Monday Morning Rant: Too Many Beautiful Snowflakes

Ok, does anyone else ever run into this and get super irritated, or is this just a personal community pet peeve? As I understand it, in more 'mainstream' cultures, people often strive to meet some idea of 'normal'. I only have limited experience though.


Now, as soon as you hit the pagan, goth, indie music, hippie, nerd, and geek areas of America, you get the exact opposite. People striving to be seen as different, unique, or weird as possible. Notice the modifier "seen as". Some of them are more successful at it than others, admittedly. But these statements and phrases drive me out of my goddamn mind.


"Oh, my taste in music is really weird, you won't like it" (Please. Stop. I'm begging you.)
"I'm a mysterious person. No one knows anything about me, I'm just hard to figure out." (Well, I already know you're pretentious, shall we stop there?)
"Oh, I'm a total weirdo. Everyone says so!" (They're just being nice, dear.)

//insert offended comment/glare when someone else is pointed out as weird// "I'm stranger than that!", etc. (Well, you certainly want to be.)


Has anyone else noticed that these hard-core "I'm so strange" protesters aren't really as strange as all that? Now, I've met some weird people, both affable and ...potentially dangerous...and the one thing they had in common was a total inability to realize they didn't fit all that well into groups. 
Weird is not going dancing in the rain (not in these here parts, anyway). Weird is actually trying to stab your boyfriend when he puts on a knife-proof vest and dares you to test it. 
Weird is not music from other cultures. Weird is believing there is a demon gateway in your brain and you must be friends forever with certain pretty girls to keep it from eating the world. 
Weird is not wearing cat-ears. Weird is emailing people you just met with "YOU ARE MY TRUE FAMILY AND WE WILL ALWAYS BE TOGETHER" . 

Attention-seeking behavior is never weird, just obnoxious. Behavior that constantly garners attention, but you don't know why, probably means you're weird.


I don't think I ever offended anyone unintentionally more than when I suggested using his ipod on a car trip, and brushed off "Oh, you'll never like it, it's full of too much weird stuff" with "You haven't met Darla, now her music is weird. I'm sure we'll love yours!" This sort of comment apparently means "You are a boring, ordinary person. "


In Darla's case, I've never met anyone else, including my grandparents, who loves 20's, 30's and 40's top hits quite as much as her.  But then, she also makes her own hoop skirts. There's a lot about her to love. :)


Back to the pet peeve. I won't pretend I wasn't a bit guilty of this at one point, but as soon as I realized how obnoxious it is, I tried very hard to knock it off. I think I know where some of it comes from, though.


Everybody wants to belong to a group. It's a human thing. In the case of the above named sub-cultures, one of the defining characteristics of those groups is not fitting in to the mainstream. Literally, being off-kilter means you belong . To the kind of insecure, self-conscious person who worries about it, anyway.


Groups made up entirely of misfits totally don't have any problems with being insecure or self-conscious, right? Right?


Ok, maybe I should cut people some slack. And it sort of makes sense that if being weird means you belong, and you really want to belong, than the weirder you are, the more you deserve to be there, right? I mean, in a subconscious kinda reasoning way.


More than half of my irritation comes from my total inability to gently point out to people that this habit is A) obnoxious and B) absolutely transparent. I generally end up not saying anything at all, and slowly grinding my teeth to points.


I'm not really that strange or startling, just another white chick from the suburbs, with a crappy office job and a fairly entertaining social life. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.


So: how to tell someone something bothers you? Does anyone know how to gently tell someone, "Would you please chill out? We like you much better when you're not trying to prove something." If I could just master that, this pet peeve would probably go away. But honestly, it just seems mean - here's this person who's already insecure enough already, without having someone come down on them with "Knock it off, no one is THAT unique." And by the time I want to say something, that's pretty much the gentlest wording that comes to mind.


Also, does anyone know a good remedy for a bitten tongue? :P


Slack returning in 3...2...1...and go.

Blessed be!
Pennanti

Broom Closet Issues - Discuss

Is there a single pagan out there who doesn't have a evangelical Christian somewhere in their family, that either keeps them in them broom closet for years, or creates some on-earth hell to pay once the Big Reveal occurs?

