The trailer for the new movie Stardust, based on the book by Neil Gaiman, can be viewed here via YouTube on The Wild Hunt blog. I admit to emitting something between a giggle and a cackle when watching the trailer. I love the book.
The Answer! Right Here! This is It!
March 26, 2007 at 8:44 pm (Culture War, Media Craptango, Politics, Theology)
Hello my beloved friends! Guess what? I know The Answer to all of your problems. Yup. I do. How do I know this? I know it because:
a. God told me and I’m His messenger
b. A light-being from the Pleiades told me, and I’m its messenger
c. It came to me in a dream
d. I’m a megaooptigazillionaire who owns my own string of islands, so I must know
e. All of the above
First, let me tell you what your problems are. It’s easy for me to know them, partially because all people are one-dimensional lesser beings than myself, but mostly because once upon a time, I was just like you. Hard to believe, that I was once as common and ordinary as the rest of you, but yes (hardy laughter), yes, it’s true! And though I’ve risen to such delirious heights of spiritual illumination and material wealth and personal grandeur, I’m very proud to say that I’ve never lost my connection to my humble beginnings, and more importantly, I’ve never, ever, forgotten you, the little people. And thus, this exuberant fondness for you – indeed, love…I do everything because of love – is what has driven me to finally share the unbelievable, amazing, never-ever-heard-before Answer to your problems. But how I do get carried away! First, your problems: You hate your job and you wish you had more time/happiness, which equates of course to having more money with which you can buy time-saving appliances, trips to your own island on your own polluting jet (Me, you ask??? Polluting whole swathes of the planet all by myself? Yes! It CAN happen!), and servants and personal assistants to wait on your every corporeal need (don’t worry about them – they do it because they want to, because they’re just good people who like serving others – and hey, they probably feel honored to serve you, after all, you deserve it!). Am I right? (Fakey robust laughter) Ha ha ha! Of course I am!
Now – do you want to know The Answer to making those ooptikerzillions, just like I have? Do you want to live a life of soulless ease and effortless, planet-devastating wealth, made even easier by being backed by claims to spiritual secrets and the blessing of God/The Universe? Do ya? Do ya? Huh? Huh?
Of COURSE you do! And you can! JUST as soon as you watch my video. And read my book. And attend my workshop. It’s that easy. For me.
—————
So no. I’m not a fan of The Secret and its hoopla. It’s really really nothing new – it’s just got a slicker marketing campaign than similar Get Rich, It’s Easy! infomercials, that’s all (for instance, they’ve wisely avoided jackets covered in question marks). And it is pretty slick. I admit: I’m a sucker for a secret – always. Months before Oprah gave it her all-powerful Guaranteed Bestseller Stamp of Instant Success, I heard about The Secret and poked around on the web site. Not feeling terribly comfortable paying for something that seemed to hold a hell of a lot in keeping it all hush hush until you paid for it, I kept pokin’ around until I learned the basics. And the basics weren’t new. And when I say not new, I mean really really not new. It’s not even new in the past couple of years (the whole “Quantum physics proves I can have the perfect life I’ve only dreamt of if I just concentrate hard enough and think glittery spiritual thoughts!” approach was thick in the hyper New Agey What the Bleep Do We Know). Only thing that’s new is the packaging…lookin’ all DaVinci Code n’ stuff.
I once saw one of the best damn TV preachers I have ever seen deliver the slickest Prosperity Gospel sermon I have ever heard. She was absolutely captivating…when I think about those Good News Pagan Tent Revivals I dream about on occasion, this is the preacher I want to see – she was on fire, righteous, holy fire. I mean, I didn’t agree theologically or otherwise with a single word she said, but I will say that she had enormous vocal and performative talent. She’d say that God gave her that talent. I don’t doubt it. I do wonder if God wanted her to use it that way, but then, I don’t know her God – maybe he does, in which case, she’s doing a great job. The crux of the sermon was this: When she gave her heart and soul to God, God gave her wealth; the more she gave to others from that wealth, the more God gave to her; therefore, the more you give to her (her mission and her church, etc.), the more God will give to you. After a good 45 minutes illustrating this message (you betcha I watched all of it – I really mean it, she was good), she said God had instructed her to instruct the audience to get out their checkbooks and each write a $300 check (I nearly fell off the hotel bed – that’s seriously bold – I mean, that’s no small change). Sure, you could give less, but God wants you to dig deep. The deeper you dig, the bigger the blessing later. That’s prosperity gospel. She didn’t say anything about what would happen on Tuesday if you bought God a hamburger today.
Prosperity Gospel and The Secret are bosom buddies, excepting that when it comes to God, The Secret would rather suavely have you insert quantum physics, The Universe, your own intellectual/spiritual power, and other New Age aphorisms instead. It’s Prosperity Gospel for spiritual seekers. Very hip!
But more important to me, the message behind it all is the claim that monetary success can be gained through spiritual means – and indeed, is a sign of God’s blessing, personal worth, spiritual enlightenment/purity. The perfect union of bootstrap capitalism, American hyperindividualism, and contemporary monotheism. A sign of Doing Something Right, as an individual. The opposite of course being that if life has handed you the short-end of the wealth-stick, you must be Doing Something Wrong – not giving enough, believing enough, praying enough, whatever, and thus, God’s (or the Universe’s) blessing ain’t there. Simple cause and effect, right? Like, a law of attraction maybe. Looking for or acknowledging any other reasons why it may be harder for you to get out of debt or have that Ferrari or buy that island than it is for Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, Oprah, etc., is chalked up to some terrible excuse game played by lazy/unsaved/negative people. I can only believe it must feel really really really good to buy such a neat and easy little package.
