Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Family

I hate it when insecure people create issues out of nothing.

I made a statement regarding the concept of chosen families and blood family in someone’s comments, and someone else took issue with it — not with me, but with the blogger. They took a neutral statement and read valuation into it somehow, despite the lack of positive or negative terms, and imposed a whack of stress upon the poor blogger.

The whole thing arose out of the concept of family.

Now, sue me if I’m wrong, but last I looked, the biological unit of mother/father/offspring didn’t have an exclusive right to the word “family”.

When the blogger sent me a private plea for help, one of the options suggested was retraction. Nuh-uh. I don’t retract unless I’m wrong, and agree that I’m wrong. Instead, I wrote a clarification, which included the following:

We form several different ‘families’, or tight-knit communities based on common interests, throughout our lives. At any one time, an individual may have an academic family, a social family, or a spiritual family in addition to his/her own geneological family. No one family is more important than another; they all perform necessary functions. Taken together, these families create a complex context for the individual’s growth and development.

These families exist in different dimensions, but no one family supersedes another. There exists no hierarchy. Rather, there exists a harmony through which the individual is nurtured.

On a practical level, there are no negative words in the phrase I wrote, and it was written thusly in deliberate fashion. ‘Different’ does not mean ‘better’ or ‘worse’, ‘higher’ or ‘lower’; it simply means ‘different’. None of the words in the phrase indicate a value judgement in any fashion, and to seek to interpret them as such is to create a false statement.

What I didn’t say was that anyone who chooses to create mountains out of molehills and put a guilt trip on someone else is more than likely operating out of fear or narrow-mindedness, and obviously needs a hobby like knitting or basket-weaving to fill the time they currently spend in making people miserable.

What amuses the heck out of me at the same time is that my irritation with narrow-mindedness arises from my (admittedly) liberal views. I become severely annoyed if someone can’t step out of themselves for a moment and use their stunted imaginations to pretend, just for a moment, what it’s like for the other guy. This has always been a strength and curse for me. In an argument I can usually see both points of view. When it comes to someone deliberately closing their minds to the fact that truth is subjective, though, I get downright grr.

Ah, well. Things like family, emotion, religion, and politics are always accompanied by a short fuse. The whole issue of same-sex marriage is currently revolving around offspring — why else would people insist that marriage be defined as the legal union of one man and one woman? Perhaps the time has come to realise that the term “family” does indeed mean more than the biological unit.

In Which She Muses On Stress

I know I haven’t been terribly communicative, but it’s my sandbox, and I’ll play when I want to. Expect me to be very absent over the weekends, because I simply have no time or inclination to fire up BiFrost, Computer of the Gods after three solid days of teaching.

It’s been a pretty exhausting weekend. Apart from the teaching of four three-hour classes, there was a birthday gathering, and three separate stressful situations that I was involved in or peripheral to. The highly ironic aspect of the weekend was courtesy of the stress-management lecture I gave, and the subsequent lecture I taught on how to function as an effective counsellor.

(See, Tal? Those ten-plus years of offering you tea after a break-up gave me training! Thanks!)

I will not go into details, because all of it’s confidential. As a priestess and a teacher I function as a counsellor, and I stick to a counsellor’s rules of engagement. I can, however, offer you my basic conclusions:

A) People in general have to smarten up and become aware that there are other individuals in the world around them who matter too. Grow out of the six-year-old I’m-the-centre-of-the-universe identity thing, and join the adult perception of cause and effect. Please.

B) Common sense is all too uncommon. I think it’s connected to (A) somehow.

C) Taking advantage of others just sucks, okay?

D) While it’s acceptable to feel tear-limb-from-limb anger, acting on it is a no-no.

Today is dreary and I have candles lit to help cheer things up while I read an excellent book for review. If anyone wants to take a look at how and why a Wiccan ritual is set up the way it is, read Deborah Lipp’s Elements of Ritual.

I’m also reading Sarah Water’s Fingersmith, a stunningly well-plotted and -written work about a Victorian underworld scheme to liberate an heiress from her fortune. I’m taking Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar in small mouthfuls to savour it, unlike my consumption of the previous two books in the series when they were released. And I’m still going at Hermione Lee’s Virginia Woolf and Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth. The latter isn’t so much a biography as an examination of the whole marketing/legend that has grown about the Bronte family. Fascinating stuff, if you’re a literature addict or a Victorian pop culture nut (score two for me!).

