The Ramblings and Wanderings

Posts Tagged ‘values’

Wear socks that don’t match

Especially on Tuesday and Friday

And always with shorts

Wear a wrinkled pink blouse

With a bright red skirt

Red and pink are in the same family

Aren’t they?

*

Don’t get subtle hints

Be confused by mixed messages

And laugh at inappropriate jokes

Always say what you mean

And mean what you say

Because no one else does it that way

*

Take everyone at face value

Be open and honest

In everything you do

Having no hidden meaning behind your words

No hidden agenda behind your actions

Is sure to frighten and confuse

*

Be loud and boisterous in public

Quiet and reserved at home

Have moods that are affected by the weather

Remember to be daring and bold

Always act as if you’ll never grow old

*

Wave with both hands

Bounce into rooms

Offer everyone a hug

And feel bad when they refuse

Dance when you are happy

And wilt when you are sad

*

When there is a job to do

Be the first to volunteer

Once people start to gossip

That you’re trying to take charge

Don’t volunteer the next time

And they will complain about that too

*

Be friendly to everyone

Regardless of this or that

Refuse to take sides in disputes

At least, most of the time

See both sides of a debate

Try to get other people to do that too

It helps if you’re cute

*

Be more comfortable around pets than kids

Wear pyjamas all day

Don’t go to bed until 2

Read lots of books

Watch too much Star Trek

Be sure to listen to Punk Rock too

*

Walk widdershins in a Wiccan Circle

Forget which way is East

Write whole Invocations

And don’t remember a word of them

When asked to bring a broom

Show up with a robotic vacuum

*

Speak your mind all the time

And as for peer pressure

Never give in

No matter they may say

Or how they treat you

Always love yourself first

And promise you’ll never change you!

From Fire Lyte, over at Inciting a Riot:

So, Project Pagan Enough is a movement, a cause, a Harmonious Riot that includes bloggers, podcasters, pagans, non-pagans, me, you, and the whole pagan community. It is my hope that the Project Pagan Enough logo becomes a beacon of progress and change for those of us living a magical life. By putting the Project Pagan Enough icon on your podcast’s site, blog, or other website, you’re making a set of promises:

1. You are pagan enough, despite how you look, act, smell, dress, believe, or are.
2. You recognize that others are pagan enough despite their appearance, smell, manner of dress, belief, practice, or other aspect.
3. You recognize that you can have an academic debate on the finer points of belief or practice, but that it does not take away from someone else’s level of being pagan.
4. You welcome, befriend, and encourage others in the pagan community despite their appearance, dress, or other physical or superficial characteristic.
5. You promise to treat members of other faiths, despite the faith, with honest-to-goodness fairness, equality, and grace, not judging them or their faith based on the actions of fringe members of their same faith.

Like the points of the pentacle, these 5 tenets of Project Pagan Enough work together and will, I hope, launch our community into a new era of tolerance, love, and all of the qualities we like to think we have.

You may copy the Project Pagan Enough logo for your own website – below – but please make sure to link back to the original blog page to allow others to know what promise you’ve made to the community at large.

I wrote this one years ago, but I still bring it out every spring when the roads open up and the construction season begins and since the Olympics are just around the corner in my hometown, and that means a lot of traffic and frustrated people. I thought I’d share it now.

My mother is a Traffic Control Person, also known as a flagger. You know, one of those people in the orange or yellow vest who stop you at construction sites.

Many people hate to see a flagger with a stop or slow sign in their hand step in front of their vehicle. After all, you don’t want to be 2 minutes late to get wherever you are going. Its such a pain in the butt to have to wait a few minutes, or to slow down when traveling through a construction zone. Many people tell my Mother that her job could be replaced by a bucket of sand, just stick the sign in that; who needs some person telling them how to drive?

The purpose of my Mothers job is very clear to her, even if you may not understand it. Her job is to protect the lives of everyone working in and driving through a construction zone.

Her job is to stop you from driving into a sinkhole, or from driving into a dump truck; its to keep you from going into head-on traffic when there are lanes closed.

Did you know that when a road is closed off, many crews will dump the load of gravel or dirt from the dump truck right in the middle of the road? Or that they will park heavy equipment in the middle of the hiway? When traffic is stopped, they know it only takes a minute or two to move it, so they leave it there, to make their jobs easier. So, what happens when you blow past that stop sign and drive right into a pile of dirt, or a giant backhoe? You just might die; you just might kill somebody else.

What happens when you speed through a construction zone? You put the lives of everyone around you at risk. People have loved ones working there.

