Getting past the fluff

I'm always amazed by people that focus on the trappings of things. This essay came out of a discussion with friends about a large number of "generic Pagans" that we see that have absolutely no core to their religion. It's all fluff, all trappings. And yet, when things get difficult, when you actually have an issue, there's nothing there. There's nothing to hold to.

I see a lot of people do this, with many religions, and it saddens me. Religion is never about the clothing or the candles or the pomp and circumstance. They are important, yes, but only for what they lead to. Not for what they are. A candle is a candle .. no amount of dressing it with oil and carving things on it is going to make it an actual religious item. What matters is the feeling and the connection that you have with what you're doing. Not the candle.

This isn't to say that trappings are bad. They're a very useful tool to get to the core of what's important, because that core is often quite hard to articulate and deal with in one's regular headspace. I'm a fan of ritual myself, when the ritual works for me. But the key isn't the ritual. It's where the ritual takes you.

If it's not going anywhere, why bother?

Questions:
Do I get caught up on trappings? I do my best to avoid that in all things. And, in fact, it often baffles me when people get caught up in trappings. That said, sometimes I avoid it too much .. I suck at small talk, which is a trapping of conversation. I sometimes have a hard time with ritual because I skip ahead and forget to write down the steps I took, because I'm doing my best to get past all that. (I also have a hard time writing description for the same reason. it doesn't matter to me, and I want to get to the story. embarrassing). But while trappings can matter, and certainly make life smoother .. they're not IMPORTANT.

What happens when I get caught up in trappings? I get frustrated, and I get bored. When I was trying to be Wiccan for a time, I could only find the trappings, and it irritated me highly. I knew there was more, somewhere .. but I couldn't find it, and it drove me crazy. It was worse than having nothing, because I had something and still didn't have it anyway.

What is the core to my beliefs and why? The most core thing is that I am of the Divine. All that I am is of the Divine, although the Divine is much bigger than just me. And it's core because it changes absolutely everything else. Once that belief is established, it puts a new light on everything. And another core belief is the twin Flames, Bright and Dark. Because when we refuse to allow ourselves darkness and a chance to rest, we stifle ourselves. It's permission to withdraw and a demand to engage both. And, again, it celebrates our sacred nature.

Keeping the Faith

Part of the impetus for this essay was frustration. I am incredibly sick of people, when faced with difficult situations, saying we need to have faith in God.

Which is not to say that I have anything against a faith in God, Gods, the Divine, or whatever else people have faith in. But I think saying we need to have faith in some being that isn't here is a bit of a useless statement. It's easier to have faith in a god and wait for that being to solve it than it is to have faith in humanity and work to solve it. And while these faiths are not exclusive, I think that a lot of people do use faith in God to get away from having faith in humanity.

I'm not saying people should have irrational faith. Humanity is what it is, a mixed group of people of which some are pretty darn useless and others are so overpowering our minds are in awe to simply know them. But with all of us, the more we push ourselves and each other to be better, the better we can be. We need to have a rational faith, but we need to have faith. When we say humanity can't do it, all we do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Questions:
Do I have faith in other people? I try to. It's easier to have faith in people as a concept than actually having faith in the individuals I see, of course. But we are the Divine, all of us. If I don't have faith in people, I don't actually have faith in the Divine.

Am I someone others can have faith in? I hope so. I do my best to live up to everything I can be without overloading myself (which lately is my problem). If I overload myself, I can't do anything well. But I try to keep up with the commitments I've made. I try to do the best I can at what I do without getting crazy about it. And I try to be the sort of person that I would want to be friends with if I wasn't already me. I don't want to look at myself and see giant gaping character flaws that I can't stand in other people. (as always, this sometimes works better than others).

What does believing in humanity mean to me? It's incredibly freeing. It means that we are the solution to the problem, not just the problem. It changes our focus from out there to down here, from external solutions to internal. When we wait for God to fix something like an illness, people just keep getting sicker. When we have faith in humanity, we back it up with concrete work like funding and research. When we have faith in humanity we know we have everything we can have to get the answers.

