Maebius Musings

I’m on a spring cleaning kick this week at work, putting all my pens and associated junk from the desk drawers into a big box inside the drawers. Thus, not really arranging anything except a tossing out of ink-less pens, but now enabling me to clean my desk on some future job-leaving-date by simply pulling out the big boxes and going home to unpack. Quick, efficient, and surprisingly lowered my stress level a bit. (I’ve been worried about being fired, or more accurately, wanting to quit for quite some months now).

I have not moved this energetic sorting to my home yet, due mainly to evenings being “TAX TIME” with the wife, and thus any scrap of horizontal surface not covered by client receipts or paperwork is still sacrosanct “For Future Use” by Mrs Maebius.

On a particularly randomly related topic, I was amazed in my online computer game last night, how the changing dynamic of a group can severely alter the experience of said group. NOTE: Jargon ahead. I want to record this for posterity here, so you non-gamers may want to skip the rest of this post.

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Continued from the epic tale of The Warrior Brothers…

In the southern lands of Lititz, Pennsylvania, the sprogling named Gatorade played happily with his cousin. The pretense of names had been dropped since last weekend, as kids tend to do, but there was still great adventures in the backyard of my parents place, involving zombie squirrels and bat-men attacks.

When we were all hanging around outside, my father asked about the Crystal Dino Bone, and if the kid was still talking about it. I asked the sprogling, and was told that the kids were now after a LightSword shaped like a crystal bone. Fair enough, I figured….

Unbeknownst to me, my father took the the original Warrior Brother story to heart, and had located “an ancient bottle” buried in the yard while he was digging his garden, many many years ago. Inside this bottle was a rolled up scrap of parchment (click image for details) that appeared to be some sort of map!

The young cousins unrolled the map, and quickly realized it showed the very backyard they were playing in, with a great mysterious X near the creek at the corner of the property.

Collecting the grown ups (who, other than my father had no clue that this adventure was pre-planned) we traced out the steps of the map.

From the porch, around the small shed, then turning sharply to circle dangerously close to the water behind the large forsythia bushes. After navigating the treacherous muddy cliffs, we returned to the center of the yard, made a loop, and began our walk towards the little side fence-row garden. Zig-Zagging next to the maple tree, we then stepped sideways around a small lilac transplanted here from Everthorn Farms. Once this was done, we were mere paces away from the final destination marked on this aging scroll.

The ground around the X was overgrown with high weeds and dusty overflow-debris from the creek. At first, it appeared we might need a shovel, but the young adventurers bravely picked through the grasses until a glint of sunlight was spotted through the weeds.

The Crystal Dinosaur Bone LightSword had been found at last!

One of the boys, made the quote of the day in an almost breathless awe: “It really does exist!” after what was initially just an imaginary play-prop.

It was a fun adventure, and the finding of an actual “crystal bone” (Plexiglass) made this geek-dad smile. My father, or should I say “Pap Da Dad”, is so cool!

The rest of the day, my sprogling and his cousin carried that sword around, having quests too numerous to recount here. The LightSword gained powers in the sun, lost energy in the dirt, and had edges SO SHARP they could cut through anything that was not specially enchanted to be “lightsword proof”.

So far, I myself am not lightsword proof, so am unable to even touch the treasure. Only my wife, the sprogling, and my oldest nephew are able to do so. And even then, they must recharge their lightsword proof ability every morning after breakfast, but the details of this process are a secret to those uninitiated.

And so, the Lightsword sits now, in a special location in the kid’s play area. The map has been discarded (I pulled it back out of the trash after the kid tossed it) now that the treasure was found. He got it out this morning before school, to defeat some creature in the bathroom where I took the picture posted above.

The adventure awaiting us on next trip to Lititz? Only time will tell….

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This weekend, we visited some friends of ours (and did taxes, of course). A really fun little situation-game presented itself while myself, the kid, my friend, and his 3yr old son were out at the local park running off some energy before “nap time”.

