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So: a jury of twelve regular janes and joes had the courage to do what Mitch McConnell and his nithing Senate Republicans did not: to find the Criminal Trump guilty of his crimes.

Whatever the future may bring—stalling appeals, a corrupt and partisan High Bench, denial of a second loss—we have at least that much: twelve regular Americans, striving to do what's right.

I was just accused of being a “fake pagan” and a “fraud”. Here is why. On cursed social media, I came upon a post which was about how dudes like “John” scream and whine that certain groups are offended by everything, but how about how offended John is, right? He can’t see the words “feminist” or “vegan” or “trans” etc. without getting offended. I made this comment: “Well, to be fair, there are a lot of people in a lot of those groups who are indeed triggery snowflakes who are indeed offended by everything.”

And THAT, apparently, meant that I am a “fake pagan” and a “fraud”. Why exactly, though? What did I miss? So I’m a fake and a fraud, huh? My dedicated, decades-long spiritual practice comes under attack by an anonymous stranger because I point out that some groups do indeed contain very easily triggered people. Was that false? Was I wrong? These are rhetorical, of course it was not false. And it DEFINITELY did not make me a fake pagan or a fraud.

So I asked myself a question. “What does it mean, then, to be pagan?” Especially in this incredibly woke and delusional and backwards world. Everyone knows everything and everyone is going crazy, yet no one thinks THEY themselves are the crazy one. But anyone who disagrees with them, even if it’s the majority, is a bad guy. Is fake. Is a fraud. Is an undeserving human being. Who decided that one has to be woke to be a true pagan?

What’s a pagan? “Pagan” is nowadays defined as “(especially in historical contexts) a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main or recognized religions.”

I fit that definition, except I wouldn’t even call them “religious” beliefs, so much as spiritual. I am very anti-religion. And I have been a devoted practicing pagan for almost half my life now.

So what made me a “fake” pagan? Am I fake because I don’t kowtow to delusions? Because I’m not especially “PC”? Because I eat meat and I think that some feminists have actually made things worse for women? Because, and here is potential blog suicide but I just don’t care anymore, I know that men are not women and women are not men?

White people aren’t allowed to “identify” as black, and white people aren’t shouldn’t wear Native American war bonnets, right? So why the hell, again rhetorical, is it ok for a man to identify as a woman? To appropriate, in fact, MISappropriate true womanhood and femininity? It’s not. It absolutely is not. The feminine is sacred, the divine feminine is real, and I don’t understand why it’s now so ok for our abusers, rapists, murderers etc. to misappropriate us, to wear our bodies and gender as a costume. I’m allowed to be disgusted by it. Most of us sensible pagans and feminists realize that men shouldn’t be able to make laws about women’s choices and bodies, but apparently it is A-OK for men to tell us what womanhood even is, that THEY can be just as much of a woman as one actually born with the parts. Care to explain that massive hypocrisy to me?

I don’t need a MAN to tell me, no matter what he has done to himself. I am a woman. A real woman. A real, bone fide, natural-born, happy-to-be-woman woman. I will not bow down to men who tell me they are women. They are not. No amount of mutilation or drugs or delusion will change your male genetics.

Now back to the fakeness. Can one only be considered a real pagan if they kiss every delusional ass in existence? Is this what it means to be pagan now? To cater and pander to delusion, to illness, to what actually is verifiable fakeness? I’m supposed to honor and respect fake women when I know the truth of the divine feminine? No. Never.

None of these social issues really has all that much to do with paganism anyway. Granted, there is a lot of overlap between spiritual/religious belief and social beliefs, there always has been. In fact, one’s religion breeds the rest of their beliefs in every other area. This is why we need a separation of church and state, something else that is desperately lacking along with logic and common sense. I can easily say that no one is a true pagan if they just live with their head up their ass and hate all facts and reality.

I said it once, and I’ll say it again...many of these minority groups are indeed very filled with very loud, delicate snowflakes and it’s a problem. And it’s becoming a problem for paganism. What kind of pagan are you? Do you understand and respect nature? Do you accept nature? Do you love and honor yourself as you are, as what you were naturally born? If you bow to the trans discourse, do you still have respect for people, especially women, who do not and will not bow to it? Do you vilify meat eaters? Are you the kind of feminist who thinks that men and women are the same and that everything and everyone should be/get/do the same? Well I’m not that kind of pagan. I’m not woke. But I am awake, and I am a true pagan. Always have been at heart and always will be. And so is every pagan who sees, knows, and accepts truth and reality.

As the unofficial chronicler of Paganistan, I often find myself telling stories that record the life of a people-in-the-making. Not infrequently, these are stories in which I myself played a part, or at least witnessed.

The majority of the events that these stories narrate have, for the most part, gone otherwise unrecorded. One hundred years from now, if any account of these events survives at all, it will be mine. Mine will be the voice of historic record.

This fact gives me a certain amount of power. And you know what they say about power.

Often, while framing a story, I ask myself: is this really what happened?

