The heart of the matter

I think what bothers me most in life is that when my eldest daughter says horrible things to me and about me publically, and no one comes to my defense. 

The fact that my wife, son and four other daughters say nothing makes me feel like everything that is being said is justified and that I am unworthy of love and respect.

Sometimes I want to just run away and live as a hermit someplace.

Honor

A man can be a liar and a cheater, but if he gives and keeps his word, he can at least be trusted and relied upon.

But, if a man is truthful and forthright, but cannot be relied upon to do what he gives his word to do, how can he be trusted?

Honor is a strange thing sometimes. 

Coming out

I am a Druid, I am a Pagan.

There, I said it.

I have always been a Druid, I think.  I spent so much time as a small child hiding from an alcoholic, emotional abusive mother.  I hid in the woods, starting from about age seven.  I like to say that I was raised by the trees.  I even had a brief encounter with Cernunnos.

Memory and sentimentality aside, I began to study Paganism and Druidism right after college, in about 2012 (I think my fall from Christianity is pretty evident in my previous blog posts, along with my underlying Pagan proclivities).  Currently, I am studying with a Celtic Reconstructionist group called the Fellowship of Druids in the latter age (FODLA for short).  I've finished my first year of the cycle of ritual, along with most of my reading list.  Now, it is about writing and composing my own style of ritual.  But, I am not going to rush to ordination, it will happen when the time us right.

My level of joy and contendedness within an open and dogma-free spirituality is immense.  Druidism is a cross between a religion and philisophy, which of course makes me quite happy.  Not being tied to a book, or a seemingly contradictory series of rules and guidelines makes me realize how much freedom is tied to spirituality.  It also allows me to refine a morality system that makes me feel like a truly good person (as opposed to a compliant person).

So, this all leads me to last night...

My lovely wife and I held our one year ritualanniverity way out in the woods.  We celebrated Lughnassda, the time of the harvest at about 1am on the night of the New Moon.  It was dark, and the stars were bright.  Both Jupiter and Mars were glowing in the sky.  My wife and I witnessed Mars dancing in the sky.  I even aligned it with a tree and could see significant, erratic movement compared to a fixed point.  The ritual went off smooth and beautifully, and we felt filled and happy in the aftermath.

The chapter of an old life is clearly complete.  I am excited to turn the page.

The threads of karma

I have a tragic but humbling and astonishing story to tell you all about the threads of karma that we have recently experienced.

Sometime about 1994 we had moved to the California coast to start a new life.  We had two toddlers and one small infant, and ended up homeless and living on the beach.  It was not so bad, the weather was okay, we had plenty of food and supplies, but the housing search there was awful, so it was just a long campout.

Well, we had a pup tent that ended up getting left at our house the year before by someone who hitched a ride to an medieval event with is.  We asked everyone who is belonged to and no one claimed ownership.  So, after a year we just used it and it became our primary residence on this beach, small but homey.

One day I was approached on the beach by a kid I knew from where we used to live that was in the area looking at colleges with his mother.  It was a happenstance meeting and a bit out of the blue.  So I invited him back to our camp for a cup of tea and to get out of the wind.

Lo and behold, as we walked past the dunes into our camp, his mother exclaimed “Oh there is our tent!  I was wondering what happened to it.”  I looked at the kid and reminded him that I had asked him several times if it was his and he denied it.  He gave a sheepish grin and said “Oh, I guess I forgot”  So, his mother said “I’m glad we ran into you, we need that tent for a camping trip next week.”  While trying to contain my anger I pointed out that we are currently living in that tent and she would be taking our shelter.  She replied “Yeah, but it is our tent.”

With abject humiliation, we emptied the tent and packed it up for her.

Fast forward 24 years later, we are approached by a lady begging for help to stop or delay an auction on a parcel of land owned by an elderly man who let her board her horses there.  We helped her as best we could, but the auction went through and a local investor/developer acquired the land.  Since she had no official lease or contract to use the property, the new owner was under no obligation to let her keep her animals there even one day.  We negotiated and he graciously agreed to two weeks.  But, she is pressuring us to get her more time.  She has nowhere to take the horses, or the trailers, and it seems that the animals may end up going to the humane society.

We realized, it was the same lady, but she doesn’t remember us, nor what she did to us. 

I am sad for the animals, they are losing their pasture.  We helped her all we could, but now she is using us by being insistent on a path where we cannot help her anymore.  To push harder would be unprofessional and way out of the purview of our job.

I do chuckle at the irony.