Indigo Incarnates

Well, technically yesterday was Beltaine. But Cedar Light Grove has their services on Saturday evenings so I will attend it tonight. I always like going to CLG for High Rites. The druid leader, Will, has been practicing the craft so long that he has the entire liturgy memorized for all eight sabbats. How cool is that? I also saw on their website that CLG follows the "Doctrine of Druidic Fallibility", which they essentially saw that everyone -- including the leaders -- are going to make mistakes from time to time.

The thing I like about Cedar Light is that they are very welcoming to ALL pagans, not just Druids. There are a sizable number of Wiccans that attend their rites (me being one of them).

So... what's the difference between a Druid and a Wiccan?

Well, there wouldn't actually *be* any Wiccans if the Druids had first not existed. Wicca is in some ways a streamlined Druidism. The Druids are polytheists, while Wicca is primarily duotheistis (ie. following a male and famale deity).But it's pretty easy for Wiccans to view named gods/goddessess as representations of *the* god and goddess. So it's all good.

I always like how there's a huge bonfire at Cedar Light Grove. During part of the service, we offer things to the gods -- flowers, incense, etc. So it usually smells pretty nice too. One time someone offered some incense that was chemically treated to make the fire turn all different colors. That was really cool!

Whether it's a Druid or Wicca service, one thing always remains the same in worship: that we are created by the gods (or the Goddess and God) in love, to be loved, and always shall be loved. We are loved when things are going well. We are loved when life circumstances go straight to hell. We are never judged as being shameful, sinful, or corrupt so long as we live our lives in goodness, charity, love, and peace.

I started following the Wiccan path a bit over a year ago and I have never regretted that decision. I feel loved when I pray, and I never had that before. I know Wicca is not for everyone. But it seems like the right path for me, and I am glad. :)

Blessed be!

Indigo Incarnates

I was thinking about world leaders and how some of them get carried away with crimes of violence. Some eventually pay while others go scott-free. There's one leader that seems to always evade justice.

The person I'm thinking of has, in the past, used weapons of mass destruction to utterly destroy two cities. The fact that the cities in question had women, children, families, grandmothers, fathers, uncles -- that didn't matter. The cities were destroyed due to religious differences between this world leader and the citizens of the two cities.

This world leader also is responsible for killing tens of thousands of children by way of biological terrorism in Cairo. There was a political dispute in that city and the person in question unleashed an attack that cut down innocent children like so much mowed grass.

Later, a then the Egyptian government sent their military to punish a group of terrorist sympathizers (ie. a group that supported this leader's ongoing reign of violence), that same leader unleashed another weapon of mass destruction that destroyed a large portion of the Egyptian military.

This leader has been known to summarily execute his own followers for the most trivial of religious offenses. Several clergy were murdered over the slight mishandling of a religious artifact. Moreover, the leader has essentially vowed to kill anyone who disagrees with his own particular brand of right-wing theology.

Despite his saber-rattling and his penchant for murdering priests and infants, this leader did nothing when a hostile power rounded up his followers in a war of genocide. Indeed, over six million of this leader's people were killed and the leader did nothing, despite the fact that it was well-known that he possessed very potent weapons of mass destruction.

What kind of leader is this? Would you call him "kind"? Would you call him "just"? Would you call him "humanitarian"? Would you even call him "good"?

Unfortunately for the parts of the world that value peace, ecology, freedom, and love, there are billions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims that call this leader "God".

Indigo Incarnates

I played hookey from choir last night for two reasons: I didn't have enough gas to get there and back (and it was the day before payday so I was flat broke) and the weather was just too nice to stay indoors. I did, however, have enough gas to get to the NCR trail (it's only 5 miles away from my house.)

I was really happy to see what difference just a few days make at this time of year. Most of the trees are sprouting leaves, the grasses are green again, and I saw lots of flowering weeds. It was very pretty. I saw plenty of squirrels and birds. I even saw a cardinal.

Since it was evening and the middle of the week, there weren't too many people. I was happy for that. The world has *way* too many people.

It was also good to get sunlight. Chanhelings need sunlight.

So, the eight mile walk was fun and it was great exercise. Yay!

Indigo Incarnates

So... Doug ordered a Futon a few weeks ago. The sales dude told Doug that when it arrived that it would be in three pieces and only require four bolts. Lemme tell ya: when it arrived it had about 100 pieces and three dozen bolts and two dozen other fasteners. Whoo-hoo! There ought to be a Time/Life series called "When Salesmen Lie", har har har.

But I'm happy to say that I actually got this beast put together and I'm lounging on it right now. Yay! I'm not mechanically inclined at all. This is actually the most complicated thing I've ever gotten successfully put together. It was a real confidence booster for me.

I The father-monster always called me a loser because I wasn't good with tools. Of course, if I had been good with tools as a child, the father-monster would have found some other reason to hate me.

But I feel like I had a real accomplishment :)

Indigo Incarnates

It's been over a year since I began studying Wicca. I'm an initiate now and I've officiated at four worship services, two of which I wrote the liturgy for. I have to say how glad I am that I found this spiritual path (or maybe I was found?) It's wonderful to feel loved when I pray.

One of the things I find so appealing about Wicca is how the religion recognizes the balance of forces. In Christianity, I've run into people who have said illness is a judgement by God, or poor finances is a judgemennt by God. But in Wicca, it is ssimply nature that there are times of disease and times of health; times of poverty and times of plenty; times of sadness and timees of joy. Without the one, appreaciation for the other would be lessened. In my life, I am in a time of health (good) but in a time of financial distress (not so good). But I would probably grow overconfident and less thankful if everything was going right at the same time. But in Wicca, I have been learning to appreciate the balance.

