tolerance and acceptance

  Last weekend I attended the Changing Times, Changing Worlds conference, an annual regional conference on metaphysics in the northeast United States. I've done workshops at the conference 4 out of the 5 years its run and I really enjoy attending. This year was no exception, with many good workshops and panels as well as excellent conversations with both attendees and other presenters.

   One of the most interesting panels I saw was "When is it okay to tell someone they are wrong?". The five panelists discussed various scenarios within the pagan community where someone was either publicly lying or falsely claiming things, such as experience or titles, and how they might each deal with the situation. I was surprised by the number of responses that advocated kind private interventions and mentoring to handle people making such claims. There was also a strong emphasis on accepting that wrong didn't include different, and that we as a community needed to be more open and accepting of varieties within traditions and practices. In other words there is no one correct Wicca, no one true witchcraft, no exact Reconstruction, so it is foolish to have so-called witch wars over differences in approach and method. I found that while I didn't agree entirely with everything that was said I did walk away with a lot to consider.
   One of the nuances that I think is consistently missed in the wider community is the difference between tolerance and acceptance. Tolerance is simply being able to allow or endure the existence of something, including things we don't like and things we disagree with. I can tolerate a lot within the community because I do not expect everyone to practice, believe, and act the way I do. Acceptance on the other hand is agreeing that something is good or suitable. There are many, many things in the pagan community that I do not particularly accept. I do not accept them as either good or suitable beliefs or practices and given a chance I'll usually expound on why. However - and herein lies the crux - I can tolerate what I do not accept. More importantly I should and must tolerate what I don't accept because it is pure ego to think that every single pagan - or even every Irish recon - would or should think and do exactly as I think and do. And I fully expect others to tolerate my practices and beliefs which they do not accept.
   So then, if I am tolerating that which I don't accept when is it okay to tell someone they are wrong? Well, my short answer is usually always, at least in the sense that I think we should all be open to questioning and criticism of what we do. I don't see anything wrong with telling someone I disagree with them, nor I do think that voicing disagreement must always be condemnation or attack. It is entirely possible to say "I don't agree with doing that" in a civil manner.
     I do also think that as a wider community we do need to be willing to speak up about the things that matter, the big things like abuse and fraud, without feeling constrained by a false propriety. This idea that we don't want to rock the boat or be confrontational seems to be so misapplied to me, when we can have huge intergroup issues over someone blowing candles out instead of snuffing them but no one wants to accuse another person of an actual serious crime when they should. That kind of behavior we should never tolerate, and yet we do while simultaneously refusing to accept minor theological differences between traditions that shouldn't even be a concern. I mean why should I care that a group I don't belong to does something I find silly or pointless, or even offensive? Whereas I should obviously care if another group is hurting children or stealing money from people.
    When should we tell other people they are wrong? When they are publicly putting something out that opens up a discussion; when they are making statements of fact; when they are speaking as any kind of authority - then I think we should speak if what is being said is objectively wrong. When it is a question of personal belief and ideas, then it is less telling someone they are wrong and more about engaging in conversations and dialogue and expressing an alternate viewpoint. I'm sure there are many valid reasons for silence as well, especially when its wiser or more strategic not to speak, but I think there is too much of that in many areas. We argue over inconsequential things, but we stay silent over what really matters.
   Accept what you agree with; tolerate what does no harm and doesn't affect you; speak your truth

Celebrating Samhain with a Complex Child

Canann Badb. 
feannóg guth
Garbh agus amh. 
Canann Badb.
Tagann an gheimhridh 
i sioc agus scáth.
Canann Badb

"Badb speaks
a crow's voice
rough and raw
Badb speaks
winter arrives
in frost and shadow
Badb speaks"