The Sprogling’s been very into making up stories recently, and games where he has an alter-ego. In the past, he’s said he was some character, but still was himself, and merely seemed to change his name. Now, he is developing entire characters, with special abilities and actual limitations,as opposed to his prior make-up-new-power-for-every-obstacle play. Of course, me as proud GeekDad is tending to encourage this RPG appreciation. We even started playing with a big 20-sided die plus some regular 6-siders in various strategic wargames. It won’t be long now until he’s ready to tabletop some classic pen-and-paper games! MwaHaHahaHa

Lately though, he is developing a world of “Warrior Brothers”. In this world of pseudo-native-american meets high-fantasy, giant rocks become monsters, trees (known as Windgazers) are spirit allies, and us human males are all a tribe of Warrior Brothers, equipped with either spell-like powers, or fun tool/weapons to use in defeating the rock-monsters. Only boys are able to be Warrior Brothers, and girls (like mom) must either stay home and be safe, or sometimes are powerful ‘sorcerer princesses’ that can defeat anything with their magic, though this changes on a minute-by-minute basis it seems.

I am actually in the process of writing these ideas down in a complete LARP-style handbook, since the setting is becoming quite involved, and remains coherent across over two full weeks of playing this game when we go outside. Sticks are either wands, clubs, or ‘power staffs’ [sic]. Pinecones are bombs of various powers, depending on size. Snow and ice are harmful environmental effects that either trap you or drain your power. Patches of grass or composting piles of leaves become lava (which can heal some types of Warrior Brother), or random landscapes (ie: one particular bare spot in the yard is a pool of poison). Of particular note, oniongrass, or ‘yard chives‘ are useful as healing snacks or poison attacks depending on the target. When our mint starts to sprout in the garden, he already knows that can be brewed into a strong tea to put enemies to sleep, or “to help WindGazers grow after they are cut down”.

All details provided below are as described by my kid. We each named ourselves in a whim, and he crafted full character biographies and the list of powers and limitations each person had. He acted as DM and leader of this rag-tag band of adventurers, while we offered suggestions to how we reacted against our enemies.

(It was actually kinda neat seeing how empowering him to compromise on certain situations we refused to be railroaded into, could be used to develop social skills in the real world. Good mental note to help him work through some school-play issues.. Hmm…)

My kid is ‘Gatorade‘, who never gets thirsty, and uses a stick like a magic wand to heal, or to shoot fire. He can also use a longer walking staff as a weapon to crack open the ground and make lava explode on impact.

I am ‘IvyLeague‘, a scientist Warrior Brother with the power to control poison ivy and other plants. I can shoot vines from my hands to wrap up enemies, and use poison thorn-attacks from my own [raspberry-branch] wand. Otherwise, I’m kinda weak and rely on Gatorade for those times when big-guns are needed. (He’s so cute!)

Our friend Nate, down in PA, is known now as ‘Cheerio‘, (yes, like the cereal), who can make lightning strikes, and is able to walk on snow without getting trapped. No known weaknesses, other than being afraid of bombs, and doesn’t like Chives or mint (see above).

The 3yr old son of Cheerio, apparently keeps changing his name. It’s either Ted-Fu, or Teddi-Go-Cha, or lately, Tedichi (ted-EE-chee). He is invincible, but can’t attack anyone because he’s too small.

Our latest adventure, in the large fitness park, was to defeat a series of 4 giant rock monsters (those landscaping rocks that have little flower-gardens and mulch encircling them in a field). The first was a bomb monster, so our pinecones healed it. Eventually, it was defeated by the pine-tree windgazer nearby dropping ‘a tillion‘ needles on the monster, which pinned it to the ground so it could be smacked with Gatorade’s Staff.

Next was a poison monster surrounded by lava, so I could not use my own powers against it. This was defeated by throwing a snowball at the lava to freeze it, and once again, got smacked by Gatorade’s Staff.

Thirdly, was an ice-monster who was immune to Gatorade’s Staff, and needed to be struck by Lightning and Poison thorns at the exact same time, or it would regenerate instantly. This one took quite a few tries to defeat.

Lastly, was a giagantic dragon rock (mostly submerged, so all we saw was the fin on his back sticking up from the ground). He was immune or otherwise unaffected by all our attacks, but eventually defeated when we used a handful of crab-grass and a pidgeon feather to tickle it. This weakened it enough that Gatorade was able to find a small 2lb rock nearby that was charged with SunGazer energy (small friendly river-rocks are SunGazers). We put the small rock on top of the giant rock back, which drained all his power and turned it to inert stone. Whew, just in time too, since then it was time to leave and return home, so the Warrior Brothers could get hot cocoa.

