Maebius Musings

(Note to the person who asked for this, sorry, I wrote it a few days ago and had it stuck in Draft-mode. Here ya go finally.)

My wife and son have been taking Karate at a wonderful dojo near us for about two months now, and it’s awesome to see how the kid especially looks forward to classes and practices at home without any prompting. Finding that ‘thing’ you like to do is an important part of a healthy lifestyle.

However, what I was musing about is not finding a hobby, but the feeling that happens when you formally decide to make long-term effort in it. More specifically the moment of Shift when you make the decision and act upon it.

In our case, the financial outlay to attend karate for 12 months, for two people, somewhat shocked my wife. She was not concerned as drastically with the dollar amount (though that was part of it and affected a vacation plan as we shuffled the checkbook around). Instead, she kept mentioning the fact that she feels really weird/scared/impressed/burdened/freed by the fact she promised to take up an activity, twice a week, for 52 weeks, and WILL be held accountable to her promise by an “authority figure” she respects (the Sensei).

Her reaction led me to ponder other areas in life with Pivotal Moments, and how finding them can be used along a Spiritual Path.

Consider things like jumping out of an airplane, or cliff diving. Those I’ve spoke to about such activities (I’ve gone skydiving) admit more often than not that the actual freefall and landing is great, but the reason they do it is that moment of Can’t-take-it-back asthey first spring from a solid platform into the open air. The feeling of Commitment, of Willful Action is where it’s at.

I think on a deep level, that sane sense of Decision is at work in most profound Spiritual experiences, regardless of how the practitioner explains it. Devout christians often speak of “Dying to Christ” at some dark stage of life, and being lifted up again in Hope/Love due to that dedicated abandonment. Similarly, a wiccan casting circles, or Drawing Down the Moon (or any number of spiritual traditions having similar “ego-stripping”) reacts similarly in allowing the Goddess to manifest in them.

When we let go, or first step off the platform of solid daily-grind, we usually can expect Great Things. Maybe not always Safe things, but Great Changes. Harnessing that Change for a better life is the goal of any Spiritual practice, I often think.

Even when the Willful Action is meant to harm, as in the case of a suicide, I’ve heard anecdotes from survivors regarding a moment of clarity/regret/freedom felt when the act of jumping, cutting, or swallowing is performed, and before the pain or darkness creeps up. I know of one person who admits being glad they attempted suicide, not because they almost died, but for that sudden Eureka of Life-worth-living even as they tried to end their life.

There are probably hundreds of quotes along these same lines, and is a big part of many Eastern religions.

To lose yourself is to find it.

“Banish the ego and develop the spirit of surrender. You will then experience Bliss.”

Or as I prefer to think of it,
“If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel. On your knees boy”

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As the sun is reborn, I hope the light of your lives shines brightly and strong, wherever and whatever that Light shines with for you.

As a musical interlude here’s three awesome songs. First, one that was performed by a wonderful brother&Sister act in church this past Sunday:
The Christians and the Pagans”

Next, two songs by the band Gaia Consort (whom I love), with the first being more Christmas-y and festive, one I listened to while standing outside under the stars and invoking Awesomeness.

Father xmas.mp3

Gathering.mp3

Enjoy!

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I was typing up a short musing on the holiday spirit, and how to re-find it in hte midst of crazy work schedules and crass commercialized holiday culture-spam.

Then in the course of cleaning out my feed reader, I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom.

I’ll admit it stuck a nerve and I just sat in my desk here at home, closed my Warcraft game, and almost wept for …um.. joy? remorse? inspiration?    Not sure what emotion it drew out of me but it was such a profoundly cathartic thing, I had to share.

http://domesticwitch.blogspot.com/2008/12/santas-wisdom-to-pagans-author-unknown.html

Strange, isn’t it?   There’s no one phrase I can pick out of this posting that set me off, but after I read it, things just sloooowly clicked and rushed aside, like some sort of “Kundalini rising” energy movement.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

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**edit: still  trying to fix formatting. Blog exploded again.  Must be a weekend thing….

I have been reading an interesting book, which I referenced in a prior post, called “Dies the Fire“, which describes a post-apocolyptic world where humanity is struggling to survive after an Event causes technology to fail.

After finishing the first book in the series, I vividly recalled the poem by Robert Frost, pertaining to the end of the world.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Now, the physisist in me always reads this and thinks the poem relates to how the universe will end, either collapsing upon itself in a reverse Big-Bang, or expanding forever into a cold infinity.

Then, I realize that in speaking of desire and hate, perhaps it relates to how the earth itself will end for us.  Either in the cold calamity of a Nuclear Winter, or some unknown firey ending that has to do with passions overwhelming rationality?

Yet, then beyond these things, the Druid in me realizes that the poem itself is slightly flawed.  The world will not really end, not really.

