Quaker Pagan Reflections

If I were a Christian Quaker, I would be strongly drawn to the tradition of plain dress. Perhaps it's good that I'm not, in that I don't have to do the difficult work of discernment that I probably would if I were. It does seem to me that plain dress, like all the Quaker testimonies, needs to have its seed in a spiritual leading, and I cannot be sure that my inclination toward it isn't merely personal. Pagans as a group are, after all, awfully taken with costume and theater, and even if I am extremely plain for a Pagan, I can't be entirely sure that part of my attraction to plain dress isn't simply to yet another cool set of threads. The real issue is probably deeper than that, though. It is my desire to live absolutely, visibly, and identifiably as someone with a peace testimony. Another of my favorite students is entering the military. He has done early enlistment and will be leaving us at midyear, and he brought me in a picture of himself in his fatigues.

I keep thinking I'm gonna give up memes, and then there will be one I just can't resist. Like this one... Which I flat out stole from Bright Crow (and he, in turn, stole from Igraine ). If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now (even if we don't speak often or have never met), please post a comment with a completely made up, fictional memory of you and me. It can be anything you want - good or bad - but it has to be fake. When you're finished, post this little paragraph in your blog and see what your friends come up with... Well? How about it? Anybody remember the time our flea market booth specializing in Hollow Earth artifacts was raided by Atlantean Customs officials? How about the prank with Captain Scarlet and the Voice of the Mysterons? Or that embarassing incident with the yak?

Came across this quote the other day: Ecstasy doesn't last. But it cuts a groove for something that does last. --E.M. Forster Yet another reason to love that writer...

Teaching has been both easier and harder than ever for me this year. It has been a really tiring year; I don't remember having such long days since my first year in the classroom. Probably that's because I'm teaching a course I've never taught before, and I'm putting in enough extra time developing my own approach to it that I'm just putting in more time day by day. It's been satisfying, though. In three out of my four classes, I basically never have a bad day—once the kids are there in front of me, I'm having fun. The fourth of my preps is more challenging, but not in any horrible, what's-wrong-with-our-civilization way. They're just kids who aren't always wild about being in English class by the end of the day. But not a one of them is mean, and not a one of them is without an endearing trait or two. There's always a class or two that's tougher to teach than the rest—that's the law of averages, I think. But though we

I'm up to Acts in my blitzkrieg tour of the Bible. (Clearly, there's a whole lot of prophets I've missed and will need to go back for--this Biblical literacy notion is not for sissies. ) I don't believe I've ever read Acts before. Though I was not raised Christian, still, I've dipped into the Bible once or twice over the years. I've done my time in Deuteronomy, having had it quoted at me by the soapbox preachers at my colleges; I've waded before through the Sea of Reeds (or the Red Sea--both are fine by me) with the Israelites heading out of Egypt--first in a children's Bible I read as a girl, and later in the King James I borrowed from the public library. (And with Charleton Heston, of course. How many of us owe our limited Bible literacy to the Omega Man ?) I've skimmed the occasional psalm, and made it most of the way through the gospels thanks to an adorable little palm-sized book another campus Christian group was handing out for free.

No, listen--! Marriage is wonderful. It really, truly is. Of all the many wonderful and miraculous things that I've experienced in my life, from the smell of clover in my six-year-old nose to the sound that a good dog makes settling at my feet by a fire, the best, the absolute most wonderful and beautiful best thing of all is being married to Peter. I know--not exactly interesting to those of you who are not married to Peter. I'm sorry. But to those of you who are also married well, caught up also in a deep spring of love with your spouse, isn't it the truth? What is more worth the price of admission than this? To those of you who do not know if there is a God or any gods, or who believe that the universe is flat and without life or meaning, let me say this: I can't prove to you that God exists or that Spirit exists, any more than I can prove to you that there is a difference between what is so cloyingly (but correctly) known as True Love and its simulacrum: convenie