Nostalgia

 For better or worse, I'm an older Millennial.  My childhood was filled with bright colours, wild 80's hair, awesome music, weird and sometimes dangerous toys (for example, I knew someone who broke her ankle using a Skip-It, and I myself incurred a number of minor injuries on my childhood best friend's Pogo Ball), and technology that was considerably less advanced than what we have today.  I could never have imagined that touching a spot on a screen would allow me to issue voice commands to my car, telling it what phone number to call or giving it an address for the GPS (on the rare occasion when I have Location Services enabled on my phone, anyway).  Being able to take a small-ish rectangular device out of my pocket to look up practically any bit of useful (or uselesss) information was unthinkable.  Portable computers technically existed—my father had one for work—but there is no way on Earth I'd ever have wanted that thing to be on my lap, because it was really, really heavy; I honestly think that it weighed more than my dog at the time, a big, goofy black Labrador Retriever.  Meanwhile, I'm fairly certain that my current laptop computer weighs only a little more than my violin in its case.  Times have changed.

Life, as they say, seemed simpler then.  But then, it always does to a child.  I'm sure today's kids will be saying much the same thing about our current world as I'm saying about the world as I experienced it in the 80's and 90's.

People love to roast my generation for being nostalgic, but I have to admit, I understand the urge to be nostalgic, even the urge to feel a bit smug about the things that we knew and remember, and the skills that we have, that young people today don't understand or have no reference for.  (I recently saw a post on Tumblr about a fanfic in which there was a DVD-style menu repeating on a VHS tape, which is impossible unless, for some unfathomable and/or trolling-related reason, somebody actually recorded a DVD menu onto a VHS tape.)  Because frankly, we've lived through a lot, and it's natural that many members of my generation—perhaps especially my segment of it, the older ones who are sometimes called "Xennials" or "the Oregon Trail generation"—should be looking back at that time in our lives with a certain amount of longing.  

We weren't expected to be available to anyone and everyone at all hours of the day or night.  Most of us were cared for reasonably well by our parents or other caregivers.  The predominant message about us was that we could change the world, our lives had worth and meaning, and if we worked hard enough, we would be rewarded for it.  And as anyone who hasn't been living as a hermit for the past quarter century or so would know, it hasn't exactly worked out that way.

My generation has gone from being told that we were the hopeful builders of a bright future to being convenient scapegoats for many of the ills of the present.  We're told now that we're the entitled and self-centred destroyers of multiple industries, too lazy to work hard enough to afford a basic home (including apartment rentals), too old to be worth a hand up when we have trouble finding work (many of the most helpful job-finding services and entry-level positions with even half-decent compensation are only available to recent college or university graduates under the age of 30), and overall, just a giant disappointment to the world.  Mental health issues run rampant among Millennials,  and have done so since we were in our 20s or so at least.  Small wonder that so many of us try to find joy where we can, including in silly slang and the memory of a time when we were told that we had value, that our dreams were worth having and chasing, and that if we worked hard enough, we could change the world for the better.

Life isn't easy for most people.  And the 80's and 90's weren't exactly a cakewalk either,  but it's easier to get sentimental about those decades because they're so temporally far away now.  And frankly, I find that it's nice to remember a time when I, and people like me, weren't being blamed for everything that's wrong with the world.  It's nice to remember hope.  Sometimes I'm foolish enough to still feel it.

So, yeah.  Cringe at Millennials for being nostalgic if you must.  (Given our general fondness for self-roasting humour, we may well be cringing right along with you.)  But don't be an asshole about it.  If nothing else, someday there'll be somebody poking fun at you for ridiculous generational stereotypes and nostalgia for the world as it was when you were young.

Companions on the Journey

I've had a lot to think about lately, and this blog—half forgotten even by its authoress—seems like a decent place to start writing it out.

First, the obvious: it's been a little over a week now since my American neighbours' disastrous election, in which the outcome that I, and many others, had feared actually did come to pass: the angry, shouty jack-o-lantern with a straw hairpiece became the next in line to be one of the most obviously powerful people in the world, and it was of little consolation that he didn't seem to actually want it.  My guess is that he had actually planned to lose and then make a big stink about a rigged and corrupt system that didn't give him what he said he wanted.

He didn't figure, I suppose, on his platform of hate, suspicion, greed, and fear being enough to carry the day.

I've heard of deaths, mostly suicides, in connection with his win, because people who were already bigoted felt freer than they have in years to torment people who are part of already marginalized populations.  This is even happening up here in Canada; the bullies have always been here, of course, but they have become bolder.  I haven't heard too much of anything happening in my neck of the woods, yet, but given the relatively high levels of racism here, it's probably only a matter of time.

It's been difficult to see what's been happening practically right on my doorstep, knowing that there was very little I could do (since it's not my country) to help avert it, and yet feeling like I share in the blame.  By and large, white people—including a majority of white women—were the ones who voted him in.

If anyone from a Roman Catholic background reads this, they will probably recognize the title of this post as the name of one of Carey Landry's better-known hymns.  (Indeed, this is one that, when I was growing up, popped up at Mass so frequently that even now, many years after I ceased to be a practising Catholic—though I've been to Mass a few times since my closest friend became the organist at a Catholic church earlier this year—I could still sing accurately in my sleep.)  It's been on my mind quite often in the last week.

Actually, my mental playlist since the American election has been quite interesting.  It's also included Melissa Etheridge's "Pulse", "Service" (another childhood favourite hymn), "Let There Be Light" (one that I've learned since I started singing with my Anglican choir), John Farnham's "You're the Voice", and  (somewhat oddly, I admit) "I Walk With the Goddess" and "We Won't Wait", the last of which is widely accepted as the Pagan national anthem.  (Confession: I've been listening to "You're the Voice" for the last several minutes.)  

Aside from "I Walk With the Goddess," though, I think I do sense something of a theme to these songs that have been occupying so much of my mental real estate lately.  The idea that we're all in this together somehow (even "We Won't Wait" refers to taking action to safeguard the Earth, even if it is in terms that imply that neopagans are the only people who care enough to save it because everyone else, especially Christians, are huge assholes who just want to burn and pillage it) is a powerful one.  I suspect that if the world is to survive what's coming, if Trump and his handlers do act on even half of the regressive policies that they're already talking about, there's going to have to be a hell of a lot of cooperation among the people who oppose them.  That's going to mean that a lot of the divisiveness (including, by the way, the not inconsiderable issues caused by white people who think that we're at the centre of all things) that has plagued progressive movements is going to need to be dealt with.  Otherwise it's going to be a fun little game of "Divide and Conquer" while one of the most powerful nations on Earth slides into fascism.

We need to care for each other.  We need to act with justice, as much as we're able.  We need to resist the temptation to see anyone who's different as automatically an enemy, stop instantly condemning unfamiliar people as garbage.  Above all, we need to love, and to act on that love in every possible way.  As a very wise friend of mine recently said, in the end, that may well be what saves us.

An Extra Reason to Care

When I was working on my teaching degree, I had to take a class on educational law. It was an interesting subject, if a bit dry, and I always looked forward to that class.

 The room was set up with a number of round tables, likely in order to facilitate discussions (and there were many). This was helpful during group work, of course, but if you were unlucky enough to have to sit with your back to the front of the room, it could be a bit of a pain during lectures!  At my usual table, I normally sat with two other women who happened to come from the other two Abrahamic religions.  Looking back, it seems almost like the setup for a joke.  ("A Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim sit down at a table...")  But the three of us got along extremely well, and I suspect that if we'd been able to spend more time together, we would have become very good friends.  As it is, I think of M. And V. often, even now, and I hope they're well.

Especially V., these days, because she was the one of the three of us who was Muslim.  And since the attacks in Paris a couple of weeks ago, all the things I've heard of happening to Muslims, especially women—I hope that she will not be targeted for abuse.  In my years of postsecondary education, and in the years since my formal studies ended, I have met many people who are Muslims, or who at least come from Muslim families.  And every single one of them is a reason why I care about the discrimination which they face, and why I'm fairly vocal (elsewhere, not necessarily on this blog, if only because I've been neglecting it in recent years) about saying that Muslims are not the enemy: hate and fear are.

But let's get one thing straight here: I would still care about what's happening if I had never met these people.  I suspect that there's a lot of that behind other people saying, "Of course I care!  I know someone who's [insert marginalized identity here]!" as well.

