CUEW Triad

TITLE:Grief purchase becomes new hope
LINK:http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070224/LIFESTYLE/702240318
Comment: Wiccanesque store goes Christian. yawn

TITLE:Wiccans fight for soldier's rights against the VA
LINK:http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/02/23/pentacle/
EXCERPT:Wiccans and other members of nature-based pagan religions are planning to gather Saturday at the State Capitol. They are hoping to bring attention to pagans who are serving in the military and a legal battle they are waging with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Posted by Kat at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read this in three different reviews about "the number 23":

Premiering at No. 2 with $15.1 million was the New Line Cinema psychological thriller "The Number 23," starring Jim Carrey as a man obsessed with the mysterious power of that digit.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/25/boxoffice.ap/index.html

2 is a digit. 3 is a digit. 23 is not a digit.

(still sans net.)

Posted by Kat at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The end of our current 'net service begins this sunday, so be prepared for me to be missing.
Kat

Posted by Kat at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE:Army Boots Wiccan Chaplain (Blog,opinion, follow-up of previous 'brief)
LINK:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/army-boots-wiccan-chaplai_b_41781.html
EXCERPT:Don Larsen was, by all reports, an excellent Army Chaplain. When he was a Pentecostal Christian, that is. His superior while he was in Iraq, Chaplain Kevin L. McGhee, called Larsen "the best" out of the 26 chaplains he supervised. But then Larsen applied to change his religious affiliation to Wicca, and the Army railroaded him out of Iraq and out of the Army.

TITLE:BAPTIST IDENTITY: Dockery, George
call for renewed study of Baptist historyLINK:http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=25025
EXCERPT:“The ultimate danger to the Gospel lies not in the nuances of our differences, but in the rising tides of liberalism, neo-paganism and postmodernism that threaten to swamp Southern Baptist identity in cultural accommodation,” the university president added.

TITLE:Renowned journalist denounces anti-Christian lobby
LINK:http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=124&id=8117&t=Renowned+journalist+denounces+anti-Christian+lobby
EXCERPT:In an interview with the Italian daily “La Stampa,” journalist and writer Vittorio Messori recently denounced the World Health Organization (WHO), certain Masonic groups, gay rights organizations, pharmaceutical corporations, and powerful ecological organizations as anti-Catholic “lobbies” that “hate Christianity out of nostalgia for paganism.”

TITLE:I'll Follow The Sun (Blog, opinion)
LINK:http://www.progressiveu.org/002604-ill-follow-the-sun
EXCERPT:It occurred to me that following the sun, or some manifestation of a “pagan” Sun God as did primitive man, at least makes some logical sense. The sun obviously exists; no one can deny it and you don’t have to rely on faith to prove its existence. Moreover, the sun interacts with day-to-day living in a variety of readily apparent ways. That’s more than can be said for the Judeo-Christian God.

TITLE:‘… And the Christian Oscar Goes To …'
LINK:http://www.nysun.com/article/49179?page_no=2
EXCERPT:This week, on its Web site, Movieguide recommended the PG-rated drama "Bridge to Terabithia" thanks to its "strong Christian worldview" and "positive references to Jesus." Meanwhile, site reviewers cautioned against the PG-13-rated romantic comedy "Music and Lyrics," for its "mixed pagan worldview with some pagan sexual content."
Comment: And the random use of Pagan for the week award goes to...

TITLE:An Altar of Earth: Reflections on Jews, Goddesses and the Zohar
LINK:http://www.zeek.net/spirit_0407.shtml
EXCERPT:For many years, as I sat in synagogues, someone on the bimah would make an off-handed reference to the evils of idolatry. Many Jews who would never think of condemning the religious practices of Australian aborigines, Peruvian shamans or Buddhist nuns, and who might even enjoy the art in a Catholic church, give sermons about how worshipping images or praying to multiple deities is the root of all evil.

