Your Politics Are Awful. Now What?

Last updated on: October 31, 2016 at 2:12 am By Tom Swiss

Now, as it happens, I have had some practice in dealing with people with deplorable ideas. Because you're probably one of them. That frustration you feel when you see someone express support for Trump or Clinton, that sugar rush of self-righteousness you get when you condemn them? I feel that about you when you express one of the views I listed above. Your politics are awful. But if I were to unfriend and boycott everyone with bad ideas I would never leave the house. I'm stuck on this planet with you and have to try to learn to love you and work with you anyway. Read more

Samhain in the Hospital: My Mother Is Not Dead

Last updated on: October 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm By Tom Swiss

And it's occurred to me that the hospital is a liminal space: between life and death, illness and wellness, joy and sorrow. A temple to shining Apollo and to Yakushi, the Medicine Buddha; but also a place of death and dying, of the ferryman Charon and of the Bodhisattva Jizo who descends into hell realms. People are healed here but people also die here. Read more

On Declining to Pee In A Cup

Last updated on: October 20, 2016 at 2:11 am By Tom Swiss

My younger friends may be surprised to learn this, but it was not that long ago that the idea of urinating on demand for an employer would have been universally understood to be ridiculous. Read more

One Cup of Coffee

Last updated on: October 17, 2016 at 9:55 pm By Tom Swiss

But now I could lose it right here in the cafeteria over this empty coffeepot. This could be the one drop that causes the overflow, the pebble that starts the avalanche, that famous straw that snapped the camel's spine. Read more

The Burners and The Pagans

Last updated on: October 9, 2016 at 4:53 pm By Tom Swiss

Do we perhaps see some parallel evolution here with Pagan festivals? Could a Pagan event be built upon the Ten Principles? Read more

More Alive Than Words

Last updated on: October 17, 2016 at 9:02 pm By Tom Swiss

But I looked out the window. Across the parking lot, across the road, a small stand of trees, white clouds in the sky behind. And I knew the Earth is alive, more alive than any words in a holy book, and this comforted me. Read more

In Praise of Miss Sue

Last updated on: October 17, 2016 at 9:03 pm By Tom Swiss

At one point she told me that she couldn't imagine ever having a job where she had to be compassionate or caring, she just didn't have that in her any more. A few years later she started working as an aide in special education classes, once again taking care of special needs kids. Even all that, the pain and the injury and the corporate bastards, couldn't put out the bright sun that burns in her heart. I could not be prouder to be my mother's son. Read more

What Do You Mean, “Zen”? (or, Dharma Burger Toilets)

Last updated on: September 8, 2016 at 3:56 pm By Tom Swiss

The term is often misused in amusing or bemusing ways in marketing in the West, something that has come to be known as the "Dharma Burger". My recent favorite is -- I kid you not -- the "Zen" toilet from Canadian plumbing fixtures company Produits Neptune. (The fact that this Zen toilet is made by a company named after a Greek deity may make this the ultimate Zen Pagan Dharma Burger!) Read more

Star Trek: Pagans in Space

Last updated on: September 8, 2016 at 1:11 pm By Tom Swiss

Trek gave viewers the elfin-eared Vulcan Mr. Spock, who projected a logical detachment from destructive emotions while also jamming out with space hippies and engaging in mystical, hypnotic, telepathic “mind melds” that questioned the nature of the self. He was a sort of Space Age Merlin to Kirk’s King Arthur. Without him, would Paganism be so heavy with engineers, programmers, and scientists? Read more

Does “The Star-Spangled Banner” Celebrate Killing Slaves? Part III

Last updated on: September 3, 2016 at 9:53 am By Tom Swiss

While Key was a slave-owner, he seems to have believed that slaves were due some humane treatment. (This is not to in any way justify slavery; it is to inquire whether he was, at the time, the sort of person who would rejoice at the death of slaves.) He actually spoke against the slave trade on some occasions, freed several of his slaves, and represented both slaves and free blacks in legal proceedings, including instances where slaves sued for their freedom. Read more

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