The Pagan Mom Blog

Coming out as pagan is always a difficult task. Some are lucky and their families and friends are supportive. Others have a much harder time with the people surrounding them. Often you find pagans online who often ask should I? When should I do it? And the ever elusive how do I do it?

I have never really announced it outloud. My family knows and doesn’t seem bothered by it. At least they have never said a word about it. This could be due to the fact that I am not very close to them and we talk maybe a few times a year. My friends know and the type of people I tend to be friends with, it doesn’t cause any issues. My husband’s family…..well I am not sure if they know or not. I have never come right out and said it but if they did ask I would totally confess. They have seen the altar in my home but I am not sure if they knew it was an altar lol. My father in law has seen tweetdeck open on my computer at work and my name is PaganMomBlog on twitter. And I have noticed that when the discussion of religion has come up, primarily the Christian religion, he will usually ask my husband a question. Not in a snotty sort of way but that kind of way of “you beleive like I do so let me ask you”. And then again perhaps I am reading into it.

Lately I have wondered if I should come completely out to my inlaws. I am concerned in the area of work. At work no one knows. Our clientele is on the elderly side and being in the south the automatic assumption is that they are all Baptists. I know, it’s an unfair judgment but it’s habit. One I am working on. I do know that some of them are Unitarian Universalists (which means very accepting) and I know exactly who those people are. But others  I worry about. I don’t want the business to lose clientele because someone has issue with my personal life.

So why is this coming up now, after 6 years of working there? I saw the look about a week ago. One of our clients has a business near my home and often in the mornings on the way in I swing by and pick things up or drop things off. This particular morning I got there before they open. I saw our client coming up behind my vehicle. Which she was staring at hard. And then that look came on her face. That look of “oh my god” and then I could see her trying to process it ” is she? noooo she couldn’t be”. Then she looked at me, that soul searching look and it was a desperate look. What was it that caused such a look? A bumper sticker. It says “Mother Grove” and has some slogan about honoring the goddess. No pentacles, no “my other car is a broomstick” sticker….just that word goddess glaring at her. I could tell that suddenly she was very uncomfortable. I handled her the way I always had. Cheerful and smiling. I told her what she needed to do with paperwork. I noticed that normally a woman who spent 30 minutes chatting my head off suddenly wanted to get as far away as possible. I haven’t heard  anything about this as of yet. My father in law is an adorable man. I can’t imagine anyone disliking him so I think if she had confronted him he might have been able to smooth things over. But the mere idea that he would have to do that bothers me. My religious beleifs should have no bearing on how well I can do my job.

So I am not sure what to do. I have this fear that if I came out to my inlaws that it would make things bad between us. I love them as if they were my own flesh and blood and for them to be upset would hurt me greatly. I think that is what makes this the most difficult. I don’t want people hurt. And I don’t feel forced into a closet, I have always wanted to live my beleifs without being an “in your face” pagan.

And perhaps I have blown out of proportion. Maybe there is some other reason she made the faces and wanted to rush into her store. Unfortunatley experience and intuition tells me otherwise.

P.S. I will be taking tomorrow off. This week is kicking my butt and I haven’t been getting up at 5am but 6 am. So I am going to listen to the body and “sleep in” and not worry about getting a post up. I will be back Friday for my Follow Friday post.

I don’t know if you have heard of this blog but 2 Witches Blog is pretty cool. For any newbie they have a wealth of info on witchcraft, paganism, and Wicca. For parents they have lots of info on pagan parenting. And  they even include some links to activities for kids and info on raising kids withing paganism. I plan on returning often to read up on their info and get some activities for my own so they can learn more about my celebrations and why.

Also right now they are doing an awesome giveaway featuring a witches calendar for 2010. I highly recommend you head on over and check them out!

This post is dedicated to my pagan readers. Of course my non-pagan readers are welcome to read and comment, it could be easily skewed to apply to anyone.

