Excerpts on Anarchy and Patriarchy

Spring seems to have come early this year...  Or at least it seemed to have before today!  My sister is part of two pipes and drums (aka Highland) bands (she plays highland snare drum), one of which does paying gigs.  And the weekends around St. Patrick's day are a BIG time of year for that band!!  Last Saturday, they played in one parade and at two bars, in freezing rain mixed with hail.  Then, for the rest of the week, it was GORGEOUS!!  Records were broken on several days: it was that warm and lovely!  Yet here we are, back at the weekend again, and yesterday when they played in Quebec City it was grey and gloomy, and today, when they played in a parade outside of Montreal, it SNOWED!  It's actually still snowing a bit here.  I'm not thrilled with the snow, but I can't really help but smile at it all.  I adore Spring in all it's unpredictability! ♥  But, with the weather the way it is at the moment, I've been spending time doing cozy inside things, like collage and other art, and reading (specifically looking for quotes that work with the collage pieces I'm working on).  And in my reading, both in books and online, I wanted to share a couple short book excerpts I really liked... 

"Think of anarchism as an individual orientation to yourself and others, as a personal approach to life. That's not impossible to imagine. Conceived in these terms, what would anarchism be? It would be a decision to think for yourself rather than following blindly. It would be a rejection of hierarchy, a refusal to accept the "god given" authority of any nation, law, or other force as being more significant than your own authority over yourself. It would be an instinctive distrust of those who claim to have some sort of rank or status above the others around them, and an unwillingness to claim such status over others for yourself. Most of all, it would be a refusal to place responsibility for yourself in the hands of others: it would be the demand that each of us not only be able to choose our own destiny, but also do so." - from Days Of War, Nights of Love: CrimethInc for Beginners

"Patriarchy divides life into higher & lower categories, labeled “spirit” versus “nature,” or “mind” versus “matter” – and typically in this alienated symbolism, the superior “spirit/mind” is male (and/or white), while the inferior “nature/matter” is female (and/or black). This false dualistic symbolism arises from an enforced order of male domination. With the aid of such phallic psychology, men can then go about the earth raping nature, exploiting resources and human labor, manipulating and “improving” her with technological-mechanical inventions and “progressive goals.” In patriarchy man separates from earth, emulating some aloof and disconnected Sky God of his own creation, and this intellectual separation makes him feel “free” to devastate the natural world without any sense that it belongs to a common ecosystem with himself. He exploits “it,” totally alienated from the fact of his own continuity with “it.” For the deluded profit of the few, and the existential pain of the many, patriarchy exists by destroying the original holism."  - from The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth  by Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor (via the blog leafnest)

Reading the words of others can be so refreshing, validating, challenging, and simply thought provoking...  A good occupation on a rather gloomy day!

Peace,
Idzie

It Begins in Fire

Enjoy Life Unschooling is hosting it's first blog canival, with the topic of New Beginnings, and when I read the list of prompts for writing a New Beginnings themed post, one of them stood out to me:

How do you celebrate new beginnings in your life?

When I was a child, I loved mythology.  All mythology.  Anything I could get my hands on.  Once, I read a novel about an Indian dancer, and in it the main character worshiped the god Shiva, who is both destroyer and creator, benign and terrible.  Shiva is also often associated with fire.  In the book, I remember reading about Shiva, the god of fire and dance, who dances the destruction of the world, then dances it's rebirth.

That must have made an impact on me, since the memory of it has stuck with me for years.

To me, fire is like that: the creator and destroyer.  Bringer of endings and beginnings.

I like to have ritual in my life.  It makes me feel calmer, more grounded.  It's a way of both connecting with the wider web of life and of centering myself.  When I forget to mark passages, and changes, and holidays, and the turning of the season through ritual, it saddens me, and even makes me feel a bit lost!  It's something that I forget about too often, but that adds greatly to my life.

Fire has always felt sacred to me.  Anyone who's ever stared into the flames knows how you can fall almost into a trance while doing so, how fascinating and exciting it is, the warmth and light of it.  Fire is both comforting and dangerous.  So it's not surprising, I suppose, that fire plays an important part in ritual, for me.

And what I want to talk about now is endings, and beginnings.  Because the two are inextricably intertwined!

A few years ago, instead of just making resolutions at New Years that I won't keep anyway, and will just feel bad about when I break, I wrote down, on a blank sheet of paper, all the things I wished for in the new year.  New friends.  Good health.  Discovering new places.  And I went downstairs, along with my family who'd chosen to do the same thing, and in the dark-warm-stillness of past midnight, we placed our papers in the wood stove and watched then curl as they burned brightly, the smoke carrying our wishes up the chimney and out into the night.

I've also used fire to symbolically cleanse bad things from my life.  To burn bad memories and feelings, release them in a tangible way so that I can move on in my life more freely.  Regrets can weigh so heavily, make you wince, and want to just curl up in a dark corner and forget about it all.  I think that too many people carry heavy regrets with them long after they should have been put to rest.  The past is past, and can't be changed.  You can never fully get rid of regrets, I know, but I'm constantly trying to lessen the burden of my regrets, and to realize that every moment is a new beginning, a time to do things differently, to move further toward what and who you want to be in this new moment.  

Fire is both endings and beginnings.  It's change.  It's wild and warm and life giving and life taking.  It's spontaneity and it's meditation.