Now – the Pagan and New Age movements have been hip to a culture of positive thinking, manifesting, and magic for decades. And the basic principles behind it all can be found in varying interpretations across many religions, spiritualities and cultures. Of course, you can manifest individual good. Certainly it has been shown that communities can manifest community good, and community not-so-good (worldviews – you’re soaking in ‘em). Choosing how we react to our situation or choosing to concentrate our efforts and thoughts towards radical bliss, world peace, personal spiritual fulfillment, and yes, a stable and fulfilling life that feeds your physical, emotional needs is possible, beneficial, and will help you manifest these things in life. Everything’s a web. Learn to see it, touch a strand here, touch a strand there, harmonize, hear all the strands singing, breathe, work for good, pray for ecstasy, pray for peace. Sure. It’s not easy, especially when you happen to be attempting to manifest things that are up against enormous obstacles – shifting a worldview is not something you just wake up one morning and do. The web is big, the tapestry is beyond understanding. You may move your sail, but ultimately the ocean moves your boat, and things swim below it that have been around longer than you. Do I really understand all that? Nope. It’s a mystery. But it’s there. It’s vastly more complicated than anyone really understands, but it’s there.
What’s not a mystery is that there are situations that are not the responsibility or the fault of individuals living in them, and that those individuals/communities did not draw their circumstances to them, and that there are enormous systemic forces in play, like racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc. etc. that work tirelessly to thwart the comfort and peace of millions of people around the globe every minute, and thus, it may be just a wee bit simplistic, if not downright appallingly insulting, to propose that individuals living under the burden of these enormous forces might be able to escape them by thinking glittery thoughts, and because they don’t, they must be perpetuating their own misery.
But the question remains. Can you manipulate the web for your own personal gain that ignores the importance of things like harmony, justice, planetary integrity, the interdependent web? Yes, I guess you can. And lo, isn’t it remarkable that it is easier for privileged folks in privileged countries to pull that off, and then market it and sell it to other privileged people? Huh. So yeah, you can learn to focus your intentions on mansions and big bucks and shiny cars, and when combined with a ruthless sense of capitalist know-how, you might could see those things happen. But should you? Ah. Should you. A question I’m feeling the folks behind The Secret probably don’t spend a hell of a lot of time pondering. And why should they? In a capitalist worldview that focuses on hierarchy, power, individual personal wealth, progress, etc. etc., of course an ancient spiritual notion is going to be twisted to serve that worldview, with the added bonus of freeing the privileged from any responsibility for others living in underprivileged situations. And voila! It has. Civilization perverts authentic spirituality – why wouldn’t it pervert Magic too?
That’s my opinion, and you can have it for free. WOW!!!!!!
Some outstanding criticisms of The Secret have been popping up lately in the progressive and Pagan ‘netsphere:
An Alternet piece by Courtney E. Martin talks about The Secret’s gross emphasis on “things.”
And Dianne Sylvan talks about the Law of Attraction’s relationship to Magic and Miracles.
Good News Communique #10
March 23, 2007 at 4:23 pm (Good News Communique)
It is a fantastically rainy day here in the not-so-wild midwest, and the spectacular sound of a downpour on my roof at night lulled me into dreams filled with blues and greens and sea-deep conversations…
A few things on this luscious lazy day to ponder – a sleepy Good News that sidles up to the porch and curls at yer feet. Rain on the rooftops, rain on the Mama. Good News Communique #10 – short and sweet like rich raindrops of perfect Beauty edition.
1. Rain. I love rain. Unlike snow, which carpets and muffles, rain illuminates and reveals. The secrets in oak bark are made manifest. The shining that lives inside our green cousins is set at center stage. One of my favorite activities is to run out into thunderstorms, throw my hands out and up to the black sky, and laugh and splash and sing and shout and dance. Fun with friends, fun by yourself. There is a mountain of healing in rain – washing away, washing away, making room for the New and the Fresh.
2. Jeff Lilly at Druid Journal has a gorgeous post about Beauty as the Meaning of the Universe. What can I say but that he’s right? He’s right. His post makes me desperately long for my beloved Southwest and the open breathtaking plains of Texas – and the light. That light.
3. Dreams. We are a dream-thick group, the Pagani. There is so much more to explore in our dreams that we have barely scratched even the surface. They are never stagnant – a constant moving, shifting, breathing, organic, evolving thing, the dream country.
4. Dianne Sylvan posts a beautiful love poem for Ostara on Dancing Down the Moon.
As for me – I’m taking a brief internet-fasting sabbatical for a few days. Posting at the PG should resume sometime next week. For the nonce, I plan to spend some quality time with the new growth in the backyard, the sweet secret places in the back of the cemetery near my home, the sourdough starter in the kitchen, and the flash and call of beeswax candles as I make offerings to my gods in celebration of the turning seasons. And dream. And dream.
Waxing Newness, Green Dancing
March 21, 2007 at 5:01 pm (Pagany Musings, Theology)
I hope that each of you had a refreshing, beautiful vernal equinox yesterday. As for me, I got me a little spring cold and spent most of the day shuffling and snarfling about my house, doing a bit of cleaning but for the most part resting and soaking in the sunshine, which was blessedly ample and pooled out on the floor next to every available window. Cats have it a-right – those are the best places to nap. But for being mildly ill, the day was lovely, and I give thanks for it.
