The Ramblings and Wanderings

Archive for the ‘Rantings & Ravings’ Category

I see them and it makes me shiver

Teenagers teaching workshops

With confidence and skill

Children who had magick sung

To them each night

Over their cradles

As the Moon rose in the window

I know it sounds cliché

But the future is in their hands

*

Grey haired Elders

Who bitch and complain

Certainly they have the right

To say they’d never do it again

They talk and rant about things

Out dated by twenty years

Embittered by drama and gossip

They walk away tired and disillusioned

I know it sounds cliché

But the future is leaving their hands

*

I hear the whispers from people who know

Things are changing in a quiet sort of way

Some folks are scared and worried

What does the future hold?

I see children run by at the Gathering

I smile and I say

I know it sounds cliché

But expect to be similarly surpassed

In ways we can’t even imagine

I see them and it makes me shiver

With anticipation

It’s Still Pagan

*

To the tune of “Its still Rock  n’ Roll” By Billy Joel

*

What’s the matter with the robes I’m wearing?

“Can’t you tell that your cord’s too wide?”

Maybe I should buy a hooded cloak

Like back in the burning times

Where have you been in the broom closet honey?

“You can’t dress witchy ’till you spend a lot of money”

*

Everybody’s talking about the new Path

Funny, but its still NeoPagan to me

*

What’s the matter with the broom I’m riding?

“Can’t you tell that it’s out of style?”

Should I get a store bought besom?

“Are ready for us to laugh and smile?

Nowadays, you can’t be too traditional

Your best bet’s besom made exactly the way we tell ya”

*

Dark Goth, Light Fluff – even if it’s old junk

It’s still NeoPagan to me

*

Oh, it doesn’t matter what they say in the Circle

‘Cause it’s always been the same old scene

There’s a new Grove in town, but you can’t get the word

From a story in a magazine

Aimed at your average teen

*

How about a pair of pentacle tattoos

And a dress from the renaissance?

“Well, you could really be Selena Fox, baby

If you would just paint it all black

Don’t waste your money on a shiny new cauldron

You get more mileage from a cheap-o pot”

*

New Age, Faery, Wicca craze

Anyways, it’s still NeoPagan to me

*

What’s the matter with Coven I’m joining?

“Can’t you tell that they’re out of touch?”

Should I try to be a solitary Pagan?

“If you are, then you think too much

Don’t you know about the new Wicca, honey?

All you need are books and a whole lotta money”

*

It’s the next thing, Heathen, Druid, Celtic

Anyways, it’s still NeoPagan to me

Everybody’s talking about the new Path

Funny, but its still NeoPagan to me

*

By Juniper 2006

How can finding the right thing to say

Be so simple?

Words drip from their lips

Like flawless pearls

My mouth is full of marbles

The right thing to do

Seems as bright and clear as day

As they move gracefully

And with an inborn ease

While I stammer and stumble with each step

The right thing to wear and the perfect hair

Adorn their elegant bodies

Complimenting style and finesse

Eyebrows delicately raised in response

To my failed attempts at dignity

Did they have mothers

Who were just as refined?

Who taught them manners and propriety

Until it became as natural as breathing?

I cannot help but wonder

If only I had a mother capable of tact

Would I socialize with such

Utter nimbleness?

Intelligent conversation

Sails past my ears

Their words never take a wrong turn

As I struggle not to misspeak

To not interrupt or repeat

Mindless pleasantries surround me

I struggle to maintain a smile

Grateful that they deign

To tolerate my ineptness

At least for a little while

Then I take that inevitable misstep

Exposing my clumsiness

I cringe and shudder

As they cluck their tongues

Gossip behind my broken back

Speak over my bowed head

And assume only the worst intent

Silent tears slip unempathized

Down my burning cheeks

As I silently wish I had just half

Of their shine and polish

Excuse me please

Which way to the can?

I think I am about to have an anxiety attack

Last night I dreamed that I was on a long, multi-day, chartered bus trip with many of my co-religionists. The hired bus driver was a quiet and professional Muslim.

My fellow bus mates became very upset that the bus driver did not want to make friends and socialize with them. They were angry that he refused to listen to the usual “Pagans are not Satan worshippers, we are good people” spiel.

It go the point that most of them had all piled up at the front of the bus demanding to know why the bus driver wouldn’t accept the fact that Wiccans and Pagans are good people too! “Why didn’t he join us for meals and talk to us?”

The driver kept repeating that he was just a bus driver and it wasn’t his job.

The Pagans grew more and more insistent and upset. Sad and angry the bus driver did not want to be friends or hear about how they are good people. “Why won’t you validate us?’ they cried. “You monotheists are all the same! Judgmental!”