We are incredible, both individually and together, if we let it happen. We have incredible power to change things at our fingertips. All we need to do is actually buckle down and do it.

Religiously completely off topic!

HeartShadow, your faithful religious blogger, has started writing a novel online at http://www.warriorsofthesungod.com and she'd like everyone to go and read it. (and why am I talking about myself in the third person?)

Anyway. Everyone go read it. Go love it. It's wonderful. And if you don't read it, you won't know what everyone else is talking about, so there.

I destroy myself, does anyone care?

I have problems with this. I do things that aggravate my wrists even though I already have carpal tunnel syndrome, for example. I also have diet issues .. my stomach has a lot of problems, so things that get me through day to day are probably very bad for me long term. My diet is fairly high-fat, which isn't good long-term. (on the other hand, if I don't get enough fats I feel very sick in the short term, and that's no good either).

We tend, however, to ignore what our behaviors do to the people around us. I knew someone that would routinely get drunk and high. And he drove. As far as I know, he never got into any accidents this way. He never hurt anyone. But I was waiting for that phone call, the entire time I knew him, of finding out he'd either been arrested or had killed himself. Or, worse to me, that his roommates had gotten arrested because he had illegal things in the house.

I have the right to do whatever I want to myself. I make the choices and I live with them, and I think that's reasonable. However, I don't have a moral right, necessarily. What I do affects the people around me. If I were, for example, to commit suicide or run away or something, that would affect my child, my husband, my parents .. the readers of this blog, the readers of my online novel, and everyone else that I come in contact with regularly. Nothing happens in isolation. If I abuse myself, I am abusing the people around me.

Questions:
In what way am I self-destrucive? Mostly, my eating habits. I do what I have to to get through the day, but I don't really think about my food or worry about having a properly balanced diet, and I should. I have a baby now, and I need to be in the best possible health to take care of him, if nothing else. (also, since I'm still nursing, I'm eating for two, which makes it even more important). As far as the why .. it's a combination of laziness and stomach problems. I'm going to do what I need to to get through the day long before I worry about what I'm going to do when I'm 50, because if life is miserable, what's the point of living it longer?

How do my habits affect other people? Well, I'm the cook in this family, so what I eat, everyone eats. If I cook junky food, three people are eating it, not just me. (baby so far secondhand, but he'll be eating tablefood soon enough). If I make fatty food, I'm giving it to everyone in the family. It's never just me. As far as how it affects the Divine: if I give myself a heart attack, I'm not going to get much writing done, am I?

How have I been affected by others? I already mentioned the friend that I was convinced was going to kill himself or someone else with his drug use. I had other friends that would engage in behavior that didn't match what they said they wanted to do, and then would get mad at me when I pointed that out. I've seen a number of people do similar things on a smaller scale. We love our self-destructive habits, that's often why we do them. They're our excuse, our escape. But that doesn't make them good, and it doesn't make them right.

Hope for today.

I feel very strongly that what we believe affects everything in our lives. When we truly expect nothing but horrible things, horrible things is what we get.

I'm not saying we should live a Pollyanna like existance. If I go running around in the bad parts of town by myself at night, I should expect bad things to happen to me. I don't deserve them, but that doesn't mean that my belief in the goodness of humanity is going to protect me. Rationality is a good thing.

But if I go around expecting people to not like me, they're not going to. If I expect bad things to happen to me, I'm only going to see the bad things .. I'm not going to believe in the good ones when they happen. Mindset affects everything.

Questions:
What is despair and why is it harmful? Despair is when we refuse to admit that the Divine is improvable. It says that things are bad and will not ever get better, or at least not better enough. And when you believe this, working to improve things becomes impossible. Seeing what good already exists in the Universe becomes impossible. The Divine looks through our eyes and sees only pain, and this feeds back into the Universe.

