CRISIS, Under the influence

I once knew a fella that always said "There are only two things in this world I cannot stand, a drunk when I'm sober and a sober man when I'm drunk." But being a member of the clergy, counseling someone when they are under the influence is something that crops quite frequently. I have heard it said that you cannot talk to a drunk. Well you can, it may not be easy, it may be exasperating and you may have to watch out what you say, as everything is a bit or more than a bit distorted for them. They never want to talk to you when they are sober when you can actually help them make sense of things. And if you try they just blow you off and say everything is wonderful and coming up roses. Then you get that call in the middle of the night, they are at their whits end, they are gonna do something about what ever problem they are confronted with right then, and no body is gonna stop em either. Some times they get so depressed they are on the verge of suicide sometimes so angry they are on the verge of committing murder and have lost enough self control and lost any sort of common sense or openness to reasonable alternatives, so yep it is difficult. The only control you may have is your integrity, your honesty, and hopefully your wisdom, and yes your connection to Divinity sure helps too. They want to talk to you because they really want someone to stop them from doing what ever it is they are planning on or compelled to do, they are also lost, feeling lost, and they need guidance and they seek you out because of the respect they have for you. You really have to be on your toes, because the dialogue can degenerate to an explosive and dangerous situation in the blink of an eye. But mostly they just need to talk, to vent, and they need help and direction. They do not need you to control them they need your support to learn to control themselves. They do not need a list of "Thou shalts" but they do need some positive suggestions and hope. You need to help them see that although it may be a very dark and trying time, that there is a light at the end. You also need to motivate them positively to dig themselves out of the mess they have landed in. Then hopefully you have helped them to resolve the crisis, if you can once the crisis has passed, inject a bit of levity into the atmosphere, but even in this be careful because it can still back-fire on you and re-create a crisis situation. You need patience, they need support, you need self control, they need to see you are in control. You need to use suggestion and gentile guidance, come on too strong and they will turn on you. Be careful, use your wits, be respectful, and if they suddenly order you out of their house then do not argue, just say OK and exit. More often than not what they want there is a confrontation, by avoiding that, often they will change their mind and ask you back, and even calm down a bit. It is difficult, potentially dangerous, and something a professional counselor is not confronted with, but as a member of Clergy, sooner or later this will be something you are faced with.

Good luck!

Workshops and Pagan Event Invitations

For the past several weeks, I have been receiving several invitations to conduct workshops and guest speaking at Pagan events that are several states away, one even from Berkley California. Unfortunately, I am on a shoe-string budget and cannot afford the transportation. Though If I were able to do so I know I would sell more books, but it takes money to make money they say and being financially challenged, it is even more difficult to get anything off the ground. The one book I have out is in dire need of re-editing and though it has been an amazon best seller as have my other two books, I lack the funds to re-issue that one as it is a self-published work. It seems that I am in more demand in nearly every state but my home state and the states surrounding it except Michigan and thats a LOOOONG drive from the ole covenstead. Last year and the year before last I received several invitations to events in Florida as well, but could not afford the trip down there. This year as gas prices climb I have to stay even closer to home. But a person has to eat and pay bills first then if there is anything left over to squirrel away saving a little at a time I can do a trip every couple of years, or have been able to thus far. Though both trips were to the wonderful state of TN. I have been down there on 3 different book promotions and each time I was able to pay for most of the cost of the trip in book sales and speaking gratuities. But any farther than that and I would probably still be trying to pay the costs off on the ol'e plastic high-interest account.

Everything has gone up but wages. My wife works in the medical field and her hours have been cut back due to cuts in medicare and medicaid. School budgets are cut, and anything to help the American poor has been slashed as well, yet why is it that some folks in Washington have passed legislation to give free medical care, free housing, and job location assistance to illegal aliens?? I just do not get that. Lets take care of our own people first. There ate millions of American citizens going hungry, going without adequate medical and dental care, loosing their homes sleeping on the streets eating from trash cans, freezing to death in winter, and there is no government assistance available for them. Yet someone from another country can come over here and be set up in a nice home, given a government allotment allowance of about $2,000/month per person, free medical care and job placement assistance all paid by YOU! That is not right folks. Then we have veterans who fought for this country sleeping under overpasses and dying from combat related maladies or starving on the streets due to the lack of funds. I do not know if this is the "Change we can Believe in" or not but it sure is the reality of the result of a lot of "Change"

Well before I really get off on a rant I'll stop here, LOL!

Clergy and End of Life

Clergy and End of Life

Here it is less than a week before the first day of spring, the time when our focus is on life, living and new beginnings. Yet several times these past weeks I have seen the truck pulling the trailer that carries and sets burial vaults making trips up and down the road between the place of business to the north and the cemeteries to the south. The fall equinox pretty much marks a time when the death rate rises. Then after the vernal equinox the death rate diminishes, yet death can happen any time to any one.

Death and dying are things people naturally shun talking about, or thinking about, yet it is a fact of life that like birth we will all experience death in one manner or other. For some, death may come suddenly without warning in an accident or natural disaster. For others it will be the termination of a long and painful illness. But the fact is we all will at some point leave this physical life through the process of death.

