Congress and Health Care

Dear fellow taxpayer,
We Frosts have experienced health care in four different nations: England, France, Canada, and the United States. Our experience has amounted to something like comparison shopping. We have to say that, given Medicare and Medicaid, we are more than pleased with the American system. We think the Brits have a slightly better one, but we much prefer to live in the States.
To complement the professional attention, we actively pay attention to our own state of health, with particular attention to nutrition.* This feels like responsible adult behavior : not to trash our bodies with reckless, irrresponsible behaviors and then drag ourselves to a physician afterward and say, "Here I am, Doc. Heal me (on taxpayer dollars). Wind me up and turn me loose so I can trash my body anew."
The current health-care debate seems to be focusing on cutting the heart out of Medicare. Consequently we are convinced beyond all doubt that Congress has no idea what they are doing. Clearly they have forgotten what it's like to be a citizen taxpayer out there defenseless, as we ourselves wer for many years. Some of the present rules are extremely weird but ostensibly liveable. We ahve recently learned of one such taht is interesting, to say the least : Even though it is well known that no level of X-ray is safe, and that sonograms are just as good at detecting breast cancer, still if Medicare is to pay for it, you have to have an X-ray before you can get a sonogram.
When it comes to the matter of abortion adn teen pregnancy, we could write reams. The government--paid for by your taxes and mine--refuses to fund real-world, practical sex education for the kids. Then when they get pregnant, Congress proposes not to pay for abortion. This has to be pure grandstanding, not to mention the legislation of religious belief into federal law. Are you as grateful as we are ?
In this nation, teen pregnancy is presently running at 42.5 pregnancies per thousand in ages 15 to 19. Compare that rate with the Netherlands, where sexual freedom adn education are required. There the teen birth rate is 3.8 per thousand--less than 1/10 the U.S. Surely any sensible, rational person can understand that on any sort of cost curve education is the cheapest; abortion is the second least-expensive--and welfare is off the graph. It makes absolutely no sense for Congress to hold up the much-needed health-care reform act for something that would really save billions because of some ancient fundamentalist principle. By the way, copulation is not forbidden in their black book.

Spirituality?

We want to thank everybody for their various definitions of love, especially Raven, who pointed out that the Greeks had so many words for different aspects of love. Now we have another request of you.
Gavin is scheduled soon to give a presentation to the local Unitarian-Universalists on spirituality. What makes a person "spiritual" ? How do you know one when you meet them if you can'tsee their aura ? Someone who is very materialistic is not spiritual ; that's clear enough--but then we see people like Bill and Melinda Gates spending millions of their money on various projects around the world, and we wonder. Also we have humanist and atheistic friends who seem to us to be very spiritual in their dealings with the world. Yet by basic definiton, since they don't believe in spirit, how can they be labeled spiritual ?
Any thoughts ? Help.

Some Thoughts about an Ill-Defined Word - Love

The other day at lunch we went around the table having people offer definitions of "love". No two definitions were alike. We started by saying that we didn't mean lust. When you're in lust--a perfectly valid condition to be in--it's a matter of one endocrine system calling out to another. Thanks especially to popular songs and to Disney animated features, the two sets of symptoms are often mistaken one for the other. What we wanted to define was long-term love : the sort that happens between a parent and a child, perhaps, or between a mature married couple who have worked through most of the prickly topics.
One definition we liked was : It is the feeling that makes me smile inside when I see either "it" or another person.
Our long-term definition of love runs something like this : It is my wish for the loved person to develop to their full potential, my wish for their well-being; no matter what the cost to me.
We realize that this does not cover the love for an object, a sculpture, a painting, a poem, any inanimate object, or even a puppy or a kitten.
So what is your definition of love?

