For Orlando: If You Want To Help – http://wp.me/p3W8Qt-u8
Author: Boneweaver (aka pjvj)
The Acute Divide of Me
I remember a time when my online persona was such a good match for my offline persona it was a bit disturbing. Somewhere along the years of Facebook I have lost that. I don’t know if it’s the medium, the horrors of menopause, or I’m just more careless and quick to answer with my words, or all of these, but it is something.
I started shifting this in January, smoothing some of my edges, but not stopping my desire to spotlight issues of social injustice. It worked for awhile. Then it didn’t, then it did. I’ve all the right reasons in my head, but then it slips and I don’t even notice at first. In person I notice quickly. (I’ll give ya sometimes I’m clueless, but that is unusual, not typical.)
I was being quiet more, with spurts of RAWR, but I didn’t shift enough internally. I was choosing where to post what, hidden from much of friends list, with the occasional two day outbursts on my timeline. Basically I changed where without changing how. Which is duh, but there ya go, I was being duh. I wasn’t feeling this shift in my body and for me that is an important piece to permanence.
Today after visiting a hospice patient I felt it in my body. Like huge I felt it. Not the shift, but the gulf between the state of grace I am in when I am in service to the dying and the state if non-grace I am in a place like Facebook. How I am face-to-face in my community where my hands fly around, my eyes are bright, and my face lights up with passion when discussing things. When I discuss all things, from SJ to how the squirrel wiggled itself up a tree. It was core blowing how acutely I felt the divide between the two places I am “seen”. And it was unnerving. And humbling.
My wish is that I hold this state of grace more purposefully going forward, in all my places. That I try to do better. That I will do better.
Witches, remember your skills, use them to pull the strings of the Web
I have “reasons” for the colour candle I light for the newly dead, but the most significant one is “because I was told to” by whatever name you call the Universal Is. So it is orange candles for the newly Beloved Dead created by a bigot in Orlando, FL, in the wee hours of yesterday morning. Orange is for the transition, for the time immediately after physical death leading into the next phase. It is for the soul, not the body. It is for their essence, not their loved ones. There are many rites for those left behind, my work is for the ones departed.
I will be reading the names of these Beloved Dead, every day, until all are laid to rest by their loved ones. Then I will read them a final time for this working. And candles – lots of candles, as I do this part of my Job.
Hel wants in on this work, is full of deep sadness, but only can watch from the sidelines knowing those folks died in battle, and therefore aren’t Hers. Hel gets a candle for holding Her compassion.
There is other work, too. Odin wants in on this Work. He is requiring only a single jar candle, and a listening heart for what comes next.
Magic is being organized locally for a public call to justice and change.
We’re witches, damnit, let’s wield our tools for change!
The Descent/Ascent of Innana? Part One
This is raw and beautiful from my friend Cyn. I await Part 2!
Let’s deconstruct this – Dan Turner pleads for leniency for convicted rapist son
Brock Turner raped an unconscious woman and tried to run away when caught in the act. He was found guilty of three felonies: assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated or unconscious person, sexual penetration of an intoxicated person, and sexual penetration of an unconscious person. His father believes prison is not appropriate for his “20 minutes of action”.
First, here is the most egregious part of his letter, highlighted in yellow:
As it stands now, Brock’s life has been deeply altered forever by the events of Jan 17th and 18th.
By the events – as opposed to “by his actions”. This was not an event that happened to him, this is a thing he chose to do. (deflection, rape culture, blame shifting, patriarchy)
He will never be his happy go lucky self…etc.
Because he’s a rapist. (Son should be able to remain unchanged after committing heinous crime – male privilege, rape culture, patriarchy)
His every waking moment is consumed with worry, anxiety, fear and depression.
So he can identify with his victim. Good to know. (lack of concern that his victim’s psychological state is the same because of him, concern only for the rapist – male privilege, patriarchy, rape culture)
You can see this in his face, the way he walks, his weakened voice, his lack of appetite. Brock always enjoyed certain types of food and is a very good cook himself. I was always excited to buy him a big ribeye steak to grill or to get his favorite snack for him.
Brock rapes an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and dad’s big concern is his son can no longer enjoy steak. ( the worst thing to happen to a rapist is losing his appetite – male privilege, patriarchy)
Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist. These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve.
Eating to exist is kind of the point of consumption of food, but I digress. The verdicts did not do the shattering, the rape did the shattering. He killed his dreams himself, he worked hard to achieve rape. (deflection, blame shifting from crime to consequence -male privilege)
That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.
Rape is “20 minutes of action” and his violent crime shouldn’t have a steep price as a consequence. (rape is sex, violent crime shouldn’t effect felon’s life – misogyny, male privilege, patriarchy, rape culture, minimizing)
The fact that he now has to register as a sexual offender for the rest of his life forever alters where he can live, visit, work, and how he will be able to interact with people and organizations.
Women’s safety is less important than his son having more options for housing, work, and social interaction. (patriarchy, rape culture, misogyny, male privilege)
What I know as his father is that incarceration is not the appropriate punishment for Brock.