And it helps me to remember that life is moving, not static, and to mark those passages, those changes, those new beginnings.

Peace,
Idzie

A (very) little bit about animism

I haven't really talked about my spiritual beliefs in this blog before, although I've certainly mentioned (and state at the top of my blog) that I'm an animist. So, when I stumbled upon this post on the blog The Center For Bioregional Animism, I wanted to share this definition of animism, which I find to be very accurate.

"The most common definition of animism is the belief of spirits inhabiting animals, plants, and inanimate objects. However, this is an over simplification based upon western-colonial concepts. Animism is being re-evaluated by many in the fields of comparative religion and anthropology. A new understanding is surfacing. In the writings of Graham Harvey, he explains that animism is not the projection of human qualities upon objects. He argues that these old ideas are outdated. On the contrary, animism is an absence of the idea that humans are superior and/or separate from the living world. Animism relates to the world as a community of people, only some of whom are human. By relinquishing our dominion over the rights and consideration of person-hood, the world is no longer a collection of resources for consumption, but is seen as a delicate web of relationships."

Peace,
Idzie

Religious research, chattering, and much exhaustion

I enjoyed just relaxing outside for a while, watching the world go by, and talking to my mother and her friend. On that note, many people consider a teen to be a 'loser' if they get along/spend lots of time with their parents, or if they actually have conversations with adults. I say that's ludicrous. One thing I hear a lot (although not to my face thank goodness) about homeschooling (which most people lump unschooling in with) is that all the kids are 'mama's boys/girls' and are controlled by their parents. For my family, that's simply not true. I find the kids that have the best relationships with their parents, both un/homeschooled and regular schooled, have good relationships because their parents treat them with respect and do not try and overload them with rules. There really is very little we "can't" do, and I'm far from rebellious. I've never done drugs (although I want to try marijuana sometime, just to see what all the fuss is about), I've never gotten drunk even though I'm allowed to have alcohol if I want (the thought of getting drunk just isn't appealing to me), the closest I've come to breaking the law is jaywalking! But all the stuff I haven't (or have) done is because of me choosing whether or not to do it, not my parents. And as for the mama's girl thing, I've been away from home before. I can survive without my mother holding my hand. I simply spend time with my parents, or other adults, because I enjoy their company. One thing I've found, yet many considerably older people seem yet to have grasped, is that old or young, gay or straight, white or black, there really isn't much of a difference. Of course everyone is unique, but it is their personalities that set them appart, not any other factor. So here ends my rant on that.

I did some interesting research today on Unitarian Universalist's, a religious group I'd heard a bit about, not enough to really understand their beliefs, but enough to make me curious. From what I'd heard, it sounded like it might fit my mother's beliefs. Turns out, it just might. She finds it interesting, but doesn't want to join any religious groups since she's "too busy". And it's not really my cup of tea. I'd love to find a community that understood my beliefs, but although UU's are creedless and welcoming of all religions, and their guidlines fit my personal beliefs, it still seems too much like going to Christian church, and they "teach" children and teenagers about religion, something that turns me off. No one has ever "taught" me anything very important in my life. I've LEARNED from people, and they've shared their knowledge, but not "taught". I don't believe in teaching. End second rant.

With my learning more about religion, I discovered a Pagan resource center in Montreal. Something I'm definitely interested in looking into more thoroughly...

Of course, we also picked my sister and her friend up from the second and last day of the anime convention. Once again, they chattered all the way home. They spent the whole day hanging out with some new friends, and seemed to quite enjoy themselves.

Wow, this post is unusually long... But I think that's probably a good thing, so it's all good!

Listening to today: 99.9 The Buzz radio station

Reading: I think I read something, but I can't remember what... Maybe I didn't read anything today...?

Sunny days

Today I decided, after much boredom holed up inside like a hermit, to go outside in the beautiful sunshine and sunbathe. I rarely do that, what with evil rays and all that, but it was just such perfect weather today and I need to get a bit more colour! I took pictures, to. I can never resist taking pictures... :-P

I got a book on neo-paganism, so that should be interesting to read, even if it is over 20 years old!

Oh, and I also went bra shopping with my mother and sister, an errand that takes me about 20 minutes tops, and my sister over an hour... Oh well.

Overall boring day I guess. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but I'm too tired to think, nevermind write. So I'm off (possibly to bed) for now.

Depressing world we live in, isn't it?

I actually read the paper today, which I haven't done in a while. I learned even more about how depressing a place the Democratic Republic of Congo is. There's a civil war going on now, and thousands of girls and women are being raped by the official military, the militia, and their own neighbors. Reading that really made me sad... I also read a cool piece on organic farming.

I also did some more research into Paganism. On that note, since I haven't mentioned it in any of my posts yet, I'm Pagan. The best description would be eclectic Paganism. I believe most of the stuff found in Wicca, but I don't like all the rules and hierarchy that comes with it. I've realized recently that a few of my beliefs can be described as Animist, and I also have some beliefs that seem to be all my own. I really enjoy finding out more about all the different Pagan religions... I'm very happy with the path, or at least the direction, that I have chosen. It just feels right to me.

On a different note, quiet day overall... I hung out outside for a bit, soaking up the good weather... Argued with people I don't like, talked to people I do like... And that's about it.

Listening to today: Prayer of the Refugee by Rise Against

Reading: the newspaper