TITLE:When kites turn lethal
LINK:http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/21/opinion/edahmed.php
TITLE:Basant's kite flying may have promoted social harmony and moderate society in the past. Unfortunately it does just the opposite today.
Over the past decade, Basant has been hijacked by kite-flying fanatics. Cut-throat kite flyers have been using metal twine. The aim: to cut opponents' kite wires. The collateral damage: hundreds of slit throats.
A beautiful cultural tradition has degenerated into a murderous sport. Reports say that hundreds have been killed or wounded when their throats were cut by razor-sharp kite twine.

TITLE:Southern Baptist Convention warns Christians about teachings of Mormonism
LINK:http://www.spcm.org/Journal/spip.php?article6558
EXCERPT:For example, Bowman notes, "In 15 short years, [Mormon Church founder] Joseph Smith went from being a thoroughgoing monotheist, a believer in one god, to a thoroughgoing polytheist, teaching the existence of many gods."
Comment: I think some types of Christians get bored reading. Polygimist becomes "polytheist" "judge not" becomes judge.

TITLE:Egyptian necropolis the cemetery of choice for longer than previously thought
LINK:http://reports.discoverychannel.ca/servlet/an/discovery/1/20070221/070219_discovery_egyptian_necropolis_older/20070221?hub=DiscoveryReport
EXCERPT:Sakkara - an ancient Egyptian necropolis located south of Cairo - remained popular for the ancient ruling elite long after the Old Kingdom period for which the area gained worldwide attention, according to Egypt's chief archaeologist.

Older excerpts below the cut.

TITLE:Cafe battles image
LINK:http://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2007/02/21/news/lake_life/lakelife01.txt
EXCERPT:Don't let the name fool you - a pagan persuasion is not necessary to enjoy the food and coffee of Witches Brew in downtown Auburn.

TITLE:Modern magic
LINK:http://spectrum.buffalo.edu/article.php?id=31172
EXCERPT:"The Pagan group holds information sessions on subjects such as the witch trials, mythology and controlling energy. They've provided activities, like Tarot card reading, at Halloween events on campus. "
Comment: The MacMorgans, both UB alumns, would like to point out that the UB Pagan student association is not well-regarded in part because of its continued insistance that divination=Wicca. For every student in the PSA, we know 5-10 Pagan students who are either no longer involved or don't want to be involved just for this reason. This is made especially sad because UB has a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE (I think I just invoked Fucillo!) Asatru community, and the PSA seems to go out of their way to offend them, often.

TITLE:Holy Smokes What a Hubbub
LINK:http://www.duxburyclipper.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2007-02-21&-token.story=62780.112114&-token.subpub=
EXCERPT:As I write, I haven't seen the Learning Channel's episode of "My Unique Family," the one they called "The Witches Next Door." I've heard quite a bit of buzz about it, but I have little knowledge of the finished product.

Oh, wait a minute. I'm in it. That's me with the clunky drum set, the "take seventeen" on-the-fly interview, and the beard that glows in the dark. But then, I may have ended up on the cutting room floor.

TITLE:My, What A Big Boomstick You Have: 'Bullet Witch' Hands-On Preview
LINK:http://xbox360.themanroom.com/news.php?id=1414EXCERPT:Looking back at the history of witchcraft, I couldn’t exactly tell you where flying broomsticks came into play, but it definitely had an impact on what we expect to see when we hear the term “witch.” In reality, Wicca is focused more on the elements and nature than on turning your loved ones into frogs, which makes Atari’s upcoming Xbox 360 game ‘Bullet Witch’ an interesting amalgam of technology and nature.

TITLE:Kashmir Archives gets award for preserving Gilgit Manuscripts
LINK:http://www.kashmirnewz.com/n000121.html
EXCERPT:Regarded as among the oldest manuscripts in the world and the oldest collection surviving in India, the Government of India has nominated it for inclusion in UNESCO's World Register in 2006-07 along with the Rig Veda.

