So, here I am, getting better now, after so long in the hospital and so long sick. I have many miles to go before I am well and I still have challenges to face. But I am alive and I am hopeful.
Owlthena asked me if the Craft helped me in anyway and I have to say that it did. Understanding the history of modern medicine through the Craft and understanding not only the physical changes but the metaphysical changes in my body have opened me up in a lot of ways to the notion of healing through magik. And all magik really is the act of nature and the super nature coming together to cause change. Since I know how many of the chemicals they used on me in their basic form works on a chemical and alchemical basis, I internalized and ritualized my process of healing or letting go. It really could have gone both ways and it still can, there are no promises to me from my doctors or from the medical community that I will live to celebrate a single post-cancer year.
What it has done is shown me how to redirect my energies and be even more determined to teach others the Way of the Wise, regardless of creed. Anyone who wishes to dedicate themselves to the ancient and noble art can learn witchcraft and embrace it as a part of their lives. But I reiterate, the Craft is not for everyone and it does not solve all your problems. What it can do is strengthen you to face those problems and use the energy that might otherwise be a source of anxiety and channel it into the world as pure magik.
Even now I am preparing by meditation and contemplation and renewed efforts at study, now I am getting stronger. I am depleted but I know that energy can come back to me in the form of simply working the Craft, pulling its chi into me and replenishing the reservior of magikal energies that once flowed through me. I will create energies by being creative in my Craft life and my personal life.
And I will try to temper my outspokeness with gentleness. I will continue to speak my piece and speak it bravely with no apologies for who or what I am, but I will temper it with compassion. And I will not tolerate hatred around me, I will shun it and keep it out of my life.
So I wait. A little over a month I will be set free from this world into the world of the living and I will embrace my possibilities and I thank all of you who have written me and been my friends on this blog and in the world. I hope you will always teach me about compassion and empathy.
Te Dia Agus Anam
Aslinn
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
My Book of Shadows
For those of you who may be interested, I have posted my Book of Shadows online through 4shared. Feel free to download it. It is free and I offer it as a gift to anyone who has been reading my blog and has been interested in the workings of a Christian walking the path of Witchcraft.
It is an Adobe document, so is you don't already have it, download one. It too is free.
Thanks to all who have been so supportive to me and Brightest Blessings Be.
http://www.4shared.com/file/100683406/d968be88/Aslinn_Dhans_Christian_Witches_Book_of_Shadows.html
Aslinn
It is an Adobe document, so is you don't already have it, download one. It too is free.
Thanks to all who have been so supportive to me and Brightest Blessings Be.
http://www.4shared.com/file/100683406/d968be88/Aslinn_Dhans_Christian_Witches_Book_of_Shadows.html
Aslinn
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Bully
Sometime in my blog I talked about being a substitute teacher and how I was leaving the teaching profession, at least as a sub, and looking for other work. Of course I came down with cancer and haven't seen much in the way of a new job since I got sick.
But then I was watching the news and in the past couple of weeks two young kids, one of them eleven years old, killed themselves because they were being bullied in school. And the comments were primarily about how the school was responsible.
Let me tell you something. I want you to listen really close. For every one kid who is marginally interested in school, who sits quietly, who is polite, who does the best they can, who is a joy to have in the classroom, there are five who are absolute monsters. They talk to everyone like they are animals. Their every other word is either Fuck or Bitch and sometimes they are used together. They fear no one. They hate everyone and if you interfere in their activities, you can be guaranteed to be hit, slapped, punched or otherwise abused.
I am a 5'3" woman. I was a chubby woman when I was diagnosed but I was never a bruiser. There were kids who would stand over me and tell me what I was and was not going to do. They routinely told me to get my fucking eyes off their face and keep their name out of my mouth as I picked up the phone to call an administrator or the on campus police officer. I intervened on an obvious case of bullying and got got my right eye blacked, the socket broken and my nose busted. I was reprimanded for physical contact with a student. (I was pulling the bully off another child). The child got morning detention.
I had one young man stand over me and called me everything but a white woman and threaten to hurt me. When I complained that he did this not only to bully me but one of my students, the Principal said there was nothing that could be done, that he was diagnosed as antisocial and having a personality disorder and I should learn to put up with it because he was in my last class of the day and his meds were wearing off.