What is hope and what do I hope for? I hope that humanity can be better than it is .. and I hope that I can work to that end. I hope to improve the Divine. I also hope for the personal things .. love in my life, my baby to grow up happy and healthy, another baby, to get my novel published .... many things.

How do I balance clear seeing with optimism? Well, I try to see every likely outcome to a situation. I know, when I send in a novel, that the odds are much better that I'm going to get a rejection letter than I'm going to get a yes. On the other hand, if I never send it out, I'm simply assuring that it will never get published. So it's hard, but I send it out and hope for a good answer even while I know the odds are incredibly stacked against me. And I do this in other aspects of my life as well, but this one's the most obvious.

Ooh, Baby!

I really hate the idea that emotion is license. I think it's one of the most dangerous ideas that people have. (ranks up there with "I can't judge another's actions ever" and "everything is equally good").

One of the emotions most used as license, and most exploited, is lust. If there's a way to make something sexy, it's the way to go, regardless of the effects. (try being a woman and looking for professional and not-sexy. It's nearly impossible. Even when you refuse to play the hobbleskirt-and-heel game (how do people move in those things?) women are still dressed as sex appeal, not as attractive but not interested. Either that or I'm totally shopping in the wrong places). But it seems like everyone's trying to sell for lust, and if that's not what you want, you're out of luck.

I'm not saying we shouldn't feel lust. Not only is that impossible, but it's unreasonable. After all, I have me a baby .. I say no lust, people are gonna laugh at me. :D I am saying we need to be responsible with it. Don't fantasize about your officemate, especially if either of you are married. Don't get hung up on celebrities and think that it's reality. Be responsible with yourself, and remember that no matter what you feel, that doesn't give you license to act.

Questions:
How is lust appropriate in my life? How is it inappropriate? Well, I'm married and monogamous. Acting on lust towards anyone not my husband would be severely inappropriate. Other people acting in a lustful manner towards me (again, other than my husband) would be both inappropriate and deeply disturbing.

What do I do if I feel attraction towards someone completely inappropriate? I do my best to pretend it never happened. If need be, I avoid the person .. which might not be fair in the short run to that person, but is better for everyone involved. I don't have the right to act on any lustful feelings that are to people other than my husband .. I made a promise, and as long as I'm still married, that promise stands. I also get irritated if I feel someone is trying to evoke lust in me.

How do I react when people try to use lust to sell to me? Mockingly, usually. "Hey, look, there's a pair of boobs trying to sell me something!" I'm as attracted as the next person to the right character on a TV show, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't help sell the show .. but please, I don't need boobs to sell me toothpaste. I'm not going to buy a car because it'll get me women. Or men. Or, really, anything but from point A to point B safely and with good fuel economy. I find the attempt of using lust to sell stuff really irritating. (it doesn't help that with me, they usually miss. more cute geeky men!) But it's inappropriate .. it doesn't work, that toothpaste won't get me men, and to constantly try to sell something with a lie is irritating.

Also: lust grants you no rights over the one you lust after. I want to make that PERFECTLY clear. You lusting after me is your problem. If you have any respect for me at all, don't make it mine. And that goes for ALL instances of lust that is inappropriate .. don't make it the problem of the person you're interested in unless there's some belief it may be reciprocated. And take No for an answer.

None of your business if I do!

Privacy. It's a political concept as well as a religious one, and it's the political aspects which caused me to write this essay in the first place. Privacy is one of those things that is absolutely necessary and yet politically difficult to accept. We all want to know what the people we don't like are up to, and we all want the people we don't like to not know what we're doing.

So why am I so obsessed with privacy? It's not because I'm "up to" anything .. far's I can tell, I'm a fairly boring. I write my novels, I write this, I play some video games, I mother my child .. someone could watch me every hour of the day and not find anything objectionable. This doesn't change the fact that if someone WAS watching me, my behavior would change. It's impossible to behave the same way while watched than it is while unwatched. (and who the person was would change things, too .. if it was someone I know, like my husband, my behavior would change less than if it was a stranger .. if child protective services was watching, EVEN THOUGH I do not mistreat my child, I'd still change my behavior out of paranoia. It's impossible to behave the same way while watched).

