Now Is Always A Beginning

     According to seemingly valid historical documents, Columbus was a jerk. I refuse to celebrate Columbus Day anymore. When people rant about how much of a jerk he was I totally concur! I just read a rant from someone about how Thanksgiving too should be shunned, how it is about respecting a history of genocide. The Pilgrims did also have their fair share of faults, and I won't defend them one iota. However, I don't think they hold the rights to thankfulness. Just because they had a famous harvest meal in the first years of their colonization does not mean that I need to be ashamed of my harvest meals. They also had another harvest meal on Llammas a few years later, it is less popular, but does that make them Catholic or Pagan? Harvest feasts are not exclusive to anyone. Being thankful does not hold any guilt by association. What you choose to respect is your business, here in this house we are not expressing thankfulness to Pilgrims. We are simply being thankful. It is good for the soul. I do not pretend to understand the deities, but I do believe they exist. I do believe it is also wise to express thankfulness to all Benevolences.

    I do not condone the ill-treatment of anyone. I have an ever-growing respect for the beliefs and lifestyles of indigenous people. When I was born, here in this state, all that had been long gone. I can't turn back the hands of time. I can move forward with as much awareness as possible, I can be thankful for the chance to live another day, to appreciate the divine blessings, to delve ever deeper into the old stories and learn about the ancient spirits, to taste the tastes and hear the sounds and contemplate a way to infuse peace into the future.

     Tonight is a full moon. We are breathing, my house is bustling with life and love. May the good things that we are thankful for ripple out positive vibrations and may the good things that others are thankful for do the same. May the magic of love and blessing heal the wounds of the past and create wisdom and symbiosis for the future. Now is always a beginning.

Curses and Blessings

I dedicate this post to the current Gemini Full Moon, that no doubt inspired my urge to write today.


According to the Biblical story, God did not tell Eve personally to not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, only Adam was told directly by God. (Genesis 2:15-18) Eve was privy to an embellished version, since she knew enough of it to talk to the serpent about consequences (Genesis 3:3-5), but what she said to the serpent was an embellishment on what we are told God said to Adam, adding "you must not touch it." Isn't that the way of it? Embellishments, there are so many of them in patriarchal religions. Extra consequences, when we have plenty enough of them without making up extras, why do that?

I have often mused over the Eden story. I am a woman. Paul said that Eve was the sinner, not Adam. That Eve brought the curse down on all our heads and that is why she needs to sit down, shut up, be pregnant. No forgiveness for the mistake of Eve, not for Eve, not for all women.... according to what we are told Paul said in 1 Timothy 2:12-14.

Of course, any woman with any self-respect is going to cringe at such a statement, and men too, I should hope! For centuries this mindset of Paul has been used to shape the structures of religious congregations and religious households and even entire societies. Second rate citizens, that is what women have been. Feminism got ahold of that injustice and shook the bugs out of it, bringing the outrageous nature of it into the light. Feminism swings the pendulum pretty far while striving for women's equality, and personally, sometimes I think the point gets kind of lost, but I am grateful for the clean slate that they have been attempting to offer my generation. "Do what you want, girls, we have cleared the path for you!" Why, thank you, thank you very much.

I was reading some thoughts of the Taoist, Osho, this morning. He was referring to the Adam and Eve story, linking it to the Mary and Jesus story. His thoughts were along the lines of "through woman the curse entered the world, and through woman the curse was broken." At first, I did not like what he was saying. After all, Adam gave Eve misinformation and she didn't receive consequences until Adam ate the fruit, so surely Eve is the one who was not at fault, but....

The other thing I have come to notice, thanks to the outrageous claims made by Paul of the Bible, is that Adam was created first, then Eve, so that makes him boss, according to Paul (1 Timothy 2:13). With that kind of math, everything created before Adam would be boss over Adam, no? What makes more sense and is also stated in the Genesis story, is that Adam was to be boss over all of creation, or so it gets translated by much of today's Christians. What I think it is really saying is that Adam is to be the caretaker, the nurturer, the nanny, the keeper, of all that was created before him, and the same for Eve. Although, Eve was especially given the task of caring for Adam, which, in the same respect could get misinterpreted as being the boss of Adam, and from the musing of some anthropologists, that is exactly what the world was like for thousands of years, matriarchal. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came to be known as some of the first famous Patriarchs. The stories have all been filtered through the subsequent ruling of patriarchs. Things are now beginning to come to light again, the true order of things, the symbiosis that is meant to be. Men are to care for all that is, and women are to care for mankind, causing much to overlap.