I wrote the above poem this morning as I listened to a crow calling to me, perched on a tree outside my window. Today is the beginning of my three day celebration of Samhain, and tonight belongs especially to the daoine maith, the Good People. I've written several times over the years about how my family celebrates Samhain and about the history of the holiday so today I decided I want to tackle a more personal topic, that is celebrating this holiday with a child who has complex medical issues.
  One of the walls I often crash against in the wider pagan community is the inaccessibility of events and rituals for children who have issues, from autism spectrum disorders to physical mobility issues, that require accommodation. We are a community that prides itself on inclusivity, and yet I often see a lack of it towards children in general and specifically towards children who have behavioral or physical challenges. The biggest argument against it seems to be that something important will be lost if we change what we are doing to make it easier for children with different needs to attend. I disagree, and below I will explain how I have modified my own practice to accommodate my daughter. 
     What frustrates me is that it doesn't have to be this way - while it does require compromise and reworking it is not impossible to accommodate families that need it. And I will never believe the Gods, ancestors or spirits are offended by the actions or needs of a child who is doing their best in the moment and only wants to be part of a spiritual celebration. 
   So, to begin with: food. feasting is a big part of most reconstructionist faiths as well as other pagan religions. Allergies are things both adults and children deal with and should not ever be something that is treated lightly. Just because peanuts are your favorite treat doesn't mean it will kill you to skip bringing them to a group celebration, and being around them might just kill someone else. And that's not hyperbole. Let me fill you in on something all parents know - kids don't care about whether eating something will make them sick, if it tastes good they will eat it anyway. My daughter for many years was not allowed to eat gluten, soy, or dairy because of a congenital immune deficiency disorder which made her digestive system very touchy, and chocolate was something she could only have in very small amounts. That never stopped her from overeating things she shouldn't have when she had a chance with predictable results . Kids with allergies are not going to police themselves, especially younger ones, and I get really irritated when adults complain about how unfair it is that they have to skip out on a food they like or are complain about being expected to cater to someone else's allergies. On a related side note, its super frustrating when there is only dish at a pot luck or similar event that a child can eat and everyone else is taking huge servings of it, not leaving enough for that child to eat very much. Shouldn't this be common courtesy? 
   Accessibility. No one ever thinks of this one, and honestly I can only imagine the frustration of parents with children in wheel chairs who are faced with hikes or trips over uneven ground. My daughter is ambulatory but due to a heart condition she tires easily and doesn't have the stamina for long walks, never mind hikes. I can't tell you how often I end up carrying her (luckily even at 6 she's very small, so carrying her is still an option). When we trick or treat on Halloween we plan carefully so that she isn't exhausted by the end. It shouldn't be that difficult to find a suitable site that is easy for people with mobility issues to access. At the Morrigan Retreat this past June we had to change our ritual location to accommodate such a situation and there was no complaining about it ruining things or blaming people for putting everyone else out. We came together as a community and made it work for everyone, once we knew there was an issue. I have a friend who is a sign language interpreter and we have discussed several times the huge challenge that deaf pagans face in trying to find even basic accommodations at rituals and workshops. Whether we like to acknowledge it or not public ceremonies are designed, almost exclusively, for people with 5 functional senses, full mobility, and normal stamina. We really need to start asking ourselves where this leaves all the people who don't have all of those things. Is it that difficult to make what we do truly open to everyone?*
  Finally behavioral issues; this is the one that has caused me to stop bringing my children to most events, in all honesty. I'm not talking here about kids who are destructive or violent and really shouldn't be expected to handle being in a ritual setting without disaster ensuing. I'm talking about kids who can't act their age or who can't focus or stay quiet or still through a ceremony. People have expectations for the behavior of children at certain ages and when your child isn't conforming to that not only is the child assumed to lack discipline but the parent is criticized for being too lenient. And in my experience even explaining that the child in question has a medical diagnoses makes no difference. People come to a spiritual gathering or ritual expecting a moving experience and they do not in any way want to deal with a child who can't be still or quiet. My daughter has a sensory processing disorder that means she is sensory seeking (she touches everything) and also that loud noises and crowds upset her. She has been in occupational therapy since she was a toddler and behavioral therapy since first grade, but these are not things that will ever go away, they are part of who she is. When she was small people were pretty tolerant of her quirky behavior, but as she has gotten older the tolerance has largely evaporated, especially with people who don't know her. I find it unfair to put that expectation of perfect behavior on any child but especially those that have extra challenges with conforming to behavioral expectations. This one is a double edged sword though because I have also had problems with judgment from people (not necessarily at pagan events, but in general) when I have to leave early because my daughter has hit her limit and is on the verge of a sensory meltdown. Children and parents who deal these issues shouldn't feel unwelcome. 
    As a reconstructionist I do not believe this is how our ancestors would have reacted to people who had different needs, not when community was the center of celebration. Babies cry, women need to nurse during rituals (see point one), children fuss, kids need to use the bathroom at inopportune times, and so on. It seems natural that children who have behavioral issues would also be understood as part of the community and while - obviously - extreme disruptions can't be allowed minor disturbances and less than perfect behavior would be tolerated. The community would find ways to make sure everyone possible attended ceremonies, I think. And while food issues may be a more modern thing I know our ancestors made sure everyone, even the poor and beggars, had something to eat on ritual days. 
   