We took the feather home, and Tedichi got to keep it in his treasure box. All in all, a really fun adventure, and one that I hope my friend completely enjoyed.

-fin-

PS: This coming weekend, The Warrior Brothers are traveling to the far-away land of Lititz, where I grew up, in search of a fabled Crystal Dinosaur Bone. Not sure how into this my nephews will be, but if such an adventure takes place, I’ll be sure to blog about it here…. I can’t wait!

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Warning: Wall of text crits you for ###### Long post ahead, so I’ll split it with a page-break. (Sorry to you RSS readers, you’ll have to visit the site for a full story).

UPDATE – apparently, this post is TOO EPIC for wordpress, and it cut off. I’ll re-write the last two days andmay have to split it into two entries here. Sorry for those you of you brave enough to read the entire thing and gripped by the apparent cliff-hanger ending here!!

The various Youtube links are NOT from our trip, but are provided in case you want to sorta-experience the ride yourself. Everthorn Website is not responsible for content or quality of these random videos.
We flew out towards Florida on Wednesday morning at around 6:30am. Sleepy kid, but we were all very excited to be leaving the cold weather and foot of snow all around us. Brief (VERY) layover in Cincinnati, Ohio where we literally ran off the first plane, and immediately scrambled into the next one which took off minutes later.

The arrival in Florida was wonderful, and immediate observation was full of warm weather, green palm trees, blue skies, and flowers outside the terminal stations.

We took the shuttle bus to Fort Wilderness campgrounds, which had a really big butterfly garden outside it. Monarchs and little yellow cabbage butterflies dances around it, which made us all smile. We met up with my in-laws around noon, where we camped along the ‘Jackrabbit Run’ loop of campsites. That first day we mostly wandered around the campsite, and got together a rough plan for the next few days visiting the 4 main Disneyworld parks: Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, and Hollywood Studios. Continue Reading »

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We just watched a very, VERY awesome movie that I had rented via NetFlix, called Kirikou and the Sorceress. I did not know anything about this film, but it showed up in a random sample of children’s/international movies. All I can say is, I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to step outside the usual Disney films and expose your family to a bit of multi-cultural flavor.

(Trailer is here)

The movie does a great job translating my pre-conceptions of a good African Folktale into an animated movie, and seems to remain really true to the culture. The colours are bright and vivid in many scenes, which contrasts the barren landscapes shown in some other segments. The storytelling is very engaging and can easily be broken up into a number of shorter mini-segments if you want to spark off an educational discussion regarding the plot.

The plot, without giving anything away, follows a small baby, Kirikou, who is born fully self-aware and speaking, and learns that an Evil sorceress has cursed the town and eaten all the men. He goes through a series of adventures to save the various townsfolk, using his wits and child-like love to overcome the obstacles in his path. Eventually, he confronts the Sorceress through several teachable moments, and important lessons, such as not letting mean people get to you, and understanding that the way someone treats others has more to do with them than those they are hurting. Kirikou remains child-like and small of stature throughout the film, but is never “childish”.

For very young children, there are a very few slightly disurbing scenes, such as the initial meeting of the Sorceress being kinda scary (similar, I suppose, to the old Disney character, Maleficent, who was not a nice witch!), and later a weasil-like creature hunting smaller chipmonk-ish things. However, these scenes are not overly threatening, or gory, and the tension is mostly felt through dramatic music and a close-up of angry faces/flashing of teeth.

I’ve seen worse on daytime TV commercials, but the engaging nature of the story means we all got drawn into the world much more than a TV commercial would, and thus jumped a bit at the sudden angry-sorceress scene (it only lasts a second or two). Sensitive children may also need to be spoken to about the fact that wild animals hunting in nature are not always nice, (though there is never any prey killed overtly on-screen), and the situation is presented more as an “environmental hazard” to avoid during Kirikou’s journey.