TITLE:Radical Christians
LINK:http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/2007/001/2.7.html
EXCERPT:Christians in Gaul remembered St. Martin of Tours for ripping his cloak in two and giving half to a naked beggar. Born to pagan parents, Martin served as a soldier until his growing Christian convictions led him seek release from the army from the pagan emperor Julian, saying, "I am Christ's soldier; I am not allowed to fight." To prove his courage he volunteered to stand on the frontline of the battle with no weapon but a cross. After studying theology under Bishop Hilary in Poitiers, Martin traveled to the Balkans as a missionary but returned to Gaul to build monasteries.
Comment: A very interesting discussion of Christianity as a minority religion. I included the excerpt above because those who know me know I have held St. Martin of Tours up as an example of a Christian that "walked the talk."

TITLE:Idolatry and Christianity
LINK:http://desicritics.org/2007/02/20/094717.php
EXCERPT:The cross was an instrument of execution in the Roman world; a mode of execution that the Greeks borrowed from the Persians and later the Romans borrowed from the Greeks. But the fact that the original Greek word 'stauros' used in the canonical gospels hardly means a crux in Latin or its English equivalent cross, but a stake or an upright pole on which slaves and non-Romans were impaled, not crucified, makes this skepticism completely justifiable.
Comment:Fascinating little article.

Posted by Kat at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.religionstylebook.org/

This style guide, which is supposedly written to help journalists write about religion, includes at least one glaring error, in the following phrase:

witch: A follower of Wicca; a person, generally a woman, claiming to have or believed to have magical powers.

Points to anyone who sees the stylistic error!

Posted by Kat at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

TITLE:For Gods and CountryThe Army Chaplain Who Wanted to Switch to Wicca? Transfer Denied.
LINK:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021801396.html
EXCERPT:"I realized so many innocent people are dying again in the name of God," Larsen says. "When you think back over the Catholic-Protestant conflict, how the Jews have suffered, how some Christians justified slavery, the Crusades, and now the fighting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, I just decided I'm done. . . . I will not be part of any church that unleashes its clergy to preach that particular individuals or faith groups are damned."

Posted by Kat at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let's have a new award! The FIRST EVER completely random use of the word Wicca goes to.....

TITLE:DS Game to Use Magnetic Fields
LINK:http://kotaku.com/gaming/treasure-gaust/ds-game-to-use-magnetic-fields-237383.php
EXCERPT:The game, which one would hope will hit the states one day, sounds like a blend of Pokemon and Boktai with a touch of Wicca thrown in for good measure.

Posted by Kat at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have already established that Paganism has a collection of intellectual have-nots, people who, through no fault of their own, are lacking great big gobs of data that they need to get make sense of the general mish-mash of Paganism.
I have also established, at least I think so, that UEW is great in that it is hard to stay such a have not in UEW.

The question becomes, and I ask this because I want to hear answers:
"Do we (as UEWwies and "haves") have a responsibility to spread the knowledge (the parts that we get from being UEWwies, not the tradition itself) to people outside our actual community of UEWwies?

Posted by Kat at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE:Wedding Bells
LINK:http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_life/?cat_id=16539&ew_0_a_id=264033
EXCERPT:In recent years pagan weddings have become more common. There are no strict rules about where these weddings should take place, what the bride and groom should wear, or even which religion they should belong to. Many couples choose to get married outside wearing traditional Icelandic costumes, often Viking style.

Posted by Kat at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE: Court upholds Wiccan-Boscov's ruling
LINK:http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070215/NEWS/70215067
EXCERPT: DOVER -- A Superior Court judge has upheld a religious discrimination finding that requires Boscov’s to pay a $5,000 fine and $21,000 to two Christians, two Wiccans and a pagan.

In May, the state Human Relations Commission found that the Reading, Pa.-based department store chain caved in to pressure from church people and illegally dropped classes the complainants planned to teach in October 2005 at the Campus of Classes at the Dover store.

Posted by Kat at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cruising Witchvox’s homepage is generally a mistake for me. I was a donor, back when I lived in Philadelphia, and I have never renewed my membership for a number of picayune reasons that add up to enough reasons to spend my hard earned cash elsewhere. We’ve never been well-off at Chez MacMorgan and are only now learning what it is like to own a home, not have the debt collectors be around every corner and be able to afford frivolities like cable and a menagerie of animals. We made a choice, Phoenix and I, to live our values even though we knew that meant taking a pay cut. We have turned down jobs that would’ve given us more but meant living in ways we disagree with, and we are invested in making our adoptive home town a better place for our kids to grow up.

