Category: Human Interest

We are blessed – Holiday Poem

After ten days of connecting with friends, relations, and chosen family…

We are blessed

 by Sam Dodge

elbows, hips, shoulders, smiles
eyes meet eyes meet eyes
stocking feet and kitchen clatterWINTER
pour the wine and share a story
little ones explore the floor
in leggy forests

slow tides of fond embraces
adrift on warming estuaries
room to room
we glide as lazy waves

tonight there are no storms
no bitter winds to scour the faces
hands linger, clasped in hands
in gentle joy
without possession
cheeks brushing cheeks
soft, unexpectant energy

the hearth is down to embers
our heart fires glow and leap
our intimate proximity
is nourishment and heat

we pass the plates
we take from each
appreciation feeds each one in grace
in this dream of now
we are the pool
in which we swim

O loves, I know
when we all dance this way
we are one soul

Love,
Sam Dodge

Solstice Fire – A Poem

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Solstice Fire    by Sam Dodge

at the rim of timeSOLSTICE
everything seems the same
dark days, dark nights
in fields of ice

flickerings of light
over futile sprays of stars

skeletons of candle flame
strangled up in shadows
dance a spastic dirge
bent dim by impish drafts

frost, in floral cataracts
looms o’er a snow-blind eye

recalcitrant grey dawn
low sun hides in dismal clouds
insomniac hands, wrapped in wool
wave numb semaphore signs

he paces; futile, cold
whilst all the earth lays dreaming

stark soul of winter
wrests hope from breasts
in claustrophobic visions
in brittle, scorning mirth

now stoke the solstice blaze
now let the laughter burn

now dance like unleashed flames
let Boreas consume your dreams
let ice nymphs eat the candles
they’ll not damp down the fire

now damn the darkest dawn
as, slow, the days grow long

Dark love,

Sam

Sam Dodge:

I’m 52 years old, from Minneapolis by way of northern Minnesota and 4 years on the west coast while in the Navy. Grew up “hippie”. Married for 27 years, think monogamy is a questionable commitment when there are so many people to love… Have 4 kids, youngest almost 17. High school dropout, always been interested in poetry, prose, and song. Have composed more than a thousand poems and 50 songs, many short stories,  finished one novel, shopping it to agents since publishers seem uninterested, will finish a second novel this winter, have half of another one ready for my attention then… I’m a builder/painter/handyman now living in western Wisconsin on about 100 acres of beautiful hills, valleys, trees and stuff…

Gifts and Thank You’s – Editorial

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Photo: vec.ca

Gifts, they are on most of our minds this time of year.  We anguish over giving them and receiving them, who needs one, who might give us one, why we give them.  It is residue from that dominant holiday in our culture, at least the anguish is.  Most of the gifts we really appreciate are the ones given from the heart, and specific to ourselves and the receiver.  There is a strong alternative movement against all the commercialism.  Give some cookies, or a hand-made necklace, a poem, hand-made card, or a special artifact of nature.  Give something really personal, these things often have more meaning.

Thank you.  Our thank you conversations are the flip side of gifts.  We always say thank you, but we can’t help but betray what we feel most often.  The enlightened honor that old saying, “It’s the thought that counts.” and really endeavor to feel it.  It doesn’t matter if we already have two, or don’t need want or like it.  It may even feel like an obligation or burden.  Why did we not think of them and have a gift?  Whatever we feel, as we accept it, we also know most times the giver instinctively senses our reaction, and it falls into a couple of categories.  We loved it and appreciate it, we are ambivalent and it is a little awkward, or they sense our subtle dread at the responsibility of accepting it.  However it takes place, we complete the gift-thank you ritual and keep moving, it is that busy time of year.

Twin Cities Pagans

How can we avoid the stress of this time of gifts and thank you’s?   What got me thinking about this was the ending of the Paganistan weekly. What a gift.  JRob took the task of building a network of people, and a place to share personal and community events, applied his love and vision of a better community, and just ran with it.  The list, Twin Cities Pagans had been around since year 2000.  I found the post when JRob got involved , message # 649, Aug 18th, 2008:

Blessings All,
I couldn’t find a place which listed the area Pagan events in one calendar, so I asked Robin and he said I could use the calendar from this group to keep track of events.  So if you want to keep up on local Pagan events, check this group’s calendar.  I’m on a bunch of local groups and I continually add things as I find them.
Oh, and I also updated the links section. But I’m not calling dibs.  I hope that other people also feel free to add things.

