Category: An Important Message…

We must stand up for the future

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., Blame Sannion, Bouncing off the Gods2 Comments

Dear Friends,

Jason Pitzl-Waters recently shared one of the previously mentioned Symphony of Science videos on his Facebook.  I was deeply moved by it and shared it here.

The ideas and images and words of these pieces have played themselves out and over, again and again in my mind and heart.  I can remember watching some of the episodes of  Cosmos with my family as a child back in the nearly forgotten days when there were 3  networks and television stations would go off the air.  I listen to the musical pieces inspired, in part, by that series and by the scientific wonders and vast possibilities of the world around us; I find myself wondering how and when the once widely popular veneer of hip cynicism became a bone deep cynical nihilism?

Why do so many people choose rage and fear and bitterness and fanaticism?

It seems sometimes that folks think that joy and hope and happiness are either simple minded pursuits; or that people have the idea that these things are achieved only by venting their anger and running away from their fears.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In my experience, happiness and joy and hope are complicated and difficult.  More often than not they seem to come from doing the hard work of facing our fears and working through them, from harvesting the energy of our anger and using it for something more productive to make a positive difference in our lives and the lives of others.

So much of what we hear from popular culture and society is weighted down with despair and predictions of doom and collapse…  Do the authors of such things not realize that the future of humanity is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

We must stand up for the future.

Not only for ourselves and our future generations, but to honor our ancestors and thank them for the gift of our lives and the precious gifts they have given or passed down to us, to honor and be in right relationship with the spirits of the world around us – whatever we concieve them to be, to serve and honor our loving relationships with The Holy Powers ~ whatever our experience or understanding of them; for all of these reasons I believe we have a holy duty to stand up for the future.

We must not be afraid to discuss the values and virtues and ethics we have discovered in our contemporary Pagan faiths.  There are enough books on rituals and spells and prayers to last us a few generations… lets start writing works on confronting poverty and hunger from Pagan perspectives.   Let us set aside the fear of prejudice, and the once glamorous but now tattered and worn mantle of the outsider and the rebel, and take pride in ourselves and our faiths, in our works and lives and worship and in our Pagan communities and our larger communities.

This I believe, is the challenge and the duty the Gods have set before us.

Peace,

Pax

Almost $10,000 in two days!!

On By PaxIn Activist Alert, An Important Message..., Love Unto All Beings, Pagan Pride3 Comments

Dear Friends,

The Earthquake in Japan hits home for me, in some ways literally.

I was born in Fairbanks and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, USA, aka  Earthquake Country.  The Tsunami had mellowed to a few feet by the time it reached Alaska, only a few feet from what my brother told me.   At the same time having grown up with pictures of, and hearing the living memories of, the 1964 Good Friday Quake.   Having grown up with earthquake drills in school as a kid.  Realizing as a teen that while it might help protect you in an earthquake hiding under a desk or table or standing in a doorway might also just make it easier for them to find your body in the rubble.  Knowing that the Anchorage area sees a major quake roughly every 20 years according to recorded seismic data and that the next big one is well over due, knowing that it could very well be my hometown and my family… Earthquakes always hit home for me.

My heart goes out to the People of Japan.

I was heartened when I read at The Wild Hunt about Peter Dybing’s observations and efforts to coordinate a Pagan community response.

(At the same time I am not thrilled that the chosen symbol for the thing was a pentacle, because of course for many of the Pagan faiths the pentacle has little or no personal or spiritual meaning… but I accept that sometimes in an interfaith community there will be growing pains and we will find a way on this issue as on others.)

I am so very happy to report that in the two days of its’ existence the Pagan Community Doctors Without Borders page at First Giving, established by Covenant of the Goddess First Officer Peter Dybing on March 14th is already nearly $10,000  towards their $30,000 goal.

Think about that.  $10,000 in two days… with mostly $20 here and $50 to $100 there….

