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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in acceptance

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Offer It Up

I stood on a subway platform as trains roared by, oblivious, paralyzed. I had been frozen by a brief, polite encounter with a former co-worker, a few weeks after I’d been laid off from my very first job, as a community college English teacher. My last set of students—young men in practical disciplines — had filled their evaluations with comments on my dress and appearance: “She should wear shorter skirts.” “She should wear more make-up.” It was decided my relationship with them had been “too personal", and my contract was not extended. Standing on the platform, remembering all this, a renewed sense of shame burned in my heart.

 

Over the years I would understand what happened better, with a more sophisticated eye. But at the time I was looking for emergency first aid. And I found it in the practice of “offering it up.”

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  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    loved that
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    Thank you. That's high praise from someone I so admire.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Permission to Fail

“You cannot win,” says the villain.

“No, but I can keep on losing forever,” says the hero.

 

This exchange from the movie Dr. Strange gave me a thrill of recognition, since failure--avoiding it, experiencing it, wrestling with it--has loomed large in my life. 

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  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    This is great, Archer - I love it! By the way, my friend's Buddhist teacher told her that she shouldn't do her practice until she
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    It really is a privilege to sit in a space where our natural messy minds are accepted and seen for what they are, and our relation
Part Two: Breast Cancer and Repressed Mother Rage

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
You can't please everyone

Since my last 9-part article here on my experiences at Pagan Spirit Gathering, I've had a big change in my life. I can't talk about most of that - sorry. What I can say is I've gained some deeper insight on the Samhain resolution I made last year about being less judgmental. I will remind folks, I say less judgy, because we're all human, but just trying to honestly walk in someone's shoes is hard for so many people to do. And I say that with the inclusion of the Pagan community.

There are notable Pagans who have spent time with me in person, people of whom I've at least made an attempt to let them get to know me and of course vice versa, at the very least on some base level of agreement, who harshly judge me. These are people who won't give me the time of day. People who, on one hand shout to the hilltops we need to be accepting of everyone, who won't even acknowledge my presence unless they are forced to. And even then, they do so grudgingly and while being back-handedly polite. Does it hurt my feelings? At this point in my life, not really. In fact, I developed a mechanism to cope with not being able to be everyone's friend/acquaintance back when I was a kid. Allow me to explain:

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  • Shauna Aura Knight
    Shauna Aura Knight says #
    One thing that struck me in your post is that I had a similar childhood--rejected by my peers, emotionally (sometimes physically)
  • Lori Dake
    Lori Dake says #
    Shauna, I'm not talking about people who are just shy, or introverted, or even perhaps on the spectrum. What I'm specifically tal
  • Lori Dake
    Lori Dake says #
    Thank you for your thoughts. It's just something that's been grating on me for quite a while, and at this point in my life, I woul
  • guy fawkes
    guy fawkes says #
    you're definitely not alone in this experience. relational aggression is a serious problem in pagandom. one major contributing fac

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Homeless

Folklore is filled with the homeless. There are pilgrims and fugitives, persecuted teachers and those unfortunates fated to wander eternally as punishment or curse. Jesus said “Foxes have dens and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Dionysus fled persecution from Greece to India to the ocean to the underworld. Sara-Kali was a wanderer and patron saint of wanderers, the Rom. Buddha left home in spectacular manner, abandoning wife, child and duty, never to return.

 

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  • Archer
    Archer says #
    I took the teacher training at Kripalu under Yoganand Michael Carroll. It was excellent--intense, transformative and thorough. Kri
  • robin fell
    robin fell says #
    Archer, Thanks once again. I am considering doing a 200 hr. yoga teachers training couse. Do you offer one or can recommend one to
  • robin fell
    robin fell says #
    Dear Archer, A brillant read about the existentialist condition. Thank you for sharing this blog, "Homeless" Can you please tell
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    Dear Robin: I did write this article but I was inspired by some words of Pema Chodron about how following a spiritual path means
  • Archer
    Archer says #
    Thank you so much!

Posted by on in Culture Blogs


Family HugLike many other Pagans, I was the black sheep of my family.  My family were hard-working blue collar folk, with some low-level white collar aspirations here and there.  They believed in the ethic of hard work.  They were not at all religious, having had negative experiences with the Anglican church of their youth.  They didn’t understand the mystical bend that shaped my life and experience from the earliest time I can remember.  When I went to my best friend’s Mormon church for the first time, they sat me down to talk to me about it in the same manner that I later would experience when they sat me down to discuss drinking, drugs, and sex.

But I suppose the foundation of my Paganism was laid by the way in which I was raised.  Though my parents shunned the Anglican Church they embraced a lot of Anglican values, and I’m convinced that Wicca is what happens when you expose an Anglican countercultural folklorist to Hinduism.  I was a Brownie and then a Girl Guide, and as Ronald Hutton pointed out, the woodcraft movement was a powerful influence on the development of modern Wicca.  Through my father’s imagination, I learned a sense of wonder; through my mother’s love of the natural world, I learned to find the sacred more keenly in nature than in any human building.

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  • Annika Mongan
    Annika Mongan says #
    Thank you for telling this story. Coming out to your family can be so hard and it is great to hear of of the positive connections

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Sometimes it is easier to just sit back and not try to take that step forward. Maybe dealing with the negativity that has become so common in my life is easier than stepping into the unknown. But by dealing with this negativity I have noticed that over the pasts two years my health has declined, my motivation has declined, as well, my positive attitude and outlook has declined.

 

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