But my morals aren’t why cruising that homepage is a bad idea for me. What bothers me is the one or two (often highlighted) articles that are written incredibly well, citing their sources and even giving links to supporting documents, followed by well-written but factually incorrect articles by people claiming spurious authority. We have, for example, the alleged Gardnerian who claims Gwen Thompson’s Rede of the Wiccae is the Gardnerian law written by Gardner (it is not, and the Gardnerians *I* know who follow it acknowledge it as something new to their trad) we have the alleged traditional priestess whose version of Magick is that of Marion Green’s Natural Magick, not traditional Wicca OR traditional Ceremonial Magick, although she claims it is both (this same author makes the same mistake as the alleged Gardnerian, by the way, in a different piece) we have the light-hearted Diabolist who outright lies about what is in Crowley and Mather, knowing that those who know better will see right through to his “inside jokes” and understand his point, we have a scad of bright young things declaring that they do something despite the teachings of “traditions,” otherwise, when most traditions believe as they do and we have a number of fake, trumped up “witch wars,” ranging from the “Gardnerians hate eclectics and vice versa” (some of my best friends are Gardnerian, and while I would never be interested in their groups personally, we have great respect for the validity and power of each groups respective rites) to “All the Christians are out to get us” to “all adults hate teens and are unfair to them.”

Our first reaction is often to laugh at the mistakes. I mean, when someone claims to be a third degree muckety muck and doesn’t know the difference between Rede of the Wiccae and The Wiccan Rede, it is funny (and, by the way, a direct contradiction to the two persons who emailed me regarding Wicca 333 to say The Rede “wasn’t an advanced topic.”) When someone claims to have been practicing for thirty years and got their charm of making from Excalibur, it is funny. When someone claims that, as a Gardnerian, they are oath-bound to fight the Alexandrians, when that dispute is going on forty-years POST MORTEM it is funny. It’s very funny.

The problem is that the intellectual have-nots (the people who don’t know the good websites and good books and don’t know how to get them or get to them) are being taken in by this tripe. If such a person reads that The Rede of the Wiccae was written by Doreen Valiente and is High Gardnerian Writ (continue reading after you catch your breath) from a person (self)promoted on Witchvox as a third degree whatsits since the days of New Wave and that person is ELOQUENT, GRACIOUS AND CAN SPELL, as compared to some of the intellectual haves who have websites of their own, they are going to believe this person-even though they are wrong.

If some obnoxious loser who comes up as NOT INVOLVED WITH ANY TRADITIONAL GROUP WHATSOEVER whenever vetted dominates a message board with claims of being obligated, as a Traditional Witch or “Traditionally trained but not a tradition member” (whatever that means,) to bash all other Wiccans, the intellectual have-nots think that the “war” between Eclectics and Traditionals, largely settled by the start of the 1970s, is active and taking casualties.

We get sick, as intellectual haves, with having to state the same twenty factual facts (not opinions) again and again and again, but we are left without a choice-we are actively fighting people who are spreading ignorance and making more of those intellectual have-nots.

To make the point clearest, I’d like to talk, briefly, about a completely unrelated group of intellectual have nots- people who live in the US and don’t speak English.

People of the extremes of the right and left (extreme liberals and extreme conservatives) have both promoted forms of English-only rules for citizenship. On the right, this is often motivated by greed and racism, but on the left the campaign to teach people who want to live in the US English-even if it involves some harm to them at first is based on the simple fact that those that don’t speak English are many times more likely to be scammed by bilingual fast talkers. We have had women forced into prostitution and children forced into sweat shops because they could not watch their local news and understand it was illegal. They were not STUPID, they just had people who they saw as authorities out to do them harm.