One of my twitter pals, RedBeanSidhe, has a blog over at Pumpkin Queen and her Pumpkin Patch. She wrote this post that gave me a moment of clarity…an epiphany if you will. To be brutally honest I have been feeling a bit disconnected lately. Something I am sure all of us go through. My monotonous routine has been wearing me thin. I get up, do a load of laundry, check email, get girls out the door, check social networks, take lil man to school, go to work, sit on a computer all day with twitter, work, and the 50 billion links I click through twitter. And when I am done work I go home, cook, check email, check social networks, blog, write articles, check email one more time, go to bed. In between all of that I might tweet or twitpic while I am around town on a lunch break or something. And yesterday I had this thought that I can’t beleive I actually thought. My Book of Shadows (BOS) has been sitting ignored. I haven’t written anything in it in months. I haven’t even looked at it. So what did I think? Why, I should transfer that to the computer! I mean I am on it all day already, so why not? Right? And I am knocking those pagans that love putting their BOS online, I just actually enjoy handwriting mine. RedBeanSidhe, bless her heart, she pushed an issue in my face that I have been purposely ignoring for at least a month now. I am too plugged in. I mean internet is wonderful, blogging is wonderful, twitter is wonderful….but wonderful things should be held in moderation. Is that not what all pagans seek? Balance? And am I balancing right now? No. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, I am not. And that is why I feel like crud and mush and major dog poo (although I almost blamed it on swine flu). The last few days I have avoided the computer even though I did get on to tweet about V in the evenings. It is time for me to rethink things and get back to some good habits.

RedBeanSidhe makes some pretty hefty suggestions. Even down to no stovetop cooking. Now, I will be honest….I probably won’t stop doing that lol. But her idea is in the right place, get back to basics. Get back to simplicity. And it couldn’t come at a better time, we are in the New Year! Change is supposed to come, we should be embracing it and preparing for it. So here is what I am going to do *takes a deep breath*

1. On weekends I can only post a blog in the morning, BUT the blog must already be written. Lots of pre-writing I must do if I want to have one post a day.

2. On weekends, NO COMPUTER. Nope. No email. No twitter. No twitpic’ing. No games. The only exception of course is to make sure that a blog post is published in the morning.

3. Weather permitting we take a walk outside in nature at least 3 times a week. Weather permitting meaning no rain. It being too cold is not an excuse. We can bundle up.

4. In the evening, candle lights. Not only will we be energy conscious but it will encourage us to get creative with our time. Of course this brings me to…..

5. No more than one hour of tv time with at least two hours of no tv in between. Yes, I am a bad mom. I let my kids watch too much tv and this to me is cutting back.

6. Write in my BOS at least one hour every other night. Encourage my daughters to start their own diary, journal, or BOS.

This will all begin….right now.

And that is all I can think of for now. I must give thanks to RedBeanSidhe for her post. She sent me her link letting me know she thought I would be interested, little did she know how much I needed to read it!

And now for all of you….write your own blog post if your up for the challenge of getting back to basics. For my non-pagan readers, you can post about perhaps how to become more unplugged. Let’s get a movement started! If you do write a blog post, please come back here and link in the comments. I want to be sure I see what your doing and others can see what your doing as well.

I found a new local shop that I am so in love with. It is called Gaea and they sell all sorts of metaphysical items. I had a great time looking around and ended up buying a couple things. They aren’t inexpensive but it’s nice to have a local place to go when I don’t have time to wait on Amazon to ship me something. I even got into a great discussion with the owner who gave me cards for some local pagans in town.

I was telling hubby about the shop and as usual our discussion went onto other topics in regards to paganism. I don’t know how we got onto this particular topic but we did lol. What I had said was that Christianity wasn’t nature based and that some Christians prove that point by saying “You shouldn’t worship the Creation but the Creator”. He took offense to this, something that I had not meant. His response was “that sounds like Pagan Prejudice”. Now there is no doubt that some pagans are prejudiced against Christians. This usually arises from some of the crap they have dealt with in  coming to their particular path and dealing with the prostelyzing. Regardless of your spiritual path, all of us are capable of being prejudiced of other paths outside our own. But in this case I have to say, no.