In my particular practice, I don’t usually celebrate the equinoxes and solstices quite as fervently as the cross-quarter holidays. For me, these are times of simplicity and reflection – honoring the Mama as she spins on her axis, giving thanks to Old Man Sun and his waxing and waning as He washes us in gold. That sweet first rush of soft wind as it relaxes the grass, waking with newness, the world covered in mud (the vernix of Earth), the blossoming of this miraculous year – I pause to wonder at the miracle of this repeating glory, that newness always comes…soon, soon it will be time for all the riotous dancing. Even now under warm rain everything is gathering for the Party. That I am privy to this not-so-Secret Joy thrills me to the core (and to the Kore). That birth and death hold hands and dance. That I get to witness it over and over again – revelling every time in its perfection, its little differences, the ways my own life waxes and wanes within it – a microcosm containing microcosms performing a part within the macrocosm (itself a microcosm of an even bigger picture – forever and ever amen) – what an extraordinary gift. Laughing, singing, laughing singing, come the children over the hill – fa la la la la la la la ha ha ha laughing over the hill (this little round always reminds me of spring and fall, the shifting seasons).
Once, when I was 14 or so I guess, I had a small cut on a finger that was starting to heal. I made some passing comment to my mother about it as we sat at the dinner table. She grabbed my hand and started to wax amazed at the power of the human body’s natural ability to heal itself (my mom’s a nurse, so it’s par for the course). Since I was 14 at the time, I rolled my eyes and giggled at her effusive rhapsodies. Today, years later, I find myself getting caught up in my own paeans to the amazing everything. When a young person rolls her eyes at me and chuckles at my nerdy love for the complex World, I’ll know I’ve truly Arrived.
Happy Spring! Blessed Ostara! Come come come come come!!!
in Just-
e.e. cummings
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
————
Such Singing in the Wild Branches
Mary Oliver
It was spring
and finally I heard him
among the first leaves -
then I saw him clutching the limb
in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still
and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness -
and that’s when it happened,
when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree -
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,
and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward
like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing -
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed
not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfectly blue sky – all, all of them
were singing.
And, of course, yes, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last
for more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it, that is true,
is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?
Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then – open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.
————–
Prayer for the Kore at the Advent of Spring
The morning breaks, a shift and a cry, the Mama sighs -
O My Daughter.
Ten green children are laughing behind the old winter bush.
Their fingers pluck earthworms from the wet grass,
spinning prayers and memos of warm earth,
mud and vernix – the lift of a veil, the tapping of a foot.
There is an egg waiting
in the flush and bloom of 9 o’ clock.
Laugh! O She comes! O She rises!
The green thread winds up the branches.
The sap moves in concert with her singing.
The crabapple blossoms are dreams in the fluttering of her eyelids.
The golden sisters in their combs cry out together -
Io Melissa! Io Kore! The Wild Girl, the Honeyed Star!
And the west wind rides behind her.
And the smoky rain clothes her in its perfection.
She is come – the world cannot but throw its arms out in welcome!
She is come – the veil of winter falls away!
She is come - we are all new in the glory of heralds and trumpets!
She is come – show us the secret in the early flower!
The world mints itself a new coin – this shining is only a beginning.
Wait.
Wait.
A Pagan’s Second Life
March 16, 2007 at 7:53 pm (Pagany Musings, Theology)
So. I’ve been reading about Second Life. For those who’ve been living under a blissful, glittery, real-time rock like I have, Second Life is an online “game” and virtual world where players go to concerts, attend parties, build houses, buy stuff, promote causes, go to meetings, and interact in general with other players. It’s like life, except it’s virtual. It’s virtually life. I’m assuming a large contingent of folks enjoy Second Life because it may enable them to explore things they wouldn’t otherwise in this life, or it enables them to lead the life they wished they could have, or, and this is an aspect of it I find particularly weird, it provides them a place to make real-life livings selling virtual products, and even virtual real-estate (virtual-estate? VR-estate? unreal-estate?). It’s like playing pretend when you were little – everyone likes to play pretend. Or role-playing…I can get that. One might also, if one were being cheeky, point out that it’s also a bit like being born again – having a life with a clean slate – sinless even. Maybe they ought to have called it Born Again. Still – I’m human and I live in our society and I understand the impulse here to an extent. It’s the point at which Second Life, which is a product of a culture of extreme individualism and radical disconnection and therefore cannot help but enable this culture, becomes the Only Life that I get a little squirrely. All right – I get a lot squirrely. I like science fiction. I have luddite tendencies. You can imagine that these in combination make me start eyeballing stuff like Second Life with visions of Terminator and The Matrix dancing in my eccentric, slightly paranoid head.
There are also the issues involved with the fact that, on the Second Life website, I am told that, if I understand correctly, 1,833,003 US dollars were spent in Second Life in the last 24 hours. On stuff that’s not real. While I would not postulate that those who spend money in Second Life are any less ethical or moral than any other member of our society (each of us, all, as persons living in our “first world” consumerist civilizations, overconsume by a staggeringly obscene amount – we are all culpable), I do think it serves as a particularly potent example of our worldview’s emphasis on consumer-driven “entertainment” that forgoes real relationship and real community in favor of virtual, individualized pursuits, as well as a visual indicator of the staggering wealth our country pours into activities that do not benefit our real communities, our real relationships, or the Earth and its peoples and beings (though I’m sure there are those that may argue with me on these points – I am making some judgments here, I am aware of that).
Ultimately, however, I can only huff and puff here on my hypocritical little corner of cyberspace and keep doing the things that I do – Second Life, while to me a pretty problematic phenomenon, does not top the list of things I’m concerned about in the world (the worldview that is responsible for it might be). Yet – I’ve been increasingly exposed to conversations regarding Second Life because of one particular fact: Pagans have started to ”meet” on Second Life for ritual. And I have to say that from a theological perspective, this rumples my spirit a bit.