The intellectual have-nots of Wicca are non-English speakers in the English speaking world, and the scam artists are salivating over them even as you read this. Your choice is to do something, or let them live in their little segmented communities, cut off from the rest of the world. Like Cubans in Miami, they may one day be big enough in numbers to be safe in their community without the ability to communicate outside of it, but that day has not yet passed.

Posted by Kat at 05:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A note: Since being purchased by Adelphia, the Time Warner High Speed at Chez MacMorgan is out more than it is on. As a result, these news briefs may be less frequent in number.

TITLE:Sex and the Single God
LINK:http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2007/02/sex_and_the_single_god.html
EXCERPT:Sex is sacred in religions that regard nature and its cycles as the source of divine power. In this religious perspective, there are ordinarily many gods, not just one. Present-day Wicca would be one such example (though there are varieties of Wicca that worship a single goddess figure); archeological evidence suggests that most religion prior to the second millennium BCE was nature-centered and that sex was in some sense “sacred,” i.e. part of the work of the gods in maintaining fertility.
Comment: I guess she only need make sense when writing about Christianity.

TITLE:Pity Party
LINK:http://media.www.thejambar.com/media/storage/paper324/news/2007/02/13/Entertainment/Pity-Party-2716679.shtml
EXCERPT:Before it became a bastardized, Catholicized, watered down version of itself, Lupercalia was a purely Roman venture. Mythology holds that the twin brothers who founded Rome, Remus and Rolumus, were abandoned and found by a she-wolf who suckled them to health until a farmer adopted them.
More valentines stories:
http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/bm/national/658974.html
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?issue_date=02-14-2007&ID=2005114145
http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2007/02/14/features/features002.txt
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=78b62109-5841-4b77-990d-183ddb1a7db2
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/OPINION04/702140348/1035/OPINION
http://www.lugazette.com/home/news/2007/02/14/Opinion/Chapys.Corner-2719366.shtml
http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_045194344.html
http://www.pressrepublican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/OPINION02/702140304

TITLE:Local Family Lands on TLC
LINK:http://www.duxburyclipper.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2007-02-14&-token.story=62643.112114&-token.subpub=
EXCERPT:Last fall, the leader of the First Church of Wicca was approached about penning a book on pagan weddings and appearing on The Learning Channel's new series My Unique Family. Flash forward to February and Hovey has since sent her manuscript to the publisher, Adams Media, with a November release date, and next Monday, Feb. 19 at 10 p.m. her episode of My Unique Family, The Witches Next Door, will air.
COMMENT: Hoo-boy, reality TV. guaranteed to make even the most noble of families seem like idiots, and the idiots seem like....

Older briefs from this week located beneath cut.

TITLE:Orthodox marks Pancake week
LINK:http://en.for-ua.com/news/2007/02/12/103013.html
Comment:I'm not sure why I posted this except the idea of a week of pancakes sounds good.

TITLE:Wiccans have rights, too
LINK:http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.chapman12feb12,0,4957989.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines
COMMENT: Same chapman article, new title.

TITLE:Pagans push peace, not politics
LINK:http://www.dailyfreepress.com/home/news/2007/02/12/News/Pagans.Push.Peace.Not.Politics-2712939.shtml
EXCERPT:In a region that has held its fair share of politically charged antiwar protests in the past few years, 15 people representing a Pagan group huddled on the Cambridge Common on Friday night to promote peace in what they called an apolitical, agenda-free event.
Comment: um, promoting peace is an agenda...... it's a good one, too.

Posted by Kat at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CUEWers are welcomed to join Kat, Phoenix and others for a Spring Celebration the weekend of March 17th.
We will have a planned ritual that Saturday Afternoon (the celebration of the breaking floes) and an Americanized Irish St. Patty's dinner of fresh bread, Corned Beef and Cabbage, probably some turkey or duck, too, veggies, pies and stuff and plenty of Stout and Wine.

Please RSVP, as space is limited in our tiny house. We can offer some terribly uncomfortable furniture space, but recommend the VERY CHEAP IN THE OFF SEASON hotels in nearby Niagara Falls. They range from $100/night 2 people DO for **** to the 40s for your basic econolodge, to the 20-30 range for drive up and down Niagara Falls Blvd looking for a place with free porn....not that we'd know anything about that!