  So, how do we celebrate with my youngest daughter? We start by talking a lot ahead of time about the holiday, because she is very into routine and unexpected things can throw her off. On the first day of Samhain we go trick or treating and when we get home we leave out an offering for the Daoine Eile. The children each choose something to offer from the candy they have gotten. On the second night we honor the Gods by lighting a fire in my largest cauldron. Because my daughter is phobic of the dark we do not do turn out all the lights, although I used to do so before to mimic the ceremony at Tlachtga. I tell the children stories of different events that have occurred in myth on Samhain and often we end up talking more generally about different Tuatha De Danann that interest them. We have a ritual to an Morrigan and an Daghda and make offerings to them, and divination is done for the year to come. Sometimes my youngest daughter stays for the whole ritual, sometimes she doesn't. On the third day we honor our ancestors. An extra place is set at the table and water and food are set out at dinner. We light white candles on our ancestor altar and we tell stories about our beloved dead. My youngest daughter struggles with expressing her emotions so she enjoys the stories of the older dead who she never knew but will usually leave when we talk about the more recent dead. We offer coffee on the altar and leave out something on the doorstep for the wandering dead.

   And that's it. The biggest accommodations we make for my daughter are letting her come and go as she pleases during ceremonies, and letting her sit or play during the ceremonies if she's having trouble focusing, and making sure nothing is too dark or too loud. We also keep each focused ceremony short and to the point because that's easier for her to handle. It's not that hard and while it has changed how I conduct rituals and the flow of my ceremonies I do not in any way feel that I've lost any substance. In a situation where I feel compelled to do something really complex or drawn out I do it by myself but honestly that's very rare. My religion is part of the legacy I want to pass on to my children - all my children - and its important to me that she be and feel included. 

*I do acknowledge that the issue of having an interpreter available is complicated because it is not a common enough skill. Maybe we should all try to learn a little sign language to bridge the gap. 

Random Life Notes and Some Writing Tips

  I realize I've been neglecting the blog of late, and I apologize for that. I do hope to be back on a regular schedule soon, but I've been dealing with a variety of pesky real life issues that take enough of my attention that I just don't have the time to get any nice juicy blogs done. Bear with me and it'll get better. Some of this has to do with an increase in the amount of writing I am doing elsewhere, and some of this has to do with child related things, but the end result is not enough blogging time.
   To fill you all in on what I've been up to in general. I wrote a couple guest blogs for Raise the Horns both on the Morrigan but very different in topic and tone. I submitted a couple essays for the next issue of Air n-Aithesc, a wonderful CR journal that comes out twice a year. I submitted an article for ADF's journal Oak Leaves, and another for the e-zine Goddess Alive! and I am working on two more for other e-zines as well. I've been asked to do an entry in another forthcoming anthology by my publisher, which should be interesting. I'm eagerly anticipating the release of my 9th book in December, Pagan Portals: The Morrigan, and recently finished the draft of my second urban fantasy novel which will hopefully be released soon as well (I'm aiming for October 31st, if all goes well). So its been a very busy writing time for me, just not here. I'm also gearing up now to officiate a wedding, head off to a Morrigan retreat for Samhain, and I have the Changing Times, Changing Worlds conference fast approaching (I'm teaching 6 workshops this year on a variety of subjects).
   Basically, I've been very busy, but am hoping that things will settle down and allow for more regular blogging soon.
   Besides all that I wanted to share a conversation I had today with a friend. We were talking about writing and in the course of the conversation I shared the two best pieces of writing advice I've ever gotten, which I'd like to share here too:
 1. Writing as a career is a job like any other and should be treated as one. When I first heard this it offended my artistic sensibilities, but the truth is, well, it's true. I treat writing with the same work ethic I treated every other job I've had and that means if I have time to write I write, whether or not I feel inspired or in the mood.
 2. Write what you enjoy reading about. This was some great advice from my friend Cathrine Kane  and I've always found it to be valuable. When we write about what we like to read about we have more passion about the topic or genre and we also are more familiar with it. And its much more fun to write.
  So there you go, hope you all have a great day!