Throughout recorded history, and perhaps well before, Clergy, i.e. Priestesses and Priests have filled the rolls of preparing the dying for the afterlife, officiating the funerary services and rites, as well as counseling the living through the whole process including helping them to do their grief work. So as distasteful as it may be to most, this is an area where Clergy are expected to be very competent in. The dying and their family and friends will look to you for guidance and answers, and they will look to you to help them find closure. They will look to you for comfort at a time of intense pain. They will look to you for advice and guidance at a time when their own thinking processes are severely compromised by the trauma of loss. And they will rely upon your strength of faith and spiritual connection to grant them the strength of will to work through this difficult time. So as a member of Clergy, whether you have had prior experience in this are or not, you should be very well prepared to deal with the entire process of helping someone prepare themselves to die, helping the family prepare for the inevitable death, helping the survivors through the funeral process, officiating the services, and then being available for the survivors as they work through the grieving process.

All of this is outlined, step by step in my book, “The Pagan Clergy’s Guide For  Counseling, Crisis Intervention And Otherworld Transitions,” Published by Waning Moon Publications. I have spent some years working with hospice patients through Vista Care, and I have officiated funerals in both traditional (funeral home) and non-traditional settings. I have also spent a lot of time talking to Christian ministers on their own experiences and distilled all of that information in “The Pagan Clergy’s Guide…” By using the material in that book, you will have every thing you need right there at your fingertips to competently and professionally officiate a funeral and the skills to help you help those who are dying and their survivors. Yes this is a plug for the book, but it is also more than just a plug, it is a desire to help you, as members of Clergy to be able to fulfill your role when you are called to do so at what may be the most difficult task you will be asked to accomplish. And to do it in such a manner that you do the task with complete competence and professionalism. This is not a time to drop the ball or bungle the task.

Some things I did not add in the book, I will mention here. You have completed the deliver of your funeral message and service. It is time for the family and friends to walk by the casket and say a final farewell as they file out. Your job now is to stand beside the deceased and guard the remains. Sometimes you may have to physically pry someone away from the body. You are there to protect the body, for the person in the casket can no longer protect their self. You may see about anything at this point where people literally break down. Some may suddenly become angry and begin assaulting the body. Some may try to remove something from the coffin or person of the deceased. It is OK to slip mementos into the coffin, but it is not OK for people tom take souvenirs.

 The people have all filed out, the pallbearers are waiting out of sight in an adjoining room until called back in to carry the casket out. Your job here is to again stay with and guard the deceased. Most funeral directors are honest. But a few are not and may try to loot the coffin before it is sealed. You are to step back out of the way and allow them to do their job while attentively observing, and ensuring that the deceased is protected against theft, or indignity.

Once the coffin is sealed, the funeral director will call the pallbearers in. You will proceed the deceased out of the funeral home then stand reverently by out of the way while the coffin is being loaded into the hearse. Then when that is done you will find you vehicle waiting for you behind the lead car. The hearse will fall in line behind you. You as officiant/Priest-ess, always precede the deceased in his/her journey from ritual site to internment site. Follow the lead car until it stops in the cemetery, then get out of the car and stand behind and to the side of the hearse out of the way of the pallbearers. Then when the casket is unloaded, you walk ahead of the procession, to the grave site where you wait until the coffin is placed and everyone is assembled, then you deliver a short graveside message and then the funeral director will coax everyone out so they can finish the job of interring the remains and closing the grave. Your job as funeral officiant is done. Share in the celebration of life as the family has a meal afterward if this is done. Then leave them to begin healing.

The next hat you wear will be as a grief counselor. In the case of a surviving widow or widower you should arrange to meet them a week after the funeral to access their mind state and continue giving them your support. The grief process may take a year or more for many to work through. And if their grief becomes abnormal grief you need to encourage them to seek the help of a professional counselor or therapist. Remember their metal health is far more important than your petty ego.

