Category Archives: Personal Development

Paganism, Personal Development, Spiritual Development

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Inspirations

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I don’t think I could possibly list all the people and things that inspire me and from whom/where I draw inspiration. I tend to look for inspiration everywhere. Most of the time, I find it. Whether I’m picking up a book fiction book, reading about the life and work of another person, watching a person live their authentic lives, or having a deep conversation with one of my many friends and acquaintances, I often find myself inspired.

Engagement with life in all of its variety is inspiring. Learning about lives different from my own is both educational and inspiring, gently urging me to expand my horizons and adjust my understanding of the world to be more broad and nuanced.

Inspirations are everywhere, just waiting to be discovered.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information on this challenge and a list of topics, see Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge.)

Paganism, Personal Development, Religion

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Festivals

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I have an embarrassing confession to make. Despite being a witch for over 25 years, I still struggle with some of the festivals. I often feel like I just don’t connect with them.

I love Yule and Samhain (though I’m seriously thinking of celebrating Winter Nights, which comes a bit earlier in the year, instead). They were easy to connect to. Yule is the longest night of the year and I’ve always felt an affinity to nighttime and darkness. And Samhain is the start of the winter half of the year, so I can relate to that in a similar fashion. Plus, I love the ancestors, and Samhain is often associated (at least in modern times) with the ancestors and the dead in general.

I feel a pretty strong connection to Beltane as well. I like the brightness and activity. And let’s face it, I don’t think a person can be a devotee/priest1 of Freyja or any other sexually charged goddess and not feel something at Beltane.

To a lesser degree, I often feel something at Imbolc as well. That’s usually because here in western New York, we tend to get our first sunny day with some hint of the coming warmth sometime in February. I remember a number of years when I went to my car to head for work, felt that sun, and immediately felt like I was shaking off some sort of slumber or stupor. So I can appreciate Imbolc as a time when we first get that initial hint of the coming spring.

The rest of the traditional eight Sabbats that Wiccans and many Neo-Pagans honor tend to feel distant and forced to me. As such, I don’t really do much for most of them. Some days, that bothers me and leaves me worrying whether I’m “Pagan Enough.” Other days, I just accept that I’m doing my own thing anyway, and that can include focusing on the holidays and festivals that hold meaning to me.

I’ve also been thinking about exploring other festivals outside of the eight ones so commonly used. For example, many Heathen groups have their own schedule of festivals and holy days. (Winter Nights, which I mentioned earlier, is one such example.) So I’ve started looking over their calendar and thinking about what holy days and festivals I might be drawn to.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about the challenge and a list of topics, check out Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing the challenge.)

Footnote(s)

  1. Potential topic for a future blog post. I rarely call myself a priest of Freyja, because that’s making a pretty strong claim. I’m reminded of a conversation of one of the mailing lists for The Troth about how you tell if you’re actually a priest. One half-joking answer given was “when you call yourself a priest of a particular god and the rest of the community doesn’t immediately laugh at the idea.” I’m not sure whether I’m there yet or not. I guess I’d have to do some “testing.” ↩︎
Books, Paganism, Personal Development, Religion

My virtues and ethics: Exploring a journal prompt from Chapter 11 of “Changing Paths”

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Hello dear readers! It’s been a busy and hectic week for me. I’ve been posting #ChangingPathsChallenge2024 posts a little (or a lot late) for the past few days as a result. What’s more, I didn’t find time to write a post for chapter eleven of Yvonne Aburrow’s book, Changing Paths until today. But I’d rather not just skip putting up a post this week, so I figure a day or so late is the better option. So here’s the journal prompt I’ve chosen from chapter eleven:

Make a list of your personal values and virtues that you hold sacred.

I’ll note that I covered this to some degree earlier this month in a blog challenge post. However, while I talked about the beliefs that tend to inform my ethics and offered a few list of virtues that influenced me, I did not write down my own list. As such, I’d like to take this opportunity to do exactly that.

The values I tend to think about and hold most dear, in no particular order:

  • Compassion
  • Integrity
  • Freedom
  • Creativity
  • Industriousness
  • Joy
  • Hospitality
  • Justice (though more through restorative than punitive means)
  • Fidelity

I hope it’s obvious that this is not an exhaustive list. Merely these are the nine (convenient that I came up with exactly nine off the top of my head) that I’d say I most consider when making moral decisions.

Paganism, Personal Development, Religion, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: My Path

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Some days, i really wonder if I have a spiritual path. This is in part because I often feel like I don’t do much. I’m not a huge ritualist. I don’t spend a lot of time doing fancy rites, complicated offerings, or grand magical workings.