Work In Progress Blog Tour

 Well I've been nominated by Arie Farnam, author of The Soul and the Seed to participate in the Work in Progress Blog Tour. The idea is to post the first sentence of each of the first three chapters of your work in progress.
  My current work is the sequel to my urban fantasy novel Murder Between the Worlds. This book picks up where the last one left off with my protagonist, Allie, trying to get her life back to normal after her attempt to help the police solve a series of murders in the first book. She's learning that moving on isn't as easy as she wants it to be, especially since things aren't as neatly tied up as the authorities all think they are. There's several mysterious things afoot, from missing girls to arson, and someone is going to a lot of trouble to make Allie's life unpleasant, but the biggest threat might be the one no one sees at all...
  Anyway, here are the first couple sentences/paragraph from the first three chapters of the rough draft. Enjoy!

Prologue
He watched the girl as she got ready to walk to her car, his hands shaking in excitement. She had finished her shift and clocked out five minutes ago but lingered, talking to friends. He wished she’d hurry. He’d waited too long, until the night he needed to do the ritual, and now there wasn't any time for mistakes.

Chapter 1
Allie McCarthy was not having a good day. She was late leaving for work after losing track of the time. When she turned onto Asylum street, the back road she usually drove to avoid Main Street, she was confronted with a wall of construction equipment and a sign declaring the road closed for repaving. By the time she detoured and fought through the weekend tourist traffic – not even a hint of what it would soon be when summer was upon them – it was quarter past and she was late. She parked haphazardly in the lot behind Between the Worlds, her bookstore, and jogged as quickly as her bad ankle would allow to the back door, hurrying to lower the magical wards that protected the building and unlock the door.

Chapter 2
 “Wow, that stuff reeks,” Jason made a face, waving his hand in front of his face.  

Allie stopped walking, the burning bundle of sage leaves held out in front of her. She glanced around her store, the ordered rows of bookshelves now obscured by a haze of smoke. “I like the way it smells.”

Jason wrinkled his nose, then looked up towards the ceiling, “You did remember to turn off the smoke detectors before lighting that thing up, right? Because I’m going to be really embarrassed if the alarm goes off and -”

“And all your firefighting buddies roll up and see you playing witch.” Allie interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Fine Takada, go open the front door and let some fresh air in.”

Here are the rules:

You write a blog post about your work in progress and include the first sentences of the first three chapters (at least as they stand at the moment). You link back to me and you link to several other authors who you nominate. Traditionally, you nominate four.

 I have been trying to decide who to nominate but am being challenged by the fact that the authors I know either don't blog (I'm looking at you James Ferace!) or don't have a current work in progress that's at a point where its ready to discuss (Looking at you now Nimue Brown). So I'm going to nominate Catherine Kane, because I know she's working on the sequel to her wonderfully fun urban fantasy The Land That Lies Between and she blogs, and also Elen Sentier whose amazing book Moon Song is coming out through Cosmic Egg Books and who I'm sure is working on something, and blogs.

You May Have Fairy Blood If...

So there's a post on a major blogsite about 8 ways to tell if you may have fairy blood. The list is heavily prejudiced towards a modern (post-Victorian) view of fairies and specifically of winged flower fairies as far as I can tell. It also includes an array of characteristics that could apply to many people for many reasons, like feeling the need to lighten the mood in serious situations with humor.
   Now in the traditional lore there are stories of people who have fairy ancestry of various sorts, from the children of selkies and fisherman to those who have a human mother and aos sidhe or alfar father. But I would tend to use a very different measure, myself, when discussing whether someone might have "fairy blood". You'll quickly see a theme for my criteria....but I'll say that I'm not just getting this from folklore, and that I do believe there are more things on Heaven and earth as Shakespeare said, so...
  The following is just my own list, feel free to disregard if it doesn't appeal to you. And I know it won't to many people.