This is inspiring, not just to know that one of the groups I tend to think of as my people, are doing good in the world… I’ve known that for a while now… but that we are doing it visibly!

There are those who will whinge that you should do charity simply for charities sake, but I say make every penny count.   I am fiercely glad, not only that people will be able to say it took them this short time to reach $30,000; I am glad that they will have a rough count of our numbers or at least of those participating who left a name…. because of course our friends and family members can participate to and support their family and friends in the Pagan community in doing good.  I am glad based on even the low estimates of how many Pagans there are in the U.S. that if each of us gave as we were able we could well overshoot the $30,000 mark!

I am too damn proud for words of Peter Dybing’s remarks on his blog…

“Pagans from all over the country have donated and stepped forward to endorse the project. We received donations from individuals as well as organizations. To all those who stepped forward THANK YOU. We still have been unable to generate significant numbers of small donations. It continues to be the goal of this project to engage the entire Pagan community in a unified effort. If you are concerned that you do not have the funds to donate consider just a few dollars. Each of us can only do so much in these tough economic times. What is important is participation not the donation amount.”

Think about it…

The estimates of the number of Pagans (..and Witches, and Heathens, and Hellenics, and Druids, and Religio Romana, oh my…) in the United States ranges from 200,000 to 1 million.  What if ~each~ of us really did give as we could give to this one cause and this one venue…. if the lowest population estimate is right we’d raise 1 million dollars for Japan if each of us gave $5!

How delicious would that be?  What if “Pagan Community Donates a Million Dollars to Japanese Disaster Relief” made the news?  What if that were to replace the latest local wand-waving weirdo as the public’s image of Pagans?

Just think about it…

Peace,

Pax

Blessed Be and Amen!

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., everydayLeave a comment

“I often preach that the cosmosphere, like a biosphere, needs diversity to remain healthy. Therefore, homogeneity should not be our goal. It should be clear by now that I have no interest in attending these rituals, and might even have trouble with some of their tenets, but I am not attacking the Dianics who want ciswomen only space within a larger, welcoming whole. I want there to be room among us for Gay Male Mysteries, for Women’s Moon Blood rituals, Heterosexual Basket Weaving, Queer Gods rites, Heathen Blots, and our scholarly talks, workshops, and concerts. I want to walk the groves and halls with Thelemites, Heathens, Dianics, Hermeticists, and Wiccans and be able to share space even while sometimes vehemently disagreeing. This sort of interaction makes us stronger. We are not all the same, but in order to make a viable movement, and to grow as humans, we need interchange. We need to work together, even when we sometimes ask for separate space. ”
~ T. Thorn Coyle, in her Patheos.com article Duality and Diversity: Gender at Pantheacon

A few Choice Words for the People of Egypt, and their critics…

On By PaxIn Activist Alert, An Important Message..., Religio-AmericanaLeave a comment

Dear People of Egypt, and President Barack Obama

For over 234 years, We of the United States of America have struggled and worked and fought and prayed and agitated and protested for the ideas and ideals and principles and values outlined in our founding documents the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and The Bill of Rights.

They are Aspirational documents. We have not always lived up to their ideals.  We have gone through a lot of pain and toil and even a Civil War, as a people and a nation trying to live up to them, struggling  and striving towards that “more perfect Union”.

I hope and I pray for the most peaceful, and just, resolution to the current protests and turmoil in Egypt.

As a tax paying, voting, U.S. citizen I hope that the United States Government, which is supposed to support and uphold the U.S. Ideals, will find a way to support the People of Egypt in their struggle for true democratic change in their nation.

Thank you,

Geoffrey D. Stewart

(From the U.S. Declaration of Independence)

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

~~~~

(From the U.S. Constitution)

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

~~~

So I posted this to my facebook as a note, and tagged, among others. The U.S. President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and the leaders of both Party Caucuses in the Congress….