My husband comes to mind, but then, he's got in-laws now.

Given the ubiquitousness of the issue, the level of the dialogue on it always kind of surprises me. We've got two major types of journalism on it:

1) How to handle The Conversation(s). Tips include calmness, talking points like An' Harm It None, a few basic bullet-pointed articles to "leave around the house", etc, and how to end a conversation fairly quickly without telling Related So-and-So that it's their hell, they can go burn in it. Everyone reading this knows what I'm talking about - it comes front-loaded in every Barnes and Nobles pagan book ever . The first one I ever read was the intro to Teen Witch, Silver Ravenwolf.

2) The personal story. We've all read these too - people who got thrown out, or didn't, and fights, conversations, the few family members who didn't knee-jerk, the explosive results of the one who did. Where The Conversation articles are focused outwardly, with generic advice of various degrees of helpfulness, the Personal Story is deeply personal - inward turned, cathartically based, and...frequently focused on how much worse it was for the author than everybody else. Ouch. They're sympathetic, but only up to a certain point.

I literally can't count the number of times the Personal Story, as a conversation among pagans, has turned into a pissing match. It's a badge of pagan cred for some people, which I just find bizarre .

Now, fairly obviously, this article is inspired by my own recent encounter. My Grandmother (last one to know, and just found out less than 6 months ago, prior to my hand-fasting) has apparently taken the inestimable words of Sarah Palin to heart, and has decided to reload rather than retreat. Which brought all sorts of things to the surface - namely, this gap in the pagan community where Christian family is involved. We've got the initial conversation, and guidelines on how to peacefully handle subsequent ugly conversations (boils down to A - yell until you get thrown out or B - leave.) What about the aftermath?

Those days afterwards, where I'm boiling and stewing. It doesn't matter if I handled the actual conversation fairly well (I did), or what it was about (lets not go there) - there's literally days of recovery, where I'm angry, and blind, and there's just poison seeping through my veins that I'm not sure how to get rid of.

I can't be the only pagan who feels like this after talking to Auntie Jesus.

Why isn't there more advice out there on how to calm the hell down after you did (or didn't do) the mature, adult thing? Now, all those cathartic personal stories come pretty much directly out of this phase - hell, I'm trying not to write one right now - but they don't really help anyone but the writer. They trend directly into triumphant defiance, "Well, I'm still pagan, and they can't stop me!", which is good for the end of the week, but...

I'm looking for understanding here. Some phase in between gearing up and coming down: "Yeah. This sucks. We've been there. And it's never going to go away, but you'll manage anyway. Try ice cream." Because we've all been there, and we don't want to talk about. It's painful. It hurts, worse than a breakup, to have these people you've known and loved since you were a little proto-pagan turn on you. Or maybe stand silently by while someone you've never liked or loved does the same. Of course most of the stories on it are so deeply personal - who could stay rational in the face of something like that?

The people who got thrown out completely don't exactly have it easy either - it doesn't matter how long it's been, there's always something that pulls you back in after a few years. Even once they've numbed out the rejection, someone gets sick. Or loses their job. Needs support, and then someone is navigating the treacherous waters of how far to trust that they aren't letting themselves in for another round of hate and bile by offering that support.

So how do you handle it? How do you get back to some kind of equilibrium, or peace? Now personally, for me it boils down to either exercise, or alcohol. Last night I picked exercise. Alcohol will probably feature in this weekend somewhere. I could do a ritual, but it smacks a little too much of teenaged defiance to be effective, personally.

As I said, I can't be the only person who finds the three days after talking to Cousin Born-Again full of anger and imbalance.

And the holiday season is coming. First Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and New Year's, and Easter. I haven't been able to hit November without an ulcer in years , totally unrelated to being pagan and definitely related to family, and I really can't afford to have a three month hangover this year. I have a grown-up job now.

A little help here, please?

Blessed Be,

Pennanti

Monday Morning Rant: I was walking across my bedroom, in June 2000, when I found myself. I didn't even have to go to Tibet!

Pagan Parents on the edge started this unintentionally with Fate and Freewill. It was sparked by the mention of the concept of someone's True Nature.