Part of our identity is what we do when there is no one and nothing watching us. Who we are in the Dark Flame. When we have no space for our privacy, when our Dark Flame is suppressed "for the public good", we smother ourselves. I don't think that's worth it. I value myself too much to accept that kind of surveillance, and I value other people too much to watch them, too. It's just not worth the cost.

Questions:

How do I view privacy, and do I respect people's? Sometimes I think I over-respect it, to the point of being afraid to intrude on other people even when invited. But without that space of freedom, we lose ourselves. I would not intrude on that for other people any more than I'd want other people to intrude on mine.

What do I only do alone? In high school, it was gardening. It gave me space to think and to relax. And I did miss it, for years. I thought what I wanted was the gardening, but what I really wanted was the space. Now that I'm a mom, that time is when I just have a bath for half an hour while my husband watches the baby. It's a chance to just let my mind wander and to have nothing I need to worry about. And I NEED that time, too. It helps to make me whole.

The Dark Flame's need for renewal .. I really don't think that's something that can recharge in public. It can perhaps recharge when you are with people, but that's not always the same thing .. it's the alone in a crowd thing. Even then, it's much harder when you are with other people. There is no freedom to be without internal censor when there are other people watching. It's much harder to risk failure when you know someone IS watching ....

Ooh, looky what I did!

I'm so proud of me for this blog! ooh yes indeedy.

Well, not really. I am proud of what I've done .. I've worked hard, and it's good to see things coming together. This work has meaning, and I'm proud of that.

But I don't let myself see it as finished or as the only thing I need to know, either. It would be easy to let pride blind me to all the work left to do .. and that would be a bad thing. If I were to look at what I'd done and think that it made me a better person than the people around me, that would be a problem.

There's nothing wrong with being proud of what I've done. The problem would be if I thought that was enough.

Questions:

Where do I feel pride, and did I earn it? I feel pride when I finish writing a novel .. or even when I've finished my daily writing tasks I've set myself. I don't think I feel pride for things I haven't earned .. although I do feel astonishing pride when my son hits a new milestone, and I'm not entirely certain I have earned that.

How do I react to pride? It motivates me .. I want to feel it again. I like looking at something I've done and being able to say I've finished it. Of course, I also want to have the best possible product to be proud OF .. it's easy to be proud I finished a novel. It's a lot more meaningful to be proud that I've written a GOOD novel. (and it would be astonishing to have written a good PUBLISHED novel .....)

Pride in other people? It ... depends. When I can see justification for it, I appreciate it. There's power in knowing that you've done something and being proud of your accomplishment. When I see no justification for it, however, it scares me. Pride without justification is dangerous, because it's fragile. It's based on sand and the tide is coming in. People that have their pride based on nothing are very quick to lash out and hurt others to try and re-establish their own worth in their eyes, and they are very scary people.

There's nothing wrong with pride .. as long as you earn it and let it motivate you. When you let it blind you, then it really is a downfall.

Here, truth truth truth!

I'm always astonished by the idea that truth is a thing that can be owned or quantified. "Don't you want to know the TRUTH?" is a sentence which usually makes me giggle: often because the "truth" then shared strikes me as anything but true. But they hoard truth in their little boxes and keep it safe from anything outside that truth, for fear the truth will be shattered by contact with reality.

I think truth is stronger than that. It is what underlies everything, the one strong reality that IS everything. When truth can't stand up to the rest of the world, what you have isn't truth. It's a process of uncovering, also, not a once-found then done. I absolutely find astonishing the idea that one can "find truth" and then move on to a new hobby or activity. Finding truth is a lifetime activity, if not longer.

Seeking truth and creating beauty is one of the important things that we do. Sharing our knowledge of what we find, seeking more and sharing more, improves the Divine. Whenever we try to lock truth in a box and claim we've found it, we deny the rest of the universe that's out there.