One thing that probably kept this movie off my radar until now is the fact that it contains…*thematic drums: Dun Dun DuNNNN*…. nudity. That is to say, the kids of the village run around naked, and the women of the tribe are topless (no adult male nudity depicted, just little kids au naturale). However, this does not make the movie eroticized in any way. It merely presents the tribe-folk as they are, and in my mind, is part of the wonderful multi-cultural experience.

The sprogling giggled and commented on how the other kids got to run around “nudie-butts” like we did at Starwood, which opened up an excellent discussion of that lifestyle compared to our current American one.

After the second watching of the movie, our kid also really seemed to connect with a few of the lessons Kirikou learned in the process of helping out the Tribesfolk, who got themselves in trouble by acting selfish or thoughtlessly. The lessons throughout the story are not over-done, and merely presented in an easily believable way, allowing good opportunity to show the issues and offer short discussion of solutions before the characters work things out with Kirikou’s help. This is benefited by the overall “african folktale” style of the movie, and really does make a great ‘teaching tool’, beyond being a wonderfully entertaining film.

http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Kirikou_and_the_Sorceress/60000485?trkid=188469

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181627/

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It is the holiday time of year again, here at Everthorn Farm, and that means COOKIES!

This year we tried one of my family’s recipes for “Sand Tarts”, which is a traditional thing from my grandmother. Each winter season, my mother and aunt have a mini-contest to see who gets over to Nan’s house first, and then call the other one to say “I ate three Sandtarts! Neener-neener!”

It’s a simple recipe, but was quite a lot of work. If you’d like to replicate the adventure, see below:

• 2 lbs all-purpose flour
• 2 lbs granulated sugar
• 1.25 lbs (5 sticks) butter
• 3 eggs.

Mix everything up in a big bowl BY HAND. Apparently the By Hand is extra-important and is repeated twice, underlined, and circled on the original recipe from my Great(x2) Grandmother.

So mix everything together well, toss flour on the table, then roll out ultra-thin. The contest is to get the dough transluscent-thin. Thick cookies are not Proper Sand Tarts.

Cut out shapes using your favorite cookie-cutters. We like stars, bells, holly, etc.

Brush the top of cookies with egg prior to baking.

Accent the tops with sprinkles, coloured sugar, or crushed nuts (or a combination)

Cook at 350F until done. This is highly dependent on the thickness of the cookies.

The best Sand tarts are thin, and get crispy-cooked in about 5 minutes. Watch for them to just start turning brown around the edges.

Let cool.

Eat! Enjoy! Brag you your siblings.

Happy Holidays!

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A number of years ago, when my wife and I were a fairly new couple, and long before the sprogling came around, I had surprised her with a felt “advent solstice Calendar”.

It is in the shape of a giant pine tree, with 21 little pockets sewn onto the back, and decorated with cut-out ornaments. It is meant to be hung up, and begin at the bottom on December 1st, so that the final “sun-like-star” atop the tree is opened on the day of the winter Solstice (or there-abouts).

(Here is a quick video. Sorry for being sideways. If anyone knows a decent free-ish video editor for Windows, let me know.)
Lately, with a kid with us, it’s becoming a wonderful tradition, and some mornings it is a struggle to delay him rushing to the tree before breakfast. This, of course, is mostly because each pocket now contains either a small bit of candy, a shiny quarter, or a little toy from those machines at the mall.

Originally, I had used the calendar to leave little romantic notes, trinkets, and such, which was fun. now, it’s a great teaching tool, and we are finding that doing homework or chores can be easily rewarded with “ok, you can open today’s Advent pocket”.

After discussing the whole ‘what is the solstice’, our little one’s been watching the sun set (well, noticing it getting dark) and mentioning that he can’t wait until it gets light again so he won’t have to go to sleep right away. It’s cute.

Even if you don’t ascribe to the original “Advent holiday” as formulated by the Church-going crowd, it makes a great secular, or other-spiritual tradition due to being easily adaptable, and wide-open to interpretation. After all, it’s merely a good way to count down the days until a specific holiday.

Our culture seems to get Christmas stuff out earlier and earlier each year (I’ll still fight against christmas music before Halloween gets here…yes, I heard it on a store speaker on Oct 30th!!), but the countdown to a holiday is a good way to get into the spirit of the season. Just keep it within reason.