Thinking about Initiation

At the full moon of Imbolc we did a couple of initiations. As usual after initiations (call it afterglow), we started to reflect on (1) the real reason for initiation itself; (2) what elements such a meaningful rite of passage should contain; (3) how it will change the life of those who attend.
It is our opinion that initiation into the Craft has always meant becoming a member of a very select "in" group. The group consists of other individuals who have met certain standards and who are further along the chosen path. The incomers are required to meet those standards so that the group can be comfortable and confident with their membership. Incomers are those sufficiently knowledgeable of the group's practices that they will live up to such commitments as these:
(1) They will not mess up when the chips are down.
(2) They have demonstrated their willingness to discipline themselves to meet challenges that may come.
(3) They are willing to break societal / cultural norms, though always within the law, to join the group. In such cases, the only individuals involved would be consenting adults, and the occasion would be an extraordinary one.
(4) Candidates are willing and able to state clearly where their allegiance lies. Is it to their family? their group? their country? and so on. (At time of crisis, they may be expected to subordinate allegiance to family temporarily to the needs of the group.)
(5) They can be trusted with inner secrets of the group, including knowledge of identities and memberships.

Though these points seem relatively simple and straightforward, too few groups make them part of the initiatory practice. Initiation is more than a matter of "Drop in Friday night and visit the drive-through." It is a life-changing milestone implying a deep, deep commitment to the spiritual path of the Craft. In our opinion, preparation for the ritual and the life change should take at least a year and a day.
Nor is the initiation a signal to stop growing. To each initiate will come a day when s/he pauses to think, "I thought I knew it all on the day of my initiation--but, boy, how far I've come and how much I've grown since then!"
The actual words of the rite can be in any format the group likes, using any pantheon and any circle-casting or other element of the rite of passage the group desires. In Gavin's case, it was in fact not only a sex-magic ritual; it was also a blood ritual. (He can show you the scar.) Currently the blood ritual is usually omitted; if the group is not going to practice sex magic, that part too can (optionally) be omitted.
It is up to you, pagans and Wiccans, but please do not cheapen any initiation which you perform. Make it a deeply significant rite of passage. It should be designed to change the person's perception of reality.
Blessed be those who live the examined life. Gavin and Yvonne

Marching to the Bank

We agree with the comments on our recent blog, that pointing the finger without suggesting a better way is not the most helpful thing we can do. However. We continually point to a better way. All our work for the past 40 years has been an effort to articulate a different, non-materialistic, partnership-not-dominator, path. To that end, here is another highly critical blog. It's time somebody pointed out the Emperor's unmentioned absence of attire.

Marching to the Bank

An old song quoted by Bishop James Pike goes,
"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching to the bank!
Dum, dum, dum, DUM, dum, hear the shekels clank."
If you have wondered why the abrahamic religions are able to make so much money so easily, you need only recall three little words :
Guilt Shame Fear
The religions get an awful lot of mileage from those words. Let's look at each one in turn.

GUILT
Way back in its earliest days, the Emperor Hadrian ordered his agents to study Christianity. His conclusion was, the religon was "so strict that it leads automatically to hypocrisy".
Christian religions make no allowance for our poor human foibles and failures. Instead they require that we show up punctually, pay our dues, and get forgiven. Time and again, we have seen politicians and now sports stars busy confessing their "sins" and paying their dues.*
A couple of years ago a very good friend of ours in our little town, well-known as a generous and friendly restaurateur, died of cancer. At the memorial service the minister berated the sheep with the message, "You too will die of cancer if you don't straighten up your act and attend regularly." This probably happened because the memorial service was the first time that church had been full since the Civil War.
Such Christian guilt-thinking recently reached a new low when Pat Robertson announced that Haitians deserved their earthquake because their ancestors had made a pact with the devil to get them out from under French rule. (No, we're not making this stuff up. We couldn't.)
In the past the Christian church simply sold indulgences. It didn't matter how you had sinned. Buy an indulgence, and it was a pass through the pearly gates--your own get-out-of-hell-free card. The more you paid for it, the briefer the time you'd spend in purgatory getting purged.
It was interesting to see the memorial service in Haiti where the church deacons passed among the attendees with their collection plates.
So let's move on to the second biggie.

