Nettle tagged me for this:
What religions do you find most interesting apart from your own? Would you pick one of the major world religions? Say Islam, or Buddhism, or Hinduism or Judaism? Or would you pick something more obscure, like Wicca or Taosim or Rastafarianism or Gnosticism? Would you pick irreligion, say Atheism or Agnosticism? Or if you’re not Christian, would you say Christianity?

To participate, state your own religion (or irreligion) as your first preference, state the other religions that interest you most as your second and third preferences, then pass onto five others. If you’re feeling brave, say why they interest you.

My answers to follow.

Browsing the Blog-o-sphere, there are many awesome answers to this, so I feel somewhat redundant and like I’m saying the same thing here, or at least redundant, in my answers, but here goes:

Interestingly enough, while I think the entire Search for Spiritual Truth is interesting in it’s many manifestations, the most interesting general “religion” to me is Atheism.
The reason for this is probably that the concept as a [non]spirituality is so foreign to me that it intrigues me to no end. When growing up, I’d love getting into a deep and involved discussion on the lack of a Divine with anyone I could wrestle into chatting with me.
(Aside: I almost have to put Agnostics in a different category than Atheists. I know two very “Devout Agnostics” who reconcile themselves that the Divine is unknowable but not yet not unproven, which to me still has a slight Spiritual Path involved, even if simply cloaked in the term “Morality and Ethics”. Spiritual here being a path of self-improvement. I may be missing the connotation of the words and context of the original Meme though so I’ll stop digressing.)

All other religions of the world, from Hindu, to Asatru, Yazdi, to Gypsy, all have at their core a belief in Something Other. The names and practices are changed across the spectrum, and the Myths are sometimes as immiscible as oil and water. Yet at their heart, most spiritual practice, by definition, contain the concept of Other. This I understand, and can relate to both intellectually in studying their trappings and ritual, and on a deeper harmonic level as a facet of Truth.

The true Atheists. Scientists or otherwise, totally baffle me.
In college I was a physics and astronomy major, and I ascribe to the Scientific Method with the best people. Yet even as I can quote kinematic equations and offer Darwinian experiments to explain evolution, I can not distance myself from the idea that Life and Love resonate beyond the physical world. We are bundles of neurons and biochemical flesh-sacks, yes, but we are also Alive and Divine.

My own Religion is something that probably could be called Christian Mystic Druid Pantheist Pagan. If you want more details, I’ll mirror Nettle’s comments and say there’s a whole bloggy Archive here on this very site. Feel free to browse it!

Also, as per the meme, I should pick two more Religions that interest me. For this, I’ll choose the Catholic Church, for being immensely popular yet strange to me for it’s guilt-ridden focus and exclusivity clauses. Third choice would be the eastern practices of Shinto/Zen, mainly because they sound so interesting and useful for day-to-day living, but are so different from my western upbringing that they feel “false” when I try to practice their tenants.
Yet here again I seem to be repeating Nettle’s answer regarding dogmatic vs Gnostic religions. I think the quest for Personal Growth is a universal drive among us humans, and it’s all pretty interesting from a cerebral standpoint to consider the myriad methods that different groups have formed that drive into a collective culture, which is what Religion is at it’s heart. Religion is the trappings and ritual and beliefs laid over the Searching-for-Divinity that I call Spirituality.

Similar terms, but much different connotation in my mind. It’s all semantics, and you are welcome to argue them anytime.

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I hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving holiday, and for those outside the US of A, I hope the last few days have been likewise Thankful and Blessed as well.

I’m recovering from the turkey-day feasts (we ate at our house, with Chef Maebius presiding over the bird and associated sides.) and the back to a normal day-shift schedule of work, so it’s nice to enter December with a fresh outlook on things.