By virtue of our still relatively ”new” status as a group of religions and our lack of traditional emphasis on structure and rigid organization, there are an enormous amount of contemporary Pagans who are solitary practitioners. Some are solitary by choice, but many remain solitary by circumstance, and many of those seek out community with others of a like mind nowadays via the internet (remembering of course that those who do are able to because of privilege). I have been and am now one of that privileged number for the most part – I understand the deep longing for intimate spiritual community – for the closeness of community ritual, sharing food and inspiration with others, lively real-time discussion/debate about theological, ethical and praxis-oriented topics, etc., and recognize that because it’s not always possible I supplement my need for community with online opportunities. I’m on a number of listservs and whatnot, and I read a host of Pagan blogs, and lo – I have one of ‘em myself. Yet – I’ve always had an aversion to any time someone has postulated any aspect of worship on the internet – whether in the form of online temples, prayer and ritual in chatrooms, or now the possibility of groves and covens meeting for ritual in Second Life. Ultimately, like the stagnation effect of capturing words on paper or music onto recording mediums, there is a really deeply crucial part of the entire experience that is lost in this translation – reading the words “SoandSo lights candle and intones invocation” simply doesn’t have the effect that actually lighting a candle (the sound of the match, the flare of the flame, the rising glow, the breathing in of light…) and listening to an invocation has…this is pretty obvious. To the point where I can’t help but question why we do it at all. I mean, I understand the arguments as to why, but it bothers me nonetheless that we may be willing to posit a virtual spiritual life and a virtual community life as a legitimate substitute or even a legitimate supplement to real community and real ritual events.*
I’ve also been spurred to think about these issue in relationship to the Ehrenreich article in yesterday’s post. Is collective joy and festivity possible in a virtual world separated from sensual reality? As I mentioned yesterday, to me an authentic spirituality is an embodied spirituality, particularly when speaking of Earth-based religions (and not all Pagan religions are ostensibly Earth-based, I am aware). A spirituality that is interdependent on our senses and our relationships with the living Earth - the brush of wind, the feel of grass, the quickened heartbeat, the indrawn breath, the laugh-out-loud shout. Online meetups and virtual reality seem anaethema to this expression. Energies don’t mingle – breath is not shared. True relationship has to be embodied - are not things like the smell of sweat, the exchange of personal energies, the mingling of breath, eye-contact, spoken blessing, the bedrock of authentic community ritual? Without these precious pieces, a ritual is just a hollow form. It may offer some kind of comfort, I suppose, and there’s merit in that. Yet, the more room we make for these forms of “worship” and gathering online, the less we make for real ritual – and for me, you really can’t beat the real thing. All the 3-D avatars in the world cannot replace the earth-moving and soul-shaking power of life – life at its fullest, its most authentic. For me, ritual is about seeking life at its fullest – about hunting down the god in your guts, the moon on a frosty night, the firelight burning up your face as the chill runs fingers up your back – it’s about creating and maintaining relationship, solidarity, it’s about creating a space where justice can bloom and hegemony is threatened – all those amazing things that Barbara Ehrenreich was talking about.
It may be that I am simply woefully slow on the electronic uptake, though I’m fairly happy to be so…plain living and all that. But there is something about meeting for worship in virtual reality that will continue to evoke deep theological questions for me. Where is the Deep Mama in all of it? Where is the Land? The Ancestors and Spirits that Dwell in the Heart of the Land? Where are the Sleeping Sisters? The Foxes and the Butterflies? How is real relationship maintained – how is true connection made? Already I mourn my own lack of connection to the Multifaceted, Dazzling Earth – already I feel cut-off from the web, purely by virtue of living within this society. My answer to that has been in and through my religion, a religion tied to muscle and sweat and rhythm and sound and heartbeats and movement and verse and heat – without it, there’s a crisis of faith – a faith cut off from my sensual being.
*I’m not suggesting that those of us whose circumstances prevent us from meeting with local Pagans spend an avagadro’s amount of money gallavanting all over the country to various gatherings and festivals – for some, online community really and truly is the only option for any kind of community. I merely question whether our enormous online presence (we Pagani are on the internet in staggering numbers and have been from the beginning) is always by necessity a good thing. And it is important to remember too that Second Life is not free to the public either.
Community and Collective Joy
March 15, 2007 at 7:23 pm (Good News Communique, Pagany Musings, Theology)
I have just read an absolutely brilliant, brilliant article by Barbara Ehrenreich regarding the need for communal, collective joy, festivals and ecstatic rituals. I can only encourage everyone to read this outstanding piece. I am consistently impressed with all of Ehrenreich’s work of course, but this particular article hits home with me on many levels. I give it a Good News Triple Gold Star Award for Inspiring a Radical, Authentic Shimmy While Wearing Red Boots and a Skirt Made of The Starry Sky.
From the article:
My own Calvinist impulses–inherited in part from those of my ancestors who were genuine Calvinists, Presbyterian Scots–tell me insistently to get the work done, save the world and then maybe there’ll be time for celebration. In the face of poverty, misery, and possible extinction, there is no time, or justification, for the contemplation of pleasure of any kind, these inner voices say. Close your ears to the ever-fainter sound of drums or pipes; the wild carnival and danced ritual belong to a distant time. The maenads are long dead, a curiosity for the classicists; the global “natives” have been subdued. Forget the past, which is half imagined anyway, and get to work.