I think it can be widely accepted that while there's a growing contingent of little pagans growing up raised in their parents' faith*, most pagans 'found' paganism as they grew up, and moved to it away from what they had been raised in.

It stands to reason from there that most pagans were and/or are questioners, people who are seeking answers in and outside of themselves, on any number of topics, and go seeking answers.

That's the logical part. In my personal experience, almost every pagan I know went through a period of "trying to find myself", and some of them still are. It easily degrades into a discussion of your True self vs. the image you show the world, and what's real, and what isn't, and I've killed many a night until dawn on the various topicii**.

So I thought I'd take a minute to explain why both "trying to find yourself" as a phrase and the false assumed dichotomy between your True Self and your Public Self drives me absolutely insane.

When somebody says that an action wasn't really them, or they don't know who they are, or they haven't found themselves yet,  I just want to ask -

Who else could you be?

I went through the fairly standard teenage identity crisis, though my father told me I went through it a bit early. Somewhere between 12 and 14, for the most part. I agonized over masks, and representations. I struggled with depression, anxiety, emptiness on the inside. I felt lost, and alienated, and pretty much everyone reading this knows exactly what I mean, which is something I take comfort in. It's nice to be understood.

Isn't that what being a teenager is about? Struggling with your identity? The more I struggled with it, the more lost I felt. I was by turns nice to my parents, or surly. A flirt at school, or a tomboy. Media sells the idea that you're supposed to be consistent, and that definitely made everything seem even more important. Who was I? And through this, I found faith in the Goddess leading me to peace (because she loved me no matter who I was, so it didn't matter much, see?) And I prayed, meditated, had insomnia. Until an answer unexpectedly found me.

It was like the thought inserted itself, that it didn't actually come from me. It was so sudden, so alien. I wasn't even consciously meditating - it arose from the anxiety program running silently in the background, mulling over things to be anxious about even as I went about my routine. (You all know what I'm talking about, right?)

Who else could you be?

This came loaded with overtones and subtle innuendos, but the overarching meaning was - you can't be anyone else. You are only yourself. Always. The truth of your actions and your thoughts and your feelings is the sum total of your being. Things might not be as they appear, but how they appear is an intrinsic part of it. Regardless, "I don't know who I am" is an empty statement, better described as "I don't know who I want to be", and possibly including "I don't want to face who I am right now".

Hard on the heels of this thought came the notion that I was a whiny, sleep-deprived, self-absorbed person, by all accounts and purposes for the last year or so. Also that all the pretense in the world that I knew what I was doing wasn't even fooling myself, let alone anybody else. So that was a starting point - self-absorbed I could live with. Whiny, definitely not. Some changes needed to be made.

You are what you think, what you do, how you act. That's who you are. There's no secret, much better person somewhere inside everyone, that's not really like that. And the world would be a much better place if people would just face up to that. It would also have less hypocrites.

As an end point to the rant, I'm aware that this doesn't have anything to do with the actual podcast topic that started it. It's just the phrase True Nature that gets me. And for people who aren't necessarily ashamed so much as confused - I wish they'd stop getting confused about not having a whole picture. Sure, you're lost. If someone handed you a map, you'd have no idea where you were on it. But you can see a gas station, and there's a cross roads, so make a decision, and eventually, you'll know where you are. At which point, you can figure out where you want to be. But if you just stand there, wailing, "I'm Lost!" well...you're not getting anywhere, are you?

Ok, rant complete, slack returning in 3, 2, 1...and go.

Blessed Be!

Pennanti

(The hardest thing about this post is writing in second person as little as possible. But I know it annoys the hell out of me when other bloggers do that - "you do this, and you do that" - it always puts me on the defensive as a reader, and I end up irritated and entirely missing the point, which is that the blogger was generalizing a behavior I probably recognize. Reading back through, there's still too much 2nd person, and no one would even believe how much I cut out.)


*(or spirituality or whatever, we can do a whole thing on terminology at a later date. Please take "faith" as "whatever you do in that direction"
**(Not a word. Totally should be!)

Pagan Blog Prompt: Forgiveness

I'm starting to notice that most of these prompts come front-loaded with an opinion, like that school essay assignment "Why is America the Best country in the world? Discuss."