Questions!

What do I seek? What do I find? I seek questions, because I think that answers are .. doubtful. It's easy to answer a question and think you're done with it. But the value is often in the question, not the answer. The same question can be revisited many times and a new answer or set of answers found again and again. A question opens up a line for truth. An answer, when you think you're done with answering, ends that line.

Do I keep things boxed up? I certainly hope not. I know there are some things which I view through a narrow lens .. I do think that in some things, there is a right way and a wrong way. I'm not about to take up driving on the other side of the road simply because I question whether traffic laws are valid. But for things that aren't simply a matter of convention, but matters of truth .. I try to keep my mind open while not having it fall out. I'm not going to believe things just because someone says them. There are things which fly in the face of conventional wisdom and logic, and while I may listen, I'm not going to believe it simply because it's there asking for belief. Logic and common sense are important too.

Am I content with not having all the answers? I think so. I don't think I'd know what to do if I had all the answers, actually. If everything was known, what would be left to do?

I take great comfort in the knowledge that there will always be more to learn, more to discover. It gives motivation to me to know there's always something new around the corner. If there wasn't, life would be incredibly boring.

When we mourn

When I wrote this, a friend of mine had just lost her father. And I was reminded of the losses in my life and others, and how people try to cope with them.

And we don't know how to cope, I don't think. We find grief and death uncomfortable, because it's a reminder of our own mortality and the mortality of those we love. We don't live in a world full of death anymore. People still die, but they are "supposed" to do it in a hospital bed when they're old. When it's sudden, when it is someone young .. whenever we're not expecting it, it hits us as a shock to the system. Something that's "wrong".

The problem is, death is a natural part of life. There must be an end for life to have meaning. People that refuse to grieve get locked into a weird place where they can't move forward, because they haven't accepted that the person is gone. But if you do grieve, people avoid you as though death and grief might be catching.

Questions:
Have I ever felt a time I couldn't grieve? Thankfully, I haven't ever been in that situation. I don't know what I would do if I was.

How do I deal with someone that is grieving? Very awkwardly, because I don't know what they need. I try to not close the person out, though, and to simply be there. I tend to make awkward humor, because I hate seeing people in pain, but I'm not sure that's a good reaction.

What is a good reaction societally? I think there needs to be space. I don't think there should be a society-standard reaction, because everyone is different, but I do think there needs to be some space .. and maybe something where a month after the death, there is a renewed reachout to the person. We reach out at the time of the death, but then never again .. and I think there needs to be a second or third reachout for the person, so they don't feel so alone when they start to come out of it.

Seeing the Shadow between the dark and the light

Like the other rituals, this one depends upon the Meditation of the Flame as its base. I won't re-describe that here.

Inside that, however, is the seeing of the shadow. I use the mirror here because I think it's important to see ourselves when we do this. A mirror-self is much like a shadow-self in how we feel .. it is ourselves, but different. When we see ourselves half-lit in the mirror, it is like seeing a familiar stranger. Ourselves, but not.

There is a line down the face that flickers and moves that is the line between the Bright Flame and Dark. This meditation draws specifically on the idea of moving that line, of bringing things into the light to examine then, but then letting them fade back into the darkness.

This meditation draws upon the illusion that these things can be looked at out of context. That I can look at my anger, and not the things that anger me, or not the reasons why, or what lies beneath that. In the dark, all these things are bound together. In the light, we can see them individually but incompletely.

This balance, dark to light and back, gives us the ability to see deeper into ourselves. And the more we know ourselves, the more we improve the Universe.

That which I keep hidden ....

The one thing I've taken out of both Wicca and Jung is the idea of the shadow-self. I found the idea first in Wicca and chased it down, because it's an idea that stuck with me. We do denigrate parts of ourselves, and we do hate that part we denigrate in ourselves when we see it in others.