I can relate to this, and I’m no Calvinist (partnered with one, though, so I know a little somethin’ about it). It’s a struggle to remember that joy is something we must believe in, we must partake of, we must drink deeply and dance out everywhere, particularly in the midst of our despair and all the Holy Work we do for the planet and for those we care about. Sometimes I feel that the world has decreed celebration and ecstasy extravagances we simply cannot afford. Yet, without them, we are completely and utterly lost. This is another reason why I open my arms and laugh out loud at the crazy loving and fierce dancing of my fellow Pagani. Drumming and dancing, ritual masking, ritual play, these are work – important work. The work of being human, of being animals, of being authentic beings on the sweet Mama.
———
The prehistoric ritual dancer, the maenad of ancient Greece or the Caribbean practitioner of Vodou, did not believe in her god or gods; she knew them, because, at the height of group ecstasy, they filled her with their presence. Modern Christians may have similar experiences, but the primary requirement of their religion is belief, meaning an effort of the imagination. Dionysus, in contrast, did not ask his followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly, to let him enter, in all his madness and glory, their bodies and their minds.
Oh my yes. I may use the words belief and faith in my conversations – but this Knowing, this Ecstatic Gnosis, this is what my religion speaks to at its heart. True community, and thus true communal joy and spiritual ecstasy, are sensual, embodied. Relationship is embodied. Intellectualized belief and theology will never be fully alive until they are wed, fundamentally and at their core, with the gnosis of the awakened body, in all its diversity, range of motion, range of appearance, range of expression – all bodies are sacred bodies. They are the manifestation of Holy Multiplicity and are the instruments of True Relationship - how could they not be?
———
The capacity for collective joy is encoded into us almost as deeply as the capacity for the erotic love of one human for another. We can live without it, as most of us do, but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitary nightmare of depression. Why not reclaim our distinctively human heritage as creatures who can generate their own ecstatic pleasures out of music, color, feasting and dance?
Why not indeed? Dance dance dance, Pagani! Dance and do not waste time! We fight with ritual, because of ritual, and for ritual. To touch that divine explosion in the center of our gut – to make everything love. To make ourselves known to the world. To know the World. Grok Earth. Pray without ceasing.
Review – A Language Older Than Words
March 14, 2007 at 8:42 pm (Book Review, EcoTalk, Politics)
(Note: Parts of this review are taken from a previous review I wrote on Amazon.com)
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
proph·et (prŏf‘ĭt) 
n.
- A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed.
- A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
- A predictor; a soothsayer.
- The chief spokesperson of a movement or cause.
[Middle English prophete, from Old French, from Latin prophēta, from Greek prophētēs : pro-, before; see pro–2 + -phētēs, speaker (from phanai, to speak).]
Not having grown up in a biblical household (i.e. a household that read the Bible, not a household in Nazareth…) for most of my life, I was confused about prophets. I knew the word invoked a kind of secret delicious shiver from the core of my heart, somewhere deep - that there must be something profound to it, yet I believed the term prophet more or less fell down to the third definition listed above – a predictor, one who sees the future. A fortuneteller. This is certainly juicy, but didn’t possess the fierce, crackling power that I felt behind the term. Upon entering seminary, pursuing some biblical study and diving into the nigh unparseable mess of authentic history as well as my own independent studies in deep ecology, ecofeminism and anti-civ anarchist thought, I began to understand the shiver better. A prophet can see the future – that hoary gift and curse – because a prophet can see the present, authentically and truly, for what it is. From there, the future becomes crystal clear. And having seen the present, the prophet Speaks – in a voice that rings out like clarion bells, a summoning voice – of all that they see. They have no choice. It may not always be a voice of doom (though this is the predominant legacy of the prophets of civilization due to the nature of that Beast, I remain greatly heartened by the radically blissful prophetic work of Rob Brezsny, for instance), but it is always a voice that calls people to listen, to dig deeper, to learn to See themselves. Prophets are, by their very nature, dangerous to the status quo. I may not believe in saviors, but I do believe in prophets.
Derrick Jensen is a prophet. In nearly every sense of the word.
I discovered Jensen and his book, A Language Older Than Words, via another author-prophet I admire, Inga Muscio. In the second edition of her outstanding manifesta, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Muscio wrote something along the lines of Jensen’s book being a jaw-dropping, outstanding work that she pretty much recommended to everyone. Everywhere. (As an aside, in addition to Cunt, Muscio’s second book, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society, is one that I recommend to everyone. Everywhere.) As I happened to read this at my local indie bookstore, and as I happen to take it to heart when authors that I think are geniuses get excited over something - I trotted over the ten feet to the section on ecology, and lo! There it was. I bought it on the spot. It altered my world. When I looked up from reading it days later, my eyes were different. My heart was different. Everything was different – and everything was exactly the same.
For as long as I can remember I have been, like so many others, deeply concerned for the World. And I knew that I felt an incredibly deep sadness, an intense loss, creeping towards despair…but I did not know how to articulate why. This book articulates why. A Language Older Than Words illuminates in precise and heart-rending prose the inextricable connections between cycles of abuse on personal and global scales. At first, Jensen sets out to discuss the possibilities of interspecies communication, but as he delves further into the subject, the interconnections between patterns of abuse and the destruction of the environment, the degradation and annhilation of indigenous communities, sexism, racism, genocide - all become necessary to discuss in depth. Indeed, in the face of such deeply woven connections, it seems impossible to talk of one part of civilization’s legacy or how to operate outside of any given piece of it without discussing the whole.
The book is often incredibly painful to read. Jensen’s talent for weaving the horrors of the world together into a plain-as-day picture of the destruction humanity has wrought, and continues to wreak, on the natural world and each other, is unparalleled in my experience, and his bravery in the frank retelling of the abuse he suffered as a child is staggering. I often run out of words trying to say why I think this book, and indeed the rest of Jensen’s work, is so important.