I must admit, it annoys me a little when people accuse others of not caring enough because they've stated that they care about any given issue because they personally know someone who's affected by it.  Or saying that these people's caring is selfish or superficial or just an attempt to avoid examining privilege by hiding behind a marginalized friend, acquaintance, or family member.  And maybe sometimes it is.  I won't pretend that I think everyone's motivations are always perfectly progressive or altruistic all the time.  That would just be hopelessly naïve.  But I am willing to entertain the idea that knowing people who are marginalized in some way gives people who do not share that experience an extra reason to care, or maybe that initial impulse to do so in the first place.

It's a very human thing, I think, to be more engaged in a cause, or to be more open to certain ideas, when you know someone who's personally affected by it if you aren't part of that population yourself.  People need connections.  And that's not purely selfish; it helps with understanding to be able to put a human face on something that, to you, might have once been a far more abstract concept than it is to someone who has to live it.

So when I hear about discrimination against Muslims, I think of V.  And because she was one of the first Muslims I ever got to know particularly well, she is one of the reasons I care.  But she's not the only one, and I don't believe that the personal connection makes my caring less valid.  As long as I don't try to pass myself off as some kind of expert or authority just because I know people who answer a particular description, how is that personal connection a bad thing?

Paintbrush

I've broken one of the cardinal rules of online article-reading: never read the comments.

The story itself—about Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman who has terminal brain cancer, and who has decided to end her own life on a day of her own choosing, surrounded by her loved ones—is one that I find fascinating, tragic, and comforting all at once.  Fascinating, because of the moral issues that it raises.  Tragic, because this woman is so young and it's reasonable to think that she might have wanted to do so much more in her life before this cancer happened to her.  Comforting, because it's good to know that some people, at least, do get to leave the world on their own terms. Frankly, I'm not sure that I would have her courage under similar circumstances.

 Of the commenters on the story, I've noticed that most of them seem to be supportive of Ms. Maynard's decision.  One or two of them seem intent on hawking cannabis oil as a cure-all even for terminal brain cancer, but otherwise it seems that most of the comments so far are from people who respect her decision and hope that her passing is what she wants it to be.  But I also noticed that a lot of them are placing the blame for the fact that she had to move to Oregon to do this on Christianity and on priests' insistence that people have to suffer before they die.

I've written about this myself before.  I still strongly believe that the prolonging of suffering just to say that someone is still alive is neither respectful of their life nor a legitimate means of bringing them closer to God (especially as so many invoke this particular god as a god of compassion, love, and peace, even if other voices tend to publically drown them out).  But a lot of those commenters also seem inclined to paint all Christians with the same brush: thirsty for world domination, determined to eradicate all real choice from people's lives, an unceasingly evil and oppressive force which is dragging the world back into the dark ages.

 And maybe they—we—deserve it.  Christian privilege is definitely A Thing, after all, and privilege has a way of making otherwise decent people into assholes from time to time.  Furthermore, a lot of these life-at-any-cost-even-if-it's-torturously-painful policies do seem to have their roots in various sorts of Christian dogma dealing with the sanctity of life.  (Mind, I'm sure that there's a financial motivation in there, too—but I'm a bit cynical that way.)  And there's no denying that a lot of people have done a lot of very horrible things in the name of Christianity.

 But maybe not.  After all, it's not usually right to apply the same awful stereotype to all members of any given group.  I'd hate to think, for example, that just because part of my spiritual life involves a triune God who is YHWH, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, that makes me every bit as awful as the Westboro Baptist Church. Or, perhaps a bit closer to my own background, like I'm as bad as the Catholic hierarchy that still all too frequently allows certain priests to get away with victimizing children.

I'm not sure precisely why it bothers me that so many of these comments have arisen on the discussion thread for this article, though. Privilege, maybe? After all, even though most Christians really aren't like that, enough really are that it's a fairly understandable view. And goodness knows that a lot of commentary I've seen about people with privilege indicates that when you're privileged in some way and someone says something about your type of privilege that hurts your feelings, you're supposed to just shut up and take it because examining privilege is supposed to be painful—and anyway, that pain is insignificant when compared to the pain of oppression. It's not a point of view that I hold—I actually think that these things can and should be discussed honestly, but not with the intent of any party to wound anyone else, because causing personal hurt won't do anything to change institutional oppression. (But then, what do I know? I've got white privilege and a fair amount of straight-passing and Christian-passing privilege. It may well be that I have a personal investment in seeing things this way because it means that my delicate little white woman fee-fees are less likely to get hurt and result in the phenomenon known as "white woman's tears.")

Or maybe it's the way that I despise stereotypes. I've never met anyone who was accurately described by the stereotypes that exist about any group of which they are members, and I've found the various stereotypes to which I'm subject as a fat woman to be extremely harmful and incredibly inaccurate. Stereotyping may be a convenient shortcut, but it's also a way of saying, "You don't matter. People like you are all alike."

Whatever the case, the comments of that sort did distress me a bit. But of Ms. Maynard herself: I hope that she remains content with her choice regardless of whatever disapproval she may face, and that when she dies, it is what she wants her death to be—surrounded by love, and in comfort and peace.

Marshmallows

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I'm a former Girl Guide.  I went all the way through the program from Brownies to Pathfinders—"Sparks", for girls who are about five years old, wasn't introduced until I was about seven or eight—and I earned my Canada Cord in 1999.  I was a little bit older than the average for it, but I joined Brownies about a year later than most girls, and I spent an extra year in Pathfinders because paying proper attention to my schoolwork hadn't left me enough time to accomplish everything I wanted to before leaving Guiding.

Now that you've got the background, you may well be asking: what does all of this have to do with marshmallows?

Well, once every year in Brownies and Guides, we played a game.  We were all seated in a circle in an order assigned by the leaders; once that was done, the leaders would read out stories of good fortune, bad fortune, or anywhere in between.  Each story would end with either "take [x] treats" or "take no treats" and occasionally "take [x] treats, but give half to the person with the most treats."  The treats they used were marshmallows.  And at the end of the game, we'd always talk about how it felt to have a lot of treats or none at all.  Afterward, the girls who had a lot of treats were encouraged to share with those who didn't have any, or didn't have as many.

This was always an interesting social experiment in itself; the girls who had been given a lot of treats were always reluctant to share with those who had few or none because they viewed the treats as rightfully theirs.

As for me, I was one of the ones who was, year after year, seated in a position where my stories gave me no treats.  This made a major impact on me, and I noticed the sudden greed of the girls who had been given a lot; even when they did share, they were usually inclined to only share with their close friends.  I also noticed that the leaders must have had specific outcomes in mind for each of us, because usually we were allowed to sit wherever we wanted while in our circle—assigned seating would only have happened if they wanted you to have a specific experience.  But it wasn't until years later that I realized: that's a hell of a lot like being part of a system that's set up ostensibly to help you, but subtlely (or not-so-subtlely) sets you up to fail.

And it's an interesting microcosm.  The selfishness shown by the girls with lots of marshmallows looks an awful lot like the selfishness of those who hoard wealth and whose lives are drenched in privilege.  But I also remember one other thing that, in retrospect, is every bit as interesting: being given treats when you'd just been denied them by the rules of the game also felt embarrassing.  It's like the difference between a handout and a hand up.  And while a lack of marshmallows is rarely a problem, being shown only a grudging amount of compassion, or compassion on terms which allow the giver to say "look at me, I'm such a fantastic person," is not just embarrassing—it can be emotionally draining, and in the end, the person who is the recipient doesn't necessarily get what they actually need—just what the person with more resources is willing to give.

Take it from me: it never feels good to be given crumbs, and to be expected to be overwhelmingly grateful for them, when other people get to feast.

(For anyone who's interested: a variation of the marshmallow game can be found in this .pdf document.)

Thanks, I Think: Reflections on Aging and Changing

Yesterday was a dear friend's birthday.  The celebration, which is always fun, this year involved dinner at a local sushi restaurant and, once we'd all gone to her home, a game of Cards Against Humanity.  Photography ensued, of course, and this morning, she posted some of the results on Facebook and tagged people in the photos in which we appeared.

A couple of people I haven't seen in years, one of whom was a fairly good friend in high school (though we've drifted apart in the past dozen years), remarked that in their estimation, I haven't changed a bit since we graduated from high school in 2001.  I thought that was a rather odd thing to say; after all, I've been able to see the changes in myself as they've gradually happened.  Surely they should be easier to notice for people who haven't seen me face-to-face in several years.