Three felony convictions, prison not appropriate. (white privilege)
He has no prior criminal history and has never been violent to anyone including his actions on the night of Jan 17th 2015.
Rape isn’t violence. Sexual assault is not a violent crime. Violent criminals shouldn’t be punished the first time they’re caught. (rape culture, male privilege, patriarchy, minimizing)
Brock can do so many positive things as a contributor to society and is totally committed to educating other college age students about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity.
Alcohol makes men rape. Promiscuity makes men rape. (deflection, blame shifting, rape culture, patriarchy)
By having people like Brock educate others on college campuses is how society can begin to break the cycle of binge drinking and its unfortunate results.
Binge drinking causes rape. Rape is not a violent crime, but an “unfortunate result”. (rape culture, male privilege, patriarchy, blame shifting, minimizing)
Probation is the best answer for Brock in this situation and allows him to give
back to society in a net positive way.
He doesn’t deserve punishment because he’s a good boy who learned things, like drinking and promiscuity are bad. (male privilege, white privilege, class privilege)
That is from a single paragraph of a 3 page letter. Not only did the dad think it was completely appropriate to enter into court records, he says his words were misinterpreted. Another “unfortunate” thing.
The victim wrote a letter, too. It didn’t sway the judge.
The judge sided with the rapist, and sentenced Turner to 6 months in jail and 3 years probation. (rape culture, patriarchy, male privilege, class privilege, athlete privilege)
There are a bunch of petitions to protest the sentence and to sanction the judge if you’re so inclined.
And for the magic workers out there, there is a collective working to address the lack of justice in this case.
This constant fight to be treated with dignity and worth exhausts me.
Failing the Body Sacred and other Myths (Pagan experience blog project; May wk 3)
Week 3 is for Gods/the Divine. This sorta fits. 😉
An audio blog post in a Dropbox link:
Forgotten Lessons/Recurring Blindspots
Sometimes we learn a thing, internalize it even, then before we’ve done it for enough time to become expert at it, life happens and we return to old habits without notice. It can be hard to notice a thing that slithers up your leg and find its way into your soul when it used to be an intimate and integral part of you. It knows where the secret entrances are to reclaim their residence within.This isn’t a revelation to most folks, who can recall the times this has been true. Periodically I go back and read my old blog posts to remind myself of those hard fought lessons. Often this proves to be a really useful action at just the right time. This happened again today.
This is from a response to a post I’d written that is only tangentially related to the discussion that occurred in the comments. As part of her reply, my friend Cyn said: “Time and time again, I am valued and loved only commensurate to how Super Woman I can be. ” Her comment prompted a dialogue about vulnerability and Shadow Work I had done surrounding it.
My reply: [My Work was] allowing myself to be seen in my vulnerability and more importantly, allowing myself to be loved in it. Sure, there are some out there who WILL reject people with exposed fragility in them. Just not everyone, nor even most. I was operating under the erroneous belief that most of the people who loved me would stop “if they knew”. And that no-one new would love me if I allowed those parts of me to be visible. I was wrong.
There were people who auto-rejected me because I showed no vulnerability at all. About the same percentage as those who may reject me for my fragile parts. The difference now is not in them. They remain the same. The difference is in me – if I am to move forward with any bit of grace and become who I wish to be fully I had to not only accept my fragile bits, but to handle them with love. This requires a level of exposure I hadn’t had since before the sexual abuse and the coping mechanisms adopted by virtue of living with an alcoholic parent.
So, that’s been my learning and my progress thus far. And yes, “Time and time again, I am valued and loved only commensurate to how Super Woman I can be, “ that was me. But I stopped. I chose to no longer gauge my lovability quotient based on other people’e expectations of who I should be. This was/is part of the same work. I have lost things because of it. And I’ve lost some people because it. Those losses hurt like hell. They do not hurt more than the manner I was hurting myself when I was living for them instead of me, though.
So while I don’t want a t-shirt screaming, “I am vulnerable! Take your best shot!” because I’m not completely unsound, I neither want one that screams “Vulnerability sucks!” If I had to have one I think it would say, “Vulnerability just is. Deal with it.”
I had forgotten my commitment to vulnerability while interacting in some spaces. I had forgotten my commitment to not act based on other folks’ expectations. I had forgotten my commitment to my lovability quotient being determined by me alone. Now that I’ve been reminded, I can see how those commitments were slipping away in my life. Until the reminder, I was ignoring the slithering, leg-climbing, blindspot from my past. Beautifully useful hindsight, I can tell you the occurrences that I believe started the slippage two years ago. I won’t use that hindsight to flog the me that lives in the now. I do hope to use it to keep this habit strong until I am expert at it so it doesn’t slip away again when I’m not being vigilant. That’s part of the point of holding a new thing until one is well practiced at it, once that is achieved, vigilance can be released to make room for other things you are tending into permanence.
To banish this most recently returned blindspot, I am renewing my commitments:
I will not act based on other folks’ expectations.