I take some heart when I read Gerald Gardner’s books. He wrote that the witches he met practiced a simple craft and that it often seemed more kike children’s games them some fancy ritual or complicated process. That seems to match my own spirituality, in many ways. I often say that for me, witchcraft is more a matter of perspective. I feel I see and think about the world in certain ways that I consider “witchy.” And most days, that seems good enough for me.

Another thing I often wonder, though, is whether things would be easier if I followed a particular tradition or joined a particular group. I often feel like I’m blazing my own trail. While I often like that and the way it enables me not to get wrapped up in things that don’t really make sense to me, it also leaves me wondering how well I actually know what I’m doing. I often find myself wondering if I could accomplish more under following the tried and true methods of a tradition as imparted to me by a teacher.

And I suppose if I ever found the right teacher at the right time, I might go that route. But until then, I find myself on a certain path of my own making. So for now, I’ll continue to wend m way through things based on my own reasoning and intuition and the occasional insights offered by my deities and any other allies I might come across. Because as much as I might wonder about other paths, a huge part of me still wants to see where this path I’m on will take me.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about this event and a list of topics, please see this post by Yvonne Aburrow.)

Personal Development, Religion, Spiritual Development

Letting go of certainty and being right: Exploring a journal prompt from chapter 10 of “Changing Paths”

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Happy Friday morning, dear readers. I hope you’re enjoying reading my posts for #ChangingPathsChallenge2024 as much as I’m enjoying writing them. I thought I’d briefly mention a couple other blogs participating in the challenge. Of course, Yvonne Aburrow, creator of the challenge, is participating over at the resources blog for the book. I’ve also managed to run across The River Crow, who has written some delightful poetry for many of the prompts. I highly encourage you to check out both blogs and their entries. And if you know of other people participating, be sure to drop a link in the comments!

In the meantime, I wanted to write a post about chapter ten of the book Changing Paths, which is entitled “Unexamined Baggage.” For this chapter, I’ve chosen this journal prompt from the book:

Check your baggage. What ideas or values or assumptions are you carrying around from your original religious or philosophical tradition? Which ones do you want to jettison, and which ones do you want to keep?

I had to think long and hard about this one. I feel like I’ve unpacked and discarded most of what I picked up from my days as an evangelical Christian. Sure, I’ve only recently started examining and working through the ways in which my previous religion was mired in white supremacy. Similarly, I’ve been going through an unlearning process in which I critically examine what my Sunday school teachers, pastors, and other Christian leaders taught me about Judaism and the antisemitism that often gets baked right into some of the common tenets of Christianity. But these are both things I feel like I’m well on my way of ridding myself of.

Eventually, however, I think I thought of something I picked up from Christianity that I still struggle with at times: The constant need to be right and even to prove that I’m right. As an evangelical Christian, I was constantly reminded of the need to “be prepared to give a defense of the faith at all times.” So debates — or arguments disguised as debates — were something I often engaged in. I felt the need to prove that my faith was rock solid and correct. To be honest, that’s a need to is hard shake.

In some cases, I’m not sure I want to shake it completely. For example, I think there are some things that are worth arguing dogmatically in favor of, such as the basic humanity and dignity of all people. Along those lines, I will unapologetically fight for the rights and proper treatment of all people. To do otherwise would strike me as a betrayal of my principles.

And yet, even in these cases, I find myself stopping to check with myself as to why I’m engaging in such fights. Am I doing it because it’s the right thing to do and because people will be harmed otherwise? Or am I doing it in order to be right? In many cases, I suspect both motives play a factor. However, I think only the first one is a motive that should be encouraged. In the end, the well-being of others and the search for justice for them is not about me, nor should it be.

In other cases, I just think it’s important to remember that I’ve been wrong in the past and I could be wrong again. So I try — though not always successfully — to remind myself to hold to many beliefs and view loosely and humbly. Because again, it has to be about a search for truth rather than the quest to be right.

Personal Development, Religion, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Dreams

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Change starts with a dream. Some notion. Some fleeting idea of something we’d like to see. Something that inspires us and draws our interest.

Over time, that dream starts to take a more concrete shape. We add more details. We flesh it out. In time, that dream because a vision we can pour our will into.

We then take that vision and begin to determine how to make it a reality. We start laying out the steps that we can take to bring it about. We look for collaborators and co-conspirators. We transform our vision into a plan.

We then execute that plan. We take the planned actions, re-calibrating and modifying both the plan and our actions as needed. Eventually, our plan and our execution of it leads us to the realization of that dream. We have altered reality itself and built something we can be proud of.

But it all started from that dream. Without dreams, nothing would change. Without dreams, would we even be truly alive?

(This post is part of the #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more information about the challenge.)