In place of a real muse-worthy post, I’ll redirect you to this one from around this time in years past.
http://everthorn.net/musings/2008/12/monday-muse-countdown-to-christmasolstiyule/?p=312

We hung the ‘Advent’ tree and started filling it with treats for the kid starting tomorrow.   This tree needed soem serious repairs as mice or other furry critters found their way into the plastic storage bin it was kept in (chewed a hole through the side?!) and thus some parts of it were eaten up.   Soem deft green felt patches later, and its’ at least suitable for this year.    Sadly, this probably means I’ll be re-designing another big crafty one for next Yule.   Any suggestions, or should I keep the general festive-tree theme?

Enjoy, and I’ll see you all again shortly once I get back in the swing of things.

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I agree with the thought to living each day as if it were a celebration. I also like the winter holiday season, with cheery music, decorated trees and all sorts of commercially viable gluttony.

What I do not like is radio stations that switch over to Christmas music 24×7 starting on November 1st.

Case in point? Mix 102.5, the local radio station that played something other than country or hard rock in my area.

At least I still have NPR for news and such, but I’ll have to start downloading more music for my MP3 player to listen too if I want actual eclectic music this month.

*sigh*

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It’s interesting to see the evolution of “wishes” as people age, myself included.
As a kid, toys and toys and games, and probably toys, are generally what gets requested for birthdays and holiday gifts.

I’m not entirely sure if this is an innate prioritization of ‘Play’ or a subtle commercialization role encouraged by society, or both. Probably both.

As an adult, our ‘toys’ tend to get more expensive or time-consuming. Either a fancy new car, or an addition to a home, or other such things. Still, it is pretty frequent that requests for birthday ideas are returned with “I don’t need anything, thanks.”

For myself, this year, I can honestly say I dis not really want anything. Perhaps a bit of free time to finish the book I’m reading (Snow Crash). Perhaps the ability to sleep in on Saturday.

Sure, there are bigger projects and presents I’d enjoy having in my life, but they are at the same time not feasible for others to get, or not really, really necessary. I’m just as content not having some things.

Is this “minimalist” outlook towards gift giving a sign of contentment, a willful step away from over-commercialization, or simply a shift in priorities?

Would becoming even more “poor” financially cause me to start wanting more toys again, as a sign of monetary wealth?

It’s an interesting muse.

Now… I’m off to make a cake, and blow out some candles. I’ll be accepting commentary presents all day.

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In the literary world, November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where people are challenged to produce 50k words in 30 days. I tried it in prior years and failed miserably.

There is also BloPoWriMo, or Blog Posting Month, where you post a blog entry every single day. This, I’d like to try, with the obvious caveat that I missed the first few days, and am actually focusing the Posts on one full cycle of the moon. Since yesterday was Full Moon, today is the first muse-post.

Some of these may be short, some may be long, but I will try to at least schedule -something- to get posted even on off-days. Wish me luck!

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Because I can’t skip over a decent almost useful meme, here’s the most recent I have seen bouncing around my neck of the blog-o-sphere.   Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.

How many have you read?  I have read, if I’m counting correctly,  55.

