Krafty Kitten

There are some who believe that my defection from the Catholic faith means I dislike Christianity and all its accoutrements.  On the contrary, I hold Christianity and all religions in the highest regard.  Finding the spiritual path that is best for you should not involve the tearing down of other beliefs, but should enable you to find an inner peace that allows you to come to an acceptance of other beliefs.

For this reason, I find people like the Phelps family who make up the “Westboro Baptist Church ” to be, not only disturbing, but also dangerous.  Finding a spiritual peace, something comforting to your soul, should not cause such a deep and vile hatred of and anger towards your fellow man.  A spiritual path should bring joy and openness, not a closed-minded bigotry.

For my part, I find religions, all of them, to be interesting from a literary and sociological standpoint.  The Koran plays an important part in arabic literature, such as The Thousand and One Nights.  Because of the spread of the Holy Roman Empire, Christianity has impacted the social structure and culture of a wide spread of the world.  As I have said before, most religions contain the same basic concept we try to teach our children: whatever you do, don’t hurt other people.  The only difference is in the way it is phrased and the fact that most religions have a karmic backlash for those who break that rule.

I cannot understand the religions that condemn you for not believing as they do.  If there is a ‘God’, an all powerful, all seeing, all knowing being, would he not prefer us to follow the basic ideals of faith rather than the strict interpretation?  And who are we, as limited beings, to presume we know his mind?  All earthly religions are based on a human interpretation of ‘god’ which means, like humanity, all religions are intrinsically flawed.  I find that comforting to a certain degree, because it means, as with most things, if we can find a way to overcome our differences, we can finally see the whole picture.

I had been considering a post on the stages of grief but when I asked Big Guy for his input, he came up with a better suggestion.  He said I should talk about the importance of friends and family in times of difficulty.  And he’s right, it’s better to focus on the positive aspects when you are struggling.

Friends can provide solace and comfort no matter what problems you may encounter.  Of course, maintaining friends takes as much work as a romantic relationship.  You have to decide what quirks and foibles you are willing to put up with and decide how much someone means to you when they start to get really annoying.

But, even with their weird sides, friends are a great deal of fun.  They are people you can do stupid things with, people whose sense of humor may mesh in an interesting  way with your own.  People who enable you to see sides to things you didn’t think possible.  And, people who put up with your own abnormalities.

I have my dark side.  I have sometimes lack the ability to NOT say exactly what I’m thinking.  Big Guy has his dark side too.  Not only is he a huge geek, he also has a tendancy to say things in exactly the wrong way.  Our friends put up with that for (what I assume) are the good sides to us.  Our ability to live and let live, our ability to let slights and insults go, and our sheer adorableness.  Well, maybe not that last part.  But more for Little Guy’s sheer adorableness.

We would not make it through our tough times without our friends.

As a gardener and a pagan, I know that most herbs play double duty.  That is, they both add something to your kitchen and add something to your practice. The following five herbs are mainstays in my garden.

1 - Basil - Aside from being a prominent herb in most italian dishes, Basil also helps to fight depression and is used to ensure fidelity in your significant other.

2 - Lavender - Known for its pleasing smell and aromatheraputic effects, it’s also used in french cooking, giving dishes an earthy taste.  Lavender is also considered to be a cleansing herb.  When pregnant, a tea made from lavender will help with morning sickness.

3 - Sage - Used in all sorts of dishes, be careful when using this herb while pregnant.  Sage can stimulate uterine contractions and cause miscarriages.  However, a tea of sage leaves is amazingly delicious and also useful for cleansing toxins from the body.  You can use a bundle of dried sage to smudge the home and eradicate any lingering ill spirits too.

4 - Peppermint - Peppermint has long been used in candies and desserts.  It can also be used as an uplifting and warming tea in the winter.  Peppermint is also good for morning sickness and chewing on a few leaves may alleviate some of the symptoms.

5 - Catnip - Related to mint, this is another cleansing herb that is good for upset bellies.  Catnip also is used to draw bees to the gardens(and cats too of course).

Growing herbs is both fun and useful once you know what they mean and what they can do.

I finally gave up on waiting for batteries and broke out the bubbles to blow bubbles for Little Guy.

And he absolutely loved it.