And let me tell you something else about your little cherubs. They cuss, they handle the foulest language, they have sex in school bathrooms, they smoke cigarettes, dope, and drink. They hate you, they hate school, they hate their class mates. They know too much about nothing and not enough of anything. They don't have feelings. They don't have empathy. They don't care about anything that does not effect them personally.
And the schools didn't make them this way. You did. You don't pay attention to your kids, either because you can't afford to take time off and be with them because you are too silly to use the seventy-five cent condom and you are working two menial jobs to support them or you are well to do and you don't have the desire. Your children are accessories, like those silly fucking dogs you carry around in your purses. Or you may be some mom who took dope during her pregnancy and you don't want to accept responsibility that you gave birth to a monster without the chemicals necessary for self control, behavior modification, even fear. Perhaps you are one of those parents who want to preserve little Susie's sense of self worth so you never say no, don't, stop it. You redirect, use positive emphasis, rationalize. Get a grip lady, life is not fucking fair.
I long for the days of special schools and paddling. I long for the days of parents being able to punish their children. If I were a parent today, and my child threatened to call CPS over the fact that they'd been give corporal punishment, I'd say go ahead, but first let me give you a reason to call them.
Not everyone should be in a school setting. It creates an unsafe learning environment for everyone, students and teachers. It becomes so unsafe that teachers, yes, teachers are afraid of your fucking kids. So don't blame the schools entirely. Our hands are tired much of the time. And parents, you were the ones who tied them.
But then I was watching the news and in the past couple of weeks two young kids, one of them eleven years old, killed themselves because they were being bullied in school. And the comments were primarily about how the school was responsible.
Let me tell you something. I want you to listen really close. For every one kid who is marginally interested in school, who sits quietly, who is polite, who does the best they can, who is a joy to have in the classroom, there are five who are absolute monsters. They talk to everyone like they are animals. Their every other word is either Fuck or Bitch and sometimes they are used together. They fear no one. They hate everyone and if you interfere in their activities, you can be guaranteed to be hit, slapped, punched or otherwise abused.
I am a 5'3" woman. I was a chubby woman when I was diagnosed but I was never a bruiser. There were kids who would stand over me and tell me what I was and was not going to do. They routinely told me to get my fucking eyes off their face and keep their name out of my mouth as I picked up the phone to call an administrator or the on campus police officer. I intervened on an obvious case of bullying and got got my right eye blacked, the socket broken and my nose busted. I was reprimanded for physical contact with a student. (I was pulling the bully off another child). The child got morning detention.
I had one young man stand over me and called me everything but a white woman and threaten to hurt me. When I complained that he did this not only to bully me but one of my students, the Principal said there was nothing that could be done, that he was diagnosed as antisocial and having a personality disorder and I should learn to put up with it because he was in my last class of the day and his meds were wearing off.
And let me tell you something else about your little cherubs. They cuss, they handle the foulest language, they have sex in school bathrooms, they smoke cigarettes, dope, and drink. They hate you, they hate school, they hate their class mates. They know too much about nothing and not enough of anything. They don't have feelings. They don't have empathy. They don't care about anything that does not effect them personally.
And the schools didn't make them this way. You did. You don't pay attention to your kids, either because you can't afford to take time off and be with them because you are too silly to use the seventy-five cent condom and you are working two menial jobs to support them or you are well to do and you don't have the desire. Your children are accessories, like those silly fucking dogs you carry around in your purses. Or you may be some mom who took dope during her pregnancy and you don't want to accept responsibility that you gave birth to a monster without the chemicals necessary for self control, behavior modification, even fear. Perhaps you are one of those parents who want to preserve little Susie's sense of self worth so you never say no, don't, stop it. You redirect, use positive emphasis, rationalize. Get a grip lady, life is not fucking fair.
I long for the days of special schools and paddling. I long for the days of parents being able to punish their children. If I were a parent today, and my child threatened to call CPS over the fact that they'd been give corporal punishment, I'd say go ahead, but first let me give you a reason to call them.