The driver was getting so distracted that the bus began to swerve on the hiway. I climbed my way into the aisle of the bus and hollered at everyone for their attention.

I said:

“Guys, he is just the bus driver. He is a professional. It’s his job to get us home not make friends or learn about the Lord and Lady. He doesn’t give a shit what you believe.”

They all turned and looked at me, pouting. I waved my fist in the air and shouted; “Everyone doesn’t need to accept you! Now quit distracting the driver before you get us all killed! Stupid assholes! Sit down and shut up!”

I owe you guys a post! Its been a while since I wrote some long, rambling, scattered rant so here ya go:

In my opinion the universe (or should I say multiverse) is just to dammed big and complicated for statements like “there is no such thing as luck”

It’s a great big multiverse and we’re all really puny, we’re just tiny little specks … its big and black and inky and we’re all really dinky. It’s a BIG multiverse and we’re not.

Perhaps it’s the pluralists or shamanic practitioner in me, but I cannot conceive of a multiverse where luck, coincidence, fate, destiny, force of will, personal responsibility, social responsibility, divine presence, divine will and a million other factors do not exist all at once. The black and white thinking where we see all or nothing, or one or the other just doesn’t make sense to my mind. I believe in fate and luck, I believe in personal power and responsibility and all the other things all together. I believe there are factors involved in the operation of the worlds (deliberate plural worlds there) and more forces at work than we could ever be fully aware of at any given moment or even over the course of one single century long lifetime.

I am uncomfortable with blanket statements such as “there is no fate” or “there is no luck” the human mortal mind is just too simple and too small to fully comprehend the wizard behind the curtain. We can barely perceive that there is a curtain.

I do believe that we create our own reality, not in the sense of the Secret, but in the sense that we are responsible for how we choose to perceive things and deal with them.

I agree that we are often more responsible for the things that happen to us than we often think we are, or can see as it is happen to us.

However I refuse to believe that only we are responsible for the goings on in our lives. That we cause these things by being “closed or “open” or through thought or visualization… or even through our actions and words. I will agree that often these things are a factor, even a major factor. But I cannot accept that they are the only cause.

I refuse to accept any claim that we cause everything that happens in our lives to happen.

I will not believe that any child being raped has brought about her abuse upon herself in any way shape or form. No child is personally responsible for being raped. As an adult that child will be responsible for her own healing, yes, but never should that child ever be considered responsible for what was done to her.

When people claim that it’s all a matter of personal responsibility they do so without thought for the child being molested. They do so without thought for the woman helplessly watching her son be executed by a guerrilla militia, they do so without thought for the people swept away in a tsunami.

To make such a blanket, black and white statement as everything is a matter of choice and personal responsibility makes as much sense in my mind as to say that the people in Haiti really DID cause the earthquake to happen to them by practicing Voodoo. It relies on a similar kind of logic.

The multiverse does not fit into boxes. It cares nothing for our definitions or attempts at explaining its myriad of processes. The forces of the worlds, both seen and unseen cannot be understood, let alone articulated by your or I. We cannot even begin to comprehend them.

Therefore I wholeheartedly reject all blanket statements such as “there is no such thing as luck”

It’s easy to say things like “everything is a matter of personal responsibility” and “there’s no such thing as luck” when sitting in an air conditioned home in one of the safest neighbourhoods in North America. Try farming…try simple living, try living in such a way that something as fickle and unpredictable as a hail storm can mean the difference of having enough food to eat and enough money to support you through winter.

Physical magazines are dying out for four main reasons:

1) Most people in Western Society under the age of 30 learned to type on a keyboard right along with learning how to write on paper. Folks are just as comfortable reading on a Kindle or PC as reading a book or magazine. Also digital information can be stored on a single, small external hard-drive whereas magazines fill boxes that take up much more space and can become fire hazards. The days of keeping old magazines in boxes for decades are coming to a close.

2) Magazines are made of paper. Paper is made of trees and deforestation is bad. Also most magazines are made of that glossy stuff you can’t even recycle, compost properly, build a decent fire with, or lay down to paper train your puppy.

3) There’s a recession going on. Rather a lot of us are trapped in dead end entry level position jobs because a certain generation didn’t save up and thus retire when they were supposed to. Now that they are retiring, they are expecting us to help take care of them, and our own families, while stuck in dead end entry level positions. Also most of them have remarried so most of us don’t have two parents, we have two sets of ageing parents. That’s if you have a job at all right now. My point? Magazines take up disposable income people just don’t have.

4) Most stuff found in Pagan periodicals are opinion pieces, 101 re-hash, “what I did for Beltaine” articles, advertising and bad poetry. In short, it’s all crap I can get for free reading people’s blogs.