So, what does the Genesis story say to me now? It says that Eve invited Adam to do something that was not in his best spiritual interest and she knew it. The story of Mary, on the other hand, is a story of a mother's sacrificial love, supporting her beloved child through the hardest choices that any mother could have to face. Her son was tortured for the best interest of the spirituality of mankind. At least, that is what the stories say.

I can sort of see now why Catholics revere Mary so highly, but I don't see why that didn't translate into a better world. Why women continued to be treated badly because of Eve. Paul is the anti-Christ, in my opinion. The Christ is alive and well amongst those that understand the Christ-consciousness, and that enlightenment holds the key to understanding true salvation.

What are we being saved from? Curses, I suppose. What are curses? Imbalances. Who curses? I don't know for sure, maybe everyone that utters a negative statement or desire, but I do believe that the counter-curse is blessing. "Bless those that curse you." (Luke 6:28) That is the basis for being a Green Witch. Thank you, Jesus the Christ, who I believe was the first "Druid," the founder of the people of the faith, the Fae People...  Friend of the Faeries. Eventually the Quakers were also to be called the Friends, a people who began to experience the enlightenment of the Christ-consciousness in spite of the overwhelming religious dogma of their era.

I have noticed three out-of-season blooms in our yard this autumn. According to superstition they are cursed flowers, do not pick them, and especially do not bring them into your home, they say. I remember the curse breaker, "Bless those that curse you." I blessed the little things, after all, you shouldn't shoot the messenger. I am guessing that they are a sign of the polluted state of Gaia. We should certainly learn how to bless the cursed. Bless all that you come in contact with.


One more opinion regarding Paul of the Bible, he parroted. Much of what Paul writes is not original thought. What makes him a novelty is that he also includes some original thought amongst all the plagiarisms. He snags some amazing words from some amazing people and he gets credit for them. In other words, not everything attributed to Paul is crap. Like all really great liars, the trouble lies in a  small percentage of his propaganda, namely the order of things and the embellishments that go over and above what Christ taught. Christians tend to see Paul as a great clarifier, an additional blessing, because Christ and the many, many followers that he personally taught (1 John 1:1 'whom we have seen with our eyes, whom we have touched') weren't quite enough for us? (Sarcastic) Apparently, the simple instructions of Christ were too confusing for many... "Love? Seriously? There has got to be more," they waited and then, "Subjugation of women! Thank you, Paul, now we have something to work with!" Religion in general, I'm currently annoyed by it, but I do think there is much to learn from the past. Stories, they teach, but different people learn different things.

In the Old Testamant, the word that gets translated as prophet (nabi) means prophet/speaker. In the New Testament the word that gets translated as prophet (dikaios) means prophet/poet.


Translating according to Amy: (Words of the Christ from Matt. 10:40-42): Anyone who accepts you accepts me, and anyone who accepts me accepts the One who sent me. Whoever accepts a poetic-seer as a poet-seer receives a poet-seer's reward, and whoever accepts a divinely impartial man receives an divinely impartial man's reward, and whoever gives even a cup of water to a little one due to the example of learning from me shall surely be rewarded.



“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” 
― Walt Whitman

Current Events

It isn't that I don't view "refugees" as I would view my own friends and neighbors. I view them exactly like my friends and neighbors. I don't particularly get along well with some of my neighbors, and many of my friends and I overlook the ever-growing gulf of religious differences, at least the ones that still call themselves my "friends" seem to. I also have an ever-growing list of friends that don't have to overlook anything to appreciate the friendship, delightful, that.

The current "refugee crisis" is a crisis of underdogs, basically. The ones that are without the most violent power are seeking refuge from the ones who are displaying the strongest shows of violent power. If some of the tables were turned and my radical, fundamental Christian friends and neighbors found themselves in a similar plight, you better believe they would get increasingly violent and make large violent displays of power, for awhile anyway, until they ran out of bullets and then they would also seek refuge and have terribly sad stories. I would probably end up seeking refuge as well,
even deer hunting season around here leaves me considering refuge elsewhere! Even though I am a pacifist and not a Christian, wherever we would find ourselves looking for a safe haven they would not be able to distinguish us and our motivations from each other, they would not be able to weigh the violence in our hearts, or lack thereof, and they would not be able to ascertain our futures. They would not know that I was raised a Christian, but have chosen a deeper, older faith. They would not know if we had something beneficial to offer their homeland, or if we were a doomsday threat. That is exactly how I view everyone, not just refugees. Everyone is a book unable to be judged by its cover. Everyone. Every single person we encounter every single day, some of them are living with extreme abuse in their personal lives and some of them will become abusers, maybe they already are, some won't. Some will justify abuse of others due to the abuse they have personally witnessed. Some will be able to let the wrongs go, probably few, but some. Some will learn to be discerning and insightful and will be the gems that the world needs to become a better place.