6 Breaths and making the time…

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., Food for Thought, Meditation, Notes on the Journey, Unitarian Universalist2 Comments

Dear Friends,

I have been having a LOT of synchronicities go on lately around Writing and Meditation and Practice…

One of those moments and one that is sticking with me is a conversation I had with my Minister from Orlando’s 1U, a U.U. congregation.  We were talking about how incredibly busy things are, and will be for a while, at our Church.  Rev. Kathy is our newly settled Minister and our Church is growing from what is called a Pastoral sized Church into a Program Sized Church, meaning that the number of people is greater than any one person can know or intuit the state-of-the-congregation…. in such a situation you need strong governance and a solid organization and sense of what group and activity relates to/reports to whom… basically there is a LOT going on…

After a meeting/discussion with her earlier this week I made the comment that it was a very lucky thing she was already a practitioner of meditation…

“I take a lot of inspiration from the fact that Science has proven that you can change your body chemistry with just 6 breaths…” she said, as she related how synchronicity had played an important part in her own journey when she had just finally committed to meditation shortly before facing a nurological illness that mimicked M.S., that was cleared up with Antibiotics (given for something else) after 3 years… as she related it was a good thing she had discovered Meditation right before that!

I have been working at my regular practices for, well, months now…   Centering and Grounding and Breathing Into my Chakras and Prayer  …at the same time I have danced back and forth with both my professional development, my spiritual development and Practice, and the many many shiny things that call to my A.D.D. blessed self for attention.  That comment about 6 breaths has stuck with me.

“If all you have time for in a day is those 6 breaths, then that’s what you do…” was the observation Rev. Kathy made…

We tell ourselves we don’t have time, we tell ourselves we will get to it tomorrow; and we lie to ourselves, and undervalue, and undermine ourselves all too damn often!  So I am continuing in my journey to breathe, to sit in silence for 10 minutes.  To do what I desire, and need to do and deal with, each day even if its baby steps.  Take time, dear friends, on your own journeys to dive deep into yourself and your practice … even if some days its just those 6 breaths!

Peace,

Pax / Geoffrey

Solsticetide Eclipse and learning to respect the moments momentous and mundane…

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., Blame Sannion, everyday, Food for Thought, Gospel Pagan, Meditation, My Florida Sabbats, SolsticeLeave a comment

Dear Friends,

Tonight I have had the privilege of seeing the Waning and Waxing Crescent within hours of each other.  The chill night air and the Moon in the sky dancing with the shadow of the Earth.  Strange to watch this celestial dance and think of how they and we are all, somehow, the stuff of stars.

Thou art God, Thou art Goddess, we and They are all one and many and interconnected and miraculous.

There is wonder in this old Universe yet!  Once more the Child of Promise is stirring, as the Crone and Maiden and Mother dance in the jewel bedecked halls of Night.  The Miracles of the Solstice are nigh, my friends, and we will welcome Him back into life and light soon.  Solstice Eve tonight (21st) and Solstice Day in the morning (22nd), and we shall welcome a New Year round soon.

I have always related to the Solstices and Equinoxes as major occasions, a natural result of an Alaskan upbringing when the Winter Solstice shall see 4 hours of daylight if the sky is not blanketed with thick gray clouds.  The Winter Solstice is the turning of my spiritual New Year, followed shortly by the Calendarical…

Drink deeply of mystery and wonder and poetry and promise my friends, drink deeply of mulled wine or sweet Sangria and Breathe deep the Breath of Life and sing and hope and dream and smile and laugh and feast with friends.  Whether you huddle round a bonfire in a chill night or spend the night bbq-ing with friends, or savoring stew cooked on the stove of by the fireside.  Light Candles and kindle fires and stare deep into flames listening to the wisdom from the flickering tongues that whispered to our ancestors oh so ever so long ago.

There is wonder and power in any Winter Solstice, and this one is more precious still for the overlapping of the Eclipse…  and yet one of the lessons of my own journey that I am filled to overflowing with this year as I feel the strange alchemy of the Solstice tide turn what had been a sense of stillness turned to stagnation and a spiritual bleakness cracking open to the wonder and possibilities and hope of this time of year; one of the lessons I have learned and should like to share is this, there is wonder and magick and Mysteries and power and possibility in our simplest acts if we open to it.