1. [+ ] – The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. [ x ] – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. [ x ] – His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. [ ++ ] – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. [ x ] – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. [ x ] – To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. [ x ] – Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. [ x ] – Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. [ + ] – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. [  ] – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. [ x  ] – Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. [   ] – Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. [  ] – Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. [  ] – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. [ x  ] – The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. [ x ] – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. [ x ] – Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. [ x ] – Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. [  ] – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. [  ] – War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. [ x ] – Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling
23. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. [ x ] – Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. [ x ] – The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. [ x ] – Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. [  ] – Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. [  ] – A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. [ x ] – The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. [ x ] – Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. [  ] – The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. [  ] – One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. [ x ] – The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. [  ] – David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. [ x ] – Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. [ x ] – Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. [  ] – A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. [  ] – Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. [ x ] – Dune, Frank Herbert
40. [  ] – Emma, Jane Austen
41. [ x ] – Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. [ + ] – Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. [ x ] – The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. [ x ] – The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. [  ] – Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. [ x ] – Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. [ x ] – A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. [  ] – Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. [  ] – Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. [ x ] – The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. [ x ] – The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. [ x ] – Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. [ x ] – The Stand, Stephen King
54. [  ] – Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. [  ] – A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. [ x ] – The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. [  ] – Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. [ x ] – Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. [ x ] – Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. [ x ] – Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. [  ] – Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. [ x ] – Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. [ x ] – A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. [  ] – The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. [  ] – Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. [ x ] – The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. [  ] – The Magus, John Fowles
68. [ x ] – Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. [  ] – Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. [ x ] – Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. [  ] – Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. [  ] – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. [ x ] – Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. [  ] – Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. [  ] – Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
76. [  ] – The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. [  ] – The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. [ x ] – Ulysses, James Joyce
79. [  ] – Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. [  ] – Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. [  ] – The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. [  ] – I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. [ x ] – Holes, Louis Sachar
84. [ x ] – Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. [  ] – The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. [  ] – Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. [ x ] – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. [  ] – Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. [ x ] – Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. [  ] – On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. [  ] – The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. [ x ] – The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. [ x ] – The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. [  ] – The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. [  ] – Katherine, Anya Seton
96. [  ] – Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. [  ] – Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. [ x ] – Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. [ x ] – The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. [  ] – Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Hmm, there you go.  I’ve read quite a bit more than I thought, but consider this a rather skewed list.  It shows a number of similar books (such as Harry Potter being there for each book,  if you read one, you probably read them all).   likewise Terry Pratchett is listed a few times, though I agree he’s a great author, and likewise with Jane Austin novels.

Anne of The Gods are Bored, just wrote a post about her daughter needing to read from an even more erudite list from the Pen-Faulkner award for Fiction.   Reading that listing, I found I only have ever picked up ONE of those books, and never finished it because it was, as she also mentions, very deep and complex and absolutely not a gripping enteraining experience.  I can’t imagine making a grade-school student suffer through them, unless said student showed a literary aptitude, or it was presented in-class with discussion and group effort.  Yuck!

(I picked up “Snow Falling of Cedars“, which was a decent book, but out of my normal range of reading, so couldn’t get interested enough in it to finish.  I can see why it’s a ’scholarly book though, and used by Literature classes for study)

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After reading Scott Adams’ blog today (Of Dilbert comic fame), I had to actually laugh out loud at the final line.

Still, there’s a hint of interesting muse going on there, beyond the witty humor.    Could such an experiment be done?

I’ve just emailed the local community college to get the name of the psychology proffs.   I’ll propose the situation, since it sounds like just the sort of thing my own psych teacher would jump all over when I attended college.   Our class experiment was about cultural appearances.  We all did the classic “Dress down and go into a fancy jewelry store to see if we get sneered at, then return later all dolled up and were shows much more respect”.

I imagine that if test scores have a remote chance to be affected (even positively) this will get shot down.

Still, doesn’t hurt to try!   That’s how progress is made, breaking down the old to make way for the new….

How are you today?   I, myself, am great, thanks! 

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I’ve seen quite a number of blog posts and undercurrents on the topic of Ancestors, whether in relation to a Spiritual practice, or simply on some secular sources talking about genetics and healthcare.   There’s a LOT to muse about here, but I’ll put one thought out quick, before I forget it and get lost in Real Life again…

There are many methods of “Ancestor worship” depending on tradition and philosophy, drawn together in quite diverse ways in the African Diaspora religions and other tribal beliefs.   The interesting thing is that my own christian and elseways upbringing never really dealt with such topics.  Old dead people (no disrespect intended as I use the term here for context and connotation)  were remembered on holdays, maybe.

I had gone through a stage where I researched my own genetic amalgams and read quite a few very detailed sources on PA Dutch hex-craft, since I was in that region for much of my youth, and had practitioners in recent generations stretching back even further.   Still, I approached it more as a scholarly matter.  I didn’t quite grasp the Sacred.