It may be absorbed into the churning inferno of our star, which may in turn collapse within the Universe itself, or we may explode it with a Doomsday Device, but it will not end.  No more than the leaves that fall on the ground each autumn are gone.   They merely transform and rejoin the bio-stream as compost and creature.

A wise man once said, “We are all Star Stuff”, and I agree.  To stardust we will all return, and when the stars fade, we’ll still be Universe-stuff.   We just might not recognize it as ourselves.

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No deep musing today, as I am recovering from night-shift-day-shift-night-shift schedule this week at work, but I wanted to mention a cute inspiring comment I heard this morning.

I’ve been reading ‘Dies the Fire‘ recently and was briefly explaining “The Change” that happens at the start of the novel. This Change is a plot device essentially causing electricity and gunpowder to stop functioning, leading to a return to a bronze-age level of technology.

This morning, as I drove my son to school, he started excitedly telling me that some Changes use a different magic, and cars still work.

I was a bit confused, since he was “asleep” when my wife and I were talking, but he followed with this observation:

“The melting frost on the car window is going UP, and the sky’s all white instead of blue! I wonder what else can magic change?!”

His eyes were shining and a grin brightened his face. I had to simply look outside and smile, with a slight awe-tingle on my neck as well.

Aren’t kids amazing?

What can’t magic, and the hope that drives it, change?!!
So mote it be.

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I sometimes am astounded that I have been at this blog for about 3 years now, and it all started with a Story of the Birds.

As much time has passed, I still remember.

Our decorations are up, our costumes are completed, and this weekend we prepare for the annual feast of Candy! (I am a robot and the kid’s a vampire, not sure which of 3 ideas the wife is planning)

Beside that celebration of gluttony and glee however, I also prepare for a nice quiet meditation out on our porch, under the silvery light of the moon, thinking about my relatives beyond the Veil.

Have you celebrated their lives lately, even though they are no longer living? Say hello again, this weekend if you get a chance. Reconnect, even if their spiritual beliefs are different from yours. Remember them, if even for this one day.

After all, you’ll be meeting them eventually, and might as well have them remember you too.

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The title refers to my mental image on “Church” and the biblical story of Jericho, minus the whole “sacking hte town” part that came after the trumpets sounded…

(short post, but wanted to get words to e-paper before I forgot).

For the past three weeks, I’ve been going to the local Unitarian Universalist Church here in town, and it’s a nice little place. Not quite the same grand Catachismic liturgy from my youth, but still holds that sense of community that I was craving, and a spiritually grounded peer-group to learn from for my son.

In my own mind, Church still apparently held an exclusionary connotation with my more polytheistic beliefs, but the UUC is, by definition, much more open and tolerant of alternative spirituality. I took this as a given, and figured it would help provide a rough foundation of “Divinity” to expose the kid to, which we could then add onto with our own practices and festival camping.

Imagine my surprise then, when this week’s sermon was on (unsurprisingly) Halloween, and the announcement was made that Thursday evening would be the church’s Samhain ritual.

I kinda had a few moments of disconnect, where the logic of “Tolerant and welcoming spirituality” embraced by this church smacked me in the face with the realization that it was evident in Deeds and not just Words on their website.

Forgive me, any readers who are smiling with a knowing “D’uh” here, but I apparently never expected to hear a Church Pastor take a few moments in the midst of talking about God and Sacred Awe during this winter eve and tell the assemblage that “Witch night was on Thursday, feel free to attend.”

There’s a sordid swirl of emotions that swept through me the rest of that short service, but it made me profoundly happy that we started going here. It may not be quite the Epic Pomp & Circumstance that I grew up with, but it’s so much bigger than I first thought it was.

Those first few sermons seemed a bit shallow and vague, but I am now realizing that it’s due to the extremely varied congregation that goes there. Over that day’s “coffee chatter” after the service (while the kids played tag outside), I met a wonderul woman from Pakistan who prays that Allah forgives her countrymen for bombing us all so we are driven to bomb them back, three pagan-types (1 Wiccan, 1 Fae-kin, and 1 undisclosed), and a few gnostic-ish Christians.

What an awesome group! I need to re-define “Church” in my head now. It’s always been open to interpretation, but it surprised me how deep-rooted my pre-conceptions of the institution still were/are.

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Sandy over on Though Soup just posted an interesting bit on Initiation practices.  I’ve often mused about such topics, but after searching my own blog, I don’t think I ever really wrote them out here.

I agree that for many, the concept of initiation in simply a membership into a group.  This pans out when you look at the accepted Definition of the term:

I think many people forget part C.2 above, where the initiate is “invested with a particular function or status“.   Initiation is both for the benefit of the group being joined, as well as the person joining.   It is a sort of liminal, transitional, empowering state.

