This week we have had several events that have proven the need to bid adieu to the way we were. On the one hand, the pagan high holiday, Sowen respects the thinning of the veil between this world and the Otherworld, where our ancestors reside. We have been presented with an annual opportunity to bid them well on their journeys and speak our piece directly to those who gave us life, inspired us through their deeds and who have added to our resources of strength and insight. This festival, the last of the harvest season, signals the start of lean times which need to be not only respected but revered for the lessons they hold. Many pagans consider this to be the true new year festival, time for making resolutions and for allowing our less than optimal traits to pass. Saying good bye can be practiced on many levels. We only need to look to the chakras of Eastern thought to think about the levels of goodbye that we can practice at this time.
Much has been said about the election, both before it took place and since. I do not want to bore you with even more hyperbole and hype, but this election coincides with a growing realization that we have to say goodbye to the tyranny of the rich white male, the "powers that be" and their stranglehold on both the economy and our ways of life. The abundant and giving nature of Mother Earth is being realized by more and more folks along the path to our collective future. we cannot take the path to sustainability without saying goodbye to a few things along the way. I know that in the past, I have made reference to the short story, "The Things That They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Collectively, our culture and society have lots of things that we hold onto, not just for their utility or their eventual use, but for psychological and shamanic resons, thinking that one day they will secure a future that will be better than the one we would find if we just left those things behind.
Approaching what has been called the "Fiscal Cliff" in The United States of America, we will surely hear much rhetoric about what we cannot afford to lose. Many economists are already claiming that the disruptions and change that will occur on the first day of 2013 because of tax increases on the wealthy and incremental cuts in government programs could spur another bout with declining economic activity and lead to another dip in growth for our weak economy. Those who have been paying attention understand that the worldwide economic collapse has been caused by listening to economists, but that certainly isn't bothering those preaching gloom and doom. I have some of the most excellent friends on Facebook and just yesterday one of them sent a link to a video that i want to share here. It points out the need to say goodbye to an entire thought experiment that we have played out for centuries in our relationship with the planet, our fellow humans and the society at large.
Look here for a short video Now, I'm not sure about moving objects with our minds, but...
The reason that I have chosen to include this video in this post is because the eternally sacred feminine energy has been discounted and overrun by our male dominated culture. this process of cutting ourselves off from half of our true nature has, for the most part, left us strangling ourselves with nowhere to go but backward. Pagans have, for ages, believed that a meeting between the Horned One and his consort has led to the spark of life that all of creation represents. We do have to say goodbye to the male domination of the planet if we are to step into the "new age". Whatever the power brokers tell us, we can rest assured that they are going to try to continue to drive their "tanks" straight over us. To effectively encircle our wagons against them, we need to reach out to whatever communities we have left, share, nurture and encircle those we care about with love, affection and care for them in ways that defy the linear approaches that have characterized the past.
Even the hardest of sciences, Physics is finding that reality is more often about relationship than direct causation. In fact, the terminology that is slowly making headway in the field revolves around charm and relationships between particles and sub-atomic matter as well. Until we look for certain things, they may not even exist, how is that for magical thinking? On the opposite end of the human endeavor, I planted six seeds, this summer and by fall, they had grown to nearly twenty feet tall and created a living roof the size of a two car garage. Miracles abound in the natural world and creation and productivity spiral ever outward influencing life and abundance in other areas that we may not expect. If we look closely, the non-linear relationships outnumber the linear ones by a huge factor. It is time to perhaps not "say goodbye" to the Cartesian Coordinate System, but to at least put it in perspective. Life is not a chart. The sooner we say goodbye to the idea that we can understand and achieve all things through linear thinking, the sooner we can take hold of the true abundant nature of our planet, her people and social structures that reflect the value of the whole over and above the parts. This week I have been fond of saying, "There are precious few buggy whip manufacturers." Perhaps in the future our economy will not revel in an endless barrage of cheap plastic crap from China, the crushing weight of our need for dirty coal and oil to move products across the surface of the planet and the exploitation of human beings and the world's "resources". In a future that more and more of us envision, the gifts that we receive directly from nature and the hands of compassionate individuals will gain importance as physical "goods" that have dominated our ideas about economic activity.
The trend toward distinguishing between wants and needs has led to a blossoming of a new cultural model, one that breaks with traditional values. We have countless examples, proof of concept, showing that "more" is, most often, not "better". The relationship between giving and hoarding is far more fluid than any mathematical "rule" can represent. This year we had a relatively tiny 4 X 8 foot bed (1.3 X 2.6 meter) devoted to tomatoes. So far the produce has been shared with half a dozen households. opening a jar of home canned salsa in the depth of winter has a value that some economists would have difficulty quantifying, but for anyone who has had homegrown tomatoes in the dead of winter knows, the infinite bliss shared in love, defies quantification. The Horned God and Mother Earth have infinite love for all creatures and finding our place involves finding a way forward that honors both. We do need both energies to thrive, but the time has come to say good bye to the idea that one has power over or controls the other. united we will find a way forward, divided against ourselves, we can only fall prey to the old ways of doing business. Just as human beings never bring a new life into existence with the intention of their child have to put up with more pain and strife than we have experienced in our own lives, god and goddess do not want each successive generation to have lives that are worse off with each successive generation. We have the power to change our lives for the better, but we must say goodbye to the childish ways that have brought us to the brink of destroying our (human) chances of survival. By taking time to cultivate a new type of soil and planting new kinds of seeds in that living organism, we can give birth to a culture that will exceed our expectations.
