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Although, thank Goddess, I didn't grow up Catholic, I've known many who did, and I've heard the stories.

So, for all those feel-good “Come Home to the Catholic Church” commercials, here's the truth-in-advertising version.

Hi, we're the Catholic Church.

We're the ones who, all over the world, have sexually abused hundreds of thousands of children.

We're the ones who did everything that we could to hush up that fact.

We're the ones who have routinely done everything that we could to protect the perpetrators.

We're the ones who repeatedly, when caught with our cassocks up and our pants down, have protested with words of repentance, but still done nothing to stop the abuse.

A long time ago, you walked away from the Catholic Church.

Bet you didn't know it, but Cecil B. de Mille's 1956 epic schlockfest The Ten Commandments has a pagan connection.

Dianic high priestess and musician Ruth Barrett grew up Jewish in Southern California. Apparently, religious leadership runs in the family. Her father was a rabbi in the Reconstructionist movement, a modern Jewish “denomination” that views Judaism as an ongoing religious civilization. Reconstructionist Judaism tends to be ritually conservative and socially liberal.

(The standard joke is: “At an Orthodox wedding, the bride's mother is pregnant. At a Conservative wedding, the rabbi is pregnant. At a Reform wedding, the bride is pregnant. At a Reconstructionist wedding, both brides are pregnant.”)

Anyway, when C. B. was putting the film together, he looked around for someone skilled at blowing the various calls on the shofar, the ram's horn trumpet used since antiquity in Jewish ritual—at the first sighting of the First Crescent, for instance.

Rheims Cernunnos

Gallo-Roman relief, 1^st century CE

What is it about witches and royals, anyway?

Maybe we're just waiting to have one of our own on the throne—again.

King Chuck

(To the Tune of: King Tut)

King Chuck (King Chuck)

When he was just a young man

he never thought he'd be

as ancient as the hills themselves

before becoming king!

King Chuck: with his royal willie

King Chuck: papa to Prince Billy

Married to Diana

Left her for Camilla (King Chuck)

In the dream, my old student apartment is decorated for a party. M. is finally graduating!

Oh, M. Through all the years that we shared this very apartment—ever since we worked together in that fancy restaurant downtown—I've been hopelessly in love with him. How many scurrilous poems have I dedicated to him over the years, how many epigrams? He's never seen any of them.

How I used to love watching him flirt his way through life. M. flirted with everyone: men, women, young, old, me included. We all knew that he didn't really mean it, and yet—such was his beauty, such was his art—our lives were made somehow the happier for having had him pass through them.

I, meanwhile, am on fire. My long-awaited book on the Tribe of Witches is finally writing itself. The words are pouring out of me. I can't find enough paper to write on. What I've got so far is written on anything I can find: envelopes, pages from the calendar, ads, anything with a blank back.

A writer friend hands me a stack of old handbills. I scroll the first into the typewriter and begin to type.

Suddenly M. is here, even more handsome than he used to be. How had I never realized before that he was actually Crown Prince of the Tribe of Witches? Or had I secretly known all along?

The Pagan Community Statement on the Environment is standing the test of time so far. Most of what's written in it is still as relevant now as it was when it was written. That's not a sad statement about lack of progress, but rather a happy statement about the foresight to keep it general instead of talking about really specific issues. At the time, I wanted to put in more specific, solvable calls to action, but my fellow committee members were right to distill it to more general principles.

I helped write the Pagan Community Statement on the Environment, representing Asatru. Although working in committees with a series of revisions by others inevitably led to some friction, I think the result was great work. I started my writing and editing on the project in 2014 and the Statement was published on Earth Day 2015.

Prompt Prosperity: Money Magic Secrets for True Abundance