Please be aware that we may still have stuff in boxes, and there will be cats, rabbits and gods only know what else crowding up the joint and that we will have very limited parking near our house. We strongly suggest leaving your car at a hotel and bumming a ride!

People in the Buffalo Area interested in being part of the celebration can contact me via macmorgan.org

Posted by Kat at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE:A Witches' Brew of Religious Discrimination
LINK:http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19339
EXCERPT:When he was alive, the U.S. government had no trouble finding a place for Patrick Stewart, never mind his unconventional beliefs. It inducted him into the Army National Guard, issued him dog tags giving his religion as "Wiccan," and deployed him to Afghanistan. He died there in 2005 when Taliban forces shot down his helicopter. It was only later that Uncle Sam had second thoughts.

Posted by Kat at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...made your spine stiff, your palms wet and the food in your stomach feel like a lead baseball?

For me, that reading right now is The Event an ongoing blog entry by the author of Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood.

Imagine Left Behind, only written with skill, and the real best of mankind IS taken away.... Imagine a deity, even an Abrahamic deity, that takes away not the good Christians, but the good PEOPLE, and leaves the rest here to sort it all out.

If, when you imagine it, you see the end of Blue America, you aren't alone.

Posted by Kat at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE:Removal of cross from Virginia college's historic chapel raises ruckus
LINK:http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/02/04/college.cross.ap/index.html
EXCERPT: Oscar Blayton, a Williamsburg lawyer who in the early 1960s was the first black person to attend William and Mary as an undergraduate, sees having the cross on display all the time as religious bigotry.
"Some of these people that are upset about the cross issue have a notion that it is a predominantly Christian community and Christians have more rights than other people," Blayton said.

Posted by Kat at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent flamewar on the local Pagan list has prompted me to write about manners, respect, and causes. We all have causes - whether we are crusaders for separation of church and state, for gay rights, for sexual freedoms, against capitalism, for personal liberties, against globalization, for one-world-living, or any one of a number of issues that are near and dear to our hearts. For many, if not most, Wiccans, social justice is an important theme in our politics, whether or not we bring it into our religion like the Unitarian Universalists do.

After watching several people - good people, I must point out - let their tempers overtake them when discussing their individual passions, it occurs to me that anytime we allow ourselves to be consumed by our distaste and loathing for an opposite point of view, by an absolute certainty in the rectitude and righteousness of our own position, we are in danger of failing to understand. I believe the Ethic of Constant Improvement requires us to make the effort to understand the other side of a battle-line when we've committed ourselves to a struggle, becaues after the dust has settled and one side has won, only those who have that understanding will be able to create the "synthesis" from the thesis and antithesis that is being resolved.

When I started learned UEW from Kat, Jenny, and others, the first lesson of the First Circle was about ethics and about understanding that upon careful consideration, even things that appeared black and white were rich shades of grey that had to carefully examined. This examination is a key thread, as I see it, in the foundations of UEWiccan ethics. Any time we fall into the trap of demonizing and drawing precise "with us or against us" lines, you run the risk of casting your issue as blacks and whites in such stark contrast that the careful examination that a UEWIccan should require of her- or himself is impossible.

The ignition of the flamewar I write about was a combination of posts excoriating an older lady in our community of limited means. Several of the clear leaders in the community had been taking her to task for mentioning that she shopped at WalMart for her groceries. This woman was subjected to almost 2 days worth of excoriation and browbeating for having dared supported such a "capitalistic" institution that engaged in "illegal business practices," until she finally stood up and said, "You know, I'm sorry I can't afford to shop at the co-ops and organic grocers, but I don't have the freedom to make the choices you can make."

Now, whether or not you believe that this woman was wrong for "supporting" Wal-Mart and whether or not you believe that her antagonists were in the wrong for their actions, this exchange clarified a phenomenon I'm seeing more and more often in the various alternative communities that I participate in: a dangerous tribalism. This tribalism is a refusal to associate or communicate with others who do not share significantly similar passions to you. In short, I believe that the disparate activist communities are tearing not only the Pagan community apart, but are fractionating the entire spectrum of non-mainstream living.