Much has been said about the election, both before it took place and since. I do not want to bore you with even more hyperbole and hype, but this election coincides with a growing realization that we have to say goodbye to the tyranny of the rich white male, the "powers that be" and their stranglehold on both the economy and our ways of life. The abundant and giving nature of Mother Earth is being realized by more and more folks along the path to our collective future. we cannot take the path to sustainability without saying goodbye to a few things along the way. I know that in the past, I have made reference to the short story, "The Things That They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Collectively, our culture and society have lots of things that we hold onto, not just for their utility or their eventual use, but for psychological and shamanic resons, thinking that one day they will secure a future that will be better than the one we would find if we just left those things behind.
Approaching what has been called the "Fiscal Cliff" in The United States of America, we will surely hear much rhetoric about what we cannot afford to lose. Many economists are already claiming that the disruptions and change that will occur on the first day of 2013 because of tax increases on the wealthy and incremental cuts in government programs could spur another bout with declining economic activity and lead to another dip in growth for our weak economy. Those who have been paying attention understand that the worldwide economic collapse has been caused by listening to economists, but that certainly isn't bothering those preaching gloom and doom. I have some of the most excellent friends on Facebook and just yesterday one of them sent a link to a video that i want to share here. It points out the need to say goodbye to an entire thought experiment that we have played out for centuries in our relationship with the planet, our fellow humans and the society at large.
Look here for a short video Now, I'm not sure about moving objects with our minds, but...
The reason that I have chosen to include this video in this post is because the eternally sacred feminine energy has been discounted and overrun by our male dominated culture. this process of cutting ourselves off from half of our true nature has, for the most part, left us strangling ourselves with nowhere to go but backward. Pagans have, for ages, believed that a meeting between the Horned One and his consort has led to the spark of life that all of creation represents. We do have to say goodbye to the male domination of the planet if we are to step into the "new age". Whatever the power brokers tell us, we can rest assured that they are going to try to continue to drive their "tanks" straight over us. To effectively encircle our wagons against them, we need to reach out to whatever communities we have left, share, nurture and encircle those we care about with love, affection and care for them in ways that defy the linear approaches that have characterized the past.
Even the hardest of sciences, Physics is finding that reality is more often about relationship than direct causation. In fact, the terminology that is slowly making headway in the field revolves around charm and relationships between particles and sub-atomic matter as well. Until we look for certain things, they may not even exist, how is that for magical thinking? On the opposite end of the human endeavor, I planted six seeds, this summer and by fall, they had grown to nearly twenty feet tall and created a living roof the size of a two car garage. Miracles abound in the natural world and creation and productivity spiral ever outward influencing life and abundance in other areas that we may not expect. If we look closely, the non-linear relationships outnumber the linear ones by a huge factor. It is time to perhaps not "say goodbye" to the Cartesian Coordinate System, but to at least put it in perspective. Life is not a chart. The sooner we say goodbye to the idea that we can understand and achieve all things through linear thinking, the sooner we can take hold of the true abundant nature of our planet, her people and social structures that reflect the value of the whole over and above the parts. This week I have been fond of saying, "There are precious few buggy whip manufacturers." Perhaps in the future our economy will not revel in an endless barrage of cheap plastic crap from China, the crushing weight of our need for dirty coal and oil to move products across the surface of the planet and the exploitation of human beings and the world's "resources". In a future that more and more of us envision, the gifts that we receive directly from nature and the hands of compassionate individuals will gain importance as physical "goods" that have dominated our ideas about economic activity.
The trend toward distinguishing between wants and needs has led to a blossoming of a new cultural model, one that breaks with traditional values. We have countless examples, proof of concept, showing that "more" is, most often, not "better". The relationship between giving and hoarding is far more fluid than any mathematical "rule" can represent. This year we had a relatively tiny 4 X 8 foot bed (1.3 X 2.6 meter) devoted to tomatoes. So far the produce has been shared with half a dozen households. opening a jar of home canned salsa in the depth of winter has a value that some economists would have difficulty quantifying, but for anyone who has had homegrown tomatoes in the dead of winter knows, the infinite bliss shared in love, defies quantification. The Horned God and Mother Earth have infinite love for all creatures and finding our place involves finding a way forward that honors both. We do need both energies to thrive, but the time has come to say good bye to the idea that one has power over or controls the other. united we will find a way forward, divided against ourselves, we can only fall prey to the old ways of doing business. Just as human beings never bring a new life into existence with the intention of their child have to put up with more pain and strife than we have experienced in our own lives, god and goddess do not want each successive generation to have lives that are worse off with each successive generation. We have the power to change our lives for the better, but we must say goodbye to the childish ways that have brought us to the brink of destroying our (human) chances of survival. By taking time to cultivate a new type of soil and planting new kinds of seeds in that living organism, we can give birth to a culture that will exceed our expectations.
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