I think I’ll go for a walk. Fresh air, some rain, exercise, maybe the used book store.

Things That Make You Go “Hmm”:

Whenever I please myself with a word count, I head on over to Caitlin R Kiernan’s log of her latest novel endeavour. I haven’t written lately, so I haven’t checked it out, but today I came across a lot of interesting posts (Caitlin is nothing if not interesting). The one that made me go “hmm”, however, is this one about how socially acceptable is a grown adult’s playing of “let’s pretend” (which is essentially what authors do in their heads). She contrasts it with role-playing, an activity which the majority of adults scoff at.

Er. It’s the same thing. Imaginative adults play let’s pretend all the time. Let’s pretend that light isn’t red, let’s pretend you’re a naughty schoolgirl, let’s pretend that bill says I owe much less than I actually do. Authors of all genres of fiction (and some non-fiction) play a version of let’s pretend and then write it down.

Caitlin blows the whistle on it, as well as costuming (another interest we share), and what she calls The Cult of Sports. Go. Read.

Spiritual Retreat

I can’t exactly provide a more in-depth commentary on my camping experience this weekend, so for now…

I passed my clergy exam. With flying colours, apparently, though numbers will not be released. And I aced the practical, which was ground-breaking and deliberately crushing, apparently in order to make a point to a certain number of my evaluators (I love politics, don’t you?). It was a real high to have people whom I respect as spiritual leaders involved in various impressive paths, traditions and positions come up to me over the weekend to tell me how impressed they’d been with my performance. I have every right to be proud of my achievements.

In circle, you may now call me “Lady Autumn”. I’ve damned well earned it with blood, sweat, and lots of tears: tears of frustration, joy, and anger in various amounts at various times. I’ve taken my oath to serve and to walk the clerical path, and I’ve been warned that it just gets harder.

The theme of the weekend was “Bring it on!” (most of the time – at certain points it was “Don’t make me get Canadian on your ass!”), and you know, after the stunning proof in the pudding (of Friday night in particular and the last five days in general), I can say that with all confidence regarding the rest of my life, now. So, bring it on. I’ve proven that I can deal with a tremendous amount of stress, upheaval, and pain over the past few years, and come out swinging. I’m only human, and I’ll still make mistakes, but by the gods, I can hold my head high and be proud of who I am, who I’ve become, and the choices I’ve made. I can help others survive, and seek, and witness for them throughout the changes in their lives, too.

It’s not what I ever thought I’d end up doing with my life, but destiny rarely drops you a neat little schedule at your birth to paste into your baby book.

Once Upon A Time

If you ask me what the most frustrating misunderstanding has been in my life, I’d have to say it’s connected to my first engagement and the dissolution of the relationship.

Once upon a time I was engaged to a warm, funny, creative man, who was a big kid at heart. Everything seemed perfect; I’d known him since we were children, we’d lost touch, we met one another again, and things just happened. It was like a storybook.

Well, you know what happens in storybooks. There has to be conflict.

In our case, it came about gradually. In every relationship there has to be a realist, and in this one, I (alas) had to take the role. We had a few talks about the discomfort I was feeling about being the one in charge all the time, and they always ended with a mutual promise to try to do better.

There were two friends I talked to about the increasingly bad feelings I was getting about the whole thing, one a man, one a woman. The woman ended up being so catty about it that I stopped hanging out with her. The man, on the other hand, was an excellent sounding board, who listened without making the “this is what you should do” mistake. He was a member of the wedding party, so as he heard my worries he’d check in with my fiance to get his side of things. My fiance assured him that everything was dreamy and perfect, and our mutual friend had to walk a fine line between supporting me and delicately encouraging my fiance to examine the relationship.

Eventually I realised that the imbalance couldn’t continue, and we had a final talk where I revealed that I couldn’t do it, and he (to my utter, utter surprise) agreed, having finally understood that we were missing a certain je ne sais quoi that he’d seen in another couple whose wedding he’d only recently attended.

If life were truly a storybook, this is were the end would be, and we all would have lived happily ever after.