I am reminded of this, especially this time of year as I watch so many people get caught up in the mad rush of days, indeed a dear friend, who lives in the North East U.S., expressed exhaustion at everything that needed doing this Holiday Season… and some part of me began to flow with the first stirrings of the Solstice miracles…. I wrote to her…

Breathe the breath of life, Inspire, draw in life giving air, life force, and Spirit, take a step and feel air and blood and magick flow. 

Know the simple blessing of breath and movement and magick. Feel the blessed benediction of the bloo…d in your veins. Where there is soreness then stop for a moment, stand and breathe into the pain… sending air and energy to whatever needs strengthening and balancing loosening the pain and repositioning your body until it moves from “ow” to “ah, that’s alright”, then stride forward once more with grace and ease.

Movement is more purposeful now, more the prowl of a panther than the leap of a gazelle, but every movement and every breath and every conscious action is a blessing and benediction unto ourselves and the world.

If we remember the powers of Air and the benediction of breath.

~~~

Light a candle, or pour a hot toddy, take a moment to warm yourself by the wood-stove or the fire or simply with hands clasped around a cup of strong black tea with cinnamon and citrus rind…. take a moment to breath in the fragrant steam, take a moment to lose yourself in the candles flame.

Look inside yourself and seek your spiritual fire and inner light. Take a breath and send air and energy to your personal fires, take a breath and open yourself to the Light of Lady and Lord, to His Light, to The Light of which we and They are a part.

Remember the blessings and benedictions of Fire.

~~~

Bundle up and take your freshly poured tea outside a moment. Look at the snow and ice around you and realize that one of Mysteries of Water is that it can be so many things…. It can be hard enough to scour the mountains to fine fertile dust, in can fall and fly crystalline and wind borne, it can flow along the earth, it can fall warm or cold from the sky… We are also capable of many things and forms in our emotions and our ways of acting and reacting…

Make a snowball and throw it at a wall, how does it react on impact? How are you reacting to the impacts from the mad rush of days?

Take a likely icicle and stir your tea with it, cooling the overheated liquid until it is drinkable, turning a burning liquid into nourishment, Transformation…

Go inside and mix salt and water and draw stars and snowflakes on your window panes… leave them a while and then when the patterns shine through later remember to yourself that you can transform you can choose how to react and what form your spirit and emotions shall take..

Take time for a hot hot bath, or a shower and a lustral bath, with soothing herbs…

Luxuriate in the Mysteries of the Waters…

~~~

Breathe in the fragrant scent of the pines, stir up a pot of stew on the stove, light a few scented candles in the rooms of the house and just take some time reveling in your home. It is a place of wonder and blessings and nourishment and nurturance. Determine to take 10 minutes to do nothing but sit in Your Spot and sip something and eat something and silently enjoy Your home and hearth and what health you have.

Bake something for your beloveds, go through the pantry and see what supplies you need to stock up on so that on the next expedition you can fill the pantry and plan something special for those you love and for yourself…

Savor the mysteries of Earth….
~~~

We are all magickal, we are all miraculous, there is wonder and power aplenty if we open ourselves to them.  Whatever your climate, wherever you are dear friends, you too can take time, MUST make and take the time to savor the moments and the Mysteries.
Bright Blessings and Much Love to you all,
Pax

They Said Forward as Appropriate…

On By PaxIn Activist Alert, An Important Message..., everydayLeave a comment

“Please forward as appropriate.

Avalon Cares will be collecting money to help a Pagan family this holiday season. One family brought to our attention are hard working army veterans with four children. They have no money for the holidays and three of the four children struggle with chronic health problems. We plan to give them gift cards to help them through this difficult time. Please consider donating whatever you can – $5, $10, $25 or more. It adds up quickly and we can make a real difference for this family.

