Video of Polar Bears Playing with Huskies

Still photos of encounters like this have been going around the internet for a couple of years, but this is the first time I've seen video.

Reunion with Wild Lion

It's unusual to find two loving animal videos in a row on my friends list.

The one below is via jillwheezul.

First Solo Bead Project!

Look what I made!!



I may finally have found a craft that I enjoy and am good at!!



This is a meditation strand, designed to anchor my morning meditation cycle, which starts in the underworld, goes through the four elements and the stars, and then centers me. I wanted a set of prayer beads because I do this before I get out of bed in the morning and sometimes I'm pretty foggy. I expect that beads to help me center and focus. I've never really tried doing something like this before.... We'll see if it works as expected.


Thousands of thanks to oakmouse, who got me started on this, and who did such a good job of guiding me through my first project that a month later I was able to do this strand with the book simply as back-up confirmation! (The book is Pagan Prayer Beads by Clare Vaughn and John Michael Greer -- highly recommend if you want to try this craft!)

Words Words Words

Today's class was about the Divine -- images, names, relationships. It was enjoyable, as always -- but there were also many poignant reminders of just how different my background is from many people's.

It's not just the wandering spiritual path I've been on since my existential crisis, it's the education and the reading. Today I used the words logos and theophany and explained what they meant. I read some passages out of The Crafted Cup in which Shadwynn describes his belief about the way the Divine Mystery expresses itself on a kind of spectrum in order for us to be able to relate to it. I read the highlights of JM Greer's discussion of the Tetragrammaton in Paths of Wisdom, which is a book on magical Cabala. I read a poem by Mirabai. I read David James Duncan on apophatic spirituality and his desire to un-say "God" in order to approach the reality behind the word. I shared a collage with images from several different pantheons, the Tree of Life, and the Grail Hallows. I didn't get to it, but I had also brought and bookmarked JM Greer's story of the cats from A World Full of Gods (a lovely little parable that explores why each person thinks his view of "cat" is more reliable than the differing views of "cat" held by others), and the Vision of Isis from Apuleius. For those struggling with how to reconcile their conservative Christian background with new ideas, I suggested Andrew Harvey's Son of Man, with its powerful mystical christology. And that's just the materials I prepared, not the tidbits and anecdotes and references (like Liberation Theology and "argument from silence") that came up during the discussions.

And these references were all just grabbed from my shelves and/or picked off my hard drive. I don't have to go looking for it, it's part of who I am. . . It's what I've been focused on for all of my adult life.

And it impressed -- even awed -- the people in the class, whose religious background was pretty much limited to Sunday School and traditional Protestant worship.

My purpose in the class is not to convince those attending that they should share my beliefs -- but those who attend speak explicitly of trying to find answers that make sense after the old ones have stopped working. To find new answers, you need to have frames of reference beyond the only one you've known. Today I spread out a wide range of ways human beings outside of Protestant Christianity have conceived of, talked about, and related to the Divine. I don't have a personal stake in any of them, nor in the answers these students come to -- except insofar as I want their ultimate authority to be the voice of the Divine within each of them, not some person telling them what to think, what to believe.

I felt the power of my words today, the power of logos to define and shape reality, to re-draw horizons, to change the terms of the discussion.

It was a good feeling.
It is, I believe, part of what I'm meant to do.