Another Quote

by Star on February 8th, 2008

Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts.
–Barack Obama

Gnothi Seauton

by Star on December 4th, 2007

Over on my regular blog, I did a little self-interview. One of the questions was “what is your motto”. I answered this with a line from Ever After, a line from Madonna, and two Delphic maxims (for which, oddly, I cannot seem to find a satisfactory link). The latter two, I realized, are things I’ve been claiming to live by as religious ideals for some time, or at least to try to live by, but which I have altogether too much of a tendancy to simply forget, and have lately allowed to fall entirely too much by the wayside.

I was going to start delving into that here, and then I realized that this is only a symptom. It is not the problem. The problem is, I’ve let things go in general. My daily practice doesn’t happen at all some days. My weekly practice hasn’t happened at all for a couple of months, I think. My monthly offering to Apollo passed by unnoticed in November. Maybe October too. I can’t remember. On top of all this, I’m not doing anything about expanding my knowledge or even keeping it fresh.

I’ve stagnated. At best, I’ve stagnated.

It’s not that I haven’t had good excuses. My normal weekly religious time has been infringed upon by Tim not taking Natalie off to church each Sunday as usual. I’ve been busy having a baby and adjusting to being a mommy, and that’s affected how much time I have to do anything else. When it’s a challenge to get everyone fed at night by a decent hour, one can be forgiven somewhat for not paying much attention to less tangible requirements, I think. And I’ve only just recently been saying I’m too exhausted, I’m running myself into the ground, I need to relax.

But at the same time, this doesn’t feel right. I need to be doing something. I need to remember to do my daily things, which take no time at all and should be easy enough to remember. I need to make more effort to find a way to do something each week even if it’s not the exact thing I’d want to do or conditions aren’t exactly the way I’d want them. I need to get back to exploring this new path I’ve found.

What’s a girl to do? I have to respect my limitations, and yet I also have to refrain from claiming limitations I don’t have. I’ve always had that problem, figuring out where the line between those to positions is that I need to be balancing on.

I can’t even think of what to say in this entry to more fully express what I’m trying to get at, much less make any kind of change. I feel like a fraud, and then I feel like there’s so much on my plate right now, how can I possibly fix it?

Offerings Update

by Star on October 20th, 2007

I never posted an update on offerings. Hera got a boquet of fall flowers, and Artemis got a donation to the National Wildlife Federation. I adopted a grizzly bear. This does have a slight material benefit for me in that it comes with a bear plushie, but I figured I’d use that as a sort of tangible reminder of what was after all a fairly abstract transaction (being as it was all digital).

I still owe Apollo something, especially after getting the news that as kidney failure goes, Tim’s actually not doing too bad. I still don’t know what to offer. Nothing I think of seems quite right. I’m still working on it.

Another Quote

by Star on October 20th, 2007

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propeganda nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.

–Cardinal Suhard

Quote For Later Pondering

by Star on October 14th, 2007

“I do not seek. I find.” –Picasso

I feel like there’s a lot I could draw from that, but my brain is all fuzzy right now and thinking is hard work. (It’s been a long, fussy weekend.) So I shall leave this sitting here to come back to later…

Offering to Artemis

by Star on September 27th, 2007

I owe Artemis a debt of thanks for my daughter’s safe birth. I will show my appreciation by donating money to an organization which works to protect and maintain the wildlife and the wild places that are also Hers. Which organization specifically remains to be determined; the time and effort spent finding the best choice are also a part of the offering.

I learn something new every day. I had previously just heard of Artemis as “Goddess of Childbirth”, no more specific. On Theoi.com, however, I found a reference that says she more watches over the infant and Hera-Eileithyia is the patroness of mothers in childbirth. Another project; I should pay due respect to Hera as well, but know even less of how to do that than I did of how to thank Artemis.

This is all very much delayed, as I’ve had little time or energy to devote to religious pursuits until recently, but I hope it’s a case of “better late than never”.

Feeling the Lack

by Star on August 25th, 2007

I’ve done almost nothing religious since the birth of my daughter at the end of July. No surprise there; it’s been a challenge to even fit in personal physical hygeine, much less anything else.

I feel as though I ought to be giving some kind of offering to Artemis following Natalie’s birth, for the relatively uncomplicated and safe childbirth and my apparently fairly quick recovery. And perhaps some sort of “hey, can you keep an eye on her?” thing. I don’t know what, though, and I don’t know where to begin looking for ideas.

Following Tim’s chronic kidney failure diagnosis, I feel like I also should be appealing to Apollo on his behalf. I’m a little shy of it, though, because the last couple of times I asked for help for people, they wound up dead. I think perhaps I just didn’t ask the right thing, though. To completely stop the problems involved would have been on the order of a miracle, and you know, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect miracles on request. Perhaps if I asked for something more reasonable, like slowing the deterioration as much as it can be slowed.