You can donate via paypal by visiting our website at http://officersofavalon.com/avalon_cares.html
(or send a direct paypal payment to treasurer@officersofavalon.com)

or

via post mail to :
Officers of Avalon
PO Box 22
Baraboo, WI 53913
attn: Avalon Cares

Thank you for your consideration and generosity.

Sincerely,
Kimberley “Windwalker” Long-Ewing
Preceptor General
Officers of Avalon “

and so I did…

Please, take a moment to Pray and Work for Peace…

On By PaxIn An Important Message...Leave a comment

Dear Friends,
One of my dear, dear, friends… Lady Rhavyn is working and living abroad teaching English in South Korea.

She co-Priestessed my dedication ritual when I dedicated to Witchcraft.  She was a dear mentor and guide when I was finding my faith and losing my mother.   Later, she became a dear friend and sister to my spirit.

I am asking each and every person who reads these words to join my in my Prayers and Workings and Spells for Peace in the coming days.

Thank you,

Pax

And now an Important Message….

On By PaxIn An Important Message...Leave a comment

Dear Friends,

I recently encountered this wise, weird, and wonderful message from The Wombat; it needs to be shared…

“The wombat speaks, and he’s smarter than you, so listen up! In less than a minute, this rapid-fire animation tells you everything you need to know about how to get along on earth for the next million years. By Jason Ables. (For more information, visit www.global-mindshift.org)”

Witchfather fan alert…

On By PaxIn An Important Message...Leave a comment

Hey fellow devotees,

So Seillean over at of Oak and Ivy has extended the deadline for the Horned God devotional to December First!

This is spurring on a number of ideas and poetic possibilities in my own mind, so I may be unleashing some rough drafts here, and encouraging some of my fellow devotees of the Horned God of the Craft… heck this might also force me to get the Pax Theologica page up here sometime before Yule… or the Turning of The Year as I think of it…

I had seen this project earlier in the year but had forgotten about it… I really need to add reading through the blogs to my daily practices… then again I’d need a catheter to stay at the computer for that much of the day, never mind the winning numbers for the lottery!

Anyhow look for random prayers and praise of the God of Witches .

Yours In His Service,

Pax

Inspiration vs Frustration round #???

On By PaxIn An Important Message..., everyday1 Comment

Dear Friends,
So I was involved in a group until recently…

“damn near every time I have opened my mouth in the meetings or written something on their e-list I have had negativity rained down on me… I couldn’t say ANYTHING right or meeting with their approval… their basic attitude is that the group has reached some sort of plateau of perfection in its events and workings and any suggestions that things could be improved are treated like some sort of attack…

I’ve had my ideas, experience and education brushed aside as being without worth or dignity… ‘You just haven’t seen how wonderful we really are yet you need to attend more events and be a member longer and then you’ll understand how practically perfect in every way’

I’ve been lectured too about how the group works on a consensus basis, by which they mean majority rules because in a consensus process the opinions of the dissenters and minority or listened too respected and effort is made to come to a FULL consensus and not simply bully the dissenter’s into silence or ignore their points…”

As I posted on Facebook, to my personal account which several of them are linked to.  Notice how it keeps the group name anonymous, that’s call trying to be classy even when you are incandescently pissed off.  They are the same group where one of the groups leaders and founders yelled at me that I had…

“…Unreasonable expectations…”

…when I suggested we should expect professionalism, communication with stake-holders, organization, and pride-of-service, from volunteers and organizers in the Pagan community like that I have seen in my U.U. community at Church.

So anyhow, ONCE AGAIN, I find myself dissapointed and frustrated by my local Pagan community and the short sighted, selfish, self-satisfied, unprofessional-ism I find in most some (BUT DEFINITELY NOT ALL) of the local Pagans I run into.

On the other hand I am deeply grateful and inspired by the friendships and connections I have made online, in part through this blog and through some of my other projects and explorations online.

Thanks folks,

Pax