Many Blessings, Jrob

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Killing, Death, Hunting, and Pagans – Editorial

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death_tree

I just finished a week of hunting deer in Wisconsin, and am a Pagan. Most Pagans don’t have a deep connection to hunting, I guess their demographic is more urban than many religious groups. Hunting is not a big Pagan topic of conversation unless you are from, or live in, a rural area.

A recent blog post by author Stifyn Emtys caught my attention. He wrote questioning hunting, well really questioning it as if hunting is essentially “enjoying killing”. The post goes on to conclude that some,  “people don’t kill because they have to. They kill because they want to. And that, my friends, isn’t just scary. It’s horrifying.“ Another, commenting on social media about that post, took it a step further with, “Hunting, when one has access to vegetation and other food sources is just cold-blooded murder, no way around it. ” 

Murder is killing a person with malice a forethought, quite a stretch to classify hunting with this term.

What offends me is that the post’s author admits that hunting experience is an area of limited personal contact and understanding, but still concludes, “ people who kill animals in the name of sport or spirituality …. reveal something starkly horrific about the human condition.” The author equates hunting with “enjoying killing”.  I don’t hunt because I enjoy killing. I accept that many things in life involve death, and yes, sometimes killing.

As a Pagan and a hunter, I don’t feel compelled to proselytize about either activity. There are plenty of horror stories about both designations, there are plenty of reason to be neither, it is a personal choice.  The blog post did get me to think about killing, death, and particularly our relationship as Pagans to it.

Where is the Pagan experience with death in this intellectual argument? It seemed lacking. My spirituality and experience has changed how I look at death, and at killing. I don’t see it as a punishment, an act of fate or karma, even something to fear. I see it all around me, everyday.

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Pagan Thanksgiving Thoughts

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Tomorrow is November 22, 2012, Thanksgiving Day.  Per tradition, it is considered a time to gather, feast, and to express gratitude. For those who watch television or receive store emails, it is the start of the mega-shopping fest season: Black Friday and now Black Thursday.  It seemed appropriate to ask some local pagans how they plan to celebrate and how they feel about the holiday in general. Is it just a shopping holiday, a time to over-consume food or is it the end of a harvest season, a time of family, and a mulit-cultural, multi-religious holiday?
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What do you plan to do for this Thanksgiving?  How do you think of Thanksgiving?

Jill: I think of it as kind of a family holiday, even though one half of my family prays and one half doesn’t.  One half is Christian and one-half is Atheist; I’m pagan and it’s awkward.  I enjoy it we get together as a family. I hardly ever see my family because they work so much. I’m very thankful. Because it’s Thanksgiving, I like to think of it as a moment to reflect upon how  how I am thankful. Even though I have had  a lot of tough times in my life, I still have my family. I’m thankful for them.  Even though my family fights sometimes, it’s still nice being able to get together with them and we all work it out eventually.

Liz at Magus Books: “We have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in our household: jelly beans, toast, straight pretzels, popcorn, and a sundae. I’m not kidding. Given that as an American holiday, folks sit down, Thanksgiving is truly multi-cultural.

Thracie at Eye of Horus:  I spend time at my mother’s with turkey and mashed potatoes.

Tamara: I come from a nice sized family that still gets together every holiday. Before my Grandmother passed away, holidays were reorganized so that every adult with a house large enough to squeeze in our extended family took a turn hosting a holiday. This ensured that many of us learned how to carry on the traditions that wove us together and the future of our family was therefore invested broadly rather than around one central matriarch. I think this has helped us maintain a cohesive family. Our gatherings are therefore decentralized, still have firm structure and we maintain a rhythm that keeps us visiting each others homes. It makes for a good weave.
Every other Thanksgiving is at our house and has been for 16 years now. This Thanksgiving we are expecting about 20 people and are looking forward to it!

Helga Hedgewalker:
I think a time to reflect on gratitude is a beautiful and spiritual thing. The Thanksgiving Holiday itself is a time for my husband and me to visit our parents without religious differences coming into the conversation, and there’s no hurt feelings about whether or not to attend their church.

Beth: I always happily spend Thanksgiving with my family of origin. For as long as I can remember, my mother has hosted a huge Thanksgiving meal in her home for about 20 members of our extended family, replete with turkey, stuffing, my grandmother’s mashed potatoes and gravy, and plenty of pies. We take time out for our routines to eat, catch up on recent events, watch football (well, people who are bigger sports fans than me watch football, anyway), and just enjoy each others’ company. I look forward to it all year, and I am definitely also going to enjoy introducing my 9-month-old child to it for the first time this year.
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