Granted, the people in my family don't tend to age particularly quickly, and even when I was in my mid-twenties, people (usually older than me, but sometimes also people who were about my age) occasionally used to ask me what high school I went to, and they were genuinely stunned when I revealed my actual age—the looks on their faces were usually rather amusing. :)  But I really have changed.  On a purely aesthetic level, I see the places near my eyes where wrinkles are starting to form.  I see the small changes in my figure—I've gained weight and then lost (most of) it again when I consistently resumed the eating and activity patterns that I tend to fall into when I'm not depressed.  My hair's a bit redder, and because it has more of a tendency to curl now than it used to, it's still as long as it was twelve years ago, but it doesn't always look like it is.  I've been known to wear a bit of lipstick and nail polish on occasion, which I never did in high school, and I had my ears pierced when I was in my second year of university.  I'm even a couple of centimetres taller than I was in 2001.

Mentally, the changes are a bit more dramatic.  I've developed my mind in ways that I couldn't possibly have anticipated back then.  I'm better at analysis.  I'm becoming a competent teacher, thanks to my volunteer work.  My spiritual life has changed—for the better, I might add.  The way that I live it now has allowed me to heal some old wounds, and although I do still find it a bit frustrating at times to be both Pagan and Christian, the resulting mental gymnastics have been worth performing, because they force me to figure out precisely what matters the most.  I have fallen in love three times—once with someone who proved not to be worth it, and his effect on my life was devastating, but it also helped me to stop myself making a horrible mistake.  I have fallen deeply into depression, and developed a particularly stubborn form of eating-disordered behaviour, and then gradually come out of them, particularly over the course of the past couple of years, though I do still have relapses of both from time to time.  My sense of humour has gotten better, my fondness for diverse forms of music has really blossomed, my love of literature has waned and then been rekindled in a big way, and my writing skills have dramatically improved.  I've picked up a fondness for The X-Files, The Vicar of Dibley, The Big Bang Theory, and the recently-cancelled Touch.  I am every bit as stubborn as I used to be, but I now have the confidence and the intelligence to make better assessments and decisions than I had when I was eighteen.

So, yes, I've definitely changed since high school.  And while my acquaintances may have meant for their words to be compliments—after all, it's quite common for people to believe that getting older is something horrible that is to be feared and avoided—I have to admit that my first instinct was not to perceive them as such.  Change is good, and just like everyone else, I've been through a lot of changes in the past twelve years.  And as painful as some of those changes have been, there is precious little that I would actually do differently, given the chance.

Feel-Good Almost-Wisdom

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine shared the following picture on Facebook.



Not too long ago, I'd have absolutely loved it.  I still kind of like it, but I have to admit that my thoughts about it are really rather mixed.  On one hand, I do believe that the words that we say, and the things that we think, do affect the way that we live our lives—and by extension, they also have some power to affect the way that people treat us (largely because of the way that our thoughts and words cause us to behave) and the things that happen to us as a result.  And I believe that it's not at all a bad idea to encourage ourselves to achieve our goals, or to believe (and reinforce the belief) that we are capable of achieving these goals.  As it was put in one of my favourite movies, "If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

That said, I have a couple of issues with this picture.

First of all, there's the way that intellect is conflated with IQ.  They're not the same thing.  IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is simply one's score on any number of tests designed to measure one's intelligence—tests that are often heavily dependent on cultural expectations and that put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on mathematical and spatial abilities.  Intelligence is so much more than this.  It encompasses many aspects of cognitive ability—not just mathematical or spatial intelligence, but linguistic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and kinesthetic intelligence as well.  IQ tests don't typically assess the creativity or problem-solving abilities of the person taking them, and people with learning disabilities (which are not in themselves indications of low intelligence) are frequently at a disadvantage when taking an IQ test.  Overall, IQ tests are not a particularly reliable means of determining how intelligent a person is, and to say that IQ and intelligence itself are the same thing seriously undermines the point that the person who put this picture together apparently meant to make.

(Lest you think that my obvious dislike of IQ tests is because of a history of low scores, I should assure you that it isn't; in fact, the lowest I've ever scored is 118, and that was on a particularly bad day.  My scores are normally in the 130-140 range, which I understand is not terribly high, but a bit above average nonetheless.)

I also find it rather disturbing that the creator of this picture states that good things inevitably follow these affirmations.  This is a feel-good message on the surface, but this kind of thinking tends to place a lot of blame on people for whom things have not satisfactorily worked out.  You can think all the good things that you want, and act in as positive a way as it's possible for you to act, and things will still go wrong from time to time.  That's life.  And blaming people for bad luck, saying that it wouldn't have happened if only they'd thought positively enough, is just not cool.  It's not particularly enlightened, either.

As for the way it dismisses the concept of trying—this also isn't a great idea.  "I'm trying" isn't inherently a block or a means of holding oneself back.  It's not pessimistic or a premature admission of defeat.  At its best, "I'm trying" means "I'm doing, and I admit that it's difficult, but I'm doing this anyway because I believe that I can."  At its worst, it means "I'm in trouble here, and I could really use some help."  Either way, it means that effort is being put towards a goal, and that should never be de-valued the way that it is here.  Success is not always a given, and it's not self-defeating to acknowledge that when you're having a particularly difficult time with what you're doing.

And I particularly take issue with the idea that "I'm a skeptic" inherently keeps people from learning.  Because I am a skeptic.  That's how I learn.  I am always questioning things—perhaps especially my strongest beliefs and the information that I'm most inclined to think of as the truest truth, regardless of whether it actually is.  If I were to abandon my skepticism, it would have to entail an abandonment of independent thought and an acceptance of whatever I'm told.  That's not learning, that's gullibility.  For me, at least, skepticism is not a complete refusal to believe anything—it means that before I'll believe it, although I may consider accepting an idea, I need to see convincing proof of its validity.  The fact that I require proof does not prevent me from learning.  And although I'm technically a member of the Millennial generation (albeit one of its older members), and many of us were encouraged to think of ourselves as special little snowflakes who are entirely unique, I hardly think that I'm the only person who learns this way.

As much as the creator of this picture gets wrong, though, I do believe that it's a good idea to watch out for our own negative attitudes and beliefs and consider that we may be tripping ourselves up when we're having a particularly difficult time with a task or a goal.  To the best of my knowledge, I've never met anyone who hasn't ever made a mistake.  Human beings, it seems, are phenomenally good at undermining ourselves, especially when we believe, deep down, that we don't deserve to have something good.  But that doesn't mean that we're the only thing that's holding us back.  It certainly doesn't mean that we need to be told that we're not being positive enough.  Thinking and saying and doing positive things—that's incredibly helpful.  Even more, I think, when people we trust are encouraging us and reinforcing the positivity that we're trying to feel and to project.

But as powerful as this can be, it's only part of the puzzle.  I often wish that sometimes more people who are seeking enlightenment, or who are convinced that they have achieved it, would remember this.  After all, telling people that the only possible reason why they haven't succeeded is that they're not [INSERT CONDITION HERE] enough is neither positive nor helpful.

And Now I *Am* OK

I was almost right about one thing in the previous post: I find my mental state when I last wrote here to be rather worrying, though not actually "terrifying" as I thought I would.

I find it worrying because I'm still capable of falling that far, that fast.  Admittedly, I was unusually tired at the time; until yesterday, for the last several months, there had not been a single day in which I have not had to get up, get going, and keep going because so many things needed my attention.  I was having trouble sleeping.  (I don't think that it's entirely coincidental that, after having given myself permission to rest from about Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon, then running a few errands that weren't all that horrible, and then having dinner and watching most of "The Fellowship of the Ring" with a close friend in the evening, I finally feel at peace and even somewhat refreshed.)  And the argument that I had on the day when I last wrote here was with someone I love; I always end up feeling the most hurt when I feel as if someone I love unconditionally only loves me conditionally, which strikes me as not being "love" as much as it is "fertile grounds for rejection," and that's precisely how I felt when we argued.

Come to think of it, that sounds an awful lot like one of the major reasons why I've never had a girlfriend or boyfriend.

And yet, I am not actually terrified by the way that I was feeling the last time I posted anything here.  No matter how bad I get, I doubt that I'll ever seriously harm myself.  The temptation to hit myself may exist, but I'm capable of fighting it.  And I don't ever get suicidal anymore, regardless of how overwhelmed I sometimes am by negative feelings.  Even when I did feel suicidal, which last happened a couple of years ago, I was never actively so; I never made plans, never acted on the feelings, only ever had a feeling of "I should remove myself from the human race because I am a hopeless, useless, superfluous drain on resources with nothing to offer the world, so I hope something happens that will erase my existence from this planet because I don't deserve to be here."  That feeling hasn't come along in years now, and for that, I am thankful.  I also believe that if it ever does come back, I will know how to fight it.  