I will gauge my lovability quotient based solely on my own desires.
I will allow my vulnerability to be seen.
Ashé.
A Slow Walk to Death
I have a hospice client I’ve been visiting since March. She is on a slow walk to death. She is unhurried about the process in all ways. She is directing it. Never doubt that the one who is doing the business of dying has a say in the progress. Every person I’ve sat with has shown this to be true. Not a stop to it, mind you, but the final puff of breath doesn’t come without consent.
Each week there is a little less fat under her skin as her illnesses take from her more than she can manage to replenish. She gets chilled easily so she wears thick clothes, lap blankets, and fingerless gloves pulled halfway done her hands. I see the upper half of her fingers, and I see the bones more clearly each visit. This week her gloves were pushed back to her wrists.
It was like an anatomy lesson laid out in topographic relief across the backs of her hands. Almond and purple tissue paper skin creates the ground with raised blue roads running the length, winding around knuckle-boulders as tendons stretch taut between unnaturally long looking bones. As she drifted in and out of naps I looked at her hands, fascinated that they could be reduced to their base elements, yet still function to pick tiny bits of of fluff from her blanket, grab my hand and pull it to her lips to give a kiss, then entwine her fingers for our prayer before I leave.
The human body is an amazing thing, and it stays just as amazing during the final slide to the door that we all go through. Blessings to the hands, and all they have done, and all they continue to do, even as they waste away to resembling the model strung up on poles in physiology labs. Blessings to the hands of the dying, offering poignant visuals to become memories for those who will remain.
The Way It Should Be
Yemaya agrees with my blogger friend here and said, “repost this”. And so I am.
Once upon a time, yesterday in fact, there were two chiefs. The elder was a priestess of Oshun, and the younger a priestess of Yemaya. They agreed to confer, with students observing them, on a subject in which they had not reached total agreement. What matters to this story is not the matter on which they disagreed but the manner in which they did it:
Priestess Younger brought forward her well-researched explorations of original lore, along with resources to share for others who wished to follow the threads she had found. Priestess Elder brought forward regional variations she had found and the historical context borne of her lifetime of experience.
Priestess Younger said, “This is my Work, here and now. I want to pay you respect because I know that it is the Work you have already done that makes mine possible. I wish you continued success in your own…
View original post 207 more words
One True Way™ leaks in everywhere
One of the reasons many people turn to walk a different spiritual path than Christianity is because they balk at the way its tenets can be presented as the One True Way™, leaving no room for personal conversations with God about how to be of service to Them.
Unfortunately, the mindset that allows One True Way™ thinking doesn’t always get left behind with the religion. At first, and for awhile, it is pushed to the edges of the mind, but then time rolls on and the freedom to embrace Many Ways tarnishes a bit. More than one right way means that my voice cannot be always right, and in fact, sometimes my voice is wrong when applied to others. It is at this time that I turn and embrace more tightly the belief that there is more than one right way to do things, to approach things, and to hear the Gods.
It feels like bright and obvious hubris on my part to suddenly turn around and insist that all messages I receive from Them are applicable to all the humans. It’s one reason I chose the path I am on, to allow for variance, and differing thoughts, and loving supportive discourse interspersed with spirited dissent.
One True Way™ thinking is gaining voice in Pagan places. It is disconcerting and disappointing, but overall, I guess it is to be expected. In the past number of years it has become more popular to proclaim how to be a proper polytheist, why there is or is not any hard or soft polytheism, why and how to be a heathen, why and how to be Feri, who does Reclaiming better — the stench is all around and the only thing it can accomplish is to divide and divide some more. To pretend at “my beliefs are valid for me, not necessarily for you” instead of living it and to not take to heart “We are all our own spiritual authority” is the height of self-important arrogance and one of the reasons many left their childhood religion behind. It is one of the reasons I left mine behind.
That last one, the spiritual authority belongs to you one? You either live it or you don’t. There isn’t an in-between for when I want to Be Right and then move back into it when the subject matter isn’t really important to me. In my path we all get to converse with the Gods. Their messages to us are our own. While they may be applicable across the board, usually they are applicable to a much smaller group than everyone on earth.
Gods are multi-issue beings, same as humans are. They have many thoughts and a range of issues they wish the humans would pay attention to and address. Who They tell what varies greatly, and one message isn’t more important or more correct than the others. Kudos to you (and me) for speaking with Deity, but un-kudos to you (or me) for thinking we have the one true connection. That is anti-freedom of religious process and wholly opposite the idea of folks being their own spiritual authority.
If Moses wasn’t a necessary piece for the Christian God to have his message of ten delivered to the whole world, but rather one messenger to reach a particular group of people, then I’m pretty certain none of my Gods need a Moses to speak to all humans. Be a Moses to your small group, but accept there are other Moses’ and other messages being delivered to others.
One doesn’t get to allow others their own spiritual authority only when they agree, and insist on one true way compliance when they disagree. Well, one does get to do that, free will and all, but others get to have thoughts about you and me because of it.
LEAN IN TO JOY with BONEWEAVER 