Not everyone should be in a school setting. It creates an unsafe learning environment for everyone, students and teachers. It becomes so unsafe that teachers, yes, teachers are afraid of your fucking kids. So don't blame the schools entirely. Our hands are tired much of the time. And parents, you were the ones who tied them.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Passion of the Christ
I can't attend good Friday services at my church while I am still in isolation. I am doing well, considering. I have a long road for recovery but each day seems to be a little bit better. But I miss the little things, a nuzzle from my dopey cat. To listen to the rain tapping on the roof of the house (at home, I live in my attic). A sip of cool wine and the sounds of the wind coming through my open windows.
So, since I could not be at home for the Easter services I got a copy of The Passion of the Christ.
Please don't write to me and tell me how bloody and violent and gruesome the movie was. Don't write to me and tell me Mel Gibson is a Nazi. If you don't want to read my blog, move along. Those of you who do, please stay, and listen to what I have to say about this amazing movie.
I was raised watching all those technicolor Cecil B. DeMille movies that came out of Hollywood. Jesus was so perfect, with his beautiful skin and his long hair and usually cool blue eyes, those beautiful Anglo-Saxon Jesus who were so handsome but looked nothing like the Jesus of the times or the race that saw him in the flesh.
I still love those sanitized movies with scenes plucked right out of a Michelangelo painting where the image of Christ is super glorified even in his suffering. Maybe the painter was too afraid to paint the way Jesus would really have looked on the cross.
For one thing, Jesus was brutally beaten. Isaiah wrote in prophecy that the mob tore his beard from his face. I had a husband who had a beard and I could never imagine tearing out a patch of his beard. They brutalized him, forced him to carry his own cross and then stripped Jesus naked. No, Jesus did not have that modesty cloth around him when he died. Jesus was naked. Jesus was naked because the Romans knew that the most shameful thing that could happen to a person who considered himself a rabbi would be to appear nude in public, in front of both men and women.
Interspersed with the brutal and violent scenes of Jesus arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion, we see Christ as he was, a carpenter, making a table for a wealthy customer. We see Christ as the rescuer, rescuing the fallen woman from her persecutors. We see Christ as a little boy being rocked in his mother's arms. We see Christ as the teacher, the servant, the preacher, the forgiver of sins.
We also see Christ making affirmations: "Mother, behold, I make all things new," he says thickly, his face misshapen and bloody. We see Christ as the suffering and condemned prisoner being comforted by a woman who removes her veil and wipes his face with it. A primitive Kodak moment.
We see the Devil, mocking Jesus "No man can take on the sins of the whole world. No, No one, it is too much," We see the Devil mocking Mary, the Devil mocking her virginal birth and her holy infant by being the Infernal Mother and her Imp child.
And then Jesus does something amazing. He gives us his mother. John is standing there with Mary, his mother and Mary the Magdalene and he tells John that Mary is his mother now and we are told that he took her into his house from that moment on.
Christ dies, bloody and beaten and torn. A giant tear (or is it just a drop of rain, like so many that have fallen upon the earth) falls at the moment of Jesus death. The temple shakes and the curtain that separated the people from the Holiest of Holies is rent in two and the ark is depicted as gone.
And then the scene changes to a dark tomb being opened up and as the light of dawn rolls over the walls it washes over my super hero, an unblemished Christ, perfect in his wholeness, perfect in his resurrection, showing only the holes where his hands have been pierced and he rises naked from the tomb.
We look for the face of Christ in the imprint of the Shroud and on the veil we call Veronica's. These smudgy pre-technology Polaroids are the sign of faith, even if they are not real. They are expressions of our willingness to believe in the King of the Most High. We are looking for His face everywhere, from drawings and art on cave walls, church walls and statuary, on humble pieces of cloth, even on the trunks of trees and in pieces of bread.
Shall I tell you where the face of Christ can be seen? The face of a tired nurse who bent over me and wiped my brow when I had pneumonia, the face of my doctor who held my hand and gave me bad news and good news. The face of a lover who slept peacefully in the night beside me.