The thing is, my life has significantly changed since the last time the suicidal feelings happened; among other things, I now have a small and trustworthy circle of close friends.  (My social life wasn't precisely nonexistent before 2011, but I mostly just had acquaintances and somewhat distant friends, and didn't feel inclined to bother the one really close friend I had at the time because she was working as a teacher in Korea and I felt that she had more important things to deal with than my petty insecurities and worries.  And yes, I now realize that was silly.)  And though I don't tell my friends everything, I trust them to be as supportive of me as I have tried to be supportive of them.  Thus far, my trust and my love (and yes, I love these people) have not been proven to be misplaced.  I believe they will not be.

So.  I'm fine, for the time being, at least.  And I'm looking forward to singing at church this morning and then taking a long walk somewhere this afternoon, because the sun is shining, the snow looks absolutely glorious, and on days like this, I am not just grateful to be alive—I absolutely love it.

On Liking Christ But Not Christians

There's a quote that I've seen several times recently, some with slightly different wording, that's frequently attributed to a certain Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who is of course better known as Mahatma Gandhi.  A little bit of research has informed me that there's not a lot of evidence that he actually did say it, but nonetheless, Gandhi the historical figure and Gandhi the archetype do seem to be a bit different at times.  In any case, the quote in question is "I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians; your Christians are so unlike your Christ."  And frequently, I've been encountering it in contexts that make me feel extremely uncomfortable and even a little bit insulted.

I know.  I'm a Christo-Pagan; to a good many people whose Paganism is, as some would say, more "pure" (ugh) than mine is, I'm effectively a member of the enemy camp.  They would say that I've sided with the oppressors, the megalomaniacs, the ones who want to Do All The Bad Things to women, children, LGBTQI (etc.) people, poor people, people in overpopulated areas or areas in which diseases, especially sexually-transmitted diseases, are still a huge health threat, and the rest.  They would say that I am a tool of the patriarchy, a tool of the Christian supremacists, a tool of anybody who hopes to make Christian theocracies out of countries in which people are currently free to choose what they will and will not believe, and all that.  In short, they'd say that because of the Christian aspects of my personal spiritual practices, I am not to be trusted and my opinion doesn't matter.  And I would even hesitate to express this sentiment to close friends of mine who happen to be Pagans of various stripes because I do have a certain amount of Christian privilege, and I do my best to keep from hurting anyone with it, and I would especially hate for it to hurt those who number among my nearest and dearest.  So there are things that I keep quiet about, no matter how much they hurt me, because my hurt is, in the end, the hurt of someone who has a form of privilege that they don't, and using that privilege to silence them is bad form at best.  But damn it, this is my space, and so I feel free to say this here: I used to like this quote, regardless of who and what its actual source may be.  (I've also seen at least one version of it attributed to the Dalai Lama.)  I don't anymore.

The thing is, I know a lot of Christians who are kind, compassionate, and generous people.  They aren't perfect.  They've all done things that they regret, they all have their dark sides, and they all have their own issues, but that's because they're people, not because they're Christians.  And I've been part of a number of initiatives at my church that were aimed directly at helping people who are less fortunate than ourselves, including putting on a play that raised money for Child's Play and making warm winter clothing for children who live on a remote reserve in the far north.  One of my close friends is an Agnostic who was raised in two Protestant denominations, at least one of which is Evangelical in a thoroughly Charismatic way; I am also fond of his still-Evangelical parents, who have always treated me with great kindness.  With a few individual exceptions, most of the members of my family are Christians of one denomination or another (most frequently Anglicans or Catholics, though a few other denominations make their appearance here and there), and as much as some of them drive me nuts sometimes, they are good people and I love them.

To place all of these people in the same category as those Christians who harm others and use their religion as an excuse to do so, those Christians who oppress others because they are something of which those Christians don't approve, those Christians who kick people when they're down, and those Christians who, through self-righteousness because they believe that they are "Saved," look down on others who are less fortunate than they are or who are different from them in some way...on a bone-deep level, that strikes me as being wrong.  And I know that this whole post probably reads as a slightly more long-winded example of something from Derailing For Dummies, but nonetheless, to make such a blanket statement as "I do not like your Christians; your Christians are so unlike your Christ" does imply that the speaker believes that all of them are hateful, all of them are hypocrites, and not a single one of them is a decent human being.  I take exception to this.  It is a direct insult to me, as someone who sees Jesus as a face of the Divine, and even more so to all the genuinely good people I know who happen to be members of one Christian denomination or another and who walk considerably more traditional avenues of belief than I do.

I am every bit as insulted by that statement as I would be by anyone who disparages Paganism or insults any of my Pagan friends.  And I cannot simply understand that we are not among the people who are being pointed out as hypocrites by the originator of this quote; because of its wording, the phrasing that does not include anything like "with a few exceptions, your Christians are so unlike your Christ," it's hard to interpret this as anything but a harsh criticism of everyone who has claimed some variety of Christianity as part of their identity, particularly because the quote is frequently attributed to men who are widely acknowledged to be, or to have been, particularly wise and enlightened, and who are known to never have been Christians.

I understand Christian privilege and I certainly understand anger at Christianity.  In many ways, I still feel this anger myself.  But I am angry with the Christians who use their religion as an excuse to do harm, the Christians who use their power to cover up terrible things, and the Christians who try to impose their beliefs (regardless of whether it's through political influence or unwanted proselytizing) on other people.  Believe it or not, it is possible to make distinctions between these Christians and the ones who do not use their faith as a weapon of Mass (ha!) douchebaggery.

Some belated reflections on the tragedy in Newtown

This may or may not make me a terrible person, but it actually took a few days for the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT to sink in.  Nonetheless, seven women and twenty children died two weeks ago today.  By rights, they should still be alive.

I didn't hear about it on the day when it happened; after a fairly busy morning, I spent the bulk of the afternoon and evening with a close friend that day, and since checking the news isn't generally one of our priorities when we spend time together, I didn't hear about it until at all until the day after.  And then it seemed that it was almost all I heard about; as I understand it, more detailed stories were then beginning to emerge, both true and untrue, about the shooter, about his actions, and about the women (none of the people he killed were men) and children whose lives he so cruelly took.  And in all honesty, it didn't really sink in until a few days later, when the principal at the school where I'm doing my volunteer work handed me a bulletin that was put together by the school board about dealing with questions that the students may ask about dealing with this tragedy, as well as our own reactions to the news.

You know, I was sixteen years old when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris went on their killing spree at Columbine High School in Colorado.  I still remember the shock that I felt, still remember the backlash against people who dressed predominantly in black, or who happened to wear long black coats.  (And this was in a school whose official "colours" were black and grey; we wore uniforms in the school's colours, for goodness' sake, and a good many of the more comfortable shirts happened to be black!)  I remember the rumours that went around, both about the Columbine tragedy and possible copycats at our own school.  Most of all, though, I remember being completely unable to understand just why anyone would do anything that horrible, why they would take lives that weren't theirs to take.

It may be a mark of the cynicism that I developed for a few years, but although I'd never do such a thing myself (I'm fundamentally a non-violent person), I think I understand a bit better.  There is such a glorification of guns and violence in Western culture; it's not as prevalent in Canada as it is elsewhere, but it exists nonetheless.  To have a gun is to have a kind of power that it seems many people find to be intoxicating.  Shoot someone, and you can utterly change their life, or even end it entirely.  This doesn't excuse the crime.  It doesn't even really explain it.  But it certainly makes it easier for tragedies like the shootings at Columbine and Sandy Hook to happen in the first place.  Until this stops, until people stop celebrating guns and violence as a mark of power and masculinity, these things will keep happening.  And despite anything that the NRA might say about the matter, arming teachers is not the solution.  If anything, it would only open the door to further violence.

Because I'm a teacher myself, and because I'm currently working with children who are very close to the age of the kids who were killed in Newtown two weeks ago, I can't avoid the fact that this tragedy hits very close to home.  Shootings like this are rare.  They happen even less frequently in Canada than they do in the USA.  (That said, we passed the 23rd anniversary of the massacre at the École Polytechnique de Montréal at the beginning of this month, and there were a number of bomb scares at schools in my city in 1995, though no explosives were ever actually found.)  But we have procedures to be followed in the event that something like this does happen, and I work with at least two students who are, even at their young age, enthusiastic about first-person-shooter video games.  One of these students has anger management issues, though he's getting better at handling them, and because he is at present a fundamentally good person, I do not ever want to hear that he has turned out like Klebold, Harris, Marc Lepine, or Adam Lanza.

It's sobering to think that, as rare as these things are, they could conceivably happen to me, or to any of my friends or acquaintances who are teachers.  It's heartbreaking to know that they still happen at all.