In my shadow, I think I have issues with anger. (hence using it as an example). I'm never sure how to deal with it, and I'm a little scared of anger, both my own and others. I was reading about anger as a motivator to do things, and felt all smugly superior because I didn't feel that anger. Then I thought about it, because my reaction seemed all out of proportion. And .. I do feel anger. I just squelch it, or deny it, or try to relabel it something else. But that doesn't mean it isn't there .. it means I fear it.

This doesn't mean I want to get more angry. Anger is scary for a reason, and there's no real advantage to being angry. What it does mean is that I need to accept the anger I do have, and find productive ways to channel it and deal with it. Even if that's to decide to not be angry about the issue, I can't do that until I recognize the anger in the first place.

I have a shadow side. We all do. The trick is doing my best to not let it take control over me.

Questions:
What is in my shadow? Did that part. :) I'm sure there's more there, but that's what I'm finding today. (it's a hard question to answer, after all).

Why do I keep them there? What's my advantage? Well, anger scares me. As long as "I don't get angry" I don't have to deal with the fear (I've no idea why it fears me, either. Working on that too). But avoiding the situation completely doesn't work either, because I either let people walk all over me (no good) or I deny the motivation for my own actions (also not good).

I react badly to anger in other people as well. It terrifies me. I don't know how to deal with it or what it does. I don't like the fact that it seems to take people out of control or that it spurs people on past what would be "logical". And that's not a rational reaction either, because anger is useful and helpful at times as well.

But knowing that anger is related to my shadow helps me cope a little more with that anger, because I recognize my reaction is irrational. And that gives me a chance to slow down and think for a moment.

But it's how I feel!

Part of the impetus for this essay was someone telling me that I didn't have the "right" to be hurt by the way someone else was acting, because she had every right to act that way. I found that doubly insulting .. both the idea that I was trying to constrain her behavior (I wasn't, I hadn't even TOLD her I was hurt!) and the idea that I didn't have the right to have my own feelings. And I found that idea incredibly insulting.

There seems to be no middle ground for feelings. Either I feel it and that's reason enough to act, or feelings are meaningless and everything should go by logic. Both of these are patently unreasonable expectations, but we still seem to operate by them anyway.

It's soul-defying to be told you're not allowed to feel things. It invalidates everything that you are. Being told you've no "right" to be hurt, or angry, or insulted .. that's saying you don't have a right to exist, in a way. It's a way to imply that you're not even real. When someone told me I didn't have a right to be hurt, it felt like a kick in the gut .. and I didn't even hear it firsthand, nor do I take the speaker as a person of high importance in my life. And it was STILL a kick in the gut.

We have an absolute right to our feelings. Even if they're inconvenient .. I have an absolute right to have a crush on someone inappropriate, after all. I just don't have the right to ACT on that crush. And that distinction is absolutely critical.

Questions:
What feelings do I just react to and why? mmm .. I try to not "just" react, although that's hard. Irritability is a hard one to rein in, although I know I should. Happiness is one I tend to just let loose .. it's hard to be dangerous with happiness. Although even then, I try to be sensitive to place and the people around me. Sometimes that works better than others. (and sometimes, I just don't care. When I'm around people that glory in moping, I've been known to be defiantly happy just because I could. EVERY directed emotion can be used as a weapon as well).

As far as "safe" emotions .. I don't think there are safe emotions, I think there are safe emotional situations. It is safe to react to the love I feel for a spouse (usually, depending on the marriage. it SHOULD be safe, at least!). It wouldn't be safe for me to react to a crush, especially in front of said spouse. It's usually safe to be happy. It may not be wise to be angry. It's almost always not safe to react to anger by throwing a punch. It's not what you feel. It's how you react to it.

How can we allow ourselves to feel while still limiting our action? I think the first step is acknowledging that it IS possible. It's perfectly possible to want to hit someone and yet refrain from doing so. Indeed, it is the stronger person that doesn't throw the punch. But more, I think we need to promote restraint in a systematic fashion. It's not simply as individuals that we need to show restraint, but also as a culture. How we respond to other people's emotional reactions determines how much of an emotional reaction we're likely to have the next time. But we also have to allow ourselves to feel. We need to respect and acknowledge our emotional reactions. It needs to be safe to say, "This made me mad because."