Suffering adjusts discernment. Sadly, abuse tends to create abusers, that is a very unpopular fact and it is not conclusive. The problem with the refugee crisis is that people see themselves. They know their own human nature and they know that given the same situation they would be a predictably unpredictable lot (like saying 80% will be violent, and 20% will be peaceful, but not knowing who falls into which category), they already are predictably unpredictable and they are very afraid of what suffering would show them about themselves.

We cannot see things in others that do not exist somewhere in ourselves. The question is, what are we cultivating and justifying?

Going the Way of the Buffalo.... or the Goddess... You Decide.

Who am I that you should listen to me? I am nobody, nothing, not much of anything significant. Almost no one reads this blog anymore since I have dropped the drama, it is boring. I am just a middle-aged white homeschool mommy blogger with a high school education and a fascination for seeking.... something. This is my most real identity (I also don't like commas, but sometimes they are necessary). It isn't my only identity. There are days when I am sure that I mean something, that I am highly significant, but those feelings are brief, fleeting, they are ants under the giant magnifying glass of society. There are also days when I am the child that my parents hate or even worse, don't think about at all. I am worse than dead to them, they don't grieve my absence or wish for more days with me, they wish I was never born. I have come to realize that is also a view that society has, over-population, wishing that more and more people just don't get born. Wow. Happy Days... not.

I started to reflect on thoughts like this first thing this morning when my alarm went off. NPR was talking about a recent study that highlighted a "disturbing" trend among the middle-aged white population that topped out their education with a high school diploma. Hmmm... I am part of the middle aged white population with a high school diploma. I have a homeschool diploma. I went to school for 12 years, K-11, and then I homeschooled my last year. I didn't actually need to. I kind of thought that I didn't actually need to, but when I had a meeting with the vice-principal of my high school about graduating early, since most of my classes were with the class above me, he told me that I could not due to needing more credits. So, I homeschooled my senior year, since I was bored with school, and when I went for my end of the year evaluation for approval for a certified diploma the evaluator said that I didn't even need the last year, I had plenty of credits from school. I had mixed emotions about that. I have chosen to home educate my own children, but every year I ask them if they prefer to be home or if they would like to try out school. They do not want to commit to school. I don't blame them, but I do wonder what life has in store for them. I don't know how homeschoolers fit into the middle-aged white "dilemma." I guess we will find out.

As for me, like I said, I seek, and sometimes I find. Through my seeking I have discovered the possibility that people need communities. It is a strong possibility. People are generally not designed to be solitary, but they do need the freedom of personal space and solitude. It is a confusing blend, but we see this demonstrated with chickens. If you force too many chickens to be together in a confined space they turn on each other, but if you let them wander freely about they flock and stick up for each other. They prefer to flock with other chickens that look like them, "birds of a feather flock together," they really do, but if none of them actually look like each other they will hang with chickens simply because they are chickens, if they don't have other chickens they will find ducks or geese or peafowl, if they don't have those they will find whatever they can, they like companionship, but they don't like crowded spaces. We are much the same, but the world is so full of crowded spaces, and when we do flock together, much like chickens, we establish pecking orders and territorial flocking spaces. It is kind of simple, kind of. Factory farmed chickens are raised in large, crowded spaces, they are debeaked, and deinstincted, much like people. We too are being raised in large, crowded space, deweaponed and deinstincted. It is hard to trust our own kind, we are so far removed from our instincts, we don't even know which feather we are in order to identify the others that look like us, we are having a hard time seeing our souls, and that is really what defines us.

Does this dilemma have a story? Yes, a long, foggy, complicated one, but the short, oversimplified version is that well-meaning concepts have been attached to pendulums that swing wildly out of control. What is good in moderation is not good in excess, basically. Sharing one's spiritual beliefs, for instance, is a great thing to do, forcing those beliefs on entire civilizations at the cost of death is not a good thing to do, yet it has been done for centuries, therein lies the root of the current problems. The solution is a tiny little sprout, I hope it is a stubborn weed.