Aliens are found, and known, and named...

Somewhat ironically, there are few times when I feel more Pagan than when the minister at my church says something that reminds me that views that I hold are fundamentally non-Christian in nature.  In a recent homily, he spoke of cycles: the seasons, the great cycle of life, and the concept of the turning of the wheels of fate and the saying that "what goes around comes around."  And he reminded us that this is fundamentally not a Christian way of thinking, and spoke (in a way that I'm sure he meant to be comforting, because I know him well enough to know that he is a kind person who means well) of God's plan not depending on the arbitrary turning of the wheels of Fate.

Of course, I found that to be, er, less than comforting.

After all, to me, as a Pagan who lives in the Northern Hemisphere, the Wheel of the Year as it's traditionally presented makes sense more often than not, and even the Christian calendar has a great deal in common with it, even if the end of the Christian year (I'm talking about the beginning of Advent, not the beginning of a new numbered year) comes about a month late by our reckoning.  I've seen demonstrations of "what goes around comes around," and even the Christians have sayings that come from their Bible that work out to basically the same thing.

Do not be decieved; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow.  (Galatians 6:7)

You shall love your neighbour as yourself.  (Mark 12:31)

And besides, I never really took to the idea of our lives being guided and shaped by God.  I was always a firm believer in free will, even before I knew what it was called, and if I have any belief at all, it's that the Gods give us the clay, but it's up to us to shape it, though because some things do depend on luck, or at least on the decisions of other people, which really can be arbitrary at times, other hands can and do interfere with our work.

And ultimately, I also felt he was ignoring the very cycle that even now the Church, however half-heartedly, still demonstrates in the life-death-rebirth narrative of Jesus that so closely resembles the Pagan Wheel of the Year, thanks to a good deal of appropriation on both sides.  So I could not accept most of what he said in his homily that day as truth.  And it's times like these that remind me that in some ways, despite my four wonderful years as part of my church choir, and despite the place that I have in my church's community (if only because I've only ever told one person who was associated with that choir that I am a Christo-Pagan, and he's an Agnostic who eventually ended up playing the organ at another Anglican church in our city, which, to people who know him, really isn't as strange as it sounds) I am still in some ways very much an outsider.

--,--'--@ --,--'--@  --,--'--@

On a vaguely related note, recently it was also brought home to me that as much as I still sometimes feel like an ousider in the church of my choosing, I am also very much an outsider in the church of my baptism.  A couple of weeks ago, I provided some music for a Roman Catholic funeral.  The service was pretty standard, though I found out on the day that there was no Eucharist involved.  (This came as a relief; although I knew what to expect, having been raised Catholic, I didn't want to be put in the slightly uncomfortable place of being a visble part of the proceedings, being obviously familiar with Catholic ritual, and yet also being unwilling to take communion.  After all, in Catholicism, being a heretic is grounds for automatic excommunication; so is being a schismatic.  Because of the way the Roman Catholic Church defines these things, I'm technically both in more than one way, and I'm unrepentantly so as well.)  As startling as it was that the once-familiar responses to things said by the priest (who I remember as a priest-in-training who celebrated his first Mass when I was ten years old; how time flies) came so easily to my lips even after over a decade of absence from the Roman Catholic Church, it was even more startling to realize how foreign Catholicism now seems.

I don't regret leaving.  I can't support a church that condemns same-sex marriage and the ordination of women while concealing generations of child abuse by its priests.  I can't support an organization that views me as a lesser being just because I was born with ovaries rather than testicles, and would eagerly condemn me to Hell for being a woman with the capacity to be sexually and romantically attracted to women as well as men.  I can't support people who would rather see me die than allow me to have an abortion should it prove to be necessary to preserve my life, which is what happened to Savita Halappanavar late last month as a direct result of the Roman Catholics' total opposition to abortion under any circumstances.  There is much good in many individual Catholics, of course, but having left the church, I find that I cannot go back.  Not while these injustices are permitted to stand.

There are some things that I miss, of course.  For example, during the consecration of the bread and the wine, there are things written into the service that I find to be almost, well, Pagan.

Priest: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation.  Through your goodness, we have this bread to offer, which Earth has given and human hands have made.  It will become for us the bread of life.


Congregation: Blessed be God forever.

Priest: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation.  Through your goodness, we have this wine to offer: fruit of the vine and work of human hands.  It will become our spiritual drink.

Congregation: Blessed be God forever.

I miss this acknowledgement of how the bread and wine came to be.  I miss the acknowledgement that whatever the story behind this ritual that after all these years still seems rather cannibalistic, the actual bread and wine that are to be consumed came from the Earth and were made the way that they are by human beings.  These few little lines always made me feel like the whole thing was more natural, and perhaps a little less creepy (despite the Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation, that is) than the Anglican phrasing of the consecration of the bread and wine, particularly in the Book of Common Prayer.

However—these are small things.  And although the words and the ritual of that funeral service were almost as familiar to me as the sight of my own face in the mirror, I felt oddly disconnected from them.  I was a stranger there.  Perhaps it's a mark of how far my journey has taken me from the church of my childhood.

Being a Christo-Pagan puts me into an odd place; I don't entirely belong to Christianity or Neopaganism, and there are people who would argue that in trying to be both, I am truly neither.  But then, if I had let other people define my path for me, I would still be a practising Roman Catholic.  Instead, I'm constructing my own path, and although it isn't a perfect one, at least it ensures that I always remember that compassion is priceless, that it is necessary to take care of the Earth, and that people whose beliefs differ from my own are not necessarily my enemies.  There's value in that, I think.

War Is Not Great

Once again, Remembrance Day has come and gone.  (Or Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, depending on where you live, if you live in a place where November 11 is a day to remember the end of the First World War.)  And once again, I have a few thoughts.

The Great War, the one that this day was originally set aside to remember, officially began 98 years, three months, two weeks, and three days ago.  It officially came to an end 94 years ago today.  After all this time, some of the battlefields of this war remain dangerous, thanks to unexploded shells, the possibility (still!) of being exposed to mustard gas, and other assorted remains of the ammunition used in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles, signed the following June, set up many of the conditions that not only made the Second World War possible, but, arguably, inevitable.  And although I can't speak for anything before 1988 or so (my first school-hosted Remembrance Day celebration), as far back as I can remember observing Remembrance Day, I remember the most powerful message being "don't ever let a tragedy of this magnitude happen again."  I've read that in the aftermath of the First World War itself, the message was very similar.

But that has slowly changed, and I don't like the shape that the changes are taking.  The focus has slowly slipped from "don't let it happen again" to "worship the soldiers; they died for your FREEDOM!!!" And a day that was once anything but a glorification of war has gradually become precisely that.  Instead of "never again," it's "be proud and grateful."  And in Canada, we're told that this war, our first as a nation, was (despite all that came before and after) the defining moment in our nation's history, the time when we actually became our own country.

As if it takes a war to confer the status of nationhood upon the people who live on any of the (largely arbitrary) sections of land that we call "countries."

There's no doubt that the First World War was one of the defining events of the twentieth century.  Its effects still reach us today, nearly a century after it officially began.  And the Second World War was no less important.  But when all the wars after that aren't considered to be as notable (especially as the second one becomes more a matter of what's written in the history books rather than a matter of lived experience), and when my country is being encouraged to think of ourselves as a warrior nation instead of the peacekeepers that we had once been proud to be, I can't help but think that we're doing a great dishonour to the very people we are supposed to be remembering and honouring on Remembrance Day.

They didn't die for values like freedom or national pride or any other impressive-sounding word.  Whatever their personal reasons for going to war, they died because of politics.  Soldiers are still dying because of politics and because of politicians who would rather send women and men to their deaths than work out their differences around a conference table, where these things are ultimately decided anyway once far too many lives have been lost or irreparably damaged.

And don't forget the civilians.  They, too, make sacrifices and they, too, are directly affected by wars.  It is their homes that are destroyed, their fields that are made unsafe for growing food, and, all too often, it is their lives that are brutally ended and then brushed off as collateral damage.  Unimportant.  A minor detail.  They are never remembered at these ceremonies as the dead and wounded soldiers are, though their lives were of no less value and their sacrifices were no less complete.  And the civilians whose friends or family members are sent off to war have a significant chance of losing somebody who is profoundly important to them.