Another thing, though, is… Well, I’m supposedly practicing in a fairly traditional Greek way, right? And that means that if I want something, I should be offering something in return. But I don’t know what. The usual incense and/or libation doesn’t seem quite enough. Money’s tight right now, which makes it both a good sacrifice and something that’s going to be hard to do in a practical sense. (I mean, if it were just my money, I’d be all over the “I’ll find a way” thing. But there’s Tim and Natalie too, and I can’t ask them to make sacrifices for my religious promises.) I don’t have the facilities for bigger burnt offerings. Poetry seems like a really good idea, but… I have been so uninspired in the last few years, and on the very rare occasion I’ve written anything it just feels really flat and awful to me. I don’t know if I even can write poetry anymore. Which makes the effort involved that much greater and the offering that much more, but I’m afraid of promising something I may not be able to deliver on. That is not a good idea, to promise something and then not come through with it.

Note to Self: PAY ATTENTION! No, For Real.

by Star on July 19th, 2007

And I really ought to read my own blog before posting something like that, because guess what? The very last entry I put up was about that thread and the suggestions I’d recieved there. Lord.

Watch Out For That…

by Star on July 19th, 2007

*thwack*

I can’t even say “I hate it when that happens”, because… I don’t. Not completely. The insight, I totally like. The sneaking up on me part I can take or leave. It’s the part where my own words rise up against me that unnerves me.

At the Cauldron, responding to something about how it’s good to read books and not just Web pages to get a good solid grounding in history and all that, I said:

Also, remember that reading up on the history and the religion doesn’t mean you have to read everything ever written on the subject. You don’t have to become an expert by any means, either. But reading some well-regarded scholarly works and/or primary sources to at least get a good basic grounding in things is a good idea before starting to construct (and especially present to others) theories that are based on actual history or the actual historical beliefs of a people (as opposed to UPG). There is, I think, a balance to be found between trying to devour and digest every written work in sight and not reading any books at all.

And I got that tingly sensation on the back of my neck that says, “PAY ATTENTION.” At first I thought it was because there for a little bit I had been kind of worried that I wasn’t doing enough in the way of research, and I was getting tired of being such a n00b with the whole semi-maybe-recon thing. But that hasn’t been bugging me as much lately, honestly. The more I looked at it, the more I thought there might be something else there.

And then Caroline came along and summed it up for me: “Moderation in all things. ” And somehow that tripped a switch in my brain. Moderation. Not an overwhelming amount of stuff, but also not a complete lack. A complete lack being what I’ve had lately as far as reading and research.

I mean, right now I feel like I do have a good excuse. Babies tend to disrupt stuff. But I’ve maybe been letting things slide more than I strictly need to. I got some good ideas from the thread I started at TC, and then I didn’t follow through on them. I’ve been getting lazy about my practice, too. I haven’t really even been trying to find that moderation, that balance point.

So what am I going to do about it? Well, as for the reading, I’d already planned on making my next audiobook the Iliad (trans. Butler). I’ll go ahead with that. And I’ll dig up that thread and find out what it was I thought was a good idea there. And once I get my tail in gear again I’ll remember that I don’t have to do everything all right away!

Continuing Studies, Limited Brain

by Star on June 20th, 2007

I’m beginning to feel as though I need to do something. I need to know more. I’m tired of feeling like a n00b, I’m tired of being tentative and wondering if I’ve got things right, I want to learn. Problem is, my brain is absolutely not up to going through something along the lines of Greek Religion right now. I can blame this partly on pregnancy, though honestly my concentration was slipping even before that happened. I don’t know if I’m just getting old (at 27? isn’t that a bit ridiculous?) or what, but it’s becoming evident that if I want to gather this knowledge I’m so hungry for, I have got to find an alternate strategy.

When in doubt, ask the folks at TC, of course. So I did. And after some clarification, I’ve gained some insight and some good suggestions. I thought I’d record them here so that I don’t lose track of them. I may update this list when/if more suggestions that I want to remember come in…

The main insight (as opposed to “thing I shoulda remembered, DUH”) is that I’m approaching this reading thing all wrong. I’m not used to reading nonfiction. Thus, I forget that perhaps I ought to just read the chapters of a given nonfiction book that seem most applicable instead of feeling like I have to read through the whole thing cover to cover. In conjunction with this, I could focus on reading 2-3 chapters at a time and then taking a break from the reading to process and think about more “what this means to me” kinds of things.

Somewhere I’d lost sight of the fact that not all of the books that can be informative to me about my chosen religion are religious books. In this particular case I don’t think fiction (at least, my usual fiction) will help with actually gaining what I need to, although fiction with Greek overtones may help “set the mood” in my head. Nonfiction books on related subjects that interest me would probably give insight even if they don’t give direct instructions.

Alternating dry scholarly texts with fun original sources (plays, poetry, etc.) is a Good Thing.

I’m working on more efficient time management for other reasons; this is no different. I need to be aware of when my brain will be most open to this kind of thing and go for it then, not try to force the information in whenever.

Making sure distractions like chores to be done are out of the way first may help. The less focus I have to spend worrying about that, the more I can spend on the task at hand.

Also, I should probably not force it. Sometimes some subject matter will come more easily than others. If I’m not clicking with the book, maybe I should move on to another one.

Setting up a special reading environment at home might help.