Jensen is a full Brother in the Holy Order of Hystericals. He feels deeply and authentically, and his clear yet emotionally compelling prose is evidence of this. If anything can be said about his work, it’s that it is deeply passionate. His wounds are real, he sees them in the context of all wounds, and he feels the crush of the emotional terror and joy in the world, the sublime bliss of communion with a wolf spider, the aching, empty sucking void of loss at the destruction of the Land around us, the despair at one person’s ability to enact any real change in the system, and the resolve to work beyond that despair with an eye towards simply doing, doing, doing, writing, speaking, acting, being, because it is right – because it is the only thing to do. All of his work offers moments of intense reflection for the reader – this one is merely the first of several powerful works. Not all will follow his books and his philosophies on out to the conclusions he reaches or agree 100% with his positions – but A Language Older Than Words alone is a work that benefits anyone interesting in thinking outside the boundaries of our worldview. It is a book that forces the question – “what can I do?” There may not be easy answers, but to begin the work of asking this question (and for me, it is a question I will be asking myself the rest of my life) and making any answers, many answers, arguing with answers, enacting answers, is a critical step towards the necessary shift away from the poisonous worldview we live in, the worldview that is so graphically and painfully illustrated in Jensen’s work.
Every once in a while I have the experience of someone I know and admire saying to me: “I read this amazing book!! You have to read it – it will blow you away,” and then they hand me a copy of A Language Older Than Words. Every time this happens, I think “yep – prophet.” Jensen may not be a medium through which the will of a god is expressed, but he may be a medium through which the will of the Land is expressed (one of several) - and if you’re me, that’s the same damn thing.
Biblical Literature and Other Conundrums
March 12, 2007 at 4:08 pm (Culture War, Pagany Musings, Politics)
Ah – it is a freakin’ glorious gorgeous day here in the not-so-wild midwest, and one cannot step outside without feeling as though perhaps gravity has not let up just a tad. The birds are singing as though their whole bodies are their hearts, and every breath of air is pregnant with promise. The vernal equinox, celebrated as Ostara by some among the Pagani, approaches, and the precious Mama warms to the moment. Of course, not all of us Pagans are thrilled at the upcoming holiday, but then, some of us are planning just to have a small ”peaceful weekend at home,” rather than the usual big family blowout (I *heart* The Onion).
For today, however, once again my attention has been drawn to the Washington Posts’ ongoing “On Faith” panel blog. Today’s question is: “Should teaching about religion be mandatory in public schools? In colleges and universities?” I’m particularly amused by Starhawk’s response: “Can I Design the Lesson Plan on Wicca?”, in which she states, “If we don’t have a state religion, then we’d have to teach all religions. And I just want to say to everyone pushing this idea that I am completely ready to step up and help design the Mandatory Wiccan Religion Session for primary, intermediate and secondary grades.”
I am assuming WaPo’s question is in response to the recent debate in Georgia over whether or not to offer bible classes in public schools (the classes would be electives, not mandatory), as well as the recent data suggesting that Americans are woefully uneducated about world religions in general. As others have noted, it is particularly interesting to note how many folks think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. This is amusing, but raises the question – why would we need to know this? Who does it benefit if everyone in America knows about all the ”main” stories in the Bible?
Now, I have mixed feelings about all this “religion in schools” business. Distinct from the kerfuffle over prayer in schools, the teaching of comparative religions or philosophy of religion have their own kettle of wormy worms. They are, in my mind, different issues, though with some of the same problems.
Unlike Starhawk, I’m not automatically opposed to teaching about religion in schools. It is true that teaching about religion and teaching religion, as in belief, theology, ethics, etc. are two different things. Do I trust the government and our educational system to enforce the difference? Bwahahaahahahhaahaha – No. But it’s still important to note that there is a difference. I do agree with Starhawk that once you begin to offer mandatory courses in Christian theology, ethics and praxis (and I’m assuming you’d have different courses for different Protestant approaches as well as Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings, yes?), you betcha there’d better be a course in Celtic Reconstructionist polytheology, ethics and praxis right there with it, along with Buddhism (a course for each kind of Buddhism of course – Zen Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, etc.), Islam (Sunni, Shi’a, Sufism and others), Hinduism (which is itself just a convenient term for a whole bunch of different religions), Judaism (Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, Conservative and Renewal, each), Wicca (haha! Try narrowing it down to maybe 6 different traditions – good luck), Other Paganisms (I can think of 10 major ones just off the top of my head), Bahai, Shinto, Zoroastrianism, a million and one indigenous traditions, forever and ever and ever. Religion is literally endlessly diverse and extraordinarily complex. The way our media goes on about it, you’d think it was pretty cut and dried, but boy howdy, it ain’t. But this is still different than teaching philosophy of religion, or a basic course in comparative religions (in which one can give all the above religious traditions the same brief overview and discuss topics and themes of relevance to world issues regarding religion).
Now, as an agnostic/newbie Pagan teen raised in a liberal household without any formal religion and who was obsessively interested in everything religious, I would have jumped at the chance to take a comparative religions course in high school. As it was, my high school did offer an elective in Biblical Literature, which I took. I also took Greek Mythology (which isn’t considered holy scripture to most and sure is holy scripture to some – there’s a whole other Pagan issue in there). The approach to both classes was similar – that each were a set of cultural stories, a combination of history, myth, and teaching story. Both were very useful courses and I’m glad I took them, and I absolutely and fundamentally believe that, given that Biblical Literature was offered, courses should have been offered in all the other holy scriptures of different traditions as well – each. Therein lies the rub once again – why are schools offering courses in the Bible and not the Qur’an and the Upanishads? Well, Georgia? Uh huh. I think we’re all pretty familiar with the answer to that.