This is the year 2012 C.E., and we should know better than to glorify war, particularly after the many conflicts of the twentieth century.  But the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria, and the military conflicts inYemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Mexico, and Colombia, among many others, prove that we have not learned our lesson.  When it comes down to it, "they have something we want, so let's attack them for it" or "they're doing something we don't like, so let's attack them for it" or even "they aren't a democracy like us, so let's attack them for it and try to force their country to make itself over into our own image" (which of course has gone so well for everybody involved) is still a much louder message than "don't let another war happen" ever has been.  But war has no winners and although it is sometimes a necessary evil (people do, or ought to, have the right to defend themselves against aggressors, and it is a good thing to actually help nations out who have been unjustifiably attacked, after all), it is never ever a force for actual good.  In war, there is simply evil and less evil.  That's it.

This does not mean, of course, that I do not have respect for veterans or their dead comrades.  I do.  I simply choose to acknowledge that the sacrifices that they (and the civilians who were caught in the crossfire) made should not have been necessary.

I will end this rant with the following video.  It was released in 1990, and while the lyrics do not acknowledge the fact that women have taken part in military conflicts and the music itself now sounds a little dated, the message is still an important one.

The Importance of Words

I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of words.

There are a lot of words with which I tend to be very careful.  For one thing, I don't tend to swear a lot.  Part of this, of course, is due to the fact that I work with children.  (I've always thought that it was rather interesting that these words are considered to be actively harmful to kids, and I've always rather preferred the idea of teaching them how to use these words responsibly.  Still, I'm not a parent myself—nor do I ever intend to be—so, particularly in the interests of keeping my job and obtaining better work in the future, I think I'll defer to society's conventions in this case.)  But it's also largely because I feel that overusing swear words causes them to lose their power, both therapeutically speaking and for the kind of emphasis that sometimes only a really taboo word can provide.  Being careless with swearing might be an easy habit to get into, but I don't think that I'd ever really benefit from it, even if words like that coming from a face that looks as innocent as mine sometimes does have a certain amount of inherent comic value.

There are other words that I'm careful with.  Faith.  Truth.  Holiness.  Freedom.  All of these words have been misused in many ways.  Faith is used as an excuse to stop thinking, or for preventing other people from thinking.  Truth—as I understand the term, anyway—is rarely absolute, frequently subject to interpretation, and claimed by so many people, all of whom hold beliefs that contradict the beliefs of somebody else who claims with equal fervency that they are the ones who know the truth, and of course they can all back up their opinions with proof, some of which is convincing, some of which is not, and most of which could really be interpreted in more than one way.  Holiness has been used as an excuse to kill other people, ostensibly because of their beliefs (which is bad enough in and of itself, of course), but, perhaps more importantly, because they had resources or access to valuable trade routes that the aggressors wanted to claim for their own.  Freedom as a concept has been used as a reason to take people's actual freedom away (witness the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks).  The misuse of words has the potential to do real harm.

Evil and hate are also words with which I prefer to be careful.  I don't call anyone evil; that word makes it too easy to forget that they're human, too.  I have no problem with calling people's actions evil.  But calling people themselves evil makes it too easy to dehumanize them and to risk becoming as bad as I believe that their actions are.  And I don't hate anybody.  It's too exhausting; it takes too much energy to hate, and I'd rather be using my energy to do things that help rather than harm.  In the end, hate isn't worth it.

But the word with which I am perhaps the most careful is one of the most over-used and misused words in the English language.  It's a big word, for all that it only has four letters.  It means so many things.  It affects so many people.  And at certain times, and in certain places, it can even hold the power of life and death.

Love.

I use it colloquially, of course.  I don't really love the internet, or my second-generation iPod Touch, or my favourite skirt, or any of my jewellery.  Actually loving things or concepts is an alien idea to me.  Things are things.  They're useful for a while and then they're recycled or thrown away.  (You can probably guess my preference in this matter; Pagans often tend to be environmentalists to varying degrees, and I'm no exception, even if I can't always make the choices that I'd prefer to make—for example, composting is great, but it's not necessarily a wise thing to do when you live in an area with a decent-sized bear population.)  Loving things holds you back.

But in a truer sense, I almost never use the word "love."  I've written at length about this subject before, but just to recap: this is partly because I perceive loving and falling in love to be very different things—perhaps now more than ever.  To me, love isn't just a feeling—it's an action, too; it's felt and it's shown.  And there are as many kinds of love as there are ways to show it.  This wider view of what the word "love" means is good, of course, and it works for me, but it also complicates things.  There are some people in my life to whom I would very much like to say "I love you," but a certain fear of misunderstandng holds me back.  When the only forms of love that are widely acknowledged are familial love and romantic love, and when the person to whom I would like to say "I love you" isn't a known relative (besides being a member of the same species, of course), it would be easy for them to assume that I mean the emotional and hormonal mix that we refer to as "falling in love."  Only one of them would be right, and that person would assume—quite incorrectly—that I wanted to act on it though I know full well that those feelings are exceedingly unlikely to be returned.  That's not what I want.  In circumstances like this, a solid friendship with somebody I trust is wonderful enough.

Being careful with words can be difficult.  It can be maddening, especially because I don't actually think with words, and translating the concept that I'm thinking of to the most accurate word I know sometimes leads me to make odd word choices, do strange things to my spoken grammar, and even occasionally use the wrong word because it looks, sounds, or feels like the one that I really mean to say.  (I sometimes feel like at any moment, somebody will quote Inigo Montoya at me.)  But I believe that it's worth it.  After all, words have power, and they have more power than people often give them credit for.

Hate

Having so recently written so much about love, I now find my thoughts turning to what's commonly considered to be its opposite.

I don't understand hate, except perhaps in the most abstract of terms.  I understand anger, yes, and bitterness.  (Perhaps I understand bitterness a little too well.)  I understand frustration.  I understand jealousy up to a point, but I don't understand letting it get to the point where it causes a problem.  I understand fear.  I understand suspicion.  I understand dislike.  I understand self-loathing—depression taught me that much.  I understand pain.  And I certainly understand distrust.  I've felt all of these things, though not always to the same degree.  But I don't understand hate.

How does it work?  What sows the seed?  What makes people actively want to harm other people, or rejoice when terrible things happen to them?  What convinces them that hate is right?  How do they justify it?  Why do they embrace it?

I just can't quite get my mind around the concept of such strong negative feelings about another human being that suddenly they don't seem human anymore, or worthy of the consideration that one would give to another person.  I don't understand the willingness to kill people for being different, or for having other ideas, or for any other reason except perhaps self-defence.

Sometimes I wonder if this means that I can't really understand love, either.

Love

Wow, I hadn't realized that it had actually been so long since the last time I posted here.  (I've been working on a few posts, which probably helped preserve for me the illusion of actually having posted.)  For those who may wish such reassurance, let me say that I've been well, and even a little bit busy, between working on a cause in which I deeply believe with a few friends, writing a long-ish story for a fan fiction exchange in which I'm taking part this year, making crochet hats and scarves for various care packages to be sent out this winter, and (as of this week) doing some volunteer work in a local elementary school.

Anyway, some time ago, somebody found this blog with the search term "Pagan thoughts about love."  I can't speak for most Pagans, of course, but here's what this Christo-Pagan thinks about love.

First of all, I think that in Western culture, we've given the word a terrible reputation.  I think that we've commercialized it, made it into an excuse, cheapened it, bound it up in far too many limitations, and yet abused and overused it to such a ridiculous degree that the word itself doesn't mean much, at least in certain circumstances.  When it's not the type of love reserved for family members, which rarely enters into conversations about love anyway, we've turned the meaning of the word "love" into something that's purely hormonal, something that looks and feels mysterious but is really nothing more than the effect of various chemical compounds on the brain.  We've taken an action and turned it into a feeling that is at once sought-after and held in disdain.  We've privileged some forms of it and dismissed too many others as unimportant because they don't usually involve sexual arousal.  To love, we're told, is to burn, to feel passion and the "urge to merge," and if you really love someone, that feeling will never go away.  We're told that to really love, there has to be only one other person involved, and we have to be everything that they need, and they have to be everything that we need.  Friends (especially friends who are of the same gender and sex as your partner) and family are nice but unnecessary when you've found that ONE BIG LOVE.  And then we're surprised when, crushed by all of these expectations, what we thought was love did not stand the test of time.

All in all, I think that the word "love" has gotten a pretty raw deal.

Furthermore, I think that love itself is not a feeling (or at least, it's not only a feeling).  Affection is a feeling.  Lust is an experience.  But love is an action, something that's shown, not merely felt.  Saying "I love you" ought not to just mean "I feel a lot of affection for you" and/or "I want to have sex with you."  It should also mean something along the lines of "I trust you, and you can trust me.  I'll help you when you need my help.  Even when we're not getting along, you're important to me."  Without actions, without a solid foundation of trust and mutual support, what we often think of as "love" isn't quite it.

