Quaker Pagan Reflections

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff Sometimes I think of my early development in Paganism as a path between two poles: Beltane and Samhain, exuberant innocence and painful deepening… Rites of Spring and Twilight Covening . In some ways, my growth in Wicca was pretty far along by the time Doug, Kirk, and I visited Rites of Spring together. We had coalesced into a strong working coven, and I had progressed far enough in my own development to make a capable acting High Priestess for the group—over the year previous, through dreams, trance journeys, and finally ritual work, I’d deepened my relationship with the goddess I call “R...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff When I first became Pagan, I was extremely idealistic about Paganism and what it could do for the world. I was profoundly affected by vision's like Starhawk's ecofeminism --the idea that most of our present ills are a result of a patriarchal world view that objectified women and the planet, sacrificing things of spiritual and lasting value for short term gains for the few, those few being mainly white guys in suits. Pagans were going to resacralize the earth, renew real respect between genders and races, and build a new ideal based on community. And our ideas were going to spread, be...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff So, now... where was I, before I so rudely interrupted me? ;) When we eventually left graduate school, my then-husband and I settled in a small town in Vermont, where he was hired on to teach in the electrical engineering department of a small college, and I began looking around for work--in social work, not in law. Things were pretty much perfect: surrounded by beautiful countryside, saving our pennies for the down payment on a house (which we eventually bought together), planning a family, and starting to build our individual careers. We practiced amateur astronomy (I under his careful tutelage) and moved fro...

All posts in this series: Part I: Getting (and Losing) That Old Time Religion Part II: Coming Home Part III: The Fool's Journey Part IV: The Underworld Part V: Seven of Cups Part VI: A Letter and a Kiss Part VII: Morticia Loves Gomez Part VIII: Nora Part IX: Felicia Hardy and the Tower of Babel Part X: When Babel Fell Part XI: Community 2.0 Part XII: This Forgiveness Stuff From time to time, someone does ask about my spiritual journey. Mainly, it's Quakers, asking about what Paganism is, though sometimes it will be a co-worker, wanting to know more either about how I came to call myself Quaker, or what on earth I mean by Pagan. I should probably mention that, despite my best efforts to be discrete about my religion at work, I was outed as Wiccan within six months of becoming a teacher by kids who know how to use Google. This blog, which at least features current information, that reflects my beliefs and practices in the present, is at least partially a response to that. In a...

I spent most of the day catching up on reading blogs and then journalling. Nothing I feel ready to share, yet, at least with anybody but Cat. In the mean time, here's my own book pile. I've cheated a little bit and included some books that I've just finished and one that I'm about to start, but it's all within a two-week window. I had brain surgery, what's your excuse? is an autobiographical account of humorist Suzy Becker's recovery from a brain tumor. It's laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking at the same time, and I'm wolfing it down in huge mouthfulls. Xenocide satisfies the craving I often get for hard science fiction. Well, can any story that features faster-than-light travel and telepathic communication with a sencient computer really be called "hard" SF? It was good, though. A fun read, but also pretty thought provoking. All of Anna Quindlen's books, regardless of plot, are really about people in mid-life thinking about ...

This is in response to a challenge from another blogger, Pagan scholar Chas Clifton, author of the influential and entertaining blog, Letter From Hardscrabble Creek . I think a lot of us have a "book pile"--that jumble of nightstand books that we are actively reading on a daily basis, dipping into every few days, reading for recreation/reading for work, or anticipating reading and have just peeked under the cover for the first chapter or two... At any rate, I do. Maybe it's just a reflection of my jumbled mind. Maybe it's a reflection of my jumbled mind that, though this picture was only taken a day or two ago, the contents have already changed! The fluid nature of my book pile makes it hard for any one snapshot to stay accurate for more than a few days--kind of like pictures of really little children that way. In my stack, you can see R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy , which I'm reading partly in response to a student reader in my 9th grade English class...