It’d be easy enough to get out there, find hotels Las Vegas and it can’t be that hard to find a place to gamble out there, actually winning, that’s hard. Psychic or not. Aside from the fact that I point out to him I’ve never been able to win more than $25 at the lottery. This is not the sort of gift that should be abused that way.

We can come up with enough to get by, really that’s all we need.

So, here I will be posting about other things, as well as the contests, and hopefully doing a post a day, at least as well as the posts per day on my other sites.

I will speak a little bit now about the ritual I did last night.
I work with a loose structural idea when I’m doing things like that, and I’m gratified that this ritual appears to have gone incredibly well. I finished right before midnight, having started things at ten p.m. and took some time afterwards to wind down because I was still wired, despite getting to sleep at some time after 1 a.m. and getting up at just before 7 a.m. I feel really great.

I did a dedication of my new tarot cards, and also a crystal ball which I received, swept all the negativity that has potentially built up in our house out, and cleansed and protected each room, and everyone who comes in and uses any room as well as those who live here.

I also did a bit of a re-dedication of myself and my purpose, acknowledging that I have things that I need to work on the main part being that I can’t cling to status quo. Sometimes I have this…fear of change. I like to have routines and that can be pretty detrimental especially with a small child who is the epitome of chaos. So, we’ll work on that for this next year.

The friends who were hosting the ritual were very prepared to the point of having a ritual meal and having a circlet made, and symbolic weapons. They work much along the way I do which is that a lot of the ritual is left to inspiration at the moment rather than pre-written and pre-planned. There were twelve of us participating overall, and the energy and sentiment were well harnessed and well intended.

It seems that whenever a group of pagans from different walks and groups come together there’s always some sort of politicking that happens but thankfully nothing came of it to ruin the ritual it’s just souring. Things didn’t come to a head on that until afterwards, and turned out to be a discussion between the two groups’ leaders. I hope that things can be resolved, but I don’t. I like group work, but I don’t know if I can do it more than every once in a while on special occasions because it seems that there’s going to be politics that happen no matter what the group is for. I saw it when I helped my Mum with Sunday School that there would be internal friction between certain people because, “so-n-so changed the flowers,” or “such-n-such is friendlier with the vicar.” I think it’s going to happen no matter what the group is involved with.

But overall I feel that the ritual was a great success. It was an “Ascension” ritual for a friend, which meant she was reaffirming her faith and her intention to carry on her path of self-discovery and magic. I was called to represent one of the corners, and I blessed her with Strength and Longevity, others gave her Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem, Balance and so on. She said she felt like she was floating after things got underway, and I know a lot of energy was built up.

Sometimes I hate that I feel as though I’m defending myself when people start in on the Christian bashing in certain communities. It happens so much in the Pagan circles it’s unreal. There’ll be something which starts on them railing on how they’re being harassed and everything by those horrible Christian fundamentalists and then not two breaths later be going on about how close-minded and horrible the Christians are and how they need to “get a life”.

Um…now who is better than who?

I know I tend to jump a bit when I’m approached by someone I can tell is Christian. I have this mental countdown going on in my head anticipating the conversion speech, but if I’m being honest I’ve had it maybe twice. I’ve had a lot of nice discussions with people who would approach me at my old job and also with some of those from other faiths: Mormons, Adventists and Jehovah’s witnesses who used to show up at our door on weekends when we were at our old house.

I feel also sometimes that I’m over-compensating. Any time a discussion pops up about things and I’m going, “Hey, you know, my husband’s a Catholic.” I feel a bit like Dan in that scene from Roseanne while an episode was going on about racism and he said, “I have a friend who is black. I’m not racist.” It feels like it’s going to be judged or taken that way.

Faith is an important part of life, but mutual respect is also. There’s been some small issues in our friends group little bits of hankerings every once in a while, but for the most part our group gets along very well, considering that we have Baptists, Catholics, Pagans and a Native American all in the same group hanging out playing our evil “devil” games of “Dungeons and Dragons”. We sometimes joke that we need to recruit a Jewish or a Buddhist gamer just so that we can start getting input from “all sides”, slowly work our way up to finding Taoists…and so on.

The main thing I find that frustrates me from the people who go door to door is that if the munchkin is up from his nap and running around they will try to get at my faith through my child, and that’s just low. I can handle discussions about religion with you, that’s fine. We can banter back and forth about how I’m perfectly happy to die and come back as a cat, or a black guy in China or something, and you can tell me how you’d prefer to just die because your God is going to come back and make the world a paradise. That’s great if that works for you. But don’t, just don’t, go, “Oh, your son is adorable! What about his future?”
“What do you mean, what about his future?”
“You’re going to raise him up not knowing God?”
“I really don’t think that’s any of your business to assume. We plan on raising him and teaching him about both our cultures…”
and I get a disapproving look, and the books come out again and the scriptures start getting quoted, and I usher them away and close the door, disappointed.

I know it’s part of certain faiths that you have to go out and try and save as many people as you can, but prior to that we were having such a nice conversation. I was learning about their beliefs, they were learning about mine. It was fascinating to me, and then WHAM, doors close because they realize I have a child and I apparently don’t care about his spiritual well being because I’m going to teach him to be open-minded and tolerant and that there is more than one faith in the world. It doesn’t make sense to me.

The worst time was when it happened in the grocery store. We eat a lot of fish in our house, and I’d gotten semi-friendly with one of the women who worked the fish counter. We were getting ready to move and so I went by to say that I was really happy to have been chatting with her on and off these past six months but we were moving and would be going to a different place to get our groceries.
“Oh, you’re moving? Where to?”
I gave her a landmark.
“Do you have a church you’re going to go to there?”
“No, we don’t–”
“But what about your son’s spiritual well being? He needs to be raised in a church!”
“Uh, no. He needs to be raised by his family. My husband’s a Cathlolic, I’m a Pagan, neither of us…”
“Look, we’re on XXX Street, right by XXX Landmark. They have wonderful programs for the children to be in while the adults are in the service.”
Which just got my ire up more because the momma-bear started to rise up, and go, “OH, you did NOT suggest taking my one-year old away from me in a strange place where we know no ONE.”
“Ma’am,” I said, keeping my calm, “I appreciate the sentiment, but any decision like that is something that my husband and I will have to have words about and make together. We already have a plan in action to teach our son about faith.”

Then it turned out we weren’t moving as soon as we thought, so I wound up having to see her a few more times and each time it was all, “Hi, how are you doing? Are you coming to our church yet?”

It’s not as if I didn’t ask my husband. I told him about the encounter, and he said he really wasn’t up for that, which I expected. Aside from the way his schedules work he’d only be able to go every other week. That church may well be the nicest one in the count, but I’m soured to any idea of even going and having a look-in because of the way she approached things with me.

My faith is fine. I pray when I feel the need to, light candles when I feel the need to. I bless our house, our family and our friends. The more I hear about Pagan groups in our area, I’m less likely to go to them either. It seems like solitary practice is going to be the way I go with my witchcraft.

When the munchkin is older we will take him to church, but right now he’s to young to understand what was going on. I’m hoping we can find other religious places around to take him as well, so that he can see how Buddhists go about things, and Jews. I got to see all of that when I was in school in England. It was interesting to see what tenets were similar across all the faiths and what weren’t.

And on a random note thinking about him socializing with other children at a church creche reminds me that I need to find a local playgroup actually. I should start looking for that.