Paganism, Personal Development, Religion, Spiritual Development

#changingpathschallenge2024: Change

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I have a complicated relationship with Odin. When I started looking to build a relationship with various Norse gods, I had planned on avoiding Odin altogether. I thought Thor seemed like a much friendlier and jovial sort. And Thor was indeed friendly to me. But one night, he told me he couldn’t stay to talk with me because someone else wanted a word.

And after a beautiful moment of being transformed into a falcon1 by Freyja and an exhilarating flight over a gorgeous canyon, I found myself in the throne room of the Al.father himself, who accused me of avoiding him.. I had been caught red handed and called out. Odin and I had a brief conversation in which he explained to me why i needed the gifts and lessons he wanted to teach me. I saw the wisdom in his arguments and agreed — albeit somewhat reluctantly — to work with him.

Odin has never been a huge part of my life. But he comes around every now and then. And the thing is, life gets interesting whenever he does. Because in my experience Odin usually brings change with him. There got to be a point in my life where I would sense his presence anew in my life and would immediate want to scream, “What now, fucker?!”2

Change is never easy, nor is it comfortable. I recall reading somewhere that all change is stressful and even traumatic, even positive change. And while the changes that Odin brought and asked me to undergo were always a net benefit for me, I didn’t always like going through the process of change.

That’s normal, and sometimes the only way to endure it is to remember that change is vital to life. One of the defining characteristics of living things is that they grow, and growth always means change. I’ve also heard it suggested that if you are not growing, you’re dying (which is typically a much less pleasant form of change in its own right) or already dead.

As someone who wants to go on living — and hopefully living well — I’ve come to accept change. Even with all its discomfort and messiness. So after I’ve sighed and groused about Odin coming around with more change, I usually let out a breath and say, “Okay, bring it on, fucker. Let’s do this.”

(This post is a part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more information on the challenge and a list of keywords/prompts for it.)

Footnotes

  1. If it’s not obvious, I’m talking about things that I envisioned/experienced while in an altered state of conscience. I’m not claiming that I literally shape-shifted. ↩︎
  2. Yes, I occasionally swear at my deities. We have that kind of relationship. ↩︎
Emotions, Love, Paganism, Personal Development, Religion

#changingpathschallenge2024: Love

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Jesus Loved Me. Freyja Taught Me to Love Myself.

That was my joking answer back in 2022 when Meghan Crozier1 asked her followers what they would title their own deconstruction memoirs. The statement has stuck with me ever since. It’s funny how sometimes what we say when joking turns out to be profound truths, even if only personally true or profound.

My understanding of love was somewhat limited when I was an evangelical Christian. This was due to the fact that in that religion, I was taught that love — or at least pure love — was something that was only given out by the perfect god of the religion, who poured his love out on the undeserving — that is, everyone else. Realizing that I was only receiving love because the Almighty was giving it to me despite myself ruined my sense of self-worth, something I’ve talked about multiple times.

So when I came to Paganism, I was confronted with a new in which I could see myself as inherently worthy of love. That changed so much about the way I saw both myself and love. In time, I’ve come to realize that love — whether for myself or others — is a natural reaction to recognizing the sacred nature — which I define as the inherent value — of the beloved. If I and other are sacred/inherently valuable, how can I do anything other than love them? This allowed me to pour out love2 — both for myself and for others — more freely.

(This post is part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. See Yvonne Aburrow’s post for more details on the challenge.)

Footnotes

  1. As an aside, Meghan co-hosts a wonderful deconstruction-themed podcast with Cortland Coffey called Thereafter. I highly recommend it. I’m their number one fan. (Pay no attention to the sledgehammer behind my back.) It also occurs to me that I should see if I can help get Yvonne Aburrow on their podcast. I think many people in their audience would appreciate Yvonne’s book(s). ↩︎
  2. I will note that as an evangelical Christian, I always found it other to be loving toward others than toward myself. Much of (white) evangelical Christianity is designed this way. After all, we are commanded to love others, but deny ourselves and do things like “put our sinful nature” — which is often conflated with “the flesh” — to death. Plus, I grew up learning that “Jesus, Others, then You” spelled J-O-Y, and that was the order you were supposed to prioritize people in. The reality was, I rarely got around to the Y part, so I had more JO than JOY. ↩︎
Personal Development, Religion

#changingpathschallenge2024: Hope

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Hope is that thing that gets me out of bed. It is the recognition of the potential contained within each new day and what I envision might become reality from that potential. Those visions can be well formed or they might still be vague concepts that I am developing.

My hope is bolstered by my community, made up of individuals who have hopes and dreams of their own. We share our hopes and dreams and work together on those that we hold in common. Often, we help one another with the hopes and dreams that we do not hold in common because (1) it delights us to do so and (2) we know those we help will likewise help us achieve our own personal goals and dreamsl. This web of mutual support and encouragement is another source of hope. It reminds me that I do not have to do this alone.