More recently, with all this Ancestor blogging going on, plus some recent experiences myself, I decided to see about taking one day a week to think about who has gone before me.   I realized, quite unexpectedly, that I already had some pretty ingrained practices in my life that were a form of ancestor worship.  I just hadn’t called them Worship, and thought of them more as ‘fond memories’.

Most pointedly, my grandfather used to carry around a coin, and that I have been doing the same thing almost every day.  Mine’s a gold ‘Sacagawea‘ dollar and it’s showing no signs of becoming smooth yet. I also still to this day have a carved wooden man on my altar at home.   (wow, did I write “I remember” 2 years ago now?!!)  It has also become a sort of joke with my family that my winter and spring jackets are starting to fade and shred, yet I still wear them.  They were from my grandfather’s closet and I inherited them.  The thought of buying a new jacket seems almost insulting, since those still fit.

Beyond all this, one of my favorite quotes about Living Well, comes from Ms Amani (source needed) a woman I met once at Starwood 2002.  It reads “We are the Ancestors of the ones yet to be“, and has been one of the limited random quotes on the main Everthorn site since about 2003.

I’m not entirely sure on how to consider my other ancestors in other aspects of Sacred Lifestyle.  As others have mentioned, there were many who would cast me and my current belief system into the Lake of Fire.  Some genetic Ancestors may tend to shrug such efforts off as irrelevant (assuming their spirits keep the thoughts they had in life).   Yet still, I think a modicum of attention is a good thing, regardless of if it is received ‘properly.

Perhaps they all went to heaven and wouldn’t hear my thanks?  Perhaps they are still around and appreciate such thanks?   The truth is, we’ll never know, and I suppose there is no real harm in offering a few blessings and respectful energies tossed out to the unknown Ancestors.   In the worst case, it does nothing, and in the best, such energies may be accepted and returned a hundred-fold.

I think with this realization, I’ll take my coin and my charred wooden man, and my jackets, and expand the energy invested in them to include those folks I never met.   If my physics knowledge proves Energy is not created or destroyed, and merely changes form, then it is easy to follow that such energies are within us now, today.  Respecting the ancestors is, in a way, respecting ourselves, and those who we become the ancestors of.  Who wouldn’t want that in their lives?!

Thank you to my father’s family, who I know only through stories and half-remembered photographs as a child.  You made me.

Thank you to my mother’s family, who I do know, and love with all the foibles and facets of your lives. You made me.

Thank you to all the friends and family who passed on before I was born.  You made those who made me, and thus, made me in your own subtle way.

Thanks.

I hope I live up to such a Divine end-result for the next batch of worshipers after I cross over. 

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Ok, I’ll admit, another sexy goddess. I mean no objectifying of you women readers.

Those who know me personally hopefully are aware that I’m not really one of “Those guys” who oggle the babes at the beach. Still, sexy dancing is a pretty sacred thing that shouldn’t be taboo either, from both genders.

This one is my favorite Shakira song to get the blood pumping, and groove started. Unfortunately, YouTube won’t embed the video, so I am linking it directly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-3brRCRsA8

One thing I like about Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll is her humanitarian work and philanthropy. Beyond being an amazing songwriter, she helped create a foundation that improves the lives of Colombian children, is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and build a $6million school in her home town which former president Bill Clinton visited.

So, unlike many other music stars with their bling and hypersexualized stage personas, Shakira used her fame and talents to improve the world close to her.  Kudos!

…

Next time, I promise, no sexy goddesses of  song.  I’ll find a nice guy for all you female readers. 

And now to continue to use of “God” in the July musical treats,  here’s something utterly weird and awesome.

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By the Goddess herself, Tori Amos.
(Forgive me the “guy moment”, but…Tori=Rawr!   Totally sexier than the blonde bunnies usually selling commercial products)

Need I say more, than this song rocks, and has such a good groove, regardless of the lyrics.

Watch more Under the Pink videos on AOL Video

Also, for more Tori Amos: I also like this groove (Sorta Faierytale…)

Discuss?

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