So let's talk about forgiveness, and how it is occasionally not nearly as useful as common belief has it.

We use forgiveness on a daily basis - your coworker screwed up the report, your friend is late meeting you, your cats peed in your bottom drawer again. Forgiveness is the emotionally over-syllabized term for "Don't worry about, it's fine". And this is a good thing. It keeps us connected, empathetic, and Not Total Jerks.

Forgiveness also does make my life better on a daily basis - mostly when, say, my husband is forgiving my latest bout of PMS. Forgiveness arguably does the guilty even more good than the aggrieved, especially when they already feel bad and want it to "be fine".

So what about when this impulse goes too far? Now, I'm not talking about the extreme end of the spectrum here - I am neither qualified nor experienced to talk about forgiveness in the context of physical, emotional, or chemical abuse. Anything that a nice policeman would beat the other guy up for and then hand you a tissue and a report.

I'm talking about that coworker who messes up every single day and needs you to cover his butt. That friend who stands you up over, and over, and over, and never seems to get why you're upset. The cat...well, you kinda gotta forgive her everytime. If she's peeing in your drawer, in some manner this is your fault. Clean the fricking litter, remember to close your bedroom door, and maybe take her to the doc.

When is enough, enough? When do you say, "Look, we gotta talk to the supervisor about getting you some training." or "You know what? Go find someone else to stand up." When does forgiveness become such a drain on your own resources that the only thing the other person learns is you're a doormat? Personally, I think it happens much sooner than most people give it credit, and a lot of toxic relationships are a result.

I don't qualify walking away from someone and then letting go of resentment and anger as forgiveness. Empathy and understanding, maybe inner peace, but you're not about to resume the relationship, so it's not really "fine" at that point.

Story Time!

I had a relationship at one point that was the emotional pits - I mean, spending every last second of my time wondering how I'd screwed up so badly, how to make it better, how to stop hurting her, since no matter what I did, she ended up crying, anxious, and forgiving me for being such a screw up.

I spent an entire 12 hour night shift praying, meditating, and working on automatic, just on the subject. How do I fix this? Goddess, forgive me, please. I'm not sure she's going to be able to after a while.

And what I got back was - "Why are you putting yourself through this?" Well, I'm not putting myself through anything, she's the one getting hurt here - "Oh, stop bullshitting. She's set you up coming and going." Well, it's not her fault, see, there's all the things that happened to her, she just gets like that - "And you're letting her."

My tiny little epiphany (Say it like a pet name, it sounds better) didn't get much farther that night. I was a forgiving sort; and anyway, she didn't mean to. But later on, it kept coming back - and eventually, I walked away. After taking much more crap then was ever reasonable.

And after admitting to myself that if she'd been, oh, NOT drop-dead heart-attack walk-into-a-lamppost gorgeous, I would have noticed some of the manipulation a little faster. But this girl made my brain melt straight out my ears. And her that much easier to forgive, for a time.

I'll also admit, I got a little harder on my friendships after that. I'm not the terribly forgiving sort after awhile. And I'm honestly happier for it, with more room for legitimately fulfilling relationships. The kind of place where you're always forgiving - it takes up a lot of emotional space and energy. Also, eventually you become one of those really obnoxious martyred people.

So, give yourself a break. Sometimes it's ok to just walk away.

Project Pagan Enough

This is one of my favorite pagan initiatives on the web, and I really don't mind saying so.

I'm a half-solitary eclectic pagan, and so is my husband - and so have been most of the pagans I've personally known. What has always been striking to me is the total disconnect between most eclectics and your hard-core, "I Have A Tradition" pagans.

Seriously. It's like that blank second you get when you remind a Catholic that, technically, they fall under the same umbrella as a Mormon. A sort of "How the Hell did that happen?" moment. Being raised Catholic, and being familiar with Mormon mythology, I also kind of feel like that, actually. Christian is a broad fricking umbrella term.

So is pagan, and for good damn reason. The most basic tenents of paganism have to do with the earth, with a personal connection with the divine and connotations of the worth of myth and faith. The only two commandments I've ever seen accepted across the board can be summed up by "Harm none" and "Don't Proseltize". And after that, it is up to you.