The answer to this question is generally: Yes. Well, mostly.

Here and there I may streamline. Every storyteller goes for effect. You leave out irrelevant details. (Why mention the five other people in the room if they have nothing to do with the point of the story?) You rearrange events so that the narrative builds. You tend to restructure so that things happen in threes, as in most jokes, in which the first two things that happen create a pattern, and the third breaks that pattern in some unforeseen way.

I give you my word: very little that I chronicle here is entirely fictional. That said, I'm a storyteller first, historian second.

No, better make that: storyteller first, educator second, historian third.

At the moment I’m reading a biography of Tori Amos that she wrote with journalist Ann Powers, entitled Piece by Piece.  Within the first few pages Tori mentions inner sovereignty, something that cannot be taken from her by anyone. They can do what they like, say what they like but she knows who she is, and is queen of her own self. I’ve been thinking about sovereignty, how we can come to an understanding of it and really see it manifest in our own lives.

I see sovereignty and peace as being inextricably entwined. We cannot have one without the other.  When we know ourselves, when we understand why we do the things that we do, when we can control out thoughts and feelings, living lives of intention instead of reaction, then we are truly sovereign of our life. This comes from a deep well of peace, wherein we find that inner core of our selves that is silent and still, that sings our soulsong in its purest form. It is our personal truth. Neither sovereignty nor peace can be conferred from without – both must begin from within.

Peace is related to truth.  We have to be willing to be open and honest with our selves, to see through our many layers of delusion, in order to understand our very being.  We have to see the good and the bad, acknowledge all these within our selves and through this acknowledgment, gain some control, some sovereignty over our behaviour.  Too often we run from the truth, whether it is the truth about ourselves or the truth about climate change. To face these truths requires us to change, to possibly suffer in order to bring about that change. We don’t like change. We don’t like suffering. Yet we cannot escape either of these things. To live means to live a life that has good and bad within it; let’s transcend those notions of good and bad and just live. When we do that, we move beyond suffering. We face our truth, and in facing our truth we find peace.

Peace is achieved when we manage to step beyond our selves, to switch off that inner chatter, that constant thinking instead of being. This does not mean that we become robots, with no thoughts, feelings or emotions. Rather, we do not attach to them, we do not spend so much time with them, entertaining them as they go round and round in our minds. We step outside of that, moving beyond our own story in order to see the story of the world around us as it unfolds in every moment. This peace can be achieved with discipline, with daily meditation, with time spent out in nature. There is no limit to our ability to learn each and every day what this means. Little by little, we come closer to joy. When we realise the world is more than just us, we find peace.

We cannot control how others behave. We only have control over how we behave in the world, how we act and react to others.  We can lessen our reaction to others to a more intentional way of being, through mindfulness of our thoughts, our bodies, the world around us. When things like pride or anger are not getting in the way, we can see things for what they really are.  We have no need to threaten others, to undermine others, to make them suffer. We realise that in doing so we are only doing that to ourselves, through the inter-relatedness of nature.  Letting go of the ego’s need for validation, for constant chatter, for endless self-centred thinking we can dive into the still, calm pools of reflection where peace is found. We find that we can contemplate the self without recrimination or judgement. When we can do that with our selves, we are able to do that with others. In that doing is compassion and understanding.

It can be difficult when others deliberately try to shatter our peace, who try to shake our foundation and inner sovereignty. But we cannot control them, and can only have compassion for them as they are so caught up in their suffering that they feel it necessary to spread it out into the wider world. We can instead find our true sense of self worth, our inner sovereignty, and let that light shine out in the world. We are our actions as well as our words. Our deeds are what is lasting in an impermanent world.

We can be at peace even in world that seems to going to hell in a handbasket. We can be at peace when others are trying to cut us down. We can be at peace in a world that is so materialistic and consumer driven that it is making itself extinct. That peace is the core of our being. That peace is within each and every one of us, if we are willing to see it. Through the opening of the eyes and the soul, we find that still, deep pool of being and of knowing, and there we reign supreme.

To find out more about mindfulness, meditation and peace, see my first book, Zen Druidry: Living a Life of Natural Awareness.  This book combines Easter and Western philosophies, techniques and spirituality to create a path that is focused on the here and now, awake to the beauty of the world and its rhythms of nature that flow through and around us each with each and every breath.

Blog image:
Still Pool Print by Jennifer Oakley-Delaplante 

This particular blog is focused on divination, and on giving readings, but the idea of developing habits that support good practice can be generalized to many other situations.

So the missionaries want to translate the Bible into Inupiaq.

In Inupiaq, every verb conjugates in one of two modes: what we may call Eyewitness mode and Hearsay mode.

Eyewitness mode conveys highly trustworthy information, because it means that the speaker has witnessed the event herself and can personally vouch for it as a matter of honor, of personal integrity.

Hearsay mode bears much less credibility. This is what I've heard, but I didn't see it myself and so can't personally vouch for its accuracy. It might be true, but it might not.

So the missionaries want to translate the Bible into Inupiaq.