Month: September 2008

Drill, Drill, Drill


I am having Sarah Palin nightmares.

I dreamt last night that she
was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles
and wore the claws of drowned
and starved polar bears around their necks.

I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness
or the fact that they live in the arctic
or that I have never seen one in person
or touched one.

Maybe it is the fact that they live
so comfortably on ice.

Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don’t like raging at women.

I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community,
help empower women
and stop violence against them.

It is hard to write about Sarah Palin.
This is why the Sarah Palin choice
was all the more insidious and cynical.

The people who made this choice
count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in
and practices is antithetical to Feminism
which for me is part of one story —
connected to saving the earth,
ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds,
deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one
of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime,
and should this country choose those candidates
the fall-out may be so great,
the destruction so vast in so many areas
that America may never recover.

But what is equally disturbing is the impact
that duo would have on the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, this is not a joke.

In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept,
the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution.

I take this as a metaphor.
In her world and the world of Fundamentalists
nothing changes or gets better or evolves.

She does not believe in global warming.
The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers,
are all part of God’s plan.

She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list.
The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered.
The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered.
The oil is here to be taken and plundered.
Iraq is here to be taken and plundered.
As she said herself of the Iraqi war,
“It was a task from God.”

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion.

She does not believe women who are raped
and incested and ripped open against their will
should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not.
She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control.
I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence
and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking.
From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library,
has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently.
She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well
be the next president of the United States.

She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns.
She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle.
She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip.
She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God.
That is of course her right, her private right.

But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God’s name,
when the rights ofwomen are
denied in his name,
that is the end of separation of church and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters.

I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands.

This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S.,
but of the planet.

It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth
or make it forever uninhabitable for humans.

It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world
or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack.

It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning
or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction.

It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare
or whether we build more and more methods of killing.

It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society
or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go
and do everything in your power to get Obama elected,
then consider the chant that filled the hall
after Palin spoke at the RNC,
“Drill Drill Drill.”

I think of teeth when I think of drills.

I think of rape.

I think of destruction.

I think of domination.

I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition,
emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent.

I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling?

More holes in the ozone,
in the floor of the sea,
more holes in our thinking,
in the trust between nations and peoples,
more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler

Q blogspot

The Spiral Dance Ritual


San Francisco Reclaiming’s annual Halloween ritual brings together over a thousand people to dance the spiral of regeneration.
A glimpse of a true Pagan ritual.

What is The Spiral Dance?

The holiday popularly known as Halloween is the time of year known to witches as Samhain, when the veil is thin between the worlds of the living and the dead.
We gather to remember and honor our ancestors, our Beloved Dead, and all those who have crossed over.
As we mourn for those we love who have died this year, we also mourn the losses and pain suffered by the Earth, our Mother.
Yet even as we grieve we also remember and honor the sacred cycle of life, death, rebirth and regeneration, celebrating the births of our children born this year, and our own vital connections to the Earth and each other, in which we ground our hope.

The first Spiral Dance ritual was held in 1979 to celebrate the publication of Starhawk’s book, The Spiral Dance (Harper and Row) Starhawk, a founding member of the Reclaiming Collective, wrote the original script which remains the heart of the ritual, though it has been altered and embellished over the years by her and many other people.
Traditionally, the Spiral Dance calls upon the energy and talents of musicians, artists, poets, dancers, crafts people, singers, technicians, priests and priestesses from the Reclaiming Community and beyond, and we are grateful to everyone who helps to create this magical experience we all share.
This is a participatory ritual and pageant which has become a central event in the Wheel of the Year for many in the Reclaiming Community and beyond.
Over 1,200 people join in this observance of the Witches’ New year, and the event raises funds which support the work of Reclaiming throughout the year.
When we dance the Spiral, young and old together, we remember and honor our own past at that same time that we renew our vision and embrace the future.
Let it begin now!

I really would like to celebrate this with my beloved ones!

Q blogspot

SPAM


Ik doe  nooit mee aan kettingbrieven, vooral niet aan de varianten met de venijnige staart:

“maar als je dit bericht niet verder stuurt, dan zul je het betreuren”

Dat soort tekst beschouw ik als een vorm van zwarte magie, vervloeking, doe ik dus niet aan mee en is reden om dat soort berichten als SPAM aan te merken.

SVP dit soort teksten niet meer naar mij versturen!

Shamanism:: Foundation for Shamanic Studies founded by Michael Harner


The Shaman is usually regarded as a healer as well as a mediator between the
normal – ordinary – world or reality, OR, and the spiritual world, the so
called
non-ordinary reality (NOR). He is an expert for communication with
the helping
spirits by changing his everyday consciousness to an altered
state and
“journeying” to NOR to retrieve power and information for his
clients and
tasks.

“Shamanism is a path of knowledge, not of faith, and that knowledge
cannot come from me or anyone else in this reality.
To acquire that knowledge,
including the knowledge of the reality of the spirits, it is necessary
to step through the shaman’s doorway and acquire empirical evidence.”
…

“The evidence was staring me in the face for a long time, but I didn’t see it; that in perhaps 90 percent of the world’s shamanic cultures they use a monotonous percussive sound to enter altered states of consciousness, rather than significant psychedelics”.
Michael Harner

Using the empirical method, I agree with the idea that drumming works. Chanting, singing, whirling, dancing also works.
Maybe the critical ingredient is in the repetitive excercise

Q blogspot

Owl’s Wings: The Lady in the Moon


Owl’s Wings quotes the classical chinese autum equinox moonfestival:

During the Moon Festival, people eat special yuek beng (moon cakes) – made
of all sorts of delicious ingredients – from ground lotus and sesame to all kinds of sugary fillings.
Along with these cakes, shops sell colored paper lanterns, traditionally in the shapes of animals and, more recently, planes and space ships.

The Moon Festival is a romantic one.
Lovers spend the night together sharing moon cakes and wine while watching the Full Moon. Even couples who can’t be physically together can still enjoy the night by watching the Moon at the same time, united together under the magical Moonlight.

Comment:
This festival also commemorates Hou Yi the Archer, lover of the Moon, who shot down nine of the ten suns who were scorching the earth.
Another nice detail: according to oral tradition the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty was organized using mooncakes with a secret message inside: “Kill the Mongols on the 15th day of the 8th Moon” .

Q blogspot