Blog o’ Gnosis

This morning I took my camera to Doran Beach, in order to capture some of the great profusion of blossoms there. It is a peaceful place to walk and think, especially on overcast mornings before the weekend crowds. I am not much of a photographer; my technical expertise lies somewhere between point-and-click and set-your-own-f-stop. Except [...]

All kids needs rite of passage ceremonies when they come of age. We planned an elaborate one for my nephew Alex, a small intimate one for my niece Rose (both of whom lived with us during their teenage years—long story), another complicated one for Bowen and a big community celebration for Lyra. The most important [...]

I finally got around to watching Jesus Camp last night, and while I was horrified at how these kids were being brainwashed I also recognized some disturbing similarities between different brands of “spiritual” childraising. Watching Pastor Becky Fischer in action, I couldn’t decide whether she ought to go to prison or a mental health facility for how she bullied those kids into crying and being ashamed for their “sins,” then turned around and filled them full of crap about being the “chosen generation” to lead Christians through the “end times.” It’s a bi-polar emotional feast, and it left me wondering just what skeletons in her closet have caused her to be such a militant.

When I was growing up, on Easter morning we’d come out to the dining room to find lovely big baskets full of malted milk ball eggs, chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks waiting for us. Later, my mom would hide jelly beans in the green shag rug of the living room and we’d go searching for them, a little less enthusiastically. Can there be anything less exciting, really, than finding a crushed lemon jellybean full of rug hairs and dirt? Fortunately there was chocolate to eat, so none of us had to dwell on the unfortunate jellybean portion of our second favorite Christian holiday. (I dimly recall earlier Easter egg hunts out in the grass, but I think in later years she got too tired to do that and downscaled the whole outdoor component. WWJD?)

Due to a plumbing emergency this week, I found myself out in my front yard two mornings in a row. My neighbor Joe was doing the fixing part under the house, and I was there helping by periodically handing him a tool or a rag when he yelled for one. The rest of the time, [...]

Next weekend I will be headed, along with a thousand or two other Pagans, to PantheaCon. I have been there every single year it’s been held - with my booth in the marketplace, my kids, notes for workshops and rituals I’m doing, and every scrap of shiny, colorful clothing I own.

Among the many things I am doing this week to prepare for PantheaCon is ironing those scraps of clothing, some of them still wrinkled in the closet from last year’s post-con washing. A clothes horse I am not, but after my first foray to witchcamp in 1994 where I realized that the only colorful thing I’d packed was a red sweatshirt, I took the challenge to upgrade my wardrobe. Since then I have slowly gathered a respectable amount of ritual clothing, most of which meets my prime criterion for dressy clothes: they must feel as close to wearing pajamas as possible. Comfort trumps fashion to me, which admittedly sets me at odds with most of my Pagan brethren here in the Bay Area.

The air feels like liquid here, in blue skies or cloud. Sure, there’s a high moisture content because of the coast, but there’s more to it than that. The air is vast, like an ocean itself. Land and sea are all on a flat plane with not much visibility downward, but the air alone is three dimensional. We can see up through it but never to the end of it.

Today I got the news that the only son of an old friend of mine is dead, a suicide at age 18. I have been sitting with this unbearable loss all day, wondering how it is that we pick ourselves up and go on with our lives after such a tragedy. He had had a turbulent youth and was beginning to exhibit signs of a mental instability that runs in his family. I don’t know all the details but I know very well the effort involved in trying to protect and shepherd an unstable youth into adulthood before he causes irrevocable harm to himself or others. It is exhausting, thankless, relentless. We do as much as we can, and being human there is always a moment we let down our guard, our constant vigilance. It is called rest, sleep.

Yesterday I sacrificed a half-day’s work to go meet my father for lunch in San Rafael. We do this occasionally, meeting more or less halfway between our homes: he in Oakland, me on the Sonoma coast. Actually, it’s a longer drive for me than for him, but I don’t begrudge an old man his 10 minute handicap. I say I sacrificed half a day, but that’s only part of what it feels like to see my dad. After his heart attack 10 years ago, and especially last year’s carotid artery dredging operation, I feel lucky for all the time I get to spend with him.

I was just writing a note to a few friends and needed to lookup someone’s email address in my email program address book. Scrolling down the list, I was brought up short by noticing one I needed to delete. It belongs, or belonged, to my friend Luis Kemnitzer who died two weeks ago.