This is why everyone is pagan enough. Sure, you can argue that there should be some standards or regulations or whatever the hell. I'll disagree with you. When I was in charge of Pagan Student Union at college, my vp was a Catholic who read playing cards, my treasurer was an agnostic with buddhist interests, and my historian was an atheist interested in energy work. My secretary was the fluffiest bunny you've ever met. And this was a good thing. We honestly had a broad range of opinions represented at every meeting - and we learned from that. There's something refreshing about knowing whatever the topic, someone there believes in it - and someone thinks it's total crap.

Seriously, this club never once experienced groupthink. Even better, as we participated in campus interfaith events, it became known that whatever you were, if you wanted to come, you could come under our banner if nothing else. And how is more people involved in charity events a bad thing? Shouldn't it be enough to say, "Yeah, I mostly don't think about the abstract belief - but collecting food for the homeless, that I believe in."?

It's Pagan Enough for me.

On Starting Out...again.

I've been staring at my blog, willing some kind of pertinent, intelligent post idea to pop fully formed from my mind and straight into the blogger editor. I've deleted two partial entries, mostly for being the kind of self-absorbed rage-filled crack that drives me nuts on other people's blogs. I'm reading to see other people's ideas, not their wildly out spun reasonings for overblown grudges because their husband forgot to do the dishes. Write that shit up and then delete it, yeah?

And then while I'm reading through other journals, I fall across Celeste's. I'm spun in, jealous and breathless, in two minutes flat. I used to have that - passion, excitement, wonder, inspiration. What the hell happened? I haven't written with adrenaline and spark in years.

Celeste isn't the only one here making me look at myself deep and carefully. The world seems to be conspiring to remind me of who I was, as a teenager, which was only a few years ago. I'm a few months short of 25. I've run across letters, written to my older self. Poems, from late high school, early college. Dreams and thoughts and hopes and fears. There isn't much from the last few years.

I'm married now. I've been in a stable relationship for 4 years. As my common sense and relationship pattern-recognition has grown, the tumultous crazy friends of yore have filtered away, either dumped by me or me dumped by them. I don't have room in my life for pointless drama. I still have friends - wonderful, supportive, interesting people. Who aren't out to sabotage anyone. (Which is a little strange, given past history.)

Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it. I never wanted to be that kind of writer. The person who only has something to say when everything is going to hell. I used to teeter on the brink of supposed chaos and consequence (the kind that would go away if you would just STOP AND THINK RATIONALLY for a goddamn minute), and the words flowed like frat-house beer. Not very good, frequently messy and unsophisticated, but plentiful. I stopped and thought rationally - and the words went away.

I let them.

I haven't written a fanfic, poem, short story, journal entry, or anything more complicated than a dungeon in...since I graduated. Three years. The dungeons are kinda fun, and I spend a lot of time on interesting plot, but I'm not exactly emotionally attached. I am going to sign up for Nanowrimo this year - for the first time, I have the time. But meanwhile, let's get back to the point.

I've been staring at my blog. And not writing. I think part of the problem is all the podcasts I listen to; or rather, that I think writing about their topics is cribbing, so to speak. I always have an opinion, but I'm not exactly going to write out long involved emails and send them all off - for one thing, I'm so backlogged the podkin would be receiving responses to crap they talked about 6 months ago. For another...I'm not sure. So, screw it. I'll do a whole series of Podcast Response. It's not cheating if you cite the source, right? :) Eventually it'll kickstart me into some of my own topics. And if it doesn't, I'll just rename this thing Pennanti's Podcast Paragraphs.

No, I didn't put Pagan in there. There's quite enough of that already out there, and they do it better than me.

New Moon Ritual Cleansing

I've been angry lately. Like, simmering under the surface frustration and anger. My computer hasn't worked right in months, I hate my mother's new boyfriend, and I read WAY too much news. There's always something to rant about. (Today's Topic Of Choice: Google and Verizon SUCK)

Then something struck me. I haven't done a ritual in ages - ever since we moved to the new apartment a year and half ago, except for Beltane. And I haven't done a cleansing ritual since I had a broken heart, oh, four 1/2 years ago. Might be time, eh? And the new moon is the perfect time to burn away anger in incense and ash.