Another key here is of course that these courses were electives. I am not in any way in favor of making any course on the Bible or any other religious scripture a mandatory course – if ya pushed me on it, you’d most likely learn that I tend to think that no subject should be mandatory…I’m one of them crazy children-directed unschooling types…it’s that pesky anarchist in me. However, given the current norm of mandatory curriculums, I might be willing to say that a basic course in comparative religions might be acceptable, providing that the curriculum was fair (and, again, do I trust institutions to pull this off? Bwahahahahaha – No). Whether we like it or not, religion is an undeniably powerful force in our lives, and American culture is saturated with it. As a whole, under the meme of “American culture”, our governmental policies are steeped in religious beliefs, our holidays, our worldview, our understandings of family, etc. all stem from religious belief structures. We may not like what those are (and I don’t really), but in order to equip ourselves to be aware of how this works in our culture and how we might begin to build different ways of seeing and being in the world, we must understand them. In order to establish friendly, authentic, strong relationships with folks of other faiths, it is necessary to know something about the diversity of faith traditions in the world, about how religions function, how they deeply influence individuals and communities, to begin to grasp how endlessly messy and crazy and fantastic and impossible the world of religious scholarship and study can get (for instance – what is religion? There’s an all-nighter – a trillion seminary students and AAR conferences later and nobody’s got the answer to that one). As a religious scholar (well, kinda), I can’t help but be biased here – I think a basic understanding of the way religion works in the world, some history of world religions, and a basic understanding of world religions in relationship with each other makes for a broader awareness of how our world works. And if you’re going to change a world, you need to know how it works. Informed dissent. That’s what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, I find the likelihood of a curriculum that is truly just and allows for the authentic, gritty, honest examination of these issues by students and teachers in a government-funded, institutionalized classroom to be pretty poor. Can it happen? Sure – I believe in infinite possibility. It’s the probability that I have an issue with.
In a world where I trusted institutions to enact fair and balanced (har!) curriculums and offer courses that enabled students to choose to study a wide variety of religions and to begin to understand the way religion works on the ground and begin to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which religious belief influences culture, government, foreign policy, etc., I may not be opposed to educational systems that included religious studies in their curriculums (hey – if I thought history courses were fair and balanced and were taught predominately with an eye towards cultivating a hermeneutic of critical examination in students I’d be happy). Even in that world, this would be incredibly difficult.* And as I’ve said before, sounds like fun to me, but maybe not to non-anarchists. In this world, where the privileging of Christianity is a very real fact, and there are those in power who would not hesitate to institute a theocracy if they thought they could get away with it, I cannot help but be suspicious of religious curriculums in public schools.
But for now, I’m just going to have to be content with my quiet little preparations for the vernal equinox. Now – pay attention, there’ll be a quiz later. Ostara, boys and girls, as you can see by the board here (*schwak!*), is a Pagan celebration honoring the arrival of spring and the growing fecundity of the Earth, symbols of the holiday include eggs, rabbits, bulb flowers….
*Please note that I am not crapping on teachers. Public school teachers have an unbelievably hard burden to shoulder – we expect them to teach to enormous expectations from our government in terms of test scores and college preparation and at the same time expect them to teach rich, creative courses that train students how to critically engage their world, and that’s no small task. I have the highest respect for those who teach. My criticisms point to the flaws in the idea that institutionalized curriculums can ever truly solicit authentic inquiry, be radically inclusive, and avoid privileging one topic over another, particularly and especially when it comes to the subject of religion.
The Painted Pagan
March 9, 2007 at 7:48 pm (Pagany Musings, Theology)
I got my first tattoo when I was 18 years old. I had wanted one for years, and was content to wait until the legal age of “I don’t need your permission” to get one – seeing it as a rite of passage into autonomy, into adult decision-making. Since the tender age of 14 I knew I wanted the a waxing-full-waning triple moon symbol, and I knew it would be significant to the expression of my chosen faith. As soon as the ink hit my skin, I began plotting for my next one. Since then, I’ve acquired 5 more – a documentary of my spiritual journey on skin. My awareness of my spiritual self has changed since that first small set of moons on my shoulder, but it remains as a living, breathing testimony to my spiritual story.
I once had a friend tell me that he would never get a tattoo because his body is his temple. This is interesting, because I have been getting tattoos for years for that exact same reason. It is merely the notion of temple space that is different – his clean and undecorated, mine a living work of art – both sacred, both witnesses. For me, a gorgeously decorated place of worship – my body. Pagans and tattoos have a long history together. At every festival and every conference you can see a wide variety of painted Pagans, happily sporting their dedications, oaths, or celebrations on their decorated temples.
Tattoos for me are a combination of all of these things – a celebration of who I am, a dedication to the path I’ve chosen (knowing that this may change – which makes it all the more precious – as mentioned previously, my skin then becomes an archive, a cartography of my journeying), a commemoration of a significant moment or period of my life. We are a people of image, of light and color, of darkness and contrast, of art and spirit and music.
I’m sure there’s lot’s more to say about this, but the delightful silvery fog that is clinging to my little piece of the world today has got my mind all fuzzy. So instead, here’s a wonderful article about spirituality and tattoos featuring an interview with the amazing Madame Lazonga.
The world is alive in a billion different ways, and wants you to be whole within it too. Every drop of rain hanging from the branches of early spring trees say this. Every breath of fallen sky. Every part of your skin.
The Same Thing We Do Every Night, Pinky…
March 8, 2007 at 4:29 pm (Pagany Musings, Politics)
Greetings to all my sisters and brothers on this steel gray day in the not-so-wild midwest! The robins are out in full splendor – nibbling at the tired wastes of still nourishing rose hips, and looking full and fat in the skinny branches of the trees.
