Linkage

This will be another post that is mostly links and quotes, because – as I said before – I’m pretty exhausted and running on fumes, but also trying to post more regularly.

To start, this song by Sara Bareilles, Cassiopeia, reminds me of the relation between the Laetha and Dierne so much it is almost painful.

Over on A Sense of Place, Rhyd Wildermuth has a great post about land spirits. His post helped clarify an issue I was having regarding one of my own gods and her related spirits, for which I am very grateful. This is the passage that helped clarify the issues:

I tried to care for her with kindness, and children came out and sang Christmas carols as I scraped out cans and bottles from the base of fragile Elder and Plantain. A man with a dog passed by and thanked me, but all I felt from her was rage. I slipped and hurt my shoulder (badly) before giving her a libation of spring water from another land, and tried to reckon with her.  I said to her, “we need you, even as we hurt you.”  I was very sore.  “It’s horrible, but maybe you can find your joy again. It’s what I try to do, too.”

Over on Syncretic Electric, Julian Betowski raises questions about Pagan identity (again).

Perhaps Paganism isn’t a collection of religions, but a certain way of being in the world. Perhaps being Pagan means that we have chosen to experience the world differently than the larger society expects us to.  Perhaps, Paganism has become a political position, rather than a religious one. If this is the case, then our doctrinal disputes over what constitutes proper Paganism are null and void.

However, if this is the case, then we also need to come together and figure out just what the Pagan lifestyle actually constitutes. What differentiates the Pagan way of being from society at large?

Which are all useful questions to contemplate, as well as what happens when we find ourselves outside of the Pagan identity and where we go from there.

Morpheus Ravenna has a post up that was pretty much exactly what I needed this solstice (even though I don’t celebrate the solstice as a holy day).

In shameless self-promotion, I put up two posts today – one about the taboo against conflict that is in place during the week of Reunion and how we can help avoid conflict during the stressful holidays, and another post about the love affair between the Clarene & Ophelia and its connection to this time of year.

In the world that blossomed and bloomed around them, the dozens of women the Clarene had wandered with ran free. The hounds and wolves raced to the mountains and cities that cracked toward the sky. But the Clarene remained near the gate, near the branch and steel as they twisted into new forms and flowers, and she waited.

“I have made a world for love,” she said softly. “So, please, my love, be with me.”

And with her hands upon the stitches of silver, her words of hope spoken, the Ophelia blinked her eyes open and clean, clear waters came to the world of the West.