However, being human, suspicion and petty jealousies began to develop. I hang out with guys; I always have. My best friends have always been male. Well, as soon as the decision to cancel the wedding had been made public, people started to talk. No one could possibly leave such a terrific man, such a perfect relationship; I must have been lured away. And of course, it must have been that guy I was spending time with – our mutual friend.

I was furious. It’s a terrific way to be absolved of any blame – don’t squash the rumours that your girl was stolen by a good friend. The horrible thing is that the more people would sympathise with him about it, the more I think my ex-fiance started to really believe it. Things went downhill from there.

It didn’t help the rumours that a year later, our mutual friend proposed to me, and we’ve now been happily married for four years. My ex is about to be united in blissful matrimony himself, to a girl who everyone says is an excellent match, and I’m thrilled for them both. She’s getting a fantastic guy, and she’d darned well better treat him right.

Our circles started to grow apart, and I don’t see him often now; mostly at parties once or twice a year. When we meet, we’re affectionate, and I’m always interested to hear from others how he’s doing. I regret the pain we both went through, pain which would have been a lot easier to bear and of a shorter duration if people hadn’t been just plain nasty and created those rumours. I don’t think either of us would alter the choices we made, though. I married the right guy. To my utter disgust, however, the girl-stealing story is still believed by people we meet who know my ex-fiance. We rise above it, though. We know the truth.

And the truth, quite simply, is that my husband is the most honourable man I’ve ever met, as well as being my best friend.

Nailbiting

I talk in general terms about spirituality here for a few reasons: I want it to be as accessible to as many readers as possible, and there’s that secrecy thing that often travels with neo-Pagan worship. Now and again I’ve said that I’m currently nearing the end of my third year of clergy training, or that I’ve been working on homework, or something of the sort. But that’s about as specific as I get.

Well, that 36 page exam I mentioned that I was writing a week and a half ago? It’s no longer in my hands. A pass is 93%.

I am now officially biting my fingernails. Oh, sure; I know I did my best. There are, however, a variety of people I don’t want to disappoint, for various reasons.

It’s been a long, strange journey, as Skippy says. Every time I turn around, there’s been a new challenge. Being resourceful, we’ve found ways around (or right through!) them. Come what may, there’s every reason to be proud of my current position, whether I surpass that 93% or not.

I’m still biting my fingernails, though.

Learning

Found this at Subversive Harmony. I like the way this girl has decided to look at the world.

*You’re not really as awkward as you think. Or if you are, other people are just as awkward, so it doesn’t really matter.

* It’s a pretty safe bet that you do/think/like things that other people don’t do/think/like. This makes you interesting, possibly a little eccentric, but not a two-headed alien.

* It’s not constructive to clam up in a corner. You’re not rude if you talk. You’re not even rude if you talk to someone first.

* Stubbornness is a gift. You were stubborn enough to walk to three grocery stores looking for your canned sweet potatoes, and you found them. Be too stubborn to think going to events is useless.

* Do things you enjoy because you enjoy them, and enjoy the things you do on their own terms. Anything else is icing.

* Remember how much better you did with finding a job and an apartment when you set aside the desperation, listened to your instincts, took your time, explored a number of options, and didn’t take the first offer you came across? You think maybe that might apply to other situations?

* You know how you said you didn’t need to try things to know if you’d like them, and then you let yourself be talked into trying them and had fun despite yourself, even if it still wasn’t quite your bag? Remember that. You know how you didn’t like all those different foods when you were a kid but for some reason tried them again recently and changed your mind? Remember that, too.

* On the other hand, if it’s not fun, and honestly not fun, there are other events/groups/activities out there. Life’s too short to waste time.

* Rumination is both your friend and your enemy. Probably more your enemy at this point.

* Que sera, sera.

Why didn’t someone tell me these things a decade ago?

I particularly like “anything else is icing”. Why do we insist on having such high standards for ourselves? What do we get out of it except a constant feeling of inadequacy? My husband occasionally reams me out for possessing higher standards against which I judge myself than those standards by which I judge other people.

The other important one is “life’s too short to waste time”. That means staying in that soul-crushing job, not-destructive-but-certainly-not-constructive relationship, that cruddy apartment may be gaining you a few cents here or there, but being miserable (or even neutral) hardly balances the gain. Be happy. It’s better for you in the long run, and probably the short run too. Really.