Over on Divine Multiplicity, Katalin Patnaik wrote on how to perform puja (a Hindu form of ritual).
This is perhaps the biggest consideration for me. I don’t want to be a Pagan chaplain, I want to be a chaplain who is Pagan.
Conor Warren, ‘9 of Beagles: A Pagan in A Christian Seminary?‘ on Agora
Through this post on Priestess of Aphrodite I found another book to add to my ever-growing and unmanageable book wishlist: The Empath’s Survival Guide by Judith Orloff.
A lot of folks, especially monotheists, but often polytheists as well, have an oddly rigid and systematized view of the many gods. “So-and-so is a goddess of storm,” they’ll say, or “This one is a god of marriage.” It’s like a very compartmentalized divine bureaucracy, as if you have to take the proper form to the correct functionary or you’ll simply be turned away — not their department.
Mike Berschenk, ‘The god you already know‘ on Cardinal & Locust (one of the coolest blog names I’ve seen)
But who is the god of suicidal friends? Who is the godden of persons who are maybe already dead, but hopefully not? Who takes responsibility for missing adults who left the house under their own recognizance, but aren’t safe from their own thoughts?
It’s not a workable system, and thankfully it’s not how the Holy Ones work, either. They certainly have their interests and typical activities, just as we do. But — again, like us — they are complex persons, and they have relationships with those who honor them. They may not be the best respondent for any particular situation, but when you build ghosti bonds with the Holy Ones, they don’t turn aside; they help as best they can. The best god to turn to in crisis is the one you already know.
I am sharing these Lughnassad posts a bit late, considering the holiday was a few weeks ago. Better late than never, right?
Both are by Kris Hughes. First, her article on Agora, ‘Our Lughnassad Harvest‘. I’m not sure I buy her premise or conclusion entirely, but it was a thought-provoking article. I especially loved this line: “The story of birth, death, regeneration is truly mother nature’s story. She is red in tooth and claw. It’s not eat or be eaten, so much as eat and be eaten. It’s the natural order of things.” It resonated with my understanding and experience of the Clarene especially.
Second, her post from last year, on her own blog. ‘Contemplating Lughnassad‘ has similar themes to her more recent post. One line that stood out to me, and that I am still turning over in my mind, “…preserving the unploughed natural world is more important to me than whether me and my tribe have enough to eat over the winter.“
Owning things is becoming increasingly a privilege of economic class.
Siderea, ‘The Privilege of Property‘ on Sibylla Bostoniensis
We’re used to thinking of buying things being, obviously, a privilege of economic class. Economic class means how much money you have with which to buy things, so it’s unsurprising that buying things is something people with higher economic class get to do more of.
But owning things – even things that were given to you as gifts, that you made yourself, that you found, that, crucially, cost you no money to acquire, and which you never bought – is also an economic privilege, and, I am contending, becoming ever more and more so.
Now, half a moment’s thought will point out that owning things has always had costs attendant, and thus has always been a privilege of economic class. You can’t own a private jet without a hangar for it; for a more banal example, it’s hard to own a car if you haven’t anywhere to park it. The small stuff we keep inside our homes, we can keep more of it when we have larger homes; ergo, it’s not surprising that getting to have more stuff is an economic privilege, and to some extent always has been.
What has changed is just how much of a privilege it is. Which is to say, more than it was not that long ago.