Today is Blog Against Sexism Day, in honor of International Women’s Day. Because there are an enormous amount of incredibly insightful, laser-sharp fabulous feminist blogs in existence, I rarely focus overtly on this issue, though it is, like ecology and other social justice issues, not possible to compartmentalize it away from my spirituality. And, of course, it certainly is not possible to ignore the continued interplay of gender issues within my religious communities. The truth remains – we Pagans, by virtue of having soaked in our culture’s poisonous worldview like everyone else (no matter how hard we continue to fight against it, and should), have our own bevy of hangups about gender too. Therefore, I have determined that today is the perfect day to write a little post about something that has my Wonder Woman underoos in a bit of a twist lately. If’n yer of the persuasion that topics of this sort are unappealing to you – you may want to pull yer hat down over your eyes there and have yourself a nap. I won’t be offended – and it will save me from having to wrestle through angry comments later, when I’d really rather just shake hands, say “friend,” and leave it at that.
Lovely. Now, in the immortal words of that beloved lady with the talking umbrella, Mary Poppins: “Line up, close your eyes, and jump!”
Pagan and Plain?
March 2, 2007 at 9:46 pm (EcoTalk, Pagany Musings, Theology)
Last night, I lay in the topmost room of our tiny old house (humble, solid and plain, our house) and listened to the wind roar and rip over the roof, blowing snow around so much that my intrepid partner remarked that it looked like great stampeding herds of snow barrelling through the dark, snorting and throwing menacing looks at wary motorists (look smart, friends, it could be time for Mama Earth to let loose with the Buffalo Snow). It occurs to me that it might be a nice vocation, to be a snow-herder.
I’ve had more than one occasion this week to consider the humbling power of this rough and tumble glorious mossy stone we all happen to be blessed enough to walk upon. Here in the not-so-wild midwest, our access to the seemingly illimitable flood of electricity, that insidious and domesticating teat we in the postindustrialized North all greedily suck on mostly without even thinking about it, has been less reliable than usual, as is its wont annually in various parts of the country due to various weather conditions, though those conditions do seem to be playing out in rather more vicious ways as of late (*cough*climatechange*cough*). But then again, I am a terrible liberal pagan environmentalist communist demon-person, holed up in my luxury beachfront home, chortling manaically at all the climate change ruckus I’m causing via my crazy lies, and planning to plunge the world into “mass starvation and human devastation,” so, you know, try not to take anything I say to heart (Oh, Ann Coulter, you comedienne – it’s just impossible to take you even remotely seriously. I have a theory that Ann Coulter is actually a performance artist with some kind of amazingly dedicated long-term artistic vision…one day, mid-screech, she will rip off her mask, exposing another mask, that of one of the Guerrilla Girls, who will then take a bow and explain that it was all a masterful parody of the most extreme right-wing foaming-at-the-mouth, ugly, mean, baseless, unhinged, soulless, cruel, accusatory, nonsensical, blithering rhetoric she could muster – the world will be speechless with admiration). The point here is that, as is often the case, I’ve had extra occasion to think about how my spirituality plays out in my deliberations on how I live.
I have just finished reading A Plain Life: Walking My Belief by Scott Savage, which chronicles the author’s walk from his home in a Quaker community that practices Plain Living to the capital of Ohio to return his driver’s license, and so I have been thinking a lot about the author and his wife’s choice to abandon their previous lifestyle and adopt a plain one (a life very similar to that of the Amish, though I have been reading predominately about plain Quakers in particular). Savage’s theology is not my own, and there are places in the book where he makes it clear that he is not terribly down with deep ecumenism, yet I can appreciate his and his partner’s call towards a simpler way.
I have an interest in plain living, as there is something that appeals to me in radically downsizing my life to make room for opening to Other Things, to simplicity. I am intrigued by the points made in Quaker Jane’s testimony regarding plain dress as a visual koan and avenue to witness. I am learning that there are many reasons why different people choose plain dress and plain living, some that are compatible with my ways of thinking and some that aren’t (among the ones that aren’t being various issues regarding gender dynamics) – but still, I am intrigued. The wind ripping over my roof says something to me – something simple, something that cuts large swathes in all this frantic accumulation we do in our consumerist monoculture…something that makes room to breathe.
Which leads me to the question – what would a Pagan Plain life look like? Just as a plain Quaker’s (or other plain folks’) Christian beliefs lead them towards their callings in the world, and given that we Pagani run under an enormous range of polythea/ological interpretations and spiritual gnosis/revelations, I have little doubt that it is possible to perceive a calling to a simpler life within Pagan theological systems. Of course it would look different – I’ve no notion to ape other people’s traditions or theologies. But I wonder…I reach…I listen. I pray. I think about the many lessons there are in pursuing a life closer to real community, less reliant on electricity, living in wide silent spaces. And then, the mess flowers around me, dancing in my spangled, colorful, anarchic, crazy radical blissful soul, and I wonder if there is a balance in there somewhere, speculating then of the existence of that holy tiny seedpoint of limitlessness (the further in you go, the bigger it gets), where simplicity and complexity are perfectly held in concert with each other, each dancing the other over and under and through. Something for a little old mystic soul like mine to strive for, I suppose.
And in the meantime I watch the roil and flash of whirling flurries and listen to the roar of my brother wind through the tops of skeletal trees, and I breathe in the smoke from far away fires and infintesimal beads of sky, and throw my hands out and up in wonder at everything, everything, everwhere. I marvel. I marvel.