 I tried to teach Little Guy to blow bubbles by using a seed dandelion.  He didn’t quite get it and after trying to blow the seeds off with his lips closed, he handed it to me with a “Mommy, blow fwower?”  So, I have seeded our yard with a few dandelions.

We spent a good hour on Wednesday afternoon, outside while CJ chased down bubbles.   The faster I could produce bubbles, the more bubbles floating around, the more laughter came out of my son.  Watching and listening to him run around with the deep belly laughs made me laugh too.  He laughs so hard that he can’t catch his breath.  And then he’ll taper off.  And take one look at me and start giggling again.

These bubbles were an amazingly awesome idea.   After we got back that evening,Big Guy, Little Guy and I spent more time outside.  Big Guy even found some batteries to get the bubble machine going and then we had a party going on in our front yard because Little Guy wasn’t the only lover of bubble chasing.  So is our cat Tiger.

Tiger is a rather massive mouser who has this tiny little meow.  Tiger is also a freaking huge wuss.  Chasing bubbles is about the extent of his hunting skills.  That and fake, stuffed mice.  Real king of the urban jungle.

That Bubble Machine was the best investment we could have made, particularly with a toddler.  The machine ensures that Big Guy and I don’t pass out in an attempt to occupy the boy.  We will likely continue our bubble blowing ways over the weekend.  Particularly since the heightened spirits of Little Guy lift the spirits of Big Guy and myself.  He truly is a little blessing from the gods and a credit to his patron spirit.

No you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need

        - Rolling Stones

One of the hardest things to come to terms with for most people is that you are not the sole determining factor of your future.  Luck, karma, and the whims and desires of the god(s) has a great impact on what happens.

There have been many points in my life where I have been angry, railed against the fates, and just generally felt like my life was going in the opposite direction from where I wanted to be.

When I was pregnant with Little Guy in 2005, Big Guy and I were living in a one bedroom apartment and looking to purchase a house.  We looked at easily 50 houses and made offers on a couple of them.  But, for one reason or another, the offers we made never went through.  I cried.  I cursed and raged.  I had determined we were doomed to live in abject poverty and misery forever.  Hey, I was pregnant and hormonal.

We did eventually get a bigger apartment and, had we bought a house, we would have been one of those families who ended up upside-down on their mortgages and been foreclosed on this year.  Did I get what I wanted?  Definitely not.  But it is an example of life providing what we needed.

A friend of mine told me that I needed to learn to “trust in the timing of things”.  And it’s a lesson we all need to learn.  The idea of patience and trusting that the world will work things out the way they must be is difficult for me.  And even worse is the idea that things will work out in a way I don’t want because it is best for everyone.  No one wants to be unhappy or uncomfortable.  No one wants to be poor or hungry.  But trusting that there is a reason for it, even if you can’t see the whole picture, is a practice that you need to get into.

This is coming to mind now due to Monday’s court date.  I have to take a deep breath and let it out slowly and release it to the winds.  Whatever happens will happen.  I can’t change it anymore than I could stop the sun from rising.  I cannot impact the outcome anymore, I have done all I can.  Big Guy and I knew we had to make this effort, knowing that we were likely to fail, for the sake of the kids.  Now, that’s all over except for the final pieces.  And I need to focus on the things that still need my input, like my family and my class.  It’s difficult still, but it is what it is.

And know that, while the outcome may not be what we want, it should be what we need.

As the New Radicals sang:
Don’t give up
You’ve got a reason to live
Can’t forget, you only get what you give.

Last week we discussed the importance of balance within yourself, today we’ll examine the balance of life itself.  Most religions have a sense of this balance.  The bible tells us: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”  The Witch’s Rede states that what you do will come back to you threefold.  Most people refer to it as karma.

I try to let my belief in karma guide my actions and make me a better person.  I realized exactly how far I had come in following that path when I stood across from someone who wants nothing more than my abject misery and destruction, and has stated so, and was able to behave in a civil and cordial manner.

Finding the ability to follow a peaceful path is extremely difficult.  On more than one occasion, I have found myself making mean or hurtful comments about someone or something and have pulled away from that edge, reminding myself that by saying those hurtful and painful things, I invite that bad energy into my own life.

