world’s view of the world for thousands of years, it was not always this way. Polytheism was the norm for a long time. Even the ancient Jews, generally assumed to have been monotheistic from the start, were actually polytheists – they believed the god Yahweh was one of many gods, the one who had chosen them as his people and forbidden them to worship the gods of other peoples. The idea that Yahweh was the only god, and the supreme omnipotent creator of the universe, developed much later in Israel’s history.

In the mythologies of most polytheistic religions, the gods are usually born from the universe; they are within it, part of it, not its external creators. To the polytheist, all of nature reflects the sacred, even the things that seem harsh, violent or tragic.

As author Dan McCoy puts it in his short but profound book, “The Love of Destiny:”

Where monotheism is a moralistic worldview, polytheism is a sacral one. The sacred is not remote from the world; it is the very essence of the world. All that is profane speaks to us of the sacred if we listen attentively enough, for the world we inhabit is the very flesh of spirit, its organic manifestation. The plural character of life, which mocks the moralist’s attempt to reduce it to an absolute good and true side, and an absolute evil and false side, is an expression of that which prevails on the divine plane, with its plurality of gods and goddesses. The polytheist does not wring his hands over the struggles and contradictions with which he is confronted, but confronts them in turn. Her overcoming of the world and being overcome by the world is the sacred’s overcoming of itself. She stares unflinchingly into its terror, its pain, its ruthlessness, and its unfairness – and, understanding that these are inseparably coupled with prosperity, joy, pleasure, and love, she is capable of seeing the sublime at work everywhere and of affirming the whole without exception.

McCoy, I think, summarizes the really important difference between monotheism and polytheism very well here. To the monotheist, the world with its pain and suffering and injustice is a thing – an object to be manipulated, to be used, to be exploited and, when it can be done, to be fixed. To the polytheist, the world with its pain and suffering and injustice is itself a spiritual entity, with which we must live in relationship. The monotheist sees the world as a broken thing in need of being redeemed. The polytheist sees the world as a living, interconnected system where pain and pleasure, life and death coexist in necessary balance.

This is an oversimplification in some respects. Any individual will have his or her own attitudes in conjunction with those implied by a religious point of view, and no one fits neatly into a categorical box. As an overall assessment, however, McCoy’s description is apt.

In a sense, religion in general is concerned with what is sacred, that is, divine or set apart for reverence – and what is profane, that is, ordinary, for common use. The French scholar Mircea Eliade, who did most of his work in the mid-20^th Century, notes that neither state can exist in pure form. Eliade did not grapple specifically with monotheism vs. polytheism; rather, he saw a divide between what he termed religious man and profane man.

We should remember that as Eliade uses the term, “profane” is not meant as an insult; it merely refers to a concern with the ordinary over the sacred. As Eliade saw it, profane man has desacralized the world. A tree is a tree, a river is a river, the sun is a ball of hydrogen. Religious man, by contrast experiences breaks, discontinuities, that connect the ordinary to the sacred.

However, neither kind of person can be completely within the worlds Eliade describes. Religious man lives in the ordinary world, and enacts rituals to establish a sacred space, a sacred time, to render ordinary objects into something more. In our rituals with ADF, for example, we light a fire, fill something with water and establish a representation of a tree, or, ideally, designate a real tree. In ritual, these things become portals to the world of the spirits, sacralized by our intention.

Profane man, on the other hand, sees the world as entirely ordinary, yet even he acknowledges some places or times as set apart – a birthday, the site of his wedding or his father’s grave, for example. These are vestiges of a religious sensibility that even the most secular person is likely to retain.

As I said, Eliade is not primarily concerned with distinguishing monotheism from polytheism, but coupled with the work of other scholars, we can see some connections. The monotheist, seeing the world as the unfeeling creation of a transcendent higher power, finds his sacred time and space in designated houses of worship – a church, a synagogue, a mosque. If he finds spiritual power in nature, it is as the product of the Creator. Nature is to God as the Mona Lisa is to DaVinci. The polytheist, on the other hand, finds spiritual power in nature because it is itself divine.

I’ve been using the terms monotheism and polytheism as a kind of shorthand here, but this divergence of worldview is broader than that. Monotheism informed the Enlightenment and the rise of secularism, while polytheism is related in its view of the sacred to animism and pantheism. In any of these isms, the difference, I would argue, is less about the specific beliefs regarding the number or nature of deity, and more about whether the material universe is regarded as inherently sacred or inherently profane. Even those who believe in no gods perceive the world as mechanistic or as alive, as sacred or profane. Dan McCoy counts modern science as a monotheism, not because of any scientific tenet regarding a deity, but because the assumptions that underlie science arise from the monotheistic view of the world.

The person that Eliade would call “profane man” experiences the world as a predictable place, governed by scientific laws and rules of society. If the man believes in God, his God is transcendent and apart from the creation. The sacred, for the profane man, may not be entirely absent, but it is not of the world; it is reached in prayer and in church ritual. In addition, God establishes morality and sets rules for his people to follow. And if he has his people, there are also people who are not his people. To this person, the world is subject to binary divisions.

The person who sees the divine power as infused in nature – whether he believes in the many gods of polytheism, or the diffuse god of pantheism, or a naturalistic humanism – perceives the world as a wondrous thing, alive with potential and power, every leaf, stone and creature holding inherent worth and identity. The sacred may not always be obvious, but it is always present, in any place, at any time. For this person, morality is more relative, polyvalent, not dictated by any single higher power but deduced from a blend of empathy and self-interest.

I do not argue that one of these views is superior to other, or even that either of these broad descriptions is likely to exist in pure form in anyone. I only wish to suggest that, like so many things, these simple labels for varying theologies have great depths of meaning that might not be apparent at first glance.