This phenomenon is dangerous, because even the most dedicated crusader for social justice and progressive causes must choose battles to focus their energy on. Because I am passionate about electronic freedoms and sexual freedoms, I focus my energies in these arenas. This doesn't mean that I'm unsupportive of religious freedom, just that I feel like my efforts are better focused in these other areas. For many, however, it is becoming the case that failure to actively pursue these agendas is a sign of antagonism towards them - if you aren't with us, you must be against us.

Fundamentally, this attitude belies a lack of respect for the passions of others. The Law of Return plays here: if we cannot show respect to the causes that others hold dear, how can we expect them to hold respect for our causes? This breakdown is poisonous to a local community, even to a large community like the Pagan community in my area. I have seen this with a different group that I had been involved with here and the end result is fracture into ever-smaller groups, until each fragment is irrelevant. This serves no one well.

Only by honoring and understanding the positions of our fellow-travellers in the Pagan community can we grow beyond this dangerous tribalism. The reality is that the Pagan community is not large. If we spend our time sniping at each other over which type of activist the other is, or your "Wiccan lineage," or any one of a host of things, we will never be able to effect change in the areas in which there is substantial agreement. This disunity threatens efforts such as the Pagan Headstone Campaign, the presence of Pagans in interfaith councils, in prison ministries, and in the crusade for keeping religion and government separate.

Take some time whenever the next time you feel the urge to dismiss that passion in another person because you disagree with them. Consider that they are passionate for a reason and try to understand why. You don't have to agree with them, but in that understanding, you are learning their memetic landscape. Having that knowledge will make it easier to communicate with them, when next you need to. Showing that interest is a sign of respect, and even your ideological opposites will respect that and return it in kind, as my fundamentalist Baptist colleague and I have discovered. We can discuss both religion and politics with surprisingly little animosity, simply through showing respect for each other's opinion.

If this is the right course of action when dealing with someone whose views are substantially opposite yours, the must be even moreso for your fellow travelers. When you fail to do so, you fracture the communities that you rely on and foul the water which you drink.

Posted by Brent at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TITLE:A Necessary Apocalypse
LINK:http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/a_necessary_apocalypse.html
EXCERPT:When religious belief is subverted, it does not, as Chesterton implied, simply vanish. It is almost immediately replaced by another set of beliefs on a similar level of abstraction and serving the same purpose. Sometimes it's an import, such as Buddhism or TM. Sometimes it's a creed deliberately created to serve a political agenda, as we see in Nazism and Communism. Sometimes it's the goofy SoCal syncretism currently expressed in Wicca and Neopaganism. ("If people seriously want to be pagans," the late Joe Myers, a Christian brother of my acquaintance once said. "They'd become Roman Catholics.") And sometimes they're a combination, a weird melange of ideas picked up from various sources that (and usually not coincidentally) also serve a political purpose. Which brings us to environmentalism.
Comment: What a moron. Since he basically says those who disagree with him are morons, I'm willing to risk it to point out his obvious flaws.

TITLE:Groundhog Day shouldn't be just another silly custom
LINK:http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/columnists/bogert/articles/5521151.html
EXCERPT:The silliness was codified on Feb. 2, 1886, when Clymer Freas, editor of the Punxsutawney Spirit, wrote, "Today is Groundhog Day and up to the time of going to press the beast has not seen its shadow." The same dweeb also named the beast, "Phil, seer of seers, sage of sages, prognosticator of prognosticators," and so on until you want to either attend a chamber breakfast or blow your brains out.

TITLE: Ye gods
LINK:http://www.bitsofnews.com/component/option,com_diary/op,view/id,4812/Itemid,42/
EXCERPT:The need to believe seems hard wired into most of us. And it is a need that political ideologies and other secular belief systems are ill equipped to fulfil. So it should come as no surprise that, as the Christian churches have lost their monopoly on faith in the Western world, even the old pagan gods are staging a comeback.