  You May Have fairy Blood If....
  1) An aversion or reaction to iron and iron alloys - its pretty traditional in most stories for the good Neighbors to have issues with iron, which is why its such a powerful protection against them. This same thing can also apply to other traditional fairy protections.
  2) A flamingly inappropriate sense of humor - laughing when other people are crying, or laughing when other people are very angry. In many stories fairies are described crying at happy occassions or laughing at funerals. The jokes they play on people are also often extreme and lean towards the macabre.
  3) An unusual charisma or ability to charm people - if we look at stories that mention people with mixed ancestry they are usually described this way
  4) A reputation for magical skill or healing - same as above
  5) An unusual physical appearance - in stories this can be exceedingly pale, fair, dark, tall, beautiful, Otherworldly or so on.
  6) Intense emotions that may be described as inflexible - again based on looking at how folklore portrays fairies, they are often described as quick to anger, quick to love, and difficult to sway.
  7) A love of both the beautiful and the broken - in folklore the Fey love luxury and fine things. They also have a penchant for the grotesque.

Why Plagiarism and Pirating Books Suck

This is expanded and re-posted from a blog I wrote a couple years ago called "The Ethics of Information"

   Several years ago I wrote this: Twice in the past week I have seen people post online direct quotes they did not write. One was a prayer and the other an excerpt from a book, but in both cases no source was given, nor was it even mentioned in the original post that the person posting the information wasn't the author of it. In the first case when asked if it was okay to share the prayer the person said they had not written it and could not remember the source so, in a move that totally baffled me, the second person replied that they would simply credit the original poster as the source, even though that person admitted they had not written it. A quick Google search turned up the name of the author but even when that was known people continued to credit the poster, I assume because they ignored the discussion under the post. In the second case the person posted a paragraph long excerpt from a book under similar circumstances, but in that case I actually was familiar enough with the book that I immediately recognized it and mentioned the source. The response by the poster was that they liked the subject and just wanted to share. Along those same lines a friend had her entire blog re-posted without attribution by someone who seemed equally baffled as to why that mattered. Sometimes the person may genuinely not realize that it does, and sometimes the person may want other people to think that they did write those words, so they can enjoy the praise and compliments generated from it. And this morning I woke to read a link to a blog talking about yet another site making the rounds that offers free pdfs of many popular pagan books, something that should clearly be against the majority of neopagan morals yet rarely fails to appeal*. (yes I admit it mystifies me that the same person who argues to the death that any magic for personal gain is wrong will turn around and cheerfully download over 100 still-in-print pagan books without seeing any issue with it). 
   Maybe this is a sensitive issue for me because I have experienced it in the past, opening an email to see my own words - my reading list, my spell - under someone else's name and fought back only to get the same reply - who cares? As if I was the one who was wrong, because they say, information should be free for everyone. I have been told that anything spiritual should be free, should be shared, that sources don't matter, or in one case that knowing the true source was the responsibility of the reader not the poster, like some sort of test. Well I will never agree that it doesn't matter or that we shouldn't care. Plagiarism is a big issue in paganism, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, but it will never get any better as long as we as a community put up with it. Now I don't mean things like chants and songs which can be more difficult to track back and spread like ink in water, although it's still worth trying to find sources on those as well, but most other material can be found, and in our online age can be found fairly easily. I would like to hope that it was obvious that any book under copyright - anything under copyright at all actually - should be respected.
   On the other hand there are some things that I do agree belong to everyone. Ritual structure, general meditations, things that truly cannot be traced back to any one person. Mythology. The old beliefs themselves. No one person can claim these things and they do belong to all of us. 
   I think it presents an interesting challenge to the community at large to decide how we are going to deal with the ethics of information. There seems to be a pretty wide spread belief that sources, and citing sources, doesn't matter, and that can only change if we as a community change it. The idea that everything should be free - including books - will only change when the people thinking that way stop and realize how much work and effort goes into that book, or article, or what-have-you and decide that supporting the author (or in the case of deceased authors the family) is better than the quick fix of a free file. What value do we place on something that is free, compared to something that we had to work and save to get? What value do we place on our community itself and it's integrity if nothing matters but instant gratification?