Finding your center enables you to maintain the balance in the rest of your life.  In doing or wishing harm on someone else, you invite harm to happen to you.  Living by the Threefold Rule/Golden Rule enables you to be a happier person, knowing that you have lived your life the best that you can.  People who wish to hurt others tend to be unhappy themselves and really deserve nothing more than our pity and sympathy.  And those who wish to hurt you should not succeed in dragging you down to their level.

In most religions, the idea of balance in central; life and death, light and dark, male and female.  Paganism makes balance a center point of their celebrations.  Each celebration has a counterpart on the other side of the wheel which corresponds to a different part of life’s cycle.

 This begs the question: When celebrating the balance of life, why do we find it so hard to balance ourselves?  Balance is not easy to come by in the busy-ness that surrounds the day to day, but is absolutely necessary for sanity and health.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the little petty things that can take our attention off finding our center.   I am as guilty of this as the next person. As a mom/step-mom to five, it’s easy to get distracted and lost in the details.  What programs are going on, what problems have cropped up, and (especially with a crazy ex) what the heck is going to happen next.

In the times where things have come at us fast and furious, I easily forget that even I need to focus on myself from time to time. But, I am always reminded of it sooner or later, generally when my balance has fallen so far that I get physically ill or mentally overstressed.

So, how do you regain your center?  Well, what do you draw strength and peace from?  For me, gardening, crocheting, and creating are all necessary for regaining that center. These are all things that give me a sense of peace and well being.   For Big Guy, he finds peace and relaxation in games, video and table top, and in fantasy novels.

Finding that balance, finding something to ‘recharge your batteries’ is a staple to get you through the dark times.  It’s not necessarily easy, but if you manage to find it, you’ll be able to care for yourself, your family, and your spirit in a much clearer manner.

Tomorrow ends Lent in the Roman Catholic calendar, with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ; Easter.  Having been born and raised in the Catholic faith, this was something I looked forward to every year.  It meant the end of the season of denying yourself the things you enjoyed.  It meant finally getting to eat meat again.  Even more importantly, it meant spring had fully arrived and summer was on the way.

After I left Catholicism and began following my “heathen” path, I became amazed to discover that there were many similarities in the spring celebrations.  Both pagan and christian celebrated the rebirth of the world.  And many of the trappings of our regular easter celebrations (easter bunnies, easter eggs) were actually fertility symbols from our pagan ancestry.

Right now, we are celebrating the warmth of the sun (the god aspect in pagan beliefs) and the increasing fertility of the earth (the goddess).  We plant and dig and on the air you can practically taste the greeness.  This is when you go outside and shiver a bit in the wind, but can still feel the underlying warmth.

Tomorrow, we have our easter celebrations, including an easter egg hunt and a big meal with friends.  And we will be celebrating, both christian and pagan alike, the return of the sun (son) to the earth.

So, tomorrow, go out, embrace your neighbor, invite them to share in the blessings of spring and life.  And enjoy, while you can, the warmth the sun grants us.   Begin to plan your garden, get ready to reap the benefits of this holiday.

Postscript - If you Participate in the “Spiritual Saturday” blog entries, let me know and I will link to you as well.  

Unlike most of the homesteaders I have met, I am not a Christian. Instead, I’m a follower of a more natural path.  My closest ties would be to the Neo-Celtic pagans, but my path diverts from theirs as well.

At a much younger age, I felt my beliefs differed from what I had always been taught and I made it a point to search out something that I connected with in my soul.  I’ve ended up creating  quite a bit from nothing and breaking ground on my own path to follow.

My personal Goddess - the one to whom I feel the greatest connection and the one from whom I draw strength - is the Irish Triple Goddess of War, Morrigan.  She may seem like an odd choice, considering her background but is probably the best choice considering my own background.

Her symbols are the raven, a common battlefield animal, and the waning crescent moon.  Her three forms, maiden, mother and crone in one, are Badhb, Macha, and Nemain.  She more or less embodies the fury, the determinedness, and the aftermath of battles.  She appeared to the hero of Ireland, Ch Chulainn, as both an old woman washing bloodstained clothes at the river and as a young woman offering her love to him.  She was both the bringer of his death and the only thing that forestalled it.

So why would this Goddess interest me?  She has strength, strength to deal with the battles that life can throw at us and the strength to fight against injustice and evil.  It’s that kind of strength we need in the world today.