His viewpoint is that Christianity should be nature based because the Creator gave us Creation. I certainly appreciated hearing that. Christians as a whole have a somewhat unspoken reputation for not caring too much about the Earth. This of course is changing and will continue to change and I mean no offense to my Christian readers whom are ecological conscious of their home. Hell, some of you all are more ecological than I am. But, Christianity isn’t nature based because they do not honor the elements and see power in the earth and moon (and even sun). That is where I think his confusion comes in. He doesn’t beleive in honoring the elements, that it goes against God. I can respect that, but he  proved my point.

The most interesting part of the discussion is when he said ” I have never heard a Christian say ‘worship the Creator not the Creation’”. Well, why would he? He isn’t worshipping the Creation. When you’re in discussion with a Christian and they know you are Christian, they don’t exactly feel the need to drive that point home. He doesn’t seem to understand that what some of what we pagans hear, he will never hear. It’s a moot point. And I have to say I was equally frustrated. He just couldn’t seem to beleive that anyone had ever told me that before. Even after he saw some of the things that Ms. Kimberly Daniels put in her article about witches (click here to see my video on that). We have worked past this now. He is still in disbeleif but he seems to understand my standpoint.

So I am interested in hearing some comments about a similar situation. Have you heard something from a different religion and someone else of that religion alleged that it was “made up prejudice” just to be angry with that religion?

****UPDATE***** Music Savvy Mom is featuring my blog and my top ten playlist today on her blog. PLEASE, stop by and say hi! And if your not following her on twitter, add @MusicSavvyMom

I figure it was about time to share my knowledge about the holiday. Actually Halloween has morphed into something that isn’t a holiday but a secular gathering for the masses.

Halloween was once known as Samhain to the Celts. It was a New Year’s celebration. The end of the harvest and the beginning of the dark months ahead….winter. It was also beleived that the deceased could come back and visit their loved ones. To appease the gods and honor the deceased, the Celts left food on their doorsteps. Once the Church gained power and worked their way through Europe they found that the Celts weren’t so easily convertable. So the Church dubbed Nov 1 All Saint’s Day. The idea was that people were still honoring the deceased but it was still “holy” in the Church’s eyes. The Celts weren’t so easily persuaded so the Church added Nov 2 as All Souls Day and “allowed” the Celts to continue leaving food on their porches for the saints and souls of passed loved ones. At some point the Church convinced people that demons and evil spirits were roaming the earth on Samhain (which by now was All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saint’s Day). As an effort to scare them away, people worse scary clothes in attempt to scare the demons and evil spirits away first. Now you see how costumes and trick or treating got started!

When the Irish came over to America they brought with them All Hallow’s Eve traditions. And over time it exploded into what we now know as Halloween. Samhain has not been forgotten. Many people don’t know that Samhain is still celebrated but that is ok. Many of us have “dumb suppers” or some variation.  A Dumb Supper is a meal eaten in silence with an extra plate at the table for your ancestors and deceased loved ones. Because I live in a home of mixed religions we do not engage in a Dumb Supper, we just add a plate to our dinner table. I know many people who do this, especially if they have non-pagan company at home. In addition some of us gather in ritual. In my town we have a coven and a grove who hold public rituals where anyone is welcome to attend and participate. We gather, we honor the gods and our deceased, we perform various divinations and we may even do a spiral dance.

Unfortunatley there are people who have done some horrible things that have been attributed to witches, witchcraft, wiccans, pagans, and satanists. Just to clarify LaVeyan Satanists (the most common satanist, rarely do you find a theist satanist) do not worship the Christian Devil. They are more atheistic in their beleifs and they DO NOT perform blood sacrifices. For that matter neither do the rest of us. Now I will mention practitioners of Vodoo and Santeria might, I honestly am not well versed in their practices. I will say that anyone doing a blood sacrifice on Halloween night is either doing it because they want to be “badass”, are mental cases, or want to draw attention to themselves. Some will claim they are witches or wiccans or any other form of pagan. These same people are NOT a proper representation of what most of us beleive. In all honesty, it would be like me comparing all Christians to the Westboro Church or the Amazing Grace Baptist Church (extreme fundamentalists in case you don’t know).

Bottom line: Dressing up and trick or treating is not going to make anyone a pagan. Yes, it has pagan roots….but so does most every other holiday. So if your not gonna stop celebrating Christmas or Easter, there is no reason to stop celebrating Halloween.