He is the faces of children, "Suffer the little children to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven." He is in the faces of old people you pass on the street. He is in the face of your fellow man. He is in the face of even your enemy "For I say unto thee that thou shall love your enemy and pray for those who do evil for they are poor in spirit."
For those of you who do not believe in some form of God, no explanation will suffice. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
God Bless you on this Good Friday.
And remember, God is in the rain.
So, since I could not be at home for the Easter services I got a copy of The Passion of the Christ.
Please don't write to me and tell me how bloody and violent and gruesome the movie was. Don't write to me and tell me Mel Gibson is a Nazi. If you don't want to read my blog, move along. Those of you who do, please stay, and listen to what I have to say about this amazing movie.
I was raised watching all those technicolor Cecil B. DeMille movies that came out of Hollywood. Jesus was so perfect, with his beautiful skin and his long hair and usually cool blue eyes, those beautiful Anglo-Saxon Jesus who were so handsome but looked nothing like the Jesus of the times or the race that saw him in the flesh.
I still love those sanitized movies with scenes plucked right out of a Michelangelo painting where the image of Christ is super glorified even in his suffering. Maybe the painter was too afraid to paint the way Jesus would really have looked on the cross.
For one thing, Jesus was brutally beaten. Isaiah wrote in prophecy that the mob tore his beard from his face. I had a husband who had a beard and I could never imagine tearing out a patch of his beard. They brutalized him, forced him to carry his own cross and then stripped Jesus naked. No, Jesus did not have that modesty cloth around him when he died. Jesus was naked. Jesus was naked because the Romans knew that the most shameful thing that could happen to a person who considered himself a rabbi would be to appear nude in public, in front of both men and women.
Interspersed with the brutal and violent scenes of Jesus arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion, we see Christ as he was, a carpenter, making a table for a wealthy customer. We see Christ as the rescuer, rescuing the fallen woman from her persecutors. We see Christ as a little boy being rocked in his mother's arms. We see Christ as the teacher, the servant, the preacher, the forgiver of sins.
We also see Christ making affirmations: "Mother, behold, I make all things new," he says thickly, his face misshapen and bloody. We see Christ as the suffering and condemned prisoner being comforted by a woman who removes her veil and wipes his face with it. A primitive Kodak moment.
We see the Devil, mocking Jesus "No man can take on the sins of the whole world. No, No one, it is too much," We see the Devil mocking Mary, the Devil mocking her virginal birth and her holy infant by being the Infernal Mother and her Imp child.
And then Jesus does something amazing. He gives us his mother. John is standing there with Mary, his mother and Mary the Magdalene and he tells John that Mary is his mother now and we are told that he took her into his house from that moment on.
Christ dies, bloody and beaten and torn. A giant tear (or is it just a drop of rain, like so many that have fallen upon the earth) falls at the moment of Jesus death. The temple shakes and the curtain that separated the people from the Holiest of Holies is rent in two and the ark is depicted as gone.
And then the scene changes to a dark tomb being opened up and as the light of dawn rolls over the walls it washes over my super hero, an unblemished Christ, perfect in his wholeness, perfect in his resurrection, showing only the holes where his hands have been pierced and he rises naked from the tomb.
We look for the face of Christ in the imprint of the Shroud and on the veil we call Veronica's. These smudgy pre-technology Polaroids are the sign of faith, even if they are not real. They are expressions of our willingness to believe in the King of the Most High. We are looking for His face everywhere, from drawings and art on cave walls, church walls and statuary, on humble pieces of cloth, even on the trunks of trees and in pieces of bread.
Shall I tell you where the face of Christ can be seen? The face of a tired nurse who bent over me and wiped my brow when I had pneumonia, the face of my doctor who held my hand and gave me bad news and good news. The face of a lover who slept peacefully in the night beside me.
He is the faces of children, "Suffer the little children to come unto me for such is the kingdom of heaven." He is in the faces of old people you pass on the street. He is in the face of your fellow man. He is in the face of even your enemy "For I say unto thee that thou shall love your enemy and pray for those who do evil for they are poor in spirit."
For those of you who do not believe in some form of God, no explanation will suffice. For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
God Bless you on this Good Friday.
And remember, God is in the rain.
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