Spirit bathing

It’s my own term. Different for everyone and can be different everytime. It’s actively participating in the act of connection with deity while doing something you get pleasure from and allowing yourself to submerge into the moment through engaged meditation.

I reach a level of Satori when I work on the land down at Midian. I am able to meditate and connect with the land and work to open the land to show it’s beauty and to provide spaces for people to come camp there, joining with our love for and desire to heal that land. Usually, I do this through the running of my brushcutter or leaf blower to clear land for camping and use because the noise/protection allows me to actively engage in the world while still being apart and able to shift that space between.

69 things about me that may or may not bother people, but, have little likelihood of changing

1. I turn everything into a sexual innuendo. This is a skill I’ve honed since childhood and has been tested for rigorously for hours at a time, and yes, I can turn *anything* sexual
2. The number 69 has been a focus for most of my life. When I played football in  high school, the #69 was taken by one of the other players, so, I took 77 for my # because it was 69 and you got 8 more.
3.  I acknowledge funny to me is not always funny to you. I still think I am hilarious.
4. I am Pagan and a Priest of Pan. My life is centered upon freedom and living life 100% and getting others to do the same, if they want to 🙂
5.  I am a Child of Loki. This doesn’t mean I call him to me, I recognize the role he plays and I don’t fight him.
6. There is no rule six – I am a huge Monty Python fan and will insert and inside honors and references to them, everywhere I can in the world
7. I think the world is too fucking serious
8. I am dedicated to the concept of consent.
9. I am very expressive and vocal.
10. I am on this earth to help people. This doesn’t mean that I think it is a good thing to fix things for you.
11. I work hard to help people make their own decisions.
12. My life is focused on helping people grow and expanding their lives and horizons
13. I am a huge fan of the number 13. I am pretty sure it has to do with my always rooting for the underdog.
14. Since the tradition is to leave the number 13 out of things like floor numbers, I tend to ignore 14 in my numbering schemes.
15. I give 100%. I also acknowledge that 100% one day is not necessarily the same as 100% on another.
16. I rarely get to talk to everyone I want to at social events.
17. I suck at keeping in touch with friends.
18. I let people make mistakes. How else will you learn?
19. I am not afraid to tell people I am a recovering alcoholic.
20. I don’t care if people drink around me. I dislike being surrounded by drunks.
21. If you get stupid drunk, you won’t get any pity from me.
22. If you forget I’m an alcoholic and offer me a drink, I am not offended. If you insist, I am offended.
23.  I tip. I have worked for tips, I know how important they are
24. I am always polite, respectful, and courteous to strangers. Especially cashiers and wait staff.
25. I put things back where I got them in the grocery store if I don’t want it.
26. I won’t talk to people I don’t like, no matter the social situation.
27. I am adept at ignoring the existence of people I don’t like, even when they are standing next to me in a large crowd and participating in a conversation I am involved in.
28. If I don’t receive a reply to a text in a conversation, I rarely continue the conversation until that person has replied to that topic.
29. I work very hard to not get stuck in the past
30. I work very hard to not focus on the future, it ain’t here, so, have no clue what it will actually be, so, why worry about what isn’t?
31. I live in the now, because it’s the only thing that is actually real at the moment.
32. I don’t make small talk. Life is too important to not communicate the important stuff and the incidentals don’t really register on my radar
33. I suck at most social civilities. It’s not that I don’t know them, usually I just really don’t care to waste the time.
34. I don’t back down when confronted and I feel I am in the right.
35. I apologize if I am wrong.
36. I won’t apologize for something I don’t feel I was wrong in doing.
37. I will call you on your shit.
38. I am not offended when someone calls me on my shit.
39. I am not afraid to scream very loudly when “The Emperor has no clothes!” I call bullshit when it’s bullshit
40. I won’t manipulate or attempt to control people
41. I don’t warn people about other people. Not everyone will have the same interactions I do and it’s not fair to influence the possibility of those people not having the issues I did.
42. Duh
43. I live by the motto “YMMV -Your Mileage May Vary” and am my own judge of people.
44. I will resist fully any and all attempts to manipulate me. Violently.
45. I am very emotional.
46. I am unafraid to show my emotions.
47. Sometimes my emotions can be meteoric.
48. My favorite description of me is “Incendiary”
49. I love. A lot.
50. I am very protective of and do everything I can for the people I love.
51. I am polyamorous. I fall in love easily.
52. I love NRE. I am aware that NRE affects all of my relationships and do everything I can to infect and boost all of my relationships because love shared is love multiplied.
53. I will not generally tell folks how much pain I am in. It’s constant and why bring everyone down. Besides it may lead you to think preventing me from doing what I want might be a good idea. It’s not
54. I have a very jaded and intense dislike of the concept of me being married. I think the word and intention is enough and if you want to go, go.
55. I will not try and talk someone out of breaking up with me. If you don’t want to be with me, why should I try and convince you to do something other than your will?
56. I will not chase anyone.
57. If I feel I am unwelcome or undesired in a relationship, I am gone.
58. I don’t talk on the phone if it can be helped, I prefer to text.
59. All of my texts can be searched so I can make sure of what I said, because my memory sucks. This is only one of the advantages of Google Voice.
60. I will search my texts to see what was said previously on a topic if it doesn’t match what I thought was said and copy and paste it back to you, with timestamps.
61. I hate liars.
62. I dislike money.
63. I sneak and pay things for my friends that need help. I also do it openly.
64. I tithe to Pan in multiple ways meant to raise the Happy Quotient for everyone who wants to benefit.
65. Just because you want me to do something I don’t do, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.
66. I won’t do what I don’t want to do.
67. I tend to be incredibly private, this blog is a huge stretch.
68. I am really busy and don’t always have time to complete everything I start
69. I may owe you one, but, I will make it up, eventually