When I pray to the Goddess and God, I feel loved. I never had that when I followed YHVH. Maybe YHVH could not love me because I am not human, or maybe because I'm homosexual, or maybe because I'm not perfect. But the Goddess and God seem to love all life -- human or not -- and I can feel their spiritual presence when I pray, whether things in my life are going well or if my life is in chaos. They do not abandon. I am really grateful.

Is Wicca the "one true path"? Nope. It's the path for me, however. Wicca is not a religion that claims to be the ultimate moral authority or the one true faith. It is simply *one* source of morality and *one* true path among many true paths. For those who find spiritual fulfillment and connection with deity through Christiannity or Islam or any other faith, I'm happy for those people since it's good to be walking the right path that fulfuills one's spiritual destiny.

Blessed be :)

Indigo Incarnates

As another "perk" of living in Baltimore, Doug and I learned this weekend that the police department no longer makes non-emergency responses on weekends. Our white-trash neighbors across the street decided to through an unreasonably loud party on Saturday night. It was really, really loud! So 11:30pm rolls around and Doug calls 311 (the non-emergency police number) to see if an officer could be dispatched to gett the crowd to stop disturbing the peace. Well, the 311 dispatcher said they no longer do non-emergency calls on weekends.

What a riot.

Of course,that means that if your car is stolen on Friday night, you can't report it to the police until Monday morning in Baltimore. Lovely.

Anyway, the party was still going on at 6:00AM. It was a long, long night.

Indigo Incarnates

Usually I post more often than this, but it's been a particularly uneventful week.

I did see that there is a defendant on Pretrial Supervision with a firearm charge -- and his name is "Raygun". What a riot!

Doug got his state tax refund back so he got us tickets to a broadway show for next month.

I've been having a blast playing Sacred-II, a cool game that Doug gave me. It features an Angel that goes around kicking the crap out of highwaymen, orcs, zombies, and werewolves. She has a holy handgun too. Whoooo-hoo!

I do community supervision today. Hopefully I won't get shanked by a junkie-bum!

Indigo Incarnates

From a religious perspective, it was a pretty fun weekend. On Friday, I went to a drum circle at Turning Circle. I don't actually own a drum, so I brought my rain stick. I think my rain stick added a nice sound to the group. Another member brought a finger chime. The ritual was pretty energetic. It was a lot of fun.

Saturday was a Full Moon service at Turning Wheel bookstore. My Wicca teacher actually let me lead the service. It was pretty cool. I am really glad that two different Wicca circles accept me and trust me enough to compose liturgy for worship services and also to officiate. And to think: the dreaded Rev Shifflet (now retired) made it a point to tell me how unworthy he thought I was for any kind of ministry. Go figure!

This morning was Easter Sunday. I'm in handbell choir so I rang bells for both services. Thistle likes church a lot. I don't mind too much (I like Jesus but I don't have any warm fuzzy feelings for YHVH. But Jesus is good). The new rector got told by the vestry to keep her sermons to 10 minutes or less. Yay! Easter music is always so cheerful!

Thistle also had an interesting analysis of the Eucharistic Rite. By Thistle's account, the Catholic Church sort of interpreted the ritual of the bread and wine. What Thistle thinks happens is that the bread and wine are empowered with life energy by Christ, but they never have been turned into flesh and blood. That works for me, since I'm not big into eating flesh!

So it was a pretty spiritually fulfilling weekend!

Blessed Be!

Indigo Incarnates

Well, I'm afraid it's time for one of my periodic TechnoRants. You know, when I gripe about technological things that should work a lot better than they do, but don't.

--- Internet Explorer 8
Wow! What a piece of garbage! IE7 was faster. IE6 was faster still. So I guess Microsoft doesn't consider a browser fully "updated" until it runs at only half the speed of its predecessor. The new thing I've noticed with IE8 is that you get an awful lot of "This page cannot be displayed" errors unless you're running a broadband connection of 384 kbps or higher. Whenever my phone switches to EDGE mode (115kbps) this new browser is essentially crippled. Oh, it also consumes an inordinate amount of processing power. When IE8 is loading a page, the processor utilization gage is at 100% the whole time. Oh, and it has a hard time closing. I usually have to do a manual application termination through Task Manager to close IE8.

--- When "Unlimited" actually means "10 Gb"
So, I was finally able to get T-Mobile to keep letting me use my SonyEricsson phone as a modem (since I had a contract that explicitly said I am permitted to). However, the cell phone service provider came up with a new hidden limitation. Apparently once a user has exceeded 10 Gb of data transfer in a 30-day period, the carrier disables the 3G data stream (384kbps) and only allows the phone to connect on the EDGE channel (115kbps). To add insult to injury, the phone chimes on the hour, every hour, with a message that reads "You have exceeded a 10 Gb limit. Your data speed shall be reduced for the remainder of the billing cycle). Since the service isn't actually terminated, T-Mobile can still technically say it's "unlimited". I am not impressed.

--- Fake 3G
Word to the wise: There are actually two kinds of 3G phones. Mine is a HSPDA device, which connects in the 350kbps-650kbps range. Then there are the inferior UMTS devices, which connect at 150kbps-300kbps. If you plan on subscribing to T-Mobile,they now only let new customers tether UMTS phones to their computers. The only reason my faster phone still works is because they implemented this policy after I signed the contract -- and I still had to fight them about it for two weeks. So, if you want broadband service and you think T-Mobile is going to be as fast as AT&T or Verizon, think again. UMTS is only *slightly* faster than EDGE. If T-Mobile really had it's act together, I could get 1.2 Mb/sec. That's never going to happen on this network anytime soon.

am willow

was pretty today
windy and cool
pretty sky
some trees have flowers now
pink and white
so pretty
am glad the trees are waking up
saw yellow and purple flowers