And while I ponder this, I think I might make something to hang up for Midsummer. Maybe a big bonfire with felt “flames” to build up each day and circled by StJohns wort flowers? We’ll see what I whip up this spring.

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Back in late September, I started seriously playing around with a pendulum I had made, in order to see what sort of latent Divinatory talents were hidden in myself. Since starting, I have used two main pendulums, with varying degrees of success. What follows is a somewhat long and hopefully not-too-rambling look back at the practice.

My first pendulum is a simple string-with-real-acorn, which seems to call to be used for more serious questions that are local to my house, property, or personal “real life” stuff. The fact that it really felt ‘wrong’ to use it for simple practice questions took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected a ‘tool’ to get such a voice of it’s own. Kinda interesting and neat though, and because of this, it has not gotten much use. I do know it will be used further in winter…somehow… so I’ll be sure to post updates with any Great Mysteries revealed in the future.

My main pendulum is described in my original post. I had kept it in my pocket most of the days at work, and often pull it out to do simple yes/no questions during bathroom breaks (too much info, I know!). This jewel-stone tool gets lots of use, and actually broke earlier this week and will need re-threaded.

I understand the concept of a Pendulum to be an extension of your inner psyche/spirit. The pendulum itself, in my paradigm, does not ‘know‘ anything beyond what the user knows, and acts merely as a sort of “answer-magnification-device”. If I ask it if my friend in Pennsylvania was wearing a red shirt yesterday, I could not get an answer due to me know having a clue what coliur shirt they wore. However, I do believe it is possible to use pendulums to help divine answers that you may not know you know, and draw out instinctive information from your inner-brain being in touch with the collective Universe. (See the end of this post, for this concept using Traffic as an example.)

Initially, I stuck with simple yes/no questions for practicing with the pendulum. Was it tuesday? Will I have soup for lunch? Should I post something on my blog today? I did this, with readily known answers, in order to really get used to the movement of the pendulum. When I started, I still had doubts about being able to use it without my hand obviously ‘making it work’ and forcing the answers. Keeping things simple helped train myself to just let the answer come, and show I could get some pretty vigorous movement even when I felt I was keeping my arm perfectly still. I started to feel how to be “in the zone” to properly ask questions and wait for the subtle muscle-twitches to provide the answer. Step one, complete.

Then I began asking more pointed questions, especially regarding my job, my future, and the deep-seated thoughts on the recent presidential election. These were questions I could not readily call out as strictly yes/no in simple terms. This time, I started learning how to ask the questions properly.

Some examples from my private diary, to show this were: Asking “Will McCain’s economic policy help prevent a further depresssion? …yes“. Following up with “Will Obama’s economic policy help prevent a further depresssion? …yes“. Same answer? Hmmm…. This made me think more, and refine the questions along the lines of “Will McCain’s policy be more effective than Obama’s in creating the economic situation I prefer to live in?“

I did this type of back-and-forth questioning on many political topics, as well as things such as “Should I keep my job which seems at-risk now, or start seriously looking with a mind to leave ASAP?” Of course, each “question” became a full dialogue with myself, exploring further specific details and digging deeper into the initial thought.

I always felt amazed at the people who really “grokked” things like Tarot cards, or runes, or palm reading, or astrology, but such activities had this weight of scholarly research attached to them. In order to know the deeper symbolism and intricate interconnectedness of the tool-units, it seemed to require an encyclopedia-brain of knowledge. The results provided by such systems I could relate to, and accept as authentic. I understood that knowing all the sniggly details and esoteric symbolism allowed profound insight into the question/answer results, but felt it far beyond my willingness or means to accomplish with any authority.

But then, just the other night, when I was doing a session of deep-digging and using the pendulum to help refine my thoughts from all angles of a question, I understood…. With a bit of string, a few holey-rocks, and a cheap silver trinket, I was doing “Real Divination”, and had to smile. It’s a form of meditation almost. I always feel more grounded and centered after a practice session. All it took was a bit of time, and a willingness to quit thinking so hard, and let the gravity of a million, billion stars dance with my own arm muscles.
Can I tell the future with my pendulum? Not quite yet.