Satyr’s Call

Pan, your children call you
Pan, your children need you
Pan, we’re lost in shadow
Bring us to the light

Day by day we seek to
Live beyond the shadows
Lost among the trees
Bring us to the light

Pan, your children call you
Pan, your children need you

My life belongs to no one
My path is mine to choose.
My best is all I can give
Guide me to what right

Pan, your children call you
Pan, your children need you

We live by our passion
We pursue our desire
Our action must be paid for
Guide me to what’s right

Each one of us is equal
Each one of us committed
All voices reach out for life
Dancing in the light

Pan, your children call you
Pan, your children need you

Owners of our destiny
All deserve the same treatment
None the right to judge us
Dancing in the light

Pan, your children call you
Pan, your children need you
Dancing in the light.

Hail Mary’s intercepted

My last year has been full of death in multiple forms of different kinds of relationship connections and levels of influence over my life. I’ve had family die, cut connections with dysfunctional family, been fucked over by friends, hurt by lovers. I’m currently in the process of rethinking my approaches to life and my views of myself as to how those who have passed and just how all of those things have influenced my life and who I perceive I am. I have a view of death that it is a passing and while there is sadness, it is part of what happens to everyone.

While thinking these thoughts, I am somehow managing to see my interactions in a much more healthy manner, when I avoided contemplating those times at all. I have very little memory of my life before high school and not much of it. Most of it sucked and there were a lot of people who felt the fat, weird kid was a fair target for their frustrations and self loathing.

When I got sober at 23, AA was instrumental in setting my path. However, AA didn’t fully work for me as a non-Christian and I stopped going to meetings after a year. (I’ve managed to stay sober to this date, no worries) I stopped because I couldn’t take the religious bent anymore and there were pieces that didn’t work for me. Mainly, it has to do with forgiveness.

My path doesn’t require you forgive people for hurting you. I don’t believe you have to forgive someone to heal from their hurt. I don’t necessarily think you have to get revenge, but what you do have to do is learn from it. Learn how it happened and what you can do to avoid that cycle and then manage to successfully prevent from being in that situation again. Learn to avoid allowing people like that in your life in the future. Learn to not touch the hot stove.

There is a step to that AA did help me in reaching, though. It has to do with accepting that you can’t control the actions and emotions of others and have NO responsibility for them. This is the step that is the hardest. Especially regarding those who have removed from my life this year. There’s nothing I could have done to prevent those people from hurting me in the ways they did. However, I look at what they did, how it made me feel, what I can do to avoid doing it to others, and then take that forward.

I don’t believe that you can have some sort of grace delivered by some distant authority that absolves you of responsibility for your actions. I am not a supporter of how Bank of America or HSBC were dealt with. I believe that you are responsible for your actions and have to face the consequences of said actions. There is no escaping responsibility, that is for Priests in confessions with people that need someone to come between them and their God and a way to feel better about yourself, when it does nothing to fix the harm you’ve caused.

Lil bout me

I am not a code slinger, at all. I am a configurer that finally started learning javascript 2 years ago, we won’t talk about the .Net failures. I can do html and css and light stuff, but I want to learn how to framework SPA’s, lol. I can do design and I have a pretty decent eye, however, I can come up woefully short of being able to express it in any way someone can view it to buy in until I am done fiddling, lol. However, I am pretty good at making the site matching your comp on more than a couple of platforms 🙂

Draw something? I have this duck I learned to draw when I was a kid and I draw Kilroy occasionally, lol.

I think you missed your bus

I am a very straight forward person. I’ve worked really hard most of my life to better myself and do everything within my power to treat people fairly, until they treat me unfairly.

Forgiveness isn’t a tenet of my religion.

I have one major relationship interpersonal “glitch” that I’m not entirely sure I want to fix. I have a moral imperative to let people have their will, this is a good thing. The bad thing is where it comes to relationships. I am not going to complain and argue and bitch and whine and manipulate. It’s not me. I won’t complain and cry because I am unhappy in a relationship. I state what I am not ok with and I wait to see if this is the way the person wants it and if this is the ongoing behavior and that’s not acceptable, I let them have their will.

I will hang on and listen and cheerlead as long as I get lip service to what the issue is, until I no longer see any possibility of change or hope for things to get better in any way.  And then I walk away.  I never know how long I can stick it out. I never know just how many weeks, months or years, I will allow myself to deal with shit, just to give people a chance to do right and actually do the things they say they will. Until I decide they won’t, because I just don’t see an effort.

When I give up, that means there is no trust that the person will do what they say. That the person has chosen to make their life in a certain way that is unhealthy or damaging to myself or my family.

The Bus doesn’t wait any longer than it can for anyone. No matter how late people run to jump on, it’s got to keep moving on it’s journey and sometimes your left looking at the tailpipe if you don’t pay attention.

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Antagonists in the Church

This was written for Christians, however, once you ignore that, it provides very effective techniques for dealing with Antagonists