SHAME
This is probably akin to the ancient shunning that many religions visited on their parishioners unless they came back to church and confessed their "sin". Essential parts of the confession were an appropriate contribution and a maximum of groveling, spiced with juicy detail.
We don't really understand why you have to be ashamed of natural behavior, provided that natural behavior does not harm any one. Can you say "victimless crime" ? Can you say "manipulation" ? Of course natural behavior is usually forbidden by the inhabitants of pulpits. Many such people are too old to enjoy it anyway. Remember St. Augustine? When venereal disease (today's STD) made him impotent, he raged unremittingly against all sexual activity.

FEAR
We have a friend who counsels sick and elderly--terminal--patients as part of an in-home and in-hospital service. He is a pagan with Druidic tendencies; he calms the fears of these poor people about where they will go when they "die". Of course the counselees also receive regular visits from the cucarachas (as Spanish-speaking nations call priests; cockroaches are black and creep around after dark). He often finds his counselees after such a visit literally terrified of what is going to happen to them and trying to figure out whether they should sign away their property to the church rather than to their natural heirs. If they sign it all away, the promise goes, they can at least get a pass to spend some time sitting on a cloud playing a harp rather than being roasted in eternal flame.
Of course eternal flames do not work as a threat to Eskimos. To Polar peoples, hell is a cold place; living somewhere that's eternally hot doesn't sound all that bad.

So that's it, boys and girls. Live a natural life. Have fun. Pay your religious taxes. You'll be all right. It really is a crock, you know.
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* Yvonne: I think I'll get addicted to something, go through rehab (making sure it's an ordeal), and sell my story to the National Enquirer. I could retire.

Deadly Combination

Of course we are all concerned and dismayed by the devastation in Haiti. Experts knew that the capital, Port-au-Prince, was on an active fault line; the area had had bad earthquakes before. But the grinding poverty of the country and the corruption in its government have combined to mean that building codes have chronically been ignored; this has combined with overpopulation, caused mainly by the Catholic Church's no-contraception policy, to create a situation that has contributed to the disaster.
In among the aid being given out, we don't see anything from the much-vaunted Catholic charities. The aid may be there, but it certainly isn't very visible. Now Vatican city is a state unto itself, and it has the highest income per capita of any state or nation. Yet we don't see any vast pledges of money or help coming from Vatican City. And further, we are told apocryphically that the Church is still charging standard fees for masses for the dead and for burials. How two-faced can you get? (a) Don't send aid--and (b) profit from the death toll.
When will these people who call themselves compassionate Christians wake up to what their church is doing every day? Take one of Yvonne's one-liners for your own use, if you like:
Good people, bad leaders.

Life versus Death

Two large shrubs bracket our front door--two witch hazels. Today, just apres-solstice, one of them is sporting an actual bud. Such a sign of life returning is more than welcome, especially since the little fellow is peering from a heavy blanket of snow.
Wiccans are fond of saying that Wicca is based in Nature. It is true that we respect Nature and are more than happy to see its repeated cycles; but we (Frosts) think Wicca is based in Life, as contrasted with Death.
The abrahamic religions have made a good thing out of Death--a good thing for themselves. They have taught people to be deathly afraid that even the most minor "sin" in this world will get the "sinner" consigned to an everlasting hell. Provided you follow the rules and regularly attend church, though, it will be all better. Whee. Your reward? You will sit on a cloud and play a harp while you grovel eternally to a neurotic deity of insatiable vanity.
Recall Jonathan Swift's words:
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death
should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
Death is as natural as being born. One birth, one death for each of us. That's what we are assigned. It's up to you, then, to pack between those two milestones everything you possibly can so that you don't have to keep coming back, going through the diaper stages and learning it all over again.
Life equates to survival. As soon as we are born, we start on a path of personal survival. As we pass through puberty, we begin to work hard on gene survival : first by producing children and then by trying to make sure that our name will not be lost. Many people are driven to acquire wealth, thinking that materialistic toys and buildings will survive with their name attached. (Donald Trump comes to mind.)
That's not for us, though we think some of our worthy thoughts may survive.
We ask and challenge you to live life and if possible to do something by which you will be remembered. Seek your own immortality.