So, one purification bath, meditation, and prayer ritual later, I'm feeling much better. I think I should take some sea salt and bowl to work with me, though.

Blessed Be,
Pennanti

Pennanti's Kitchen Bath Salts:

2 cups Epsom Salts
1/2 Cup Boiling Water
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1 Tablespoon Sage
1 Tablespoon Basil

Pour boiling water over herbs, let sit for a few minutes. Mix in olive oil and epsom salt, pour into bath water. Soak. If being crunchy with herbs bothers you, take a shower right after and scrub off with baking soda. Relax!

Who you calling fluffy?

Has anyone else noticed the slow drift of the term fluffy? It seems to become just a bit more encompassing every year. It’s possible, I suppose, that this monstrous definition it’s turned into is applied most strictly by the involved and obsessed (and, loud) on teh interwebs, and the quieter lurkers are cheerfully ignoring it’s scope, but I don’t like it anyway.

Once upon a time, I used “fluff-bunny” for a very specific stereotype. It applied to that person, generally a girl, between the ages of 11 and 19 who’s JUST discovered Wicca. Mostly, Silver Ravenwolf. And it’s TEH NEATEST THING EVAR. There’s connotations of enthusiasm inversely proportional to effort and research, and starry-eyed expectations of magical fixes for everything. A general ineffectiveness at life. It could be wrapped up neatly with the phrase, “Cute, but harmless”.

The final...connotation...involved was the expectation that this fluff-bunny was eventually going to get bored and wander away. This mostly bore out in the last year of high school or first years at college, as they drifted into other more entertaining things and eventually settled comfortably back into whatever style of belief they were raised with.

So the definition was thus: Young, enthusiastic, lacking drive, seeking answers, and likely to go back to being a tolerant, harmless sort of Christian. Who might grab a Tarot reading at Ren Faire every now and again.

Does this reflect how you see it used now? It doesn’t for me. I see fluff-bunny expanded so far that it’s now a range, a “fluff-factor” (Thank you Fire Lyte!). It’s used to beef up your own personal pagan cred by denigrating someone else’s commitment. It’s used to say:

- I find your belief silly and dismissable
- You don’t know what you’re talking about
- You haven’t done enough reading or research
- You’re only playing. *I* am serious.

I find myself taken a little aback, actually. What use is this term anymore? It wasn’t ever precisely nice, but it’s been taken to a pejorative level that has people on the active defensive. I commonly see or hear discussions of belief and practice front-loaded with, “Well, I know it’s a little silly, but I...” or “I know it’s not accurate, but I like to...” in a quiet, self-deprecatory tone. Pagans are afraid of judgement by each other. What happened to the confident declarations of “I practice what I believe, and what works for me,” and “You don’t need centuries of history for validation.”?

Personally, I’m sticking with my own maxim. I’ve had it for so many years I can’t remember where I took it from: “There are a thousand paths to God, and every man’s is different”.

Blessed Be,
Pennanti

Testing, Testing, Here Goes Nothing...

I suppose these blogs should start out with a statement of purpose, shouldn't they? As my sister, The Squirt, would put it, "You need to define your brand!" Which is as good a thought as any, even if it's a very obscure way of saying, "Figure out what the hell you're doing, and why you're here, idiot!" I will admit her way is a little shorter.

Anyway.

I am officially tired of being solitary, or semi-solitary, or whatever you would call someone with a like-minded husband and a few like-minded friends, but no actual group structure to fall back upon when the time comes to practice. (Oh, by the way, this is a pagan "brand").

I have been listening to podcasts, reading blogs, and generally lurking for over 6 months.

My handfasting, while fantastic and amazing, was a bitch and a half to plan and execute, and is now over. So I have no more excuses.

I do now pledge, given all of the above, to execute some kind of outreach or presence, every day, without fail, into the internet pagan community. It may be a lengthy blogpost (better titled as "Rant"). It might be something on Facebook, or a comment on someone else's blog. I will at least use Twitter when I am cheapening the hell out.

It's the beginning of August. I think...the New Year is a good ending point. Hell, it's when everyone else gives up on their resolutions, I might as well pop it into the plan.

Blessed Be :)
Pennanti