But, then again, perhaps the correct question is “Do I really need to?”.

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Warning, this may be a large post with many pictures so I’m splitting it with a page-break to prevent browser damage.

We carved pumpkins and went Trick-or-Treating this weekend. Unfortunately, the sprogling has been feeling a bit ill an keeps waking up in the middle of the night with either being sick, or bad dreams, or otherwise “uncomfortable” since last wednesday. You’ll see some serious dark circles under his eyes in one of the movies. Poor guy!

Also, this weekend, since the weather was sunny and relatively warm, the kid was determined to have “Boat races at 10:00 in the morning”. No bad weather, or sleeplessness, or parental diversions were going to prevent boat races. They HAD to happen, COME ON MOM?!! So the latter pictures will be slightly unseasonal, but still fun.

Click after the break for full details. Continue Reading »

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I have been asked recently by one of my readers about my early path,since I’ve made mention of a christian upbringing. So here is the condensed story of my Footsteps… I will try to keep basic jargon to a minimum, but can discuss further questions/details to anyone offline if they wish.

Sit down, this may get wordy…..

When I was young, my family went to the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd each sunday, every sunday. We weren’t totally religious, and saw church as more of a community bonding experience, and a tradition. In some ways, I miss this.

When I was old enough to start really questioning my spirituality, and had gone to Sunday bible school classes, I really did feel there was a deeper energy going on during the services. The hymns, especially the more energetic ones were inspiring, even if the congregation singing was a bit pitchy/offkey. It was, as I’d describe it now, magical. Of course, my only framework for such explainations was to be feeling the presence of God.

This led me to persue extra-curricular activities within the church. I offered to help out, in my young teen years, as an assistant minister. This job mostly involved holding the little carrying case for communion cups (our church used little shot-glasses to drink the wine, which were passed out/collected as the congregants approached the altar). We got to wear the cool white robes with long thick rope-belts. We sat behind the altar along with the real pastors, and we got to process in at the start of service and light the candles on the altar. All the fun cool stuff of ritual!

Eventually, I stayed involved, and while not being ordained as a Full pastor/priest, I took quite a few bible-study classes and delved deeper into a personal relationship with the Higher Power. I earned the priviledge of doing readings from the gospels during church service. The full sermon was done by the head pastor, but I got to read at the altar passages from the bible, usually a good full page or so. I also was able to pass out the bread and wine during communion. (Not quite Bless and make simple bread/wine trans-substantiate, but close enough!)

There were also the little things, like standing near the pastor with towels during baptisms, and such. It was an important ‘job’, and really made my church-life much more solid and community-minded. In many ways, I miss this.

Throughout this whole experience, I expanded my bible and comparitive religion studies. I attended catholic High Mass in Washington DC, I attended two Jewish synagogues, one rather liberal Muslim Mosque, and met with a Bhuddist pradtitioner who came to our church for three weeks sharing his own beliefs.

I learned a lot, and the scholarly study of spiritual practices formed quite a big part of my current Pagan practice. I saw the similarity of all monotheistic faiths, and that once you strip the dogma from them, they easily can easily incorporate the Druidic/Pagan Path in terms of lifestyles and kindness.

Unfortunately, once I went to college I had a momentary crisis of faith, and felt my ‘straying’ from the Church to be a source of guilt. I still felt the spiritual power of church communities, I felt the awe that our natural world has wrought, and I was moved by the magesty of nature, as God made it. But the face of God became less personal, and more immanent, rather than transcendant. Jesus, as taught by the protestant church, was supposed to be important, and I saw him more as a good teacher and inspired avatar of God, in the sense we are all divine, rather than a direct dogmatic “Son of God” and intermediary to the Father. It’s complicated, and could easily be it’s own novel, but that’s a decent summary.

Due to this vague undefined guilt, I threw myself into the born-again movement, having met up with some friends who lived nearby and walked similar social circles outside of thier church. One was an Assembly of God adherent, and a nice girl, until she turned Fire & Brimstone on me. But the group I hung out with was fun, and not overly preachy in general, unless approached about their beliefs. We were more interested in living the Good life, going to movies and playing monopoly rather than smoke and party like our “fallen peers’, and offering a welcome hand to join our weekend bible-debate meetings without forcing our hand into theirs.