  *I am reposting this today after finding one of my books available on a free download site this morning. It has been downloaded there almost as often as copies have been sold, which represents a significant loss both to my publisher and to me. These sites offer a wide array of in-print in-copyright books all of which represent taking money away from people who put a lot of time and effort into writing, editing, and publishing those books. 
   Taking someone else's words and claiming them as your own is wrong and it hurts the original author. Taking those words and attributing them to "anonymous" also hurts an author. How? Because people who like those words don't know who said them and may never expend the effort to find out. People who might have read more by that person instead add small quote or prayer or article into their own array of material under that anonymous label without another thought. 
  Taking a book in pdf form - or scanning one into that form - and then handing it out like candy hurts authors. It devalues the original work, for one thing, and it takes money away from authors who are already not seeing a huge return for their efforts. It is stealing. Imagine that you have worked hard for months or even years to make something and you put it out to sell it and then find someone else has taken it and is giving it away instead. And lets just be blunt here, free pdfs are not in anyway like library books. For one thing a library has one copy which was paid for and can only go to one person at a time; a free pdf can be copied and handed out exponentially. People who pass out free books are hurting the authors of those books, and anyone who thinks authors make a lot of money and won't notice a few stolen copies of books - or a few thousand pdfs getting passed out - has no actual idea of how being an author really works for the vast majority of us.  
  I want to emphasize that this kind of theft of intellectual property really hurts small authors like myself. It's not a harmless thing or a victimless crime; its choosing to take an action that has a real world impact on a person. This is true whether its a book, artwork or music - people need to think really hard about what they are doing before they do it. If you wouldn't walk up to me, reach into my pocket, and take money out, then why would you ever think its okay to get or hand out a free copy of one of my books?

Novel Writing

I started writing the sequel to my novel (which is free on amazon right now) a couple weeks ago. As part of my writing process I post little word count update and plot hints on my facebook page as I write and I thought it would be fun to share them here as a follow up to my "Novels, sequels and looking back" post. At this point I think I'm about 1/3 of the way through the draft of the new book, so here's where it's at so far:

4,436 words - only just beginning. There's a very dangerous man, a missing girl, and a distraught mother - but my protagonist does not want to deal with more problems. She has enough of her own, and she just wants some control over her life....

6, 037 words - sage, 4 thieves vinegar, and a hopeful attitude might not be enough to turn my protagonists luck around but she's trying. Misery loves company though and she's not the only one with problems....

8,044 words - rekindling romance is a complicated thing when my protagonist feels like maybe she's bad news for the person who cares about her most. Meanwhile there's a new roommate reminding her that life goes on whether she wants it to or not....

11,602 words - Sometimes you really just need a friend to tell you to stop being an idiot. Sometimes instead what you get is a voice from the grave telling you to get your head out of your butt. We'll see if this is a wake up call for my protagonist...or not.

14,664 words – just under 15,000 words and really only just beginning. Comparing to the last book I’m estimating this one will probably end around 100,000 words total so a bit more meat on the bone for you guys that have been eagerly awaiting the sequel

16,800 words - sometimes we just can't let go of the past. Of course its harder to let go when the past is also holding onto us. One small ray of sunshine in my protagonist's otherwise cloudy day is a friendship that is proving much stronger and deeper than she realized it was.

19,763 words - my love triangle is still triangular despite my protagonist's attempts to round it out. Maybe because her heart isn't as clearly decided as her mind is, which is bound to cause trouble for everyone later. Meanwhile there's some very suspicious activity afoot...but no one is connecting the dots yet.

21,732 words - beware making bargains with elves; my protagonist is about to learn that they are a lot better at it than she is. The devil, as they say, is in the details...

23, 574 words - time is running out for our missing girl.

We'll have to wait and see if she meets a bad end or not, but the bad end may be the greater mercy in this case....

25, 779 words - more than one conspiracy is a foot, and they may be on a crash course with each other…

32,669 words - someone is keeping a close eye on my protagonist but they definitely don't mean her well. She's under a lot of pressure and may be relying on the wrong person, but how do you know who to trust when nothing is quite what it seems to be?

37,092 words - the other shoe has dropped and its a big one, but my protagonist has no one to blame but herself for thinking that dealing with elves was a good idea. Meanwhile the game's afoot and my protagonist is finally on the trail of the missing girl, which means she's also only a couple steps behind a very dangerous person....