I've also been thinking lately (again) about the nature of what's known as unrequited love.  (For reasons that are probably made obvious by the paragraphs preceding this one, I dislike the use of the word "love" in this term, but at the moment it's the only phrase I know that describes this particular experience; I'm aware of what limerence is, but that's not what I'm talking about here.)  I admit that I have at least one personal reason for doing so; I'm kind of on the edge of it at the moment, and I'm fighting it.  So far, though I admit that there's always the possibility that I'm fooling myself, I think I'm winning.  It's difficult, though.  Late last year, I met someone who's proven to be an intelligent, funny, and compassionate person.  We hit it off more or less right away, and he and I have become fairly good friends in the course of the past year.  I knew that I was attracted to him, but I shrugged it off; I'm aware that for various reasons, I'm not exactly the type of person he'd normally consider dating.  As our friendship developed, occasionally that attraction bothered me a little, but I've long been of the opinion that unrequited attractions, and even what we call "unrequited love," do not necessarily ring out the death knell for a friendship, especially if the friendship itself is solid and both (or all, depending on the situation) parties are still invested in maintaining it.

The thing that annoys me the most about the way that people see unrequited love is that there's this automatic assumption that you have to want the feelings to be requited, and you'll be totally miserable when, time and again, it's proven that they are not.  It's as if everything goes to hell once the hormones kick in.  And although I'm not speaking from current experience, my past experiences have shown me that this doesn't necessarily have to be the case.  Even if you can't control your actual feelings, you can choose how you will react to them and how you will deal with them.

Meanwhile, practically everything I've read about unrequited love suggests that it's one of the Greatest Lifetime Disasters of Humanity, as if it's automatically a cruel and humiliating experience that absolutely destroys one's life.  Call me a heartless bitch if you like, but I don't think that unrequited love even ranks in the top ten disasters that a human being can experience.  Sure, it can be unpleasant, and I'm sure that there are people for whom the experience is worse than it's ever been for me, but it doesn't have to be the end of the world.

In any case, as I've said before, love itself is more than a feeling.  It's action.  It's compassion.  It's mutual trust and support.  Under certain circumstances, it can involve lust.  But what it never is, is selfish, jealous, possessive, or manipulative.  Anyone who acts in those ways and says it's because of love is a liar.

"...this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."

Perhaps the title for this post wasn't the best thought-out, given that it's arguably racist (it's a quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Prospero's talking about his slave, Caliban, who is frequently portrayed as being non-white).  Nonetheless, it was the only title that came to mind that I didn't absolutely hate, so I hope that you'll forgive the infraction.

The thing is, a number of things that I've been seeing, reading, and experiencing have lately had me thinking about the darker side of people's personalities.  Regardless of whether we admit to having them, we all do.  All of us have thoughts and desires that, if we're basically decent human beings, disturb us or make us wonder if we're really the good people that we want to be.  (Or, if you want to be cynical or are experiencing a period of self-doubt, you might say that these things make us wonder if we're really the good people that we pretend to be.)  Nobody thinks or acts with perfect love at all times.  And yet, so many people have such a drive to be kind, to make this world a better place, despite these things we try to keep buried, to hide from others and perhaps especially ourselves.

It's such a temptation to pretend that these less-admirable qualities of ours don't exist, and it occurs to me that it is not necessarily a wise thing to do.

Wouldn't it be better if we were able to openly acknowledge these things about ourselves?  How effective is it to bury these things, knowing that they're never really all that far away from the surface?  I'm not saying that we should actually indulge these harmful aspects of ourselves, but I do think that it's far healthier to admit that they exist and try to actually live with them rather than to try to sweep them under the rug and pretend that they don't exist, despite the strange shapes that they make under the surface that we're futilely pretending is flat.  And in fact, perhaps the one positive thing that I've found has come as a result of having experienced serious, long-term depression is this: I've been forced to confront these demons of mine.  I've never had the luxury of ignoring them.  And every time I feel like I'm going to relapse, I have to confront them again, if only because I know from experience that if I try to ignore my personal demons, my mental and emotional state will only get worse.

I won't list them, but anyone who's been following this blog for a while will probably be able to figure out what at least one or two of them are.

When my character flaws come to surface as they occasionally do, I deal with the problems that result in several different ways.  Usually, my first impulse is to write out what's bothering me; if I can put what I'm feeling into words, it will almost always calm me so that I can deal with my emotions in a more productive manner.  (In the words of John Donne: "Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,/ For he tames it, who fetters it in verse."*)  The results of this tactic, of course, sometimes end up here, or in a locked post on a blog that I write on another site under another name.  Sometimes I'll resort to meditation, or if I can't concentrate on that because I'm too upset, I amuse myself by playing Vice City in order to do some stupid car tricks (I've edited a couple of the cars so that they're almost indestructible and will travel far faster than their default settings would allow for), picking up my violin and playing very fast; tunes like Catharsis or a fiddle adaptation of The Hellbound Train are particular favourites of mine for moments of intense frustration, perhaps especially because I don't play them perfectly, or, if I can be reasonably sure that nobody will hear me, singing something with a lot of high notes—or even one very cathartic high note, like "Stay" by Shakespears Sister. (That note actually is in my range, though I don't so much "hit" it as "pulverize" it, so it's not actually a sound that you ever want to hear me make.  Still, I often feel better after I've sung that song because it just feels good to produce that high note.)  And when all else fails, I take a good long walk, moving as fast as I can for as long as my feet are willing to carry me.  And then I rest for a while, think (or write) about what's been bothering me, and make my way back home.

I know that none of these things will ever solve whatever problem I'm encountering, but I still consider them to be a good start; they give me a chance to tame the negative emotions that I'm experiencing so that I can actually think clearly enough to do something about whatever is causing the problem.  It's my form of acknowledging those demons of mine without actually letting them take over, especially as most of my character flaws tend to be emotional in nature.

I'm not suggesting that everyone has to do these things, of course.  However, I do think that, rather than just ignore one's shadow side or try to pretend it doesn't exist, it's far more practical and constructive to take a good look at it—shine a bright enough light so that it can be seen, so to speak—and come up with ways to deal with it.  It's a profoundly uncomfortable processs, of course, but I would argue that it's also a necessary one.

After all, it's awfully difficult to figure out precisely what darkness and light really are unless you've taken a good, hard look at both.  Or at least, that's been my experience.

--,--'--@ --,--'--@ --,--'--@

*"The Triple Fool"

Enough Already!

Courtesy of a friend's Facebook feed: here is something that makes me very, very angry.  And courtesy of the group in whose photo album that picture is posted, here's a statement about Christianity that starts out with a fair point, though one that's a bit of a straw man in places, but which descends into little more than a slightly more eloquent version of "these people are all scum."

I realize that a group with the name "Strong Intelligent Women Choosing Equality & Freedom Instead Of Religion" is hardly going to be sympathetic to anything that even has a slight whiff of religion to it.  I understand that they have a certain interest in portraying themselves as being more intelligent than people of any kind of faith, and that they will prefer to see religion as an oppressive and evil force that holds no value in their lives and ought not to be valuable to anyone.  And in all fairness, given the fact that I left the Roman Catholic Church for some similar reasons, I admit that I can even sort of see their point.  Still, it makes me angry that people who see themselves as intelligent and strong are so adamant that anyone who hasn't embraced atheism as they have has to be stupid and malicious.

It's not just the repetition of these tired old stereotypes and attacks—and I do view the way that all Christians are routinely equated with the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church or the guy holding the sign in that first picture as a sort of attack, as by far most of the people I've known in my life who are Christians are actually pretty decent people, with (gasp!) functional brains and well-developed consciences—that makes me angry.  It's the fact that so many Christians, people with whom I share some elements of belief, are expected to be judgemental and misogynistic anti-intellectual assholes, particularly since so many vocal and/or high-profile Christians insist on being judgemental and misogynistic anti-intellectual assholes.  It's the way that it's so popular to either embrace the worst hateful, misogynistic, and destructive things (and it's a decided understatement to say that there are some absolutely awful things in the Bible) or harp on the horrible stuff as if that's all there is.

On both sides, and in very different ways, there often seems to be a willing ignorance about (or perhaps even the suppression of) the kinder, gentler things that appear in the Bible.

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.  Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour's eye.