When we as a culture or as individuals say that someone is not allowed to feel, we set ourselves up as arbiter over their Flame. This is absolutely immoral, and I think it's damaging on both sides. We all have an absolute right and need to feel. Only reactions should be judged and controlled.

Loving kids

Children are a special case when it comes to FlameKeeping. They are dependent upon us, needing us to help nurture and shelter them, but at the same time they are their own people and need to learn and explore their own Flame. Finding a balance between protection and freedom is a constant tightrope nightmare for every parent.

So far, I have it pretty easy on that. My little one is only one year old (almost!) and can't get up to much. His freedom is one room, and I'm always there to watch him. But I still have to not run when he falls .. only when it hurts. I have to let him scream out his frustration at night so he can go to sleep, as opposed to holding him the entire time. Even now, when he can't even walk or talk, I have to let go a little.

So how do you balance? I don't know .. and there's certainly no clear-cut rule, no one thing that will fit every child and every situation. Parenting is too individual for that. I do know that too much freedom with hurt a child, because he won't have a chance to learn about rules .. and sooner or later, rules come for all of us. And too much protection will hurt a child, because then when they do get freedom, they won't know how to handle it.

We have to love our children .. and we have to put their needs ahead of our own. As hard as it is, we have to do what's right for the child .. not just what's right for us.

Questions:
Should we try to eliminate risks? No, in general, both because risk is inherent for success, and because teenagers could make crossing the street dangerous. You can't make safe someone that doesn't want safety. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things safer, because there's no point in needless risk. But it needs to be thought out and the tradeoffs weighed.

How do you balance care against suffocation? Carefully and constantly. There's no way to make one single rule, because children and situations vary. All broad rules will have exceptions, sometimes very important ones.

Love your child, and try very hard to do what's best for the child in these decisions, not what's best for the adult. It can be hard to tell, sometimes .. but when we have a child, we make a promise to that baby that we're going to do the best we can for the little one. That promise never runs out.

it's a party!

The important part of this is the mindfulness. It's so very easy to view food as nothing but fuel, meals as just something to get through to get on to the next thing. This is a time to actually think about it.

What difference does it all make, I bet you're asking. Who cares where the food comes from? Well, it matters. Food isn't interchangeable. Some choices are more environmental than others, some are more humane than others .. there are a lot of choices to make. Being mindful is an important part of FlameKeeping, and refusing to think about these things because it's all too big is an abrogation of responsibility. We vote with our dollars every time we buy food. It's important to make certain that's a vote we're happy with.

And it's important, too, to take time with family and friends and simply enjoy them. We are a species that craves contact with each other, and yet we're very good at making that contact less than what we need. This is a time to enjoy each other, enjoy yourself, and put aside worries for a short time.

After all, the Universe is improved when people in it are happier, and that includes you.

I'll get you!

I'm frequently bothered by the rhetoric of punishment and retribution in our country. People talk about deterrence, but we seem to be focused on the idea of punishment. There's the idea that someone hasn't paid "enough" for what they've done, as though a year in jail or a certain dollar amount was equivelent for what they've done. And that always makes my blood run cold. There is no "enough" .. there simply needs to be an adequate deterrence. (this also bothers me with corporate law .. the fines are usually so small they don't get high enough to stop the behavior).

I think about this sort of thing a lot because I have a baby, and he's old enough that I have to start paying attention to what he's doing and start corralling him. And of course, there's the spank/no spank debates and everything else. What I'm finding, though, is that the only thing that gets his attention is removal .. sticking him in the playpen. So I don't engage in the issue of spanking, because this "works". Punishment isn't the goal here .. getting him to stop turning off the computer is.

Questions:
Why do we punish people? Well, I try to punish or push back to stop the behavior. I don't want to actually PUNISH them .. I want it to STOP. Sometimes this means removing myself from the situation .. and if that's what it takes, that's what it takes. While I want the person involved to learn from it as well, the only person I can control is me.