Becoming/Attaining

Becoming…. Good? Becoming = Attaining. Attaining = “Getting Stuff” - Better
home, more money, better job, more powerful, more better more better…..
If we Attain wealth – become wealthy; Attain power and become powerful;
Attain knowledge and become knowledgeable. What we attain, we become, and
what is attained becomes an extension of the Ego, whether that is strength,
knowledge, or affluent, because the Ego incorporates that fact.
So “Attaining is the Self’s process of “Becoming”. Becoming is intricately
woven into the nature of time and the mechanics of Thought. BOTH which
support the fabric of Fear, which in turn is the barrier to self-awareness.
The driving Force behind Becoming is our feelings of insufficiency. We feel
that we are insufficient to the task of living.
Look deeply and honestly within yourselves and see your inner truth. As a
species, humans are empty, fearful, lonely, and isolated. Mankind has
isolated itself from the world, constructing barriers to isolate ourselves
even further. We hide away in our artificially climate-controlled
environments. Separated from nature and each other. We imitate those whom we
believe know more than ourselves, and we shun those whom we judge to have no
value to our own ambitions and pleasures.
We fear Death, and we fear Life. We tie together, pleasure, security, and
need, calling this package “Love.” We are self-centered and concerned with
our own welfare, even to the detriment of nearly everyone else. The world we
have created is based upon possessiveness and ambition. And if we are TRULLY
honest with ourselves, we can see that we are really empty shells, playing a
role in this reality of our creation. That is not living, it is existing.
So, in our loneliness, we reach out and through attainments, we seek to fill
our emptiness with possessions, power, knowledge, talents, prestige, or the
love of others. But this is a vain process because that emptiness is the
ABSENCE of Love. True Love, which is the love that blooms within us when we
are able to realize the true reality of ourselves; The reality of the Divine
within, and make that connection to that spark of the God-dess within all of
us. The Void within is the absence of this connection to Spirit, and no
amount of power, or wealth, or prestige, or “STUFF” can fill that void.
In most of us, that void is the driving force of Attainment; the root of our
never-ending desire to become what we are not. So the process of endless
becoming is endless attaining, and that is the obstacle in the path of
self-understanding.
That void within can only be filled with LOVE, Perfect love, Divine Love.
And it begins with first understanding and loving the SELF, which we ARE.
Through that acceptance, we can connect with our Divine Self and then
recognize Divinity in others. Other creatures, beings, plants, the cosmos,
and through that understanding, we can make the connections to ALL that IS
because we are a part of and connected to all that is. We are God. We are
Goddess. We are Divine. We ARE…

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exup’ery

I know why they wore hoods

Standing upon the frosty ground, peering east through the ice fog at the golden glow intensifying over the distant tree tops, I begin to hail the sunrise of a new day. A sound, distant at first, but quickly becoming louder, the clicking of grackles and the trilling "Good Moooorning!" of the Red-winged Blackbirds as wave after wave of mixed flocks flew over head. I quickly raised the hood of my hooded sweatshirt, being an unfortunate victim of aerial assault before. A hood is a handy thing to have attached, which was why they were worn on the capes and cloaks of a by-gone age. It helps to retain body warmth. It can hide your face in shadow, if you prefer to be discrete, and it protects ones noggin from gifts from above.

Life Journey/Spirit Journey

It seems that Spirit or "the powers that be" which guide me have completed working through me in the "technical" or "how-to aspects of helping to guide members of Pagan Clergy to better perform the duties of their ministries and are ready for my work to begin a second phase, that of life guidance in general through stories based upon our Pagan heritage which deliver parables to help us find the way through the morass we often find ourselves in as we stumble through this great adventure called "life"

I completed a series of children's stories and sent that work on my publisher "Waning Moon Publications" then started working on a 2nd volume which will have more adult type themes and stories more suited for us older kids of 16-160 Oh the previous work, "Wizard Tales" is interesting even at my age after writing, reading, editing re-reading re-editing and reading yet again, it still had not lost it's appeal and one can find more and more hidden parables in those yet to be published pages.

I  recently completed another story for the next of the series, but it is of such a nature that I am thinking few will actually see or understand the spiritual/life messages contained in those few pages. The story is of the life of a man who came to a new country (born into a new life) from the east, across the sea (the womb). He set shore at the new growing town of Jamestown to prepare (learn and acquire rudimentary skills and the tools needed) for the next leg of his journey.

His journey takes him up river (following Spirit) toward the distant Mountains (Earth mother/Goddess) Along the way he not only has to work against the current, but he also has to learn how to survive on his own without falling prey to hostile Indians (the pitfalls and traps that we encounter in life). The constant testing of Spirit makes him stronger as it does in our lives. He observes, sees and learns. Along the way he meets a wounded Indian woman who will eventually become his wife. He would not have survived were it not for her, nor would she have survived were it not for him, and together, they are able to meet and overcome each and every challenge the wilderness tosses at them. Of course being a short story, all this is brief and alluded to in the mind of the reader. Then he gets wounded in the leg (thigh). Sends his wife on along with their children to a new and more fertile valley where they can live together peacefully without the constant threat of attack by a hostile tribe.

The wounded thigh is a classic metaphor of castration, the stoppage of the flow of the fertilizing agent which needs to pour forth in order to initiate life within the mother/earth. He lets go, freeing his offspring
and his mate, remaining behind until he is able to travel, then he sets out alone. In the mountains, the womb of the Great mother he meets his death.

While he was alive the hostile Indian tribe sent only the young men to attack him as a right of manhood. He gets bitten by a serpent ( infused with wisdom) and then is killed in a weakened state by a war party. There is a twist right at the end which I will not reveal here.

But not only is this the life of the man, it is the parable of the male mysteries. And I think if the reader were to examine the story from the perspective outlined here, those mysteries would begin to be revealed.

Speaking on Men's Mysteries, there is a new book by Terry Michal Riley entitled "Brothers of the Sun, Pagan men's mysteries" that will be coming out this month (March 2011) or so that was the plan. which I believe has been long over due. Terry is a great guy who I had the pleasure to meet about a year ago and I got a sneak preview of the work and would highly recommend it as both a guide and a teaching aid to help one better understand the male mysteries of our long-forgotten heritage.