The solution lies in the power of our instinctive spirit not dying when they confine us and debeak us. The solution lies in realizing that ants are not defined by the magnifying glass. The solution lies in using those beaks for what they should be used for, not for defense, they are great for defense, but they are best used for foraging. We are the same, what we use to harm others is really just meant for foraging, mindfully. Chickens are not vegetarians, nature is not vegetarian. There are vegetarians in nature, and carnivores eat them like big, yummy plant byproducts. That does not mean that vegetarians should be disrespected, or that they are not part of the circle of life. It also does not mean that carnivores should be disrespected, or that they are not part of the circle of life. It does mean that there is a circle of life, with a balance of life and death. What society offers us is a circle of death, and no balance. Look around you, are you being defined by a symbol of death, such as, say, a cross, or a gun? It is your identity, you are very proud of it, you would peck your neighbor to death to defend that identity of yours, and you wouldn't feel guilty about it. Or would you... who are you? Who am I? What happens when we die? What happens when our neighbor dies? Is there hope in these answers, or fear? Hope and fear get so intertwined. "I know I am going to heaven not hell!" I have heard since I was a wee lass. The fear of hell seems to balance out the joy of heaven, for so many. I too entered into that mindset as a child, but as I became more and more of a seeker I just wasn't all that happy about being part of an elite minority. I wanted to be part of a symbiosis of life. I wanted everyone and everything to have a beautiful part in this life and in whatever comes next. All rainbows and butterflies and light and joy! I hoped, then I had a nightmare that all the trees in my yard were chopped down, that there was nothing but sunshine, so much sunshine! I realized that darkness has a good place, but are there types of darkness, surely darkness is dangerous, metaphorically speaking, or is it just metaphor? We are a solar-powered planet, I think, it seems anyway. We do literally need light, but we also need darkness, literally and metaphorically. That is what the religions don't excel at, the cooling, refreshing darkness, the balance. They show us the dangers of excessive darkness, and they are correct, when the pendulum swings too far there is trouble, but they don't highlight the dangers of excessive light. They showed us the cross and we have run so far the other way that we are standing thirsty in a desert of light, a crowded desert.

The information shared by NPR this morning was like an arrow of poignant thought for me. I then looked up another article online by the NYTimes. (Here is a link Middle-Aged White American Crisis) A lack of college education is being emphasized as a determining factor, but I am seeing something deeper. I heard the article to be saying that out of an elite majority in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" we have raised a hopeless generation, disconnected from their communities and disgusted with their society. There are some that fit in with societal standards, they are the ones that go to college and semi-happily find purpose in the "rat race." Have you read, "Who Moved My Cheese?" The other ones, the white ones, the enslavers, the ones who aren't allowed to have white pride, the ones that have been given the benefit of being born in America with all the privileges of being a caucasian in the "best country in the world," the ones that have no excuse to not succeed, because they have been given every advantage, the ones that weren't born in huts without running water, the ones that have achieved the much promoted high school diploma.... they have decided that life hurts. Life hurts so much that they need to numb the pain with whatever they can get their hands on. That reminds me of another article I read recently about the nature of addiction. (Here is a link Human Connection and the Roots of Addiction) Seems that people need people, and not just to be forced to be together in confined spaces. Learn from the chickens, folks. Why does that chicken keep crossing the road? I think the road might be the answer. We have had several chickens hit by cars, sadly. We confine them in movable coops, but sometimes they just love to run about. They are so happy running about that I let them take their chances with it, life is short anyway. Turns out that chickens really like standing in the middle of the road, a much disdained place by society, but if you look at it from the perspective of the pendulum or scales, it looks more like balance. To be able to stand in the middle of the road without getting hit by the speed of "progress," that is what "underachieving" middle-aged white America is trying to do. They aren't dying in huts, but they don't want to be part of the rat race, and the only place left is the middle of the road. It is a lonely place to be, but if there were more and more and more chickens hanging out in the middle of the road there would probably be more cars stopping rather than running right over them, the chickens might get a tad more respect, but in America you aren't allowed to have a flock of chickens hanging out on the road. We are civilized, for crying out loud. Well, our suicide and addiction rates don't look too civilized, folks. Sorry, but we need a few more flocks of chickens to teach us about what we are doing wrong.

I really wanted to talk about trees. I think trees are the answer, and wolves, and sharks and butterflies and rainbows... and.... what does it matter what I think? No one reads this anyway, and even if they did, I don't have a college education, so my thoughts don't matter. I am just a middle-aged white American housewife, no one listens to them, not their parents, not their children, not their friends, not their government, not their God. Their Goddess on the other hand.... have you met her? Don't let that pendulum swing too far, though, the God and Goddess thrive on balance. The Chalice and the Athame, the cup and the knife, what do they symbolize to you?