I don't deal well when people try to "teach me a lesson" .. usually because I find such reactions amusing. One person went around trying to spread rumors that I "radiate evil", which I find absolutely hilarious. I think I was "supposed" to learn to not tell this person anything that she doesn't want to hear. What I did learn was that she's got a messed-up view of reality.

If I was in charge, how would I punish people? I'm not sure there would be jails .. or at least, jails would be solely for people that couldn't be allowed out in public. I'd make people work for their punishment, because I think you learn a lot more slaving away doing meaningless labor than you do locked away from society. And I would make it something that couldn't be construed as "manly" so people wouldn't want to "go to jail" to "become a man", which happens now. As far as what would happen after that, I don't know. But it might be interesting to see.

A dance with flame

Poetry is important, although I'm not very good at it. Some ideas are better said from a poetic angle than they are directly. Which makes this very hard to talk about.

I can discuss the inspiration. I had a two-day .. hrm. I suppose the best word is "visit" from Papa Legba, a Voudoun spirit. Needless to say, this startled me immensely. The more I looked into him and researched him, the more I felt that I'd been focusing too much on the logical end of FlameKeeping.

Religion is inherently illogical. There comes a point when one must simply let go and dance with the Flame.

Sometimes one must just let go. And it's not an easy thing to do. It's not a logical thing to do. But when it comes to faith, that's not something that can be held onto with strong fists or examined by a logical mind. Faith defies logic, defies strength, defies everything that we try to use to examine our lives.

Sometimes, there isn't a clear answer. Sometimes there isn't a logical path. Sometimes one must simply let go and dance.

And when you do, you become whole again.

Don't cross me ....

I don't remember if I wrote this in response to something specific or not. Really, it doesn't matter, because it is a statement of what happens all the time.

It's very hard to know where boundaries are. And it's hard to know if one's boundaries are reasonable. There are times I feel totally stepped upon, yet have no idea what to say because my reaction seems unreasonable to what happened. What makes that even more difficult, though, is that people don't realize something even is a problem until you make it clear.

My baby knows how to handle personal insults. He screams his fool head off. (of course, he also does this when he wants a diaper change, a snuggle, or that toy back, so it's hard to tell what the problem is). But there is a time in our lives when we know that when something happens we don't like, we respond. Somewhere along the way we lose that .. we learn that we must go along to get along, that we have to fit in with the community, that we have to find a way to bend ourselves to fit the mold given us. And it's worse for women than for men, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem for men as well. We're all told to just "shut up and take it."

I don't have any easy answers. What I do know is that when you bend, and bend, and bend, you're stifling your Flame. Perhaps the problem is your boundaries, and then you need to find a way to make more reasonable ones. But perhaps the problem is people simply treating you like a welcome mat, in which case the absolute correct response is to refuse to play that game any more.

Questions:
How do I handle transgression? Usually, poorly. I tend to just take it because I so hate confrontation. When I get pushed too far, I explode, which makes the issue the explosion and not the actual problem. I'm VERY bad at this. (I work on it, but it's hard to deal with long-established patterns. surprise! I'm not perfect. darn).

Do I feel oppressed by transgression? No, I don't. I've managed to arrange my life as to avoid most places where I do feel oppressed .. like most day jobs. (hopefully this writing gig will pay at some point!). I take care of the house and the kid as well as I can, and it works for my husband and myself. When I tried to work a day job, though, I felt absolutely twisted and broken into something I was not. And unfortunately, there was no way to respond that let me keep my job, because the system itself simply didn't work with me.

How do I react to other people's reactions? I try to get past the anger and to the actual problem .. the actual anger is pretty useless. It's a reasonable response, and it tells me that there is a problem, but it doesn't tell me what the problem is. I try to be reasonable, though, and not react badly to other people what I actually see in myself. It is easy, however, to say this .. harder to do it.