Pagan Soup: Polyamory, Piracy and Public School Pagans

I want to point out some interesting bits floating about on the web today.

Steven Abell’s latest column touches on the controversial subject of worship in Heathenry (and Paganism as well):

The word worship always appears in these discussions, and it always takes a beating. Someone will come to its rescue and remind us that, originally, it meant an acknowledgment of worthiness, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But someone else will point out that, in our time, the word carries unmistakable connotations of groveling. We don’t do that. We have no reason to. And I’m pretty sure our gods, in all their greatness and power, would be annoyed if we did.

Nels Linde over at PNC-Minnesota is interviewing polyamorous Pagans:

It is easy in a monogamous relationship, if one person sees a problem within you, and you don’t want to own it, to simply deny it. When you are in a polyamorous relationship and you have two people saying the same thing, you have to look at it. It is not easy to get away with a lot of the things that people do in a monogamous relationship.

Gus diZerega takes a good hard look at monotheism:

My individuality requires my being incomplete, so that it can be developed and brought into more complete being by the relationships into which I am born and into which I enter afterwards. If I am already complete as an entity my entering into relationship with you does not in any sense make me more complete. I am untouched. In other words, I do not really enter into relationship with you because you cannot touch me or change me.

Elysia at Llewellyn takes a pirates argument apart piece-by-piece:

How shall she educate without the books? No one is asking her to. All we are asking is fair pay for our work – and I say that on behalf of authors, publishers, and booksellers as well. She might also like to talk with other Wiccan teachers around the country who are managing to do the Great Work just fine without distributing files without authorization.

Eric Scott recalls the explicit Christian-ness of public school:

Looking back, it’s remarkable just how little anyone thought about keeping a distance between religion and school while I was attending Shepard Elementary in the early ’90s. I sang in the school choir’s holiday program, which featured mainly explicitly Christian carols: “Away in a Manger,” “Silent Night,” “Little Drummer Boy,” and so on. I even had a solo in the spiritual “What You Gonna Call Your Pretty Little Baby.” (I was the one who sang, “Some say one thing / I’ll say Immanuel.”) I recall a few of my teachers invoking Jesus by name during class, too.

Kris Bradley from Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom is promoting National Donate A Pagan Book Day:

Participants are encouraged to donate new or gently used books to their local public library, Pagan community center, Pagan library or prison ministry in order to help share a love of books and knowledge.