Friday, February 20, 2009

Greetings, Gentle Readers.

We are delighted to receive a request for input regarding the Craft from a representative of MTV. She is looking for people between ages 14 and 25 who have discovered the Craft as an alternative spiritual path and who now may be uncertain how and where to follow up. Such seekers naturally feel the need simply to ask questions--but where can they do it safely? What source is (a) safe and (b) valid and (c) non-condemning? This when their family may not be exactly encouraging of their desire simply to gain information. And the seekers need to know they are not alone.
Anyway, here is the question the MTV rep has sent us.
We are casting for an upcoming episode of the award-winning series True Life. For this episode, we are looking for people who are involved in Wicca. We are focusing on the relationship of how hard it can be when a young person believes in something their parents don't understand. I would really appreciate if you could mention this on your blog, or at your group meeting. We hope to have the show cast by the end of the month.
If you could have people email their situations to Parents@mtvnmix.com with their name, age, location, phone number, and recent photo of themselves I would really appreciate it. The age range is 14-25. end message from MTV rep ...
This could heal lives, boys and girls. Please do respond with offers of help and with contacts from real-world individuals who are somewhere along the path to and within Wicca. Goddess knows, this sorry nation needs some kind of alternative option. Just look around you and weep.
Anyhow, each of you, be true to yourself. Those who don't like it can take it to the "lord" in prayer, no?
Blessed be each one who reflects. Gavin and Yvonne

Friday, February 13, 2009

A New Product Line for eBay

In the Wall Street Journal of February 6, 2009, Ms Bari Weiss describes two cases of autonomous women taking steps to assume charge of their respective futures. Her title: "Putting Herself on Sale." These are Ms Weiss' gasping horrors.
Gasping horror No. 1: A 22-year-old woman is offering her virginity for sale. At press time, the top bid was $3.8M. Bari, is this woman claiming that because she has decided to sell hers, you must sell yours too? Repeat after me: "Optional is not mandatory." Does the term "consenting adults" convey anything to you? Clarify for me, please: How does her action hurt you?
Gasping horror No. 2: An educated, cultured woman is offering her ova for sale to people who want them. The same questions occur in my mind. Does she insist that you must imitate her? Are these not consenting adults making a rational decision in which they all can share? How are you hurt? And have you advertised your own ova for sale? Let me guess again--given your mindset, on a good day they'd get maybe $2.50 each.
Still, isn't it nice that you can hold the moral high ground and quiver with righteous indignation while you curl the lip at individuals who you claim have "sold out"? Let me guess--that you sleep with a Bible under your pillow; that you haven't yet caught on to the tired old eternal trinity of the dominator culture: Guilt, shame, and fear.
So how about this for a fresh idea? You run yours, and I'll run mine.
If you don't like my thinking, take it to the Lord in prayer.
Blessed be those who think.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

"Must" Reading

Many of you know that we "believe in" *
1. a pantheon of deities, of which all are human constructs;
2. a syncretic monotheistic Prime-Mover-type deity that set this existence off and then retired.
The other day in reading Richard Dawkins' "God Delusion", we came upon this description of the Abrahamic god of what is often called the Old Testament. We repeat it here for your amusement and perhaps your enlightenment. Do read the book, for one thinking man's take on a conventional path.
Our hope is that you will find as much validity in Dawkins' description as we have found, as one recovering Anglican and one recovering Baptist. Here's what he says.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

We urge you never, never to let a young person read a single page of the Bible without close adult supervision.
Blessed be! Gavin and Yvonne
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* Yvonne says, "Wait a minute! 'Believe in'? Sure, I acknowledge that lots of jujus-on-sticks exist; that lots of Jungian archetypes exist; that there are thought forms or (gasp) the idea of unseen specialists, if you will, in this or that aspect of human experience and longing. But believe in? Thanks, but I'm voting with my feet. Give me Guides and Elder Ones any day. Them I find credible, indeed essential, to my own spiritual path. Others need to find their own way.