TITLE:Halloween Costumes Promote Witchcraft According to ChristiaNet Poll
LINK:http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?storyid=12597&ret=news.aspx&cat=Business
EXCERPT:ChristiaNet.com (http://www.christianet.com), the world's largest Christian portal with twelve million monthly page loads, gave readers an opportunity to take part in a poll answering the question, "Should Christians participate in Halloween?" An overwhelming majority of 181 out of 266 felt that it wasn't appropriate for God's children to take part in a holiday that is Pagan. The overall consensus is that it is a holiday that encourages evil behavior. One participant made a very good point by commenting, "Although it has its origins in the Catholic Church it has resulted in a corruption of what initially was a Catholic day of observance in honor of the saints."
Comment: Look! War on Halloween. In related news, Christians lower the standard for overwhelming support to 68%, and the standard for "support" to 30, to make it seem like most Americans support the President, I assume.

Older news items below:

TITLE: Unconditional Love: God Doesn't Buy It
LINK:http://www.americandaily.com/article/17458
EXCERPT:
Christ spoke pointedly to the wayward souls of his own religion. He did not show them unconditional love. He was blunt. He warned them that by their writing their own religion apart from Scripture, they were children of the devil, they were whitewashed tombstones, they were cups with clean exteriors but dirty insides.
Comment: Very often I see Wiccans saying of Christians the same thing this Christian is saying of Christians. Not sure why we're involved at all, but there you go.

TITLE: Tricked or a real treat?
LINK: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/Columnists/BarryRonge/Article.aspx?id=311366
EXCERPT:Why on Earth has South Africa bought into the whole Halloween thing, when what we should be doing is celebrating summer and jacaranda blooms?

TITLE:Seasons of Love: History.com Delivers Interactive Resource on the History of Valentine's Day
LINK:http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-30-2007/0004515751&EDATE=
EXCERPT:Each February, candy, flowers and
gifts are exchanged, while individuals send notes with expressions of love.
All of these activities take place in the name of the somewhat elusive
"Valentine." But, who is Valentine?

TITLE:Gaia’s Rising Covenant to hold ritual
LINK:http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/16556315.htm
EXCERPT:Gaia’s Rising Covenant, a Columbia group that practices paganism, a nature-centered spirituality, will hold a public ceremony to observe Imbolc, or Caldemas, at 7 p.m. Friday.

TITLE:W is for Wicca
LINK:http://www.independentmail.com/news/2007/jan/26/w-wicca/
EXCERPT:This is the 23rd week of the ABCs of faith. Wiccans believe that everything in nature is sacred and humans are a part of nature, rather than its rulers. Also known as witchcraft or the “Old Religion,” Wicca dates back to Paleolithic times, but today’s version is more part of the new pagan movement. It connects humans to their environment and tries to find the feminine face of the divine.

TITLE:The crone
LINK:http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A43155
EXCERPT: When I was home for the holidays, my mother's Wiccan friend Rebecca asked me to write something for my mother's croning ceremony, celebrating the accumulated wisdom of her six decades as a woman. The first thing that came to mind was the little note mom always put in the school lunches she packed for me. Sometimes she'd draw silly pictures meant to make me smile; other times she'd write sweet poems to make me feel special; at least once she used the letters of my name to spell out my good qualities. As I think about those notes now, I realize they were like little love letters.

TITLE:Former Witch and Christian Author Featured on The Tyra Banks Show
LINK:http://www.wdcmedia.com/newsArticle.php?ID=2691
EXCERPT:“When I was in high school, I was a practicing witch. It wasn’t until college that I became a Christian and came out of that dark world.” Sumpolec said. “The Tyra producers thought my story of coming out of witchcraft, how it lead me to attempt suicide, and my current beliefs about it, was the right balance for their program.” That put Sarah on a plane that night and in L.A. for the taping the next day.
Comment: You, too, can leave Witchcraft, be a nut job and make money. You'll still be the same nutjob you were before being a witch, but you'll have money!

Posted by Kat at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)