For myself, I was active in the local Boy Scouts of America program in my youth.  One facet of that organization is a sub-group called “Order of the Arrow“. You do not apply for this group, you are invited.  (The mission statement for this group: The mission of the Order of the Arrow is to fulfill its purpose as an integral part of the Boy Scouts of America
through positive youth leadership under the guidance of selected capable adults.)

It is steeped in a cloak of not-quite-authentic Native American symbolism and pseudo-morality, but I’ll forgive that since I never considered it when I was first made a member.  At that time, it was the “cool mysterious group who got to go on extra camp-outs and do more stupid work-projects in the community“.

The group itself had a number of ritual trappings, from the dramatic “invitation” itself, to a number of service-oriented events.  Yet the one thing I really connected with was the “initiation” camping trip.   As Sandy mentions, a Good Initiation prepares the initiate. They do not simply join up.   The initiate is held accountable for their actions and decision.

In my case, the invitation was made, I attended the usual initiate’s camping trips, complete with a bit of good-natured hazing, but also with lots of personal decision making.  We were given a history of the group, told what to expect, and then told to find a project to work on.

It’s a classic example, in my mind, of how “leadership training” should work.  We weren’t given projects, we were told to go find a project and complete it. The details of what project, necessary materials, and even what constitutes a project, were left unsaid.  The initiate had to organize the pool of non-initiates, formulate a plan to complete something, and then do it.

The end result of this, which was felt to be “stupid making us do all the work” by some, was that those who finished all the tasks requested of them, were able to undergo the Initiation and join the ranks of this leadership council.

To those of us who did it, more than one of us realized in hind-sight that after all we did, we already were in the club.  The ordeals and lessons and challenges provided to us just helped us realize that fact.

And in realizing it, that was the shift.

The big ceremony afterward was more for the group and those spectators attending it.  To the initiate, the ‘lines of energy’ were already set  in place.   We were initiated, and then just had to formalize it in a ritual setting to let the others know.  

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This is a shorter post than I honestly want it to be, but I wanted to toss out a rough-draft for commentary and archival purposes, since I’m doing a bit more on the topic behind-the-scenes.

I’m guilty of it too, but why is it that people are so frikkin afraid of thinking for themselves?  Related topic: why are Debate clubs and such seen is such a negative light by the “cool kids” and harbor suck a “geeky” label?  Heck, in that regard, why are Geeks/nerds shunned so in our younger years when those same types often turn around and be “successful” on the corporate community?

I digress.

As a gamer, I enjoy the playing and discussion of various electronic games in various formats.   Yet all across the internet, stating a preference for one game almost invariably results in hostile commentary in the forms of “Us vs Them” from other game-preferring crowds.  Even among the same game (such as World of Warcraft) one faction is all but universally reviled as “the enemy” from players of the opposing faction.

Tobold makes a few points more related to this topic here: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/09/art-of-discussion.html

Likewise, the recent speech by our president is shrouded in all sorts of “news-worthy” drama and incidents of blatantly ignorant avoidance. (ignorant in my opinion, which I do also understand follows my own Us Vs Them complaints).

Some schools refused to broadcast the event, to appease protesting parents and avoid in-fighting between the supporters and opposers of our President.  To me, this totally goes AGAINST the message itself.   His message was not controversial, unless I’m just failing to see how “Work hard, do better” is controversial.

Granted, Sharon Astyk mentions that perhaps the common school -> college -> consumer-job -> house+car+stuff is not the best option, but I still think that the message from our president was broad enough to work.  Hard work = good results. In today’s society, at least, school is still a very good indicator of opportunity.  What gets my goat is that some schools refused to show it, out of fear or something, in order to appease those who disagreed.

In my opinion, school is about learning.   Learning is more than just 2+2=5 [sic], or that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14-hundred 92.  It is about thinking bout things, and being exposed to (without being force-fed) concepts you disagree with, in order to figure out for yourself Why you disagree.

Even if your dream is to be a street-corner prophet, having a basic grade-school education will help your plans and influence public opinion more than a being a drop-out.

In my own life, our elementary school cut recess last year. The state mandates Phys-Ed (gym) a certain amount of time per day.  This didn’t fit the schedule so they cut free play-time.  For High-schoolers, this isn’t an issue, but for my own kindergarden child, I and many other parents protested. We lost, since the decision was that Gym was active time too. (I still disagree and the war’s not over…)

Yet there again is the point I’m thinking here.   Did you read any of the above examples and feel either a smug agreement or a trickle of bile at my “wrongness”?

Why is it that many topics, from games, to real philosophical issues, can be so hard to discuss fairly and intelligently?  Do our ape-subroutines kick in that hard, and emotions naturally still rule over rationality?

No wonder we are where we are at.  Such huge strides in some cultural sectors, such slow ruts in others.

Your thoughts?

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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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