My thoughts, as I rationalized it internally, was that by surrounding myself with good Christian folks, my faith would solidify again. I’d re-find that connection with God I lost, and see Jesus as more of a savior again, instead of a Really Inspiring Guy.

It was during this period that I listened almost entirely to christian rock, or easy-listening radio stations. When in Rome, as they say… There is a LOT of good music out there in this genre, and still listen to a “Jars of Clay” CD I have. It’s inspiring decent music. (Seriously, listen to the Flood or Love Song track with an open mind, and it’s good music, though Love Song is a bit more churchy.)

Years passed, I moved to a different university, and started exploring the local wiccan scene. The christian thing just got too false, and I got discouraged. Wicca didn’t exactly match my internal thoughts, but it was new, and completely different from the ‘other religions’ I studied back as a minister.

Through the wicca studies, I found the tools and language of ‘magick’, which made a ton of sense in explaining my feeling of energy and power during church decades ago. I finally had the words to describe how I felt and how I acted, and the path before me suddenly offered branching trails of druidic study, eastern philosophy, and new age spirituality.

I still noticed that many of the younger ‘covens’ seemed to be christians in goth clothing (no offense to wiccans!) where God was replaced by a Goddess, and the rituals changed from candles and bible to candles and elemental circles. Still, it had validity again, and I dove in with abandon.

There was a brief period where I was meeting with a fun pagan girl, partying at their house, and indulging in a bit more hedonistic tendancies, learning all about deeper magic (not sex, Big Cermonial Rituals) and really starting to feel the Power again. It was like a drug, leading me to hang out with them a bit moreoften than I should have, and using drunken wine-evenings and powerful circle castings each week as an escapist activity.

I learned all about ancient herbalism, and how plant-based drugs could open a door to the Otherworld, yet still held back in my own experimentation out of a nagging guilt from church-raised purity. Then, one day, I got dosed without my knowledge, and abruptly cut off contact with that group after waking then ext morning in a drugged stupor. The door had been thrown open, and I definitely saw the Other side, but it was scary and Fierce.

More years passed, and I kinda shut down spiritually for a while. I slowly integrated all the past experiences I had, and re-formed my beliefs into something resembling my current philosophy. I got over the shock and ‘betrayal’ of the flying oil incident, and actualy saw how such things could be useful in gaining a perspective of things if used properly. Still, I didn’t dare seek out that type of thing, and preferred to just Be. I’d light a candle every so often, or stop to watch the sunset, but stopped actively Worshiping in any outward way.

I moved to Philadelphia, met up with a friendly priestess-type girl, and tenatively stepped back into that world, still unsure about where my Path led, and unsure if it even was This path, and not one I’d already stepped off previously. I gained experience with a gentler side of Pagan/wicca-ish spirituality, and divination. I still had a few minor moments of scary-ness, but it was never forced, and made a huge difference in helping my confidence with this subject matter.

More years pass, and I am invited to attend Starwood in 2002. (wow, it’s been that long?!) More so than ever, I found myself surrounded by practitioners of ‘alternative’ spirituality, far outside the bounds of my youthful church-going worldview. It was amazing! Even among the nearby campers who may follow different faiths, it was Safe. There was no judgement, no condescending Guilt from cross-faith adherents, and the possibilities of the universe were nascent and visceral all around me.

The Divine Power of a good congregation-hymn was back, carried now on drumbeats, and by flickering firelight. A sacred tea ritual took on deeper meaning, and the Otherworld door opened wide again. This time, I was more mature, more learned, and more confortable with myself. I stepped through. I spun glow-stick poi until the grey of first-dawn touched the distant horizon. I came Home. I felt God again. He was here. We were him.

I still see a Higher power as a male creator-figure, though only to personalize what is essentially a boundless potential. We are all part of the divine, which is why even back in the church of my youth, I could feel that Power. It is divine to gather, to combine our energy towards the creation of Good.

In some way, my beliefs never really changed from way back in my early tween years. I just have the right words and experience to frame it properly. I can drink in the wonder and Magical Mystery that is Life.

May you never thirst.

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