Did you know that firemen and police officers have been killed by people speeding past a parked fire truck or police cruiser with flashing lights and everything going?

In some States and Provinces, a flagger can make pretty darn good money. Not in my Province though, my Mom makes 11 dollars an hour to step in front of moving vehicles.

Flaggers work long hours, often 12 or more.

They rarely get lunch or even potty breaks, many of these people have to pee into cans they keep in the back of their work trucks.

They stand out in all kinds of weather, including below freezing conditions, or extreme summer heat.

All day long, they get to listen to people yell at them, call them awful names and threaten them just for trying to keep those people safe.

My Moms job is to keep you safe and alive, but many people call her terrible names for this. They flip her the bird, they throw objects, like beer bottles, at her from their cars. There has even been a few times where angry men have gotten out of their cars, intent on attacking my mother because they didn’t want to wait any longer. My Mom is 50+ years old, she is 5 feet 3 inches and weighs 120 pounds soaking wet, thank the Gods for the guys on the work crews who have saved her from attack every time!

I don’t care if they’re making 25 dollars an hour; these people risk their lives everyday to make sure you get home safely and to make sure the guys working the construction zone get home too. There is not enough money in the world to justify losing my Mom to a drunk driver or speeding asshole.

I know, I know. Obviously these people are horrid, uneducated blue collar slobs who can‘t even get a real job. They MUST be drunks or something to wind up working in construction … Somebody has to do that job, would you prefer a job lottery? Maybe you’d be cleaning my toilets next week.

A few years ago I was especially relieved that my Mom had taken a few days off.

In March 2006, at about 11:40 pm, a speeding Camero came roaring through a construction site on the hiway in Kelowna.

The driver swerved around another vehicle, clipping marker pylons before swinging back and ploughing into a parked vehicle and the flagger.

The flagger was standing beside her work truck when he hit her.

She was squished between the two vehicles before being thrown across the hiway.

The car then slammed into a dump truck and a backhoe working on the crossing of Highway 97 and Highway 33.

The flag person was pronounced dead at the scene.

The flagger was a friend and co-worker of my Moms. She was 43 years old and her name was Theresa. She was a single mother of a teenage daughter, who now has no family at all. Imagine waking up to hear the news that some drunk driver killed your Mom.

Please, I beg you. SLOW DOWN, OBEY THE SIGNS, WAIT PATIENTLY, DON’T ROAD RAGE, DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE, TURN THE CELL PHONE OFF IN THE CAR

And don’t kill my Mom too.

Please folks, if you are driving around Vancouver during the Olympics be a good driver and be kind to the people whose job it is to get you there safe. Leave really early so you won’t be late, and if you are running late, then be late. Please don’t risk other people’s lives and yours as well to make it to an event (or even work) on time.

Thanks, Juniper

Last night I dreamed I was sitting in a grove with a lineaged Traditional Witch or Wiccan.

I am not sure which Path she was on exactly, dreams are like that, but I knew she was hard-nosed Traditional.

We were discussing our different world views and Paths.

She leaned against a large grey boulder or small standing stone and said:

“My Path is like this stone, strong and old; a solid foundation upon which to build.”

Then she pointed to a pile of leaf litter and compost by my feet.

She spoke with smugness when she said:

“Your Path is like a pile of compost, a bunch of different stuff collected in a shapeless heap.”

I was not injured by her words.

I reached out and stirred the compost pile with my hand.

I said:

“Yes. But you can grow things in a compost heap.”

And thus a riot of wild flowers, ivy and herbs sprang forth from the compost and leaf litter.

Covering it with new, fresh, young growth.

I plucked a ripe, red fruit from a Wild Strawberry and asked:

“Can you eat your rock?”

I turned towards her, waiting for an answer.

But she and her rock had been covered over with moss, they had become one.

She could not speak, she could not move.

I said:

“Moss does not grow on a rolling stone.”

I ate my strawberry in the silence, watching the herbs in my compost pile grow.

Taken by Brendan

This is how my garden grows

I will be me

Unequivocally

Always

And in every situation

No audience

No following

No friends

Or family

Will make me be

Anything other than

Me

I am not a one dimensional character

I am an onion

I have many layers

It may take time

For them all to see

All that is me

Sometimes happy

Sometimes sad

Sometimes compassionate

Sometimes stark raving mad

Though I am a human being

And thus I will change and grow

And often be a different me

I will still always

Be me

But always and forever

I will be me

Consistently

With integrity

I will be me