Stuff

I had a really interesting nightmare, the other day, about a faceless woman, with long black hair, wearing a green kimono, who kept trying to brush my hair. For some reason, she gave me the screaming willies, to the point that I actually woke myself up trying to push her away. This is rather odd in itself, as usually I'm too fascinated by the goings on in my dreams to be afraid. I remember I had one dream once where I was being chased down the street by drowned children who'd climbed out of my great aunt's washing machine, and the primary thought in my head was. "Oh, they're so pretty and pale! This is so cool!"

I'll be spending the whole week away from Mom's. She's decided to quit smoking, which is a good thing, but I know from experience that the lack of nicotine makes her even less sane and less peaceful about it. So yes, heading for the hills for a few days. Besides that, not driving back and forth so much should lower her stress levels a bit.

I've been following a thread in one of the forums I've been hanging around lately. The topic is the bashing of Ecclectic Pagans. As an Ecclectic myself, I haven't seen much of this, aside from this thread, but then I'm not terribly active within the Pagan community. From what I've been able to gather, most of the friction comes from followers of Reconstructive paths who accuse Ecclectics of cultural rape, because they do not follow the traditions of the places that worshipped their gods. Now, this is just my opinion, but that strikes as a little bit on the Fundy side to me. As a person who's worked with different gods from different pantheons for a little over a decade, it's been my experience that they aren't so narrow or stuffy as to particularly care about how precisely they are worshipped so long as it's done sincerely and with a little sense. The gods are living (after a fashion), growing, changing entities. They're as much a part of nature as anything else, and it seems like a rather unnatural thing to assume--that they don't change as surely as the rest of the world, and that they do not appreciate the glorious variety that fills it.

But then, I think the gods are also mirrors. Simply because these are my experiences of them (as a rather informal person when it comes to spirituality), it doesn't mean that more conservative people do not experience them differently. But, then, that's the point. Everyone's different. Everyone's spiritual path is highly individual, even when it runs parallel to others' with similar beliefs. As such, it seems a little off to bash a person for following a spiritual path different from one's own. Nobody follows the exact same spiritual path. We grow, we change, and the path ever and always changes with us.

Beware, O wanderer,
the road is walking too,
said Rilke one day to no one
in particular
as good poets everywhere address
the six directions.

If you can't bow, you're dead meat.
You'll break like uncooked spaghetti.
Listen to the gods.
They're shouting in your ear
every second.

-- Jim Harrison
(from 'After Ikkyu,'
TRICYCLE, Spring 1996)

Moving on...

I picked up a copy of Across the Universe, and I'm very glad that I did. Good story, beautiful visuals, excellent acting, and lovely singing. Julie Taymor has not lost her touch, though it is not as far out as her Titus. Sexy Sadie is my favourite of the characters. I swear, she's the long lost love child of Janis Joplin and Robert Plant. :-|

It's snowed, here, and been pretty cold. Went with Raney to take in a sale and see a new Pagan shop in Greenwood. They have a Reiki healer there who we're going to see in a week or so, so that should be interesting. On the way back, we saw a bald eagle flying over the road, dodging cars in an attempt to get at some roadkill. It was thrilling (neither of us had ever seen one in the wild) and at the same time rather sad in a multi-metaphoricle sort of way...