My deities are a part of that community, and their wisdom and faith in me also bolster’s my hope. it’s strange to consider that my deities believe in me as much as I believe in them. “You’re doing great! You got this!” they seem to say, and I take another cleansing breath as I continue my labor to bring my hopes to fruition.

Some days are rougher than others. Some days, my hopes and dreams don’t materialize as much as I’d like. It can be discouraging. And yet, as I lay down for the night, I take comfort in the knowledge that tomorrow will be another day full of yet ore potential and opportunities to turn that potential into something real.

I know that tomorrow, hope will be there to help me get out of bed once again.

(This blog post is part of the #changingpathschallenge2024. For more information on the challenge, see Yvonne Aburrow’s post announcing it.)

Meta-Blogging, Personal Development

Musings on this blog and life in general

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This blog has been running on a self-hosted instance of the WordPress blogging software since I migrated over from the (also self-hosted) Movable Type software back in May of 2013. I’ve never regretted the decision to make the move and actually love WordPress. It’s handy, versatile, and easily-extended platform.

Though for the past few months, I’ve been having trouble with their JetPack plugin. The worst of the problems is that every now and then, when I do a plugin, the whole system would have to go down. Then I’d have to deactivate Jetpack and possibly even disconnect my blog from the WordPress.com site and then set it all back up.

Well, tonight, I managed to resolve those problems. it was pretty easy to fix in the long run. It was mainly a matter of contacting my hosting provider and having them enable another extension to PHP for my server. Then I also found out that my PHP configuration was limiting memory to a ridiculous number, which I was able to fix myself. And now, I have a happy blog that plays nice with JetPack again. Cool!

Of course, having spent the time to sort through that, I feel like I need and want to get back into blogging. That’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, to be honest. After all, I felt really energized after writing blog posts participating in the #OcculTea conversation. Then again after appearing on The Mocha Widow’s podcast.

What I struggle with is how to keep up the steam. And if I’m being honest, I feel like this has been a recurring problem for me. I look back at the number of abandoned — and it feels like failed — projects I’ve started up:

I think the only thing I’ve been able to stick with has been microblogging at sites like Twitter (I will never call it “X”) and Threads. And that’s mostly because (1) it’s easy to come up with something that’s only a couple hundred characters long to say and (2) I’m often just silly there. A blog requires something longer and more serious. (As do many of the other mediums I’ve experimented with in the above list.)

Of course, I think another thing that helps me on those particular sites is the engagement. I almost always get some feedback on Twitter and Threads. But when it comes to my longer content, whether it be a blog or a YouTube video? Not so much. And that’s a bit discouraging. I won’t deny that or apologize for feeling that way.

However, it’s also more than that. Engagement energizes and inspires me. When I get feedback, it often makes me think of other things I want to say. When I don’t get such feedback, I often feel like I’m stumped wondering what else I actually have to say. The engagement keeps me thinking.

This is something I realized after doing the Interview with The Mocha Widow. i jokingly thought to myself that I’m a much better guest than a podcast host myself. Though maybe that was the mistake with my podcast. I wasn’t inviting guests on, but merely trying to fill the show with only my own thoughts.

In some ways, that’s also why I often miss diary communities like OpenDiary, which is where I got my blogging start (though we didn’t call it as such over there). We read each others diary entries and commented on them. And often we replied to comments on the other person’s own diary. We had whole conversations going there. (Weirdly, I feel like sites like LiveJournal and Tumblr have tried to recapture that community feel, but it just doesn’t seem the same to me.)

I’m not sure how many people really see this blog by comparison. It’s standalone. There aren’t diary circles I can submit posts to. There aren’t other bloggers on the site looking to join in. So part of the trick to get engagement hear is just to get people reading what I write here in the first place. And I’m not entirely sure how to do that anymore.

I also think I need to work on getting more inspiration by engaging in things myself. For example, I haven’t read many books on Paganism and witchcraft lately. I mean, it had probably been a full year before I borrowed a Kindle Unlimited copy of Essential Asatru last month. So I think getting back into some appropriate reading might help give me new things to talk about. Or maybe even just new perspectives on old things I’ve talked about before.

I do know I’ve been thinking I’d like to start reading some of the Pagan theology books I started looking up. So that may be a good place. Plus I have all the Icelandic sagas and other source materials for Norse/Germanic culture and religion that I still need to read. Maybe that will help get the creative juices flowing as well.

And as always, if you’re reading this, you are more than welcome to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. After all, as I noted earlier, I thrive on engagement/feedback. So how about providing some nourishment for your friendly neighborhood wyrd-worker?