—Matthew 7:1-5

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'  Then the righeous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?  And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?'  And the king will answer them, 'Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.'
—Matthew 25:34-40

From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.
—Luke 12:48

How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
—1 John 3:17-18

These passages, and ones like them, are the reasons why I'm able to blend the basic religious framework in which I grew up with the more Earth-centred, female-friendly, and inclusive spirituality that I developed in my years as a total Pagan.  This is why I haven't totally abandoned Christianity and this is why I believe that it is, at its most basic level, compatible with my Pagan beliefs and practices.  There's love there, and compassion, too.  There are reminders that no matter how self-centred we can get, we are not the centre of the universe and we owe other people, and the world itself, our kindness and generosity.  And the more we have, the more we have a duty to share, or at least to work for a world in which those who do not have as much as we do will still have a decent quality of life.

Don't tell me that I can't believe in these things, or that I can't possibly acknowledge the importance of science (I do), or that I'm a misogynist or an anti-choicer or a person who thinks that women ought to shut up and be kept pregnant and dependent on men (I'm not) just because to me, one of the faces of the Divine is Jesus of Nazareth.  If you do, you're doing yourself no favours and you're doing me (and people like me) a lot of harm.

It's one thing to dislike Christianity because of the bad things that it's been used as an excuse for, and because of the less-than-compassionate aspects of the Bible.  That's fair game.  But to hate all of it outright, to blast it (and the people who follow one of its many paths) for the bad things and completely disregard the good without regard to the fact that many people are inspired to do good things because of it, are inspired to be better people by it (and not just because of the threat of Hell that the churches have disproportionately emphasized through the centuries for their own purposes and gain), there's no excuse for that.  The anger may well be justifiable, but the misrepresentation and disdain are not.  It's entirely possible to disagree with people of other creeds without having to stoop to insults, straw arguments, lies, and half-truths garnished with conveniently unpleasant truths.  All it does is antagonize people.  This kind of hate, as with any other kind, doesn't help anyone.

Dis/Comfort

Sometimes I wonder if I've gotten too comfortable with my life.

I mean it.  As much as I dislike the fact that I've remained officially unemployed for so long (it's weird how volunteer work somehow doesn't actually count as work), and as much as I really don't like still being under my mother's roof when I'm going to be turning thirty years old in a few months, I wonder if perhaps I've gotten too comfortable with these forms of discomfort.  I'm starting to wonder if I'm too used to experiencing disappointment in my job search, and if I'm just too accustomed to feeling stuck and boring and lonely.  I'm even starting to wonder if some part of me wants to stay this way.

I also wonder if I've gotten too comfortable with the state of my spiritual life.  I'm so accustomed to going to church on Sunday, mentally adding my own private Pagan musings to what I'm seeing, hearing, and doing as part of an Anglican church, that somehow some of the flavour seems to be gone out of it recently.  I'm so used to going through the "Wheel of the Year" with my own private observances and reflections that incorporate some aspects of Christian thought and practice that seem appropriate to the time, that I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing all of this out of habit.  I wonder if, since I joined my church choir, I've become too Christian and not remained Pagan enough.  (There are certainly those who would argue that any amount of Christianity in Paganism is too much.)  This path still has meaning for me, and that's why I'm still walking it.  I don't intend to give up on it any time soon.  But even so, I still have doubts, especially because I could easily be seen as being part of a privileged group (Christians) who is wrongfully appropriating aspects of a non-privileged group's culture and beliefs (Pagans and Neopagans, and the various cultures and traditions from whom their beliefs are drawn).  So much of my philosophy of life is wrapped up in this idea that kindness, compassion, and respect for other people is absolutely essential, and cultural appropriation is something that just—please forgive me for using a fan culture term here, but it just absolutely squicks me.  The possibility that I'm actively taking part in it because I couldn't stick with just one or the other is, to say the least, somewhat disturbing.

And I miss my closest friends.  Somehow I've managed to just fade into the background with most of them.  One is living across the border until sometime around the end of August, and I haven't seen him in a couple of months; the border guards really scared me the last time I went into the USA, and though I can certainly understand that it's their job to make sure that it's safe to let people into their country, being "subtlely" accused of being a homewrecker, a slut, and a possible future illegal immigrant really gets old after a while, especially when these things come with not-so-veiled threats of being detained or refused entry into the country unless I can prove without a doubt that I intend to return to Canada in a reasonable amount of time.  Another friend is so busy with various things in her life that if I hadn't randomly run into her while we were both running some errands at the beginning of the month, I wouldn't have seen her at all since sometime in May.  Another—who is somewhat paradoxically the friend with whom I've had the most contact in the past month, and from whom I'm trying to withdraw a bit because I'm getting a bit afraid that I'm annoying him—is in a city that's several hours away until the end of August, researching and writing what he hopes will be his first book.  And every time I've tried to make plans with the other two in the past month or so, those plans have always fallen through for one reason or another.  It's a little discouraging, to say the least.

So it's reasonable to say that I'm not precisely in the best mental space right now.  I need to re-engage with the world again somehow, and I need a bit of positive discomfort in my life.  Something that helps me to move forward, rather than the discomfort that I've got right now, which is just making me feel stuck and hopeless.  Darned if I know how to invite it in, though.

What a week...

It's been a deeply emotional week, and I actually feel rather exhausted because of it.

Last week, I did something that, from what I've heard since then, may have led to some undesirable consequences for someone who was, up to that point, a close friend (and for one or two of her friends as well).  It was unintentional, and if it hadn't been for the written equivalent of a slip of the tongue, I might not have caused any damage at all.  But I did make that mistake, and I still feel terrible for it, though I'm no longer in the state of self-loathing that consumed me for several days after I was informed that I'd made a severe and potentially harmful misstep.  I did what I could to fix the mistake, and I apologized as much as I dared to, given how upset my friend was, and knowing that I was quite possibly the very last person she'd want to hear from at the time.

I've consciously kept away from her—and to a certain extent, our mutual friends as well—since then; I'm terrified that she's still angry with me and I'm afraid that I've done our friendship irreparable harm both by doing what I did and then keeping such a low profile afterward.  But for a few days I was in absolutely no shape to talk to anyone if it wasn't totally necessary.  Experience has taught me that when I'm that upset, it's best to shut off my more social inclinations for awhile.  I ultimately end up truly hurting fewer people that way.  The person I am when I'm depressed, or even when I'm just somewhere on the outside edges of depression territory (as I was last week), is not a particularly pleasant person to be around; I don't become cruel, but I do become very gloomy, and people tend not to appreciate the company of someone who is that negative.

And then, a few days ago I heard from another good friend, a person upon whom I've come to depend perhaps a little more than I ought to, that he had the opportunity to leave our mutual hometown to work somewhere else.  There were several reasons why going elsewhere would probably have been a good decision, as well as several reasons why it might have been a mistake, but it's not my story to tell, so I can't say much more than this.  But I can say that I encouraged him to go; as much as I'd have missed him, I truly believed that he'd be most content with the decision to leave.  However, he eventually decided that he'd be staying here for a while yet after all; he says that he's at peace with that decision, and as for me...well, it was quite possibly the first good news I'd had in a week.

That these things happened more or less all at once was an interesting coincidence, if not an easy one to deal with.  And it's got me thinking about the importance of social interaction.  You see, although the friend whom I accidentally hurt last week is someone I've known for somewhere between eight and ten years (we had a couple of classes together in university), and one of our mutual friends is also an old university classmate of mine, the other people I've come to think of as particularly good friends are of a much more recent acquaintance. I met two of them last May, and the other late last September.

Given that it's usually very difficult to earn my trust, it's rather remarkable that I let all of these people become so close to me, most in a fairly short period of time.  Because of them, I've become more social in the past year than I had been in years.  And it's changed me.  Although I still maintain that nobody can make other people happy, and that looking for another person to complete oneself is foolish at best, because of these friends I feel more more alive than I did at this time last year.  Because of them, my mind and my heart are more full than they were, more engaged, and even healed from some of the more significant hurts in my past.  My life is better because of them, and I hope that I've been able to be at least a little helpful to them as well in some way, in spite of the problems I might have caused last week.

I don't use the word "friend" lightly.  And my faith in myself was severely shaken by the mistake that I made; I felt that I could not be trusted and that I wasn't fit for human company.  I'm out of that initial shock of self-loathing now, but the results of my mistake last week are still somewhat unclear to me.  Perhaps in a few more days I'll be able to muster the courage to ask my friend if she's still upset with me, but for now, I remain a coward.  Perhaps it's for the best; if what happened after my mistake did happen as a result of it, I suspect that I might still not be the most welcome person in her life at the moment.

So, yeah.  This has all been fairly exhausting, and I hope that the week ahead doesn't hold any more unpleasant surprises.  I still need some time to catch my breath from the ones I've already had!